I’ve been working on illustrative graphics for one of my clients that they will present in Toronto this month…and part of the project was finding source images for certain expressions of emotion (ie. “Anger” or “Denial” etc.).  In my research, I came across a lot of photos of The Small One from just about 6 months ago and… I was struck seeing these pictures: My baby girl does not look like this anymore.

Clearleft has launched their new usability testing software today.  However, this is an OSX platform software for now. I *do* have a Mac, so I’m planning on downloading in the near future.  Check it out a copy at silverbackapp.com.

Every purchase of the software counts — they are donating 10% of all profits to The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund!  Save the Gorillas through usability testing!

For my IxD homies out there:  A couple of online tools worth evaluating:

Rapid Rabbit

Rapid prototyping tool which allows you to diagram and create links between pages or dialogs (depending on what you are doing!). Seems good for high-level design planning and fundamental screen interactions and workflow — but I haven’t test driven this yet.

Pencil Project

Free and Open Sketching/Prototyping plug-in for Firefox.  This one I *just* installed and plan to do a little monkey bidness with it.  I mean, good monkey bidness.  Ah, you know what I mean.  Either way, it has stencils that are stylized specifically for Windows XP/Vista and GTK+ environs… it’s not to say you couldn’t prototype with this tool for web applications, but I’d wager there are other tools that work better for mocking up web application UIs.

For me, I still heart visio stencils from www.guuui.com.

Lots of expressions coming from this child.

Little Girl had a pretty good weekend save for the following events:

1. Faceplant onto the hardwood floors whilst crawling, cut her lip on ALL THOSE TEETH… upper lip still a little puffy
2. TOOTH #7 has erupted on her lower jaw — I swear she’s going to have a full set by the time she’s 12 months

Growing up is hard work, it’s hard on a little body.  She seems fine despite her new bumps.  This weekend, she rocked her latest swimsuit (a clearance special found at Baby Gap).  I like the suit because it’s dead easy to put on her squirmy little frame, as opposed to her current suits that where sedation is necessary to get her into the little bathing suits.

Just to clarify: the sedation is for me, not the baby.

Editor’s Note: Notice block #2.  Reese has learned to wave, using her fingers as her waving device.  Kind of hard to depict in photographic stills, but thought the readership should know.

…but I couldn’t resist acquiring a lovely knit hat for Schnickelfritz.  Much too warm right now for her to wear it, but dang it, she’ll be cute this fall and winter.

Only thing I can see to do would be to anchor some ribbon straps so she can’t rip it off her head so quickly.  For some reason, the speed of which she rips a hat off her head is directly proportional to the amount of enjoyment I derive upon seeing her in a hat.

Why *is* that?

Suddenly, I have a desire to wear a straw cowboy hat, ala Kenny Chesney.

Also. I want a mojito.  And I want to sit on a beach somewhere.  Neither of which have anything to do with an infant-sized knit hat.

THE INFANT. She strikes again, inflicting slobbery, paper-chewing destruction wherever she goes.  Today, she found my “tote du jour” (which is French for “inexpensive Target canvas diaper bag of the day”) and proceeded to carefully remove each item from inside the bag but not before placing each item in her mouth first.

Guess what!

She found my paycheck.  And she chewed it.  Relishing every pulpy moment, I’d wager.

Fortunately, she seemed to only mostly destroy the protective paper envelope.  The check itself was in acceptable condition upon deposit this morning.  Moist, yes, but still acceptable.

Dear Reese,

I cannot even believe that we have now officially shifted out of the single digit months when referring to your current age. TEN MONTHS. My relationship with you has officially lasted five times longer than any relationship I’ve had prior to meeting your father. And my relationship with your father has lasted 6 times longer than I’ve known you…so…uh, have fun figuring that out.

On a side note, no one could have convinced me that I would still be nursing my baby at ten months. Your relationship with my boobs still seems healthy and strong, so you’re probably not going to like what I have planned for you this month:

The Beginning of THE WEANING.

The Great Boob Breakup of 2008.

And no, my editor does not pay me per instance of the word “boob”. I just find breast too clinical, and ta-tas too cutesy, and other euphemisms too crass. Plus whenever I read “boobs” I tend to pronounce it with a silly inflection, like “boouuubbbes”. Really. Ask your father.

Or you could ask your Aunt Beth, because I tend to pronounce “booze” with similar inflection. Boouuuzzze.

Anyway, the weaning. Yes. I am really going to do this. By now you’ve seen the memo that your Mommy has recently accepted a full time position working as a consultant. You may be inclined to think that going full time means I would see less of you. I prefer to think of it as this: my free time with you will be better now because when I’m with you, I won’t be thinking about all the work I’m not doing for my freelance clients.

I’m so thankful for the opportunity to work a flexible part-time schedule so I could be there for you, nurse you, care for you…but somewhere along the way, my part-time became full-time and my free time became a guilt-fest. When you work at home, my dear, sometimes it’s hard to leave work…if you know what I mean. Well, you may not know what I mean now, but sometime in the future you will understand. My hope for this new adventure is that my work life becomes more structured and predictable, because currently it is neither. I want my time with you to be about you, and I think this change will support that desire.

Moving on: You’ve been doing a lot of swimming this summer. You’ve been having fun on a semi-daily basis in your frog pool that Gramma and PawPaw got you last month. You love your little pool. This month you got to try out a big-girl pool with your friend Laynie. You just went crazy, I could barely hold onto you, you were that excited. You so desperately wanted to swim, kicking your frog legs and your rudimentary dog-paddling arms. Somewhere along the way you’ve learned to love water, and for that I am thankful. Your Momma never really *officially* learned to swim, and it’s probably one of the things I regret not learning. I don’t like the idea that if we went to a pool or lake or the ocean and I couldn’t save you if you got into trouble in the water. It doesn’t help that I tend to panic in deep water. Enjoy the water, my little fish. You will learn to master it one day.

