J. Michael Andresen

Miss Virginia Caressa Cameron is the new Miss America. She did not deign to list merely "vocal" as her talent, choosing instead to hawk her singing talent as "vocal pop." She did not disappoint, performing pop diva Beyoncé's "Listen" from Dreamgirls . That means that the answer to Question 2 of the 2010 Prognostication Quiz is B. Some very special variety of vocal . These folks correctly surmised that the judges would not reward just plain vocals this year: Topher Ryan Janette Rachel H. Cameron Beth Z. Larry Beth K. Adrian Nad If you took part in last year's quiz, you should give three hearty cheers to Rachel H. She was shut out of the scoring last year, so her first point is particularly exciting this year. Death We have our first "official" passing. A. Miep Gies passed on earlier this year, but before the entry deadline, so it didn't count. But Z. J.D. Salinger met his maker last week. That made winners of five people who guessed...

We used to have a large coffee table in our living room that had lots of sharp corners. Now that Max is more mobile, we decided to swap in something smaller (giving him more room to maneuver) and softer. The ottoman we chose has nice storage for toys, too. A few days back, Max was playing around and climbed into the storage bin all by himself. He seemed quite delighted in the chest and played in there for quite some time. I caught video toward the end of this. In addition to being cute while sitting and playing, watch for some of his other current cute moves. At 1:55, he demonstrates how much he loves hearing his voice modulated. We provide a hand to help him out. At 3:15 Max shows how good he is at pulling himself up to stand against a piece of furniture. He is also quite adept at climbing stairs. It's all happening so fast! He had just started crawling a couple weeks ago!

My sisters took some fun videos of Max playing some of his favorite games over Christmas. He was really into shaking things that week: But his favorite thing of all (which remains true to this day) is walking. He can't do that on his own yet, but he loves cajoling his parents, aunts, uncle, grandparents, friends, and occasional strangers in off the street to hold his hands and walk with him:

I have no idea why I was reading Max something from Martha Stewart Living magazine, but Katie thought it was photo-worthy. Max takes his first sled ride! Katie really likes dressing Max up in animal clothes. She begged me to buy all manner of animal outfits for everyday indoor wear, but I put my foot down and said that I could tolerate Max being dressed up like an animal only for (a) Halloween or (b) winter outerwear. Katie takes full advantage of the latter and routinely dresses Max up in a monkey hat under his bear snowsuit. All told, Max has six ears in this photo. A nice before . . . . . . and after of Max chowing down on some yogurt. "Food makes me sooooo happy!!!"

The 2010 Prognostication Quiz gets off to a quick start with Question 1. The Freedom House issued its annual press release today regarding the number of free countries in the world. Although the main headline reports that freedom declined this year, the number of completely "free" countries remains unchanged at 89. (It was a number of lower countries in the "partly free" category who did most of the regressing.) This means the answer to Question 1 is C. No change . Ten of this year's 53 entrants got that answer correct (listed here in entry order): Topher Polly Gloria Ryan Marcus Missy Ron Janet Craig Keila Congratulations to the top ten! Special congratulations to Janet and Ryan, who have already equaled their total score from last year! It must be a great relief to them to know that they can't do worse than last time. On balance, our group of entrants was more optimistic than pessimistic: 25 thought the number of "free" countries would grow to...

Facebook very helpfully requests that I reconnect with people whom I haven't spoken to in some time. This is today's example (click for larger image):

Max has been on the verge of crawling for a month or so. He's gotten as far as a few crawl-steps before falling back on his stomach and reverting to his sliding motion to propel himself. I've repeatedly explained to him how much more efficient it would be to stay on his hands and knees, but he's stuck with his one-armed army crawl for his everyday mobility needs. Another fun thing that Max loves to do is to knock things down. He got a fun set of foam blocks from Santa and he loves to knock down the towers that Daddy (or other big people) build for him. If he sees any stacked structure from across the room, he understands his important responsibility to the family and makes a bee line to knock down the unmolested tower. This morning I was cleaning a bit of the basement as Max napped and came across some old scientific posters that I didn't need any more. I thew the posters out, but thought that the cardboard tube that contained the posters would be a fun toy for the baby...