a philosophical question

If two kids are sitting at the dinner table, and one eats only the taco shell while the other eats only the taco filling, does it count as one good supper?

that naughty kipper: the birthday cake

When we were kids, we had a dog named Kipper. She was an Australian Terrier, whose mother was the dog of one of my dad's close friends.

Kipper had... quirks. And she was not known for being particularly intelligent. Nor for leading a boring life.

Recently, Robin has been requesting "Kipper stories." These stories have turned out to be remarkably effective bribes at the dinner table, so I think I should write them down so that the next time a plate of vegetables is on the line and my mind blanks, I'll have a reference.

May I present the current favorite: The Birthday Cake.

Summer, 1991. My dad's 40th birthday. We spent the day baking a cake, then icing and decorating it. We carefully placed it on the kitchen table before taking Dad out to Ichiban, a Japanese restaurant downtown.

It was a lovely dinner, I'm sure. I recall the chef preparing it at our table, but have no memory of what we actually ate. No matter. We had our cake waiting at home for afterward.

When we returned home, Dan and I were the first to enter the kitchen to see that someone had already started in on the cake. About a third of it was gone. We looked at each other, confused. Mom had placed the cake on the table immediately before we'd left, so that it'd be the first thing Dad would see when we returned. There had been no time to sneak a bite. (If there had been time, I'm sure at least one of us would have so done.) So who could have possibly beaten us to the cake?

The answer struck us both at the same time: Kipper. Despite having a standing height of, at most, twelve inches (and then only when her ears were standing extra-tall), she was known for her ability to jump onto the chairs and then the table to scarf down whatever was available. We'd all learned to make sure that our chairs were fully tucked in when we left the table, but I suppose in the rush to get out the door one of us had slipped up.

What had thrown us off was not that the cake was up on the table. We knew Kipper plenty well enough to know that height was only a partial barrier. What had fooled us into thinking, even briefly, that Kipper might be innocent was the fact that it was done so neatly, so precisely, that you had to look pretty closely to see that the missing piece had not been removed with a knife.

I can just see her, noticing that we'd left the chair out, then jumping up in a flash (we may not have even been out of the driveway) and realizing it was all her Christmases come at once. She must have started with a lick of the icing, nervously waiting for the sound of the garage door opening again, then another lick, and another, before throwing caution to the wind and gulping down cake until she'd had her fill.

I'm not saying we were glad she'd helped herself, but at least we had enough left to add the candles and sing Happy Birthday in the traditional loud, off-key, out-of-time way for which our family is known.

i've got mail

I don't remember how it came up, but Robin became very interested in the mail on our drive home tonight.

So, over and over, we wrote pretend letters to each other, put them in pretend envelopes, added pretend stamps, pretend walked to the pretend mailbox, pretended to put them in the mailbox, discussed the pretend mail carrier coming to pick up and sort the pretend mail and collect all the pretend letters for Robin, then walk the pretend mail route, reach our pretend house and put the pretend mail in the pretend mailbox, then pretend to retrieve the mail and read the letter.

When Robin asked me what my letters said, the answer was always:

"Dear Robin,

I love you!

Love, Mommy."

When I asked Robin what her letters said, they were never the same, but always something to the effect of:

"Ninety two dog stairs and the [unintelligible] ideas."

Robin isn't tired of this game yet, so we no doubt will have lots of chances to practice.

out for (to?) lunch

Mommy: "Robin, if you eat up all your lunch, you can have an ice cube for dessert."

Robin: [Eagerly takes another bite to show us her willingness to be bribed. And while Mommy and Daddy have not dipped their own eggs in jam, they are not planning on stopping Robin from doing so if it means finishing a meal in less than 90 minutes.]

Daddy: "Maybe you can even have TWO ice cubes!"

Robin: "No, I just want ONE ice cube." [Takes another bite.]

Mommy: "Let's not be rash here, Daddy."

olivia has a sense of humour

our family

Mommy: Robin, who's in our family?
Robin: Mommy and Daddy and Danny and Olivia and baby food!

Eh?

robin's first joke

"Old Macdonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. And on his farm he had a [delighted, mischievous grin appears] MONKEY!!!"

Followed by the explanation: "Monkeys don't live on the farm! They live at THE ZOO!"

Followed by the repetition of the above comments approximately forty-seven times in a row.

Give her this: she knows what goes
where.

robin's bedtime poem

Every night (at least, every night that I put Robin to bed), the last thing we do before I tell Robin that I love her is recite a poem. This is a poem I remember my mom telling me when I was young, and it always made me feel very calm.

Recently Robin has started demanding the poem from Andy, who unfortunately does not know Mommy's particular childhood poems. So I'm writing it down for him.

Good night Mr. Beetle.
Good night Miss Fly.
Good night Miss Ladybug.
The moon is in the sky.

Good night Mr. Rooster.
Good night Miss Sheep.
Good night Mr. Horse.
We must all go to sleep.

Good night Miss Kitten.
Good night Mr. Pup.
We'll see you in the morning
When the sun comes up.

our funny bunny and her little sister

I'm sure I'll remember these things, but let's face it, I won't...

• Robin, when asked whether she's a "funny bunny" or a "silly billy," invariably answers whichever one you say last. Then she immediately changes her mind.

• When asked "Do you know how much I love you?" she spreads her arms wide and says, "Biggest much!"

• She's a bit of a neatnik. She likes to walk around with a washcloth wiping surfaces, saying, "I'm cleaning." She also likes to take the cloth after a meal and clean her own tray. Or at least smear the mess around.

• Robin is now at the stage where she constantly asks, "What's that?" It's often a random guess as to what she's pointing at, but she rarely lets us off the hook.

• She has a great imagination. She likes to climb into the footstool and pretend she's in Papa's boat, then jump out and "swim" on the floor, demonstrating her kicking, then splashing, and then blowing bubbles. She puts her stuffed animals to bed many times a day and sometimes picks up my knitting needles, clicks them together and informs me, "I'm knitting a sweater." She also puts the wrong end of her spoon in her mouth and hums, then tells me, "I'm playing my flute."

• She is an amazing talker, although she calls her sister Isla. She speaks in full sentences; her record, as far as I can tell, is ten words: "Isla is having a sleep in Mommy and Daddy's room." It's quite remarkable. Really. And not just because I'm her mom.

• When asked to say cheese, Robin puts on her "ham smile." It looks more like a grimace of pain, but it comes in handy when brushing her teeth.
  

• Robin is very, very good with her little sister. She likes to gently pat her face and give her kisses (which entails lightly touching her lips to Olivia's face and saying mmmmaaa). She keeps close tabs on Olivia's activities and keeps us updated: "Isla is sleeping." "Isla's awake now!" "Isla is squirming."

• She is also very aware of what babies eat: breast milk. Several times a day I am advised, "Isla needs breast milk now." She occasionally breastfeeds her stuffed animals.

Ollie-Dollie is doing well also. Compared to Robin, she's enormous; 5.5 kg (12 lb 3 oz) compared to 4.6 kg (10 lb 2 oz), and is almost out of her 3-month-size clothes. She sleeps incredibly well, knock on wood -- usually from 10 pm to 5.30 am or so, though recently as late as 8.30!!! She smiles at us when we pick her up out of the bassinette. She humours us by sitting quietly while we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, mainly to ourselves as she's not the least bit interested in actually looking at the book. She's a big-time talker too. What she lacks in articulation, she makes up for in cuteness and quantity. Andy has a great video here.

scientific literacy, or the lack of it

By "scientific literacy," I do not mean advanced knowledge in one or more areas of science. I mean an understanding of the scientific method, and of its strengths and limitations.

Put simply, the scientific method is just a means of objectively answering a question using a certain set of steps. First, the question is asked -- for example, does reducing the amount of cholesterol in one's diet reduce the chances of having a heart attack? Next, a hypothesis (a fancy term for a guess at the answer) is generated -- yes, reducing cholesterol reduces the chance of a heart attack. Then an experiment is thought up to confirm or refute the hypothesis -- this group of a thousand people will eat one diet, this group of a thousand people will eat that lower-cholesterol diet -- and carried out. Next, the results are analyzed -- the lower-cholesterol group had the same number of heart attacks as the regular-diet group. Last, the conclusion is drawn and the question is answered -- a diet that is lower in cholesterol does not reduce the chance of a heart attack. (That's actually true, as dietary cholesterol is broken down before it reaches the bloodstream, so it doesn't affect the arteries very much at all.)

