and a close up of 5 month old daughter Kasia:
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Family Photo
Assuming picture is worth a thousand words, here is a current family photo
Monday, March 29, 2004
Instinctive Fear of...
My wife and I were big fans of the original Baby Einstein video with our first child, both because it was one of the few ways to calm our colicky child, and because we liked the premise that playing recorded speeches in different languages might help our child retain the full range of phonemes that are usually lost as babies hardwire their brains strictly for the limited subset of sounds they hear in their mother tongue...only time will tell if the brief taped speech samples contained on the Baby Einstein tape are sufficient to help our daughter's generation hear and so learn other languages more easily.
[I remember only too well the trauma of my own school experiences with a French instructor screaming at me, "Not 'r' you imbecile, 'r'!", with neither of us knowing (because the research came 20 years later) that there really was no way for me to 'hear' a French phoneme to which my developing brain had not been exposed in the first six months of life. The difference may have been painfully obvious to the instructor, just as the Chinese inability to distinguish between 'l' and 'r' seems impossibly odd to Anglophones, but it?s fundamentally a hardware problem, and no amount of shouting and repetition is capable of fixing it.]
So, even before the arrival of our new baby we had purchased the boxed set of Baby Einstein videos, including our current favorite, Baby Bach. The tape displays a series of wonderful toys (I have spent many hours on the internet trying to track down some of them for our own purchase) more or less synchronized with various pieces of classical or other music. The 20 minute tape, in combination with her vibrating bouncy chair, helps Kasia fall asleep when she is otherwise too tired and unusually fussy.
Early on, however, we noticed an inexplicable phenomenon?although our Kasia was turning into a Baby Bach junky, she always exploded into terrified tears during one particular sequence. At first we thought that it was simply a matter that she had reached the limit of her attention span, since no newborn can watch a 20 minute tape all the way through. But this turned out not to be the case, because we would get the same reaction even if we happened to start the tape with that sequence; and as Kasia grew older, she can watch for much longer, even watching attentively as the tape cycles through more than once, provided we hit "skip" on the DVD whenever that particular sequence appears. Then my wife insisted it was the particular musical selection that our daughter was reacting to, but no; when just playing the music track (the DVD has a music only option) there is no reaction. No, as unlikely as it seems, it is demonstrably this one set of visuals that fills our baby with terror.
The sequence in question simply shows three tin toy robots marching peacefully, if somewhat stiffly, to a selection of Bach music. So someone please explain to me how a newborn can have an instinctual fear of robots? I mean, lizards and snakes I can get ? the collective unconscious might well have evolved a very sensible collection of innate fears with which to protect babies. Babies that failed to fear spiders and rats and snakes might well be deprived of the subsequent opportunity to contribute genes to the next generation. But robots? I mean, can you be reincarnated from the future into the present?
Makes my brain hurt.
[I remember only too well the trauma of my own school experiences with a French instructor screaming at me, "Not 'r' you imbecile, 'r'!", with neither of us knowing (because the research came 20 years later) that there really was no way for me to 'hear' a French phoneme to which my developing brain had not been exposed in the first six months of life. The difference may have been painfully obvious to the instructor, just as the Chinese inability to distinguish between 'l' and 'r' seems impossibly odd to Anglophones, but it?s fundamentally a hardware problem, and no amount of shouting and repetition is capable of fixing it.]
So, even before the arrival of our new baby we had purchased the boxed set of Baby Einstein videos, including our current favorite, Baby Bach. The tape displays a series of wonderful toys (I have spent many hours on the internet trying to track down some of them for our own purchase) more or less synchronized with various pieces of classical or other music. The 20 minute tape, in combination with her vibrating bouncy chair, helps Kasia fall asleep when she is otherwise too tired and unusually fussy.
