Heptadecagon

Chris had been feeling a little uncomfortable all day Wednesday, but at 38 and a half weeks pregnant, I'd guess that's the normal way to feel. We'll pick up the story around 11 pm, when contractions were about five minutes apart, but according to Chris, didn't feel like they were contractions of the entire uterus. I have no uterus, so I can only write what she described, and that's how she explained them to me. Oh, and another thing: this post will use the word "uterus," and other words that cause queasiness among beer-swilling men. If this sort of talk upsets you, skip all the words and scroll to the bottom of the post for the baby pictures. But back to the uterus (UTERUS!). I had noticed that the contractions kind of followed the scheme of one big one, and then two smaller ones, all spaced about five minutes apart. I don't really know for certain if this was what was happening; I was just trying to estimate the strength of the contraction by ob...

Dear readers, as I sit here typing this post, good things are happening in my brain. Happy chemicals are fluttering around, and neurons in activity centers deep inside my brain are tingling. At this point, you may be thinking (and honestly, I wouldn't blame you for it because it doesn't sound like a half-bad idea), "Oh here he goes, with his pitcher of sangria on one side and keyboard on the other, trying to be a modern-day Hunter S. Thompson ." The truth of the matter is that blogging is good for you . Imagine that. Seriously, go ahead and imagine it, because then maybe your brain will release some dopamine, too. Take a moment; I'll be right here. Do you feel better? I knew you would. According to one author of the study, expressive writing is linked to improved sleep. It seems perfectly clear to me, then, that babies and toddlers should be blogging. Babies could be sleeping twelve or thirteen hours straight at nighttime, and their parents wouldn't ...

Although nobody has pointed this out to me yet, the past two posts contain no pictures of the wee beasts. This sort of reckless posting puts me dangerously close to alienating my base readership (mom, et cetera). Without delay, I present the basement ! Not long ago, we almost-kinda-sorta finished part of the basement ("A bucket of bleach, some cans of paint, and I'll have this place ship-shape in no time" -- Jacqueline Ogburn from a beloved book ). Many of the kids' toys have taken permanent residence in the basement, but the world-beating toy down there is the inflatable house. Well, it used to be a house. The green and yellow parts that now resemble flaps used to attach to form a roof-like structure. These days it's more like a box, but for simplicity's sake, we'll continue to refer to it as a house. One way to use it is to sit in the house and play (like maybe "playing house," for example), but that mode of operation lacks in both a...

I guess when you're a kid, maybe the best thing about going to visit other kids is the opportunity to play with an entirely new set of toys. On Sunday we went to a party hosted by some new friends who have three young children of their own. Aaron enjoyed the workbench and, as you can see, followed all OSHA regulations and guidelines. However, the big winner of the day, the one toy that the kids were talking about for days and days before the party, was the trampoline. In fact, I think that was the most desired play object for all the kids there. At one point, I counted no fewer than seven children and one adult on the trampoline. (Full disclosure: I was that adult.) Before the kids asked me to hop with them, I managed to get a few pictures. This one is interesting. Like any almost-safe trampoline, there's a safety net. The picture is kind of nice, but all the little hexagons from the netting mess things up. Warning : \begin{geek} I want to try to get rid of them by t...