My Improving Eye Roundness

During the past five years my eyes have been getting rounder.

Vision prescriptions involve three measurements: sphere, cylinder, and axis.

(It sounds like a math test, doesn't it?)

My sphere measurement has remained constant at -0.75 which means I am slightly and unchangingly myopic.  I wear my glasses when driving or when I go to a movie.  My prescription is minor enough that even glass lenses are light and comfortable, so I always get glass lenses to avoid lens scratches.

My cylinder measurements have decreased, which means my eyes are getting rounder.  In 2007 they were -1.00 and -0.75 (right and left eye).  In 2009 they were -0.75 and -0.75.  Two weeks ago they were -0.5 and -0.5.

The axis measurements have also changed slightly: 172 and 22, then 164 and 20, then 165 and 20.

Another Happy New Year!

Happy High Holy Days!

It is almost sundown, but I have time to squeeze in a quick

L'shanah tovah tikatev(i) v'taihatem(i)!

This traditional Hebrew greeting for the High Holy Days means "For a good year may you be inscribed as sealed."

The alternate (i) endings are the grammatical form used when addressing women.

Rinsing a Memory Foam Mattress Topper

One nice change during the summer was how Smiley's aim improved.  I no longer need to check the toilet seat and nearby bathroom floor and each time I enter the bathroom.

But he did have an odd during-the-night accident a couple weeks ago.  No reason why.  He did not drink more the evening before, or have extra water to drink in bed, and he was sleeping in a pull-up.  Yet he flooded the pull-up and wet the bed.

Remember his bunk bed?  He was sleeping on the top bunk.  Both bunks have a memory foam mattress topper that he uses as a mattress (because it is thin, so the railing is effectively higher).  But on the top bunk we never put a plastic cover, since he had stopped wetting the bed before we let him sleep up top.

So I was up at 2:00 am helping Smiley, and then it took me a while to fall asleep as I worried how to clean a memory foam mattress topper.

I found tips on a couple websites.  But the cleaning was actually very trivial.  It turned out to be barely wet, and the day was very warm, so I just set it on the deck and rinsed the damp spot.  The water drained right through it, like rinsing a sponge.  The only "trick" was setting up a shade to keep it out of direct sunlight, which supposedly would harm it.

But even if clean-up was easy that time, we did order a second plastic cover to avoid any future problems.

Firefox Protection

According to my wife, Firefox is currently having trouble publishing an update that will successfully patch a security risk due to what embedded Java can do.

Time to disable Java in Firefox, at least for a while.

This issue prompted me to read a bit more about Ubuntu security, which recommended three Firefox add-ons that would benefit people who use the browser on any operating system.

Two I already use: NoScript and Adblock Plus.  I found out there is a third important one: BetterPrivacy, which blocks parts of Flash files that act like cookies (called LSOs).

Installing BetterPrivacy was easy and took only a few minutes.  After the install I needed to go to its option in the Tools menu, tell it which LSOs I do not want deleted, and then tell it to delete and protect from the rest.

Blender Ice Cream

This week held some unusually hot days.

Well, sort of.  Summer here in Eugene always has a few days in the high 90s.  So the heat is "unusual" as in "fairly rare" rather than "unpredictably surprising".

Anyway, the weather prompted me to buy ice at the grocery store during my morning walk with Gallant around the neighborhood, while my wife and Smiley slept more.

Our freezer has an ice maker but we disconnected it several years ago after the plastic tube that travels between the freezer and pipes under the sink had a leak.  Now we have ice cube trays and more freezer space.  So having a lot of ice at home is unusual.  Time to experiment with recipes!

We have a new blender ice cream recipe online.  We've made it twice today.  Yum!

Red Cane Theatre

Last Saturday was a hot day, and an early and uncomfortable work-day for my wife.

So I spoiled her by driving to Ring of Fire to get some fancy Thai food that is gluten-safe even for her acute sensitivity.

In the same shopping plaza is a new theatre, the Red Cane Theatre.  You can read more about them in a Eugene Weekly article.  Some (all?) of their actors were out front, taking a break and welcoming arriving dinner patrons, while we were two doors down getting our Thai food; they appeared very friendly and professional.

Looking at the upcoming shows, I expect my wife would enjoy Robin Hood and perhaps Grease. I am not sure if any of their productions are appropriate for children Smiley's age, but Robin Hood and the mermaid story might be.

A Somewhat Unhappy Week

Last week I suffered from stomach problems.  I do not know if I was sick or had food poisoning.  I was blessed that it did not interfere too much with parenting or math teaching.

I wrote in May about changing my novels from DOC files into HTML.  That is now done.  Yay!

I also got to do some pleasure reading last week, since I was forced to spend extra time sitting alone.  I read some of my favorite fantasy story, The Initiate Brother.  I did not finish, but got to again enjoy the best parts.

My next book to read in the bathroom is an overview of Biblical archeology.  It is one of those books I purchased years ago when I was actively running a religious congregation but never got around to reading.  Fortunately, I am healthier this week and have not gotten very far.

A Busy Weekend

This weekend was a very busy one.  My wife's work required her to do an online training on both weekend days.  Fortunately, this could be done at home.  Unfortunately, it was East Coast time, so she was required to be at her laptop from 6am until 2pm (with a break for lunch).

I had to keep the boys away from the house as much as I could, so they would not interrupt mommy!

On Saturday we hung out on West 11th.  Smiley had his normal gym class at 9:45 am until 10:30 am.  To keep away from home we also went to the open gym at 11:00 am.  But what to do for the half an hour in between?  Drive a few blocks to our favorite pet store, Zany Zoo.

We found out that Zany Zoo now has "petting zoo hours" on Saturday and Sunday from 1pm to 4pm.  We were too early for that, but still enjoyed looking at the animals.  We will try to visit their during petting hours next weekend, perhaps as a play date with one of Smiley's friends.

Sunday we went to a friend's fourth birthday party at Camp Putt.  I had never been there before.  It was very nice, and the miniature golf was silly.  I should write more about it later.

A Planetarium Rainforest Adventure

On Friday I enjoyed my first ever movie date with Smiley.

Grandma babysat Gallant while Smiley and I went to a Science Factory planetarium dome showing of Bugs! A Rainforest Adventure.  (It appears that you can watch the normal-screen version on Hulu.)

Lots of bugs were featured.  The two stars of the show, whose complete lifecycles were shown, were a caterpillar named Papilio and a praying mantis named Hierodula.  At the end of the film the mantis eats the butterfly, which seemed a very odd choice for a kid's film but did not bother Smiley at all.  He liked the film a lot.

The movie was beautiful and the filming was amazing.  But there was not much of a story: just the two stars eating and developing, interrupted by lots of other bugs, without any sense of narrative flow.  I'll readily trust this reviewer who claims he knows about better bug films for kids.

I was worried that I had forgotten Smiley's earmuffs, but he got used to the volume.

All the audience was families with at least one young kid (some older siblings too), which meant that no one minded Smiley's frequent quiet questions.

Gallant's at One Year

Somehow I have neglected to write about Gallant since late May.  What has he been up to for a bit over two months?

