A quick update

Our home computer is still busted (not connecting to the Internet) and may remain so for the foreseeable future, so if I'm going to maintain this blog, I'm going to have to get used to using my work machine. So here goes. First, here's the news. Talia's completely mobile. Not only is she walking, but she's trying to climb pretty much everything. She continues to be pretty sweet-tempered most of the time, but she's beginning to develop a very strong will (to match her very strong muscles -- I sometimes have to use two hands to hold her still while diapering). She shrieks with displeasure when you take away something she believes is hers. On top of this, she's beginning to talk -- a lot. She has a hell of an appetite and accordingly probably sixty percent of her vocabulary refers to food. "Quacka" (cracker), "nana" (banana), "mee" (milk), "goff" (goldfish), "chee" (cheese) -- all staples. (As you can see, she's not yet adept with final sibilants and palatals.) She's also into dancing around in circles (in a sort of proto-toddler waddle) and making funny faces. It's cute.

Zeke is still getting used to using the potty. I feel like we've been saying that for a long time now. But anyhow, he continues to make progress. He hasn't worn a diaper or Pull-Up in probably several months now, but accidents (especially the smelly, filthy kind, rather than the wet, rug-destroying kind) are frequent. As you can see from the previous post, he is very interested in letters and reading. Perhaps surprisingly, he is maybe even more interested in numbers. Every time he sees a cluster of numbers together (especially in the car, like on a highway sign), he asks what it means, for example, "Daddy, what do two 2's and a four mean?" on seeing the sign for U.S. route 422. He's fooled around a little with making his own numbers, but he hasn't really discovered yet that one can draw symbols for oneself.


And then, some recent pictures.


Go here to see all these pictures together on a single page.

Finally, here's the latest quip from Zeke. This is from bedtime tonight.

Z.: Daddy! Do you smell something?
Me: Um, no, do you smell something?
Z.: (rubbing his nose) That's boogies! I smell boogies!

(By "boogies," he means, ahem, boogers. )

About the lack of posts

Dear readers of this blog, all four or five of you, you may be wondering what's become of the posts. Simple. My home computer is not connecting to the Internet properly (it may be a dead network card, or it may be something worse), which means that if I'm going to post, I need to use either my work computer or my mobile phone, neither of which is all that satisfactory an option. Hopefully I will have this resolved soon and with a minimum of pain. However, please be assured that both children are well and more or less happy. Zeke got a lot of Thomas stuff for Christmas and his potty-training is proceeding. Talia, well, her head is nice and wide, and she's starting to try very hard to imitate what we say. (Most recent vocabulary word: "Goff," for "goldfish" -- the snack, that is.) More sooner, rather than later, I hope.

A note on Utterz.com

Over the past couple of days, I've been posting almost everything to this blog using a service I just discovered, called Utterz. (I find it a little embarrassing to say the name, but that's the only drawback I've discovered.) Anyone who's reading this and wants a painless way to run a mobile blog ought to check it out. You can post anything you want from your cell phone or from the website -- text, photos, video, or phoned-in audio -- to a mobile blog on the Utterz site (mine is here). Utterz will then re-post your updates to a blog, to Facebook, to Twitter, or to any site where you can embed a bit of Flash code.

Anyhow, though, I was pretty impressed by the service, but it also turns out that there's a strong community around the site as well. A couple of people have been following Talia's story over the past couple of days and have posted encouraging messages of support for her (and for the rest of us). I logged on tonight, and look what I found:

It's a little audio-and-photo message to Talia and her folks (us) wishing her a good recovery, from the good people who run the Utterz website. (Click the orange triangle to hear the audio; click here for a larger version of the photo.) I couldn't believe it. I was totally bowled over. Anyhow, thought I'd share that. The internet can actually be very cool sometimes.

A technical note about "subscribing" to this blog

If you've been getting updates to this blog via email, you may have to re-subscribe. I'm making a couple of minor technical changes that might deactivate your subscription. It's also possible that you won't notice any difference. I'll put up a new short post tomorrow; if you get it, you'll know that your subscription is still working. If you don't, visit this website (Life-with-Zeeky.blogspot.com) and re-subscribe. Or: if you're not reading this blog via email, and you want to, why, you can subscribe too.

To subscribe by email, enter your address in the box at the top right of the screen. You can also click the gray "Subscribe to this feed" link at the bottom of this post, which will pop up a screen with a few more options.

This blogging system is set up to prevent spamming, so, unfortunately, there's no way I can add your address to the mailing list; you have to do it yourself.

One other thing: there's also a gray link at the bottom of each post labelled "Email this." That will let you send a copy of a post via email to whoever you want.

That concludes this technical bulletin. I hope you have, or have had, a pleasant weekend. They were forecasting a tornado here, but now they say it's not going to happen.