132 seconds of Juniper in the baby swing on a rainy day

This last semester was busy. And busy semesters are usually stressful semesters. It should have been a lot more stressful, though, seeing as how we have a new baby in the house. (I need to be careful what I say here, since Sarah has been doing most of the rearing while I finished my last […]

187 seconds of sound sculpture and traffic in North Adams

Trips to the Berkshires are always very busy. We have this sense that very little–and almost nothing kid-friendly–happens up in Potsdam, so when we make our way down to civilization it’s a flurry of food, entertainment, and cultural activity. Sarah found a recommendation for a little park up in the hills by North Adams and […]

57 seconds of crickets and crows with Pops

Back in August, we went down to visit Pops and Oma. Before heading back up north with them for a long-in-the-works Lake Monsters game), we thought it’d be a good idea to take advantage of the good weather and dip Otis in the river. We heard some wildlife along the road and instructed Otis to […]

(I’ll be back soon!)

Keeping up two blogs was more work than I thought it’d be! (And this semester was busier than I thought it’d be!) The photoblog made it through most of the semester, but this sound blog suffered a bit… Well, I’ve got the next eight months off so suffer no more little blog! New post on […]

51 seconds of mom gossip at swimming lessons

Otis started swimming lessons this summer. It was an incredible deal: $20 for a full summer’s worth of lessons with, I think, a Red-Cross certified instructor! Granted, the lessons were just a half hour, but they met every weekday for two months. Otis and I settled into a routine of a leisurely breakfast followed by […]

68 seconds of the gurgling St. Regis River

We used to live right by the river in West Stockholm. The St. Regis River flowed right past our house and you could hear the water from our bedroom. Sometimes there was a lot, sometimes just a little. There was a large rock peninsula, too, that was perfect for lounging and drinking beer in the […]

122 seconds of NICU background hum

After Juniper was born, they kept her in the NICU for a few nights. Because she came out so early, she had very low blood sugar and, later, high bilirubin levels. They gave her an IV with dextrose, then slowly weaned her off of it through a combination of breast- and bottle-feeding over the following […]

62 seconds of Otis spinning a plastic puzzle piece

Our neighbors across the street have a couple of older kids, so there’s usually at least one small pile of stuff on the curb out in front of their houses. I recently spotted a gallon sized zip-lock bag in the pile with a bunch of colorful plastic tiles. There were also a bunch of large rectangular […]

122 seconds of Juniper’s fetal heart monitor

We had a composer friend in Berkeley named Sivan. She urged us—on several occasions as I recall—that if we ever had kids, to record the sounds they made when they were babies. That way, if the kids grew up and decided to become composers, they would have some biographical material to work with. Well, Sivan, […]