J. Michael Andresen

The New Orleans Saints defeated the Indianapolis Colts in a thrilling game that became the most-watched television program of all time : its 106.5 million viewers beat out the 106 million that watched the last episode of M*A*S*H in 1983. (Is this foreshadowing that one of the two cast members on our death watch will also fall soon?) Ten percent of the entrants guessed that The Saints would come marching in: Ryan Beth K. Mary C. Zhiqi Valerie Leader Board Ryan has now answered the first three questions correct to jump out to an early lead over the rest of the field. Nipping at his heels are Beth K. and Topher, each with two points: 3 Ryan 2 Beth K. 2 Topher 1 Rachel H. 1 Mary C. 1 Zhiqi 1 Marcus 1 Pamela 1 Cameron 1 Stephanie 1 Valerie 1 Beth Z. 1 Larry 1 Eric 1 Craig 1 Ron 1 Adrian 1 Polly 1 Nad 1 Janet 1 Keila 1 Peter 1 Gloria 1 Cherie 1 Missy 1 Janette 0 Diane 0 Ekrem 0 Jan 0 Megan 0 Mike F. 0 Liz 0 Kevin 0 Leanne 0 Tina 0 Matthew 0 Rich 0 Mary A. 0 Grant 0 Todd 0 Russell 0 Christoph...

Max is ten months as of Tuesday. Here are some recent photos! "I may look young, but I am quite long in the tooth." "Butternut squash is the secret to my baby-soft complexion." "Who dat keeps doing dat baby talk?" "I climb stairs with alacrity." "I discovered that I love caviar. Mommy won't let me have the champagne or petit fours with her, though." "Daddy is my favorite because he lets me play the pull-all-the-kleenex-out-of-the-box-one-by-one game more than mommy does." "Although sometimes I have to endure childish activities like the tedious pretend-the-baby-is-a-bunch-of-groceries game." "I can crawl REALLY fast when I want to." "Mommy often asks me to open up, but I always demand a quid pro quo." "Did I mention I can crawl fast? I'm usually out of the room by the time Mommy grabs the camera." "Although in general, I think the camera is rather kind to me."

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...