That's the scientific method right there: question, hypothesis, experiment, results, conclusion.

That's it.

In the real world, designing and carrying out the experiment such that "confounders" are accounted for can be tricky. A confounder is something that was not accounted for in the experiment that impacted on the results and might affect the conclusion -- for example, what if half of the low-cholesterol-diet group were smokers, while almost nobody in the regular-diet group smoked? That would definitely impact on the results, and you could come to a totally wrong conclusion!

It can also be tricky to figure out exactly how to collect and analyze the data. How do you know that someone had a heart attack? Ask them? Check their hospital records? How did the hospital know whether or not they had a heart attack? And what statistical method do you use to compare the results?

So yeah, the practical aspects of the scientific method can be difficult to deal with. But that doesn't change this: the scientific method is the best method ever identified in human history for answering questions and advancing our understanding of the natural world.

We sometimes laugh at other methods used in the past, like reading tea leaves and relying on "everybody knows it" reasoning. And in the real world, we often have to rely on plain ol' common sense and our own experience because not everything we encounter in our daily lives has been subjected to rigorous investigation. But there are all kinds of examples of how conclusions based on those systems of answering questions are completely wrong. A few examples include the idea that the sun orbits the earth, and that white people are superior to black people, and that it's a good time to buy Company X's stock.

Many things have been subjected to rigorous investigation, and while there is always the possibility that in the future more information may come to light and change what we think we know, in these cases we at least have some empirical evidence (ie. we didn't just assume or guess, but actually checked) that a particular course of action is a better choice, or at least no worse, than another.

It is not okay to bury one's head in the sand and pretend that just because I don't know something, nobody else does either. The body of human knowledge is so vast that it's just not possible for one person to master it all, but that's okay. One person doesn't need to know it all -- they just have to know who to ask when they need to know about something that's outside of their area of expertise. You can get into issues of what an expert's motives and influences are, but it's important to differentiate between one's desire or need for a particular piece of information, and one's actual knowledge. It takes humility to see this in ourselves, but it's true. (A case in point: a parent passionately wants to do the right thing for their child, but that does not in and of itself make them knowledgeable about whether or not that vaccination is a good thing.)

Judging from the media, there are a lot of people who fall into the "I don't know, so nobody else does either" trap. Look, I'm not advocating blind faith in anyone. I think it's perfectly all right, even a good idea, to not just take someone's word for it. But we need to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. And when we are up against these limits, we need to recognize that someone else might have the answer.

How do we find someone with the answer? That's an art, but for what it's worth, here's my approach. First, it needs to be someone with motives in line with mine; even if my motivation is not the same as theirs, it should not be at odds. I may want information about what stock to buy, but asking a broker who benefits more if I choose Stock A over Stock B is probably not as reliable as the broker who gets paid the same regardless of what stock I pick (better yet, who gets paid the same even if I choose no stock at all). Here my motivation is a return on my investment; the broker's, I hope, is to impress me with his or her knowledge so much that I seek their advice again next time. Those two motivations, while not the same, are not mutually exclusive. On the other hand, if the broker's motivation is to earn a better commission, then our motivations might very well be in opposition to each other -- he might get make more money if I pick the stock that's going to tank next week.

Second, they need to be knowledgeable. Generally I think it's reasonable to accept that if someone has the proper credentials, they can be thought of as knowledgeable. That's not foolproof (it depends on what it takes to earn those credentials), but practically speaking it's probably the best we can do in an area that we are not experts in ourselves.

Third, and most importantly, we can ask them to show us the evidence, to ask why they recommend one course of action over another. Ideally, there's a formal experiment following the scientific method that they can refer to. There are some areas in which it's more realistic to expect solid experimental evidence (like medicine) than others (like the stock market), and in those cases, we should expect to receive concrete answers, or at least an admission of a gap in the knowledge base.

I'm not saying this is easy. There are a lot of questions out there that haven't been examined properly, and as I said we often are stuck with nothing more than our common sense. But our own personal experience is a form of evidence too; it's the lowest form of evidence (meaning that it's the most likely to lead us astray), but it's sometimes the best we've got.

The key is to recognize the limitations of relying exclusively on our own experience, and recognizing that more reliable information might be out there somewhere. And then having the humility to go and find it.

love hurts

Mommy: Can I have a hug?
Robin: [Faceplants into Mommy's hip in enthusiasm.]
Mommy: Doesn't that hurt?
Robin: Yes! (Said with equal enthusiam.)

on birth

I suppose it's not really all that surprising that I've been thinking about birth more and more lately, seeing as I've hit the eight-months-pregnant mark and all. It's interesting to see how many people think they have the right to impose their views on a pregnant woman when it comes to labour and delivery choices (of course, that's after they've also felt free to rub her belly and express their thoughts about her pregnancy, but before they'll tell her how to raise her kids). I mean, it's one thing for close friends and family to tell you what they think -- in a lot of ways, we rely on that -- but it's something else entirely when random people on the street or internet try to tell you what you "need" to do.

I have been involved with something like eighty or ninety births, and it's an interesting exercise to think about the process from different perspectives.

When I was pregnant with Robin, I had a few different feelings as the birth drew nearer. First, I was looking forward to being not-pregnant again. Being nine months pregnant is not a particularly comfortable state. Second, and more importantly, I was looking forward to meeting this little person and getting to interact more meaningfully than just feeling kicks and hiccups. Although I was somewhat nervous about the delivery, I fully accepted it as a necessary step and was looking forward to getting through it and starting this parenthood gig. Not that Andy and I particularly felt that we knew what we were getting into, but I was pretty sure we'd be able to figure things out as we went along.

I didn't really have any "expectations" for the birth other than having a safe delivery with a healthy baby at the end. Of course I was fully aware that there are no guarantees in L&D (or the rest of life, for that matter), but it is the norm in this day and age in a developed country. It's very easy to take for granted, and I did.

I definitely didn't have any pre-set ideas about what I was going to choose in labour. I'd considered things like labour positions and pain-control methods, and knew what the options were, but I was pretty sure that these would be game-time decisions -- that I'd have to see how things went and decide what was going to work best at the time. My birth plan was (a) call my parents to look after the dog and (b) go to the hospital. Everything after that I considered up in the air.

But as a birth attendant (and by this I mean a doctor, nurse, midwife or other person trained to oversee the process of L&D -- as opposed to a support person, like a spouse or doula), I thought of things very differently. My goal for each birth was the same as when it was my own: a safe delivery with a healthy baby and mom at the end of it. But my job was to do everything possible to make sure that happened, not to simply hope for the best and assume that things would work out as I did when it was my own delivery.

I had spent years learning about L&D, but most of this time was spent learning about all the things that can go wrong -- and that's a LONG list. Sure, most of the time things go more-or-less well, and in those cases the delivery is, from the attendant's point of view, "easy." Obviously I recognized that the mom usually wouldn't agree -- it's called labour for a reason -- but in these cases she didn't need a whole lot from me (although even in the most straight-forward situations, there was almost always something that I was needed to do).

The thing is, the whole point of having a birth attendant is not really to manage "normal" birth -- it's to have someone who can identify problems and take action if things take a turn for the worse. Things can go wrong, slowly or suddenly, in a minor way or catastrophically. And it's not always predictable -- they can go wrong even when everything has been perfectly normal up to that point. Catastrophe is not all that common but it can happen, and that's why throughout history (and even now in developing countries) maternal and infant mortality have been serious problems. Lots of people minimize the risks of childbirth by saying something to the effect of, "Women in Africa have babies all the time without doctors," and that's true -- but far more of them die, or their babies do, than women and babies who have access to good care. Want to know how much this actually matters? The WHO estimates that in Canada, maternal mortality in 2003 was 7 per 100 000 live births, whereas in Rwanda in 2005 it was 1300 per 100 000 live births.

That's right, in a country where access to perinatal care is limited, maternal mortality is almost 200 times higher than in a country where high-quality perinatal care is the norm.

So as a birth attendant, I felt a tremendous responsibility to make sure that I knew how to identify very quickly things that were starting to go badly, and to know how to react to reduce the risk as much as possible. That was my job, and I was too focused on that to worry very much about the smaller details, the "niceties" that some of my patients were focused on. Perhaps it was callous, but things like nice wallpaper and the ambient music were not helping me accomplish the "healthy mom and baby" goal. It was fine if someone else wanted to worry about those things, but it was not my role; I had other things to think about.

