Kirk blAug

Tsunami and I like to communicate. He is two months old so he cannot actually talk yet. He also does not have very good control of his hands and arms yet, so no sign language either. Of course he knows how to cry when he needs something, but what about when he just wants to chat? Tsunami has mastered the use of his tongue for chatting. The other day Chris was sticking her tongue out at him and he mimicked it. Ever since then, whenever I walk by him he sticks his tongue out at me. Then I reply by sticking mine out at him. We go back and forth like that for awhile. It is usually a pretty good chat. Some consider sticking a tongue out at someone to be a rude gesture, but when Tsunami does it all I feel is love.

I have been wanting to go up to the top of the Gateway Arch since the first few times I visited St. Louis a few years ago. Unfortunately for me, no one wanted to go with me. Something about a cramped pod experience that they did not care to relive. I would have gone alone once, but on that particular occasion it was a weekend and there were patrons lined up far outside the security gate and I was not going to imposition my wife and in-laws to wait for me to wait in line. I ended up having to wait until I lived here to go. I thought that a Monday morning would be my best chance to get to the top without waiting in too many lines, and I was right. This morning I asked Jupiter if he would go up with me since no one else wanted to. He said he would, perhaps not knowing what I was talking about but excited about going on a ride, and so we went. On our way up Jupiter and I were the only ones in the pod. It was far from cramped for just the two of us. It looked like something from the future

I was recently remembering strange emotions I started going through when Chris and I first found out she was pregnant with Jupiter. The realization that I was going to be responsible for a tiny human was very scary. I think it started with me being in a daze for a couple of months not knowing exactly how I should feel. I was excited, but I was constantly taking note of the fact that I was not feeling quite as excited as I maybe should be. I think I was more scared for the little guy. This human life was going to have me for a father. Me. That did not seem like a good idea at the time. It seemed like I might possibly be subjecting someone to the life long punishment of having me for a father. I did not know what kind of father I would turn out to be and I am sure I over-thought the prospect. There was more than once that I was freaking out. Balling even. I was convinced for a moment or two during those nine months that I was in no way responsible enough for this task. I am always pretty

Historically, Thanksgiving is a day which celebrates the Puritans and the Natives enjoying a meal together. This happens just before the Puritans decide to slaughter a lot of the natives and steal their land. Still, I like to take this day to think about some of the things that I am thankful for. I am most thankful for my family. They give me reason to get up in the morning. They give me reason to better myself. They give me reason to try to make the world a better place to the best of my ability. I love them more than I could possible describe. I am thankful to them for putting up with me every year.

From time to time, my 3-year-old son will whine about how he wants something. Something like, "I want to watch Cars!" or "I want some candy!" or something else he does not really need. My standard response has become, "I want world peace." At first he was taken aback by this response. Now he tends to go bug mom about his want instead. I choose that response because it shows that the words "I want" are not some pair of magic words that can make anything happen. I thought it would help illustrate that we can get what we want, but we have to work for it. Even working at something we want a whole lifetime does not mean we will get what we want. People have been working on world peace in some incarnation or another since there was ever the realization that there is a world that we all have to find a way to exist on without killing each other off. Sure, some ideas of attaining that goal have often been, and continue to be killing off anyone who does no

According to a new study coming out of the University of Notre Dame, spacing out the birth of children is positively associated with test scores in the older sibling. The younger sibling seemed to be unaffected by the spacing of birth, however. The abstract: OLS results suggest that greater spacing is positively associated with test scores for older siblings, but not for younger siblings. However, because we are concerned that spacing may be correlated with unobservable characteristics, we also use an instrumental variables strategy that exploits variation in spacing driven by miscarriages that occur between two live births. The IV results indicate that a one-year increase in spacing increases test scores for older siblings by about 0.17 standard deviations—an effect comparable to estimates of the effect of birth order. Especially close spacing (less than two years) decreases scores by 0.65 SD. These results are larger than the OLS estimates, suggesting that estimates that fail to acc

Since getting moved, we have been doing a little bit of exploring around our new community. It has been keeping us very busy the past few days and my posting frequency has suffered a bit as a result. Sorry about that. When we found out the house that we rented was so close to an Amtrak stop, we told Jupiter that we would ride trains when we live at the new home. On Wednesday we fulfilled that promise with a short trip down to the nearest stop in Washington, Missouri. Jupiter had gotten sick over night and seemed to be tired Wednesday morning, but we decided that he would still enjoy the ride and went anyway. We could tell that he was indeed very excited, but he lacked the energy to express it. He wanted very badly to watch out the windows while the towns and other trains were going by, but had eyelids to heavy to stay open. When we arrived in Washington, we walked up the street a bit to a place which served food and pie. The owners had a sign up that stated "Pie Fixes Everything&q

Every once in awhile, I come across an article having to do with what is considered by some "higher authority" to be an abusive name. A 9-year-old girl whose name was Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii was taken into state custody in New Zealand a few years ago. The judge said, "It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap." More recently, Heath and Deborah Campbell who named their son Adolph Hitler Campbell are in a custody battle their their kid's over the name. This, despite the judge saying that there was no evidence of abuse in the home according to Heath. In the first case, I think it is definitely a stretch to call Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii a social disability and handicap. If the girl feels embarrassed by her name she could shorten it to Talula when she introduces herself. The article even said that her friends refer to her as "K", as if a one letter name is so much more acceptable than a 6 word one.

