November 2008 Archives

Caleb had his 15 month checkup today and, despite his current cold, is a very healthy little boy. We were able to look in his mouth and he has his 4 upper and 4 lower teeth fully grown in (that he's had for awhile) and is currently sprouting 2 bottom teeth on each side and one on his upper left. That's 5 teeth coming in at once! The doctor said it's rare that they get that many in at once. Poor little guy! His gums are all swollen, but since the teeth have all broken through, Caleb has enjoyed grinding his teeth while walking around the house. Such a pleasant sound!

And get this, since his 12 month checkup he's gained less than a pound, but he's grown a little over 2.5 inches! So, we have a tall, skinny kid here.

Here are the 12 month & current 15 month stats for comparison.

Last Checkup (12 month):
Weight: 20 pounds, 5.5 ounces (15th percentile)
Length: 28.7 inches (16th percentile)
Head Circumference: 18 inches (30th percentile)

This Checkup (15 month):
Weight: 21 pounds, 2.2 oz. (10 percentile)
Length: 31.25 inches (61 percentile)
Head Circumference: 18.31 inches (33 percentile)

Or should I say, "Literature for the children of geeks?"

Recently, I was looking over Caleb's Wish List with Josh and asked him his opinions on books or other Christmas gifts that would be good for Caleb at this point in his life. He couldn't really think of anything so I asked, "Well, what are the children of geeks reading these days?"

Initially, nothing came to mind. Then, he said his buddy gosnat had suggested the book Ping, a book about a duck crossing a river. And it's geeky because it's about pinging.

That being said, we laughed heartily at one of the customer reviews of the book left by John E. Francisco. This was our favorite part (which explains the book and is also hilarious):

Using deft allegory, the authors have provided an insightful and intuitive explanation of one of Unix's most venerable networking utilities. Even more stunning is that they were clearly working with a very early beta of the program, as their book first appeared in 1933, years (decades!) before the operating system and network infrastructure were finalized.

The book describes networking in terms even a child could understand, choosing to anthropomorphize the underlying packet structure. The ping packet is described as a duck, who, with other packets (more ducks), spends a certain period of time on the host machine (the wise-eyed boat). At the same time each day (I suspect this is scheduled under cron), the little packets (ducks) exit the host (boat) by way of a bridge (a bridge). From the bridge, the packets travel onto the internet (here embodied by the Yangtze River).

The title character -- er, packet, is called Ping. Ping meanders around the river before being received by another host (another boat). He spends a brief time on the other boat, but eventually returns to his original host machine (the wise-eyed boat) somewhat the worse for wear.

If you need a good, high-level overview of the ping utility, this is the book. I can't recommend it for most managers, as the technical aspects may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts too daunting.

Moving on, we felt sad that the great, vast, and powerful geek community had no children's books that we could think of besides this one (which, by the way, was published in 1933. Seriously. If that's not total hardcore old school 1337, I don't know what is).

I continued by googling "books for geek children," and the search engine immediately asked me, "Did you mean: books for greek children"? We also found this to be hilarious. And sad. It was both hilarious and sad.

We did find a few notable things. The first being the Geek Parenting site, which listed 10 Superhero Comic Books your Kids should be Reading. Most of these were Marvel comics (Fantastic Four, Hulk, Spider Man, etc.). Some could say that comic books are more on the "nerd" side of the line than the "geek" side, and I know there are lots of people who straddle the line quite gracefully, but I'm not here to hold the nerd vs. geek debate. (Note the funny conversation between daughter & father on the Geek Parenting site -- Daughter: "Daddy, what's a multiverse?" Dad: "It's a plot device for lazy writers." LOLZ.)

Back to my conversation with Josh. We recognized that many geeks are totally into comic books and that they are a fantastic genre. But, in this case we were instead looking for books that taught about geek topics of interest like net neutrality, digital privacy, digital rights management, intellectual property rights in the digital age, topics considered by the Electronic Frontier Foundation... you get the idea.

(Sidenote: We then stumbled upon a link to the still-funny Children's Books that Didn't Make It. We came up with a few of our own and enjoyed the general hilarity of it all. But that is a huge digression from the topic at hand.)

In the end, our search was mostly fruitless and disappointing. With so many great and interesting topics swirling around the geek community these days, there has got to be something that our children could enjoy right along with us. The wheels are turning. I'm not promising anything, but the wheels are turning. So far there is a boy and a bird....

Well, today marks our transition from disposable diapers back to cloth. We initially started with a mix of disposable & cloth, but decided to go to all disposable because of the whole move across the country, live with my parents, search for a house, buy a house, move again thing. Now that we're nice and settled, I figured I'd switch back.

I'm using cloth diapers with the Bummis covers. We have both the Super Brites and the Super Whisper Wraps. They worked great for us before and I'm hoping they'll work great again this time.

I will be using my front-load high-efficiency washer (which has a special setting just for diapers!) to wash them myself instead of doing a diaper service (I don't even think they'd do that in the boonies where I live!). I think it should go pretty smoothly, but we'll see!

Before the change back to cloth, Caleb had started notifying me when he needed a new diaper, usually by going into his room and getting a clean diaper out of the cabinet. I think this communication will make it easier on him to use cloth since he can tell me when he's wet.

Josh's parents have often spoken of Josh's childhood in terms of "Houdweebie" stories. They are basically odd things that Josh would do to escape situations and pretty much just be the weird kid that he was.

Here is a recording (from Josh and Kevin's college radio show Mission Control) of Josh's mom sharing some Houdweebie stories about Josh:

Well, I think those wonderful genes have been passed down to Caleb.

