Lift Up Your Hearts!

June 28, 6:02 p.m. 10 lb. 3 oz., 22.5" long, 15" head, 15" chest.

This is the quick post. The birth story is coming soon. (Really! it's actually all written on paper, just needs to be typed.) Sorry for the delay, we've had Internet problems, but Jon has it all fixed now.

(The above is from Heather and Jon's blog. Stay tuned for more. There will be pictures, too!)

(Picture added later, as the link below no longer works.)

Many, many thanks to all who have been praying! Mother and baby are radiant and doing well. More details after Jon posts to their blog; I don't want to scoop the story. :)

Jon showed me this Speed Bump comic (by Dave Coverly), and it's too good not to pass on.

The title says it all. We are now past everyone's guess but Heather's, but still only four days past D-Date, and Jonathan was five. You might say it's not worth posting if there's no news, but some of us like to keep in touch even when there's little to say. :)

We went to a wonderful Thai restaurant the other day, and Jonathan asked for chopsticks. They gave him the ones with training wheels—fastened at the top so all he had to do was pinch them together—and he did very well. That's okay if he's not going to have daily opportunities to use chopsticks, but probably not the best way for him to learn. I'm sure he learned to use a regular glass so competently at such a young age because he never had a "sippy cup," which is a convenience for parents but teaches bad habits.

There's something delightful in hearing a two year old say, "I want some guacamole."

Porter is here. We have a van. All systems are go. Just waiting for the star of the show to make his/her grand entrance.

Sometimes Jonathan will be in a silly mood and talk in nonsense words. Other than that, I've learned that if what he says doesn't make sense to me, it's not because there's no sense to it. The only example I can think of right now (though there have been many) was when, out of the blue, he asked Heather, "Where do the covers go?" We were riding in the car, and could put no context to such a question, until I remembered that earlier in the day (or it may have been the day before) I had changed his diaper while Heather was asleep. It was a particularly messy one, and he needed not only a new diaper, but also a new diaper cover and new shorts. All these go in separate places in the laundry room; the diaper in the diaper pail, the shorts in the plastic basket...but what about the diaper cover? I asked Jonathan, and he gave me an answer I didn't think was right (though it turned out it would have been the correct answer a few months ago). I put the cover in the diaper pail (which was wrong, but there's a limit to how long I'll stand around holding a dirty diaper cover) and promptly forgot about the issue. But not Jonathan. He was obviously dissatisfied with the solution and continued to think about it until he had a chance to ask the proper authority.

Jonathan has his own laptop, a touch-pad device Jon brought home from work. He knows how to plug in the power cord, and is pretty good at starting and using Microsoft Paint, his favorite program. (This is not "child's computer," so Paint is probably the most interesting program on it for him.) He doesn't always get the timing of the double-click right, and sometimes has trouble with a selection because he's leaning another part of his hand on the screen while pointing with his finger, but in general he handles it capably. It's amusing to see several of us sprawled on the living room couches, working away at our laptops, and Jonathan just as busy beside us with his own.

Tomorrow Janet will be with APA and I am so excited for all of them! No news on the baby front, except that Heather is really tired today and is now napping, having chosen that over lunch, so it can't be much longer. Porter's here now, so that accomplishes all but one of the things she was hoping would happen first—the one remaining is the arrival of a minivan, which some friends are kindly lending us as the Labor-Mobile, assuming it gets back from the shop on time.

I've occasionally wondered what we might be doing to ourselves by prolonging daylight with the use of artificial lights. A study by the U. S. National Cancer Institute and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences presents evidence that the use of artificial light during the hours of darkness is a signficant risk factor in the development and progression of cancer.

Although the study specifically targeted breast cancer, it's hard to believe other cancers are not similarly affected. Other studies suggest that the problem may be that the hormone melatonin, which slows the growth of cancers and boosts the immune system, is produced by the body only in darkness.

Apparently what matters most is light received through the eyes, rather than that falling on the rest of the body, as breast cancer afflicts blind women at half the rate of those who can see. I would like to see more details of that statistic, specifically how the cancer rate varies among different causes of blindness. When the fault is in the brain, is the protective effect the same as when the problem is directly with the eyes?

Similarly, I'd like to know what variations there are among people who live in different lattitudes, those who have about the same hours of daylight throughout the year, and those whose light and dark patterns vary widely with the seasons. Assuming there are enough people without artificial light to study, that is.

