Dwyeropolis » Angus

And now for another installment of Rate This Baby

Angus — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:15:57 +0000

Trog-baby Dwyer II

Benedict had his 4-month check-up at the doctor this morning. Things look good with the exception of his baby eczema and lack of appreciation of Wes Anderson. (We’re working on both.)

The relevant stats:

Height: 26 in (90th %)
Weight: 15 lbs (50th %)
Head: 42.5 cm (50th %)

That length measurement will tell you the reason why he seemed to outgrow all of his clothes overnight — those overalls never had a chance!

Mean Median Mode

Angus — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:23:46 +0000

Ben had his 2 month checkup last week. He’s healthy as a clam, and took his vaccinations like a man.

His metrics reveal him to be an almost perfectly average little man:

Height: 23 inches (50th %)

Weight: 12 lb. 2 oz (55th %)

Head: 40.5 cm (50th %)

Close readers of the blog will recall that his sister at this age had a similar weight percentile, but she only got there by balancing out her ginormous head and diminutive body. Ben is of more… usual proportions.

Happy baby after the break:

How’s Ben?

Angus — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:35:45 +0000

He’s fine. I find it harder to blog about Ben than Pru at this stage, because she’s doing stuff, having all manner of toddler misadventures, whereas he’s still in the adorable blob area: he sleeps, he cries, he cuddles, he eats, he … anti-eats. All of it adorable, none of it notable. He’s as bad as his sister was about needing to be held constantly when awake; he naps during the day pretty well but sleeps less soundly than Pru did at this point and is much harder to get back down when he wakes.

I’ll try to keep my newly revitalized blogging equally balanced, but it’ll take some effort. How much?

Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much:

The Secret Ingredient of My Secret Ingredient Soup is…

Angus — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:18:41 +0000

…heavy use of our “Kung Fu Panda” DVD. Pru’s probably seen it over 100 times since we bought the DVDs in the Spring, almost entirely of her own volition. She knows the story by heart, laughs at appropriate (and inappropriate) times, and can successfully identify the protagonist as a “cat” (close) named “Po” (bullseye).

With that in mind, we leapt at our chance to take her to a free showing of “KFP” at the multiplex at one of the local malls today. Our previous attempt to see a movie with her in the theaters, going to see “Be Kind Rewind” with Matt Alderman when she was about 3 months, had been a total disaster, and though she’d been good at our visits to the drive-in earlier this summer (we saw “Night at the Museum II” and “Up”) she seemed to appreciate them more as opportunities to bounce around the back seat and trunk of the car in her PJs than as cinematic experiences. We figured that if there were any circumstance that would constitute “ideal conditions” to try to re-introduce theater movie-going, this was it: a movie she was intimately familiar with and loved, an audience filled with other kids who would be forgiving of slight noisiness on her part, and a price tag that would make bailing easy if things went south.

So we headed out…

…and things were, actually, a decent success. She seemed to understand why we were there, since she repeatedly pointed at the screen during the oh-so-challenging pre-movie trivia and said “Po, Po.” And she was quite well-behaved during the first two fifths of the movie, paying attention and snacking on our small popcorn (which was gigantic! I understand why the large sizes are so oversized, but is it really necessary for me to be unable to purchase a bag of popcorn that doesn’t also double as a hat?). After Zheng’s visit to Chor Gom prison, Pru started to get a little restless, chiefly I think because she started seeing other kids get up for bathroom breaks and assumed that it was OK to just kind of wander around the theater (in the same way that she can play with blocks or walk around when watching “KFP” at home). So we had a couple of walking sessions after that, but each time she got it out of her system pretty quickly and returned to her seat without protest.

In sum, she’s not afraid of movie theaters now, and isn’t too bad about behaving herself. Does this mean “Ponyo” is in our future?

New Addition (Not Featuring Bobby Brown)

Angus — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:28:58 +0000

This has probably been brought to all of your attention already, but just in case you missed it somehow: Dwyeropolis has welcomed its newest member.

Sarah gave birth to our son, Benedict Ambrose Dwyer, just under two weeks ago, July 28, 2009.

At birth, Ben (or “Bender,” as he’s known around these parts) was 21 inches long and weighed in at 8 pounds, 4 ounces (almost too heavy for the newborns wrestling weight class). By his first official pediatrician’s visit last week, he’d grown an inch and had regained most of the “freshman 8 oz.” that the kids typically lose these days. A strong, healthy boy, who’s only real vice is that he snores at night. Just a little.

We apologize for not doing more posting to the blog. We’ll try to correct that going forward, for those not also following us on Ye Facebooke. In the unlikely event that we’re still not great about updating, all of the photos of Ben, Pru and the rest will be uploaded to our Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwyeropolis/

To tide you over in the meantime, assorted pictures of Ben and his happy family:

In Which I Am a Cliche

Angus — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 02:30:59 +0000

A note to all the would-be suburban dads out there: when you go to explore a strange noise in your garage or basement or the like, where there’s a remote but actual possibility that you may be about to face down an intruder, don’t do what you’ve seen every TV or movie character do in similar circumstances (when they don’t have a firearm or a baseball bat) and arm yourself with a large chef’s knife “just in case”.

The reasons are twofold: one, you will feel ridiculously hackneyed, and two, even if there is an intruder, the knife will do you no good. If the intruder has a gun, then you’ve literally brought a knife to a gunfight, which works about as well as the figure of speech suggests. If the intruder is unarmed, the knife will be a hinderance you’ll have to discard, since you probably won’t want to stab an unarmed man (even if he is an intruder) in part because (depending on where you live) you probably don’t have the legal right to. The knife only does you any good if you’re facing down an intruder armed with a knife (or some other non-firearm weapon – perhaps a mace, or a tree branch) but even then, the odds are good the intruder has better knife-fighting skills than you. It’s just an incentives issue.

Christmas Comes Early to Dwyeropolis

Angus — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 03:41:14 +0000

We *may* have spent part of the day yesterday (when the ice giant Ymir visited Albany and bedecked the land with a frosty dollop, leaving us trapped inside, huddling together for warmth) unwrapping Christmas presents early. We did this because (a) it doesn’t make much sense to drag everything down with us to Rhode Island, where we’ll be spending “calendrical Christmas,” just to have to port it back with us; (b) Pru had already partially unwrapped most of the presents, anyway; and (c) I have very poor impulse control. Photos of our premature Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Saturnalia can be found here.

Clunky but Cool

Angus — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:40:45 +0000

Has any three-word phrase ever so perfectly encapsulated a man?

Ouroboros

Angus — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 21:37:52 +0000

A friend from college (who now has her own blog, by the way) chided me, ever so gently, to update my blog more often. So, here you go, Windy.

The Big Oh-One

Angus — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:05:12 +0000

Happy Birthday, Prudence!

We started the day with some fun present-unwrapping:

Then Dad went to work, and Mom and Pru had a fun day at home. When Dad was done at the office, we went to Alexi’s Diner, a local place that Pru likes and where the staff likes Pru. Dinner was nice, and when they found out that it was Pru’s birthday they gave her a little jello with a candle in it (and us a free slice of cake and coffee) and sang “Happy Birthday” (the copyrighted version, no less!) for her. Then we came home and gave the baby a small slice of the ice cream cake we’d been planning on giving her, which lead to the usual first birthday mess. Pictures will follow, probably tomorrow.