Dalty's First "Solid" Food

(Originally posted Monday, December 25, 2006 by Tim )

So we’re bad parents. We were supposed to wait until six months before offering Dalton any “solid” food and we broke down tonight at the five and one half month mark. Dalty has been intently watching us eat for over a month now with occasional grabs for plates of food and serving utensils. It’s been clear that he has really wanted to try what we have been eating.

Cat mixed up some mashed banana with breast milk tonight and the entire family crowded around for the show. He was all over it. He doesn’t yet know how to get food off the spoon, but he was reaching for it each time and helping Cat guide it into his mouth.

This post’s picture was taken by either his aunt Laura or his aunt Jessica. I’m not sure which, but I’m sure they will let me know in the morning. It doesn’t quite do justice to the level of enthusiasm that Dalton had for the experience.

We’ve been holding off because the current thinking (at least in the books we read) is that you want to wait on solid food until the babies stomach lining has sufficiently matured such that it won’t let large protein fragments into the blood stream. The hypothesis here is that large protein fragments in the blood could elicit an immune response and lead to future allergies. At six months, the stomach lining of an infant has developed such that this is not considered to be a great risk. We’re only two weeks short on six months (less than 10%) and he’s really quite a physically advanced baby.

Ok, I still feel guilty…

Dalton's First Christmas Service

(Originally posted on Sunday, December 24, 2006 by Tim)

Today was Dalton?s first Christmas Eve. We are celebrating the occasion in Florida with Cathy?s family. The usual tradition is for them to descend on Cathy?s grandparent?s house in great numbers from a variety of locations. Dinner is consumed and then there everyone moves to the family room for the opening of gifts.

The extended family on Cat?s side is quite large. Cat?s mother has six siblings, each of whom has a family with at least two children each. In addition, there?s a half generation gap between Cathy and most of her cousins. The average cousin age is about 12 years old. This makes for a rather cozy room full of rowdy kids shouting, tearing open presents, and generally increasing the entropy of the universe by several orders of magnitude.

My general defense at this event is to fall asleep. I usually find a comfy spot at the back of the room. When the volume turns up, I tilt my head back and I?m out in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, I?m a father this year and thus I have a responsibility to stay awake and watch my son experience the event. Well, that and someone took my comfy chair.

Dalton is the first child of his generation. As you might expect, he is the subject of much attention from his great aunts and uncles as well as his first cousins once removed. He received a great many gifts today and participated in some of the unwrapping. Since I was awake anyway, I took the opportunity to snap a few photographs. Today?s photo is a ?representative example?.

After the holiday bonanza, we returned to Cathy?s parents house to open more gifts. Once again, Dalton was a recipient of many gifts. The biggest single category for the day was children?s books. A number of the books were of the ?touch and feel? variety. You may be familiar with these books. They have a picture of a bunny and part of it has some fur attached that bears no small resemblance to astroturf. I got a kick out explaining to Cat?s cousins how these books were crafted. ?Look a bunny!? , I?d exclaim while the page was open to a picture of a rabbit. I?d then point at the textured fur on the rabbit and say, ?and they made it from real bunnies.? I was almost the only one to find this funny the first time I did it and certainly the only one who found it funny the fifth time. Go figure.

Mom reading to Dalton from a book made with kitties in the picture above.

Next, we went to one of the Christmas Eve services at Cat?s parent?s church. While neither Cat nor I are religious, it was quite nice from a number of perspectives.

First, Dalton has now been in two different churches and he hasn?t burst into flames on either occasion. We find this comforting.

Second, tonight?s church was the one in which our wedding was held (neither of us burst into flame on that occasion either). There is some amount of symmetry in the fact that Dalton?s first Christmas service would be spent in the church we were married.

There is also the singing. I have developed a much greater appreciation for singing since Dalton was born. Usually when I?m at a church service, I either mouth the words or sing very softly. I?ve grown to enjoy singing more and it was fun to being doing so in a group this evening. I saved the program as there were a couple of songs that I?d like to sing for Dalton in the future. I had thought that Dalton would enjoy the caroling, but it turned out to be a bit much for him at the late hour. It ?knocked him off the boobie? (disturbed his nursing), he protested, and we were forced to retreat to the ?dome of silence in the back of the church. From there on out, things went pretty well. There were lots of toys in the ?dome of silence? and a big mirror. Dalton really likes mirrors and it is always nice to find one that I?m not afraid he?s going to knock off the wall.

Awesome ginger cookies

(Originally posted on Friday, December 22, 2006 by Tim)

Carol's delicious ginger cookies:

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 c sugar
• 1/4 c dark molasses
• 1 egg
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 t cloves
• 1/2 t ground ginger
• 1 t cinnamon
• 2 t baking soda
• 1/2 t salt
• 3.5 oz crystallized ginger chips, minced

Combine butter, sugar, molasses, egg, beat well. Sift dry ingredients together. Add to wet mixture. Mix well. Add ginger chips. Chill one hour. Form 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar, place on a baked greased cookie sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake 8-10 minutes at 375. Makes 3 dozen cookies.

Stealth posted by Cathy.

Or maybe a cook...

(Originally posted on Thursday, December 21, 2006 by Tim)

Here's some more career aptitude testing.