Early on, however, we noticed an inexplicable phenomenon?although our Kasia was turning into a Baby Bach junky, she always exploded into terrified tears during one particular sequence. At first we thought that it was simply a matter that she had reached the limit of her attention span, since no newborn can watch a 20 minute tape all the way through. But this turned out not to be the case, because we would get the same reaction even if we happened to start the tape with that sequence; and as Kasia grew older, she can watch for much longer, even watching attentively as the tape cycles through more than once, provided we hit "skip" on the DVD whenever that particular sequence appears. Then my wife insisted it was the particular musical selection that our daughter was reacting to, but no; when just playing the music track (the DVD has a music only option) there is no reaction. No, as unlikely as it seems, it is demonstrably this one set of visuals that fills our baby with terror.
The sequence in question simply shows three tin toy robots marching peacefully, if somewhat stiffly, to a selection of Bach music. So someone please explain to me how a newborn can have an instinctual fear of robots? I mean, lizards and snakes I can get ? the collective unconscious might well have evolved a very sensible collection of innate fears with which to protect babies. Babies that failed to fear spiders and rats and snakes might well be deprived of the subsequent opportunity to contribute genes to the next generation. But robots? I mean, can you be reincarnated from the future into the present?
Makes my brain hurt.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Spaghetti Harvest
Ooh, ooh, ooh! J. Brian Clarke brought this one to my attention: log on to the
BBC's history site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/aboutbbcnews/spl/hi/history/html/default.stm
click on the 1950's, then click on Panorama's sample video of a 'Spaghetti Harvest'.
This is one of my all time favorite hoaxes, but I had no idea this gem was available on the net...well worth viewing.
BBC's history site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/aboutbbcnews/spl/hi/history/html/default.stm
click on the 1950's, then click on Panorama's sample video of a 'Spaghetti Harvest'.
This is one of my all time favorite hoaxes, but I had no idea this gem was available on the net...well worth viewing.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Typical Day of Parental Leave
Being on parental leave, my primary responsibility these days is to take care of my three month old. I nevertheless find myself on campus quite frequently because my wife Mary is still teaching, and since Kasia refuses to take a bottle -- hysterical screaming at the mere sight of a plastic nipple or sippy cup -- I can't be more than two hours away from Mom. Mary nurses Kasia just before teaching a class, and I hang around so she can do another feed on break, if necessary, or immediately after class. If Kasia is sleeping, I can run up to my office and do email; if, as is more commonly the case, Kasia is awake, I struggle to keep her entertained with the small number of toys that are suitable for this age. (Of course, Mom, Dad, and big sister are the primary play objects.) On occasion, however, Kasia begins to cry and I end up walking the corridors to calm her.
The UofL is a great location for walking babies.
First, the aptly-named University Hall has the longest continuous hallways in North America (approximately 1/4 mile). I have now paced these corridors so often that I can describe the cartoons posted on each professor's door from one end of the hallway to the other, on all 8 floors. (Note to colleagues: time to cycle those cartoons! Once the paper turns yellow, it has been up long enough! Get some new material, for pity's sake.)
Second, there are large number of colleagues and alumni to stop me in the hallways to admire Kasia. Walking with a new baby garners far more glances, smiles, and interactions than one would normally experience taking the same route. Talk about positive reinforcement for an exercise routine. And of course, all those smiling adults engaging Kasia significantly adds to my supply of "toys".
Third, I have discovered the game of "Who is a keeper?", a marvelous voyeuristic pastime. One merely carries a baby through a crowd of adolescent couples, as found on campus, and observe the reactions. As Kasia is carried past crowds of female students, three quarters respond with, "Oh, look at the baby! Isn't she adorable?", while approximately a quarter turn away, or cross to the other side of the hallway, apparently fearful that having babies is contagious. Carrying Kasia through crowds of males leads to the same response, but in reverse proportions. What is highly fascinating, however, is watching how couples respond. Given the base statistics reported above, it should not be surprising that three quarters of couples respond with the female at least smiling at the baby, while the male ignores her or looks away. Often the exchange involves the female trying to stop to interact with the baby, while the male exhibits obvious resentment at the delay-- or worse yet-- at the interruption in his date's attention, should he have been talking at the point we come into view. On the other hand, there are about a quarter of the couples where the female goes, "Ooooh, look at the baby!" and the male actually smiles and interacts with the baby with equal interest, then looks at said female with a certain look that tempts me to tell her, "Hey, this one's a keeper!"