Although other studies indicate the problem is with light itself, the effect of artificial vs. natural light is not clear. One article suggested that lighting manufacturers should develop more natural lighting, but if the problem is light stopping melatonin production, that won't help.

I wonder what this says to those of us who stare at computer screens much of the time? And what about the common practice of putting night lights in children's rooms?

The article linked above made the following suggestions for mitigating the problem:

I notice they don't suggest reordering our lives along more natural lines, probably because for most folks such a change would be close to impossible. It's worth thinking about what is possible, however, because of studies indicating that night shift workers are significantly more likely to develop breast cancer, as are women who stay up late two or three times a week. (The article, unfortunately, did not define what "staying up late" means.) It would be irresponsible to conclude that what is true of breast cancer is true of other cancers, but even more irresponsible, risky, and foolish to assume that it isn't.

It's been a while since I've posted a Frazz comic here (I always worry about the line between fair use and copyright violation), but it's one of the best comic strips ever, and deserves all the publicity it can get. Though set in a public school, it often captures what homeschooing is all about, and today's strip made me shout in acclamation:

We gave Jonathan a copy of the Three Billy Goats Gruff story, and if the words aren't exactly as I remember my father reading them to me ([sung] "Who's that tripping on my bridge? Trip, trap, trip, trap on my bridge? [spoken] Oh, it's YOU, little Billy Goat Gruff. I'm going to EAT YOU UP!"), it's still a fun story to read. Jonathan asks to hear it a lot, and has some of the lines memorized already. After he'd only heard it twice, however, he didn't quite remember the title, so he asked if Grandma would please read him "Two Horses Woof."

To my utter amazement, Jonathan knows his left from his right, not just occasionally but consistently.

He can put on his own sandals, which have Velcro fasteners, though if he undoes the toe strap as well as the ankle strap when he takes them off, he usually needs help redoing the lower one, which is quite tight, especially if he puts his foot too far forward.

When he is either not in a mood to ask for help, or else doesn't see someone to ask, he can be very patient and persistent. As he was working hard to put on his shoes one day, I overheard him encouraging himself with, "I'm getting there, I'm getting there!"

Heather has a gingerbread house cake mold that belonged to my mother, and putting it together is a non-trivial exercise. The other day Jonathan spent about 20 minutes working with it, until he succeeded.

I once read that a study conducted at a preschool revealed a high percentage of the girls' utterances to be recognizable as language, whereas what came out of the boys' mouths was mostly sound effects. Jonathan is a clear exception to that trend. He is verbal to the point of being a chatterbox. Like his Aunt Janet, he embellishes his play with long and detailed narration.

That said, the past couple of days have brought an annoying trend: Suddenly his precociously clear and logical speech has been replaced by deliberate baby talk: words shortened and/or made "cute," vowel sounds altered, pitch raised to a near whine. I know it's normal, especially with a new baby coming. I remember Janet going through that stage, and once when I enjoined her to "talk like a real person," she responded indignantly, "I NOT a real person, I a BABY!" But I do wonder where it came from, as he was never spoken to in baby talk himself.

A recent New York Times article on the effort to promote breastfeeding includes this interesting line:

Nursing may even produce a euphoric feeling

So if you can't convince them with the overwhelming evidence of breastfeeding's benefits for the baby, try suggesting it as a new way to get high!

In honor of my father, who knew to display an iris on this occasion.

I know hurricane season began June 1, but really, we're not supposed to have to think about this till August, at least! Yet here is Tropical Storm Alberto, with the potential to become the earliest hurrcane in 40 years to hit the United States. Oh, well, my Brother the Insurance Specialist did warn me that Florida has had an unusually easy 40 years. Guess he can say, "I told you so."

On the plus side, the long-delayed rainy season may finally be upon us. My garden should be happy, if Alberto doesn't beat it into the ground.

I'm too busy playing with Jonathan to write much about him, but here are a few delightful Jonathan-isms:

I'll friz it to you and you friz it to me. If there's a word for what you're doing when you throw a Frisbee back and forth, it can't be any better than Jonathan's.

There's an emery board in there. He was looking in my travel kit, and he was right; I just didn't expect "emery board" to be in a 2.5 year old's vocabulary.

