My Daughter, the Comedian

Just some stuff that I wanted to record from the past couple of months, but no photos...

[We're listening to this song]
TMBG: Yodeling like cowhands do! Yodeleihoo!
RUTH: That's silly! Cows don't have hands!

[I throw a piece of gum off the porch, grumbling about kids throwing stuff there.]
RUTH: Daddy! You don't throw trash in the street! You know better! You know where is the garbage!
ME: You're right, I shouldn't have thrown it in the street.
RUTH: You have to go time out.
[Trying to show her that rules are rules, when we get inside I dutifully sit in the time out chair. Normally, for her, we set the kitchen timer to 2 minutes for time outs. I sit for a bit.]
RUTH: Beep! Time out is over.

[We've been talking about Spain and pretending to go there, like we're in a Dora episode, but an actually educational one - go to the airport, over the Atlantic Ocean, etc. Ruth pulls her "phone" out of her backpack."
RUTH: Spain? Are you open? I called them. They're open.

Christmas Video Round Up - All-Singing, All-Dancing, All-Trimming-Extravaganza!!!

Day 934 - Ruth is Getting the Hang of It, But Still Goes Backwards Mostly

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Critical Hit! Max Parenting!

Day 982. Not pictured: Ruth likes to play with my minis. The Chain Golem is a friendly monster who protects her from dragons and "what's the man? Who looks like a fire? The SALAMANDER."

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Schober-Levine Family Channukha!

Earlier, my folks came down to celebrate Channukha with Ruth, along with Uncle David and Meli. The hit of the visit (Day 952) was, of course, icing/sprinkling cookies with Grammy, and then licking the bowl.

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Schober-Levine Family Christmas!

Now that we've got Ruth, having the only family tradition being heading to see Trixie Little and Mr. Gorgeous in the Holiday Spectac-u-thon isn't going to cut it.

Of course (day 970), to get her in touch with her roots, we like to go to the Kwanzaa festival at the BMA (though this year the drums were too loud for her):

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Another, started last year with my folks, is to head out to Feezers Organic Tree Farm* to have Ruth pick out a tree.

Day 977 - The Tree Farm

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From 21st Century Digital Kid

Later (same day) we went home and the ever-handy Melissa helped Ruth make (as requested) a wreath/spray for the front door from some of the boughs we found at the tree farm. After an hour of searching various stores, I finally had the good sense to go to my mother's favorite store, Herman's Discount and found ribbon and inexpensive bulb ornaments for it.

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Then Melissa and Ruth trimmed the tree, including the garland that my Mem gave me, which had been on the tree when I was a kid (I did the lights and placed the tree upright, but there's no photo of me being assaulted by a thousand Norway Spruce needles. I sang this song to comfort myself).

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

And then, of course, there's Christmas morning (Day 983)! Ruth got a magic dragon wand:

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And she played with her spaceship dollhouse in her much-beloved tutu from Uncle David:

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She also got a moose from Aunt Connie that she looooooooves! But, unfortunately, I took a photo of her hugging it before I realized that last night, while cooking, I'd accidentally smeared duck fat on the lens of my phone's camera. We should all have such problems.

And, of course, she started writing thank you notes:

From 21st Century Digital Kid

* Insufferable liberalism not included with price of tree.

Ruth Tells A Story. Day 932.

Day 817 - Hot Dog

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Day 928 - Halloween

This Halloween, Ruth went as Little Red Riding Hood, thanks to a ridiculously cute coat we found cheap at the consignment store. Her friend Larry went as a giraffe.

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From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Day 920 - More from the Cider Mill

That slide hill isn't as tall as M makes it out to be. And the band is the one Ruth was dancing to in pictures from the previous post.

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From 21st Century Digital Kid

Day 907 - Batter

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Day 882 - Trike-a-Thon!

In September, Ruth's new school (the Y) held a "trike-a-thon" to raise money for St. Jude's Children's Hospital. Ruth did her best (but man, her classmate Addy can ride!). I was able to attend, and I mostly ended up pushing Ruth's scooter around the track while she balanced on it. By the end, she managed to at least start getting the idea of pushing herself along.

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Ruth's new class, the Sea Turtles! Back row (L to R): Miss Sophia, Miss Helena. Front row (L to R): Addy, Cecilia, Ruth, Larry, Kamil, Khadim

Day 880 - Happy Birthday Grammy!

This year, my mother (and father) was in China on her birthday. So we took this photo of Ruth with the characters for "happy birthday" (thanks, Google Translate!) on her chalk board and sent it to her.

