Outfit

This, my friends, is called an outfit and is something of which I am very proud. It's not that I really have trouble dressing myself (although I have noticed I care less now), but I just didn't think it really mattered too much what Hannah wore. Who is going to come up and say "Your babies socks don't match. She is ugly. And you are a terrible person."? Babies are the definition of cute. This approach was not well accepted by my wife, especially when I would drive Hannah to meet her at the end of her workday, which she would follow with meeting friends. "You don't like the strawberry onesie with blue pants, and socks that are different colors, sizes, and even intended for different seasons? We were in a hurry."

At any rate, I have been trying. And now, for any similarly uninterested gentlemen, allow me to walk you through the above clothing choices.

I do not always enjoy dressing Hannah in pink. You understand why. I also cannot always find the bows that we use to avoid questions like..."Boy, right? - oh, well, that's what people assume when a baby has on blue." While green does not avoid this problem, it's not blue, and strangers take offence to baby girls in blue, as if you did it just to make them look stupid. Also it has a giraffe and lion on it. Who doesn't want their daughter to also love giraffes and lions? I'm sure this shirt is currently influencing her and her career choices - maybe someday I will get a safari out of it. That being said, I'm not sure how I feel about the message. Are giraffes and lions supposed to be friends? I find this doubtful, so then we can assume that they are supposed to be your baby's friends. This is perhaps even more troublesome. But that's not the important part - we're talking about matching clothes here.

So we have chosen a shirt. Green pants would be a mistake for several reasons. If they were exactly the same color then your baby becomes a little blob of green. Which is ok for Mom to do, if it is pink, but we have already ruled that out. If they don't match perfectly, then you end up looking like you tried to match them and failed. Yellow is far enough away, and I saw yellow pants within two seconds of opening the drawers. And here is the crucial part - there is yellow on the shirt. This means that baby goes from wearing clothes to having a cute outfit. You might be asking, this means something? Indeed. This means that Mom gets to spend her afternoon hearing "That is such a cute outfit!" instead of Mom saying "Her Dad dressed her." And Mom appreciates that, more than will ever make sense to you.

And I was just about to hit "Publish Post" when Heidi called to tell me what to dress Hannah in. APPRECIATE THIS!!

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Factoid Friday: Thou didst not know?

According to my wife, I am full of it. It here refers to little bits of information that I collect in a manner similar to our house collecting pet hair - it gets shed in my vicinity and sticks around. So in thinking of regular features for the Micro Observer, Factoid Fridays came to mind, for two reasons: alliteration, and it is one of the few things I'm good at which might be interesting to the outside world.

This is a lot of introduction for a little factoid, so here it is.

The pronoun "thou" which has since died out everywhere (except some churches that believe biblical scholarship reached a pinnacle in 17th century England), was the informal way of addressing someone, compared with the more formal "you". I find this surprising because language generally becomes more sloppy as time goes on, and if I had to guess I would have chosen the informal version to win out. For those who know or remember studying other languages, "thou" would be comparable to "tu" in Spanish, French, and Italian, and "du" in German. "You" would be the counterpart to "usted", "vous", "Lei", and "sie", respectively.

So then for those of us who are familiar with church hymns (or scripture) in which God is referred to with "Thou", this is actually not a sign of respect, but rather of familiarity. Since I referred to King James earlier (King James Version), I'll pass along my favorite tidbit about him (it's a two-for-one Friday!). After Queen Elizabeth passed James the crown, the people of England found fun in joking about his effeminate nature: "Elizabeth was our king and now James is our queen."

On a different note, Heidi has suggested to me that the daily stills be tri-weekly stills, which doesn't quite have the same ring, but I believe she may have a point. I hope this does not push anyone to tears.

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MOHAWK!

