Labeling Emotions Helps?

In the course of reading the book "Brain Rules for Baby", I am learning a lot to put it mildly.  One of the more fascinating aspects of raising a child that I hadn't even thought about yet is dealing with tantrums, outbursts, and the emotions of a child.  I think part of me was just putting off consideration of this area because I didn't want to deal with it and figured I had enough time to figure out the best way of dealing with tantrums, emotions, and the like.  Well, left to my own devices, I probably would have gone about it completely wrong and potentially screwed up my child.  OK, so maybe it wouldn't have been that bad, but I never would have considered what the book suggested as a proven solution to the problem of dealing with a toddler's emotions and occasionally concurrent tantrums.  The proven solution is, as you might have guessed from the title, labeling the emotions of the child.  At a young age, emotions are a new experience for children and as they don't know what is going on within them, the emotions they are experiencing or the resulting effect of the emotions, we as parents need to help label the emotions for them.  This labeling of the emotions is largely based on our ability as parents to be in tune with our children, empathize with their feelings, and help them work through them.  It is not enough to tell them they can or can't act a certain way for that only skates the surface and doesn't deal with the underlying issue of why they are acting the way they are.  Nor does it work to ignore their actions hoping they will go away.  They only proven method for helping children work through their emotions is to empathize with them and label the emotions for them so they can understand what is they are feeling. 

Lets take a minute and think about it from a child's perspective.  To do this we must pretend that we don't know what a given emotion is, like jealousy.  Lets place ourselves in the shoes of a 2 year old at an older siblings birthday party.  At that party, the older sibling is getting lots of presents and we the 2 year old are getting none at all.  We start to feel angry and frustrated at the fact that we are getting nothing while our older sibling is getting all the presents and attention.  At that age, we would probably react by trying to get attention through crying, screaming, and in extreme instances, acting violently towards our older sibling.  Most of this lashing out is due to the fact that we don't understand what is happening in our brains and thus in our body.  If our parents took the time to sit us down, explain to us what we are feeling, we would be able to put a label on the emotion and understand at least a little more what is happening and be better able to cope with it.  If, however, our parents told us to stop or go sit in a corner without explaining anything, we wouldn't know what we are feeling, only that we are told not to act a certain way.  This doesn't accomplish anything except maybe a momentary reprieve.  The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me that simply being able to identify an emotion, label it for a child, and help them understand exactly what it is they are feeling, would be a great benefit for them in the moment and also later in their lives. 

How many of us had parents who did this for us?  To be perfectly honest, I don't know if my parents did this with me or not.  I know they did the best they could or knew how to, but my memory of childhood before 5 is somewhat hazy.  Even now, it takes a serious act of concentration to label my own emotions as I am feeling them.  I can label the easy ones, happiness, anger, frustration; but there are a whole slew of emotions that I understand, but can't always put my finger on when I am feeling them.  The research in the book shows that by labeling emotions, we are connecting a psychological reaction with a physical reaction and by doing so, we help calm the nerves that lead to whatever the emotion is we are feeling.  Some parents are naturals at this, others need to work on it.  All I can say is that I  am one of the ones that need to work on this now in order to get myself ready for when our son is older.  I am glad that I am reading this book now and not afterwards.  I probably would have been one of the parents who told our son just to not act the way he was acting and not really get into the underlying issues of his emotions.  As I move through this parenting journey I am realizing more and more just how much work goes into raising a happy, healthy child.  Its not easy, I never thought it would be, but I don't think I thought it would be as hard as it is turning out to be.  Trust me, now is easy for the most part, but I know it will get more complicated down the road.  Like I say quite often though, one day at a time, one day at a time, one day at a time.

"Brain Dead" but Alive

I came across a news story floating amidst the news feed on Facebook that struck home for me as I am a relatively new father.  This story involves a father and a son from England and their journey through a hospital nightmare.  (Full story linked here)  To keep it short, what essentially happened was this man's son was involved in a car accident that left him in a hospital with major injuries.  He was placed in a medically induced coma to help him recover, yet doctors soon afterwards claimed that he was brain dead and wanted to harvest his organs while still fresh.  The father refused to believe the doctors and brought in different doctors for a second opinion.  The second opinion stated that there was still brain wave activity occurring in his son and that he wasn't "brain dead".   Well, the second opinion proved invaluable as his son made a full and complete recovery.  Why were the first doctors at the hospital so eager to rush and proclaim this young man brain dead?  It was obviously so they could harvest his organs, but it still boggles my mind as to how they could place this young man in a medically induced coma and then claim that he was "brain dead".   This just solidifies my disgust with modern medicine, and the sad state of hospitals these days.  Before I get criticized, I am not intending to slam the whole medical industry here.  I know that hospitals and doctors play a vital role in emergency services and other illnesses, but to hear of this story and others like it just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. 

For many people, or maybe not that many, there is always a consideration floating around in the back of our minds as to how long we would want to be kept alive if there was proof that we could make a full recovery.  In essence, we have that debate in our minds as to when we would want the plug pulled on ourselves.  Some people never want the plug pulled, hoping that modern medicine will find a way of bringing them back to fully functional human beings.  Others say don't even try to keep me alive, what happens will happen.  This story brings to light an interesting scenario however in that the people we are supposed to trust with providing the proper diagnoses on a possible recovery are the same ones that are rushing to proclaim a brain "dead" in order to snatch organs.  How do we factor human negligence, or even dare I say, greed, into our decision of how long to keep a life going?  It definitely made me pause and think.  Now lets take into consideration that you are the decision maker for someone who is in that situation.  What would you do?  Would you take the word of the first doctors opinion, in which case a human life would needlessly be ended, or do you seek other opinions in hopes that a different outcome might reveal itself?  It is murky waters we tread here with no clear answer.  We could go on debating the pros and the cons, but it all boils down to how good of a job are the doctors doing who are in charge of making diagnoses on a life. 

Personally, I wouldn't want to be kept alive past the point of medical insanity.  If there is a chance that I can be saved and brought back to being a fully functional human being, then let me live.  But if there is any question as to the state of my brain or my full recovery, I would want the plug pulled.  Now, however, I may want the person in charge to get a second opinion if the latter is the case du jour.  I for one, while trusting doctors out of necessity when needed, don't particularly care for the profession as a whole.  I know, I know, they do in fact help people who need it and they are necessary, but it doesn't mean I have to like them on an everyday basis.  But it is what it is, some doctors are good, some evil it seems.  Its unfortunate that a few doctors whose only desire is to harvest organs cast a bad image over even more doctors and calls into question their motives.  I for one wouldn't even want to imagine myself being in that father's footsteps having to make a decision about my son and whether or not to have his organs harvested.  Just can't imagine it and hopefully I will never be in that situation.  But for now, let us only hope that some changes come to the way patients are handled in hospitals.  Let us hope that they can be treated more as patients and not as potential organ donors.  Let us hope that we will never be put in a situation such as the one highlighted in the story and forced to decide about a loved one's life. 

More Teeth A Coming

So starting a few days ago, our son, despite his regularly happy demeanor, has been getting a little fussier.  Comparatively speaking, its nothing to go crawling into a corner and covering your ears with a pillow about, he has simply been moaning and groaning more.   On top of that, any activity he embarks on, including his precious creeping (no crawling yet) usually lasts only 15-20 minutes before he gets frustrated and starts his moaning and groaning again.  Despite his fussiness, he still doesn't scream and only rarely cries.  So all things considered, we are still really lucky.  But regardless, we were wondering up until Tuesday what was going on with him.  No fever, still active, still sleeping, still happy most of the time.  We know he already has three of his baby teeth in, 2 in the bottom front, and 1 in the top front.  To have that many teeth is quite remarkable to some parents, but babies can teeth anywhere from 2 months to 12 months or later, so we were not overly surprised.  Well, on Tuesday, I happened to be playing on the floor with our son when I got a good look at the top of his mouth while he was laughing.  To my utter surprise, there were three more teeth on the verge of breaking through at the same time.  All three teeth are on the top and would completely fill out his four front top teeth.  It seems the fussiness has been explained. 

I can't imagine what it must be like for him to have three teeth coming through his top gums all at once.  I know that I went through it at one point, but lets be honest, how many of us adults can actually remember the teething experience?  I for one can't and can only imagine the discomfort that he must be going through right now.  Yet a part of me is also in awe that he doesn't scream or cry over the pain.  He is only six and a half months old and I can probably count on both hands the amount of times he has actually had tears come out of his eyes.  He is one tough little cookie.  So enough about his fussiness and his six full baby teeth he will have very soon and on to other advances.  Well, as I mentioned above, he is not crawling yet.  He is gaining speed however in his creeping.  It is quite funny to watch when he really gets into it.  He doesn't creep with two arms, rather, he uses his right arm to lift his body up and shimmy himself forward, only using his toes to help with the pushing.  His left arm continually reaches for whatever object he is after.  When he moves forward on his right arm, he will go as far as his little body will let him on the one push, his arm completely disappearing beneath his body till he has to roll to the side in order to extract it.  In the midst of his roll to the side, his left arm never stops reaching and his eyes never leave the intended object.  If he can't quite reach the object after a push, he restarts the cycle until he can reach his destination. 

