Ann vs. Jason

By: Ann

My brother Ahan and sister-in-law Julie finally welcomed Alia into the world on January 7.  I’m super excited to meet my new baby niece.  It will be very interesting to see how Athena plays with her.  We’ll have to keep a close eye on her since she tends to play on the rough side.

They seem to be doing well and taking parenthood in stride.  Now the circle is complete with the Newman kids having their own kids.  I can’t wait to see first hand how my brother, the pediatrician, is doing with fatherhood.  He’s the  same guy that said, “Oh, I don’t change diapers.  That’s what the nurses do.”  I’m sure they’re both great at being new parents, though.  I’m so happy for them.

Here are some much awaited pictures, as promised.

By Jason

We still owe everyone a post about our trip to Cleveland for Thanksgiving, but we’ve been busy. In my case, busy doing interviews with lots of reporters.

Google is a very interesting place to work because (among many other things) if some random engineer knows about a topic and is willing to do interviews, they’ll put the engineer out there rather than a PR guy or spokesperson. At most companies, the notion of putting a programmer in front of a TV camera would probably get the PR team fired. Heck, even Intel hired an actor to play one of their “rock star” engineers.

I’ve been working for months to fight the “work for Google” scams that have been promising people money in order to get at their credit cards. You might have seen me on Good Morning America a few months ago talking about it. Since Google is suing some companies, another post for the Official Google Blogjust went out and I’ve been doing a ton of interviews since.

And, if you’re not interested in hearing me talk about scams, I’ve included a cute Athena video at the bottom of the post.

Here’s a story from CBS News (I’m featured near the end):

Another story from a local NBC affiliate in Utah:

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

And here’s a story from KQED radio news – this is pretty exciting for me, since I listen to NPR on my way to and from work every day:

I did a bunch of radio interviews, but they’re a bit harder to find on the web. Here’s one from WBZ Radio. I even did a few live interviews, which I think went really well – but so far I haven’t found a link to share.

Finally, here are a couple print and online stories where I was quoted:

CNET – Google sues over alleged work-at-home scams

The New York Times (from an AP story) – How Fake Sites Trick Search Engines to Hit the Top

And now, without further ado, that cute Athena video I promised:

By Jason

Sunday was Athena’s birthday, so it’s time to post cute birthday photos and take stock of her progress thus far. I feel a little bad because I haven’t had time to put together a spreadsheet or anything, but this completely random list of accomplishments will have to do.

In one year, Athena has:

• Learned to walk and run;
• Walked five blocks straight without a break;
• Figured out how to turn on the dishwasher;
• Figured out how to turn on the stove;
• Figured out how to open the baby locks that we put on the stove;
• Climbed over the play yard fence;
• Learned at least five words, including “Hi,” “Bye,” “Mama,” “Dada,” and “No” (pronounced “nuh-nuh-nuh”);
• Printed out an essay she wrote on mama’s iBook;
• Recognized incoming Skype webcam calls;
• Muted the webcam about 100 times;
• Discovered that she can drag large items around the house and use them to climb up to reach things she’s not allowed to play with;
• Started singing, though she can’t really carry a tune.

Now for some photos.

Because I spent a lot of money on a fancy DSLR camera, I feel that I should be able to do all the portrait photos of Athena myself. This is almost always a fiasco, because Athena doesn’t like to stay in place for any amount of time, but I’ve come up with a few rules for success in child photography:

• You have to have more than one chance to take photos. Setting aside one day to take the official N month photo is setting yourself up for disaster.
• Limiting the photo session to a certain time period is unrealistic and will just lead to frustration.
• Putting a dress on a baby raises the cuteness factor but lowers the chance of actually getting a good photo by 50 percent.
• You need more light.
• The fewer photographers, the better. Everyone wants to take their own photos, but this leads to family pictures where everyone’s eyes are looking in different directions.
• Put the shutter on continuous. Pick the one frame out of 5 that isn’t blurry.

We went to Google for our first attempt at 1-year photos Saturday morning. I figured it would be a good spot because of the ample light and primary color walls, and it worked out fairly well. The hardest part was getting Athena to keep from running off.

Here you can see Athena deciding to rearrange the studio:

Ann and Athena:

The family photos didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. This is always the hardest for me to do, since I have to run back and forth between the camera and the scene.

We got some of the best photos of the day when we put Athena on the piano. She loved it.

Ann picked out a really nice dress for Athena:

We tried to get some photos outside in the sun but Athena has discovered how fun it is to run away from dad when he has the camera.

On Saturday we went to Ahan and Julie’s house for a combination baby shower and going away party. They are moving to Oregon. We stayed the night so we could hang out on Athena’s birthday.

Athena was a lot less enthusiastic about unwrapping presents than we expected. She was very precise:

Ann and I got her a toy laptop since she’s always trying to type on our computers. Here you can see her demonstrating it to everyone:

It’s for ages 3 to 5, so it’s not surprising that she hasn’t figured out all the features yet. She really likes the startup music so she spends most of her time opening and closing the laptop.

No first birthday is complete without a messy cake:

Between her normal easting issues and her dislike of sweet, sugary foods, we didn’t think she would be too excited about the cupcake.

Do they make salty, non-sweet birthday cake?

She did give it a try:

But soon decided that it should be backhanded to the floor:

Why so serious, Athena?

The other big news is the emergence of not one, not two, but three teeth almost simultaneously! If you look really closely you can see them in the photo:

This is a really cute photo:

Saying goodbye to Uncle Ahan and Aunt Julie:

Next up: Thanksgiving trip to Cleveland.