Heidi tried giving Hannah a mohawk after her bath the other day. I thought these pictures were hilarious and post-worthy, especially juxtaposed like this. Technically I suppose this would count as a faux-hawk, but I doubt that any fashionistas read the Micro Observer (although I am sure they would love it, love it, love it!). Anyway, putting up the post title made me curious as to whether or not Mohicans wore mohawks. It turns out that they did, or at least something roughly similar, but only when they went to war. Braves would shave their head, excepting what was termed a scalp-lock, which would then be greased with animal fat to get it to stand up. In my roughly three minutes of Google searching, the best explanation I found was that this amounted to something akin to a "come get me if you can" gesture to the opposition tribes, as it would provide a handle for cutting off the brave's scalp if he were to be caught or killed. Supposedly, the middle finger stems from a similar wartime gesture coming from English long-bowmen. I've heard the French would cut off the middle finger (and perhaps the index too) to prevent English soldiers from firing the long bow, leading to Englishmen holding one or both of those fingers up prior to battle in the same spirit as the Mohican scalp-lock.

I certainly hope Heidi's intent was somewhat different.

Rather than leave you with talk of removing body parts, I'll leave you with this picture of Hannah and I. She just looks too cool not to show this to the Interwebs. I don't know where she got it.

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First Daily Still

We almost didn't take this photo yesterday. I remembered when Hannah was looking like she was asleep, and Heidi was about to get ready for bed. Then fate intervened. It is apparently that important.


I can already tell that this is going to change our lives. I for one am already more motivated to shave and to get a haircut, before I end up looking like '80s Mel Gibson (you can click on it if you doubt I'm on my way). I'm not sure, however, if this is going to be anything more than keratin removal motivation.


I wonder if we can get Hannah to alternate between arms up and down. Then putting them in order might make her fly. Also, we don't usually put a bow on Hannah as part of her pj's. How any passersby are supposed to make out her gender in the middle of the night, I just don't know.

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IT'S ON!

I gave my wife some pretty good advice this morning that I thought you could benefit from, Mr. and Mrs. Interweb. If you are ever in a meeting, or any other tense situation, and you do not know what to say, stand up and say "IT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG!". The next move is up to you, or perhaps up to the person with whom it is on. You may be saying, "But James, this is completely ludicrous; how is that appropriate for anything with any degree of gravitas?". I say, the more intense the situation, the more on it should be, and the more Donkey Kongish of the on-ness is necessary. If you continue to disagree, we may be forced into a situation where "IT'S ON LIKE DIDDY KONG!", but only because we're friends. Perhaps I have read too many webcomics and drank too much coffee this morning.

Oh yes, that reminds me - Grandma is watching Hannah today so that I can get work done. So we should rap up this pep talk. But wait! There is reason to check back later. Since Hannah was born, I thought it would be neat to take pictures of her as close to every day as possible. Then last night, I thought that a photo of the family every day, in the same spot, would be neater - perhaps even wicked awesome (do people still say that?)! I am keen on this idea! So tonight will be the first of many. Then perhaps by the time it would be visually interesting to put them all together in a video I will have enough web savvy to make it so.

"IT'S ON LIKE PRINCESS PEACH!"

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It's like day and night

Things I said this morning:
I'm sorry. Is the dragon not making out with you?
You pooping? Need help?
Are you growling now? I really hope you're growling.

Things I have said so far this evening:
I should probably take these poison gloves off before I touch anything else.
I don't think my k-means clustering algorithm is working right.
He was off by a factor of 10; no wonder everything died the first time (fortunately only bacteria die in this lab).

I really love my work, but I definitely miss one half of my day more than the other.

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must...not...laugh

Things are always funniest when you can't laugh. I can't read Dinosaur Comics (click here for my favorite) while holding a sleeping baby. This Notes from the Trenches post just made me wake up Hannah. It reminds me of when I was an undergrad in a lab researching herpes. My nose would start to itch like crazy right after I screwed the top off the vial of virus. I really wanted to itch my nose, but not with a herpes hand.