At this point, over almost all of his toys, plastic cups, and cardboard boxes, he loves to go after our pets the most.  His favorite, and only because she places herself in front of him quite often, is our cat.  Spice (her name) will plop herself down in between me and my son thinking that she will get some attention from me.  To her dismay, however, she instead gets a fist full of hair or her tail pulled by our son as soon as he reaches her.  I am partly guilty here because I will give Spice attention until our son can reach her and make a grab.  Spice doesn't quite mind the fist fulls of hair being grabbed, but when it comes to her tail, she is not a big fan of it.  Our dogs try to keep their distance most of the time, not allowing our son to really get a good grip on fur, skin, claw, or tail.  They will tolerate a little, and then get up and leave.  Occasionally, if I am petting one of the dogs, they will stay around a little longer and tolerate our son's exploration, but we never push the limits.  They will go up to him however and give him a good lick in the face, the hands or his feet.  Our son never minds, just closes his eyes for a second and then opens them when the licking is done.  When he gets a little older, I am sure that he will get along just fine with our large pups.  Needless to say, I am glad I got my day off with our son yesterday even though he napped for almost four hours.  I simply enjoy being with him, talking to him, and helping him explore the world around me. 

A Little More Empathy

So yesterday I talked about happiness and relationships and the correlation between the two.  Yet with all that discussion, it leaves some questions unanswered in my mind, at least in terms of establishing friendships, creating relationships, and deepening them.   So to be fair, I am not really going to touch on how to establish new friendships as that is a wider topic than I wish to tackle and one that, to me at least, is dependent on individuals, how they interact with others, and what their comfort zone is.  However, I will delve into deepening the relationships we already have and enhancing them.  While there are many different means by which people seek to deepen relationships either through activities, conversation, or whatever; there is one key factor that plays an integral role in any relationship.  That key factor is empathy.  Empathy, simply put, is our ability to place ourselves temporarily in someone elses shoes in order to try and understand their feelings and emotions.  Without empathy, there is a lack of understanding and in turn, a lack of substance to any relationship.  In any relationship, people seek to be understood by others and to have others relate to them in a way that makes them feel accepted and comforted.  Yet despite the necessity of empathy being a part of any relationship, how many of us take time to practice the art of empathizing with others?  How many of us actually take time while listening to someone's story to try and place ourselves in their shoes and understand things from their perspective.  I would posit that most of us could do a lot more in the way of bringing empathy into the relationships we have.

I for one will be the first to admit that this is an area that I need to work on.  While I usually try to place myself in other's shoes and see things from their perspective, I often times waver and slip back into my selfishness.  It is not always easy to drop our own feelings on a matter and seek to understand things from someone elses perspective.  After all, we all have an ego that seeks to dominate us and drive our actions and reactions.  There is a time and place for ego, however, and that place is not in a relationship, especially if one wants to deepen a relationship.  I fall prey to this quite often, letting my ego and my selfishness take hold in a conversation, driving me to not listen to another person, cut them short, or try and impose my perspective on their situation (which most times never works).  For me, it takes active effort to try and empathize with others, to let go of myself in essence, in order to understand someone more deeply.  I find that when I can actually empathize with others, the conversation takes on more meaning, my understanding deepens, and we seem to be drawn closer to one another.  It seems that for the most part, people just want to be understood by others, yet if no one is willing to empathize with them, they are left wanting.  Some people are better than others at empathizing, yet I think the majority of us could do with putting in a little more effort in this area. 

To empathize doesn't mean we can't offer our opinion on something, it simply means we offer our opinion based upon our understanding of someone elses situation from their perspective.  How many times have we offered our opinion to someone only to see a look on their face that says, "What the hell are you talking about?"  Maybe the reaction wasn't quite that drastic, but you get my point.  Our opinion on someone elses situation can only help them if it is rooted in a true understanding of their situation.  To reach that true understanding, we need empathy.  Regardless if we are talking about marriage or mere friendship, any relationship takes work if we want it to last, to take on more meaning, and to deepen.   If we can manage to work on our empathy in relationships, than we can improve the quality of them, and in turn bring more happiness into our lives.  If we can empathize with others, then they will be more apt to empathize with us and seek to understand us and our situation.  Relationships should be a life long endeavor, but too often it seems as if we treat them in a way that we assume they will remain with us when in reality we must work to keep a relationship alive.   We have all had friends go their separate ways.  How many of those friends departed because there was a lack of empathy, a lack of work that went into the relationship?  Not all relationships end because of a lack of empathy, but I guarantee that it is a factor a lot of the time.  So today, in any conversation we have with someone else, lets seek to employ a little more empathy and see if we can't understand someone else from their perspective. 

Happiness and Relationships

How do we become the happiest person we can possibly be?  Do we aspire to be successful in work or life?  To we seek to make as much money as possible thinking that it will buy us happiness?  Or do we delve in to activities thinking that the activity in and of itself will bring happiness to our life?  The answer would be none of these.  In the course of reading the "Brain Rules for Baby" book and also watching a documentary on men's relationships with one another called "Five Friends", I have heard a few times that it is our relationships, friendships, and the amount that we have that determine how happy we will be.  It has been proven that the more relationships we have with others, the happier we will be in the long run.  These aren't just business relationships, but rather friendships (including marriage) that form the basis for happiness in our lives.  As humans, we are social creatures and despite the fact that some of us feel we can go the course alone (which we could), in the end we would not be as happy as we would have if we had friendships along the way.  Some friends come and go, but if we keep on seeking to build new relationships with others, deepen the friendships we have, and practice the art of conversation, then in the end we will be happy.  I for one believe this.   I feel that the only way we can truly attain happiness is through the relationships we have with others.  We all need time alone to sort things through, but to live alone and without human connection is to deprive ourselves of happiness.

One of the facts that I found most interesting about happiness is the correlation, or lack there of, to money.  This fact came from the book "Brain Rules for Baby" yet is applicable to all aspects of our life, not just dealing with a young child.  In fact, the book brings up this point to show parents how their lives, and their happiness, directly influences their child and has great bearing upon how their child will turn out.  But I digress, I was talking about the money and happiness.  There was actually a study done on happiness, a scientific one at that, that came to show that individuals happiness rises with their income rates only to the mid five figures; that would be $50,000 a year.  Anything above that does nothing to increase happiness.  Lacking money obviously has a detrimental effect on happiness, but all in all, it does not take that much to ensure happiness in an individual, it is more about the relationships one fosters along the way that make the difference.  I personally found it fascinating that $50,000 a year in income is the "cap" if you will at which happiness peaks in association with money.  Throughout our lives, we always see people striving to make more money, to get the raise at work, to buy more things (and maybe in their minds happiness), and yet once you pass $50,000 a year in income, none of it matters.  Maybe if people took the time that they spent trying to make more money and invested it in human relationships, they would be happier.  Wait, its not maybe, that's what is needed.  It seems we are too often blinded by the dollar sign to see the people around us who are seeking a connection with us. 

Sometimes it seems that we retreat into our shell, or into our work, because relationships and friendships take effort to work on.  It goes beyond effort though, it requires us to lay bare a part of ourselves, to "trust" others with information about us.  That is not always the easiest thing to do, yet relationships require that we do it in order for that relationship to progress in a meaningful way.  It seems we have lost the ability to trust others, to form a deeper bond with them, to be confident enough in ourselves where we can move beyond the realm of mere "acquaintances" and form long lasting friendships.  Personally, I feel the lack of connection we are experiencing has a lot to do with technologies influence on our lives.  While we may feel connected through technology to others, feel that we have more friends because of technology, we are not really investing the necessary face time with others that is the only way capable of forming lasting relationships.  So what do we do to increase our happiness?  I say lets put down our phones, put away our ipods, and seek to re-establish that connection with others.  Lets focus on the friendships we have and on deepening them.  Lets also focus on creating new friendships and relationships with others.  There are many ways of creating new friends, but lets take the friendships offline and make them meaningful, not illusory, and maybe, just maybe, we will increase the happiness in our own lives. 

