The science of cuteness

Ok, so I logged in fully intending to do something else, but when I got to my Yahoo! homepage there was picture of a baby panda

and a link to a great CNN Jeanne Moos report on cuteness. It turns out that most people think that baby pandas are even cuter than Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt (aka the Brangelina baby).

Need more pandas?? Click here.

Pandamonium!

I had the day off today (which meant that I worked a half day from home) and decided to do a little shopping in the afternoon. I found some things I wanted - gifts for my Secret Pal, actually - and was standing in line to pay. The woman in front of me had a huge basket of stuff that she was buying, so I was standing there waiting for quite a while. I was just kind of looking around, up higher than where I normally look and I saw IT - a stuffed panda on a shelf labeled "Clearance"! He's 17" tall and was marked down to $5! He came home with us. He doesn't have a stain on his belly, by the way, that's just some weird shadow that showed up in the photo. He is perfect :)

I ran the bear up to Nora's room when I got home and on my way downstairs I noticed a box on the porch -- it was the first gift from our new Jan DTC secret pal. She sent Nora a t-shirt and socks from the San Diego zoo (home of the PandaCam), a bunny stroller toy and two packages of Halloween tissues.
Thank you very much, Secret Pal! I think you told me something about yourself with this gift. I've narrowed your identity down to someone who (1) lives in SanDeigo (2) has visited SanDiego (3) knows someone in SanDiego. Let's see, who can I cross of the list of possible Secret Pals... uhm, no one. Bummer. Well, maybe next month.

Congratulations Lun Lun!

Congratulations Lun Lun on the birth of your new baby!! You probably don't remember us, but my mom and I saw you when we were in Atlanta for Illinois' sweet sixteen game a couple of years ago.

For anyone interested, Lun Lun lives at the Atlanta Zoo -- she and her new baby are featured on a 24/7 panda-cam which you can access either from the zoo's website or from cnn.com. Right now the baby looks like a naked rat, but the zoo's website says he/she will begin to show panda markings sometime next week.

Four (?!) sets of panda twins

For some reason panda news is harder to come by than you'd think. I've been hearing snippets of panda births on the news and am having trouble coming up with a good count. Piecing together the various news stories, I think that four sets of twin panda have been born in the last week -- on Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday. That makes ten baby pandas born in Chinese breeding centers this year. Does that sound right? The latest news story is here. I also found some more panda information on China.org.

Happy Birthday Su Lin!

Su Lin, a panda cub at the San Diego Zoo, celebrated her first birthday today! Her name means "A little bit of something very cute" - how appropriate! Please support conservation efforts, it would be horrible to lose these gorgeous animals.

What's Black and White...

and eats 42 lbs of bamboo per day?

Rob and I stopped at the healthy market on our way home from dinner tonight to pick up a treat (aka ginger soda) for this evening. There were a couple of people in front of us in line, so of course I looked at the magazines and this month's National Geographic caught my eye. How could it not with a cover like this??

The feature was timed for the National Zoo's panda cub Tai Shan's first birthday on July 9. Check it out if you have the time, it's very interesting and the pictures of Tai Shan are unbelievably cute. You can also see more of Tai Shan on the National Zoo's website. They even have a panda-cam!

Nora's Second Personalized Item!

This is truly amazing. Manette from the January DTC group made us each a personalized quilt square with the group's logo and our baby's name (I blanked out our last name in this photo). As if that wasn't enough, it is on a beautiful tone on tone heart fabric. The photo doesn't do it justice, it is absolutely beautiful and so special to us. I am going to make it into a decorative pillow for Nora's room. Thank you so much, Manette, you have outdone yourself.