Year: 2007

Leilani loves animals. She doesn’t have mommy’s concerns about loss of freedom and habitat, so the zoo is one of her favorite places to be. These pictures are from the Austin Zoo where we spent a whole day during our recent vacation with Andy’s parents.

Some of the animals do run free:

Wait, that one doesn’t run free, Andy leaned over the safety barrier to photograph through the fence.

Andy had to lean way over the safety fence for this one:

Maybe too far because they noticed, and they didn’t like being woken up:

“Photographers taste gooood….”

The pumas are more realistic, we pretended not to notice who they were watching:

At the petting zoo, the animals are more tame:

Leilani really liked the birds too:

Ooops… too pink.

But in the end, she was most familiar with the cat who came to our picnic:

We thought Leilani would enjoy the zoo train, but it’s just a ride, not really to see any animals:

So we had to find something to photograph:

To quote a song on a CD Leilani received for Christmas: “Well we stayed all day and I’m getting sleepy / Sitting in the car gettin sleep sleep sleepy…”

I suppose I should write in german here… I certainly talk mostly in german on the recording. Leilani speaks mostly english though, and some of her own language.

Listen to her take apart my wallet (“money”), see her dady go by and call him, look at several books (“Buch”) many of which have little doors to open (“apa”), giggle, decline a kiss (“No”, “No-o-o”), make animal and machinery sounds, and even sing a Leilani song. In the end she is really tired and wants to go “Hei-Hei” – german for night-night.

It’s a true recording, I took out silent periods, and some of my talking, but nothing was added later or rearranged. It is 1.5 MB, and 13 minutes long. And no autoplay this time, sorry about no warning on the christmas post…

Leilani is getting a musical instrument. We have narrowed it down to 2 choices – the most likely one is the stonaphone

Mouse over the keys to hear it!

Credits: Jim Doble, Elemental Design, downloaded from the website http://www.tidewater.net/~xylojim/index.html

This instrument has the most beautiful sound, the pentatonic tuning ensures that there are no disharmonic sounds. Downside is, if Leilani was to use it as a stool and step on it, it would probably break.

The second favorite is the Babydinda – sound is not as rich, a pretty typical wooden xylophone sound, but totally babyproof.

From the builder’s website: “A visual delight as well as a musical one. The keys of this xylophone are each a different type (and color) hardwood. A pentatonic scale, the tones are bright and match each other nicely. Built solid to be able to take a beating from young percussionists”

Check out Jim’s other virtual instruments: Pipe Harp and links to others at the bottom of that page.

More on Pentatonic Scales

The Pentatonic scale is probably the worlds most universal scale. It’s found in the folk traditions of Russia, India, Africa, Asia, Europe, and pre and post Colombian America.

It is a five note scale in which all the notes are harmonious with each other. It’s most easily found by playing just the black keys on a piano. You could pick out any other notes on the keyboard, keeping the same intervals of the black keys, and you can get a variety of pentatonic scales. Another way to imagine it is: do re mi – so la – do, with the “fa” and “ti” left out.

Because of the lack of dissonance, the sound is very sweet to the ear. Anyone of any musical ability can improvise to their hearts content and it all sounds harmonious .

The limitation comes in when you want dissonance in your music or you want to play most modern written music. Then you’d want to go to a diatonic scale or some combination.

We took several nice walks in the neighborhood of Andy’s parents’ house, most of them in the Walnut Creek park.

Grandpa Jim plays catch-up, as usual …

Leilani and Grandma Rosemary stand out from the drab landscape:

On our first night walk in the neighborhood we took photos of these displays and Leilani in mittens:

While Rosemary and I went shopping for craft materials, the “guys” take Leilani on the little trails down to the stream:

We went to 37½th Street in Austin which has very artsy (and funky) displays. We found illuminated fish, aliens, polititians and other creepy things. Oh and we also found 2 good puns: “The Baby Cheeses” and “Soy to the world.” And a black cat…

Back to the stream on a different trail:

And some tender moments:

A riddle, what is this? You soak in it, splash around and play in it with a rubber ducky. You can also drink from it, preferrably milk, or soymilk. It also flies through the air going twiet twiet twiet. And finally, its the place one uses as a toilet?

It’s a Badi. That’s what it sounds like to us at least. “Badi” is german babytalk for a bath. “Botti” is a bottle. “Boadi” is a birdie, most likely followed by twiet twiet. And “Potty” is a very urgent matter, and better not misunderstood and discussed for a long time (yes Leilani finally reports having to pee too!! Sometimes). Unfortunately I’m not a good role model for keeping “P” and “B” appart, or “T” and “D”, or “V” and “W” and the “R” is swallowed into an “A” like sound.

Beer and Bear is another one. I’m actually not that happy she says beer at all, but it sure is funny. She saw someone drinking from a beer like bottle at the airport and went “BEEEER!!!”

Also “Wischi” (wipe one’s mouth, german babytalk) and “Fishi” are hard to tell appart by sound, but mostly the context makes it clear.

Other recent words are “Buch” (german book) “Sitzi” (german sit), “Momo” (monkey), “Apple” (any remotely round fruit) “Hei-Hei” (german Night-night), “Ducky” “Jesus”, “Sus” (shoes), “leaf”, “Apa” (open), “Moon” and her new favorite “No”. There are also a few new animals sounds, she does the elephant better than I do, and says Mooo for the cow,

It seems she tacks on an “i” at the end of a lot of words, which I heard a lot of german speaking babies do, and I wonder if I inadvertantly encourage this.