The Speedy Weekend

Every Friday when we get home from work, it seems that the weekend will hold plenty of time for us to get our tasks done, relax some, and actually enjoy the time off.  Come Sunday night, however, we look back and wonder where all the time disappeared to.  How come the weekend always seems to fly by faster than any other time during the week.  Yes, I know, it is the shortest part of the week, two measly days in which to get stuff done around the house, relax with our family, and enjoy ourselves.  Yet despite the fact that it is the shortest part of the week being only 2 days, it seems like we should be able to fit so much more into a weekend.  Perhaps for me it is the fact that I now have a 6.5 month old son who adds to the influx of activites that need to get done and takes priority over everything else.  Perhaps it is just the case that as you get older and time seems to move more quickly and the days begin to blend into one another that you realize how precious every second is and how much you would like to have more seconds to enjoy.  Or maybe we just need to cut down the work week to four days instead of five so that our weekend is three days instead of two.  Personally, I like the idea of a three day weekend and only a four day work week.  I would be totally willing to work longer on those four days in order to get an extra day of relaxation (not that it is total relaxation with all that I try to get done, but you get my point). 

So this weekend, as usual, I definitely didn't get as much done as I wanted to.  In fact, I didn't even get half of what I wanted to get done, done.  I can't complain too much, however, because I always have a tendency to set unrealistic expectations of what I can actually get done in a weekend.  I have grand plans always set by Friday evening of what I want to do, the projects I want to work on, the cleaning I need to do, the time I want to spend with my family.  Come Saturday, those plans are invariably twisted, skewed, and altered to adapt to current situations.  Our son takes priority now over everything else.  I take plenty of time to spend with him, putting on hold everything else to ensure that he gets to see me.  But it is what it is, everything else can wait.  This past Saturday in fact, I got almost nothing done on my to-do list.  The only major project that was completed was the cleaning of the garage to create a little extra room and make things more manageable.  My wife and I emptied everything out, swept, organized, and put everything back.  In between all of that was our son who we spent time with, and in the end, the garage was organized.  I didn't get the grass cut as I wanted to, or wax my concrete countertop, or work on the cabinets, or anything else.  All that stuff isn't going anywhere, though, and it will be there waiting for me next weekend.  A little bit at a time and in a few centuries it will all be done. 

But back to this three day weekend.  I go back this week to taking a day off to watch our son and spend time with him at home.  When my wife gets out of work as a teacher and can watch our son during the summer, I will probably take off Friday and in essence, create for myself a three day weekend with a four day work week.  Those other four days I realize I will have to work my butt off in order to get the necessary amount of work done, but I have no issue with that.  I only hope that I can continue to keep my four day work week, three day weekend to some extent, but I don't know if that will happen.  For now, I will simply keep on trucking, getting as much as possible done during the weekend and not sweating the fact that I am not getting it done as quickly as I want to.  Personally, I think America should adopt the afternoon siesta, but that will absolutely never happen.  For some reason, we here in America like to work long weeks and be "productive".  Well, I for one think siesta's are productive in the fact that they would allow us time during the day to relax, regroup, spend time with family if we wanted to, and enjoy life a little more.  Unfortunately, the siesta was born in a different culture and our culture here in the U.S. would not be able to adapt.  We can dream, however, and that is what I plan on doing.  For individuals who work for themselves, the siesta is possible, but not always realistic.  Ah well, let us simply enjoy the time we have, regret not that time flies too fast, and just live each day as it comes. 

Little Man's Companion

Does anyone find it odd that women, more than men, get asked if they want another child almost immediately after they have their first?  It doesn't stop there, it continues ad infinitum it seems until you actually do have a second child.  Don't get me wrong, I do get asked if I want another on occasion, but from the stories I get from my wife, it seems that she is asked almost 10 times as much as I am.   From our perspective, it seems that there is an overabundance of people who really enjoy the baby phase; that cute, innocent, non-speaking, non-moving, entity that we like to call "infants".  Please don't misunderstand me here.  I am not saying by any means that I would trade in any of the time that we have had with our son, nor would I wish for time to speed things along and have him talking and walking before he is ready to, we just aren't the sort of parents who would like to freeze our son where he is and preserve him until eternity so we could enjoy his "infant hood".   Building off of that, we definitely do not want to rush into having another baby just so we could have that "infant" around the house again.  We love our son with all we have, its just his infant phase is just that, a phase of his life that he will grow out of and move on from, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing changes the love that we have for him.  But moving on, I guess that the question still remains unanswered as to whether we are ready for another child or perhaps a more apt question would be, do we want another one period?

To be honest that question has been put on hold for now.  All we do know for certain is that we don't want another one right now or anytime within the next year for that matter.  Life is good right now and quite frankly, after hearing stories about other children, the difference in sleeping patterns, their demeanor; we will stick with our son for right now.  Lets consider some of the facts surrounding this.  Our son started sleeping through the night at 2 months old, unusual and rare yes, but wonderful.  He is a happy go lucky baby, fussing only when wet, tired, or frustrated.  I guess that there aren't too many factors that go into this consideration, but those are the bulk of them.  Part of us questions why we would want to jinx our luck and have another child, who might adopt the same pattern, but who on the other hand might not want to sleep through the night till 9 months and who could be more fussy than our current son is?  There is also the money factor that must get discussed.  But there are also benefits that we see to having another child.  There is the companionship that the two of them could have, the bond that could be formed as siblings, the help that they could offer each other as they grow older.   There are many pluses to the equation as well.  I guess the biggest part is that our son is only six months old, we are new parents, and life is going well right now.  If anything, the question will probably not be brought up in seriousness for another year at least. 

Going beyond the facts of the matter, my wife and I also have two different perspectives on this issue.  She was an only child and as such, sees how someone doesn't necessarily need another sibling in order to grow, mature, and make it in the world.  I had a younger brother, 7 years difference, but there was still a certain degree of companionship during our young years that I see as a benefit to having a sibling.  I think that if my brother and I were closer in age, we might have forged a tighter bond earlier on in life, but we have no control over those things.  So many things to consider, discuss, and move forward with, but for now, we will simply enjoy the little bundle of joy that we have.  Although he is growing and not nearly as little as he was six months ago, he is still our little bundle of joy.  Personally, whenever I spend even five minutes with him, there is no consideration whatsoever of having another child.  My focus is entirely on him and what he is doing.  Although now that I have said that I don't consider another child when I am with our son, I probably will now.  But such is life, a tumultuous roller coaster of decisions, considerations, discussions, and more decisions.  We never know if we make a right decision until after the fact and even then, we don't know half the time.  The time we have is meant simply to be enjoyed and let the future bring what it may.  I find it much more exciting that way anyway, letting things unfold without trying to exert too much influence over them.   Ah well, must move on now and start my tumultuous day. 

Missing My Day Off

If you have been reading my blog, you know by now that I have been taking at least one day off a week since my wife went back to work to watch our son at home.  It used to be two days a week for a while, but now with my wife's mother back in town, she will be helping watch our son and I will be cutting my days off to one.  This week, however, is an anomaly in that my wife has a vacation week off from work and is staying home with our son every day.  It isn't to say that I don't want to take a day off this week, its just that work has been a little crazy and with my wife home, I haven't taken a day off.  On top of that, I have been working a little bit later and have only gotten to see him in the mornings for an hour or so.  Needless to say, I kind of miss my day off.  Instead of witnessing first hand what our son is doing during the day, I must hear it second hand from my wife.  Not quite as exciting as watching it myself, but it is much better than not hearing it at all.  And from the reports I have been getting, he has been quite the active little man this week.  He is moving farther and farther on his own and he is starting to eat more solid foods although I have seen pictures and he still makes a little scrunchy face as if he doesn't quite know what to make of the solid foods yet. 

But lets start with the moving and the shaking.  It is seriously time to start baby proofing the house, especially are living room where our son spends most of his time on the floor.  Every day it seems we find something that needs to be moved to a higher shelf, cords that need to be bunched together and zip tied, and dust that needs to be vacuumed from previously hidden corners.  Our son is pretty much making it around the entire living room on his own now, on the verge of crawling, but not quite there yet.  Currently, he employs a solid mixture of rolling and creeping to make his way around the room and find the fascinating objects that were previously unattainable.  What strikes me most about the stories I hear is his fascination with everything but the toys he has.  Don't get me wrong, he will still spend a good deal of time sucking on his favorite stuffed toy, but put a plastic glass on the floor or a cardboard box and he is enthralled.  Lets not forget the bright led lights that pepper the electronics in our room or the gardening books that had to be moved because he wanted to pull them off the shelf.  His favorite gardening book was, you guessed it, wrapped in a green jacket and way to heavy for him to pick up and move.  If he did figure out a way of dragging that book off the shelf, though, it would have made quite the noise.  Seriously, what do babies need toys for when their interest seems to be drawn to everything else around the house and a cardboard tube from paper towel can entertain them as much as the five dollar toy from the store.  So it seems like it might actually take only a week for him to progress from creeping to crawling.  On top of that, he was on the floor rolling and creeping for an hour straight yesterday before going to bed.  For starters, he has never made it an hour on the floor before without getting frustrated and with the little bit of solid foods he is eating, his energy level seems to be up. 

