December 30, 2004

Not Expecting It To Last

On Tuesday, for the first and perhaps last time in her life, Dorothy did what her Daddy told her to! Once in the morning, and then again in the afternoon, as she was crawling from the living room to the dining room, she stopped at the tape & CD rack, and reached for the tapes on the bottom shelves. I told her "No, Dorothy, don't play with the tapes." And then, she turned around and crawled away from the shelves!! I was stunned, especially the second time.

I'm certainly not expecting this behavior to last, and in fact this morning, she ignored me as I told her not to play with the shelves. But it was such a nice feeling to have for one day.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 09:35 AM | Comments (1)

December 28, 2004

Kneepads

Dorothy's crawling all over the place now, and a couple of days ago she started enjoying the game of chase (either chasing Daddy as he crawls away, or being chased by a crawling Daddy).

If I don't get a pair of kneepads soon, I don't think I'll have knees left by summer.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 10:46 PM | Comments (1)

December 26, 2004

Comments Open Again

Now that the spam comments are somewhat under control, I've re-opened the ability to comment on blog entries. I went back and opened the comment ability on posts from the past couple of weeks, too. Go ahead and say whatever you want - I can take it. ;-)

Posted by Tom Nugent at 10:14 PM | Comments (0)

Autumn Milestones

We haven't been doing a great job of documenting all the new things that Dorothy has been doing in the last couple of months, especially since it seems like she learns something new practically every day now. Here's the roundup of her recent accomplishments, as compiled by both Tom and Elizabeth:

Mobility

The big news on this front is that Dorothy is crawling pretty well. She sometimes uses both knees, and sometimes still crawls on the right knee and left foot, but either way, she makes good time now. She can crawl over some obstacles (like toys, people's legs, and non-mobile babies at daycare), and sometimes will "tow" a toy or shoe with her as she moves. She keeps trying to crawl off the edge of the bed, but so far has not succeeded (at least not without someone hanging onto her ankles to keep her from actually bonking her head). She loves to be "chased" by a crawling adult (especially Daddy), playing "I'm gonna get ya!" Today, she started chasing Daddy, too, all the way from the kitchen to the back of the bedroom!

She still wants to walk (with someone holding her hands for balance), and has started to throw mini-tantrums if Mommy or Daddy sit her down too soon (they're pretty cute tantrums now, but I'm sure we won't think so in another year). She pulls up to standing on anything that she thinks might be strong enough to hold her, including the safety gates, the couch, the chair, any handy pant legs, Tom's clothes rack, the laundry basket (she's tipped that one over, but it works if an adult holds it for her).... She's especially good at standing up in the playpen in Daddy's office, and has started to work her way around the edge while standing. Once she's gotten to standing, she can stay that way with only one hand, and will wave the other around or grab for toys. She sometimes lets go with both hands, but doesn't stay up long yet when she does. Tom keeps telling her that balance is the key to being able to stand and walk without needing our help, which must be the reason she keeps trying.

Sleep

Sleep continues to be the one problem area as far as Mommy and Daddy are concerned, but it's been getting better. Dorothy's bedtime is now around 7PM, and she usually sleeps at least until midnight (occasionally waking to fuss for a few minutes around 10PM, but that waking seems to be going away), occasionally making it until 3AM. She "wanders" all over the crib at night, often ending up in positions that we couldn't sleep in! She has been waking to eat around midnight and 4AM for the last few weeks, and we're currently working on eliminating the 4AM feeding. Right now, she often will stay up for a long time at 4AM, fussing whether we go to her or not, although sometimes a bottle of water will calm her enough to go back to sleep. She still reliably wakes up bright and chipper at 6AM or earlier, causing us to wonder where the "morning person" genes came from.

She is still queen of the 40 minute nap (an improvement from the 30 minute naps of the summer), but occasionally will go for 60-90 minutes, or even 2 hours if she's snuggling with Mommy or Daddy. She also will go a bit longer between naps - she gets sleepy again anywhere between 2 hours and 4 hours after the last one. We're just starting to work on transitioning her down to a single, longer nap mid-day, in anticipation of starting in the Toddler room at daycare out in Seattle at the end of January.