Bored with the hallways today, however, I wandered into the Fine Arts Center and the campus art gallery. UofL boasts an art collection far superior to what one would expect on any other similarly sized campus, and whoever runs the gallery actually has some taste ? I usually really enjoy the shows. Wandering around the gallery exhibits today was fun, because having Kasia in my arms gave me an opportunity to muse aloud about the art without looking completely crazy. Okay, commenting on art to a three month old may seem a bit redundant, but babies like to hear the sound of your voice, and it doesn't really matter what you're saying, so might as well be stream of consciousness about art appreciation.
But as I carried Kasia about, it became obvious that some works attracted and held her attention far more than others, and these were usually also the works to which I was drawn. The basis for this selection was not immediately obvious to me, since Kasia seemed equally drawn to abstract and representational works, bright and subtle compositions, and so on. So you have to wonder, is there something deep in our hardwiring or collective unconscious that these more successful works were triggering in both Kasia and I, or do daughters inherit their Dad's tastes, or was I simply unconsciously directing Kasia's attention? Well, there were a few pieces she liked more than me (or at least attended to more than I ? I suppose she might have been looking at them and thinking, "gee, what is it about that one I hate so much", but somehow that seems less likely with babies), so her taste was not identical to mine, but still. So I was thinking, there's probably a research project or two there? Bring babies into a gallery, watch what they look at, identify archetypes?
The UofL is a great location for walking babies.
First, the aptly-named University Hall has the longest continuous hallways in North America (approximately 1/4 mile). I have now paced these corridors so often that I can describe the cartoons posted on each professor's door from one end of the hallway to the other, on all 8 floors. (Note to colleagues: time to cycle those cartoons! Once the paper turns yellow, it has been up long enough! Get some new material, for pity's sake.)
Second, there are large number of colleagues and alumni to stop me in the hallways to admire Kasia. Walking with a new baby garners far more glances, smiles, and interactions than one would normally experience taking the same route. Talk about positive reinforcement for an exercise routine. And of course, all those smiling adults engaging Kasia significantly adds to my supply of "toys".
Third, I have discovered the game of "Who is a keeper?", a marvelous voyeuristic pastime. One merely carries a baby through a crowd of adolescent couples, as found on campus, and observe the reactions. As Kasia is carried past crowds of female students, three quarters respond with, "Oh, look at the baby! Isn't she adorable?", while approximately a quarter turn away, or cross to the other side of the hallway, apparently fearful that having babies is contagious. Carrying Kasia through crowds of males leads to the same response, but in reverse proportions. What is highly fascinating, however, is watching how couples respond. Given the base statistics reported above, it should not be surprising that three quarters of couples respond with the female at least smiling at the baby, while the male ignores her or looks away. Often the exchange involves the female trying to stop to interact with the baby, while the male exhibits obvious resentment at the delay-- or worse yet-- at the interruption in his date's attention, should he have been talking at the point we come into view. On the other hand, there are about a quarter of the couples where the female goes, "Ooooh, look at the baby!" and the male actually smiles and interacts with the baby with equal interest, then looks at said female with a certain look that tempts me to tell her, "Hey, this one's a keeper!"
Bored with the hallways today, however, I wandered into the Fine Arts Center and the campus art gallery. UofL boasts an art collection far superior to what one would expect on any other similarly sized campus, and whoever runs the gallery actually has some taste ? I usually really enjoy the shows. Wandering around the gallery exhibits today was fun, because having Kasia in my arms gave me an opportunity to muse aloud about the art without looking completely crazy. Okay, commenting on art to a three month old may seem a bit redundant, but babies like to hear the sound of your voice, and it doesn't really matter what you're saying, so might as well be stream of consciousness about art appreciation.