So on to the foods.  He did fairly well with the bananas for three days before we switched him over to green beans.  He progressively ate more and more (still minuscule by our standards) and learns very quickly.  At one point my wife went to feed him a baby spoon of banana and he didn't open his mouth.  So to teach him, she mimicked the action herself, flying the spoon to her mouth and opening her mouth wide as it approached.  That was the only lesson he needed.  Right after her demonstration, he followed suit and opened his mouth as the spoon came flying in.  But back to the beans.  He actually seems to be enjoying the beans, as long as they are room temperature.  My wife tried them cold in the morning and it didn't go over as well as it did in the afternoon when they were room temperature.  It was hilarious to see his face covered in beans with a disturbed look on his face saying, "what is this stuff and why is it all over me?"  Priceless.  So our little man is growing up, expanding his non-verbal vocabulary (if that makes any sense), and is on the move and ready to go.  We also started baby sign language with him this week which is supposed to help babies in general communicate before they start talking.  Its all fairly simple stuff, but anything to help him communicate any frustrations he might have, dirty diapers, hunger, etc will go a long way with us.  So till next week, my second hand reports that I have been getting will have to suffice.  Ah well, what is a working man to do?

Complicated Taxes

Tax day here in the United States has come and gone and let me say, it is perhaps my least favorite day out of the year.  Every year, I say I am going to get my taxes done early, get everything figured out in January, and be all set before the rush in late March and April.  Well, once again, my procrastination kicked in and I waited till last Wednesday to go see our accountant.  I haven't personally done my own taxes since I started my business seven years ago.  Too much detail is involved, there is too much I don't know, and quite frankly, I don't want to screw anything up and have our wonderful version of Big Brother, the IRS, come hunting me down.  To make my life, and the life of my wife easier, we see an accountant which takes away a good chuck of stress.  The big issue for me is simply getting all the paperwork for my business in order.  I enjoy running my own business, but I hate paperwork, any kind of paperwork.  Receipts get piled in one area, bills in another, quotes and invoices in another.  Luckily I know where I put everything so come March (although I always have the best intentions of starting in January) I can just gather the piles together and start making my master list of revenue and expenses.  Then we rush off to see our accountant and have him put the appropriate numbers in the appropriate boxes and come up with either what we owe or what we will be refunded.  The last few years, there hasn't been a refund, but rather a bill that needed to be paid. 

This year, luckily, was different.  Normally, when your self employed, your supposed to make estimated payments towards your taxes so that when tax time comes, you don't end up owing an enormous sum of money.  We usually make about half the payments we are supposed to and this probably won't change.  For the first time in a while, after all was said and done this year with taxes, we ended up being eligible for a refund from our wonderful government and the hawks over at the IRS.  The only twos reason this happened was because my wife went on maternity leave and ended up making less than she normally does in a year and because we had a son, we get a tax credit for him as a dependant.  It wasn't an exponential amount we would have received back, but it was enough to make a difference on next years taxes.  So instead of actually getting money in our pockets, we decided to push it towards next year and start with a deduction before we even begin.  Our estimated payments this year as a result will be far lower than in previous years and we might actually pay them all.  So all in all, taxes are not that horribly complicated if you have an accountant do them for you, but come 2013, they will become increasingly complicated for business owners.  That is the year when our government and the IRS will be putting an added burden on business owners.  Starting that year, in an effort to fund Obamacare, every single business owner in the United States will have to distribute 1099's to every company they buy more than $600 worth of supplies/materials from. 

For me, this means that if I buy more than $600 dollars worth of supplies from Home Depot, I must issue them a 1099.  The same goes for the local hardware stores I shop at.  Essentially, instead of just tracking my receipts, I must now track them by business to see how much I buy from a certain business.  Now, if I track this well enough, what I could do is find enough local hardware stores and distribute my purchases among all of them, not spending more than $600 at any one store in a year.  That number might seem quite high, but for a contractor, $600 is not that much.  From last year alone, I probably would have had to issue at least four 1099's.  In my mind, it is all crap!  It is merely a case of our government passing on the burden of financing this new health care bill to all the businesses in the United States.  As if they didn't have it hard enough offering medical insurance to their employees.  And people wonder why I don't hire anyone.  It is just too damn expensive and I would rather keep more money in my pocket than in the government's pocket.  But enough about taxes, I have gotten my frustration out for this year and I am sure there will be more frustration next year.  But till then, my receipts will continue to migrate to their respective piles and I will maintain the best of intentions of staying on top of all the paperwork and doing it a little bit at a time.  (Ha!  If you believe that one, I have got a great story about elves and unicorns for you.)

Concrete Lesson Learned

Yesterday I was finally able to install the first section of concrete counter top in my kitchen.  There are two sections total in my kitchen and since I had never done a concrete counter top before, I figured I would start with the small section first, the easier, and then tackle the big one that includes a cutout for a sink.  Personally (and I don't know what made me think this), I thought making a concrete counter top was going to be much easier than it turned out to be.  I had read a book on how exactly to make the counter top, modified it here and there to suit my needs, and began.  From the outset, it turned out to be much harder than I anticipated.  It wasn't so much the actual work that was technically difficult, there were just a lot of little details that needed to be paid attention to in order for everything to work out smoothly.  To start with, you need to build an extra strong base on which to pour the counter top as concrete is a very heavy material.  That part is fairly easy, just a little time consuming.  Then comes the form.  This is where measuring eight times and cutting once becomes extremely valuable because if you screw up a measurement, you can't exactly trim an eight inch very easily off of a slab of concrete.  Once you get the measurements down, though, it moves along.  To do it properly, you use 3/4" melamine (particle board with a smooth laminate finish on two sides) screw it all together, and silicone caulk the inside edges.  Still sound fairly simple right?

Well, on to the rebar, which are pieces of steel embedded into the concrete to add strength and prevent cracking.  With the rebar, you use half inch steel around all the edges set about an inch in, and then you use a four inch grid to cover the rest.  You tie all this together with wire and suspend halfway through the form with wire that goes up and over the edges of the form.  (By the way, the counter top is two inches thick for ease of operation, any thinner and it would be difficult to get the rebar just right, any thicker and it would be really, really heavy.)  For our counter top, we put in some accent pieces of blue and green glass.  We glued it lightly to the bottom of the form (which will be the top of the counter) and once the rebar, glass, and form were set to go, we poured the concrete.  Since the first section was small and only required two bags of concrete, I decided to mix the concrete by hand instead of renting a mixer.  Not horrible, but definitely tiring.  Then the concrete goes into the form, gets leveled off, and then vibrated to help it all settle down properly.  Your supposed to use a concrete vibrator which gets inserted into the wet concrete, but I didn't feel like renting one so I used my vibrating sander on the exterior of the form and it worked out pretty well.  Once all that is done, you cover it will plastic and let it cure for at least four days, occasionally spritzing the concrete with water and then recovering with plastic.  Then comes the exciting and hard part, de-molding the counter top.  It only gets hard if you are attempting it by yourself, which I did.  Once it is out of the mold and flipped over, the polishing begins.  You use diamond grit pads, with water, and work your way up from either 50 or 100 grit to 400.  After four hundred grit has been used, you fill in all the air holes that were left from the pouring with slurry (I used grout as you would for tile), let it set and then start with 400 grit and work up to either 1500 or 3000.  Then you seal it to prevent staining, wax it to protect the sealer and make it shiny, and install it. 

What a process, I know, and it took about two and a half weeks to get it all done.  But despite all the hard work, I couldn't be more excited at the end result.  It really does come out looking as smooth as granite or marble, and the overall cost is much less in the end.  Supplies probably cost me around $200 including wood for the base, form, rebar, and concrete.  I'd say it was pretty good.  The finished counter top is 2" thick, 41" long, and 26" deep.  Not an enormously large counter top, but it weighs in at 180 lbs.  To see picture of the finished product (minus the wax, which is in the mail right now) go to my Facebook page and check it out.  (The page has public access so everyone should be able to get a glimpse of the counter top).  So in the end, I would only recommend someone tackling a concrete counter top if they have had some experience in construction.  Without even a little experience, I feel the counter top would be extremely hard for an average person to handle on their own.  But by all means, if you want to get a book, read up on it, and do it yourself, then I wish you the best.  For me, however, I now need to get started on the large section of our counter top which is about 10' long and will probably weigh in excess of 500 lbs.  The hard part with that section will be the knockout for the sink (rigid styrofoam insulation) and the overall weight of it all when it gets flipped over and consequently installed.  I will definitely need at least 4 or 5 friends to help me out with it.  Guess I better pick up the phone and make some calls.  In any case, I needed to talk about my counter top today because I am really excited at how it turned out.  Till tomorrow, get your hands dirty and enjoy the day!

