The K is Silent!

We felt that Matilda was moving around PLENTY with her commando creep, but as of October 4th she's been doing the official crawl as sactioned by the I.A.C.M. (International Association of Crawl Monitors). Funny that Matilda decided to do her first one at LAX while waiting for our flight to Vermont. Since then she has used her new found power to get quickly to things she shouldn't (usually something electronic) and navigate around the apartment to find more things to climb on (and then fall from).

Here Kristen demonstrates both Matilda's ability to crawl and her predatory desire for electronic devices:

Of course there are challenges but the more this little gal can do the more fun we have with her. It's great to see her choose on her own what she wants to investigate closely. The welcomes I get from Matilda when I return from work have always melted my heart, but I'm sure you can imagine how much more it means now that she crawls to me. - T 10-22-06

PS - Here's this year's batch of Halloween links!


	FRONT PAGE ARCHIVES I absolutely had to end 9 months of website inactivity to yell, "OUR DAUGHTER IS TWO YEARS OLD!" across cyberspace. Yes, the one we call Matilda and who 24 months ago looked like this: Sigh. But why go on about it all when I could just let her tell you? Here she is waiting for a table at Duke's in Malibu: Between Flickr and Kristen's blog, I think we have kept folks pretty caught up, but it doesn't mean this crazy dad doesn't wish he had the time to share even more. Especially videos. Since you can't see Matilda move and hear all of her funniness, there is a lot to be enjoyed from these little moments of time. Here she is in January '08 relaxing with her guitar, her Grandma, and every toddler's favorite performer: As much as I can get nostalgic for that perfect baby girl we brought home, there's no question the fun we're having now. I never realized that as Matilda got bigger, so would her laughs (and ours!). Here she is, earlier this month, discovering the wonders of a backyard fountain with her friend Molly: And then just to blow all of our minds, here's a time machine trip to when Matilda was 90 minutes old getting bathed by a nurse: Thanks for indulging a proud papa over these 2 years. - T 3-27-08 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ...that we had maybe the best party ever in the history of humans. *Anniversaries really are* a fun thing. S & G stayed with Matilda so the wife and I could get out and focus on each other for a couple of hours. Can you believe I forgot to bring a camera out to the swanky restaurant? At least I had the cellphone cam: - T 6-28-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While we were at the zoo in Santa Barbara, Matilda picked up one of our cameras and pretended to take a picture. It was so spontaneous and funny. It also melted Daddy's heart. When we got home she ran around the apartment for quite awhile "documenting" things: plush animals, books, her parents. . It's now a daily activity. She's even been making a "click" noise and pushing on the button. All she needs to do is see this one camera of ours and she ready to capture her world. Shouldn't be long before we actually turn the camera on for her! - T 6-12-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Whoa! Where'd Tim go? Well, thanks for noticing. It seemed like it took me over a month to catch up on Flickr thanks to all of our trips, outings, and events. Additionally, Matilda switched to 100% walking (from crawling with some walking) which eliminates a surprising amount of the free time that we already didn't have. But HEY, the little walking girl also takes the dad-fun up a dozen notches. I've put up two videos from April that I want you to see while the little growing machine stills looks like Matilda. Here M helps Daddy brush his hair: This next one shows off both her steady walking skills already in place by April 30th, as well as her obsession with sniffing things: More soon (but remind me if I forget). - T 5-23-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There was so much picture-taking during the birthday time (and therefore MASSIVE Flickring to be done) that I've had no time to offer up videos. Well, before I am off to AZ for more picture and video taking, I thought I'd at least get this cute one up from Matilda's 1st birthday: More after we get back. - T 4-11-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And twelve fantastic months for her dad. - T 3-27-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After 5 weeks of just peppering her mobility with steps, Matilda really seemed to turn on the walking power this weekend. Especially today at the playground when we witnessed her walking the longest distance so far (5 feet) and she really acted as though she wanted to do it. After returning home from the park, Matilda continued to walk from place to place. A highlight was when she just decided to "Frankenstein walk" from the living room into our bedroom. I'm sure you're thinking, "Talk is cheap, bub. Show me the goods." Well after all of this time I understand your dwindling