Oh Yeah — Remember last month when I said it wasn’t going to be long before you started crawling? WELL GUESS WHAT. You are so totally crawling now. You’ve been crawling to follow me around the house, crawling to get to the massive pile of unread magazines I have stacked on my coffee table, EVERYWHERE CRAWLING. Tonight I stripped you down to your diaper before your bath and left you in the nursery so I could fill up your bathtub. No sooner had I turned on the water and you were already padding across the bathroom floor. That means you crawled out of the nursery, down the hall, and made a beeline for my feet as I stood in the bathroom and I was like HOW DID YOU COVER THAT DISTANCE SO QUICKLY?

Let me tell you about my new name for you: “Ice Cream Baby”. No, it doesn’t have anything to do for your love of ice cream. I’ve been calling you “Ice Cream Baby” because when I’m holding you and your father comes home from work, you take one look at him and then you literally melt and become a sweet little shy baby, turning your face to my neck with your head on my chest. It’s like you melt like ice cream when you see your Daddy, and that in turn melts your Daddy’s heart into a gooey, sticky puddle of smooshy love. Tonight when he came home and picked you up from the floor, you pulled an “Ice Cream Baby” right into his chest — at that moment, there was no better thing in the world for your father. This feeling, the one that you give him when you snuggle with him, makes up for every single hair you have unceremoniously yanked from his chest.

You’ve been doing so many new things this month, and not all of them have to do with you destroying magazines or eating paper when my back is turned. Some newer things have just happened in the past few days. You are still experimenting with sounds, some sounding deceptively close to you saying “Mum mum mum mum mum”. You practice your conversational babble, mimicking the tones and inflection of our conversation to you. I’ve been noticing that you’ve learned to whine by making high pitched noises through your nose. I’m not such a fan of that, because it seems you do that only when you are bored. You still throw a fit if I leave the room suddenly and no one else is there to distract you from your loss. I’ve been learning to move with the stealth and skill of a ninja to keep you from noticing my absence and screaming, but so far, you’ve been able to detect my movements. How do you DO that?

You’ve become a proficient kisser, by the way. When I say “Do you want to give Mommy kisses?” you respond with a perfect open-mouth baby kiss complete with a little baby tongue. You’ll give most people kisses if they ask you for them. We’ll worry about your technique a little later. Also, the snuggling is still happening this month, of which I cannot get enough.

This month I am going to try to memorize everything about you: the way you smell so delicious after a bath, the cowlick swirl on your crown, the way you suck in your lower lip, the shape of your toothy smile (six! six teeth!), the little panting noise you make when you crawl, the “concentration tongue”, the way your mouth opens like a baby bird when we feed you bites of our Cheerios, the way you screech and thrash in delight when we play the “I’M GUNNA GET YOU” game before bedtime, and the way your Daddy makes you laugh that laugh where it sounds like hiccups are getting caught in your throat.

I love that sound.

Love,

Momma

Mommy promises to finish your letter…uhm… sometime this week…

.

I know the answer to that burning question you’ve all been too afraid to ask — Yes, magazines do make good baby bait!

Laynie’s first birthday celebration was today, and it was held poolside-luau.  What a lot of fun that was! However, C and I totally screwed up because we didn’t bring our swimsuits.  Reese did get pool time, but at the expense of my capri pants. Totally worth it for her to experience a “big girl” swimming pool.

One way or another, I’m going to raise a water baby.

First July 4th, Day Two.  C and I sort of had a very low key get-together in mind for some friends in the hood (and some friends from the Hilliard hood).  However, everyone bailed that day EXCEPT Ulrike and Greg (yay!).  Ulrike is the reason why we adopted Ronin, after we arranged for a very special greyhound dogwalk one morning at Highbanks about 2 years ago.  We just fell in love with her ladies, Rooftop Dawn and Blondie.

Ronin was just beside himself, his favorite girlfriends came to run in *his* backyard, played in *his* pool, played with *his* toys.  And he loved every minute of it, ESPECIALLY since Blondie appears to be his new sidekick. Those two were inseperable in a very “Me and My Shadow” sort of way.

I don’t know if many people really pay attention to the sigh of a contented dog, but we heard many that night.
Also: Ulrike taught Reese the fine art of the “high five”. Sweet.

Our rockin’ next door neighbors threw a hoo-ha for the 4th, and a lot of their friends have had babies in the past year (or in one case, in the past two weeks).  Reese had a couple of playmates, one of which was a strapping, toothless, handsome 6-month-old man-child named Ben.  Reese couldn’t keep her fingers out of his mouth.  I hope she was just trying to figure out where his teeth were.

For some reason, I love to give my baby fauxhawks.  Some might say I’m taking advantage of Peanut’s inability to make fashion decisions herself.  Perhaps I am, perhaps thousands of other parents do the same when they dress up their babies like this (is that abject terror I read in those eyes?!).

Perhaps it’s my exposure to many different hairstyles and colors in my time as an art major in college; perhaps it’s the effect of the exposure of the emo-mainstream-cool-post-neo-punk mashup aesthetic; or maybe I just relish being a pain in the ass who doesn’t do bows and ribbons on my little Punkin.

I still think a tiny little mohawk on a baby is just flat out adorable.

Yup.  This week we caught The Small One taking her first crawls with a forward motion.  I’m currently editing the video to get it ready for posting… for now you will have to enjoy this exciting development through the magic of photographic stills!

Lucky you!