I think the worst bout of forbidden laughter I have ever had was in church. I was sitting with a friend's family, whose mother was exceedingly kind, but who was to be taken very seriously and was not to be crossed. It happened to be the end of a very odd several months, during which taking communion gave me butterfingers. The previous two times I had spilled it on myself; I don't know how, it just happened. Anyway, it happened a third time. On a new white sweater, which was just too much. And we lost it, laughing almost uncontrollably for several minutes during the most solemn part of the service, while Mrs. Coolbutstrict did all she could to keep her dignity and tell us to shutuprightnoworyouwillbesorry. It was the kind of hnnn.. hnnnn... hooo.. spespespespespespespe... hnn... hnnn laugh that almost sounds like you are alternately struggling to breath and blowing mini-raspberries. We couldn't stay quite for more than five minutes for the rest of the service.

I can't wait until Hannah is in junior high.

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Thief!

Turns out that being a dad has made me into quite the shifty character. Stealing from my child has become a regular occurrence. Sometimes even twice a day! I don't know if it makes it any better that my victim is always sleeping.

The victim:

The loot:

The failing guard dog:

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AVOCADO!

Hannah was not impressed with rice cereal. Avocados came highly recommended from mostly everyone, so we jumped on the bandwagon. Hannah loved it! I'm sure it will be the first of many bandwagon rides; I will cherish this one all the more knowing there are other rides with names like "High School Musical" and "Hannah Montana". I hope those come with vomit bags for parents with weak stomachs.

Anyway, apparently she was ready for food, just not gruel made with breast milk. Here is Hannah's seal of approval:


She decided that she liked this food thing so much that she should try putting everything in her mouth. Including the camera. nom nOM NOM!


The avocado kind of makes her into a baby version of the Hulk, you see. So we cleaned her up, because a baby Hulk is really not a baby at all. And then canceled out the Hulkiness with some pigtails. Her first! Here for you to see, Mr. and Mrs. Interweb.


Nothing says Hulk-be-gone quite like some pigtails.

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Comfturble

If a blog isn't the right place to mention this, then I don't know if there is a right place for it.

No one says com-for-ta-ble the way it is spelled. Everyone says comf-tur-ble. I propose that comfortable is replaced with comfturble. The word comfturble even looks more comfturble; comfortable seems a little too uptight to convey the appropriate meaning.

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The Moby Warrior: Posture of Silence

Today the Moby Warrior takes on sitting down with a baby who fell asleep despite teething.

This is another downfall of the Moby, sitting down is not easy. So if your two favorite things are sitting and putting things in the oven, then you might not need one. In fact, I wouldn't recommend children either.

It goes something like this. Pull out the chair that has been tempting you. Bend your legs like you are an overworked person playing a game of limbo against your will, and you haven't had time to exercise for the past X months (we'll pretend like that shouldn't say years). Given the topic of this blog and that you are reading this, you may well just need to bend your legs the best you can. But only bend at the knee, your thigh and torso have to stay aligned (hence the limbo part). Now put your hands on the back of the chair, and do something resembling a crab-walk until your center of mass is somewhere over the seat. Crab-walk forward, and lower yourself onto that cushion. Your posture is perhaps not what it used to be, but neither are your standards for most other things involving civil society. Well done. I hope you brought that cup of coffee with you for some nice over the shoulder drinking. Don't worry about burning the little one; by the time you get to this point your coffee is cold anyway, and you're too lazy to go fill it back up. Enjoy!

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Teething

Who knew that my skills in putting females to sleep would finally pay off? And I didn't even have to talk about my research!


Also, teething can bite me.


Until the tooth shows up.


Yes, I already know that my jokes are like your high school math teacher's.

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Guys! Happy July 22nd!!

I am so glad that I was reading Dinosaur Comics today. It is Happy Pi Approximation Day! Now where's my pie so that I can rub it around my face? Success is much less (ful)filling when it is approximated.

On second thought, is this holiday only celebrated in countries that write dates day/month? Because 7/22 means nothing to me. And 22/7 means pie in the face. Another reason to move to Canada.

