Chilling out with the Doctor: December 2005

A low-key welcome to 2006

This time the New Year came and went without much thunder or applause. We played it pretty low-key and fundamentally mellow. In fact, here I am, about 30min. into the 2006 (as usual, way ahead of most everybody else I know back home!) and I'm actually back in the Crary Lab playing around on the internet and writing on my Blog. I realized that I never posted our first Family Christmas picture - so in thinking about back home and feeling just a little homesick, I thought it a good idea to share this photo on my blog. As usual, Liam pretty much slept the entire time whilst waiting in line and woke up sitting on the lap of a strange old man wearing red pants with fuzzy trim. I think you can see his surprise by the deer-in-headlights look he gave the camera. priceless.

On a different note, I received some exciting news today. As most of you know, I truely enjoy the outdoors and camping and I found out today that I will have a chance to do a load of camping this field season beginning this coming wednesday. I'm heading out to the field with plans to stay about a week or 10days. Camping in the antarctic should be a trip. However, since I'll be working in ASPA's (Antarctic Specially Protected Areas) we will be observing no-impact rules, which means peeing in bottles and pooping in bags. Well, maybe I will have something to mail to my dear friend Hutson after all. Indeed, 2006 is getting off to an interesting start.

peace and love to all, dr. rock

Happy New Years!

Mount Discovery

Russian Ice-breaker in McMurdo Sound. TransAntarctics in the Background.

Shortly after arrival and after de-briefings (aside: is the functional definition of "debriefing" a useless meeting that has no point and goes on waaay too long?) Yo Chin and I went up Observation Hill to stretch our legs and catch some views. Erebus is in the background still smoking away.

In the upper right-hand corner of the picture you can see a C-130 that had just taken off after we got off the C-17. I included this picture as proof that the old bucket of bolts can actually still take flight.

Penney Miller, a PI on our project, in front of Ivan, our transportation to McMurdo from Pegasus Airfield

Inside the C-17

arriving to the ice on a C-17

arrival haiku

First the C One Seven
Then Ivan to McMurdo
Home away from home

Leapin' Liam!

Greetings to all from Sunny&Summery New Zealand! I arrived here this morning or afternoon or whatever to a nearly perfect day with the temps in the mid-70's. With this being nearly the peak of the summer months, the days are long and the nights are cool. Honestly, it is nearly 9pm here, just finished a little walk through the botanical gardens and now I'm really struggling to stay awake. I'd like to adjust to this crazy timezone as soon as possible, and not having slept since monday, and having given tuesday a total pass, my circadian riddems are either totally messed up or absent. Either way, I feel like the walking un-dead, although I admit, I'd rather feel like poo while eating fresh mussels and excellent Thai food in georgeous Christchurch than in some shitty ice storm in central O-HI-O. Yup, that's pretty much as solid of a fact as they come.

So with my fatigue draining all my creative energies, I will skip right to the point here. This trip has motivated Aby and I to set up a blog sit that will be 100% LiamRay. The address is:

leapingliam.blogspot.com

I hope you enjoy his new site and I also encourage all my "regulars" to write to Aby to support her in this new and very important task of keeping everyone up to date on Liam's developments as he continues to master the sounds of flatulence...and not just when he farts either. Yes, these are indeed very exciting times in which we live.

Finally, I leave you with an important oberservation I made today. To all of you who have desparately written me wondering what you can do to get rid of the stench of Hutson from your person and domicile, well I finally have found the only 100% effective action you can take - move to a different hemisphere.

Peace and hugs to all.....drock

(a quick shoutout to LisaB. you rock.)

Liam with Dad and Grandpa...and checking out something much more interesting than Dad and Grandpa

Breaking all the Barriers

If you've never spent hours talking to a 4-month old, you're really missing out. It is as though the muscle control over speech is developed incrementally, one sound at a time coming from a different way to hold the tounge or open the mouth. It's absolutely astonishing and simultaneously HI-larious. While this has been progressing over the past couple weeks, Liam has accomplished the significant hurdle of making fart noises and cracking himself up - and me too in the process. To actually witness the birth of something that will make him laugh well into adulthood was very special to see - enough so to feel compelled to share with all of you.

And speaking of big hurdles...one almost as significant as making fart noises... is that this past weekend, Liam has broken all sleep records to date. Two nights in a row, Liam has slept MORE THAN 8 hours in an row. No Shit! Two nights in a row...delicious. This is no doubt a direct consequence of his successfully chowing his very first meal. The menu for Liam's first dinner was dried hypoallergenic rice cereal re-hydrated in breast milk. Delish! While our first attempt at feeding was met with caution and curiousity, the second attemtp was met with enthusiasm not seen since his morning poo. I just put a couple pictures taken from that first feeding, and indeed, we had a grand time. So, after his first bowl of rice cereal, he fell asleep around 11pm and did not wake up until almost 8am. OUT-FRIKKEN-STANDING!

And finally, Liam met Santa Clause! In keeping with other significant events in recent memory, Liam pretty much slept through the entire affair and had to be awoken for the main event. Basically, he woke up with a camera and some bells dangling in his face and through all that he still looked super cute.

That's the update for now. I'm sure I'll have more pictures and stories once Abuelita and Aunt Lindsay come visit this friday.

dr. rock

First time on Santa's lap

This stuff ain't so bad!

It mostly goes in my mouth, mostly.

Liam's advice is to suck on your entire hand, or both hands if you like, in between bites to aid digestion.

Fun with grandpa

I just found my foot!

I'm 4 months old today!

The Mayor of Crazytown

I can't believe this guy just cleaned my clock in the playoffs of our fantasy football league. Total crap, if you ask me. Well, at least I didn't loose by a point or two, it was a total trainwreck. Good work, Dobler.

Four months - solid food and more shots

Yes, it has been a while since my last update and I'm sorry for the lag time in posting pictures from Thanksgiving/Baptism weekend back in November. After we returned to Columbus, I had one day to unpack, wash clothes, repack and catch a flight to BWI. I got back from a 10-day trip to the University of Delaware Marine Laboratory, where I worked on the fabrication of several environmental probes that we will use down on the ice this year. Now that I'm back, I'm faced with the reality of actually having to be away for not just the 10days I spent on the east coast, but rather closer to two months. Even after 10days, Liam has already noticably changed. He's bigger, more attentive and is definitley starting to 'talk'. He has his own language, and it is truely amazing to watch how he develops speech. Simply and wholly amazing.

Liam has turned 4months this week. 13lbs 12oz and 25in. long. That puts him at 45th percentile for weight and 80th for length. (at what point do we call it height?) He got his latest round of vaccinations and we determined once and for all that shots pretty much suck.

So, I'm off on the 26th and Aby and I are contemplating what to do with this blog space. Currently, we're thinking that I'll keep this up and post pics from Antarctica and we'll start a whole new blog just for Liam where she can post while I'm away. So stay tuned and we'll post the new website address as soon as we can.

Happy Holidaze
Dr. Rock