Recently in Cambridge Category

One of the places I’ll miss most when we leave Cambridge is our local, the Cambridge Blue. We took Emmie to the garden there the first week she was home, and she’s been something of a regular ever since.

Here’s some brief footage from a sunny Sunday afternoon last week, as Emmie got a chance to play with all the ladybugs out back.

We had a good Easter, yesterday. It’s a 4-day holiday in the UK, so there’s been plenty of time to relax and just hang around the house. We’ve squeezed in a few great bike rides, too — the weather seems to have finally turned, and it feels like everybody in town has decided to stroll or cycle along the Cam this weekend.

Emelyn had a little surprise waiting when she woke from her nap on Easter Sunday: a little (very little) egg hunt in the backyard. We actually wound up doing it three times, as Emmie enjoyed it more with each go; she’s been talking about eggs all morning long today, too.

We had our first (and only?) snow of the season on Tuesday. Luckily, I happened to be home that day, and caught Emmie’s first encounter with the stuff.

It’s all fun and games until somebody gets cold hands:

This is short, but sweet: Emmie walked up to a small Christmas tree in the Cambridge city centre today, pointed out the lights to me, and made the ASL sign for ‘flower’.

So, a few weeks back, Emelyn pointed vigorously at a full-page picture of Tony Snow (White House press secretary) in Time magazine and said, “Da-da”.

Today, she pulled a five-pound note out of my wallet, stared long and hard at Queen Elizabeth’s portrait, looked up at me and smiled, then pointed carefully again at Her Majesty, and said, “Da-da”. At which point Azure tells me that Emmie did the exact same thing two days ago, when I wasn’t around.

We’re slipping deep into Autumn, over here. As evidenced by this video from last weekend, where you can see the trees starting to turn on The Backs.

Azure taught Emmie a little habit she picked up from her own dad, as a little girl: whenever he finished off a can of Pepsi, Doc would make an exaggerated, telegenic “Ahhh!” noise.

Something like this:

Speaking of media, here’s some unadorned footage of Em being loud, and quiet.

It was a run-of-the-mill weekend here. Fine by me — last week seemed altogether too compressed, and it just felt like we needed this one. (Az and Em had been sick all week, and after Istanbul, I was playing catch-up all week at work.)

Anyhow, the easiest way to describe how we’ve been keeping occupied is to point to the video. Really not much going on, as you can see, but we’re having a good enough time of it:

For those preferring the naturalistic filmmaking technique of cinéma vérité, here’s a five-minute-long and mostly-unedited video showing Emmie eating blueberries. And then eating more blueberries. The current working title is ‘blueberries’.

Not the most entertaining featurette, admittedly, but as they say in these parts, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Seriously, though, the kid is crazy about blueberries.

I’ve been at home all week, having taken the week off work to simply spend some time with Azure and Emelyn. Lots to write about, later — but I’ve already stayed up too late compiling this video. Hi!

I graduated from Cambridge last weekend. It’s a little after the fact, now — I’ve been back at work for nine months, along with the rest of my class, so the whole affair wound up feeling more like a reunion than a mortarboard-tossing end-of-school finalé. Still fun, though.

Sure, I have my small grumbles about JBS and Cambridge, but one thing I can’t begrudge the University is its absolute lock on pomp and circumstance — with nearly 800 years of graduation ceremonies under its belt, Cambridge gets away with some wacky stuff in the name of tradition.

Like, the graduation ceremony is still entirely in Latin. Which is a good thing, since it precludes the usual guest-celebrity commencement speech. (Boooring.) Instead, they get right down to the business of conferring degrees. (Actually, there’s one weird bit, first, where the praelector introduces the college, bowing low and doffing his hat at unpredictable intervals. Hadn’t seen anything like that before…)

And this, then, is how the actual degree is conferred: first, the praelector stretches out his fingers, and four students each grab a digit. Then, he gives a bit of a spiel about the degree, which in our case was rather funny, inasmuch the praelector couldn’t remember how to say ‘MBA’ in Latin. After an awkward pause, he mentioned something about Maestrum Negozium et Powerpointium which sounded convincing, and then in turn, we each kneeled on a small pillow in front of Magdalene’s Master, who would clasp our raised hands while giving us his own little benediction.

By the time I was down on the pillow, I half-expected somebody would pull out a sword and tap my shoulders, too, but in truth, you just get up, make a little bow, and head on out of the Senate House. I was actually quite joyous in the moment — but that had mostly to do with the fact that I didn’t trip over my gown when kneeling or getting up. It’s a small but real risk, apparently, and they warn you about it.

Anyhow, I did fine. Can’t entirely say the same thing about Emelyn — though I will proudly say she did an admirable job of keeping quiet for the first 30 students or so. She sat stately on Azure’s lap, flipping the pages of a board books, but after 15 minutes or so, she obviously felt it was time for a little dialogue with her book, instead. Now, it’s gravely quiet in the Senate House — far quieter than we’d anticipated — so Az made the call and had our babbling baby whisked outside by Tante Hannelore, in the nick of time. So it was all good.

In short: a fine weekend. We took Mom & Dad and the Hearsts over to Ely, too, where there’s a nice cathedral and some good chippies. Looking back, we took fewer photos than we should’ve, but hey, we were having a good time.

It was a stay-at-home weekend, as both Azure and Emelyn have a cough-and-cold combo that’s been pretty rough. (Emmie had some sniffles in Rome, but the doctors think she caught another virus right after, and it’s been way worse the second time around.) Both were running fevers earlier in the weekend, and Azure had to get up throughout the night to feed Emmie, who’s eating in smaller doses. Not easy.

On a happier note, staying in gave me a chance to go through the hour of tape we shot in Rome, and make a 6-minute movie out of it. I’m starting to understand why family home videos are so maligned- I dumped 13 gigabytes of footage onto Azure’s Powerbook, and we still had a hard time finding clips where the shaky camera didn’t leave the viewer seasick, or where my own bubbling, asinine commentary managed to achieve the same effect.

Anyhoo. Here’s the goods:

Alrighty, then. Pulling into King’s Cross as I type; so ends the nice part of Monday morning. I strongly suspect this’ll be another Week Of Pain at work - so see you Saturday!

One of the crazier curveballs that parenting has thrown at me, so far, is that it keeps getting progressively more fun. I’m mixing baseball metaphors, I know, but it’s a whole different ballgame now that Emelyn will crawl half-ways across the house to sit at my feet. Newborns are lovely (I’m already a tad nostalgic), but in the last few weeks Emelyn has become an absolute hoot to be with. She’s good company.

This was a good weekend. It was just the regular rigamarole for the most part (helllooo Grafton Centre), though the three of us had some bonus fun spec’cing out backpacks. The weather is finally turning, here, so we’ve been debating whether to buy one of those child-carrier packs for our jaunts around Cambridgeshire and our upcoming Easter in Rome.

Emelyn’s reaction at being hoisted up for the first time was actually a pretty good one - her little head bobbled in almost every direction, just trying to take it all in. That said, she started whimpering a few minutes later. Suppose it was a lot to deal with, all at once. Anyhow, we tried a few more packs later on and she seemed to enjoy ‘em thoroughly. Guy at the store said most kids flat-out wail the first time they’re strapped into a pack - bet that’ll kill a sale.

Other than that, well, there’s not much to say. The Daily Grind is, once again, on a ‘coarse’ setting, but hey, Friday is already one day closer than it was yesterday…

Okeydoke, here’s some more footage from the videocamera, since the Nikon is busted: