welcome to spiceland.

Woot.com has our tiny, handheld video camera for sale today for $79. Target.com lists these for $149. Most of the videos on our site come from this little camera, and it is so easy to use that even Tru can do it. There is no charger or special battery. It just takes two AAs. You can record up to 60 minutes of video. Plug it into your comptuer’s USB port, and just drag and drop the videos onto your desktop. They’re all ready for uploading to Youtube and most other video sharing sites. This camera is perfect for those just wanting a simple point-and-shoot video camera that fits into your pocket. We have two already.

Poor Tru has been sick for days. First it was a runny nose, then a light cough. A slight fever followed, and then her cough developed into a wet, phlemy hack-hack-hack that was interfering with her breathing. I took her to the doctor today, and it turns out she’s got RSV, a common respiratory tract viral infection that can be very serious or even fatal in newborns or the immunosuppressed. I mentioned to the doctor that Heidi had a runny nose for several weeks several weeks ago, and she suspects that Heidi got it first and passed it on to Tru. I have no idea why Heidi tolerated it so well that I hardly noticed she was sick when Tru looks like she’s run full-force into a brick wall. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that Heidi was breastfed for about 6 times longer than Tru was. If so, what an extreme effect! The doctor says Tru will get over it on her own, too.

Update at 4:51 PM CST: Tru just had a fever of 102.1. We’re treating it with Tylenol and Robitussin. Hopefully that will be enough!

Below is a picture of a bug in our microscope. Tru and I got a microscope for Christmas. We’ve been using it to explore the miniature world around us. This weekend, we’ve been looking at all of the bugs we could find. The picture below was taken from our flip video camcorder.

Heidi cut her first tooth today! Earlier today, I could see it underneath the skin. Now, I feel that there is no skin covering it anymore. Yay, Heidi! She’s also vocalizing more and more every day. She’s almost 20 pounds, and she’s even wearing some 12 months clothing. She’s very close to crawling. She can get up on her hands and knees and rock back and forth, and she can support her weight standing up. Big girl!

Update: Make that two teeth! Her other one in the same spot is coming through, too.

I’ve put a couple of new pictures up in the new Tru and Heidi 2009 folder.

As an advertising gimic, they are giving away free 3d glasses just about everywhere (I picked mine up at Kroger). They are for a super bowl commercial preview of the Aliens vs. Monsters animated movie. If you are like me and too impatient to wait for the super bowl commercial, you want to use them now. They are not the old school blue and red glasses. Instead, they are “ColorCode 3-D” glasses. You can click on the link below for a gallery of cool stuff to look at while you are waiting for the super bowl.

http://gallery.mac.com/csvendb

Heidi turned 8 months old today! It’s hard to believe that she’s getting so old. She’s just beginning to show some interest in crawling, and she’s becoming much more personable and interactive. A couple of days ago, I was using my computer with Heidi standing in my lap. I was looking around her at the computer screen. (Shameful, I know.) She leaned her whole body over to position her face between mine and the screen, forcing me to may eye contact with her! It was the sweetest, cutest thing she’s done yet. She’s also much more interested in her toys and in interacting with Tru. Tru loves to entertain her little sister. She sings and claps with Heidi and shares her toys with her, too. Heidi loves watching Tru play!

Here are some videos that we’ve taken recently. We have a tiny little video camera called a Flip that Tru loves to play with. She took some of these videos herself using the Flip! We have one that Tru took of Heidi walking down the hallway (at not even 8 months old!), a video of Tru and Heidi watching home movies from when Tru was about 18 months old, a video of Tru showing off her GeoTrax train set, and a video of Tru’s 4th birthday party. Enjoy!

Heidi Kinda Walks

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Tru and Heidi Watch Homemovies

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Tru Shows Off Train

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Tru’s 4th Birthday

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Well, we’ve finally migrated completely off our own software. We just can’t compete with the likes of Google and WordPress, so we’re joining the masses. WordPress gives us much more flexibility in formatting and adding new content, as well as managing the old content. What do you think?

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