One Year Check-up

He had his one-year check-up.  That day he was 28.4 inches tall (10th percentile), he weighed 20 pounds, 4 ounces (15th percentile), and his head size was 46.5 cm (55th percentile).  Compared to his brother at that age he was an inch shorter, half a pound heavier, and about 1 cm less head circumference.

(For comparison's sake, here is the link to Gallant's nine month measurements.)

Walking and Running

Gallant is very comfortable on his feet.

He walks well, and likes to carry things.  Both hands full is best!  Sometimes he drag things behind him.

Pushing toys can fun, but only now and then.  His big brother really adored pushing things, especially toy wagons.  Gallant just wants his hands full.

The exception is pushing toys down stairs or down the back deck's ramp.  He loves that!  I spend a lot of time bringing toys back up onto the deck for him to push down again: bump, bump, bump.  His favorite pushing game is pushing the little doll stroller down the ramp.

When we go for a morning walk he likes to leave the stroller for the home stretch and walk down the sidewalk from the middle school to the bottom of our hill.  That third of a mile takes him 18 minutes.  He has to stop and look at every crow, dog, and cat.  The sidewalk has a few deep worn-down cracks, which he often will cross and re-cross to make sure he has mastered walking over them.  One neighbor has recently replaced their duplex's water meters: he always takes a little detour to walk on the sand around those and step about upon them.

He also runs a lot, usually in the back yard but also when I am exercising by doing some sprints across the fake-grass field behind the middle school he runs about and shouts.

He only jumps when I hold his hands.  He likes that.

He climbs, but is not at all the super-climber his big brother was.  He loves our plastic slide.

He can climb up stairs very well.  Down stairs is usually okay, but occasionally (almost always on the steps leading down from the gazebo) he tries descend while sitting and might tip over.

He also likes stepping on things.  I am not sure how much this is a balance game and how much it is a manipulating objects games.  Cloths, small toys, bits of rope or chain.  He reaches forward with one foot and wiggles them around.

Smiley likes to use a walking stick when we go on a walk around the neighborhood.  (He has two lengths of broom handle.)  Gallant has picked up on that.  He looks very cute walking around the back yard using one of his big brother's sticks as a walking stick that is slightly taller than he is.

(Ironically, Gallant still refuses to ride that little wood scooter which had been such an important part of Smiley's life at one year of age.)

Teeth

I wrote about Gallant getting in his sixth tooth.  Now he has ten teeth.  A top and bottom molar on each side have arrived.  (My lack of sleep during that long process is a big reason I have done so little blogging since May.  Now he is sleeping through the night again.  Yay!)

Wrestling

A year ago I wrote about all sorts of roughhousing games that Smiley invented.  Gallant is now old enough to enjoy rough housing, but does not usually care what it involves as long as the movement is fairly gentle and he is receiving lots of attention.

Foods

Gallant is allowed to eat just about anything now that he is over one year old.

He enjoys feeding himself.  Using a spoon is still very tricky, but banana and full-fat Greek yogurt stay on pretty well even turned upside-down.  Applesauce is a favorite but much more messy.

We are no longer keeping track of when we introduce foods, but I should mention that today he had chocolate chips for the first time.  (Today has record heat for this summer so far: 97 degrees Fahrenheit.  I took some cookies out of the freezer.  Cool cookies are nice on a hot day, and he loves dried cranberries even though they go right through him.  I bit off the obvious chocolate chips, but he still got some.)

During his molar teething he had some very fussy days when all he really wanted to eat was fruit.  A lack of non-milk fats caused his poops to turn soft and white.  We solved that problem by mixing olive oil into his applesauce and introducing him to Larabars (which taste like fruit but have nuts with their fats).  He still refuses to eat avocado, which once was a favorite--why, oh why that sad change?
We are using our Toddler Nutrition Log to confirm that Gallant eats a balanced diet.

New Toys

Gallant also gets to use the sandbox now.  We move it down from the stand I built to keep it at a good hight for Smiley.

One day he tried crayons with his brother.  They were great for putting into and out of the purple cup.  That is all he did with them.

On warm days his brother plays in the wading pool.  Gallant just watches, and splashes the water (with his hands or a toy) while leaning over the edge.  He likes baths, but for some reason does not like being in the wading pool.

Remember the new big swing?  Gallant can swing too!  We unhook his brother's wooden circle seat and hang up our baby swing seat.  It is nice to have a child who enjoys the swing at a young age.  (Smiley would only swing for a few moments until we made the big swing.  Park swings were too boring for him.)

Gallant's selection of inside toys has not changed much.  He still likes stacking toys and putting objects in boxes.  He shows more interest now in board books and shape sorters.  He has become fond of rolling toy cars down cardboard ramps.  He gets to shake the vacuum cord when I vacuum (which is a treat since he is otherwise prohibited from touching electrical cords).  He yearns to play with dishes in the dishwasher, but I do not let him help with unloading the dishes (as his brother got to help at that age) because he still drops them on the floor so often.

Four Categories of Traps

Steve Winter, author of The Howling Tower, has recently written a Kobold Quarterly article that categorizes traditional role-playing game dungeon traps into four purposes.

Here is my version, which is as much alteration as paraphrase:

• Puzzle: The story hopes the heroes find this puzzle and spend time or resources to solve or disarm it.  Which colored tiles are safe to walk on to cross the room?  How should the levers be moved to open the exit rather than the monster's cage?
• Certain Death: The story hopes the heroes notice this trap's placement and also that they cannot nullify it.  The trap must be avoided and exists only to redirect them.  It does so with a satisfyingly suspenseful escape that focuses entirely on the current location.
• Forward Railroad: The story hopes the heroes do not notice this trap until it forcibly moves the heroes to a new place in the story.  The heroes fall down a chute to a deeper level of the dungeon, are gassed unconscious in the wizard's tower and awake in a cell as toads, etc.
• Roadblock: The story hopes the heroes do not notice this trap until they trigger it, temporarily stopping the story.  (Sometimes it is triggered yet the effect is not noticed until the heroes return to the location and then discover that an exit is blocked or an item is missing.)  Yet it neither provides hints about what to do nor does it move the heroes along in the story.  Instead the heroes must use the information they have gathered so far to decide how to respond to the halted progress.

(My blog has very few comments.  I expect a better discussion where I copied this as a topic in the Story Game forum.)

A Nice New Tea

I am enjoying a new kind of tea.

At Sunrise Market, the local Asian grocery store, I saw a new type of tea and decided to try it.

It is Hojicha, a Japanese roasted green tea.  Hojicha only contains tea leaves, unlike Genmaicha and other Japanese or Korean roasted teas that contain rice, barley, or corn along with or instead of tea leaves.

(Barley would not be welcome in our gluten-free home!)

I bought one of these packages by Yamamotoyama (but I only purchased one package instead of the six-pack Amazon sells).  I cannot say how similar other brands taste.  But I like it a lot, both plain and with milk.

Last summer I wrote about discovering Yerba Maté.  Will I continue to discover a new type of beverage each year?

Classroom Fair Use versus Copyright Infringement

The LCC Library posts a newsletter named Inklings three times each year with news about the library.  Instructors get a copy in our department mailboxes.

