Walking!

first steps from Andrew Rittle Family on Vimeo.

Can you believe it?

Say it with me while you watch: Whooah, almost fell there, whooooaah, ok now, Got it!

Every day Edie crawls a little less and walks a little more. Any day now we'll have a walker! Mommy and Daddy are so proud.

Audience Participation with Flags and Puppets: Now THAT'S Pomp and Circumstance!

Perhaps the single most tell-tale social characteristic of YouTube I can think of (aside from all that social networking stuff) is the ability for most videos to stand devoid of any context whatsoever. Take this clip for example. What the Hell's going on here? We all know the tune. To me, first flute for four years of High School, this song resembles more of a death march. Or better, it reminds me of the art of repetition. And repeating. And repeat again -- and coda*.

Not so for this audience. I have a newfound love for the song after watching these people. Of course I haven't gone to any graduations yet this year. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had, especially if it was required of me. But that's not my circumstance** ... [wait for it]

Sarah's Graduation from Law School is this Sunday! She got all dressed up in her regalia tonight, complete with six corner hat and colorful hood. The law degree is called Juris Doctor, but Hallmark just calls it "lawyer degree" in their card section.

*In fact, read this oh-so-accurate comment from the video (notwithstanding the "Wtf is wrong with that audience?" quip):

lol. our band's lyrics go
Pleaseee let it be o-ver
this is, the 23rd time
if, we play this again
I'm go-ing to cry!
when, did we get so many sen-iors
I swear, they're going too slow
Oh-yay, es finally over!
Tha, aaa-aank, you
GOD!

**Get it?

Sarah passed the bar!

Here's Edie, showing how excited she is that Sarah passed the bar! Sarah's pretty thrilled too:

To quote Sarah at her law grad reception last week, "What a relief!"

Almost crawling!

(that's Edie in yellow and her baby friend Isa)

InaDWriMo (Still a great idea, but)

Ok, so the Thanksgiving holiday ended up taking about 10 days out of my month, throwing a wrench in my academic writing progress for November. Of course I could have carved out time while others were carving turkeys, but instead I took it easy and hung out with family. Hey, what's a holiday for, right?

You'll notice in the sidebar that I've only reached 36% of my writing goal with four days to go. That's 64% remaining, or 3,163 words per day for the next four days, for you stats minded folks. Given that the actual NaNoWriMo people need to write 2,000 words per day to meet their goal, then maybe I could -- well no, that's still a whole lot of writing in just a little time.

I have two options: (1) be satisfied that I wrote over 7,000 words in just 15 days, or (2) write like hell. Since the first half of November was the most productive I've been all semester, I can be happy with option 1. Here are my accomplishments thus far:

• I'm about ready to turn in my field exam re-write. I'm specializing in the sub-field Sociology of the Family (and the sub-sub field of Carework), and hopefully this version will take. This progress feels woefully inadequate to me, but given that I took the summer off, and that really I don't feel behind in my final goal of a 2010 graduation*, I'll take it and be satisfied.
• Through a process of journaling, field research, and even a little blogging, I've changed dissertation topics. This is huge, and it took InaDWriMo to arrive at this point. In short, I was planning - for about the last three years - to focus on paid caring work. I've already written and presented in this area, but my issue is that it places me more within the sociology of work than of the family. My likely new direction will be toward unpaid caring work, specifically of parenting and very likely of fathers in particular**. I'm still blending work with family along with other areas, but I feel much more connected to family research, as you might have noticed through my ongoing delicious links (see sidebar).
• I did not include in InDWriMo the countless emails and other textual organizing work for my session at the midwest meetings. I received enough submissions to break into two sessions, and this has occupied a bit of academic time this month.
  

So there it is. Possibly you'll see the count go up before the end of the week, but I'll be lucky if I reach 50%. I wouldn't trade anything though: InaDWriMo is a qualified success, just the boost I needed.