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Day 844 - Kinder Farm Park

A few times now, we've taken Ruth out to Kinder Farm Park. M had taken her there for the first time because she was looking for a place - following Ruth reading about these things in a Dora book - that had cows, a silo, and a windmill.

But in the end, Ruth preferred the goats.

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From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Day 830 - Field of Dreams

Ruth gazing at the flowers under the abstract sculpture near the National Aquarium.

Ruth: "It's a fork!"

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Day 824 - The Infamous Bench

Ruth used to love sitting on this bench for a bit before heading home from Miss Tyra's (Little Scholars).

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Day 818 - Bear

This was Ruth's favorite thing at the National Zoo.

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Day 900 - Chickens!

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This is where we get our chicken from. Ruth hasn't made the connection yet, but she does say "Chickens is delicious!"

Some other kids at the farm realized that the turkeys (not pictured, but one is reserved for our Thanksgiving table with Grammy and Grampy) would gobble back en masse if you shouted "gobble gobble" at them.

Day 893 - Cheese!

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Day 892 - Nature!

There's a nice park relatively near us (accessible now that we have a car - thanks Mom and Dad!) that has a nature center. Ruth was charmed by the animals that she could look at (live) and touch (dead). We took her back after this outing for the honey festival, which was a hit, too (those are from Day 899)

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Afterwards, we stopped at Andy Nelson's BBQ, which was REALLY a hit. Their potato salad is great, but Ruth is just interested in tearing through piles of meat.

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Honey festival - looking for a frog.

Day 920 - At the Farm

Yesterday, we went out to Weber's Cider Mill farm with Ruth and some of the other families from her Y class (note to self: if you want to make a killing, have the only pick-your-own apple place inside the Beltway). Lots of fun was had - Ruth spent much of the day running at top speed toward or away from one of her friends, shouting "NURRRRRRYYYYY" (the poor kid's name is Larry, but when I try to correct Ruth, she says, "I think his name is Nurry.") or "ADEEEEEEEEYYYYYY." We also went down the slides a few times, ate a dozen cider donuts, Ruth wolfed down M's lunch again, and everybody danced (except M).

From 21st Century Digital Kid

Ruth and Nurry just finished dancing to a song the band was playing. I wasn't quite fast enough with the camera phone to catch them dancing.

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From 21st Century Digital Kid

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Ruth and Larry running through the struts for the fake gold-prospecting set-up.

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L to R is Ruth, Addy, and Larry (I don't know who the blonde kid in the background is). Khadim was also there, but I don't seem to have any photos with him in them.

It was also fun to meet some of the other parents. Turns out they have a lot in common with M - Addy's Mom works for EEOC, and her dad is a lawyer with the SSA. We also found out the source of the plaintive "Larry's not here anymore" that we got a couple times from Ruth the past week - he'd been in Puerto Rico with his parents (his Mom's from there). I want to say that Khadim's Mom also did something health-related, but I'm blanking now. Anyway - it's nice to meet some other parents, even if M and I have so far not had much luck converting "parent friends" into friends we see outside of our kids interacting. Kamil's mom and I had discussed W. African politics at the park the other day - she's from Nigeria, but a doctor at JHU now - and she was one of the organizers of the outing, but they didn't show up. Oh well.

I do have some more photos, but I can't find the camera right now (these are from my phone) - I hope I didn't leave it at the farm - so they'll have to go up later.

Day 920 - It's a Hat!

From 21st Century Digital Kid

This is what happens if I turn around for a few minutes.

More Misc

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On Saturday (Day 864), we took Ruth to the Maryland State Fair. This time, she was not afraid of the cows, but also not terribly interested in them. She was really into the massager chairs that she could climb all over. And she was really really into the Ferris Wheel that mommy took her on. Sweetheart, when you're 20 and reading this, the reason you couldn't go again was that it was $12 for each ride for tickets for you and mommy - or, about $45,013 in 2028 dollars.

Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to snap a good photo of her and mommy actually riding, so you get this one of them standing in line.

From 21st Century Digital Kid

On Sunday (Day 865), we went to Cromwell Bridge Park. Ruth wanted to swing on vines. Then we splashed in the stream a lot, and saw some crayfish, but I left my camera behind s

From 21st Century Digital Kid

That afternoon, she helped me make cupcakes (pictured above; helping consisted mostly of putting red food dye in to make them pink and then "helping" me clean the bowl of batter... she's her father's daughter, after all).