The Spring 2012 newsletter (PDF) had a fascinating list of ten classroom situations that may or may not involve copyright infringement.  You can quiz yourself by following that PDF link.  Is each situation fair use or copyright infringement?

All ten situations and the answers are at this link.

More Foods for Our Toddler

In June I mentioned updating our Toddler Nutrition Record Page.

Gallant is eating more types of foods now, so I updated it again.  Now it has servings for watermelon, plum, and Larabar.

More Recipes!

I've updated my recipes page, and added recipes for my currently favorite breakfasts: tropical pancakes and chocolate waffles.

Best Google Voicemail

Google Voicemail never transliterates voice messages 100% accurately.  But it usually does fairly well.

A funny exception was this one from a doctor's office, back in February, confirming my appointment.

Yeah you air parks yo you of your appointment. Oh, bye you. Dr YYY YYY, bye.

 Heh.

Comment Spam

During the past two weeks my blog, which seldom receives comments, has gotten some comment spam.

All is unusually polite, with some generic blurb about "Have you written more on this topic?" or "It is nice to have found someone who shares my opinion," before the link to another website that is the actual purpose of the comment.  The plethora of spelling and grammar mistakes add to the entertainment.

Oddly, as blog author I receive e-mails about these but they do not appear in the blog.  It is as if Blogger notices they are spam and removes them, but only after sending me notice of their existence--which seems different from how the comment's anti-spam measures intend to work.

Here is my favorite so far (with the link removed), which seemed programmed to detect blogs with few pictures.

I was wondering if you ever considered changing the page layout of your blog? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say.  But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having one or 2 images. Maybe you could space it out better?  my website..

I wonder who is going through this much effort to put links on random blogs?

That spam's question might actually deserve an answer: perhaps when Gallant is done teething I'll again have time to blog regularly about the family photos I still am quietly putting up on the Picasa albums.  For now, here is a recent favorite: Smiley on his big new backyard swing.

 

Becoming a Little Boy

Yesterday Gallant ran for the first time, across the sitting room carpet to mommy.

Earlier this week he started being able to remain standing steadily while putting one foot on something.  (He did this at first to mimic my using my foot roller massage thing.  Then he did it on other days with some of his toys.)

His balance is certainly improving!

Today is also trash day and for the first time he is fascinated by the yard waste and trash trucks.  He hustles to the window to watch them when he hears their noise.

His face is changing too, to look more like a little boy and less like an infant.  Those huge cheeks are slowly losing prominence.

New Math Website

I have done very little blogging lately because I was working on fixing up my math website with online lecture notes.

In Winter 2007 I spent a huge amount of time creating PowerPoint lecture notes for my Math 20 classes.  They have served me well for years, getting small revisions as appropriate.

But times have changed.  Now many (perhaps most) of my students carry phones that can read websites but not PowerPoint.  Also, the PowerPoint lectures were a bit too soothing and easy to "nod along to" that yes, all makes sense and is well.  Slideshows do that.

So I transferred everything to web pages, elaborated where I noticed a topic's discussion or example problems seemed skimpy, and then included lots of links to step-by-step video example problems.

The result is still "online lecture notes" that are only a complete experience along with class time.  But they should be much more useful for students studying at home while doing homework and before the tests.

Perhaps some day I will have time and energy to make the math website a more complete "random strangers can learn math here without my LCC classes" experience.  But I expect there will soon be no need.  Quite a few places are already working on that.

Please check it out!  Any feedback would be appreciated.

Smiley's Observations Today

As we arrive at a pretty busy u-pick strawberry patch:

Me: Do you see your friends?  Are they here yet?

Smiley: We should listen for noise.  If it is quiet we know they are not here yet.

At bedtime:

Me: Time to brush teeth and go pee.  Your marble run will wait for you until tomorrow.

Smiley: My marble run will get lots of rest.  Then it will be harder to knock down in the morning.

Updated-Again Toddler Log

I have written twice about our toddler weekly nutrition record page.

Today we started using it for Gallant.  So I changed it from an Excel Spreadsheet to a .svg image file it and gave it its own web page.

Naming a Casino

Last month had many adventures, including attending a wedding in Joshua Tree, California.

Driving there we passed a billboard for Spa Resort Casino of Palm Springs.  "That should not be a valid proper name for a business," I quipped.  "It's just a string of three types of buildings."

My wife and I joked about casino names a bit.  Eventually we competed to rename Spa Resort Casino with an equally descriptive but less generic and more attractive name.

My suggestion was "Relaxing Wet Pile of Money".  I think that sounds like a great name for a casino/spa.

Conservatism and Judaism

An interesting article by The Lid on Conservatism and Judaism.

I do not agree with all his arguments, and his case against Liberalism involves several Straw Men.  But it was an interesting read.

Self-Publishing

Shortly after I finished writing my novels I looked into publishing them.  But not very much.  I joined a relative on a visit to the Book Expo America 2002.  I talked to many publishers and discovered that only a few big ones were interested in publishing children's fantasy and those all required an agent.  Not willing yet to work with an agent, I stopped my effort towards publishing.

(I made one small effort a few years later.  I'm still amazed that children's fantasy is a specialty genre despite the popularity of certain a series and its many spin-offs.)

Since then I have been too busy to pursue publishing again.  A few days ago I came across an article promoting self-publishing.  Is it really only a few mouse clicks away?

Some day I'll have time to find out...

OEC Recommendations for Dry Cleaning

I had never heard of the Oregon Environmental Council before this week.  But looking for a dry cleaners that did not use Perchloroethelene, I found their web site and their recommendations.

Sherwood Showdown Art for Sale

Heather is selling extra artwork to "clean house" as her family prepares to move.

I like the card game Sherwood Showdown that she illustrated.  Her art website tantalizingly says:

Other art from the game also available upon request-- all art is available except for the game cover. You can see more illustrations from the game here.

I'm wondering which illustrations to buy as presents for myself or friends...

Wings of Wonder is Closing

Hm.  Oregon never ceases to amaze me.

Something I had never heard about until this morning is Wings of Wonder, the dream project of a couple to create the state's largest butterfly exhibit.

They are retiring.  The place will close on Father's Day (June 17th).

It is closed Mondays, open the first Tuesday of each month for adults only, and open Wednesdays through Sundays for families.

It would be nice to visit before it closes.  But it is an hour-and-a-half drive to halfway between Albany and Salem.  Not sure if we can make it.

A New Rubric

I will teach Math 20 again in the Summer term.

Sumer term classes can be dreadful.  Instead of a normal class with twenty 80-minute lectures (two per week for ten weeks) the term is shrunk to have fifteen 110-minute classes (two per week for seven and half weeks).

Math is simply not appropriate for 110-minute lectures.  Even with normally memorable information research has shown that student retention plummets after about 20 minutes.  Math is even worse because of how "I can follow the lecture" and "I can do open book homework" are actually two surprisingly different levels of understanding.