The Creeping Has Begun

Well, about a month and a half after I was certain that our son would be crawling within the week, he has finally begun to creep his way forward across the floor.  He hasn't quite reached the crawling stage, but at this point, it can't be too far away.  The creeping began on Saturday, the day our son finally figured out how to coordinate his legs and arms in such a way that he can gain that forward momentum he has been seeking.  Its not crawling, mostly because he is not up on his hands and knees making consistent, coordinated movements between all four limbs to reach a desired destination.  Rather, in an attempt to reach an object in front of him, he stretches out one arm as far as possible, tucks the other underneath his chest, and pushes forward with his feet, gaining a few inches at a time.  If he has not gotten close enough to reach the desired object, he repeats the maneuver alternating his arms.  He creeps, reaches, creeps some more, reaches, until he gets to his toy or whatever it is that he wants.  It is amazing to watch him, the effort that he puts into what we would consider a simple action, and keep on trying till he reaches a point of frustration.  Just over the past two days he has increased the speed with which he is creeping and is raising his chest higher and higher off the ground as he does so.  The look of determination on his face is priceless.  I only hope that he maintains that determination and drive with whatever he does. 

It is sometimes a funny to watch him creep forward, or I should say, attempt to crawl.  At times, in the middle of one of his creeps, his butt will fly into the air, his legs continuing to push forward to the point where they completely straighten out (in yoga terms, this would be downward dog minus the straightened arms), and then falls to one side or the other for lack of balance.  I can't help but laugh sometimes at the startled look on his face that remains for only a few second before he realizes what he did, flips back onto his stomach, and again begins his attempt at forward movement.  Outside of his creeping and attempted crawling, we also had a grand experiment this weekend in which we attempted feeding him solid foods.  At this point, I am really not sure what he thinks about the food.  On Saturday we tried feeding him soft, mashed up avocado.  The first attempt we made simply made us laugh.  At first he looked all excited that we were going to put something in his mouth as that is where everything ends up right now.  Once the plastic spoon with a dash of avocado on it passed his lips, his face grew worried, then scrunched up almost in disgust.  He didn't spit it right out, I actually think he swallowed a little, but the two attempts we made immediately following the first merely increased his look of disgust and while the food made it past his lips and got swirled around in his mouth, it came back out in the form of drool.  That did it for the first attempt. 

Chalking it up to his mood, we figured we would try again in the afternoon.  His face didn't show as many signs of disgust as it did in the morning, but he was still quite uncertain as to what he was supposed to do with the food and I am quite sure he didn't know what to make of the taste.  Keep in mind that up until this point, the only real food to pass his lips had been breast milk.  Aside from that, it has just been a variety of toys, cardboard, tags, and whatnot that has received the official taste test from our son.  So after the second attempt with avocado, we decided to switch it up for Sunday figuring maybe a something different would please him more.  So we tried mushed up banana.  Well, needless to say, we only tried it once yesterday.  We think he ate a little smidgen of it, but that was it and after the first spoonful, he wasn't that excited and any banana exited as drool, just as the avocado had done.  So our first attempts at food, while not failing entirely, didn't really gain the excitement that we expected from our son.  But a little at a time, he will figure it out.  I guess he just needs to acquire a taste for solid foods and figure out what to do with them.  We will stick with the banana for now and see how that works out.  Another attempt today, at least one, maybe two and we will see where tomorrow leads us.  So that pretty much sums up the exciting baby news from this weekend.  Till tomorrow, enjoy the day and be well!

What Would You Do? (A Tragic Story)

If you are from Connecticut, chances are you heard about the horrific incident out of Salem involving a 6 year old boy and a wood chipper.  If you do not live in Connecticut and you haven't heard of the story, you are about to read about a heart wrenching tale that occurred earlier this week.  So enough set up and on to the grim details.  A father, who owns a tree removal company, was working with his 3 sons in his yard clearing debris and feeding branches through an industrial size wood chipper.  As he turned his back for a few seconds, his 6 year old son attempted to feed a large branch into the wood chipper.  The branch was grabbed and sucked into the wood chipper.  Unfortunately, the young boy couldn't disentangle himself from the branch and was dragged in with it.  The young boy died that day.  Being a parent now, I keep on thinking about what that father must be going through at this point and what my reaction would be if I was in his shoes.  For any parent out there, some emotion must come out just hearing about this.  Whether it be anger at the father for letting his son help (which I think is over reaching personally) or incredible sadness at the loss of the son (my reaction), this horrific event brings some emotion out.  Accidents happen all the time when parents turn their backs for just a second, but I think this tops the list at being the worst accident that could happen for a parent. 

As I keep on trying to put myself in the father's shoes, my reactions keep on changing.  At first, after my wife saw the story on the news and asked me what I would do, I said I would jump in the wood chipper after him, thus ending my life as well.  I don't know about other parents, but at first I couldn't envision how I would be able to live with myself after such an incident occurred.  I imagined the grief I would feel, the questions I would have of myself, the despair.  I started to waver, however, between jumping into the wood chipper after him and not doing so.  I began to see my first reaction as being incredibly selfish.  What about my wife after all?  Why should she have to go through losing a son and a husband.  She would feel just as much grief as I would in that situation and would be even worse off if she lost her husband as well.  So as I eventually got past the suicidal aspect of my reaction to the event, I still have trouble envisioning how I would function if such an event occurred to me and my family.  I have now come to the point where I know I would eventually recover somewhat, but it would take a very long time for me to heal and to move past the event itself, the loss, anger, and guilt.  Luckily, I don't have to think too much about it because it didn't happen to me or my family, but I have a son and I can see him wanting to help with dangerous tasks around the yard or in my work shop. 

It boils down to a parent growing eyes in the back of their head, or at least attempting to do so.  Even if a parent is a vigilant as possible, it doesn't guarantee that an accident won't happen, or that a parent won't miss something at some point.  There have been too many instances where a parent turns their head for a split second and something happens to their child.  I just hope that it never happens to me or my family because it would be very hard to cope with.  I keep coming back to the fact that a parent must remain as vigilant as possible.  I guess that is my fixation at this point, trying to work myself up to the point where watching our son every second is second nature to me.  Yet even then, I know there will be times where I will have to turn my head for a second and trust that he will be okay.  Luckily, I don't own a tree removal service and don't have an enormous wood chipper around the yard.  But I do have a slew of other dangerous tools in my garage from circular saws, band saws, table saws, nail guns, power washers, etc, etc.  There is a time and place to let children help with projects, it just must be done with a very watchful eye.  I only hope that I can be as watchful as I need to be when the time comes and prevent something like this from happening to my family.  So as the week ends, I keep my thoughts and prayers with the family from Salem, the tragedy of losing a son, and hope that they can pull together and work through this terrible incident. 

Pre-Birth Intelligence

I began reading a fascinating book this week about babies and what is proven to work best in terms of raising them from pre-birth to age 5.  The fascinating part about the book is that it is based upon years of research by a molecular biologist and other scientists who have been studying what happens in a babies brain.  The book itself is called "Brain Rules for Baby" by Robert Medina.  As I have just started the book, I only just the passed the section on pregnancy and just started into the life of a newborn.  So far, the author has debunked a series of myths that relate to an infants time in the mother's womb and has related what is proven to work to bring to term a healthy, happy, baby.  So what are the myth's debunked?  Essentially, anything that parents try to do to increase a baby's intelligence while it is still in the womb, such as playing Mozart, reading to it, or any other activity that is "supposed" to raise a baby's IQ, won't do anything.  What a baby really wants in the womb is to be left alone.  During that time, as we know, a baby is growing at an astounding rate, especially its brain, and any sort of intervention or outside stimulus will not aid in assisting it.  At certain points, the baby is forming 8000 new neurological connections a second.  Astounding if you take time to think about it.  Further, it is quite fascinating how the brain develops in association with the different senses.  The baby's brain forms separately from the senses; the eyes, ears, and nose all forming on their own and connecting during the second half of pregnancy.  Even by the end of pregnancy, however, the baby's brain is not fully developed in order to ensure that it can pass safely through the birth canal.  Throughout the first year of life and beyond, the baby's brain is still forming all the neurological connections it needs.