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Big day for a little girl

Hannah has been holding out on us. Here we've been trying hard to get her to roll over, knowing that most babies can by now. She has had all the parts down, rolling to her side, going from side to front or back, etc., but doesn't connect them all. We've also been trying to get her to sit up on her own, but she thinks the only reason to sit up is as a launching position; all the better to fly back and crack open ones head. Then yesterday, she rolled over when I was at work. And then I came home, and she decided it was time to sit up. We kept the Boppy pillow behind her, as this is still a dual-purpose sit/launch position. She didn't need the Boppy to sit up, but found it quite comfortable.

Then she started chillin'.

We were quite surprised with all this progress at once. Rolling over, sitting up, and chillin' all in one day? And if that wasn't enough, she decided that the Pooh quilt made an excellent yoga mat. Here she is in a little pose she called Supta Matsyendrasana.I wonder what she's going to do today.

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The Moby Warrior: Baking Scones

Putting on a Moby wrap feels like getting kitted out for a martial arts class. Then you put a baby in it. But I am now convinced that if there were to be a stay-at-home dad superhero, he would be wearing a Moby wrap. I didn't have very good luck the first time that I tried it out (when the name Moby Warrior was born), but it has aged and is more forgiving. Thank you Master Moby.

So a few days ago I got it on, got the baby in, and cleaned. Then it was time to bake. I don't know why it was time to bake, it just was. We didn't have any yeast, and my wife isn't the biggest fan of soda bread, so I decided to make scones. Chocolate chip scones! I still don't know what made it time to bake. I had just cleaned the kitchen. That's already a lot for me. But baking? And then cleaning? Again?! This Moby Warrior dude gets serious. Notice that the baby is already asleep, despite what looks like a very ferocious yell.

Turns out scones are pretty easy to make. I'm usually more of a cook than a baker. Despite what you might expect of a scientist, I'm terrible at following recipes. Baking requires precision that I only reluctantly give my lab work. Somehow the Moby Warrior managed to pull off some decent scones.

And then ate one with his favorite five month old.

At this point I have to recommend taking the baby out before trying to get anything in or out of the oven. That must be the Moby Warrior's kryptonite.

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I was wrong

Apparently I was wrong about the dragon. The dragon is no enemy that must be driven off. It is a friend. For making out with.I think even St. George would be impressed. Or disgusted. Hard to tell which.

You can see part of one of our dogs, Heinz, behind her, in case you were wondering. And a storage bin being filled with clothes she has outgrown. SO QUICKLY. On another side note, adverbs don't look quite as good written in all caps as adjectives.

SO FAST.

That's better.

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Central Command

This morning baby central command was all a blur. There's a barnyard of noises (including the midwestern farmer's favorite - a lion), a dragon to ward off, and a solar system to look after, not to mention the library and the clicking wheels! If only the seat would spin faster! It's like an activity mat on speed.

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First eats

We have been anticipating Hannah's first foray into the world of food beyond breastmilk. She seemed like a budding foody, grabbing at everything that we ate in front of her (which made it seem as though we were torturing the little one). So at her last check-up Heidi got the okay to give Hannah food. We decided to start with the usual: rice cereal.

If you haven't seen it, rice cereal is basically gruel. I didn't think it looked very appetizing, and to our surprise, Hannah agreed. We gave her the first bite and it just made her grimace; she looked like she was going to be sick. This lack of eventfulness is not what I was expecting. I was thinking there would be food everywhere, that Hannah would be flailing her arms in joyful exuberance at getting something new or spitting it up and thrashing until the table was covered with the goop. The event did have an interesting quirk, though. Hannah looked tortured, plowing through the tiny amount of cereal that made it into her mouth, only until we presented her with a new spoonful. She would grab this new spoonful with renewed zeal, shoving it into her mouth, then grimacing. Here is the sequence in pictures.

"Yay! Food!"

"Yuck! Food!"

"Yay! Food!"

