Data Day: Maia's First Year

Milestones

• Social Smiling: 2 months
• Foot Grabbing: 3 months
• First Laughs: 3 months
• First Solid Food: 4.5 months
• Sitting Up: 5.5 months
• Clapping: 6 months
• First Airplane Flight: 8.5 months
• First Teeth: 8.5 months
• Crawling: 9 months
• Drinking Through a Straw: 9.5 months
• Cruising: 10 months
• First Word In Context ("Dada"): 10.5 months
• Upwards Stair Mobility: 11 months

Here's how Maia's height, weight, and head circumference stack up against her peers:

Key takeaways: Maia will be small like her parents and her head's not going to be nearly as big as initially expected.

Weekend Wrap-up

Rebecca has a permanent 4-day weekend in her schedule now from Friday to Monday, which is pretty awesome for her. On Friday, she took the morning to go to a new yoga studio with Kathy while I stayed home and worked and Maia hung out with her maternal set of grandparents. In the evening, we went to Mellow Mushroom for dinner for delicious hoagies and pizzas.

On Saturday, Rebecca met Ben and Andrea, up visiting from Cary, North Carolina, at the Lake Anne Farmer's Market. Everyone came back to our house after the market so the babies could play together, and Amelia spent the period poking a tired Maia in the eyeball. After a well-deserved long nap, Maia got to swim around our new kiddie pool on the deck. We invited the across-the-street neighbours over so their son could also be in the pool (no eye poking occurred) and had burgers with colby jack cheese.

On Sunday, Rebecca tried yet another new yoga studio, this time in Reston, while I organized the living room. In the afternoon, we re-organized the entire kitchen for maximum efficiency (following such common best practices as "put all the baby junk in consecutive drawers for maximum network throughput" and "move the fajita kit to the top shelf since we never make fajitas").

How was your weekend?

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:17 AM: Showered and ready for work.

6:32 AM: Breakfast.

6:46 AM: In the home office, ready to write about things and stuff.

10:05 AM: Good morning!

12:10 PM: This is a robbery. Hand over the adult food.

12:28 PM: Spoons are for wusses.

1:15 PM: Afternoon Beat Saber workout while Maia naps.

3:05 PM: Bottle service before a trip to grandma's house.

5:03 PM: Maia performs a magic trick. (Those flowers used to be a rabbit).

5:55 PM: New stairs to conquer.

7:31 PM: Home from grandma's, exhausted and disheveled but possessing a tin of Toasted Oats.

8:46 PM: Guess who's home!

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Sinfonia Pop by Mika:
This DVD is a delightful live concert of Mika performing with orchestral accompaniment. The conductor is also the arranger, and allows Mika's songs to exist away from Mika's normal electronica. Great performances all around, including the little peppy backup singer who is clearly having a ball. For example, here's the song, Grace Kelly, as originally recorded and orchestrally arranged.

Final Grade: A

3%, Season Two:
I really enjoyed this season (though I could only watch it during Maia naps where I could pay attention to the Portuguese subtitles). The story grows organically from the simple baseline set out in the first season and focuses on four characters with clear, complex motivations that don't just change their mind to further the plot (unlike The 100). There's great interplay between the leads and good progression towards the season's conclusion, albeit with a few too many dream sequences. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B+

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Season Three:
It took us a long time to get through this season. The story went where it had to go, but it's hard to laugh at the continued absurdity when things like attempted suicide are also in the mix. The main character morphs from someone doing crazy things that you can laugh along with into someone with more awareness of the bad things she does to other people (yet continues to do them anyhow). The songs, though fewer, are still pretty fun. Free on Netflix.

Final Grade: B-

KT Tunstall at Wolf Trap:
We saw KT Tunstall (followed by Better Than Ezra and Barenaked Ladies) at Wolf Trap on July 2 in the worst, clammy heat possible. We bumped into Larry and Janice at the concession stand (as fans of the headliners) and took our yuppy pavilion seats with a good view of the proceedings. KT Tunstall was great in person and worth the price of admission. Better Than Ezra was fine -- engaging performers playing music I'm not particularly enthralled by. BNL were also good, although I'm not a huge fan of their music either. We left about halfway through the BNL performance to relieve the grandparent babysitters, but not before a fun duet between KT Tunstall and BNL.

Final Grade: B+

New Cert Day

Now that I've acquired the six main path AWS certifications, I'm on the lookout for new certifications that I can pass without much studying effort. If you know of any certification exams that match these skills from my current skillset, please let me know:

1. Once drove home from Fredericksburg to Sterling in 71 minutes by way of I-95 N.


2. Earned an epic PvP mount as a level 59 priest in World of Warcraft in 2006.


3. Can still play the entire Marching Virginians 1st Trumpet playbook (circa 2000) from memory.


4. Can consistently park in the same spot in front of the house (with a margin of error of about 2 inches) by triangulating tree trunks, in order to leave room for the mailman, the trashcans, and a 2nd guest parking spot.


5. Killed two Widowmakers in less than 3 seconds with Mei icicle headshots in Overwatch in 2016.


6. Can recite from memory the General MIDI patch numbers for all orchestral instruments (59 is the Tuba).


7. Once attained 100.0% code coverage on a non-trivial Java project.


8. Have read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin over 20 times.


9. Can devise an accurate "lovechild" profile of any actor or actress based on their looks (Jason Sudeikis is the lovechild of John Krasinski and Ed Helms).


10. Can ruin birthday surprises by accurately guessing what the present is without even touching the wrapped gift.