Virtually every birth I was involved in (and I was only an active participant in low-risk births; I was involved in some high-risk births but didn't do much more than observe) had at least one "uh oh" moment, where I wondered if things were starting to go sour. That's just the nature of birth -- even when things are completely normal, it's one of those extreme events, when both mom and baby really are on the edge. These "uh oh" moments were almost always relatively brief and sorted themselves out, but sometimes they didn't. Even in the cases where I had to take some kind of action, it was usually a simple maneuver that often the mom didn't really notice at the time.

Most of us, when in a position of responsibility and faced with something that we think might be going sour, feel an overpowering need to take action, to do something, rather than simply wait and see. Obstetrics is no different. Like other areas of medicine, OB is becoming more evidence-based (ie. more and more things are being properly studied to see if they are actually helpful or not), which is a tremendously good thing. But there's still a lot of things that just haven't been studied yet -- sometimes because it's so rare that it's hard to find enough cases to study, sometimes because nobody's thought to do the study yet, sometimes because it's very difficult or impossible to study accurately or ethically. So in these cases people just have to do the best they can with what they've got. It's not a perfect world; we just have to muddle through.

reducing dangerous plays in hockey

Every so often, some NHL player does something unbelievably stupid and seriously injures another player. These dirty shots are often just sickening to watch -- for example, Marty McSorley clubbing Donald Brashear in the head in 2000, or Todd Bertuzzi sucker-punching Steve Moore in 2004. The world is shocked, hockey gets on the front page for all the wrong reasons for a few days and the player who delivered the shot expresses his profound regret. Usually, though, it's not much more than a blip in the career of the injurer, but the injuree often has to live with the consequences indefinitely.

Hockey has become much more cognizant of the long-term effects that head injuries can have, which is a good thing. They are currently working on a plan to discourage headshots in particular, though frankly I was underwhelmed by the plan recently announced: they can call penalties. Holy moly. That'll learn 'em!

May I present my suggestion: the You-Don't-Play-Till-He-Plays Rule.

It's pretty straight-forward: a player who is deemed to have committed a wantonly reckless act that was clearly intended to injure another player and results in a career-threatening (or worse) injury, is suspended until the injured player is also able to return to the game. Yup, that means that if you end a guy's career with a a$$*@&# play that if committed anywhere else would result in jail time, you'd end your own career too.

Sure, there are definitely some areas open to debate here. First and foremost, nobody can prove beyond a doubt what a player's intent was; that would have to be left to the league's discretion. But that's already the case anyway -- nothing new here. And there would have to be an appeal process, since we're talking about a very, very serious punishment -- but again that's nothing new. And I'm not talking about incidents where the contact was accidental, or a nasty-but-routine play that happens to result in serious injury -- I'm talking about the incidents where the action taken can result in nothing other than serious injury, like the incidents mentioned above.

Why? Because I think that if you're willing to end another player's career, you are forfeiting your own privilege to play.

This rule would create a very strong disincentive for players to let their emotions run away with them during the game. Sure, there may have been a long history of animosity between Bertuzzi and Moore, but in the real world, you can't break someone's neck just because they've been harassing you for a while.

This would also create an incentive for the injured player to stay out of the lineup longer if the other player is a bigger asset to the team than the injured player. But would this really be a big deal?

• Most players want to get back into the game sooner rather than later as it's not good for their careers to stay out longer than necessary. As the saying goes, you can't make the club sitting in the tub. Of course, it's possible that management could take the decision out of the hands of the injured player, but most clubs aren't eager to pay guys to sit on the bench unnecessarily either, at least not for long. Historically, management has been far more likely to rush players back into the lineup before they were ready than to keep them out too long. Particularly if the injury is a concussion, this might actually be to the injured player's long-term benefit.
  
• It's unusual for a "skill" player (eg. Gretzky, Crosby) to injure a goon, but they are much more likely to be a goon's target. In other words, it's the skill players who need the league's protection more, and it's also in the league's interest to protect them, as they're the ones people pay to see. So the issue is more important when one goon hurts another and there's a significant difference in their importance to their respective teams.
• This is also more important when the teams involved are in the same conference or division and are competing for the same playoff spots. And these teams play each other more often, so they are more likely to be involved in these sorts of incidents. However, these factors are nothing new -- they're already reasons for a player to be more likely to injure someone in his own conference.

Under the current system, the player who commits an act like this is given a suspension and usually some kind of economic penalty as well. And sure, that probably hurts after the fact. But in the heat of the moment, competitive juices probably overwhelm economic considerations, so in the instant where the player is deciding to swing the stick or deliver the elbow to the head, a financial penalty is probably not as much of a deterrent as the knowledge that they might be ending their own career (which would be a bigger financial penalty in any case).

The biggest stumbling block to this rule would likely be the NHLPA, the players' union. It has a mandate to protect its members from unfair discipline, because historically sports leagues do not exactly have a great track record for looking out for the players. (Of course, the NHLPA has not always been great for its members either.) And I can see the union not liking the idea of indefinite suspensions, even though it's been done before.

But shouldn't the NHLPA it have a mandate to try and protect its members from each other as well? How can they justify standing behind, say, Bertuzzi (other than to make sure he gets his due process with the league) when Moore, who's just as much a member as Bertuzzi, has suffered a catastrophic injury at his hands?

I'm not saying this rule would eliminate career-ending injuries in hockey. It's a rough game and accidents happen. But it might reduce the non-accidental injuries, and would demonstrate the NHL's desire to foster some degree of respect between players, which is one of the reasons we want our kids to play sports in the first place.

why one-year-olds are not generally left to look after their younger siblings

Robin is fond of her doll, and is very enthusiastic, if not very cautious, about looking after it. In a space of less than five minutes, Robin had dangled the doll upside down by one leg, gripped it by the neck, "burped" it with sufficient vigor to break its spine, dropped it, attempted to stand on it, accidentally kicked it when another toy caught her eye, put it to bed on the extreme edge of the couch and almost asphyxiated it with an absolutely filthy blanket that she'd pulled out of a nearby basket of dirty laundry. You know, so it wouldn't get cold.

every publisher's dream come true

This is what happens when you keep secrets about what you're getting someone.

the flu and the shot

Hat tip: Alyssa.

No vaccine is completely without risk. I don't know of anyone who claims that they are. The issue is, which is greater: the risk of the vaccine or the risk of the disease?

Choosing not to vaccinate is not choosing to take no risk -- it is simply choosing to take a different risk. (Hat tip: Paul Offit.)

Based on previous pandemic flu outbreaks and experience with previous flu shots, the numbers are:

• Serious complications caused by the flu shot occur in about 1 per million people vaccinated. By "serious," I mean severe neurological injury or anaphylactic allergic reaction.
• Non-serious complications caused by the flu shot (such as redness of the eyes, mild fever, and localized soreness at the injection site) occur in about 1 in 10 people vaccinated. The symptoms usually last 1-2 days, though occasionally persist longer.
• The risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome (the neurological disorder most commonly associated with the flu shot) in people who do not get a flu shot is also about 1 per million people.
• Death due to complications of the flu are estimated to have occurred in about 1000 per million people who became ill in previous pandemics.

Look, I'm the LAST person in the world to advocate blind faith in Big Pharma or the government. I'm actually kind of thought of as a bit of a wing-nut in that department. But it's important to remember that there's a reason to get worried about influenza.

It is definitely, absolutely, 100% your right to not put anything into your (or your child's) body if you do not want it there. That is a fundamental principle that I think must be honored under virtually all circumstances.

I am not telling anyone what to do -- I simply wish to make evidence-based facts available so that people can make up their minds based on good information. This evidence comes from well-designed, high-quality studies that have been ongoing as long as this particular vaccine has been available.

The safety testing for the H1N1 shot was actually not abbreviated compared to regular seasonal flu shots. The part that was skipped was the initial step where they look at the circulating flu strains in the spring and try to determine which strains will cause problems the following year so that they can be included in the vaccine. With H1N1, they knew exactly which strain to put into the vaccine, so this step was unnecessary. The rest of the safety testing was the same as every year (at least in Canada), which is why the H1N1 vaccine is coming out late.