Test days are also awkward.  Devoting an entire class to a midterm now uses up too much time.  Trying to mix lecture and test during the same class is problematic.  So many small quizzes work better.  (I also provide take-home midterms that are worth barely any points.  These are mainly to help students with test anxiety get some test practice before the final exam arrives.  When I did this in the past many students took the take-home test in the math tutoring center instead of at home without proctoring or a rigidly enforced time limit to make the experience as realistic practice as possible for the final exam.)

For this upcoming Summer term I have a plan.  Even though I am taking the time to type it out it is still a very rough-draft plan.  I would appreciate any constructive feedback.

Homework includes both math problems and reading some lecture before class.

The first 20 minutes of class (more or less) I will go over the assignment.  I will summarize and clarify the "homework lecture" and do a few an example problems.

Then students will have 5 minutes to "finish" the notes they took on the assigned reading.  This will give them a chance in class to merge the textbook explanations, my online notes, our recent class discussion, and their own thoughts into one resource for future studying.  I can circulate and whisper constructive comments.

Then I will write three problems on the board to be treated as an open-notes quiz for about 15 minutes.   Students will need to provide step-by-step answers.  One problem will be a word problem for which they will need to pay attention to the problem solving process.  I have composed a homework rubric that makes my expectations clear.

After time is up for the quiz I will ask for student volunteers to share either their notes or their quiz answers.  They can explain what they did and why, and I can provide additional commentary on how their work avoided common pitfalls and/or could benefit from certain changes.

Then, at roughly 50 minutes into class, I will start my lecture for the new topic.  This will be slightly challenging for me because I'll need to focus on the parts of my established lectures that most need class time: the tricky parts or the parts that produce class discussion.

Finally, the last 10 minutes of class will be a chance to start the next homework assignment in groups.

Overall, I am decreasing my lecture time by about one-third from sixty minutes per topic to forty minutes per topic.  Students will be asked to compensate by being responsible for reading the "easy third" of my lectures along with their other homework.  In exchange they get more time with personalized feedback during class time.

I'll also try to find links to good online lectures and example problems, and add these to my online lecture notes.  That will help support students understand my lecture notes while reading them at home.

Sound okay?  What part of the plan needs improvement?  What might go wrong that I should keep in mind?

Writing Quality Step-by-Step Math Answers

I need help brainstorming characteristics of quality step-by-step math problem answers.

Ten I thought of while writing answers to a practice test.  Five more were contributed when I asked my colleagues in the LCC math department for help.

What others are we still missing?

Baby Food at Trader Joe's

Trader Joe's is not known for its baby food.  Perhaps this is because its employees believe they do not sell any.  But owning a nice blender makes Trader Joe's a great place to shop for what to feed you baby.

Gallant has never eaten any baby food from a jar.  (Smiley did, but only during his train trip.)  It is too expensive!  Here is most of what Gallant eats instead.

Green Stuff

Trader Joe's sells nice pesticide-free frozen spinach.  Raw spinach is dangerous for babies because the leaves are loved by E. coli and salmonella, but freezing it has killed any bacteria.  Pesticide-free is also nice for baby food.

Trader Joe's also sells yummy frozen mango chunks.  Mango is a very nutritious fruit of the "yellow/green" category.  The frozen chunks are much less messy than raw mango, and not any more expensive.

Gallant's "green stuff" is mostly half spinach and half mango.  Microwave these frozen items a bit so they will blend better.

We also add a little of my wife's applesauce to help it blend.  (Trader Joe's does sell healthy applesauce with no added sweeteners: beware how some major brands add high fructose corn syrup, which is not good for babies.  However, my wife likes making applesauce during the chilly days of early Winter, so our freezer has many bags of it.)

Orange Stuff

Trader Joe's is the only store I know that sells full-fat yogurt.  Fat is important for a baby's brain development--in general (although ask your pediatrician) babies should not be fed lowfat or nonfat yogurt or cheese.

Gallant's "orange stuff" is half full-fat yogurt and half baked sweet potato.  (Trader Joe's does sell sweet potatoes, but we use Costco.)

Pink Stuff

Trader Joe's sells nice tomatoes.  (CostCo does too.  Where we buy them depends upon which store we're at when we need them.)

We used to buy a lot of canned beans from Trader Joe's before my wife was hit by adult-onset Celiac.  Unfortunately, she is now so extremely gluten-sensitive that we had to stop buying canned beans of any brand.  They were too frequently gluten contaminated.  Now we buy big bags of dry beans that we pick through, soak, and pressure cook.

(We know why roasted nuts and oats are usually gluten contaminated.  Why canned beans?  We have no idea.)

Gallant's third staple food mix is half Great Northern beans and half tomatoes.

Avocado

Fat does more than help brain development.  Since it is digested slowly it also helps a baby sleep longer.

For most of his life we fed Gallant one-quarter of an avocado before bedtime.  Hooray for fatty fruit that is soft enough to eat even before teeth!  But for some unknown reason Gallant has not wanted avocado much for about a month.  Strange.

Trader Joe's is one of the few stores that often sells organic avocados.  We did not worry about this because avocados are part of the Clean 15.  So we buy our avocados at Costco where they are not bruised by customers who falsely think squeezing them helps test ripeness (the skins become dark when ripe, so there is no need to squeeze!).  But if you want your baby to eat organic, Trader Joe's helps with this food item too.

Pumpkin

Unfortunately Trader Joe's only sells nice organic canned pumpkin seasonally.  The rest of the year we order it from Azure Standard.

This is wonderful, healthy baby food straight from the can.  Great for picnics!  Remember that food stored in open cans leeches small amounts of BPA into the food: perhaps not enough to trouble an adult but as baby food it should be moved into another container once opened.

Sunflower Butter

Researchers and pediatricians disagree about the age when children should first eat peanuts.  But this issue can be sidestepped with Trader Joe's sunflower butter.  It is a nice high-protein and high-fat food.

Finger Foods

None of Gallant's finger foods are as nutritious as those three blends.  But he does enjoy feeding himself.

Rice Chex are now gluten-free.  Those are the finger food we give him most often because they are the least messy.  No Trader Joe's connection with those.

Trader Joe's sells freeze-dried mango slices.  Gallant likes those a lot.  Since they are freeze-dried they keep most of their Vitamin C (unlike dried fruit) and are easy to eat even before teeth.  These are so sweet we save them for special treats on stroller walks.

Trader Joe's also sells rice cakes.  These are nothing special, except that where we live they are usually intact whereas the rice cakes sold at other stores are more often broken.  I am not sure if the difference is due to shipping, shelf stocking staff, or clumsy customers.

Trader Joe's also sells dried pineapple circles.  These pieces are difficult but fun to chew, and not too messy.  When we want to keep a fussy Gallant happily occupied for a while we use these.  Every parent needs an "emergency plan" for when chores need to be done but the baby is acting fussy and difficult to please.

(We also tried the Trader Joe's "just mango slices" but found that sucking on those turns them into a sticky paste.  Two or three pieces allows Gallant to create for himself gloves and a helmet made from a layer of slime.)

 Finally, organic banana.  Many stores sell these, but I think Trader Joe's has the least expensive ones in Eugene.  Of course, bananas are not only a finger food but also a shirt and face and hair food.

