As expected, we had some pretty enormous change in the state of the offspring this month. They’ve doubled in number!! Our son, Ian, was born as healthy and robust as I’ve ever seen a newborn. He doesn’t seem too pleased, however, to be outside, and very much prefers to be pressed up against his mother as he is accustomed. The little bugger has an absolutely voracious appetite, often draining both his mother’s breasts and still wanting more, which we supplement with formula. (more…)
Somewhere around her second trimester, my wife calculated that if she could hold out until her due date of April 25th, then her maternity leave would butt right up against a five day weekend in August, created by a national holiday and a local holiday and a puente. We had a minor scare a fortnight early, but she made it…right up to midnight on April 25th, when her labor began. She let me sleep an hour from 12:30 to 1:30 before waking me and telling me to go downstairs and clean up some dishes and crumbs from dinner the night before to make the house tidy for our guest who we were about to call. (more…)
As I write this, I am a week or two away from the birth of my second child. Until about a week ago, I wasn’t really nervous or excited, but then we started sorting through the baby clothes and preparing the newborn stroller attachments, and I started to get pretty excited. Yesterday I pulled the crib down from the attic and somehow managed to remember where all the screws and joints go to put it back together. It’s really starting to sink in now. (more…)
Looking back, there haven’t been that many new developments this month. Nora did turn four years old, which was important. Her writing has improved to the point where she can write her name every time without problems. My parents have been visiting for a week now and the forced use of English is good for Nora, although it certainly doesn’t seem to be causing her any extra stress or difficulty. She’s off from school now for eleven days of Spring Break. (more…)
I don’t think I’ll ever buy a red car again, at least not until I’m a multimillionaire with a six-car garage. My first car was a red Honda Civic, which I loved dearly and can still see and smell if I close my eyes. Our current car is a red Opel Astra, which is very similar to my Civic. We bought it eight years ago when we moved to Spain. Apparently the problem with red cars is that their paint fades much more quickly than other colored cars. Presumably it has to do with reflecting the longest wavelength (red), which has the least amount of energy, and absorbing all the high energy sunlight. For the past few years, our car has been more orange than red. (more…)
Nora has always had a bit of anxiety associated with bedtime. When she was sleeping in her crib and could speak enough to request it, she demanded that I hold her hand, through the crib bars, as she fell asleep. Trying to escape from someone’s grasp and sneak out of the pitch black room as they slowly lose consciousness is an interesting game. I would’ve preferred to do more parental negotiating in this area, my wife’s schedule means that she has to get up very early in the morning, so I often had to do whatever kept her quiet. I did, however, manage over the course of months to only promise to sit down outside her door as she fell asleep, allowing for smoother getaways. (more…)
The biggest offspring event this month was Kings Day, the day the traditional Three Wise Men break into the homes of Spanish children and leave presents. This Christmas was the first one where Nora really got into the spirit of anticipation and consumerist lust. The item she most wanted was a maletín de médico, a doctor’s bag. Even after multiple interrogation sessions, I’ve still been unable to find out where she got that idea from. Luckily I was able to find one in the local toy store. (more…)
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m rather fascinated with the psychology behind decision-making. Both Dan Ariely and Jonah Lehrer are leading experts in the field, at least experts in writing best-selling popular psychology books about it. Ariely has recently moved into the study of lying cheating, and Lehrer moved into the practice of lying and cheating, getting caught for plagiarizing, if you can call it that, his own previous work and falsifying quotes from Bob Dylan to help support his conclusions. (more…)
We’ve reached a very rebellious stage lately. There are some days where it feels like every single thing we tell Nora to do, she says, “I don’t want to!” Depending on how much time or patience we have available at the moment she needs to, say, wash her hands, I vary from giving a lecture about germ theory to the “sometimes we have to do things that was don’t want to do” to the parental cop-out of “it doesn’t matter whether you want to or not” to actually physically grabbing her by the arm and dragging her into the bathroom to wash her hands. I really hate doing the last two, but sometimes there’s just no time available for negotiations…and sometimes it’s the ten thousandth time she’s refused a perfectly reasonable request that day. (more…)
George Catlin painted ominous, swirling clouds of black smoke that loom out of the distance and drive the Indians before them. The artist was an eyewitness to such terrifying events, and described the fire’s “thunder rumbling as it goes.” But he also wrote that prairie fires made for “some of the most beautiful scenes that are to be witnessed in this country, and also some of the most sublime.”
As expected, we had some pretty enormous change in the state of the offspring this month. They’ve doubled in number!! Our son, Ian, was born as healthy and robust as I’ve ever seen a newborn. He doesn’t seem too pleased, however, to be outside, and very much prefers to be pressed up against his mother as he is accustomed. The little bugger has an absolutely voracious appetite, often draining both his mother’s breasts and still wanting more, which we supplement with formula.
The biggest offspring event this month was Kings Day, the day the traditional Three Wise Men break into the homes of Spanish children and leave presents. This Christmas was the first one where Nora really got into the spirit of anticipation and consumerist lust. The item she most wanted was a maletín de médico, a doctor’s bag. Even after multiple interrogation sessions, I’ve still been unable to find out where she got that idea from. Luckily I was able to find one in the local toy store.