The only real difference between the H1N1 shot and the regular seasonal flu shot is the addition of an adjuvant. The adjuvant, which is made from things like vitamin E, fish oil and water, is there because it boosts one's immune response to the vaccine so that you can get a lot more doses out of the same amount of material. At the beginning of the manufacturing process, it was not at all clear that enough vaccine could be made to protect the population, which is why they added the adjuvant. The adjuvant has never been used in North American flu shots before because it's never been needed; it's been used for years in flu shots in Europe, and in other vaccines in North America, and has a very good safety record.

The non-adjuvanted vaccine is going to be available for pregnant women, hopefully soon; this is being done because although there's absolutely no evidence to suggest it's harmful in pregnancy, some people feel there is not enough evidence of safety either. This is being done, appropriately in my opinion, out of an abundance of caution.

We can't wait for long-term studies of flu vaccines because by the time the data is available, it's too late -- the virus has done it's thing and moved on to its next version. So we have to go with what we've got right now, based on what's going on in other countries now and on past experience with other flus (pandemic and not) and vaccines. It's entirely possible that H1N1 will fizzle out and we'll look back in the spring and wonder what we were worried about, but so far it looks like H1N1 is coming back pretty aggressively and it would be irresponsible from a public-health perspective to take a "let's see what happens" approach. We do not have a crystal ball to tell us whether this flu is "The Big One" or not. I'm not exaggerating to scare people here -- influenza pandemics can wipe out enormous numbers of people, even with modern sanitation, nutrition, etc.

There is no really effective treatment for influenza. Tamiflu is somewhat helpful but far from a miracle drug, so all that can really be done for someone with the flu is supportive care -- for most, this just means fluids and rest but for those who are hardest hit, it means ventilators and intensive care. And the concern is that more people than with most flus have been in the "hardest hit" group.

This is why the H1N1 vaccine is being offered to everyone.

enough

Mike Kelly makes me mad. He keeps proclaiming his rock-solid confidence in the Bombers and his offensive system. Now, I do not claim to be a football expert. I do not claim to be a farmer, either -- but I can still identify manure when I smell it.

From Wikipedia: Despite lofty promises, the Bombers 2009 season hit an all-time low on September 13, when they were humiliated 55-10 by the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the Banjo Bowl, in a game that left many in Winnipeg calling for Kelly's job.

robin's first word!

You know you're in trouble when your kid's first word is, "Uh-oh!"

I was wondering what her first word might be. I was guessing some form of Griffin, because she hears it many times a day from both Andy and I. I also thought that something like Mommy or Daddy might be good candidates, or maybe peek-a-boo. I considered "bee bo" (which is the tiny hippo way of saying "belly button") a long shot but in the running, given how often we read that book.

She learned, "Uh oh!" from Andy, who says it every time she drops something off her tray when she's eating. I guess I forgot about the things we say a million times a day without realizing it.

it's a good busy

June tends to be a hectic month. Coming right after the always-busy May (home of Andy's birthday, Mother's Day and the first long weekend of the summer), June plays host to my birthday, our anniversary, my brother's birthday, Father's Day as well as the end of the school year which brings my mother's gloating giddiness about having nine weeks off. And of course, June is also the month when I finally get around to cleaning up the garden, which should have been done in May but never seems to be. Turns out having a baby around to feed and water kind of kills my interest in doing it for plants. Oh well, the perennials are looking after themselves.

And of course, it's also the month of getting ready for July: Folk Fest, holidays and weekends at the lake. This year the end of July also means (a) Robin's first birthday, which leads to (b) Andy going back to work.

I love summer!

disconnect

When Robin was born, Andy and I were introduced to a whole new world, one that includes diapers, strollers, car seats and very small clothing -- all things we'd never thought about before. It had never even occurred to us that anyone might think about these things. Other than Kirk and Miyuki's daughter Lisa, we hadn't spent a whole lot of time around infants, because there just weren't any in our immediate families, and most of our friends were still childless.

I don't think this was so much of a problem in the past. Families tend to be smaller now, and more spread out. It's not uncommon for people to live hundreds of miles away from their parents and extended families, and to see them only occasionally. As a result we don't see each others' kids as much and therefore go for years at a time without holding a baby, watching a toddler throw a temper tantrum, seeing a preschooler learn to print her name, and so on. We don't have the experience with young kids to know what is normal and when, other than what we remember from our own childhoods.

I think this is one thing that make parenting harder now than it used to be -- the lack of contact with young kids and the resulting disorientation around childhood milestones. There is a tendency to push kids to reach developmental milestones sooner, to learn new skills faster and be more "advanced" than is reasonable for a given age. And why? For what benefit?

the nhl is not coming to winnipeg

Every time an NHL team gets into financial trouble, the media in Winnipeg stirs up the pot about how maybe the team will relocate to Winnipeg. This bugs me to no end. The NHL in its current state is not viable in Winnipeg. We are too small a market and there just isn't the corporate base to finance a team. While the NHL would be much more viable than it used to be now that there's a salary cap, it's just not going to happen here.

Having said that, the NHL in any incarnation is not viable in a whole lot of the markets where it's currently operating. Gary Bettman is either a fool if he truly believes that the Predators, Coyotes and Thrashers are ever going to make money, or he's a flat-out liar to keep saying that these franchises are doing well. Who does he honestly think he's kidding?

The main problem is that people in these markets are just not that into you, Gary. They don't grow up playing hockey, they grow up playing baseball and football. They don't get the game. They have never been passionate about it, and despite your trying to jam it down their throats for a decade, they still aren't. This is a square peg in a round hole -- it just ain't gonna fly.

the eternal project may someday draw to a close

Our third floor has been a work in progress for an embarrassingly long time now. We had some water problems the first spring we lived here, so Andy basically ripped a hole in the wall (it was this flimsy particle board) to get into the crawlspace to find the source; that began the journey, way back in spring 2007. In the fall of that year we gutted the third floor and replaced the wood-chip "insulation" with something that actually provides, you know, insulation.

With that, our heating bills plummeted and we kind of lost steam. Andy, with the help of many, gradually put up the vapour barrier over the next, um, year or so (hey, it takes a long time), but we didn't really need the space so it kind of got put on the back burner. Especially when we decided to put on a new roof to keep our brand-spanking-new insulation all dry.

Then along came Robin, who was doing fine sleeping in a bassinet in our room for a few months. Then we set up her crib in the second bedroom on the second floor, which is also our office. This was also fine, because she was a very sound sleeper, so after she was good and asleep, we could still go in and use our computers.

But now she doesn't sleep quite as soundly (don't get me wrong, she sleeps fine, as long as she doesn't wake up while we're in there and realize that hey, mom's here -- it must be playtime!) so we can't use our computers as much now. I must apologize for the lack of picture updates these days, as I can't get in there to upload them off the camera.

Anyway, the vapour barrier is long finished and the drywalling is well underway. We have WALLS! Pretty soon there will also be new flooring, light fixtures and (dare I say it) baseboards! Ooh, I got a shiver just thinking that!

I'm so domesticated.

cutest. picture. ever.

Courtesy of Andy's mom.

why we immunize robin

The "debate" over the risks and benefits of childhood immunizations drives me batty.

There is a lot of information out there, but it's crucial to be very critical of each source that you look at. While not everyone has the same experience with vaccines or anything else for that matter, I think the best you can do is to look not at individual experiences but at what happens to the majority of people, because that gives you a better idea of what is likely to happen in your own case.

The problem with looking at individual cases is that it's very difficult and usually impossible to prove causation (ie. that action A caused result B) when an outcome is isolated. That's not my opinion or interpretation, that's a well-established fact; it's why we have the field of statistics. I'm not saying that A didn't cause B. A might very well have caused B, but you just don't know. Unless there's a very, very clear cause-and-effect relationship with a well-understood mechanism (eg. pushing the glass off the table caused it to fall to the ground and smash via the well-known mechanism of gravity) then it is necessary to study many cases and see if the result happens more often when the suspected cause is present than when it is absent. That's why they do clinical trials.

These trials, especially vaccine trials, are huge (30-70 thousand people, with recent vaccines), because when a result (such as a serious side effect) is rare, you have to study a LOT of people to get the side effect enough times to find out whether or not it happens in more people who get the vaccine than who get the placebo. Again, this is a statistical fact, not my opinion.