Website Reorganization

I have reorganized my website a little.

The top menu link for religion now goes to a nice index page instead of merely jumping to the P'nei Adonai website.  The essays about Parashot and Holy Days that used to be on the P'nei Adonai website but were removed years ago now live there.  My translation of the Tao Te Ching is also there.

The top menu link for stories now includes my two fantasy novels.

Those changes also mean that I do not need a "books" category, so that top menu link is now gone.

Yay!  Simpler!

Walking and Stacking

Early this month I wrote about Gallant learning to walk.  At that time he was taking up to six steps at a time.

A few days later he could walk forward as far as he wanted.  Two days later he learned to pivot to face a new direction.

By the end of that week he was able to walk on a flat floor, although lacking stability or confidence.

His second week of walking happened while visiting my grandmother.  Although she did not see his first steps, she did get to see him develop more balance and confidence.  Within a few days he could walk on her mowed lawn, and walk over the track of the sliding door that leads out to her patio.

Gallant still does not want to ride the wooden scooter that was so much a part of Smiley's life at the same age.  When I put Gallant on he climbs right off.  It is funny how different the siblings are.

---

Gallant's newest trick is stacking.

My wife saves Trader Joe's coffee cans for him to use as drums and stacking toys.  Smiley enjoys making towers and pyramids for Gallant to knock over.  On Wednesday Gallant started to put one can on top of another.  He was so happy after doing this!

He also has one of those colored rings stacking toys.  He started putting the rings on the post, or on any similar "post" we held (such as a wooden spoon handle).  This also made him happy.

Gallant has been settings lids on containers for a few weeks.  (Although not yet screwing them on, of course.)  I wonder why lids come sooner than stacking?

Alien Checkers

After many years off the internet, Alien Checkers is back online.

War on Coal

Coal plants supply most of this country's electricity.  Perhaps this should change.  But attacking coal plants with Federal regulations during a recession without providing any alternative energy supply is silly.

On the Wednesday before last Christmas the EPA created the "Utility MACT rule".  It might make sense to adjust how most coal plant particulate emissions are already regulated.  But this rule instead uses the guise of "mercury emission regulations" to attack coal plants.  Its cost-increasing effects are beginning to be seen.

This is silly.  Mercury emissions are circulated globally, and U.S. coal plants are responsible for less than 1%.  Moreover, since the 1950s the nation's mercury pollution has been decreasing for many reasons.

Soon the Senate will vote on S.J. Resolution 37 to overturn the Utility MACT rule.  This morning I wrote to Senators Merkley and Wyden to ask that they support overturning such dreadful legislation.

Two New Sonnets

Last week I was in California, so my grandmother could meet Gallant and see Smiley again.  I also attended a friend's wedding.

The trip was calm enough that I wrote two sonnets, Developing Balance and Holding, Blending, Dancing.

Spam from my Evil Twin

In early April I received the following e-mail.

Hello: What is your name penei.com domain name transfer intention?
I want you to talk about the transfer of matters. If convenient, please leave your contact
Mr. Qufa

So far nothing too unusual, since I get automated requests like this a few times each month.  This one was also in Chinese, but I am not going to copy-and-paste that text in case it actually translated to something else.

However, Mr. Qufa provided a different e-mail address for me to reply to than the address from which the spam was sent.  His was a foxmail.com address.  The spam came from ekylsnav.divad@cwtoday.com.

Why would someone think using my name backwards would be helpful?  Why would someone bother writing software that did that?

Oh well.  As one college friend would paraphrase Shakespeare, "There are more things in heaven and earth than anywhere else."

Sabbath Prayer Videos

I often get phone calls to the P'nei Adonai phone number from people wanting to know where is the Messianic Jewish congregation nearest to Eugene, Oregon.  I think that is still Beit Ahavat Yeshua in Lebanon.

Mark, who runs that congregation, has recently finished a big project: putting all of the major Sabbath prayers online as videos.  Fun!

Blessed are the Inefficient

Today Nathen blogged about taking short rest breaks, even napping if needed, as a spiritual practice that aids emotional and physical health.

I no longer need almost an hour to fall asleep, but after years of sleep-onset insomnia can certainly celebrate with Nathen for his overcoming that affliction.

(My only recent problem is how my role of househusband kept me waking early and going to bed late.  I am a few pounds overweight because of this, because I eat a little more than I should to compensate for not regaining enough energy with sleep.  I have probably lost a few brain cells from lack of sleep too.  However, it is a part of parenting and compared to "real" health issues is a small matter.)

I still sympathize with Nathen about the mindset of get things done! that prevents me from being as relaxed and restful as I should be during the day.  Parenting and preparing for my math teaching keep me quite busy.  I also try to do a little website work each day (I am currently adding old essays to my religion section and converting my novel Windsong to HTML).

Fortunately, I am neither a workaholic nor one of those people whose nature thinks it a crime that scripture never says "Blessed are the efficient".  I am fairly content to not get something done today, and barely bothered when a task winds up happening in a non-efficient manner.

Nathen writes well about keeping the day relaxing.  I only have one other trick to add, which has worked well for me in the past: have someone drive you somewhere remote and leave you there for a couple hours.  The situation of being completely unable to be productive can be delightfully therapeutic.

My Winter 2012 Morning Routine

For almost a year I have been getting too little sleep.  Because my wife is not a morning person it is my role to wake up when little Gallant does.  This is usually between 5:50 am and 6:45 am.

When he was very little I would put him in the ergo, make tea, and go for a walk.  Some mornings I would hold him while I showered.

Colder mornings of Winter happened to correspond to Gallant being old enough to entertain himself with toys (and heavy enough that holding him in the shower was no longer a trivial matter).  So the routine changed.  I put him in his baby corral for twenty minutes while I make tea, eat a banana or some other quick food, and take a shower.  That was my time to myself each day this past Winter.  Then, after twenty minutes, Gallant needs attention.  So I play with him downstairs quietly, including letting him climb on me while I do my back extensions and planks, stretching, and morning praying.

Between 7:30 am and 8:00 am Smiley wakes up.  If it is a Tuesday or Thursday I depart for LCC at 7:45 am, waking up my wife if she is still sleeping.

If it is a Monday/Wednesday/Friday I bring Gallant upstairs and try to keep the boys quiet while making us breakfast.  My wife wakes up between 8:00 am and 8:30 am.  I get Smiley to preschool at 9:00 am.  I either drop my wife off at her work on the same trip, or return home to get her and take her to work.

If possible I try to go to bed at 9:00 pm, shortly after Smiley is in bed.  But this seldom happens.  Until fairly recently Gallant would wake up once or twice (usually twice) between his bedtime at 7:00 pm and midnight, wanting to drink.  While my wife nursed him, I made a bottle (her milk supply is low at the end of the day).  Then I waited a few minutes while she fed him the bottle before helping move him back to his crib.

Happily, more sleep will happen soon.  Gallant has been walking for about a week.  This tires him out enough that he is no longer waking between his bedtime and midnight.  Yay!

Relaxation, Fascia, and Rhodiola

About a year ago I blogged about taking rhodiola root extract to help with muscle relaxation.