Food

Dorothy has been trying lots of new foods, as she gradually reduces the amount of breastmilk she gets (especially during the day). She nurses in the morning and evening, and takes one big bottle in the afternoon now, but otherwise mostly eats "solids" in the daytime (three meals plus a snack or two). She detests carrots, but otherwise will eat almost anything she's offered (at least if she's hungry), including yogurt, rice cereal, oatmeal, chicken, beef, turkey, lamb, peas (grudgingly), pears, apples, bananas, and her favorite, green beans. She's starting to eat a few "unstrained" foods, including teething biscuits, apple and pear slices, and her other favorite, Cheerios. She particularly likes feeding Cheerios to Mommy, although she will sometimes change her mind on the way to Mommy's mouth and eat them herself, instead, then giggle.

She's not terribly interested in feeding herself most things, although she will happily smear strained food all over her face and high chair if she gets the chance. She does like to pick up and eat the Cheerios and fruit slices. She also started drinking water from a sippy cup a couple of weeks ago. Actually, she seems to mostly want to chew on the spout, but she does seem to get a reasonable amount of water into her (in addition to the puddles on the high chair and floor, and soaking her bib). If handed a spoon with strained food on it, she will put it in her mouth (usually), but we think it's more to chew on the spoon than to get the food. But she does get the food that way, too.

Other stuff

Most of Dorothy's favorite toys are not really designed as baby toys, of course. Top of the list is still the cordless phone, but she also enjoys pulling all the shoes off the shoe rack, crumpling and chewing on the phone books, and any paper she can get her hands on. She is obsessed with trying to get the cat food, but so far has not been allowed to succeed. She got a toy cordless phone for Christmas, which is not as good as the real thing, but was at least the only toy that she preferred to the box it came in on first sight.

She's started "sharing" her toys - she will hand us a block or other toy, and watch us "play" with it. She particularly likes to see Tom juggle her blocks (although she's not a discriminating watcher of juggling - she'll happily watch Elizabeth throw one block back and forth, even if she misses regularly). She'll usually accept the toy back if we offer it to her, but sometimes hands it right back to us again.

"Disappearing" games are also favorites. Peekaboo never gets old, and she can play herself now, pulling a blanket over her head, waiting long enough for us to say, "Where's Dorothy?" and then yanking it down again. She was fascinated when Tom started hiding a ball up his sleeve, and kept trying to pull his sleeve down again when he wanted to stop playing. She may not be talking yet, but she can communicate "again, again!" with crystal clarity.

She's making a lot more sounds, with more intonations. Common syllables are ma, wa, ba, oh, hi, ay, and yai, but there are plenty of others that occasionally crop up. A week or so ago, she and Elizabeth were looking at Cobalt, and she turned to Elizabeth, announced "Oh-bah," and then turned back to watching the cat. So we think that Cobalt has beat out Mommy and Daddy as the first creature in the house to be addressed by name. Around the same time, she was sitting in the exersaucer saying "bababababa" while Elizabeth was in the kitchen. Elizabeth called "babababa" back to her, and she angrily said, "BAbababa." Elizabeth then looked into the dining room and saw that she had her ball, and asked, "Are you playing with your ball?" Dorothy gurgled back happily, "bababababa." So we think that that was an initially misunderstood attempt to say "ball," although she seems to use the "ba" syllable for a lot of things.

The most traumatic development for Tom has been Dorothy's social development at daycare. Specifically, we've heard that she's developing a strong attachment to Ian, so strong that she's kissed him. Apparently one day when he was lying on the mat with his head up, minding his own business, she leaned over, and planted a kiss right on his lips. Then she looked around to see if anyone had spotted her. Tom plans to start shopping for his new shotgun soon.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 10:03 PM | Comments (1)

The Missing Week, and Xmas

I know it's scandalous, but there was an entire week (December 8th to the 15th) where no photos were taken of Dorothy. To make up for this horrible error (due in part because Tom was in Seattle looking for housing), we have extra photos from after the missing week, right up to Xmas eve.

And to keep from having too many photos in one album, we have a separate photo album solely for Dec. 25th - Dorothy's First Xmas.

Enjoy!

Posted by Tom Nugent at 03:32 PM | Comments (1)

December 25, 2004

Some Assembly Required

Friday night was Elizabeth's and my first Xmas Eve as parents. I'm sure things will be much more involved and crazy in future years (once Dorothy is older, and she perhaps gets siblings), but it was still fun and different this year from years past.