There was a vaccine against rotovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea and can cause severe dehydration and death especially in young children, a few years ago that was pulled off the market because it was linked to intussusception, which is an intestinal problem that can be dangerous and may require surgery to fix. There were 28 cases of intussusception that were reported after the infants had been vaccinated with RotaTeq; based on the number of doses of the vaccine that were given out, statistically this didn't exceed the number that would have been expected in that population ie. there were no more cases in the vaccinated babies compared to the unvaccinated ones, so there was no evidence that the vaccine caused the intussusception. But public outcry in the US, led by the very vocal anti-vaccine lobby, caused the manufacturer to the pull the vaccine despite the large trials (over 70 000 kids) that had demonstrated its safety.

I'm not saying that RotaTeq should have remained available; there was a potential problem that was identified and action was taken, which is what must happen. But there was a cost to having this vaccine become unavailable. The pulling of the vaccine off the market because of these 28 cases that may or may not have been caused by the vaccine has led to the illness and death of countless children in the developing world who are extremely vulnerable to rotovirus because it is very common (due to a lack of clean water in many places) and because if they do get it they have limited access to treatment, even simple hydration.

This is the problem -- the anti-vaccine lobby isn't accountable to anyone. Nobody blames them for the deaths of these kids in Africa. They can cite poor studies, anecdotal "evidence" and outright conjecture as fact because they do not answer to anyone. They have provoked enormous fear without any high-quality evidence; simply by saying, "Well, it MIGHT be a problem" they can make parents, who of course are appropriately horrified at the thought that something they do might cause harm to their children, they cast doubt on an intervention that has been so successful at reducing the burden of these diseases that people have the luxury of forgetting how serious they can be.

It is not enough to simply state that there are two opinions on an issue; it is equally or more important to carefully evaluate the evidence behind each opinion and to decide what evidence deserves to be weighed more heavily. You can't have a debate if one side is citing high-quality evidence while the other side just says, "Well, I BELIEVE it's a problem." That's not a debate -- that's just an argument.

better than before, i think

I replaced a window screen for the first time this morning. I'm not a real "handy" type, but I figured this couldn't be that bad, and whether or not I did a great job, it would certainly be better than the mosquito-attracting tears in pretty much all of our screens. I don't think our new screen could be described as a "great" job, but it should be serviceable, and I'm pretty sure the fact that I pulled the mesh way too tight, and thus have a screen frame that is more saddle-shaped than planar, can be overcome by a simple application of brute force to get the screen to fit into the window frame again. Or maybe I'll be doing this one over again.

So the first screen is done -- eight more to go! Guess I'm going to need to get some more mesh, seeing as I've used up Kirk's entire supply.

an update on the furry one

We haven't heard a lot from Griffin lately. He used to be featured quite prominently in this space until the arrival of "The Pink Thing," which I'm pretty sure is how he thinks of Robin. He's probably starting to think of her as "The Squirming Thing," or perhaps "The Stinky Thing" as her diapers are becoming more aromatic these days.

Look, see how even when it's supposed to be about Griffin it turns into another Robin post?

Anyway, Griffin is doing fine. He's four-and-a-half years old, so we expect that any day now he will start calming down as he reaches middle age. Any day now. Any. Day. Now. Actually he is somewhat less ridiculously active now, but not really what I would call sedate. He is a strange mix of fearless and cowardly; he'll stand his ground against any of the big dogs in the dog park but is thoroughly intimidated by my cousin's pug, and while raging thunderstorms are no cause for alarm, the sound of someone chewing gum is terrifying. He is not about to win any awards for Guard Dog Of The Year, as sometimes it's not until a visitor calls out, "Hello," that he realizes that someone has come in.

But he's as affectionate as ever and will happily settle in for a good twenty-minute licking session (only one way to hit that million-lick mark, after all). Watching him run through the park at top speed after a stick is to watch pure joy. And there's no greeting quite as enthusiastic as when you come into our house.

the eight-month check in

So here's a little snapshot of life with Robin these days.

• Robin generally sleeps through the night now, which Mommy and Daddy are over. The. Moon. About. She goes to bed about 9 pm and sleeps until sometime between 7 and 8 am. She sometimes wakes up and entertains herself in her crib for a while before she starts hollering to get out. We aren't swaddling her anymore.
• We mainly use cloth diapers, but disposables when we go out. Cloth is not as much work as I thought it would be, though now that she's not exclusively breast-fed things can be a little messier than they used to be.
• Robin is a bit of an unpredictable eater. We feed her twice a day -- usually some kind of baby cereal mixed with formula and either a pureed fruit (in the morning) or vegetable (in the evening). She particularly likes bananas, peaches and butternut squash. She doesn't like peas and isn't crazy about carrots, but if we catch her at just the right moment she'll eat them anyway. Sometimes, though, we catch her at the wrong moment and she just isn't gonna eat.
  
• Robin is a professional sitter now and can get herself up on all fours from her tummy, but she hasn't quite figured out crawling yet. If she tries to go forward, she ends up doing a faceplant. I'm pretty sure her view on the matter is, "Crawling is for the birds -- it hurts my face too much!" She can lie on her tummy and slowly inch herself backwards, but it's pretty random. Fortunately for us she doesn't set any land speed records yet.
• Robin likes to stand. A lot. She needs a lot of help with balance, but she's plenty strong enough to stand and even jump.
• Robin is very good at manipulating her soother into her mouth. When it starts going in backwards, she knows exactly how to turn it to get it right. She likes to pull her soother out of Daddy's mouth to put it in her own; sometimes she even gives it back!
• Robin really likes water. She plays in the tub till the water's stone cold, and had a great time in the pool in Cuba.
• Robin's favourite toys these days are non-toys, especially cups. She was entertained for about fifteen minutes on the flight to Cuba by an unopened package of snack mix.
• Robin is generally pretty easy-going and good-natured. She was up at 4 am to leave for Cuba, but was happy as a clam all the way there, even though she only slept for about 45 minutes. She charmed the pants off strangers in Cuba with her big smiles for anyone who made eye contact. She isn't really making strange these days unless she's tired. We are teaching her to wave hello and goodbye; right now she sometimes sticks her hand out but doesn't really move it. Very endearing nonetheless.
• Robin is getting to be a cuddle-bum, especially with Andy and I.

sometimes you just go with the flow

Some days have a theme. Tomorrow might be "Pen Running Out Of Ink Day," or "Finding Pennies Day," or something like that. Usually the cut-off is three -- if something happens three times, then that's the day's theme. Sometimes the theme is narrowly defined, like "Offer To Get Me A Coffee From Tim's Day," and sometimes it is much more broad, like "Can't Remember Where I Left Things Day."

Today was "Random Answer Day." This theme was particularly strong today; this happened a lot more than just three times. This is a somewhat frustrating theme, because it tends to double or triple the time it takes for me to do what I need to do (thus allowing me to move on to see the next person so that they can not answer my questions), but it had its upside. The funniest conversation I had today went like this:

Me: So what can I do for you today, ma'am?

Very Sweet Little Old Lady Who Has No Idea Why She's There: Well, last night they served spaghetti for supper, and I usually don't like the spaghetti sauce, but my neighbour told me they're using a different sauce, so I decided to give it a whirl, but I didn't think it was any different from the old sauce, and so I had a couple of bites but then decided to just stick with the garlic bread, because they make good garlic bread. But I think my neighbour might have meant that they changed the garlic bread, because it certainly was different -- I don't think it had any garlic at all! I used to make garlic bread for my daughter because she liked to have us over for dinner, but she has four kids and she doesn't usually have time to make garlic bread --

Me: Ma'am, I'm sorry to interrupt but I was just wondering what brought you here today.

VSLOLWHNIWST: Oh! [Looks at me like I'm completely daft.] The ambulance!

At this point, I decided that whatever the lady was there for, it was obviously not as important to her as the spaghetti sauce, so we discussed the pros and cons of various brands as well as the merits of making one's own sauce from scratch (a noble effort, we concluded, but not always possible and sometimes not as good as some of the really good brands).

why didn't i hear about this before?!

I have joined the cult of babywearing, which is using one of a variety of different carriers to tie your baby to you. Umm, it's more comfortable than I just made it sound. There are a lot more options for this than just the Snugli, as it turns out.

Andy's favourite is the Ergo, which is sort is a backpack with a spot for baby to sit in. My favourite is the mei tai, which is basically a square of fabric with four long straps: two to go around your waist and two for your shoulders. Both can be used on your front or back; the front method is very handy for nursing, while the back is getting more comfortable now that Robin is a whopping 17 pounds.