It actually does much more for me.  It's about time I blogged that too.

Between it and the fact that I have much less fascia tension than a year ago I now fall asleep fairly quickly.  For most of my life it took forty to sixty minutes to fall asleep.  What  a huge benefit!

Also, from my high school years until a year ago I had a subconscious nervous habit of picking at my upper lip.  This habit has bothered me (and really annoyed one of my best friends) but I could not stop it since I usually did not notice starting to do it.  Yet the rhodiola root makes that habit go away.  A couple of times during the past year I have wondered if the rhodiola root might have had some permanent effect and stopped taking it, and with a day or two I catch myself picking at my lip again.  Strange!  I must have some slight chemical imbalance or lack that the rhodiola root fixes.

Six Teeth and Six Steps

Gallant now has six teeth.  His upper right lateral incisor came through last weekend, and the upper left lateral incisor came through this weekend.  He still has a runny nose and frequent wakings during the night, so we expect he is working on yet more teeth.

He also took his first six step "walk" towards Smiley, yesterday.  Not only is this his longest set of steps yet, but he is getting noticeably better at it.  Before he did a "shuffling charge" that was all one continuous forward slowly falling motion.  Now he is taking steps almost as big as when he cruises holding onto furniture, and not falling forward until the end.

Smiley's Treasury

Today, after a splashy yet relaxing soak together in the spa, Smiley and I had an interesting conversation.

I had mentioned needing to do my exercises next.  Smiley likes to invent "exercises" which usually involving holding a somewhat contorted posture and then wiggling the fingers of one hand or the toes of one foot.

Smiley: Do you want to do more exercises?

Daddy: In one moment, after I get dressed.

Smiley: I keep them in my treasury.

Daddy: What is a treasury?

Smiley: My treasury is a special one.  It contains all of my exercises--those with names and those with no names.

Daddy: Tell me more, please.

Smiley: Do you know about a treasury contest?

Daddy: No, what is that?

Smiley: Some have names.  The person with the best one with names gets a surprise on their birthday.  That's just what happens in Far Away Land.  In Eugene it's not happening right now.  Maybe tomorrow morning it will happen.

I have no idea where or when he added the word "Treasury" to his vocabulary.

VTech InnoTab with Ubuntu Linux

My family will be going on a long car trip later this month.  So I bought an InnoTab that Smiley can use to watch his five-minute Thomas the Train avi files.  It seems to be the least expensive and most durable device for having a little kid watch movies in the car.

Thanks to two guys named Ron I have learned how to put versions of those movies on the InnoTab.

First, prepare the SD card.  If it has contents, erase them.  Make a folder named LLN (which is an acronym for Learning Lodge Navigator).  Inside make three subfolders named MOVIE, MUSIC, and PHOTO.

Now you can use your computer to transfer music and photos directly to the SD card in the appropriate subfolders.  But movies first need to be put into the proper format for the InnoTab to display.

Go to the Ubuntu Software Center to install WinFF, which is a graphical user interface for the standard Linux utility ffmpeg.  Start WinFF.  In the Edit menu create a Preset with the following attributes and save.  (The Name and Label can be anything you want.)

Preset Name: InnoTab
Preset Label: InnoTab Movie
Preset Command Line Parameters: -vf "scale=480:trunc(ow/a/2)*2" -vcodec mjpeg -b 1800k -r 15 -acodec pcm_s16le -ar 20050 -ac 1
Output File Extension: avi
Category: AVI

At the bottom of the main WinFF window pick AVI, InnoTab Movie, and a different folder than the folder containing the original movie files.  Then use the Add button in WinFF to pick which movies to convert.  Click the Convert button and wait a while.

Now you can put the new files into that MOVIE subfolder of the SD card.  Ta da!

Google down then spread out

A couple weeks ago I could not log into gmail for a few hours on a Tuesday morning.  The service was temporarily unavailable.  Searching the internet for the error message revealed an oddity: some folks that had multiple gmail accounts were able to use one but not another.

I never heard what happened.  The best guess I read was that it involved a server switch to implement Google's new type of networking.

Gallant at Eleven Months

Gallant is almost eleven months old.  Besides being sick for a month, what has he been up to since his nine-month checkup?

He has learned how to do many new things.

Briefly amusing was his new game of sticking out tongues at each other.  What a funny way to be social together!  Thankfully, he was amenable to being trained not to do this in the high chair, and although he still enjoys it no longer initiates it so frequently.

He also learned to use his toys of the "pull on a string and it wiggles" variety.  Two of these hang from parts of his baby corral.  The tricky one is a little toy hamster whose "tail" is a bead that pulls out: like his brother, he learned to pull this with his teeth months before developing the finger coordination to pull hard on a bead.

He became more fond and skilled at standing up.  Eventually he did so much standing that merely standing up was no longer entertaining and he is again content to play with a toy while sitting if this is easier (which makes baths more relaxing).  He takes up to three steps but only in a shuffling-charge aimed at leaning on furniture or a parent.

He loves to practice walking.  In the back yard he has a plastic wagon to push around the lawn.  Inside he has a wooden scooter but its steering handle still confuses him; the wagon is more predictable in its movement.  Gallant is slowly discovering how to grasp the wagon or scooter with hands spread out symmetrically.  He very quickly learned to deal with getting stuck by cruising around to the opposite end and pushing the other way: often when pushing more symmetrically would suffice he instead moves to the opposite end.

He also likes to practice walking while holding hands.  Smiley enjoys helping with this, and also helps by slowly pulling the scooter in circles in the sitting room so Gallant need not steer while "pushing" from behind.

Gallant became much better at eating solid food without gagging.  He learned to take very small bites of harder foods.  One piece of Rice Chex might be a dozen tiny nibbles.  It is nice to have peeled apple and bananas added to the list of usable finger foods.

He adores talking to Grandma on Skype.  We often do this at his second breakfast.  He squeals and chatters when he sees the Skype program starting, and interacts with the video call much more than his brother did at the same age.  He babbles, holds out his finger food for Grandma to see, and demonstrates how well he pounds his hand or spoon on the high chair tray.

Currently Gallant's favorite toys (aside from the wagon and scooter) are his shape sorter (just the peg board, not the shapes) and empty coffee cans.  The shape sorter is really fun to wave around and chew on, but occasionally while he holds one end the peg on the other end will bop him in the forehead.  The coffee cans are drums as well as things he knocks down when we stack them.

He eats a lot of solid food and poops five or six times each day.  At that age his brother wore mainly cloth diapers: we only used disposable diapers two or perhaps three times per day before bedtime (when the extra absorbency was needed) or when we really expected a poop.  Gallant rarely needs a diaper change because of being too wet.  Maybe twice per week.  So our cloth diapers are currently out of rotation.  The good news is that his bottom, although often slightly pink, seems very resistant to diaper rash.  He has only ever had two so far, and both went away quickly.

2012 Big Spring Swap

Wednesday afternoon from 1pm to 3pm some friends are hosting a "Big Spring Swap" in Sladden Park, a few blocks west of the Rose Garden.