Parents have told me that the three worst words for a parent are "Some Assembly Required." Luckily, this year Dorothy's toys were relatively simple to assemble. I can only imagine some future year, though, when I'm tasked with helping Santa to assemble a giant doll house, or My Little Fusion Reactor™. For now, though we've had a good Xmas so far, and are looking forward to relaxing the rest of the day, and maybe opening some more gifts (Dorothy's only tackled a couple so far, since they're all so fun to play with).

Everyone here wishes you all a safe and happy holiday!

Posted by Tom Nugent at 01:10 PM | Comments (0)

December 24, 2004

The House Out West

My trip last week was successful, if hectic. We're excited about the house we decided to rent. The problem with the house is that we may not want to move out, because it's so big and I doubt we could actually buy a house like it. :-) I'm not sure of exact size, but it's probably 2,700-3,000 square feet, and is on a couple acres of land (by my estimate) that back onto "Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park." It's within 15-20 minutes of Elizabeth's office, which is about as far as we want to get for now.

The house is some distance away from the road, though, as you can see from the gravel driveway:
CM_driveway.jpg

Here's the view of the dining room and living room from the front porch:
CM_frontporch.jpg

And here's a view of part of the back yard:
CM_backyard.jpg

Our moving dates are settled: The movers come on January 10th to pack, the 11th to load, and we fly out on Friday the 14th. Our stuff should arrive sometime the following week. We now have just over two weeks :-O to finish sorting through our stuff and getting everything ready to move. It's going to be a crazy couple of weeks.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 09:58 AM | Comments (1)

December 23, 2004

The Old Gray Hairs, They Ain't What They Used To Be...

The old gray mare, just ain't what she used to be,
ain't what she used to be,
ain't what she used to be,
The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be
many long years ago.

My version of this song is about "gray hairs" instead of the gray mare. Gray hairs aren't what they used to be, because they used to be found only on elderly people. But now they've changed! They're found on ME, for instance!

When Dorothy was a few months old, I noticed a couple of gray-ish hairs in my sideburns, and I dutifully blamed the start of the color change on my child. But last week, while at the hotel out in Seattle, I noticed a few full-length gray hairs up in the middle of the top of my head. They're spreading! Aaughh!

My father and some of his brothers have a history of going gray relatively young, so I can probably blame this on genetics as much as my lovely child. In fact, maybe I'm doing well by not getting gray hairs until I'm 33. But in any case, the appearance of looking old doesn't match the feeling inside of being young. I'm told that this dichotomy doesn't change for years and years...

Posted by Tom Nugent at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2004

Back Home

I arrived home from Seattle late Friday night. I really missed Dorothy and Elizabeth. I got updates every day from my Mom and Elizabeth about how Dorothy was doing. It turns out that, while I was gone for 5 days, she now crawls on both knees pretty regularly (before it was one knee, one foot). And she started drinking from a sippy cup! Well, she's chewing on the sippy cup spout, and she seems to occasionally get water from it, so we'll count that as drinking. :-)

The trip was good, if hectic. I arrived in Seattle late on Monday, then spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday driving all over Bellevue looking at housing and daycare. I visited four daycare centers, and roughly 10-12 houses (and drove by another 3-6 houses). I was on the phone a lot, trying to set up appointments to see houses. It was very crazy, and tiring. But we found some excellent prospects, and hopefully should have housing decided and confirmed on Monday (12/22).

I flew back to Boston on Friday, and got to see my baby girl asleep that night and then played with her lots on Saturday. Now it's down to the business of getting ready to get out of Boston!

Posted by Tom Nugent at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2004

An old story about security

This is a story from right after Dorothy was born that we never got around to writing about (I'm writing it while sitting in the airport, heading to Seattle). When it was time to leave the hospital, we had to wait a while for them to get an orderly to wheel Elizabeth and Dorothy out to the front door. A lady finally arrived, and we headed down. As we were leaving the OB/GYN wing, a security officer at the exit stopped us, because the orderly who was taking us out didn't have the correct color ID card, and hence was supposedly not allowed to take babies out of the hospital (and apparently their security procedures had changed recently, hence the confusion about who to send down with Elizabeth). So we're sitting there by the exit, Dorothy in Elizabeth's arms, people in the nearby waiting area looking at us and googling at Dorothy, while the security guard called up to the area we'd just come from to check and make sure it was OK for us to leave. So Dorothy got stopped by security before she was even a week old. I hope this isn't an indicator of what life's going to be like with her when she's a teenager...

