The Rankin Zoo 

Here you go - some non-robot photos. I hope you enjoy! Watch the slide show or click into the gallery for the full size pictures.

About a week ago Pearl started to babble. It’s pretty standard baby babble but we love it. First of all, Pearl has been such an “easy” baby - her temperament is just so chill that she doesn’t make tons of noise. Sure, she cries now and then but for the most part she’s pretty quite. Second of all, it seems like Coral learned out to talk when she was two weeks old - so it’s been a long time since we’ve had a babbling baby in the house.

It is very cute. If you respond to her babbling she usually babbles more - with even more expression. I think she really thinks she’s having a conversation with you. If you get a good babble conversation going with her she can go non-stop - except for the occasional break to flash you a super-cute smile.

Someone at work linked over to this video and it is amazing. It starts off kind of creepy - with a high pitched whining sound - but you can see that this is no ordinary robot.

About 35 seconds into the video is the first particularly interesting part. A guy gives the robot a shove with his foot. The robot weighs 235 pounds and is carry another 340 pounds - you would think the thing would fall over but it doesn’t. The strangest thing is that I felt bad when the guy shoved it - even though it’s just a robot (and it didn’t even fall over).

Then at about 1:25 in the video the thing walks out on an icy patch of the parking lot. It slips and slides like a dog or other animal would but manages to recover.

I’m not sure why I’m so amazed, and a little creeped out, by this thing.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now. Coral has a friend, Champe, whose mom does some work for a company called Handwriting Without Tears. Coral’s nanny, Kirstin, is also a photographer. Somehow, all that stuff came together with some kind of photo shoot and the result is Coral’s picture up on their web site.

Unfortunately, Coral did not get paid for this engagement but we’ll add it to her portfolio. I’m sure she’ll hit it big at some point. I can’t wait!

It seems that time flies and my pre-loaded pictures of the day have run out already. I have a plan for getting more pictures in the pipeline but I haven’t enacted the plan yet. So, no pictures for now but the feature should make a comeback soon!

I’m not sure why we dressed as clowns for bedtime stories.