(In case of inclement weather the location will move to June's house which is one block away--if necessary my cell phone can help friends who read this find the house.)

Bring clothing, books, household items, seeds, plants, toys, shoes--anything folks need to thin out for Spring!

Bring only items you want to give away freely.  No one will be keeping track of trades/points or anything like that.  Whatever is left over will be taken to a local charity.  (If anyone wants to itemize their leftovers for a tax deduction, they can take theirs back or join the drop-off crew.)

Maybe see you there!

UPDATE: Yes, the location is moved to June's house.

Spring Break 2012 - Cold and Colds

Whew.  No real blogging in over a month!

Last we really had personal news it was March 19th and Gallant was at his nine-month checkup.  At the doctor's office both boys caught RSV, what should be called "the other common cold", which has going around Oregon a bit later than usual that Winter.

(Tangentially, note the fascinating math in that graph from this website.  The visually intuitive blue line would be the number of positive test results, not the percent positive.  There could be high positive results on day with many, many tests ordered even if the percent positive was not maximal.)

Well, RSV has an incubation time of two or three days.  So it was the Wednesday of the week before Spring break when the boys became terribly congested and tired.  Poor little Gallant had never needed to breathe through his mouth before, which was incredibly upsetting while trying to relax and fall asleep.  He could not breathe well while nursing, or drinking from a bottle, or even when sucking on a finger in an attempt to relax after frustration while drinking.   Each time we put him to bed took about an hour.  So then my wife and I are also exhausted.

Well, two boys with colds at the same time is bad.  But not too bad.  Right?

Then our neighborhood suffered the worst freak snow storm of recent years.

(Our Picasa album has more snow photos.)

Wednesday night trees fell all over town.  Five thousand people were without electricity.  Our couple-blocks was among the last to have electricity restored since comparatively few homes were in our group.  Our power was out because Smiley's friend had two trees fall on his house.

We heat the house with wood anyway.  And our wood stove allowed us to boil water.  So for two days we enjoyed hot tea and ate a lot of fruit and oatmeal.  The boys continued to get worse; that weekend seemed like a B-grade horror movie named Invasion of the Mucus Lords.

That Friday Gallant did get his fourth tooth: his upper left front central incisor.

The boys suffered from RSV a bit more than two weeks.  Then some relief when 24 hours after the fever is gone and they are not contagious--we could have play dates again!  But coughing can last two more weeks.  It's a nasty virus.

So that explains most of my lack of blogging.  What a month! 

The silver lining was that Gallant was so exhausted, and having trouble falling asleep anyway, that he learned to fall asleep (and stay asleep) unswaddled.  In comparison, his brother outgrew the swaddle at nine months merely because he was so incredibly active.

My Poetry Now Online

For over a year my Picture Poems from 2001 have been dormant in an unmentioned Picasa album, waiting for when I had time and energy to put them online with appropriate formatting and commentary.

As Aragorn would not say, Today is that day!

I also shared some poems from my high school and college years.  You can use this link or click the "poetry" box in my top menu.

(I was praying earlier this week and clearly heard God say to finally get around to this chore.  So I wonder which blog reader will find something in the poems timely--or perhaps someone stranger directed my way by a search engine.)

Now I am inspired to go compose more poems.  Especially in praise of my wife, who has not been heralded in verse as much as she deserves.

X-rays

Smiley and Gallant have both been sick for two weeks with a bad cold.  They probably caught it at the doctor's office for Gallant's nine month checkup.

The cold started as a bad sinus attack.  The weekend of March 23rd was like a bad B-move named Invasion of the Mucus Lords.  Poor little Gallant was especially miserable because he had never before had to breathe only through his mouth.  His nose was too clogged and runny to breathe well, nurse well, drink well from a bottle, or even suck on my pinky to soothe himself.  Putting him to sleep took about an hour each time, several times per day.

Last week the colds shifted to become chest colds.  Smiley got really tired.  Both boys coughed a lot.  Gallant still has some sinus drip but is no longer all clogged up.

On Monday we took both boys to the doctor again.

Gallant had two ear infections.  He started taking pink Amoxicillin liquid twice a day.  He is doing much better.  His appetite has returned and I am now wiping his nose only a few times each day.

Smiley had no noticeable congestion in ears, nose, or lungs when the pediatrician examined him.  But he had suddenly developed a 104 degree fever that day.  So his doctor ordered two x-rays to be taken, to make sure his lungs were clear.  (Most colds start with a fever which goes away.  A late-appearing fever often means pneumonia.)

His lungs are clear.  And he has x-rays.  He received paper copies, which he loves.  He knows about x-rays from his alphabet puzzles and from the Curious George Visits the Doctor book and film, and the Curious George Has a Cold film.  Now he has x-rays of himself!

Those Curious George story were favorites in February.  He became so enthralled by thinking about people's insides that he even made a gingerbread boy to try to draw his own idea of where inside parts are.

I helped draw some of those lines, but most are his own work.  The yellow lines show "where the breathing goes".  The red lines in its chest are its heart(s?).  The blue lines are its lungs.  I can't remember what the green lines supposedly were.

Please pray we are all healthy by Friday!  This weekend has both Pesach seders and Smiley's birthday party.  We do not want to have to cancel those plans!

One Page Dungeon Contest 2012

In past years I mentioned the annual One Page Dungeon Contest.

For the 2012 One Page Dungeon Contest I finally have a submission of my own!

My RPG's website now has an adventure called The Hermit Alchemist Tower.  That web page is a bit more than one page, so I trimmed the text and reformatted it as a one page PDF file.

Hooray!

In my mind the adventure is nothing special to write home about.  But this contest submission is the "public debut" of my map design acrostic.  I expect that aspect of the adventure is what will catch the eye and cause my entry to stand out.

I Learn a Small Lesson in Marketing

I recently requested permission to use an edited version of this map image as part of this RPG adventure.

My request was denied for a very understandable reason I could have realized myself, but I have no intuition or experience in retail sales.  In interesting learning experience, recounted here.

Gallant's Nine Month Checkup

Today was a big day for Gallant.

During the night he got his third tooth: his upper right front central incisor.

This morning he had his nine month checkup.  No shots this time.  He has grown a lot since his six month checkup.  Gallant is 27.5 inches tall (20th percentile) and weighs 19 pounds, 12 ounces (25th percentile).  His head size is 46.4 cm (70th percentile).

(At nine months his big brother was 28 inches tall (45th percentile) and he weighed 17 pounds, 13 ounces (10th percentile), with a head size of 46.5 cm (65th percentile). Again we see that nurses do not read percentile charts consistently.)

This afternoon he rode the little wooden scooter on our wood floor for the first time.  During the past week he only was allowed to have it on the carpeted floor, where it is a bit harder to make roll.  He enjoyed pushing it, and tipping it over to spin its wheels.  Until yesterday he would climb down off it if we put him sitting upon it.  Since he might stay on it sitting, today I wanted to experiment with him riding it forward.  He enjoyed this very much, even though he of course cannot yet steer it.  He would ride down the hall towards Smiley, who was sitting on the floor drumming on empty coffee cans.  When Gallant "caught" his big brother then Smiley would move to the other end of the hallway and I would turn Gallant and the scooter around.