Posted by Tom Nugent at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

Searching for a home, travelling sans baby

I'm heading out to Seattle (well, Bellevue to be exact) this week to look for housing and daycare. I'm flying out on Monday, and returning on Friday. That gives me Tuesday through Thursday to check out four daycare centers and 10-20 houses. We'll be renting a house for a while, as we get a feel for the Bellevue area, the neighborhoods, length of the commute, etc. Maybe we'll rent for 6 months, and maybe for 12 months or more. It all depends on what leases are available, and how we're feeling about moving yet again once we know the area. I want to spend more than a month getting a feel for the area, but that means we'll do a decent amount of unpacking once we arrive. Re-packing and moving again will be enough of a hassle that me may stay at whatever house we rent for a year or more.

The entire time I was packing for the trip, I felt like I was missing a bunch of stuff. I've gotten so used to bringing all the baby stuff on flights that I feel naked when I'm not lugging around a carseat, toys, diapers, stroller, baby clothes, and of course the baby herself. But for this trip, I just have two small bags that I can easily carry on. Weird.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2004

T+9 months and Healthy!

Dorothy's 9-month check-up by the pediatrician was last Thursday, and she's been declared healthy (except for the on-going cold). She weighed in at 20 lbs. and 12.3 oz, and roughly 2 feet and 4.5 inches tall. Both those numbers are around the 80th percentile for her age. Her head circumference came in at 46cm, which is near the 90th percentile, so she's becoming a fathead like her Daddy. ;-)

Her pediatrician was impressed with how much she's walking (when holding onto someone's fingers), and said that her motor skill development is overall very good. Lungs, limbs, ears, etc. all checked out pretty well.

Now she just needs to shake this cough, and she'll be the model of health!

Posted by Tom Nugent at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2004

Toys for All Species

Until now, the one item that Dorothy would reliably go for is the cordless phone. She'd reach for it, and even drag herself towards it. And since Sunday, when she started doing actual tummy-off-the-floor crawling, the cordless phone has been the main way of getting her to actually crawl.

But yesterday, while taking care of her during her illness, I decided to entertain her and the cats at the same time by using one of the cat toys. I chose one of the ones that is basically some feathers at the end of a string attached to a wand. Cobalt had lots of fun pouncing and swatting at the toy, but as I dragged it near Dorothy, she tried grabbing it too. She's not nearly as fast or coordinated as Cobalt yet, but she was having fun, and being distracted from being sick. Then I let it dangle near her, and as I'd slowly pull it away at the right speed, she started crawling after it.

So forget all that crap from Babies R Us. I guess I can just buy the baby's toys at PetCo from now on.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 10:13 PM | Comments (0)

My Snot-Nosed Kid

New photos of Dorothy are now up. Illness and general craziness made this almost two weeks' worth of photos instead of one. It may be two weeks again until the next batch.

And yes, she really is a snot-nosed kid (look closely at the full-size picture).

Posted by Tom Nugent at 08:01 PM | Comments (0)

December 08, 2004

Puppeteer Daddy

What I need is some sort of mini-trapeze (just two strings and a small bar), or perhaps puppeteer's handles and strings.

When Dorothy is walking around (and she seems to be demanding it even more now that she's sick), hanging from my fingers, I need to bend over a bit to keep her feet on the ground. But this position quickly breaks my back. So I need some sort of arm-extender so that she can hang on, and I can walk upright. Otherwise Daddy will become the Hunchback of Norwood all too soon.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 07, 2004

Hoarse cries

With her cold, Dorothy appears to have a bad sore throat (at least, the doctor says it looks really red and ulcerated). Her voice is hoarse, so she can't cry as loud as usual. But the cries she makes are really heartbreaking. She has a different facial expression, that I'm not sure I can describe, but she sort of wrinkles up her forehead and pulls her cheeks back as she opens her mouth to cry, and the quiet, raspy plaints come out. I can tell that crying itself hurts her, and she knows it's going to hurt her, but she doesn't have any other way to complain about everything else. I try to respond as fast as possible, so she doesn't have to make the noise for very long, but of course I can't make everything all better - I can just sympathize and snuggle her. She slept with me for most of last night, so I could get her immediately and wouldn't have to keep getting up and down to get her out of the crib. I'm pretty out of it at work today, but I think she got a fair amount of sleep last night. Hopefully she'll have an easier time tonight.