Lately I've been playing with a wrap, which is a long wide strip of fabric that you can tie in many different ways - front, back or hip. It's been a bit challenging; fortunately the internet is there to guide us. I've never really appreciated YouTube before. I can do a front cross carry, a front wrap cross carry, a pocket wrap cross carry, a hip cross carry, a coolest hip cross carry and am getting better at the mother of all carries: the back wrap cross carry. I plan to try the wiggleproof cross carry and the ruck soon.

Robin is a big fan of being carried (she has excellent naps in there) but she's starting to get tired of getting in and out of the wrap. I can see it in her eyes: "Pick a stupid carry and stick with it already!"

This is a cult, though. A lot of babywearing proponents are dyed-in-the-wool granola types -- and some are very "crunchy." They take their babywearing very seriously; when Motrin ran an ad campaign last fall that could have been taken as critical of people "trying to look like official moms" (thus developing aches and pains from carrying their babies all the time -- Motrin to the rescue!) the babywearing community was up in arms, writing letters to McNeill and boycotting their products. The company promptly pulled the ad campaign.

andy's invading the blogosphere

So Andy's starting a blog to document Robin's achievements. Like gaining head control, sitting unassisted, and successfully mastering baby-talk. (She said "ga ga" the other day! Oops, I gave it away.)

viruses, viruses, everywhere

Robin is sick. I am sick. This is one happy household! Ironically, Andy, who is usually the one who gets hit with every bug that comes along, seems to be okay so far. However I'm sure he'll be infected soon.

Actually neither one of us is THAT bad (knock on wood). Sniffly, coughing a bit, nothing too major. Robin sure has cute little sneezes! She had a fever a few days ago but not right now, which is a good thing because infant Tylenol is on the (very short) list of things she does not want in her mouth.

they kill me

Me: Knock knock.
You: Who's there?
Me: Miss.
You: Miss who?
Me: Mosquito!

Me: Knock knock.
You: Who's there?
Me: Andy.
You: Andy who?
Me: And he bit me again!
You: HA HA HA HA HA HA!

all my gadgets together at last

I like gadgets. Mostly electronic ones. I have a cell phone, an iPod and a Palm (although it's so old that it's becoming somewhat less useful, as nobody makes software for it anymore and it's got a very clunky operating system that Palm apparently abandoned five years ago). I also find the Kindle interesting, although it's not available in Canada, and won't be in the foreseeable future.

I was thinking about what I'd want in my pocket -- the ideal device that would eliminate the need to carry more than one piece of hardware, and would eliminate the need for more than one charger. It should:

• play music, especially mp3s
• display photos
• play movies (full length!)
• have both a headphones port and a small speaker (high sound quality not required)
• have WiFi
• have Bluetooth
• be a phone and text-messaging device
• if possible, have a physical keyboard -- nice but I can live with a good touchscreen keyboard, like the iPod's
• have internet access without necessarily having WiFi, like a smartphone
• have as much memory as possible -- minimum 80 GB of storage
• have a large screen
• have a reliable battery with a long life
  

Software-wise, I need:

• a good internet browser, not the POS browser on most mobile devices
  
• a good email program
• a calendar that syncs with iCal for the Mac, and a contacts program that syncs with Address Book
• UpToDate, a program I use for work (it's available on the internet but would be more reliable as a stand-alone program)
• a quick, easy way to find and load new programs on it
• a good way to read e-books, and an easy-to-download way to get them
• an easy-to-use interface and operating system

Sounds like I'm looking for an iPhone that's a bit bigger than the current model but smaller than a Kindle, with easily accessible e-books, with a less heavy-handed attitude towards what third-party developers can provide, and for UpToDate to get their act together and make a stand-alone program for it.

Not asking for much, am I?

the lesser of two evils

Robin is a messy eater. Very, very messy. If she doesn't get food above her eyebrows, we consider her practically sterile. Cleaning up after she eats is a two-person job: one of us takes the baby, the other the high chair.

I'm not sure who's getting the short end of the stick. If you get the high chair, there are a lot of nooks and crannies and the baby food tends to get crusted on within seconds, so it's a lot of scrubbing. On the other hand, the high chair also freaks out less about having it's face washed.

my next hobby, maybe

I think I'm going to try to learn to sew a little. I can already put a button back on a shirt, so I figure that's a start. However, I do not have a good history with the sewing machine. Last summer I tried to hem some blankets for Robin; I ended up with one sewn extremely securely to the machine. I have no idea how I did it. My mom has no idea how I did it, and she's been using this machine since she won it in a sewing contest when she was 13.

I had visions of wrapping Robin up in the blanket to cuddle with the sewing machine.

how is robin like a vw?

Robin and the wiper-fluid-is-low alarm in our car both work on the same principle: if it's worth worrying about, it's worth worrying about a lot. In our car, the wiper-fluid-is-low alarm sounds roughly like an air raid siren. And it's set to induce these small heart attacks when the wiper fluid gets to the half-full point, which means there's still a good litre-and-a-half left, which depending on the season means we will not be running out of wiper fluid in the next two months. And the best part is, the sensor is very sensitive, so when the remaining wiper fluid sloshes around the litre-and-a-half-left mark, going just over and then just under and then just over with every little bump (and I should point out that we live in Winnipeg, The Pothole Capital of the World) then we are treated to multiple air raid alerts on even the shortest of trips. If this is the "You Will Run Out Of Wiper Fluid In A Few Weeks" alarm, I shudder to think what the "You Have Hit A Small Child" alarm sounds like.

Anyway.

Robin seems to have only two settings for crying: "Off" and "THE WORLD IS ENDING." This is a particular problem when we have the temerity to, wait for it, LIE HER DOWN ON HER BACK. What outrageous jerks! Robin is an excellent sitter these days, which means she does not care to lie down for any reason, including diaper changes. It's an interesting exercise trying to change a six-month-old who is struggling to sit up the entire time; she prefers the "lock my legs together" technique which makes pulling the diaper up between her legs, umm, a bit challenging. On the other hand, she is considering marketing her new exercise program -- Abs of Steel: Infant Edition.

the law of unintended consequences strikes again

The law of unintended consequences: see Freakonomics.

Before Robin was born, we were a bit concerned about how Griffin would adjust to his new status. In the years BC (Before Child) he was the baby. He was accustomed to being thoroughly doted on, and we were not sure how well he would take his demotion. We spent a lot of time thinking and reading about this and did some things that must have looked mighty odd, like walking the dog with an empty stroller, to get him used to it.

One key part of our plan was to make sure that Griffin was well-exercised before and after Robin's arrival. He is an exceptionally active dog and from puppyhood we have found that he is much better behaved when he is tired. So the plan was to take him to the off-leash park frequently and to regularly let him chase the red dot around the house (chasing laser dots is supposed to be a cat thing, but Griff is incredibly enthusiastic about hunting the red dot; I'm not sure what his plan is for when he catches it). This we did.

Mainly we ended up with an even more fit dog, who has even more energy and, um, "vitality."

Don't get me wrong, Griffin has done way better than we dared hope with Robin. He seems to recognize that she is different and puts up with her grabbing his fur and doesn't react to her jerky movements and funny smells and sounds. He doesn't particularly ignore her, nor does he seek her out. He just seems to get that she's part of his world now.

But holy moly, what a hyperactive nut!

snowshoeing with an infant

We took Robin snowshoeing for the first time this weekend at Falcon Lake. Robin didn't actually do any showshoeing -- she rode on my back in my Babyhawk under the babywearing coat that my friend lent me. It was great!

the best time-waster on the internet

Wikipedia is pretty remarkable. It's an online encyclopedia that is open for all to edit. And each article has links to many other articles, which means looking up one topic often results in reading in a lot more depth than originally intended. It's a wonderful way to waste an hour when you "just want to look up one thing real quick."

how to put robin to bed

Robin's bedtime routine has become quite set. Some nights are easier than others, but in general this is how it goes.

Robin starts showing signs of impending sleepiness around 8 or 8.30 -- she yawns, rubs her eyes, gets a bit fussier and generally looks tired. That is our cue to rush upstairs with her before she gets really cranky. If it's a bath night (Mondays and Thursdays, mostly) we fill up the baby tub with warm water (inside the big tub to contain the splashing, which is getting more vigorous these days) and undress her. In the bath, we wash her with soap from head to toe, dump the soapy water out and refill the tub with fresh water -- she likes it very warm -- and let her play with her bowl, rubber pigs and duckies. Mostly she stuffs them in her mouth. After a while, we get her out, dry her off (she hates that) and put a new diaper on.