"We've been here before!"

The only mess was when Hannah knocked the spoonful away from her mouth and over her face.


It was cause for reflection.

We are starting to wonder if Hannah has a bit of red in her hair; the lighting here makes it look much more red than normal. We both have redheads in our extended families, so it wouldn't be too surprising.

Sometime within the next couple of days we will be trying out avocado. Surely that will provide some more excitement.

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The sound of laughter

Hannah doesn't laugh frequently, she saves them up and then lets them all out at once. So far she finds the dogs especially amusing. One of her first fits of giggles was when my sister-in-law's boyfriend (of somewhat Bunyonesque proportions) picked up her (also large) puppy. Big man handling little dog in the air must have been very funny because it set her off. I'm pretty regular size, but our 80lb dogs are half my size, and they just don't go in the air like that. I tried. It was uncomfortable for everyone.

Anyway, we have trained both of our dogs to catch food, but due to their insanity when it comes to foodstuffs, we haven't done too much of that around our little one. Last night we had Hannah in her swing, and Heidi threw an almond to Levin (our chocolate lab). She loved it! Longest baby giggling I have ever seen. Must be the quick opening and snapping of Levin's mouth as he catches. She laughed for about 10 minutes, and Levin had a feast of almonds. We don't have a real video camera, but I caught some of it with our digital camera. I played the video for Hannah several times today and she loves hearing the laughter. Sometime later I'll probably go through youtube and see if she enjoys other babies laughing too. Would love to know if anybody else's child enjoys this.

Last night was also the first time that we tried rice cereal with Hannah. I am not quite sure what she thought about that, but I'll do another post about it later with pictures.

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The times, they are a changing (part II)

What I intended to write about in part I, is how my relationship with Hannah has changed since I started staying home with her. My wife and I work opposite each other; she works 8AM-1PM, and I work 2PM-late. We started this schedule about three weeks ago, before which Heidi was on maternity leave, so I usually had Heidi to fall back on when Hannah wasn't happy. And I did that more often than not. "She's crying. What does she want? Can you do it?" or just "She's crying. Take her." That's not to say that I didn't do anything, she was just fussy in the evenings because of cluster feeding and I lack the appropriate equipment.

Or at least I used to. Three weeks ago I got new breasts, in the form of adiri bottles. We highly recommend them. Hannah wasn't a fan of bottles, and she didn't take these right away, but she did take them. I still don't enjoy getting bottles ready and suffer from the occasional bout of booby envy when holding a screaming baby waiting for milk to warm up. Did not see that one coming.

Once we reached an understanding as to what is required for her not to starve in my care, we started to get to know each other better. I know her cries, her tired look, her about to be hungry look, her poop face. She knows me. She knows it's ok with Dad, even when Mom isn't around. She knows that when I sing she can stop screaming. And fall asleep. The down side of this is that I have sung Bogoroditse Devo at least ten times a day for the past three weeks. I need a new song.

I also have a new item on my list of favorite things. As I mentioned in a previous post, Hannah loves diaper-changing time, and as a result, we don't mind it so much either. Most of our pictures of her prior to three months are on a changing pad, just after getting her dressed. While diaper changes aren't quite my favorite yet, it is this time right after that I cherish. Hannah is happy and smiling and we get some good face to face time. We change her on pads on the floor, so it is a good time to give her raspberries and kisses. And then the new favorite thing: brushing my nose across her cheek while she half closes her eyes, grabs my face and says "A-goooooooooo!". That is not something that I would have guessed would be on the list a couple of years ago; if only I had known that there was something this amazing in store.

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The times, they are a changing (part I)

I would like to start this post with a little excerpt from a NYT article that I found amusing. It's not that I really found the article amusing, as it is about the C.I.A.'s plans to assassinate Qaeda leaders, although in my pre-adolescent years that would have probably qualified as a dream job. What made me chuckle is that the article makes it sound as though the C.I.A. envisioned it much as my junior high self did. Here's the line: "'It sounds great in the movies, but when you try to do it, it’s not that easy,' a former intelligence official said. 'Where do you base them? What do they look like? Are they going to be sitting around at headquarters on 24-hour alert waiting to be called?'" So many questions! Why didn't Arnold ever have to do paper work? Let's just give up. Thanks for nothing Hollywood.