patience. Luckily for us there was so much walking tonight that we did finally get some on video. By this point Matilda had taken to carrying around her overalls regardless of how much it tripped her up, but here I captured a more graceful moment: In case you were wondering that is a battery charger Matilda is going for and yes I am congested. Currently we are preparing ourselves for the fact that our little baby turns one-year-old in nine days. If we can come out of the shock in time, I should have some fun birthday postings. - T 3-18-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Tuesday, February 6th, at 10 months old, Matilda took her first steps. First a set a six, then a set of four, and then a another set of four for me when a I got home. When she chooses to repeat this new trick seems to be completely random and we've had no luck reproducing it for pictures, video, or friends - BUT we are the Knauff family so we sure have fun trying!: Who knows how long before we actually get some photographic evidence? In the meantime, I know there will be plenty of silliness to entertain you. Here's one from our trip back to Ithaca. Matilda harassed a lot of cats and dogs on her 3 week visit, but Tara is one pooch she could not get the better of: More to come. Have a happy Valentine's Day. - T 2-11-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's true Matilda started eating solids 3 months ago, but she hasn't really liked them. Three spoonfuls or fistfuls a day of something tops. Until her 9 month birthday on 12/27/06 - Pow! She loved this soup K made: Every dinner that week and almost every meal since has been a success. Here's a 2.5 minute video of her enjoying dinner: And then just a few days later we got this funny (and short) one: Matilda has always been a great restaurant baby. We have kind of a dilemma now when it comes to eating out. She still doesn't cry or have fits, but now she makes the type of sounds that are kind of hard to miss: We're off to I-town next week for some belated Xmas cheer with the fam back home. Happy MLK Day!- T 1-11-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In case you haven't heard, the Intergalactic Empire marched on Pasadena, California today and freed her people from their oppressors. What a New Year's Day! Here's some video of the historic moment: More cheek, less tongue to come. Happy New Year!- T 1-1-07 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today the three of us woke up to our first Christmas morning as a family. We were sad to be away from our families for Matilda's first Christmas, but the pleasures derived from today could not be overshadowed. Here's to hoping you all made some good memories too. - T 12-25-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah, the end of the year. For the past couple of years that has meant a bone-powdering crush at work mixed with standard holiday insanity. While the job has once again reached an all-time high of lunacy, I do have a secret weapon this year and she's got some wicked stamina. I don't have time for much but I did want to be sure to show you how Matilda is keeping off the holiday pounds this December: K shot that while visiting with her mom in San Diego. We won't be traveling home for X'mas so with any luck I'll get a chance to update the ho-ho-homepage soon. - T 12-12-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Since it seems I really can only update this site once a month, I might as well cover a few things at once. Matilda continues to move, move, move. K managed to capture an example of her cruising on video (Note at the end of the of the clip I walk in the door from work!): A non-Matilda item: we are so excited to have the Griffith Observatory open again. The astronomy stuff was always fun but we really missed that view. It was the best way to take in the magnitude of this town and when viewed at night from up there, Los Angeles never looked more beautiful. Of course now that we have Matilda we can appreciate the Observatory on a whole new "family" level. K has managed to even go up during the week with M just to take it in. Here's the mighty Tesla Coil on display in the Observatory museum: Again, not really Matilda-related, but two of our friends posted these very similar pix within a couple of weeks of each other: Indra in Napa Valley, USA ___Martin in Melaka, Malaysia Miss Matilda and her mom are sick again. M managed to go 6 months without being sick at all, but now this fall seems to be pounding us all with regular maladies. I think I have a way to avoid this one though: Happy Thanksgiving! - T 11-19-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We felt that Matilda was moving around PLENTY with her commando creep, but as of October 4th she's been doing the official crawl as sactioned by the I.A.C.M. (International Association of Crawl Monitors). Funny that Matilda decided to do her first one at LAX while waiting for our flight to Vermont. Since then she has used her new found power to get quickly to things she shouldn't (usually something electronic) and navigate around the apartment to find more things to climb on (and then fall from). Here Kristen demonstrates both Matilda's ability to crawl and her predatory desire for electronic devices: Of course there are challenges but the more this little gal can do the more fun we have with her. It's great to see her choose on her own what she wants to investigate closely. The welcomes I get from Matilda when I return from work have always melted my heart, but I'm sure you can imagine how much more it means now that she crawls to me. - T 10-22-06 PS - Here's this year's batch of Halloween links! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 months came at last on September 27th. K and I had been so anticipating being able to start Matilda on solids that her six-month birthday really felt like a holiday for us. Having never been able to feed Matilda it was an extra special day for Dad. Here's the whole first food process (it's about 3 minutes long): It's been a rough couple of weeks with us all being so sick, but we've still had fun here and there. Here's a clip from the bachelor party-weekend I put on for our buddy, Adam (I'm in the long-sleeve tee): There's been a couple of updates to the Friends, Pix, and Baby section on here - just FYI. We're off to VT for Adam's wedding this week. - T 10-1-06** ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've mentioned on Flickr how much I love Matilda's laugh and what a big part of her it is that's missing from the 100's of pix I post. At last the camera was right by me and Matilda was on such a long roll that I managed to get a chunk of what was a very long gigglefest: We're only a couple of weeks from the magic 6 month mark when M can start enjoying solid foods. Currently, no food and especially no DRINK will go unnoticed by the little miss. Here K enjoys her icy glass of water while Matilda lies on the bed. Watch Matilda move into action!: More to come at 6 months!. - T 9-12-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Donations are being accepted due to the unexpected recent events involving Matilda fast-forwarding through her development. That was last Sunday. Yesterday, this stuff started: That's Miss Matilda pulling the plastic covers off of my records. By next posting she may be freestylin' with two-turntables and a microphone. - T 8-26-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Four months ago today we met Matilda for the first time. I am so glad she's the person we came home with from the hospital. This little gal is so funny and so sweet. I don't know how she maintains it. With a 4 month birthday comes what every little girl wants: a pony - I mean SHOTS. Poor Matilda. She was a trooper this time and gave up crying very quickly so she could go back to smiling at mom and dad. As noted in our Flickr pix, the little miss started propping herself up in a sitting position this week. This was after a week full of firsts: first roll over from back to belly and first time in the ocean. Below we've got M's reaction to her very first encounter with a body of water. We're off to I-town soon. Maybe Matilda will prefer the beauty of the waterfalls! - T 7-27-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The most recent couple of weeks have been SO fun for hanging out with Matilda. 4th of July weekend was wonderful for me since I had a long weekend with both of the gals. Not only did I, as usual, take oodles of pix, but I also caught some fun moments on video. We still haven't really caught a good batch of laughing, yet. It's tricky since we never know when it'll happen or how long it will last. But also, she has few different laughs and some chortles might not be differentiated between happy sounds by non-Matilda parents. As a sample I've posted this long run of happy sounds that does have a laugh at the end: Miss M is also quite the chatterbox now. Here she is going back and forth with me (ignore K in the background): And lastly I leave you with the below bit of loveliness. We're off to NC next weekend. More goodies after that! - T 7-9-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So I got to try a turn at the strangeness of having a new holiday in honor of my parent-ness. Not so bad. It was a pretty relaxing Sunday that ended with a steak sandwich (a real steak, not some shredded crap). Last week while I was taking out the trash, I ran into the other dad and daughter that live in our building. I said hi to them both and he said to his toddler, "Look, sweetie, it's Matilda's dad!" She smiled big because she likes Matilda. How about that? Just in time for Father's Day, I'm now identified as Matilda's dad to someone. It's absolutely the best name I've ever had. A week ago Matilda laughed for us for the first time. Once on the changing table for me and then for K the next day after some good raspberry blowing. They were really giggles which I think are even better than laughs. We haven't gotten them or the subsequent one-shot shout-laughs on video, yet. HOWEVER, there is this uber-cute one K got of Matilda smiling big time for her mom's raspberries: The other thing Matilda started to do over a week ago is sit up from a reclining position. She doesn't do it often but sometimes she gets in a mood and does it a bunch in a row. This is usually how it ends: M is 12 weeks old today which is not really comprehendible to us. If I didn't have the hundreds of pix to prove it, I don't know that I could believe she was ever as tiny as when we brought her home. -T 6-19-06 PS - If you need more updates on Matilda and the stuff her mom likes, bookmark this blog. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ K was slick enough to capture the above event for me on video while I was at work. We'd been able to get Matilda to roll over on something hard (like the kitchen counter) but never on the floor. Since the little miss has gotten so much bigger and has been an old pro with neck holding we were finally able to graduate her to front facing in the Baby Bjorn. The timing is perfect since she is SO alert now that she really enjoys scoping out the the busy nabe as we stroll down the side walk. Something that has come out of walking with my daughter everywhere is the full realization that this is a completely different city if you have a baby. People are friendly. They talk to you. And not just the freaks I wrote about previously: the old sour faced Armenian men who have hung out on our block for the 5 years we've lived here smiled at me and Matilda on Sunday. And then they waved. Waved. To strangers. On the same walk, people yelled "Hello!" from their porches, gave big smiles as we passed them on the sidewalk, and offered up compliments as they got out of parked cars. Maybe it's the heat. - T 6-5-06 (ps if you click the smoking baby it now works ) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What a treat Miss Matilda has been over the past couple of weeks. I'm having so much fun with her being SO alert. Now that we're at the 2-month mark I feel like I can safely say that she has been very good to her amateur parents. Matilda has been venturing out with us more to grocery stores, restaurants, and various public gatherings and has always behaved like some sort of super-baby. So long as she is funneling information into her tiny head she seems to be content. With her getting out more I'm starting to learn things about strangers and babies. This is a town where we have celebrities, remember, and for the most part people ignore them when they turn up in a supermarket or store. A cute baby apparently IS enough cause for a jaded Angelino to break through social norms and talk to a stranger. People walk right up like they know you, speak to your child, and touch her. I knew Matilda had star power around our friends and family, but I underestimated its magnitude in the outside world. Folks seemed to enjoy the last video I posted so I've added another of M being very cute after waking from a nap (M is cute but her parents come off like F-R-E-A-K-S). - T 5-29-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kristen woke up this morning to find out she had a new holiday thanks to Miss Matilda. New holidays AND we almost always get to use the car pool lane? Wow this kid-thing ain't such a bad deal! M and I took the new mom out to a neighborhood cafe for some outside brunch dining and both girls seemed pleased with the event. You'll see there's an old post below that hasn't actually been up before. I started to have some technical problems last week (basically this site is made of popsicle sticks and Elmer's Glue). For the time being only the most recent posts will on this page, other swill be banished to the ARCHIVES. Matilda is smiling SO much now. I'd like to think that means we're doing something right, but I'm sure it has more to do with our daughter's pleasant disposition. -T 5-15-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So no update in 3 weeks but at least the pix are still going up on Flickr. We've had my brother and now my mom out for visits over the past 2 weeks. It's great to see our fam get to to interact with and respond to Matilda. The biggest changes with her have been that she smiles for us now. She's been doing the restful "inner peace" type smiles from the get go, but she also has always seemd pretty happy, so it's been tough to try to be sure about the reaction smiles. We thought we saw the real deal last Sunday when she got really excited about some elephant heads that hang from her Pack N Play. Gradually through her 5th week we got to be more convinced that what we had a happy, smilin' little girl. Friday when I kissed her good-bye for work she gave me nice big grin: what better present for my birthday! Saturday we actually got some video evidence. (If it has trouble playing in your browser just double click it.) Enjoy! - T 5-7-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Matilda is 3 weeks old! It doesn’t seem possible that she could have already been in our lives for that long. Something else that doesn’t seem possible: that we could also go 3 weeks without bathing her again. But hey, the doctor said it was okay and it was really scary last time. BTW ,my mom put a Matilda announcement in the Ithaca Journal that you can see online. - T 4-17-06 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------