If it's not bath night, we give her a quick sponge bath with water -- washing off all the baby food we missed earlier -- and dry her off before putting on a clean diaper.

Then we take her into our bedroom, put on a clean sleeper and swaddle her up. These days we are leaving her arms out, but she still seems to like having the rest of her bundled up. By this time she is usually good and tired and fusses a little more seriously.

Then it's time for book(s). Usually we read two or three; I like to finish with either Goodnight Moon or The Going to Bed Book. Then I nurse her until she's REALLY sleepy but not quite asleep, pop in her soother and put her in the crib, where she sleeps in the bunting bag that Grandma made. If she's still awake, I recite the "Goodnight Mr. Beetle" poem. If she's not asleep yet, I either leave the room, stand at the side of the crib or rest my hand on her face, depending on how not-asleep she is. This is also a good time to turn on either the mobile or the music box doodad on the crib, which tends to get her attention and ideally kind of mesmerizes her. Sooner or later her eyes get heavy and she gets to sleep, though sometimes it takes a little bit of crying.

and now for a facebook special

So there's a thing circulating on Facebook where you post 25 random bits of information about yourself in a note and then tag 25 people so that they hear that you've written this note, and then when they get tagged they're supposed to write their own 25 random things and tag other people.

So here we go.

1. I recently realized that I start a lot of sentences with, "So..."

2. If I was 18 and just finishing high school again, I would do my undergraduate degree in history instead of physics. I really enjoyed the time I spent studying physics, and I certainly don't feel it was a waste, but the courses I remember most about are the two history courses I took mainly because they fit nicely into my timetable. I would particularly focus on the twentieth century. I probably wouldn't be a career historian though.

3. I am a labourer, not a savant.

4. I hate being asked about my most embarrassing moment, not because I don't wish to share it but because I can never remember it when I'm on the spot.

5. I love summer. A lot. I was a lake kid, and Big Whiteshell Lake is the site of most of my favourite memories from when I was a kid.

6. I am not sure of my place in the universe, but I am sure it is pretty much the same as everyone else's.

7. I like fire. I can poke at a campfire for an hour easy. It's probably my favourite part of camping.

8. I don't have a good track record for getting along with administration in the places I've worked. I'm willing to accept only a small amount of blame for this.

9. I frequently wonder just what is going through my dog's head. One of my favourite things to watch is when he's lying on the floor and then suddenly jumps up and chases his tail around. Then he pauses to make the tail think he's forgotten about it, and suddenly starts chasing it in the other direction. Tres funny.

10. I had three imaginary friends when I was little: Luke, Beeko and Tito.

11. I am married to my best friend.

12. I speak a bit of French, and wish I spoke more. I was surprised that I remembered enough French to get by on in Paris.

13. I have absolutely no musical skill whatsoever. I kinda want to learn to play the harmonica.

14. I have a six-month-old daughter who is starting to laugh at her Daddy a lot, which is pretty much the nicest thing I've ever seen.

15. I like football a lot, but I don't really understand it. The line of scrimmage looks like one big riot to me, but I know it's actually well-choreographed chaos. I would like to be able to understand what's going on in there better.

16. I have never had a comfortable pair of skates or ski boots. I played ringette and hockey for many years with incredibly painful feet because I just figured that was the way it was supposed to be. Every so often I would hold my tongue just right as I was tying them and they would only be moderately uncomfortable rather than excruciating, and on those days I wanted to keep playing for hours.

17. I have flat feet, as to #16.

18. I am very good at remembering phone numbers.

19. I have a respectable store of useless knowledge, which I'm sure will come in handy when I'm on Jeopardy.

20. In grade three, my teacher taught us the American Sign Language alphabet. I don't know why. I remember it to this day, which has been useful exactly one time in my thirty years. Unfortunately I don't think it'll come up on Jeopardy.

21. I would like to be a writer. I don't know what I would write about, which is why I have a blog: I can write as much or as little as I want, and about anything I want. And pretty much nobody reads it but me.

22. I am close to my family and really, really like it when we are all together.

23. I have been on some awesome road trips.

24. I turn into a pumpkin at midnight. Actually, I turn into a pumpkin earlier and earlier these days.

25. I have a major fascination with Western Europe, I think because of the fact that you can go into a place that is eight hundred years old, and it's so well-maintained that it seems like it's just built to look like it's eight hundred years old. And you have to imagine all the people who lived or worked or visited there over the eight hundred years.

okay, maybe i do have something to say

I think the best quote I ever heard about being a parent is (I'm paraphrasing, and I can't remember where I heard this): "Ten years ago I had no kids and lots of theories about childrearing. Now I have lots of kids and no theories."

These little people just keep throwing curveballs! Robin's latest is that she likes plain old boring rice cereal, and she's okay with plain old mashed carrots, but she doesn't really like yummy sweet mashed bananas nor plain old mashed avocados. Go figure. Andy thinks maybe the bananas are so sweet that they kind of overwhelm her palate, but her palate is used to breastmilk, which is pretty sweet itself.

I hope she doesn't end up being one of those super-picky eaters. We shall see.

dropped the ball

Some days I have nothing to say.

what do you expect

I think a lot of the angst in life happens when people or events fail to meet our expectations. That means there are two ways to avoid this angst: either allow people or events to be a part of our lives only if we are sure that they will meet our expectations, or else alter or give up our expectations. Giving up expectations could also be interpreted as simply learning to accept the world as it is and on its own terms.

gotta do what you gotta do

For better or for worse, we are "crying it out" with Robin these days. It sure is hard to lie in bed listening to your baby cry her guts out because you aren't there, especially when you know that if you get up and go to her she'll calm right down, but we're really at the end of our rope with getting up all night. It was getting ridiculous -- some nights, Robin would wake up five or six times. We weaned her off night feedings first, so she was really just waking up out of habit, not because she needed anything (other than maybe having her soother put back in her mouth). She hasn't been waking up more than once or twice a night since we started letting her cry, so maybe she's getting better at soothing herself back to sleep. I hope.

I think she still likes us.

the system is breaking down again

Things have been such a yo-yo over the past few days. Andy's father, Reg, died last week. It was very sudden and unexpected; though he had some pretty severe limitations after the car accident last year and the subsequent complications, he was very stable from a medical point of view. His short-term memory was not very good and physically he was essentially limited to bed, though he did spend some time each day up in his chair. But his long-term memory was basically intact (he knew all of us and often talked about events prior to the accident) and he had regained quite a bit of the use of his right hand (he could feed himself and was able to use his remote control for his television).

Andy was visiting with Reg last Thursday. He had a good long visit and Reg gave Robin a raspberry as they were leaving. Nothing seemed unusual at that time. The staff served him his dinner (Andy had brought in some particular favourites), but when they returned about twenty minutes later, Reg had passed away. It's still not clear what happened; we may have some answers tomorrow.

It's been quite weird over the past few days. Sometimes we are going about the mundane things like laundry or putting gas in the car, feeling like it's a pretty ordinary day, and then bam, something happens that reminds us that things are not ordinary but rather very surreal and upside-down. It's very disorienting. Having kids around, both Lisa and Robin, has been a very normalizing force. Regardless of how odd it feels to do simple things like feeding the baby, it's got to be done. So you concentrate on that for a while and things sort of right themselves for a while.

There will be a memorial service this Wednesday at 7:00 at Thomson Funeral Chapel on Broadway. All are welcome to come.

why didn't we do this before?!

This is the River Trail's second winter. The River Trail is a path on the Assiniboine River that has been cleared of snow and flooded to make a skating path. It runs from The Forks downtown all the way to Omand Park at the west end of Wolseley; the plan is to extend it all the way to Assiniboine Park, which will make it 9 km long.

We went skating on the trail last weekend; it was a beautiful day and hundreds of people had the same idea. It was like a holiday; Andy called it "We Can Finally Go Outside Day." We bundled Robin up and put her in her stroller with a plastic cover to block the wind, and she was nice and toasty.

expanding horizons

Today we added avocado to Robin's arsenal. It didn't seem to be her favourite, but then she might just have been getting full. Next up: bananas! What baby doesn't like bananas?

It seems the best way to feed Robin in to strip her down to her diaper and then use a bib with a pocket at the bottom to catch everything. What a great invention.

impressive

We've started Robin on baby food. Tonight's menu consisted of a lovely rice cereal with a side of freshly steamed mashed carrots. (Okay, technically they were freshly steamed yesterday and then defrosted today.) I'm pretty sure she was thinking, "Oh, Mommy, you forgot something in my mouth! Here, I'll give it back! Oh! You did it again! Here you go!"

I didn't think she was really getting anything down, until she barfed up a whole lot of orange and white mush. Turns out quite a bit was actually swallowed after all! Even if it was temporary.

finally

For the first time in days, I want to go outside. It's been so hideously cold that any time spent outside has been for essential reasons only, and contained within layer upon layer of cold. It's become common to see people wearing ski goggles while out walking around to protect that tiny little bit of exposed flesh from the -40 windchills.

Yeah, so it's -40. This is Winnipeg in January, so surprise surprise, it's cold! But this winter has basically seemed like one long cold snap after another, since December was also unusually cold. Nice to finally get a break.

a victim of its own success

According to free-market proponents, competition is vital; it forces systems to become more efficient in order to survive. Without competition, systems become bloated and corrupted. So isn't it a bad sign that there hasn't been a serious alternative to capitalism since the end of the Cold War? (Some would argue since even before the end of the Cold War.)

what a great show

Aside from James Burke's leisure suit with the lapels that reach out way past his shoulders, Connections might be the best show I've ever seen. Did you know that the development of the stirrup for horses ended up leading to the development of the telephone?

whiny, whiny

Getting up once in the middle of the night is a drag, but not that bad. It's the second, third and occasionally the fourth trip out of bed that's really a pain. We're trying to cut down on the amount that Robin eats at night to try and get her to sleep longer. And we're going to be starting on "real" food in the next week or two. Fingers are crossed.

And I am NOT interested in hearing any stories about how this baby was sleeping through the night by two months, or that baby sleeps a solid twelve hours at a time.

a new approach

I'm going to try something new: posting a couple of sentences a day, sort of like updating my Facebook status. I'll post pictures occasionally (you can see more pics at on Flickr) but I think this might be better for actually getting me to update this "blog."

I am trying to learn more about football. I know the basics, but what happens on the line of scrimmage really just looks like a random mess to me, and I know there's a lot more to it than that. Wikipedia has been helpful with this.

Also, Blogger seems to have changed my blog "for" me. Does anybody who knows something about HTML know how I would get the blog posts column to be wider and the sidebar on the left to be narrower?

video!

So apparently now one can upload videos to Blogger pretty darn easily. Of course, that requires one to have videos worth uploading. Here's one: Andy and I were in San Francisco recently and saw the Giants play the White Sox.

Honest, there really was a ball hit out of the park there. What, you think we got the entire crowd to stand up and cheer in unison?!

As you can see, our camera doesn't take the highest quality videos. But our new camcorder does! Future videos promise to be much better.

our first look at junior

We had our routine 20-week ultrasound yesterday.

We DON'T know the sex. It was kinda weird. I've heard all sorts of answers to the question, "Will they tell you the sex at the ultrasound?" Some people have said yes, they will at HSC but not at St. B; some have said, no, they won't at either place; some have said no, not at the routine ultrasound but yes at later ultrasounds; so obviously there's a lot of confusion. My best guess is that the hospitals' policies have changed over the years so that some parents have been told one thing and some have been told another. Perhaps it also depends on the tech who's actually doing the scan. Who knows? But some people are very disappointed or even become angry when they are told they might not be able to find out the sex of the baby.

Anyway, the tech did ask if we wanted to know the sex, and we said no. It was tempting though.

Personally I think that doing an ultrasound for the sole purpose of finding out the baby's gender is not a good use of resources. Ultrasound is one of the most useful imaging modalities available for about a zillion different things and demand for ultrasounds already outstrips supply, so I don't think using them simply to satisfy curiosity is appropriate. In addition, there are always risks with any test (admittedly small ones, in the case of ultrasound, but still not zero) so if you're going to do a test, there should be a good reason i.e. you should be getting practical and important information out of it that will help you decide what course of action to take -- and not just help you decide what colour paint to buy.

However, there are good reasons to have an ultrasound done routinely at around 20 weeks or so (a full pregnancy is 40 weeks, though any delivery after 36 weeks is considered full-term); primarily one is looking for placental or anatomical abnormalities, abnormal growth or even multiple babies. The idea is that if there are any surprises, 20 weeks is late enough that one will probably be able to see them on the ultrasound but early enough that (hopefully) one can do something about it, or failing that, at least to prepare for it.

And as long as the ultrasound is being done anyway, why not give parents the option of finding out the sex? In some countries the concern is that boys are preferred to girls and there's a fear that if parents learn that the baby is a girl they will have an abortion and try again for a boy, so they don't tell people the sex for that reason. (I have no idea if studies actually support this hypothesis or not.) And as noted above, an ultrasound for the sole purpose of determining the gender is not a valid use of a limited resource.

But that's not generally a concern in Canada, where in most cases an ultrasound is done (once) routinely. In Canada people mostly want to know (a) to help with preparation and to avoid getting everything in green or yellow and (b) to satisfy their insatiable curiosity. And at the end of the day, what's wrong with that? Why shouldn't parents be entitled to all of the available information about their baby if they want it?

my uncle seems to have worked

Yea! It's by no means warm but at least the deep freeze has lifted. No wind chills of -40 for a good week now!

Things like the end of February make me start to think about spring. Living downtown was great last summer -- we're close to so many things to do that we often could walk or bike. That is, once I got my new dork-cycle.

I realized last year that I hadn't ridden my old bike for a while when I took it out of the garage and realized that it had completely seized up thanks to the thick layer of rust coating the chain, gears and cables. The brakes were brittle and when pulled essentially crumbled, which unfortunately had only minimal impact on my speed. (Fortunately, though, the rust layer had prevented me from getting up much of a head of steam, so I managed to stop before I wore completely through the toes of my shoes.) Fair enough; I'd inherited that bike from my brother Jonny, who got it when he was about eleven. I figure ten years is a reasonable lifespan for a bike, and anything past that is gravy.

So I headed to Canadian Tire looking for a new bike. Nothing fancy; I mainly was looking for cheap as I'm hardly training for the Tour de France. I'm pretty sure what I ended up with is the dorkiest bike ever made. It's got the giant seat, granny-style curved handlebars and a nice shiny fender.

However, there's no doubt that this is the most comfortable bike I've ever ridden. It's got shocks on both the front tire (not sure why; I'm sure not riding on anything bumpier than paved streets... oh wait, I live in The Pothole Capital of the World) and the seat. I hardly have to lean forward at all to reach the handlebars so my back and shoulders never get sore. And the seat is about nine square feet and has an inch of padding -- it's like sitting in a nice cushy chair!

It truly is a Supercycle.

uncle

I give up! I've run up the white flag! Winter, you win! Just warm up a little!

i don't believe roger clemens

I don't believe Roger Clemens one bit when he says he has never used steroids or human growth hormone. I just don't.

- If I was Clemens and MacNamee injected me or my wife with HGH without my knowledge, as Clemens claims, I would be screaming bloody murder about assault, not just calling him a liar. This does not add up if Clemens had truly never used steroids.

- Contrary to what the Clemens camp says in "The Clemens Report", his stats do not exonerate him (ie he got better after the steroid use was supposed to have started, and at a time in his career when virtually all athletes are in decline) -- see the Freakonomics blog here (post #1; a summary) and here (post #2; more math). I'm not a statistician by any stretch of the imagination, but I agree strongly with Wolfers et al. that comparing Clemens to three of baseball's most successful late-career pitchers (and not to the hundreds or thousands of pitchers who were not as successful during the same era) is awfully dodgy, and you don't need to know much about math to understand that. And I think that using a pitcher's ERA as the primary measure of his ability (as the Clemens camp does) is also questionable.

- Andy Pettitte stated in a letter to Congress that Clemens confessed to him, on two occasions, that he had used HGH, and Pettitte, by virtue of the fact that he confessed to HGH use himself, has far more credibility than Clemens (though I still question Pettitte's honesty about the extent of his drug use) and has no obvious reason to say that Clemens told him this if it's not true. Particularly as Pettitte and Clemens were apparently close friends (Clemens indicated that they still are, though that's something else I don't believe).