The title of the post, however, does not refer to The Times, or our political times and changes. This blog is way more narcissistic than that. Actually, time for a tangent. Not that this blog has loads of followers (hello to the both of you), but I feel a bit silly not explaining my reason for writing. It is, quite simply, that I enjoy writing. I like smithing words. I don't assume that anyone is going to visit here because I have life-changing things to say or that the world needs to hear more about and from me. Science writing can occasionally be less than a satisfactory creative outlet, so my wife encouraged me to write on here. But it's really for the inevitable money and fame.

One diversion and one tangent. Maybe I'll get to something relevant to my original intentions in "The times, they are a changing (part II)", a less divergenty and tangenty sequel!

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The diaper-void, will-to-void paradox

Diapers are useful. I am not arguing that. What is counterintuitive, however, is how much babies enjoy disposing of their waste outside of their pampered walls. We will, more or less, go through two diapers at most changing times. One diaper that prompts the changing, and another diaper that prompts the peeing. Pee unfettered by covering. Pee unrestrained and joyous in its natural release. Pee that gets all over everything involved. My worst fear is that I will be promoting healthful eating by giving her a raspberry, when she will think "So relaxed, so much fun. Hey that tickles. I love to pee!". Oddly enough, the pee usually goes over her belly, and there is nothing that ruins a raspberry quite like urine. In my face.

Unless it is poop. Fortunately, her projectile poop is not as frequent as it used to be. At first, taking her temperature was like uncorking a shaken bottle of champagne, with a couple of minor differences, but nothing important enough to point out. Unfortunately, raising her legs to wipe off her previous diaper's work makes for a beautiful new canvas that our little Jackson Pollock attempts to cover as quickly as possible. I have included her best work here.

You may be thinking that there is an easy solution to this problem - keep your baby's butt covered. An excellent suggestion! I'm so glad you could help. This method is frequently taken into consideration, and would be used exclusively, except for Hannah's love of nakey time. Nothing makes our baby smile like getting naked. As parents, she probably thinks that taking her clothes off is what we do best. I have to admit that if I wore diapers, a little aeration post-urination would seem like just the thing.

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The New Job

I have wee ones in my charge. One very important wee one for whom I would lay down my life and billions and billions of much, much smaller, dispensable ones.

On February 23 of this year, my wife and I welcomed a beautiful baby girl into this world. It went something along the lines of "THERE IS SO MUCH FRICKING PRESSURE!!!" from Heidi, and "Woah!...hmmm...uhhh...baby!!" from me. Hannah weighed in at 6 lbs 10.7 oz, with probably 1 lb of that consisting of a beautiful head of hair. Yes, Heidi did have heartburn, and no, I don't think that really makes a difference. Which brings me to explain my second charge of wee ones (and frequent skepticism).

By day I watch Hannah, and by night I am a microbiologist. A real live scientist! Or a real life scientist. Or both. I work with Streptomyces, bacteria that make most of the clinically useful antibiotics. My beloved wife works from 8-1, and then we switch, and I work from 2-late. Whoever is not working is watching Hannah. Because that's not work. HAHA. Ha. hmm. Maybe you didn't realize this blog would be so funny?

At any rate, she is the cutest baby. It's objectively true. Verified by everyone who has seen her. Exemplified, perhaps, by her Zoolander impression.
I am not sure if that is Le Tigre, or if she is already taking a shot at Magnum; I asked, and Hannah thought it was obvious enough to not dignify my ignorance with a response. Hannah wanted to go for a softer light with this next shot, something she calls "Darth Ducky".
All good things in moderation; that should be enough cute for one day.

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