He specifically requested to go to my stylist again instead of a discount haircuttery. Schuyler did an awesome job, as always.
New Haircut
Category Archives: parenthood
Footprints in the Snow
I had just flashed my usual I Love You 🤟🏻 to Connor as the school bus pulled away. When I turned to walk back up the driveway, our matching sets of footprints stood out to me in the morning snow. We wear the same size shoe now: his men’s size 8 tread-marks are on the left, and my women’s size 10 slide-prints are on the right.
This school year is the first that Connor has taken the bus in the mornings since Kindergarten, since the elementary bus pickup conflicted with my work schedule. During those elementary years, I drove him to school — either for Extended Time in the mornings before school, or directly to school on days when I worked from home. Those short drives to school were some of the best one-on-one times I’ve had with Connor, and I had mixed feelings about losing that time with him.
Luckily for me, he still likes having me wait with him for the bus — and not just because I have the iPhone app that shows where the bus is on her route.
Unpublished, Jan 2023: We’re Officially Black Belts!
This post has been languishing in my Drafts folder for nearly a year now.
There was clearly more that I wanted to say at the time, but didn’t quite manage to get into words. There’s even more to say now that a year has passed… but that’s a post for another day.
The date embroidered on Connor’s black belt is December 3, 2022; mine says December 17.
It may have taken longer than expected, but we finally have the tangible proof that we’ve earned the rank of black belt.
The interesting and perhaps unique perk of our dojo is that we now get to cross-train. Connor and I now attend a weekly all-ages Black Belts Only class, which introduces the kids with black belts in American Freestyle Karate to Krav Maga concepts, and the Krav Maga adults get to learn forms and katas.
Foray Into AI Art
A couple of months back, Connor told me about an AI art website he found that renders photos in an anime style. I’d never actually tried out any of the AI content generation tools that are out there, so when he asked if we could try it out, I was game.
I took a photo of Connor and uploaded it, then tagged it with Connor’s suggested prompts of boy, strong, and muscles.
After a few minutes, we got some results.
Despite Connor wearing a shirt in his source photo, all of the AI results were shirtless. They also all wore sneakers and had the wrong number of fingers. It was cool to see how the AI interpreted the environment and changed it to vibe with the anime style: the duffel bag hanging on the closet doorknob became a box or basket sitting on a pile of something, and the carpet and closet doors became wood planks.
It was a fun experiment, but I don’t see myself having a need to delve deeper into AI art anytime soon.
Then and Now
Same kid, same hat, same tree, nine years’ difference.