There are only four things that are proven to assist the baby's development inside the womb and these are: 1) weight, 2) nutrition, 3) stress, and 4) exercise.  These are all fairly simple things that most women already know, but they are the only proven things to help.  The first is obviously the mother's weight, which should remain at a healthy level.  But accompanying that is the baby's weight.  It has been shown that a baby's IQ increases with its body weight up to 8 pounds and over 9 pounds it is actually shown to decrease.  The second is to obviously maintain a healthy diet.  The only two supplements that have been proven to aid in helping a baby's brain develop properly are B-folic acid and Omega 3 fatty acids.  Aside from that, it needs exactly what the mother needs to survive, nothing crazy.  The third should also be fairly obvious and that is to keep stresses to a minimum.  The more stress a mother experiences during pregnancy, the more it will affect the baby both during pregnancy and later in life.  The fourth is exercise.  Exercise must be kept moderate and anything excessive will actually harm the baby.  There is so much more detail in the book that I just simply couldn't get into here because I don't have the time, and the author does a much better job at explaining all of this than I do.  So after reading all of this, you must be wondering, why am I writing about it? 

Well, watching my wife go through 9 months of pregnancy and not reading this until now, I found it interesting to look back and compare what my wife did with what the book says should happen.  It turns out my wife did a really good job of following these four criteria without even knowing it.  We had done some research, but nothing as extensive as this book provides.  We did read a little to our son, but it wasn't in an effort to boost his IQ, but more in an attempt to have him recognize our voices before he came out of the womb.  I also just found it amazing to read about how exactly a baby's brain develops, starting as soon as four weeks after conception.  Reading this book continues to prove how a fetus really is a human even though some people continue to think that this is not the case.  To hear how all the different body parts develop in accordance with the brain and how all the neurological connections take so long to develop really drives home the importance of a healthy pregnancy.  As I read more in the book, I will pass along the information that I get in a condensed version so that any young mother's out there can hopefully use it with their own children.  Even for the older, experienced mother's out there, it might be interesting to see what is being proven now compared to when you were pregnant.  In any case, to read more in detail, check out the book. 

Who's Your Nanny?

A few weeks ago I was browsing through the New York Times online and came across an interesting article that gives a small peek into a world that the majority of the world will never see; the world of the high priced nanny.  Being a relatively new father, I had to read the article and see what exactly some of the nanny's to New York's elite children are commanding in terms of salary.  As it turns out, I will probably never make as much as they do in a year, which in my mind speaks to the absurdity of it all.  But I guess if you have the money to spend on essentially not raising your children, then have at it, although I would much rather take charge of my child's upbringing than hand it over to someone completely unrelated to my family.  So what exactly does a high priced nanny make?  As it turns out, the one interviewed for the article makes $180,000 a year, plus a Christmas bonus, plus a $3000/month apartment.  All this to watch someone elses children on an almost continuous basis.  Personally, I can't quite wrap my mind around the price, thinking that a couple is paying someone else that much money to essentially raise their children.  On the flip side, it almost makes me want to quit my day job and start looking for a job as a nanny.  That, however, wouldn't quite work as I have a six month old son who, along with my wife, are raising ourselves.  This begs the question as to why some people spend as much money as they do to have someone else raise their children. 

I am quite sure that I will never understand what goes through the minds of these multi-millionaires who hire nannys at these extravagant rates.  We all know parenting is a full time job, but to pay someone else to do the job for you makes me wonder why some of these people had children in the first place.  If you don't want to raise a child, yet you still want children, then why have them.  It almost seems to me as if these people have children just to continue their family dynasty and to show off at social functions.  If your not going to take the time to raise your own children and instead pay someone else to do the job for you, can you even call them your children?  Technically, I guess you could, but only in the most strict sense of the word, that being you gave birth to them and they live in your house.  Beyond that, they are to me, the nanny's children.  After all, she is the one who spends the most time with them, takes care of them, and makes sure they are okay.  Although if you look at this whole paradigm in a larger sense, the parents probably don't know any other way of dealing with children as they were probably raised by nanny's as well or at least had a nanny growing up.  This simply speaks to the vast cultural difference between those with excessive amounts of money and everyone else.  This isn't to say that everyone with millions of dollars pays for nannys to raise their children, but it is a different world where nannys are much more prevalent.  To the majority of the population, nannys could be the equivalent of grandparents or relatives, people who help to raise a child.   Even then, grandparents and relatives rarely go as far as nannys do. 

Obviously I have strong feelings about this as I am a parent myself and for starters wouldn't be able to afford a nanny even if I wanted to.  But beyond that, I couldn't imagine having someone there  to take care of my child 24/7.  Granted, some nannys do more than others.  Some are only there to help when the parents are at work, essentially permanent baby sitters, while others take care of the children even when the parents are home.  The difference is vast but it all boils down to what your idea of parenting is.  Some view parenting as a job that gets hired out to the best fit nanny, others view it as a part of life that is best dealt with by the parent.  I personally view it as largely the parents job and I would think that the majority of people view it the same way.  Even if some people don't view it as their job, many people don't have the money to spend on a nanny to raise their children for them.  Whatever the case, I will dedicate myself to raising our child the best I can for two reasons; the most important being that I want to, the second being that not in my wildest dreams could I afford or want to afford a nanny. 

Where Did Daddy Go?

Last week held an interesting event for our little man that I didn't end up finding out about until Friday afternoon.  It was Wednesday afternoon and I had a dentist appointment I had to go to around 5.   As that time is nearing our son's bedtime, he isn't always in the best of moods, especially if you bring him out somewhere.  So instead of attempting to bring him to the dentist's office with me, I asked my mom to come up and watch him for a little while so I could get my teeth cleaned in peace.  With our son being her first grandson, she obviously had no problem whatsoever.  When she got up to our house, little man was just starting to stir from one of his daily naps.  So soon after my mom got there, I went and got him, changed his diaper, and got him ready to be fed.  No issues to speak of before I left.   However, that all changed after I left the house.  My mom had just started feeding him when I was walking out the door to go the dentist and he seemed perfectly fine, happy and hungry.  About five minutes after I left, so the story goes, he started looking around for me.  My mother said that he started looking towards the kitchen where he had seen me last, trying to find where I was.  It didn't take him long to realize that I wasn't there and he started freaking out and screaming at the top of his lungs.  My mom had to stop feeding him and walk him around for 5-10 minutes till he calmed down and was able to eat again.  After he calmed down and started eating again, there were no more issues.  It was simply the fact that I had left, he couldn't find me, and wanted to know where I was. 

Obviously most of this is speculation as to why he freaked out, but if you look at the series of events, his actions and reactions, it seems pretty obvious that it was my leaving the house that set off this traumatic event.  My mother was astonished because she thought that this type of reaction didn't happen till much later.  Other more experienced parents have said the same thing, this isn't supposed to happen at six months old.  Yet, nevertheless, it happened.  My wife even looked it up in the "What to Expect" book and the only mention of it is in the 12th month, and even there, it receives only minor attention.  So what does this mean?  I don't know.   Obviously I would like to think that our son is super smart, but he is only 6 months and my thoughts are probably just a projection of what I would like him to become.  Realistically, it is more probable that he is merely making mental connections sooner than expected.  At his age, it is supposed to be "out of sight, out of mind", but perhaps he has gotten to the point of "out of sight, let me freak out".  It might have had something to do with the fact that I had watched him all day and after his nap, he saw me briefly and then he didn't.  To us, it is all theorizing.  We have no way of knowing what is going on in that little brain of his and at this point, he doesn't have the verbal acuity to tell us.  It is fascinating how the brain works and it would be wonderful to understand a babies brain even more, what is going on in there, the connections that are being made, and what he is thinking about. 

Regardless, it was fascinating to hear about this little development in our little man.  He doesn't have an issue when I drop him off at day care, probably because he has been going there for almost three months now so he is used to that routine and the people he sees there.  It seems that he has gotten used to being dropped off in the morning knowing that he will be picked up later in the day.  The afternoon, however, is a different issue as last Wednesday was an anomaly.  In a way, I am almost glad that he is getting this out of the way early.  I can only hope that since he is reacting the way he is now to me leaving we will have fewer issues to deal with when dropping him off at school or anything else later on.  I know I am probably getting my hopes up and this may be something that comes back to haunt us at a later date and time, but you never know.  In any case, this week my mother has off from work and will be watching our son today, Thursday and Friday.  I am sure that he will have no problems, especially since she will be coming over in the morning to watch him and not in the afternoon when he is more emotionally vulnerable and unstable.  We shall see how the rest of this week goes, but as usual, we will take it one day at a time and I am sure that he will do what he does best, surprise us with something new at every turn. 

Christian Politicians?

