Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

For a nice afternoon treat, we took Paela to a park just south of the airport and watched planes fly over our heads. They were loud and Paela initially climbed into Rebecca's arms when they roared by, but by the end of the trip, she was making the sign for airplane when Rebecca's arms were full of other stuff. Along with the sign for airplane, she's also been signing "all done" and "up" for quite some time.

Monday afternoon, they sprayed for ants. Unfortunately, this was also when Paela came down with a cold and really needed her sleep because they kicked Rebecca and Paela out of the apartment for three hours. But they managed to find a place to roam for that long and get Paela to take a couple of catnaps along the way at least.

And I'd like to officially declare Paela as a walker. No longer do we have to stand her up to get her to walk, she decided early this week that she was going to go where she wanted to go whether we came or not. Now, she walks from room to room; if we try going to point A and she wants to be at point B, she lets go and moves on.

Because of the cold, we had to help her fall asleep -- which makes for some very frustrating evenings when she can't fall asleep because she can barely breathe.  Rebecca had plenty of adventures trying to help a screaming kid back to sleep while I was out until late hours many nights. We did notice that she's been climbing under her blanket to sleep, whether we leave her there or not. While some parents might be concerned about suffocation, etc, we have long known Paela to take charge of her own sleeping habits. She moves all over her crib anyways, so why stop her?

I was up at Berkeley for an artist lecture with Steve Kurtz Thursday evening. It was a rare opportunity to hear him talk because of all the legal trouble he's had with the Department of Justice for the past four years, so I was lucky to go. For those of you who wonder what it is exactly I do now, the best way to describe it is by putting it into the category of tactical media art, although I can't say my work is that similar to Critical Art Ensemble's work in the public domain, partly because I am not an advocate of getting arrested. [lucky for me and paela -bec]

We spent many nights and days working on my thesis work, which led me to buy my first soldering iron kit. I had been using one on campus, but I was tired of being limited to where and when I could work. For some people, this might be the purchase that makes them feel old. Not me -- that was when we bought our 5 gallon water cooler last summer.

Somewhere in there we had Rebecca's friend Erika come down and visit and we watched last year's film Speed Racer. While I understand why Rebecca didn't like it -- car chases in normal movies give her headaches, so this was like that times 20 -- it's really a great movie. I can't fathom why so many people thumbed their noses at it.