Posted by Elizabeth Nugent at 05:10 PM | Comments (0)

Spam Deleted

Thanks to Jay Allen's MT Blacklist I have now eliminated the 1,000+ comment-spams that hit this blog earlier today. I'll probably have to keep adding new blacklist words & URLs as new spammers try to hit my system, but at least I can leave the comments open, and deleting new spam is relatively easy (and can be applied to hundreds of comments at a time, rather than having to hit them one by one).

We return you now to your regularly scheduled day.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 02:57 PM | Comments (0)

Damn Spammers

Around 4:30am Eastern time today, some spammers discovered my blog, and began spam-commenting all across it. I've heard that other bloggers have had problems with asshole spammers posting comments to their blogs, but I had no idea how bad it could be. The spamhole must have an automated system, because there have been over 1,000 comments posted in the last 5 hours! :-O I've turned off the ability to comment on posts, and am going to try to clean things up. If anyone knows of an easy way to delete 1,000 blog comments, and/or a better way of turning off comments retroactively in blog posts (MovableType seems to only let me turn it off easily for future posts), then please email me. My address is "tomsubs" at the domain "contracheck.com". Thanks.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2004

Countdown to Disaster

As described last Wednesday, Dorothy has been walking (with assistance) for a couple of weeks now. She can also reliably push herself from her tummy back to a sitting position. The problem with this latter skill is that it's been making it harder to get her to crawl - as soon as we put her on her hands and knees, she pushes herself back to a sitting position. Multiple times, I've knelt over her, and moved her through the entire crawling sequence, one hand and one foot at a time. And if we grab her arms and hold them off the floor and pull them forward, then she's scooted her legs along in a crawling action to keep up. But she hasn't been purposefully crawling. Until now, that is.

On Sunday, I was playing with her in the living room, and she did what Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads calls the "Jacknife" crawl - one leg underneath, the other out to the side. She took three crawl "steps" to get to some toy, then sat up! So December 5th seems to be the day she first crawled all by herself, not on her tummy. Then tonight, after getting home from the pediatrician, we gave her some Motrin and she seemed to cheer up. She was on our bed, and crawled a couple of "steps" to get to a piece of paper the pediatrician gave us.

We'd sort of been hoping that Dorothy would wait until after we'd moved out of the house in early January to begin a truly mobile terror, but no such luck. Now we'll have to do the real baby-proofing, only to take it down in 5 weeks.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 09:55 PM | Comments (0)

Sleep Routines

It's been about a month since the new sleep initiative began for Dorothy. It's had its ups and downs, but we are generally all sleeping better. Or at least we have a routine.

Dorothy starts her bedtime routine around 6:30 or so, depending on when her last nap of the day was. We read some books, nurse (or she gets a big bottle on the days when I'm not home from work yet), brush her teeth, snuggle, and she goes in the crib. She's mostly been falling asleep pretty fast, only occasionally protesting the initial bedtime. She usually wakes up around 10 PM and complains for a little while - sometimes a single token cry, and sometimes up to 5-10 minutes of off-and-on fussing. We haven't been going to her for this one, since she doesn't seem to be hungry, and we want her to learn to go to sleep on her own. She usually wakes again sometime between 11:30 and 12:30, and I feed her then. She's been sleeping for almost exactly four hours after that feeding, waking up between 3:30 and 4:30 for a second feeding. Then she sleeps for two hours, or maybe two and a half if we're lucky. So some mornings she's up at 5:30, and some at 6:30 or occasionally even 7:00. If it's 5:30, I usually bring her to bed to feed again and end up falling asleep myself for a little while. I don't know if she dozes off or just plays until we wake up.

Of course, all this is out the window when Dorothy is sick. Right now, she's coughing at night, and sometimes waking herself up. I just went in to nurse her a little and help her get back to sleep (at 9:15 PM), and I expect to do it several more times tonight. Then we may need to go through a few more nights of fussing and complaining when she gets better, but still expects the constant attention. I'm hoping we'll be able to eliminate the 4 AM feeding sometime in the next month, so I only have to get up once at night, but we'll see how it goes.

Posted by Elizabeth Nugent at 09:26 PM | Comments (0)

That'll Teach Me To Open My Big Mouth

I spoke too soon. No sooner did I proclaim that we haven't been getting sick, when BAM! Dorothy gets sick. Then Elizabeth. And I'm getting worried about me.

