Bummer

The other day, I was talking on the phone and got another incoming call. I pressed the wrong button and managed to hang up on both calls. I told her what I did. She looked at me very seriously and said, "You pressed the wrong button and hung up on Daddy? Bummer."

My daughter the engineer

Two things happened recently that convinced me that Alana might well be an engineer in the future.

First thing happened when we were out at lunch with the whole family. Alana was sitting in a high chair with the straps buckled. She put on her vest and was trying to zip it up around the straps and I was trying to tell her that it wouldn't work because she was in the way. Of course, she wouldn't listen to me and kept trying and trying and getting more and more frustrated. Andrew turned to her and said, "Alana, you can't zip it up that way, it's physics. Two things can't occupy the same space at the same time." Alana looked at her A-goo, then turned to me and said, "Oh, physics. OK." and stopped trying until we got everything sorted out.

The second thing happened a couple of days ago. Alana built a bridge between the couch and the coffee table with one of the couch cushions. She spent some time playing underneath the bridge. After a while, she came out to stand next to me and leaned on the bridge. It collapsed under her weight. When she stood up, she looked at me and said, "Mama, the bridge... it's not very stable."

Good thing I don't have anything against engineers. *g*

I wish my days could go like this

Alana told us today, "I'm going to work, bye-bye." and went into the mudroom. A minute or so later, she came back in. Keith and I asked her how her day was and she replied, "It was fine, my problems disappeared."

I wish that would happen to me!

Getting an early start

So Alana got her first credit card offer yesterday! We signed her up for an airline mileage program and that must have put her name right onto the mailing lists. Sometimes, the efficiency of the marketing world is a little frightening.

Budding Red Sox Fan

Alana came home tonight and asked her father to play "Red Sox" with her. We found a soft baseball but she insisted that she needed a glove in order to really play.

What a Beautiful Day

This morning turned out to be grey and foggy but Alana and I had to run some errands. As she's riding in her car seat, she tells me, "What a beautiful day!" I said, "Really?" She says, "Yes, that's what Auntie Tricia says, 'What a beautiful day!'"

That's not the way you do it!

Alana's friend, Shen-He, was banging on Alana's toy piano. When she heard the ruckus, she quickly ran over to him and said, "That's not right." He wandered over to play with another toy and she sat down on the piano bench and pressed the keys and sang a song. She turned to Shen-He and said, "That's the way to do it."

Thank you Larry & Jess for giving Alana the toy piano! She plays with it every day. If she's not playing notes on the keyboard, she's dancing to the demo music. It's been a wonderful toy!

Writing an email

I just told Alana it was time to get changed for bed and she told to wait, she just had to finish an email. I have no idea where she got that from! Yeah, right! *raises an eyebrow in Keith's direction*

AST 2005

AST 2005 went off without a hitch! About 60 people came to the party and enjoyed the pool and the pond. This seemed to be the year for kids at the party! Everyone played outside until it started to get dark and then moved the party inside. Everyone brought yummy food and we got to see a short movie called Candy Bar, by Daniel C. Amazing work for a 10 year old!

MIT Stuff

I was just given an article called "MIT Nerds" from the June 2005 issue of Discover. It captures the spirit of the place very well, and brought back lots of fond memories (with 10 semesters across 11 years at the place, I've got a few!). My buddy Eric Vesper refers to MIT as "a place for the terminally curious", and that sums it up in a nutshell. The aforementioned Discover article mentions a bunch of famous MIT alums (Hugh Lofting, author of Dr. Doolittle...I had no idea!), and notes that "At a guess, none of them were normal, either. No one seems to be normal at MIT." Nice to know some things never change.
Personally, I think this is one of the great strengths of the place. There's such acceptance of intellectual and personal exploration (to the beat of one's own drum) that folks can really push the limits.
As another example of why I love the place, I attended a musical performance a few weeks ago that included some works by Prof. Peter Child. He played some piano works in which each hand was playing in a different key. Challenging stuff, but it really worked. It was interesting to hear the implied mode change within a couple of notes... Peter wrote some of the pieces for his daughter, who at 11 or 12 played them in one of the best renditions of the piece Peter has ever heard. Shortly after playing them, she quit piano (though he said he's not willing to attribute any causal relationship between the two events). I'll do another post at some point with my thoughts on MIT, both good and bad. I'm actually President-Elect for the MIT Club of Boston this next year, so I'm spending a fair bit of time thinking about it.