When we look at politicians in the United States and hear their claim of being Christians, do we believe them?  Do any politicians that we currently have actually act as Christians?  Many politicians in fact claim that they belong to some form of Christianity, not all by any means, but a good number of them.  (Before I go any further, let me state that the ideas I am presenting today are not all mine, but they intrigued me when I heard them and felt I had to share and build off of them.)  I don't believe that many of the "supposed" Christian politicians that we have actually act out their beliefs.  In order to understand this, we must first look at what it means to be a Christian, to claim to hold certain beliefs.  In a nutshell, to be a Christian is to act out of love towards others, to not disparage or in any way degrade others or their image, to not act violently either verbally, emotionally, or physically in any way.   After reading that and now looking at our current politicians in office who claim to be Christians, does what they say hold true?  I would have to argue that in many cases, it does not.  Many politicians these days are solely concerned with their own well being, not that of others, and as such act in ways that belie their claims of being Christian.  Some may claim to hold their constituents concerns at the forefront of their agenda, but do they really, or are they just trumpeting that as a means to get re-elected and win favor amongst others?  To me, if a politician is going to claim to be a Christian of some sort, than they should either act as a Christian or leave their religious beliefs at home. 

Considering all that has gone on this year from budgetary issues to the upcoming presidential election, we have much to look at in regards to politicians and their behaviour.  Lets look first at the whole budget debacle that took place beginning last summer and to a certain extent, continues to this day.  In the midst of the whole mess, Christian politicians were not only acting childish, but they were acting in ways that sought to degrade the image of their fellow politicians who happened to be from a different political party, either Democrat or Republican.  Their bickering and name calling went so far as to make them look as they had regressed back to kindergarten and begged the question as to whether they needed a teacher to educate them on proper manners.  Not only were they acting childish, but they were acting as if they had no religious beliefs.  They didn't even attempt to be polite or to act out of love towards one another.  Despite their actions, they continued to make the claim that in fact, some of them were Christian.  Really?  I didn't see it then and I don't see it now.  Lets move on to a bigger show, the bid for the nomination to run for president in the Republican party.  When was the last time anyone saw one of the presidential hopefuls act with a Christian attitude towards another from their own Republican party.  I personally can't think of one.  Just for example, lets look at Mitt Romney, a "Christian".  Given the option, he would be the first to throw any of his opponents under the bus to ensure that he wins the opportunity to run for president.  From mud slinging to name calling to outright lying, he will do whatever it takes to ensure that he gets to run against Obama for the presidency.  A "Christian"?  Not by a long shot judging by his words and actions. 

So why even bring this whole issue up of politicians acting like Christians?  Well, if you are going to claim to hold certain beliefs, I believe that you should at least make the attempt to stick to those beliefs and live up to them.  Is it easy to do?  Not by any means, especially when someone across the aisle or your opponent starts berating you, degrading you, and by any means necessary stripping away your personal character.  When someone acts out against you, either verbally, emotionally, or physically, it is much easier to retaliate than it is to take it and still act out of love in return.  In fact, it could be the hardest thing we ever attempt to do.  But if we are to make the claim of being "Christian", of holding certain beliefs true to our hearts, than we should do everything in our power to act as "Christians".   I find it hard myself, especially in a society that holds violence and retaliation as sacrosanct, to always act as a "Christian".  My first reaction is usually to make the other person pay, to hold them accountable by whatever means, and put myself first.  But as a Christian, that is not what we are called to do.  If our politicians who claim to be "Christians" actually acted as such, they might actually attract more involvement in the political process.  Part of the reason that I find I can't watch any debates or listen to politicians is because of the way they act towards others.  I despise the name calling, the degradation, the mud slinging.  Most of all, I despise the fact that they don't even make the attempt to act out of love towards one another.  Their whole concern is with getting elected or re-elected, and their beliefs do not matter at all.  I could go on and on about this, how it pertains to many different areas, but I won't.  Lets simply start, if you are a Christian, to act out of love towards one another, to attempt to sympathize with others, to hold ourselves to a higher standard.  Then maybe, others will change around us.  Its a hope, maybe a small one, but a hope nonetheless. 

Shadows and Feeding

To set the record straight, no I don't feed our son in dark shadows.  However, he has started to learn how to hold his own bottle and in regards to shadows, he is fascinated by them and tries to grab them when they are on the floor.  Both of these things started yesterday as I watched him throughout the day.  His fascination with shadows may have been present previously, but it wasn't until yesterday when we were laying on the floor with the early morning sun beaming through a window that I really discovered this about him.  As he was on his belly, working on figuring out how to crawl, I saw him grabbing at the rug, hitting it and scratching it.  Curious about what he was grabbing at, I held out my fingers so they cast a shadow in front of him and walked my finger shadows back and forth.  Sure enough, he followed the shadow on the floor back and forth reaching to and fro and attempting to grab the illusory fingers.  He has yet to figure out that it is my fingers in the air that are causing the shadows, although in an attempt to show him the connection, as I was walking my fingers back and forth, I would fly them in to his hand along with the shadow.  Still no connection though.  All in due time.  I personally find it fascinating that shadows have such an appeal to him, but then again, it is something new that he has had relatively little exposure to in such a direct fashion, and we all now how babies love anything new around them.  He even tried to taste the shadows once, but found the rug instead and kept on tasting that.

After he was done on the floor, it was time for his morning brunch.  As is usually the case, I lay him in his boppy on the couch next to me and held the bottle for him.  Yesterday he seemed to be overly fidgety when I was feeding him however and it was taking quite a while to get him to eat from his bottle.  It wasn't that he was fussy, he was just trying to move constantly.  He would swipe at the bottle, knocking it out of his mouth.  He would push off the back of the couch with his legs all while twisting back and forth and again, force the bottle from his mouth.  After about 20 minutes of this and only half a bottle gone, I decided to start teaching him how to hold his own bottle.  So as he placed his hands on the bottle as he occasionally does, I took my hand away.  The bottle stayed there for a few seconds till he moved one of his hands and it fell.  I lifted the bottle slightly off of his chest so he could grab it with his hands.  I didn't, however, lift the bottle up so he could get any milk, I let him figure that part out himself.  And he did.  It wasn't immediate, but it got to the point where if the bottle simply fell on his chest, he would grab it himself and lift it up to his lips.  Occasionally, his hands would slip, sending the bottle soaring onto the floor or the couch around him, but that mostly happened near the end as he was slipping into what we call his "milk coma".  Obviously when that happened, I picked up the bottle for him and handed it back.  Regardless, I didn't know if he would figure out how to hold the bottle correctly and feed himself, but he did.  He is definitely not to the point yet where I can just have him feed himself entirely, but it is a lot easier now that he is in partly in charge of getting the milk from the bottle into his mouth. 

So those were the two big occurrences yesterday, just after I said that he wasn't making any enormous strides.  I guess it just goes to show that everything happens according to his schedule and no one else's.  The end of the day was fantastic.  After my wife got home from work, we set our little man on the floor for some more tummy time.  It seems at this point, he has mostly lost his fascination with rolling and is intent on figuring out how to crawl.  That isn't to say that he doesn't roll anymore, it is just that the majority of his effort is spent on forward movement, which it seemed like he almost got yesterday.  But anyway, back to him on the floor.  While he was down there, we would each take turns tickling him and I must say, he had us both cracking up as well.  His laugh is just so precious and infectious that you can't help but laugh along with him.  I couldn't even begin to describe it, you would just have to hear it yourself.  But I will try a little description.  It starts almost as a grunt, morphing into a little giggle which occasionally turns high pitched, and then on occasion he will get out a little hiccup laugh or two.  Like I said, the description doesn't do it justice, but I had to try.  Overall, though, yesterday was a wonderful day.  He was in good spirits for the most part, took his 2.5 hours worth of naps, and whatever we were doing, he was fascinated by it.  Next week I will only be watching him for one day instead of two and it will probably be that way from here on out.  I will miss the two days, but will cherish the one that I have alone with my little man. 

New Adventure for Little Man

It seems like our son has taken a break from making any bold new advances over the past few weeks.  He is slowly introducing new consonants into his vocabulary, but they are haphazard and I don't think he really knows yet how he gets those sounds out.  There are times during his soliloquies when he gets this look of deep concentration, his brow furrowed, his mouth wide open uttering whatever comes to mind, and normally while holding a block in his hand.  Other times, when he is laid out on the floor getting his tummy time, he will press his face right into the carpet and start talking and singing.  It is quite funny to see, especially when he stops, looks up, and smiles at you as if he wasn't doing anything.  He is definitely one precious, unique, baby and I wouldn't have it any other way.  In terms of his crawling, he hasn't quite gotten there yet.  I know I have been saying for weeks now that it seems like he is on the verge and it is only a few weeks away, but I obviously can't tell when exactly he will start.  It does seem like he is getting closer and closer, it is just in really small increments.  He tries his best with his legs, moving them forward as best he can, he just can't figure out the whole balancing while moving the arms forwards part.  He gets himself up on all fours, arms either bent at the elbow or completely straightened and struggles to figure out how to coordinate all four limbs.  Sometimes he will leave one arm bent, the other straightened, and attempt to scootch himself forward with his legs, however he usually ends up flipping himself onto his back when he does this.  In any case, crawling is not on his list of achievements as of yet, but maybe another week, two, or four will see him moving like a madman. 