First, Caleb has escaped the church nursery (out the first gate only) twice. TWICE. How many other babies have I known that have escaped even once? None. I haven't even seen another child consider it. But, Caleb has learned to sit very very quietly near the gate (while feigning interest in a toy) and pay close attention to adult movement. When he sees an adult reach for the gate, he quickly slips in step behind them. Luckily, the second gate is not as easy to get out of, and he has just cried and banged on it, which alerts people that he escaped (again) so they can put him back in the nursery.

I have since had people in the nursery, upon finding that I was Caleb's mom, say, "Oh, he's the escape artist." Indeed. He's our Houdweebie.

On a similar note, although not a story of escape, we have found that Caleb has also developed excellent slight of hand skills. In the nursery at our church, babies are labeled on the back so we know who they are and if they have any special needs. So, every baby has a name tag, and some babies have special instructions (usually "diaper rash," "spits up," etc.). Recently, while I was working in the nursery while Caleb was in there, another volunteer pointed to an unidentified child and said, "Who is that baby?" It was at this point in time that we realized that not just that one, but FIVE babies did not have nametags on their backs to identify them. This baffled us since all of these babies had nametags when they came in.

Well, I didn't have to look any further than my own son, sitting quietly in the corner playing with five sticky nametags. Though we were all playing with the babies, none of us noticed Caleb's little collection spree.

The next time I picked Caleb up in the nursery, besides having his own name stuck to his back, he had another identifier "Escapes. Steals nametags."

So, already at 14 months of age, Caleb has begun racking up his own Houdweebie stories. But, now he's going to have to up the ante because we're all on to him. I hope his next attempts include something cool like a top hat and a small flock of doves.

Caleb's Lion Costume 19, originally uploaded by StephLewis.

Caleb was a Lion for Halloween this year. I made this costume for him out of fleece and ribbon. I made it a little big (with room to let out) so that he can still play in it over the next couple of years. He loved being a lion and even got the hang of roar-ing towards the end.

First we went to Grandpa & Grandma Whiting's house and trick-or-treated there. They loved how cute he was with his little tail. Then we went to visit the Peterson & Lewis families in White Bear Lake. We trick-or-treated with Elise (a clown) and Maia (Robin Hood). Andrew & Karina (superman & wonderwoman) joined us for the first house, but then stayed back because we party to hard for them. So, Jon & Emily and Grandpa & Grandma Lewis all came with us trick-or-treating.

Caleb was confused at first until one of the houses had a dog. He was excited and stood at the door looking at their dog. I think after that he thought trick-or-treating was so we could look for dogs in other peoples' houses. Once he realized a house didn't have a dog, he seemed disinterested. If a house had a dog, he would get excited and stand at the door bouncing up and down. (Note: I think I would actually prefer Halloween if we went from house to house admiring other peoples' pets. It would be way better than candy.)

When we were finished trick-or-treating, we went to Trinity Baptist where we played some games. Caleb enjoyed jumping in the giant inflatable dog, and also spent quite a bit of time pointing at the giant inflatable dog making "woof" sounds.

All in all, we had a fun night out!

I've been reading the blog Soule Mama for quite some time. I so loved the writings of Amanda Blake Soule, that I also purchased and read her book The Creative Family: How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections. It is fantastic and has helped me to think differently and wonderfully about how I view and use art and craft with my family.

But, now she's done it again with her new project Mama to Mama: Connecting Families Through the Gift of Handmade. She speaks in her book about a concept called craftivism, "the concept of using craft for social action." This intrigued me as I thought about what people need around the world and how there is something more connected to sending handmade goods than just flinging money (although sometimes money flinging is needed, I think handmade is also needed). And how wonderful it can be when women, families, classrooms, and other groups meet together for the purpose of creating goods for others in need. I have known of church organizations that quilt or mend for good causes, but other than that I am not aware of how craft can be used for social activism and helping the downtrodden.

In her introduction of the project Soule describes why and how her idea got started. She also describes the first project, The Caps to Cap-Haitien Project: A partnership with Konbit Sante. She describes how crafters can create newborn caps, following a pattern that you can download off the site, send them to her and they will all be donated to the project.

I'm excited by this idea and I look forward to where it could lead. Crafters unite!

Sewing
I made a halloween costume for Caleb. He was a lion. It was a fun costume to make. I made it a little big (with purposeful room to let some parts out) so he could play in it for the next couple of years.

Designing
I've been designing a quilt square for Abby as well as a ton of Christmas presents. I can't divulge them all here though because it would give it all away! I've also been working on a redesign for this website (the current one is so horrid, but it actually wasn't so bad when I designed it back in... 2002). I need to upgrade my Movable Type really badly too. I've also been doing some contract web work. So, yeah, lots is going on in the design front.

Cooking
My favorite thing that I've made lately is my pumpkin spice bread. That was WAY good. I stuck walnuts in it this time and that just sent it over the top. I also enjoyed making Sour Cream Apple Pie, which was also pretty delicious. Caleb and I usually make cookies or mini muffins once a week, so we've been doing that too. I also have been making our bread at home because it's super good, but mostly because I just enjoy making it!

Church Stuff
Josh and I just finished our membership class and elder meeting to become members at Bethlehem Baptist. I've also finished my Nursery training and have been working in the nursery. I've also been attending MOMS group and am doing some activity coordinating for them. It is SO GOOD to be connecting with a church body. We miss PBCC so much. But, Bethlehem is proving to be a great place for us too.

Playing
Caleb now enjoys kicking and throwing and pushing balls around. He also loves swinging, sliding, crawling through tunnels, driving his car, pushing the dump truck, digging in the sand box, painting, coloring, reading, cooking, singing, dancing... so I pretty much am playing or watching playing most of the day! What a joy he is!