The baby's head is pressing on my bladder; I need to go to the bathroom again. His baby brother or sister is due in less than two weeks, so I guess he's heard this phrase a few times....

Oh, you DO have nipples! He took a nap with Grandma, and I had to explain to him that, unlike Mommy, I couldn't provide him with any milk. Later, he was with me when I was changing into my pajamas, and that's when he came out with this statement, an expression of amazement and perplexity on his face. Boy did that make me feel old: all the right equipment but totally useless.

While Mommy was cooking, Jonathan and I made up the Word/Horse game. We spread some of his word cards around on the floor, I get on my hands and knees and he climbs on my back. Then he directs his horse, pointing to a word and telling me to go there: Go to "Mommy," now go to "Aunt Janet," now to "loves." He made the game more interesting by asking me to make new cards for "tickle" and "fall off"; you can imagine what happens when the horse and rider arrive at those cards! He also has great fun with the difference between the cards and what they represented. For example, if I trot up to the Mommy card and say, "Hi, Mommy!" he laughs and says in a "how can you be so silly" voice, "That's not the REAL Mommy, that's the WORD Mommy!"

We went to the Orlando Science Center last weekend. Because they had three new movies we hadn't seen, we didn't have much time for the exhibits, but that's okay since we know them all pretty well. However, they do have a new traveling exhibit called Invention at Play, at which we spent all the rest of our time, and which is one of the best new exhibits I've seen in a long time, at any science musuem.

What makes it so good? Content, content, content! That's what's missing in so many exhibits these days.

My absolute favorite science museum was always the old Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. When I was in college, I worked for two summers at their research labs, which were located across the street, and nearly every lunch hour I took advantage of the tunnel between the buildings and the fact that my ID badge let me into the museum for free. That was heaven for someone who never had enough time to explore when we actually paid money to visit! You can't see much in half-hour bites (lunch "hour" was never an hour) but over a summer of days the time adds up.

While I was there, the museum opened a large addition, full of new exhibits, and I was so excited! And then so disappointed. All that space, and so little content. The old part of the museum had been focused on education, with information presented in an interesting and multi-dimensional form: hands-on activities (puzzles illustrating mathematical concepts), interactive exhibits (buttons to push), physical involvement (a large locomotive to ride, a model of the heart to walk through—my perennial favorite as a child), and detailed descriptions and explanations to read. One could enjoy it on many levels, at many ages, and there always seemed to be more to learn.

The new section, however, seemed to care more about entertainment than education. This was primarily evident in the striking reduction in the number of words associated with each exhibit. It was as if they wanted people to walk by, take in the flashy display, push a button, and move on. In the old museum I could often explore one display for 15 minutes; not so the new.

In the years since my Summers of Fun I have visited science museums in several other cities, and alas have found them to be modelled on the new (now many years old, of course) Franklin Institute rather than the old. Oh, I've certainly enjoyed them! But the low content density discourages frequent revisits, and I often feel I've been more entertained than educated, which makes me feel I've been cheated.

The Invention at Play exhibit, while not quite up to my old Franklin Institute standards, has a significantly better content/fluff ratio than usual. In addition to all there is to see and do, there is a lot to read, which is why we were able to spend so much time enjoying the displays. Definitely an exhibit for all ages to enjoy!

(Did you know that kevlar, used to make bullet-resistant vests, is also used in many other products, including hockey sticks, heat-resistant gloves, and canoes? The exhibit includes a full-sized, kevlar-based canoe that weighs only 36 pounds.)

Oh, and about the movies. Once again, my complaint is lack of content:

• StarQuest Take a look at some of astronomy's most common questions. Where did the planets come from? What is a black hole? How do you find a constellation? How will the sun die? Plus much more. Sounds good, but the question most seriously considered by the movie was the whereabouts of an escaped hamster. The lame subplot was nothing but an annoying distraction. Maybe they answered all those good questions in the latter part of the movie, but by then I was sound asleep.


• Aliens of the Deep Did you ever see the TV show, 48 Hours? Where they take an hour to cover 10 minutes' worth of material? Aliens of the Deep has the same problem. Lots of shots of deep-diving vehicles maneuvering underwater, and interviews with people telling us much they love their jobs, but almost no explanation of what they actually learned from the explorations.


• Greece: Secrets of the Past This one was great! Lovely pictures, great history, lots of content. The only one of the three films worth watching.