So I mentioned in the title that he has a new adventure and I wasn't leading anyone on, I just wanted to drag you in a little before I revealed it.   This adventure that I speak of comes in the way of contraption that you place an infant in.   The official name is the "musical motion activity jumper".  Sounds complicated, but it really is quite simple.  It partly suspends the infant in a chair (allowing their feet to touch the ground), is suspended by bungee cords so it bounces to and fro, and the seat spins 360 degrees with different objects or attached toys for the infant to play with.  So it is probably not the best description, but its the best I got without boring you with excessive details.  Well, our son absolutely loves it.  I placed him in it for the first time yesterday and for a minute he didn't know what to do with himself and all the colorful contraptions surrounding him.  That didn't last long as he started banging on some things, attempting to put others in his mouth, and learning how to spin himself around in the swivel seat.  By far his favorite object on the jumper is a sunflower that is attached to the seat.  It is the only object that is flexible enough to allow him to put it in his mouth and as such he focuses his time there.  He will rotate on occasion and try his hand at something else, but he inevitably returns to the sunflower right now.  I can already see the benefit of this jumper outside the activities attached to it.  The fact that he can partially stand looks like it will aid him in gaining his balance.  It is sometimes funny to watch him as he stands and then tries to start running.  The whole jumper bounces to and fro and he gets this wide mouthed look on his face which soon after erupts into a smile. 

Outside this new adventure, he still remains his normal, happy, cheerful self.  He still loves people, and loves to study anything new that is going on.  I mentioned a while back how he stares at people's lips when they are talking, well, it seems like he is doing that even more in an attempt to figure out how to talk.  One of his favorite songs, sung to him while changing his diaper, is the alphabet song.  He could be getting fussy because of a soaking wet diaper but as soon as I start the alphabet song, he stops his fussing and smiles away, almost giggling.  He is such an amazing little baby that I don't know what I would do without him now.  Just last week, my son and I went on a little road trip to check out a job for me.  I had worked at the place before so I knew the people really well.  When I got there with our son, the lady wondered if she could hold him, and of course I said yes.  Our son didn't mind either, although at first he was skeptical, looked at me to see if it was OK, and when he saw me smiling and telling him it was fine, he smiled and started grabbing for the lady's face as he grabs for any face within reach.  Truly amazing.  Even when we go to church, he smiles at everyone around us and never minds when they ask to hold him, he just grabs for their faces.  So as I begin my second day this week watching our son, I look forward to every aspect of the day and whatever it may bring.  We will continue our adventure in the jumper and probably go for a walk somewhere.  Till tomorrow, enjoy the "abundant sunshine" as the weather channel says. 

The Challenger Deep

About a week and a half ago, a trip was made to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that hadn't been made for 52 years.  There are a number of remarkable things about this trip in my mind, the first being that it was not spear headed by some government agency but rather by a well known movie director James Cameron.  He did receive some sponsorship from the likes of National Geographic and others in the scientific community, but for the most part, he used his own money for the trip.  Even more remarkable is that he didn't use any conventional submarine for this endeavor, rather, he designed and built his own in an attempt to make the dive and subsequent rise from the bottom quicker.  The major change in the submarine's design?  It was designed and built like a vertical torpedo rather than the horizontal design we most typically think of when we think of submarines.   This just goes to show that if there is a will, there is a way.  For a person known for their movies to design and build a ground breaking submarine capable of withstanding the pressure almost seven miles beneath the ocean surface is incredible.  Even better is that his design actually works, despite a few small problems.   So on his trip down to the Challenger Deep, visited only once before in history, what exactly did he find?  Not much it turns out despite a few small creatures no bigger than an inch long. 

No one knew what would be found seven miles down in the ocean.  The last trip conducted 52 years ago by the U.S. Navy didn't go nearly as well as this latest one did.  On the previous trip, the approach to the bottom stirred up enormous amounts of sediment rendering the landscape outside the submarine practically invisible.   On top of that, the time spent at the bottom was only 20 minutes compared with the 3 hours that James Cameron spent there.   But finding nothing down there doesn't mean some larger creatures don't exist at those depths.  As Cameron put it, he only saw a small portion of an area that is 50 times larger than the Grand Canyon.  They had also planned on setting some bait to hopefully lure some bigger fish at those depths, but due to hydraulic failures, had to postpone that till next time.   (More about his trip here.)  So what does all this mean; this trip down to the bottom of the Pacific, this new groundbreaking submarine.  To me, it means that as time goes on and governments need to focus more on the needs of the people than exploratory missions, we will need to rely more heavily on personally financed endeavors such as this one to perpetually explore the unexplored.   This is the first time where the whole idea of a submarine was upended and reconfigured, all by a person with an idea and a mission.  Perhaps its time for the scientific community to begin relying more heavily on personally financed missions than ones financed by governments or government agencies. 

If James Cameron can figure out a way of designing and building a submarine that can withstand the pressures of the Challenger Deep, than why can't we find someone who can design and build an aircraft capable of sustained outer orbital flight, or space flight.  The oceans have received a vital boost in terms of exploration by James Cameron.  Now its time we gave space a boost.  I read some comments online that people view James Cameron's endeavors as a money making scheme, one driven by profits and future movies down the road.  Well, that may be the case, but if it also opens up the Challenger Deep to continued and regular exploration, than it is worth it.  If one man's personal mission can benefit both himself and the scientific community, than what's the problem.  Even if it benefited only himself and all we got to see was visions of that deep, dark world, than so be it.  But that's not the case.  As James Cameron did for the ocean's, we now need someone to create a re-usable spacecraft capable that can bring us back to space on a regular basis.  With the space shuttle being retired and no new developments on the government side in terms of space exploration, we need to turn to the private sector to get what we need.  But in any case, most of us will never travel to the bottom of the ocean or to vast expanses of space, but at least we can view other's endeavors and their explorations on the big screen. 

The Art of Sleeping In

So you got me, there really isn't an art to sleeping in, it just happens sometimes.  Sometimes, you don't even have to be up till the wee hours of the morning to sleep in, you just wake up late.  Well, that's what I did this morning, slept in, and woke up about an hour after I normally do.  My alarm clock is normally set for 4 A.M., which really means its 3:50 because I have my clock set 10 minutes fast.   The thing is, I remember waking up 5 minutes before my alarm clock was due to start beeping, and I also remember turning off the alarm clock for some reason figuring that I would just get out of bed in a few minutes.  That didn't happen however.  Instead, I got shaken awake an hour later at 4:45 with my wife saying, "you slept late".  Well, that did it for my morning routine.  No half hour walk with the dogs, no leisurely coffee making, no head start on my morning blog.  Some days are like that however, and I could get upset, but you know what, I got an extra hour of sleep and feel pretty good in that respect.  So there will be no self loathing, no depressing cast for what is supposed to be a beautiful day, simply a shorter blog this morning and a little extra coffee to kick me into high gear as quick as possible.  The thing is, I still have to leave at the same time to drop my son off at day care.  My wife still has to leave at the same time to get to work.  The only difference this morning is that I slept in.  Lucky for me, my wife woke up when she did and get us truckin, because if she didn't, I have no clue when I would have woken up. 

What exactly goes through one's mind when they sleep late.   I did wake up and I did turn off my alarm clock, but normally I jump right out of bed.   Obviously there was some part of my brain that said, "Sleep, Alex, Sleep."  OK, maybe my brain didn't say that and maybe I still am a little tired and starting to ramble, but hey, I can blame it on the tiredness today.  So with that in mind and sleeping late luckily not a regular occurrence, I am signing off for today.  I nice, little, short, to the point, quick and easy blog post for your Tuesday morning.  Wow, I need more coffee.  So till tomorrow, enjoy your day and don't sleep in (unless you really need to, then I give you permission.)  Oh, and a quick correction per my wife; I didn't wake up before my alarm clock, it actually did go off, so I guess I just shut it off and passed back out.   In addition, the clock I was looking at was wrong, so I only slept in 45 minutes instead of an hour.  I stand corrected (although I am sitting right now, so how does that work?)