But as I carried Kasia about, it became obvious that some works attracted and held her attention far more than others, and these were usually also the works to which I was drawn. The basis for this selection was not immediately obvious to me, since Kasia seemed equally drawn to abstract and representational works, bright and subtle compositions, and so on. So you have to wonder, is there something deep in our hardwiring or collective unconscious that these more successful works were triggering in both Kasia and I, or do daughters inherit their Dad's tastes, or was I simply unconsciously directing Kasia's attention? Well, there were a few pieces she liked more than me (or at least attended to more than I ? I suppose she might have been looking at them and thinking, "gee, what is it about that one I hate so much", but somehow that seems less likely with babies), so her taste was not identical to mine, but still. So I was thinking, there's probably a research project or two there? Bring babies into a gallery, watch what they look at, identify archetypes?
Saturday, January 24, 2004
The Case of the Shattered Bowl
Middle of the night, there's a "pop", followed by a crash, from the kitchen. My wife and I investigate and discover that my wife's favorite glass bowl (about 10 inches across) has apparently shattered spontaneously. What we find is half the bowl (a literal, precise half) sitting on top of the counter, as if it had been sliced by a lazer. The other half has dropped off the counter and shattered into two dozen large fragments; a couple of hundred tiny shards; and a quarter million nearly microscopic dust flakes. I have seen glasses shatter into 'a million pieces' before, but I have never seen anything like these dust flakes. Instead of the usual random shards in a variety of jagged shapes, this dust consists of nearly flat, impossibly thin flakes of glass that are nearly impossible to see. The kitchen floor consists of a pattern of square tiles, so I use the grid to systematically clear each tile, and the surrounding grout so as not to miss anything. It takes four passes to wipe each tile: first a wet cloth to pull up glass, then a dry towel to wipe up the water and remaining glass fragments; then repeat because there are still a hundred flakes glinting up at me; then repeat again because while I can no longer see anything on the floor, I can hear and feel the grit under the wet towel, and see the glass glinting off the dry towel, even though I have already cleaned this individual title twice; and a fourth pass to make sure, which comes up with more glass more often than not. Working methodically, it takes me an hour and a half to clean the kitchen floor, and another 20 minutes to clean the counter just to be sure, though I only see a single shard on the counter other than the surviving half. (My conclusion is that the bowl broke cleanly in half, and the single minute shard has splashed back up onto the counter from the floor when the other half fell and shattered.) I have to discard my socks because they have picked up glass flakes even though I am only walking on the 'clean' tiles; I elect to wash my pants in the laundry room sink, and wash the sink, then run the pants throw the washer on their own, followed by an empty cycle, rather than throw those out, but I admit to being a bit nervous about the glass contamination spreading. I am keenly aware that if any of these flakes make it into our food, they would slowly slice one open as the piece traveled through the digestive system and be essentially undetectable. (The perfect murder weapon, I'm thinking.) Or if a piece sticks to my hands and I pick up my baby… I spend a long time washing up.
So can someone explain the physics of this to me? I have to admit that it has shaken my faith in the universe to have a glass bowl we have used for years suddenly up and explode. There was no one in the kitchen, and while I can imagine a scenario where an improperly stacked bowl could fall unexpectedly after everyone had left the room, this was clearly not the case here: My wife had left the bowl sitting empty by itself on the counter, where half of it remained perfectly preserved – nothing I know of could slice it so evenly in half, and there was nothing within a meter of the bowl anyway. It is just bizarre and unsettling.
