Big! Airplane!

Here is my YouTube debut. I'm disappointed to discover how much the compression degrades the video quality--it looks vastly better on my computer--but it certainly captures Pete's enthusiastic little self. Before we had a child, I would wonder why people ever ate at certain restaurants, the loud places with mediocre food at prices that would buy you more interesting fare in a quieter setting elsewhere. The answer: because at the loud places, nobody cares when your child mangles his cheeseburger while shouting at the window. This video will show you what I mean. And let me emphasize that you're seeing one continuous shot, the only one I filmed. It's a representative sample.

Airplane!

We got back yesterday from a trip to the DC area to visit friends and family on both sides.

The theme of the trip turned out to be aviation. Not only did we fly with Pete for the first time since he began to understand what airplanes are, but we also went to the new suburban annex of the Air and Space Museum, the downtown air and space museum, and then back to the suburban one! And just when we thought we weren't doing anything related to flying, we went to dinner with my cousin's family in Arlington and found ourselves right under the takeoff route from National. Now Pete regularly tells stories of seeing the Space Shuttle ("huge, huge, huge nose!"), the cool spy plane ("huge, black airplane"), the upside-down airplane, the airplane with teeth, missiles, and the Story of a Flight, with some mix of these components: "Big airplane! Here it goes! Take off! In the sky! Landing!" He had an amazing stamina of excitement for watching takeoffs; the hundredth one occasioned the same enthusiasm as the first. I got a great little video of his commentary that I'll share when I find the right cord to get it off of my camcorder.