* Ok so that date originally was earlier, but still I'm fine with 2010 - that includes two years of dissertation research and writing.
** Though I am not a fan of autoethnography, so don't be looking for a study on myself as a father. For that, I'll just keep a blog.

rolling over and back again

I think posting this video is the closest I can get to expressing what it's like trying to get Edie to roll over. This week she is already four months, and her accomplishments in the last two weeks are amazing. You'll see here that she is looking at things, aiming and grabbing at them, and she's even holding onto her new favorite toy, Hippo.

These days Sarah and I spend our Edie-time watching scenes like this saying, "That's right Edie! You can do it, just pull over that arm and leg!" You might find yourself saying the same thing.

As a matter of fact she's rolled over twice already. Once two weeks ago, purely by accident I'm sure. But today I looked over at her on the playmat, to find her off the playmat and on her tummy. This video is my attempt to catch her doing it again. I almost think she knows what she can do and is trying to do it again.

If you check out this second video, taken just a few minutes later, you'll see that she does roll over, but only for a second before tossing back again. By the way, I can't edit these simple camera films, so please just watch the first half of each one... you'll get the idea.

first father's day

My first father's day and I already received a button down shirt! Excepting the standard tie, that's about as father's day like as you can get. I blog about it however because this is the first time that I noticed the tags on Old Navy wear. Digital pictures of small print don't come out so well, so here is the text:

Cross-Continental
OLD NAVY
MADE IN BANGLADESH

XS S M L XL XXL

THIS GARMENT HAS BEEN MANUFACTURED
IN A SUPERVISED SETTING, ENSURING IT WAS
PRODUCED WITH REGULAR-ISSUES RUGGED
MATERIALS AND THAT IT WILL DEMONSTRATE
SUPERIOR FUNCTIONALITY, EVEN UNDER THE
MOST FATIGUING OF CONDITIONS. IT IS
INTENDED TO MEET OR EXCEED STANDARDS
FOR MANEUVERS AT ALL LATITUDES.

Mostly the prominence of the "made in bangladesh" caught my eye, and I considered how bold Old Navy was in proclaiming in such large print first thing on the tag. That interested me enough to read on, only to discover that it was "manufactured in a supervised setting." Frankly, the rest of the text seems superfluous or otherwise incomprehensible. Anyone care to guess what "produced with regular-issues" or "maneuvers at all latitudes" could mean? Well at least I know that the making of my father's day shirt was supervised.

p.s. I had a great father's day, by the way. We visited my family in far west suburbs and ate BBQ. Yum! Edie showed off with her grandmother in church today, too.

It's a Baby!

Edie Andrew Rittle
7 lbs 9 oz, born 9:35am May 30, 07

honorable mention at the statistics bar

Not that this will interest everyone either (sorry, I promise to post interesting content soon), but I just had to share with the blog world this comment by my statistics professor on my final project on factor analysis.

Your discussion of how you decided what to do [in reducing 30 variables to around 15] was easy to follow and informative -- sort of a factor analysis blog -- a new idea for the gang at the statistics bar. (emphasis mine)

All we've heard about this semester is the famed statistics bar. When oh when will I ever actually get a drink there? Well at least I've contributed a small bit of conversation to those who do.

i promise not to meta-blog anymore...

... but this does happen to be the one year bloggiversary of starting everyday life. I still think that my first week or two of blogging here were my best all year, so please check out my label the first posts to celebrate. If you don't have time, then just read my all time favorite post, also in my first week of blogging, (insert verb) this book!

Pictures of the Week: Alley shots!

Good news: I finished my coursework! Only two field exams and a dissertation proposal to go. To celebrate, here are the pictures of the week for the last three weeks:


shopping cart on dumpster in my alley


toilet bowl in a neighboring alley


dumpsters in my alley again

As you can tell, walking down the alley provides some great photo fodder. By the way, these are photo numbers 116, 107, and 100 from top to bottom. Only 249 pictures to go.

UPDATE: I just realized the significance of posting pictures of not one but four dumpsters on the day that I finish classes.

One photo everyday: most recent photos, What is Project 365?
Picture(s) of the Week(s): Sarah's red crocs, viking monkey, Torts Clock, Sexist Komen, Joe Moore and foie gras, moravian star, coffeeshop snowman, toy basket, This American Life Live, Bike!, Airport Restroom Sign, USPS Jedimaster, baby blocks