The baby is now ten weeks old, and smiling regularly, and clearly working her way up to a laugh. This is excellent timing, as it coincides with the worst of colic and the start of extended awake times, so without the reward of the occasional smile, a lot of parents might find babies sufficiently annoying that not smiling became a significant factor in natural selection… But for us Kasia is a pure joy, and worth the total disruption of our lives. Were Kasia our first child, I would no doubt be complaining here about the horrors of colic, but compared to Tigana's constant 24/7 screaming at that age, Kasia's colic seems pretty mild. Indeed, we were starting to worry that Kasia is too lethargic, since she seems to sleep quite a bit and lie around quietly a lot of the time she is awake, until we actually kept track and were able to reassure ourselves that she was falling within normal parameters. But even when Kasia does cry, we can often settle her fairly quickly, once the initial problem (hungry, wet, bored, sleepy) has been dealt with – she has an "off" switch, which Tigana lacked. With Tigana, once she started crying it would just keep escalating until she passed out. With Kasia, if she doesn't get fed immediately when she starts crying, she will often stop, look around, and not seeing mom, say "okay, I'll call back in 15 minutes." The call backs become increasingly desperate on those rare occasions I haven't been able to come up with an appropriate response, but the fact that a baby could pause at all between requests was a major revelation to us.
Kasia's biggest problems currently are gas pains (forcing Mary to stop eating 90% of her favorite foods, since everything apparently causes gas in babies –e.g., chocolate) and a second case of the sniffles. She seems to breath normally all day, but between 4AM and 6AM she is so sniffly that she has trouble breathing and we have to stand in the shower with her. It is fascinating how excited one gets from finally pulling a load of mucus out of a baby's nose. "Hey, I got more snot!" is now a commonly shouted joyous exclamation in our house.
I fortunately am on parental leave until late March, so it is relatively easy for me to cope. Mary is finding it harder, having to continue to teach, though she is down to teaching a single course a couple of times a week. Tigana, (coming up on her 6th birthday), is taking the intrusion of her younger sister into her previously self-centered universe far better than we could have hoped. Tigana never complains about Kasia's screaming, is gentle and caring with Kasia, and seems genuinely pleased to have a little sister.
So can someone explain the physics of this to me? I have to admit that it has shaken my faith in the universe to have a glass bowl we have used for years suddenly up and explode. There was no one in the kitchen, and while I can imagine a scenario where an improperly stacked bowl could fall unexpectedly after everyone had left the room, this was clearly not the case here: My wife had left the bowl sitting empty by itself on the counter, where half of it remained perfectly preserved – nothing I know of could slice it so evenly in half, and there was nothing within a meter of the bowl anyway. It is just bizarre and unsettling.
Kasia
The baby is now ten weeks old, and smiling regularly, and clearly working her way up to a laugh. This is excellent timing, as it coincides with the worst of colic and the start of extended awake times, so without the reward of the occasional smile, a lot of parents might find babies sufficiently annoying that not smiling became a significant factor in natural selection… But for us Kasia is a pure joy, and worth the total disruption of our lives. Were Kasia our first child, I would no doubt be complaining here about the horrors of colic, but compared to Tigana's constant 24/7 screaming at that age, Kasia's colic seems pretty mild. Indeed, we were starting to worry that Kasia is too lethargic, since she seems to sleep quite a bit and lie around quietly a lot of the time she is awake, until we actually kept track and were able to reassure ourselves that she was falling within normal parameters. But even when Kasia does cry, we can often settle her fairly quickly, once the initial problem (hungry, wet, bored, sleepy) has been dealt with – she has an "off" switch, which Tigana lacked. With Tigana, once she started crying it would just keep escalating until she passed out. With Kasia, if she doesn't get fed immediately when she starts crying, she will often stop, look around, and not seeing mom, say "okay, I'll call back in 15 minutes." The call backs become increasingly desperate on those rare occasions I haven't been able to come up with an appropriate response, but the fact that a baby could pause at all between requests was a major revelation to us.
Kasia's biggest problems currently are gas pains (forcing Mary to stop eating 90% of her favorite foods, since everything apparently causes gas in babies –e.g., chocolate) and a second case of the sniffles. She seems to breath normally all day, but between 4AM and 6AM she is so sniffly that she has trouble breathing and we have to stand in the shower with her. It is fascinating how excited one gets from finally pulling a load of mucus out of a baby's nose. "Hey, I got more snot!" is now a commonly shouted joyous exclamation in our house.
