Cross-posted from SpaceParanoids.net. Please leave your comments there.

Tags: ethan, video, video games

Cross-posted from SpaceParanoids.net. Please leave your comments there.

Ethan decided he wanted to make some beautiful paintings to send to his grandparents as Christmas gifts. We thought it would be fun to share a video of the artist at work. I imagine the video of Ethan creating his masterpiece will eventually help us deflect scrutiny from 60 minutes.

Tags: ethan, video

Cross-posted from SpaceParanoids.net. Please leave your comments there.

My dad used to tell my brother and me that once the infrared wireless television remote control became affordable for the masses, there wasn’t any good reason to have kids around. Actually, Dad probably never really said that. But I bet he thought it.

In the twenty-first century global economy, today’s toddler has to be versatile. Waddling over to the Zenith console to turn the giant rotary dial just isn’t enough to remain competitive anymore.

Tags: ethan, video

Cross-posted from SpaceParanoids.net. Please leave your comments there.

“Moo. Moo. Moo. Moo. Moo. Moooooooon.”

Ethan talks about the moon more than anything. By a pretty wide margin, actually. His mother is waxing concern (see what I did there?) over Ethan’s latest fixation, but I’m confident he’ll grow out of it in eventually. He’s probably going through a phase. (Pause for laughter.) In the meantime, we get hourly requests to go outside to observe the moon, and story book time often consists of skimming through illustrations to point out ones in which the moon is depicted.

The last few weeks have been tough because the moon was in a phase that made it very difficult to observe, rising in the early morning hours and setting some time in the afternoon. But Ethan was in for a treat Monday night. The moon was setting over our backyard and it had some very special company. The silver crescent was paired with the planetary conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. I did my best to photograph the celestial meet-up…

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Tags: ethan, photos

Cross-posted from SpaceParanoids.net. Please leave your comments there.

It seems like everyone has a story about going to the emergency room on a major holiday. On Easter Sunday, 1995 I was in the worst car accident of my life (hopefully). I was spending some quality time with my second family. My best friend Chris, his sister and folks were piled in a minivan. Chris’ dad, blind in one eye, pulled the Dodge onto Route 13 directly in front of a car speeding along in the fast lane. I don’t remember hearing the screeching of rubber before the impact. The little wagon struck the van on the right-front fender and veered off into a ditch. The van spun around like a top, coming to rest in the facing south in the center northbound lane. Both vehicles were totaled.

The old people got the worst of the impact, but thankfully everyone recovered fully. I got scraped up and bruised, but I wasn’t injured. The ER doctor made me get a tetanus shot, which ultimately caused me more pain and discomfort than being in the wreck.

We had been on our way to morning church services in Cheswold, and we often joked that this was God’s way of telling us, “don’t bother.” And I haven’t.

Despite being 21 months old, Ethan already has his first story about going to the emergency room on a major holiday. On Thanksgiving morning I was trying to keep Ethan busy while Danielle frantically prepared for the trip to her mother’s in the Bay Area…

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Tags: ethan, video games