Today he also fell asleep unswaddled for both his naps.  He normally sleeps swaddled, so this is a big deal.  He will sleep through the night better once he learns to self-comfort when he partially wakes up.

How else is Gallant different than at the end of Februrary?  He is crawling much faster.  When "cruising" holding onto furniture he can cross his legs to move sideways much faster.  He can balance for up to five seconds when standing.  He claps objects together as well as banging one object on a surface.  He can climb up stairs, but not down.  He enjoys drumming on coffee cans and sometimes sings when he drums.

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Ramen but Were Afraid to Ask

A couple weeks ago I received a small flood of requests for link-sharing or domain name purchasing, mostly involving my recipes.  I'm not sure what list davidvs.net appeared on to generate that.

One exchange was worth sharing.

Peter: I came across your website while searching for resources around recipes and food and was wondering if this is the correct contact in regards to the content on the site. My team just created a graphic on the topic, would you be interested in taking a look? I'd appreciate any feedback.  Thanks in advance.

Me: Sure, I'll look at a graphic on the topic of food.  But why?  And for the record, I think the web need more limericks and fewer graphics.

He then send me a link to this enormous graphic about ramen.  To see it all you have to scroll down the page quite a ways!

Of course, my household is gluten-free so we are not ramen eaters.  But I do admire the graphic and am happy to share it in this blog.  If I were assigned the task of making a graphic about ramen I would not have done nearly so thorough or attractive a job.

My Entertaining Pathfinder Forum Threads

Even folks who do not play Pathfinder might get some laughs from some of the forum threads I have started.

You Know You are Playing Pathfinder Too Much When...

The Best Pick-Up Lines of Golarion

How Many People of Golarion Does it Take to Change a Continual Flame Coin?

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Pathfinder

Silliness with a Net

Charm Person and Charm Monster Don't Do What We Think

Mr. Ed, the Cosmopolitan Mount

New Magic Item Crafting Feat: Egg Laying

Pop Song and Dance as Spell Verbal/Somatic Components

What Cookie is Your Character Class?

Pathfinder Classes and the WoW Definition of Balance

Villains the GM will be Excited to Role-Play

Brainstorm Uses for the Summon Instrument Cantrip

Making Elementals Interesting

The Golarion Version of Old McDonald

Ketoconazole

I have a funny story I should share about visiting the doctor in January.  But I don't have time to write it now.

But my doctor did recommend Selsun Blue to get rid of those small patches of seborrheic dermatitis that have been on my forehead for years.  That didn't work.  They vanished, but returned when I stopped using that shampoo.

So he prescribed Nizoral 2%.  It's priced strangely.  The over-the-counter 1% version is only $20 on Amazon.  The prescription bottle had a $15 co-pay, and a total cost of about $60.  So it was cheaper for me, but a bit overpriced to my insurance company.  I guess that is how medicines work these days.

Dead Puppies Worship Jesus

One of my favorite worship songs is You are my All in All by Dennis Jernigan, which was apparently written in 1991.

Today I realized that the chord progression and much of the chorus melody are copied from the 1980s song Dead Puppies Aren't Much Fun by Ogden Edsl.

The two sings blend really well.  Sort of.

Je...sus Lamb of God Wor...thy is Your na...me

Dead puppies, Dead puppies, Dead puppies aren't Much fu....n

I'm glad I do not sing this song in public.  I might now have an accident.

Parenting Styles and Outcomes

Nathen recently wrote a great post about emotion coaching parenting.

Infant Ibuprofen Dosages

We get our infant ibuprofen at Safeway.  Their generic brand recently changed in three ways.

First, the medicine is now twice as diluted.  (The pharmacist had heard that too many parents were giving their babies too high a dose.  Apparently the manufacturer hoped watering it down would prevent this.)

Second, the bottle no longer provides dosage information for children under two years of age.  It just says "ask a doctor", which is of course the best advice.

Third, it now contains a small cup instead of those nice syringes that made it so much easier to give the medicine to an infant.  (They were Smiley's favorite teething items, too.)

Our family physician recommends for Gallant the dosages that matched what the old bottle said.  And we still have a few of those nice syringes.  So here, for our own record keeping, are the two now-missing infant dosage amounts adjusted for the half-strength new medicine.

• 12 to 17 pounds - 2.5 mL (one-half teaspoon)
• 18 to 23 pounds - 3.75 mL (three-quarters teaspoon)

Check with your doctor before following these old guidelines!

Gallat Approaching Nine Months

I've mentioned that Gallant now has two teeth.  What else is happening with him?

Teething makes his gums sore.  Some days he eats well, but usually only one or two meals.  Other days he only wants to drink.  My wife and I are tired because Gallant is waking up every two or three hours during the night, hungry again.

He weighs 19.2 pounds, which is about what Smiley weighed at one year.  He is a much bigger baby.  This sometimes confuses my intuition or my wife's.  Shouldn't he be doing this-or-that by now?  Smiley did so, when he was that big.  Then we remember there is a three or four month "gap" between the two boys for developmental age and physical size.

Gallant is balancing better when standing.  He still needs to hold on to something, but only barely.

He likes banging things against the walls or his high chair tray.  Bang, bang, bang!

He has developed that cute but annoying baby game of Not Quite Sharing:

1. He holds up a toy or food item with an outstretched arm.
2. Sometimes, but not always, he lets us take it from him.
3. He laughs if I put the object in my mouth or bop myself on the chest or forehead with it.
4. If he did let go, I give it back to him.
5. Repeat until the sun burns out.

He loves knocking down towers.  Fortunately, I Smiley loves building towers with blocks or empty coffee cans for his brother to knock down.

He really loves Smiley's toy truck that goes by itself with batteries.  He will chase it, turn it on and off, toss it, and chew on it.  Balls are also good to chase, toss, and chew--especially if they make noise when shaken.

Because the gluten-free teething biscuit recipe I tried for Smiley never worked great, today I tried making baby-safe pancakes.  That did not work very well.  I'll try another version later this week.

Today he did his first climbing.  He has often tried before to get a knee up on top of a stair or other small height.  Tonight he actually climbed up on top of mommy as she lay on her back on the floor.

Today he also pushed a toy car across the floor for the first time.  Before he would often push a toy car back and forth in front of him.  But tonight he crawled along with it, pushing it twice across the floor.

Gallant's Second Tooth

Hm.  It's been a weeks since I did any blogging.

On February 19th I mentioned Gallant's first tooth in a timely manner.  He got his second tooth, the lower left front central incisor, the next day on February 20th.

No third tooth yet.  He has very swollen gums at his upper central incisors and the lower right second incisor.  It's a race to see which appears first.

Gallant's First Tooth

Smiley had his first two teeth when he was seven months old.

Today Gallant got his first tooth.  Like his older brother, it was his lower right front central incisor.

Hopefully Gallant will do better than his brother at acquiring teeth in the normal, least painful order.

She Bit Like a Crocodile

Recently xkcd asked for the worst name ever for a baby girl.

I nominate Boynamedsue.