Holiday Travel

(Originally posted on Wednesday, December 20, 2006 by Tim)

Today?s picture is from our travels to Florida to celebrate Christmas. We were waiting to board the plane in Roanoke Airport and I was observing where the other babies were in terms of development. There was a veritable herd of 5 month olds at the gate, all doing different things. Some of them were walking, some were talking, some reciting Shakespeare, and I think I saw one integrating with a set of crayons. Dalton watched the other babies for a while and then decided to upstage them by putting his foot in his mouth.

I?ve been obsessing a little bit over Dalton?s developmental milestones. To get a better idea where he?s headed, we gave him a career aptitude test. As you can see from the picture, he is apparently well suited to be a hairdresser.

Generation Plant

(Originally posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 by Tim)

Scandal! Two posts in a row without a picture of Dalton. To put you at ease, Dalton is doing well and we do still take pictures of him. This post is even about Dalton-- sort of. Well, maybe this post is more about me, but he is still in it.

My sister in law's husband Larry was telling me about a friend of his who has an interesting tradition in her family. The family has a bamboo tree that is passed down from generation to generation. By passed down, I don?t mean that someone hands the plant off. Each child gets a clipping from the bamboo that they grow and then pass on clippings to their children.

If you know me or you?ve read many of my posts, you know that I enjoy growing plants. When Larry told me about this tradition, I thought it was a really great idea. I thought I would pick out a suitable plant and start this tradition with Dalton. I started thinking about what kind of plant would be best for this process. It would need to be something easy to care for and also a plant that is interesting. Interesting is important. While I?m told they are good in salads, passing dandelions down from generation to generation lacks something. Besides, all dandelions are to be killed on sight in our household.

As fate would have it, I didn?t have to make a decision on the plant at all. While I was talking to my Mom, she mentioned that she had saved some cuttings from her fathers Christmas Cactus. Even better, he had grown those plants from cuttings from his mother. Mom has now given me a cactus (pictured above) grown her cuttings so that is four generations.

I tried to find the official term for plants passed down generation to generation and I haven?t been successful. I?m probably not using the correct search terms. I?ve never been very good at finding things on the internet (at least compared to my peers). Hence, I?ve decided to call the cactus our ?generation plant?.

Fish Tycoon - a really dumb review

(Originally posted on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 by Cathy)

I've been playing Fish Tycoon lately. The basic premise is that you've got an aquarium simulator and can breed the various fish to "discover" 400 fish species, including 7 magic fish. So far, I have discovered 66 fish species, including one of the magic ones. (I deserve no credit for the magic one, since it hatched from a starter egg.)

I was poking around looking for a discussion/FAQ of fish tycoon breeding, when I found this USA Today review. According to the reviewer, Jinny Gudmundsen, kids can learn about both genetics and fish breeding from this game.

Um, yeah, right.

Now, I'm no expert on fish genetics, but there's something pretty um... fishy here.

It's a minor quibble, but all Fish Tycoon fish are apparently simultaneous hermaphrodites. (Meaning they're both male and female at the same time.) Now, that's not totally crazy for fish, although sequential hermaphrodites are more common. (Meaning, the fish starts out male and switches later, or vice versa.) Anyway, as it works in Fish Tycoon, you can impregnate any fish with any other fish - fish gender is apparently unimportant. I guess I don't blame the game designers too much for making all of the fish simultaneous hermaphrodites, although I'm really not sure how I'd explain that to the kids the reviewer recommends this game for.

My larger complaint is that the genetics are totally botched. Each fish has two characteristics: the fin, and the body, with 20-ish choices for each. Ok, so far so good, two is simple, but that's enough. Here's where it gets weird. Fish Tycoon fish are apparently all homozygous, even where that's impossible. If you breed two different fish together, all of the offspring are identical to each other (and often radically different from either parent). That's ok if you suppose the parents were homozygous. (Example from humans: someone with two blue eye genes has kids with someone with two brown eye genes - all their kids have brown eyes, since all the kids get one blue and one brown gene, and brown's dominant.) BUT, if you take the identical-looking offspring of those different parents (which really -must- be heterozygous) and you breed THEM to each other, you get offspring that look exactly like their parents. That's just wrong. (Going back to the eye example, some of those humans' grandkids will have blue eyes and some will have brown.) There's no way I can pervert Mendelian genetics or even non-Mendelian genetics to make that one work, unless you get into some really bizarre (and mostly speculative) weirdness about killer genes.

While I'm picking on genetics, these nominal 400 different "species" of fish are all able to cross-breed, with fertile offspring. (Assuming the offspring survive. Realistically enough, some offspring don't survive.) The offspring of crosses between two fish with different bodies and fins are very different in appearance from either parent, with really no traits from either. That's pretty extreme, although it does make it easier to tell one set of pixels from another. But where things go wrong (again) is here. If fish species A and fish species B mate to produce fish species C, quite often fish species C and fish species A can mate to produce fish species B, and B and C produce A. I can't figure that one out.

So what do we have? A genetic system that doesn't resemble real genetics much at all, or if it does, only resembles the weirder bits of real genetics. This is not a game to teach kids genetics.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go check on my fish.

(this is Cathy posting - oops!)