I fortunately am on parental leave until late March, so it is relatively easy for me to cope. Mary is finding it harder, having to continue to teach, though she is down to teaching a single course a couple of times a week. Tigana, (coming up on her 6th birthday), is taking the intrusion of her younger sister into her previously self-centered universe far better than we could have hoped. Tigana never complains about Kasia's screaming, is gentle and caring with Kasia, and seems genuinely pleased to have a little sister.
Friday, January 02, 2004
Baby Back in Hospital
My newborn has been sick with a cold. This is significantly worse than it sounds. Babies under two months old don't know they can breath through their mouths, so when their noses block up, they simply stop breathing. I thought Mary and I were coping reasonably well by taking the baby in shifts and pumping saline solution up her nose as required, but when we took her in for her six week checkup, the doctor immediately sent Kasia to hospital.
Seeing one's infant connected to various monitors is unsettling, even when the doctors confirm that the RSV virus (a more serious condition that often masquerades as a cold) is not present. My daughter is so tiny, she seems completely dwarfed by the monitors. The pulse/oxygen level reader, for example, that normally hooks over the end of an adult's finger, completely covers my daughter's foot. And the readings themselves are both more reassuring (when the readings are what they should be) and more terrifying (whenever they aren't) than simply watching the baby snuffling at home. The monitors are alarmed to go off if the levels reach scary highs or lows, summoning the nurses, but the parent's are supposed to stay with their baby to keep track of pre-alarm trends and to administer the saline drops as appropriate. Naturally, my wife ended up with the more brutal night shift, since she had to breast feed every two hours, while I got to go home with my older daughter to a more or less normal night's sleep; but I did what I could with a single bottle feed to give my wife at least one four hour complete break mid-day.
So here I am on shift one afternoon, pacing with Kasia in my arms, when Kasia's readings start to show distress: her breathing starts to be too rapid, indicating a problem getting air in, and her pulse rate starts to shoot up, indicating either panic over oxygen deprivation, or a reaction to the drug they were giving her to open her airways. The trend is slow enough, and common enough, that at first I do not react, beyond trying to calm Kasia by pacing a bit faster, adding a bit of a jiggle to my hold on her, and patting her on her back, all of which usually sends her back to sleep. Instead, she starts to cry louder, and the monitors reveal a rapidly worsening trend. I redouble my efforts, but within seconds Kasia reaches crisis levels – the alarms go off, the nurse rushes in, and my heart stops in sudden dread as my daughter's pulse exceeds 220/minute.
The nurse takes one look at me, and starts to leave. I sputter something incoherent about the readings along the lines of "Do something!" and thrust my dying baby in her general direction. The nurse pauses, and with professional politeness says, "I take it your wife didn't explain to you that the monitors work by detecting sound and movement – your baby's reading's are fine; you're just making them go off the scale by pacing, jiggling and patting…"
Well, duh!
But for a minute there, I was one panicked Dad as my daughter's life flashed before my eyes.
Seeing one's infant connected to various monitors is unsettling, even when the doctors confirm that the RSV virus (a more serious condition that often masquerades as a cold) is not present. My daughter is so tiny, she seems completely dwarfed by the monitors. The pulse/oxygen level reader, for example, that normally hooks over the end of an adult's finger, completely covers my daughter's foot. And the readings themselves are both more reassuring (when the readings are what they should be) and more terrifying (whenever they aren't) than simply watching the baby snuffling at home. The monitors are alarmed to go off if the levels reach scary highs or lows, summoning the nurses, but the parent's are supposed to stay with their baby to keep track of pre-alarm trends and to administer the saline drops as appropriate. Naturally, my wife ended up with the more brutal night shift, since she had to breast feed every two hours, while I got to go home with my older daughter to a more or less normal night's sleep; but I did what I could with a single bottle feed to give my wife at least one four hour complete break mid-day.