Late Sunday afternoon, Dorothy started sounding a bit congested, and hoarse at times. We read the baby health books, and decided that the symptoms weren't too bad, so we didn't worry about it - we figured she just had a tiny cold. Monday morning, she was sounding worse, but I took her to daycare since she didn't have a temperature. They called back mid-day, saying that she was getting worse, couldn't sleep well, and had a temperature. :-P

So I made an appointment with the pediatrician, picked Dorothy up from daycare, and then took her in to the doctor's office a couple of hours later. By this time she was sounding very congested, and whenever she'd try to cry, it wouldn't come out very loud (a side benefit, I'll admit). She really sounded pathetic and sad. :-( The quick strep test came back negative, but the back of her throat is red and looks pretty raw. We'll find out in the morning how the full strep culture turned out, but in either case it looks like we'll have at least a few days of an unhappy baby, even after drugging her with baby Tylenol etc.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 08:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2004

Foot In Mouth Disease

After reading Ben MacNeill's post about getting sick much more often since becoming a parent, I turned to Elizabeth and asked, "We haven't been getting sick much more frequently since Dorothy arrived, have we?" To which she replied, "Well, I was hospitalized for the first time in my life, other than to have the baby. Other than that, no."

Oh, yeah. That.

Anyone have a foot-extractor?

Posted by Tom Nugent at 09:22 PM | Comments (4)

Help! I've Sat Up and I Can't Lay Down!

Recently, Dorothy has started practicing new motor skills, such as crawling etc., in the middle of the night (a normal activity for babies). Last night she practiced sitting up. Of course, she was tired, but she didn't know how to lay back down to go back to sleep, so she'd start fussing, and eventually Elizabeth would go see what was going on. Dorothy of course can fall back to horizontal, but she hasn't yet purposefully laid down by herself. So Elizabeth was helping her to lay back down (at least sometimes). We'll see how quickly she learns...

Posted by Tom Nugent at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 03, 2004

Protective of Our Baby Girls

Apparently I'm not the only new father who is very protective of his baby girl and who's thinking 15 years down the road. MetroDad recently echoed my own thoughts exactly on how his protectiveness will play out in the teen years:

I'm already feeling sorry for the first guy who tries to take her on a date.

I love you Dorothy! I apologize now for making your teen years miserable. :-)

Posted by Tom Nugent at 05:25 PM | Comments (2)

December 01, 2004

James Cameron on Space

In a recent Wired magazine interview, James Cameron states very eloquently why space exploration and development is so important:

Everybody talks about the cost of going to space. But what about the cost of not going? Where would our economy be if the space race of the '60s had not happened? What if we hadn't been forced to come up with more-powerful computing to calculate trajectories on the fly while guys were on the far side of the moon in titanium cans? Where will we be in 20 years if we don't do something that captures the public imagination and inspires kids to give a damn about science and engineering again? What if we become Rome, blinded by the image of our own superiority while other younger, more vigorous cultures supplant us?

You may be asking: Shouldn't we solve our problems here on Earth before we go into space? There will never be a time when all people are satisfied, when all wrongs are addressed. We live better, more luxuriously, and longer now than at any other time in history. Cook, da Gama, and Magellan left behind shores wracked by death, disease, and social injustice - but they went, and their societies benefited. Our problems must be solved, but not at the expense of exploration.

Exploration is not a luxury. It defines us as a civilization. It directly or indirectly benefits every member of society. It yields an inspirational dividend whose impact on our self-image, confidence, and economic and geopolitical stature is immeasurable.

So, as the ones paying the tax bills, we have to shout out that we want this! Our shout has to be loud enough that in the mind of the politician, that fear-based processing algorithm, the fear of going becomes less than the fear of not going.

What are we waiting for? Let's go.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 09:17 PM | Comments (3)

Which Body Part Should I Ruin?

Dorothy has been insisting for over a week to walk. A lot. She needs to grab onto an adult's hands (preferably an adult who is behind her so that she can forwards forever) to get lots of support, but once she's got that, she can do a silly & awkward goose-step all over the place.

Besides the daycare ladies, I seem to be the one most often escorting her around. But this gives me a choice: Do I stand on my feet, thereby bending over and getting a sore back, or do I kneel, thereby saving my back but hurting my knees?

I suspect that the question is moot. I'll probably wind up ruining both my back and knees with various child play activities over the next few years.

Posted by Tom Nugent at 07:27 PM | Comments (0)