Moving to tumblon!

For the past several months, I have been maintaining two personal blogs, this one, and (without any publicity) my tumblon blog. That time has come to an end, as I will now use the tumblon blog exclusively. Why am I making the switch now?

1. Integration.
• Tumblon is integrated with Elisabeth's developmental milestones.
  
• Tumblon integrates stories and photos (and soon video) in one service.
  
2. Security.
• Tumblon has 3 tiers of security for every milestone, memory and photo: private, friends & family, and public. Now I don't have to be nervous about publishing because I control the content - and I can write for each audience.
  
• Tumblon uses a static url (mine is http://scharf.tumblon.com). Registered friends see all the friends & family content, while unregistered folks see only the public posts.

There are lots of other benefits of tumblon over blogger, but these two are the reason that I'm making the move now. So, reset your feed readers to the new blog, and feel free to email me at leavened (a) gmail.com to request an invitation to see all of our friends & family content there.

For the sake of full disclosure: I am co-founder and community manager of tumblon, and so I'm very excited to share the service with family and friends. We are making many improvements, and adding many new features as we move toward a public beta (very soon), and then a public launch (in a few months). So you will get to see many of those improvements and features over the weeks and months to come. If there's something you think would make tumblon better, you can email me, or use the support email on any of the tumblon pages to let us know how to meet the needs of parents.

UPDATE (Nov 3, 2008): Our public beta is going well, and now includes video!

More tulips

The tulips are fading, but I hadn't yet posted this picture . . .

I can do it!

Elisabeth has been timid to try this hanging aparatus, as it rotates with the weight of the child. Finally she tried it, and (not surprisingly) was just fine. She announced with glee, "I can do it!"

Gardening

Elisabeth tried her hand at gardening this week!

Sitting pretty

Of course I couldn't let her take all the pictures.

My little photographer

Elisabeth took this one!

Sitting with tulips

The tulips are in bloom!

In Mom's boots

Back in the sandbox

Yesterday was the first day of spring in the sandbox!

Fun on the merry go round

Dying Easter eggs with Uncle Frank

Elisabeth had a fantastic time coloring eggs with Uncle Frank, and I failed to post any pictures . . . until now.

Hopscotch

I was quite surprised to find that Elisabeth can no do the entire hopscotch board without extra little jumps!

Elisabeth's zoo

Elisabeth has taken an interest in painting animals in the past month or so, and the collection of them has come to be referred to as "Elisabeth's zoo." It is amazing to me how her intrest in animals has helped her learn to control the brush far more than she does when painting free form.

The end of an era

Today Elisabeth had her first ever haircut!

"Chunky Cheese"

Elisabeth looked forward with great anticipation to her first trip to "Chunky Cheese." (We tried consistently restating it as "Chuck E. Cheese" for her to hear the proper pronunciation, but she hasn't picked it up yet.) The highlight of the day was when she accidentally threw a ski ball into the pool of the water pistol game!

Wipe clean books

Elisabeth received two wipe clean (dry erase) books for Christmas that we have been using frequently. This is one of the first times that she has written her name with only the first letter capitalized.

Hooray for snow!

The snow (which has now melted from the railing entirely) brought Elisabeth great delight.

Snow covered gloves

Elisabeth's gloves are snow magnets.

Snow!

It snowed again! So we took full advantage of playing in the snow (and will again later today).

Happy Valentine's Day!

We're a day late, but a very happy Valentine's Day to all!