So here I am on shift one afternoon, pacing with Kasia in my arms, when Kasia's readings start to show distress: her breathing starts to be too rapid, indicating a problem getting air in, and her pulse rate starts to shoot up, indicating either panic over oxygen deprivation, or a reaction to the drug they were giving her to open her airways. The trend is slow enough, and common enough, that at first I do not react, beyond trying to calm Kasia by pacing a bit faster, adding a bit of a jiggle to my hold on her, and patting her on her back, all of which usually sends her back to sleep. Instead, she starts to cry louder, and the monitors reveal a rapidly worsening trend. I redouble my efforts, but within seconds Kasia reaches crisis levels – the alarms go off, the nurse rushes in, and my heart stops in sudden dread as my daughter's pulse exceeds 220/minute.
The nurse takes one look at me, and starts to leave. I sputter something incoherent about the readings along the lines of "Do something!" and thrust my dying baby in her general direction. The nurse pauses, and with professional politeness says, "I take it your wife didn't explain to you that the monitors work by detecting sound and movement – your baby's reading's are fine; you're just making them go off the scale by pacing, jiggling and patting…"
Well, duh!
But for a minute there, I was one panicked Dad as my daughter's life flashed before my eyes.
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Mr. Picasso Head
Too preoccupied with new baby to keep blog current, though that should change once my grades are in later this week. In the meantime, check this out, courtesy of Holly Gunn: Mr. Picasso Head
Saturday, November 22, 2003
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Friday, November 14, 2003
Kasia's Birthday
Kasia Alexis Gina Runté was born 16:17 November 13, 2003.
Being weighed at birth: 6lbs 4 onces.
Friday morning.
Mary is doing well.
Saturday, November 08, 2003
New House: Month Three
This week is the third month anniversary in the new house, and we have discovered another drawback: the custom-made, under-floor heating intermittently sounds like a series of American attack helicopters coming through our bedroom. This is not a particularly soothing sound at 3AM. Although the noise seems continuous while we are holding the pillows over our heads in a futile attempt to dampen the noise and get back to sleep, it is sufficiently intermittent that it never performs in front of the repairman. "Now I've bleed out all the air, it should be perfectly quiet." But that night, it's another showing of Apocalypse Now…
So I am at the doctor's with complaint about pain in my feet, and his diagnosis is bone spurs. "It is a common problem for people who have to stand or walk on cement all day. Did you change your work patterns so that you are suddenly walking on cement more?" "No, no! Nothing has changed at work. It is a complete mystery to me." Then I go home and look at the 3600 square feet of tile in my house (well, my house isn't that big, but the tile is also on walls and ceiling in a lot of places) and realize, "Doh!". ? *Sigh*
But I still love this house….
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
The Shape of Things to Come
Got to see my new daughter again - - via the miracle of ultrasound - - this time at 34 weeks.
(Face is on the upper left, looking right.)
In some ways, this picture is less clear than the ones we got at 22 weeks, because the baby is now taking up so much room, the ultrasound equipment has less opportunity for a clear shot without shadows, etc., but the technician did a pretty good job of capturing a recognizable image here.
Mary is scheduled for a C-section in approximately three weeks, so I am pretty excited by the prospect of holding my daughter so soon; it has crept up on me pretty fast. (It has, I concede, seemed somewhat longer to Mary!)
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Halloween
Dark humour at http://www.extremepumpkins.com. I like the gunshot wound and puking pumpkins best.
Monday, October 06, 2003
New House: Month Two
Today is the two month anniversary of our move into the new house. We are still not completely unpacked, and we are still discovering new things about our new home, most of them pleasant surprises.
One minor problem is that we still haven't figured out which light switches are for which lights. There are a lot of lights in this house with two and three switches each, so one can, for example, switch on or off the main stairwell light from upstairs, downstairs and the landing. Potentially quite convenient, but it makes it a bit confusing. And it is a big house with lots of lights, so I am still learning which ones are which. I actually stopped to count them today, and there are 71 light switches in our house. Is that normal? I don't think that's normal....
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