Today my hair smells like watermelon. It is not because I got into a food fight in the produce section. No, that is still on my bucket list. It is because my shampoo is packed in a box somewhere and the only shampoo I could find belongs to my two year old. We are packed up and ready to load up the rental truck and drive it from Lincoln, Nebraska to St. Louis, Missouri. The family finally ready to make the move. It is about time. We have been talking about it for almost two years. Jupiter was surprisingly helpful when packing. He was eager to help me pack up the kitchen which was by far the biggest headache in my packing yesterday. He also packed himself in a couple of boxes, but we let him out eventually. Tsunami was also pretty helpful in that he remained mostly quite and sleeping while we were packing. We can not ask for much more than that from him. Today we load the truck. Tomorrow we hit the road and unload when we arrive. I am excited for some new scenery with some new experience

I recently suggested that readers who use the iPad check out The Magic of Reality App . Transworld, the developers of the app indulge us with the process a little thanks to The Literary Platform : Each chapter is designed in ‘ribbons’ and the images and text move at different paces as you swipe through the app, meaning that each screen brings something new and exciting. They also created a very simple but effective navigation panel that allows the reader to jump seamlessly from one section of the book to another. Subtle animation was added to McKean’s illustrations in the myths section of each chapter, which surprises and delights rather than distracts, and we came up with several interactive demonstrations and games to allow readers to delve deeper into the science. I would encourage reading the rest of the article for insight on the creative process. It really is the best way to read this great book by Professor Dawkins.

One thing that bugs me more than most things is door-to-door solicitors. Sometimes it is so bad that they come to our house once a day. When they do it is always during nap time, which means that they wake up the kids. I do not think that I am alone in my unfavorable view of these peddlers. Some communities have even tried to prohibit them. The first such community was Green River, Wyoming. The ordinance aimed to make it illegal for any business to sell their items door-to-door without permission from the household beforehand. The only way a solicitor was welcome would be if the owner of the household put up a sign that said, "Solicitors Welcome." It is now common to call any ordinances with this aim a Green River Ordinance . Green River Ordinances have been successfully challenged as a violation of freedom of speech when the ordinance includes religious proselytizers or non-profit organizations. It is also thought that while in the past commercial speech had not been protec

Scooby and Shaggy must be the world's worst skeptics. Time and time again they find that the supernatural illusions they come into contact is nothing more than a human with a greedy agenda, yet every time there is a new mystery to solve they suspend their past observations for the idea that these things the go bump in the night are truly the unexplainable supernatural phenomenon that they intuitively appear to be. One would think that anyone with as much experience in ghost debunking as Scooby and Shaggy have would walk right up to their fears and confront them head on so that we could spare the remaining fifteen minutes of the episode and go on doing something useful with our day. They will not, of course. They spend so much time making a mysterious smoke come out of that Mystery Machine that they seem to completely forget all their experiences from one episode to the next. Instead history will repeat itself. The two will keep running away from what they should reasonably assume i

You, whoever you may be, might die. Any moment now. You could just suddenly die of some cause that you will never know about. You will not know about it because you will be dead. I am not saying you are probably going to die, or even that it is remotely likely that you will die. That does not mean that you will not. It is always a possibility. It does happen. Not often, but it does. I am not saying anything here that you do not already know. Most people know that they may die at any moment. The thing that I have trouble with is that most people do not realize that they may die at any moment. There is a subtle but important distinction there. I think it is a good idea to take a moment to realize the brutal fact that you may die at any given time. As uncomfortable as it may be, it is good to think about the implications of that fact. Have you been doing with your life the things you want to be doing with it? Have you been working toward the betterment of yourself, your family, your fri

I am out at a restaurant or a store. Baby has a full diaper. I need to go change him. I start walking toward the restroom area. I notice a Koala Care sticker on the door of the women's restroom as I walk by on my way to the men's room. I breathe a slight sigh of relief thinking that I will not have to huddle over the baby on the floor, but only for a moment. I saw no similar sticker as I passed through the door to the men's restroom. No changing station. This is a very common instance when I am out with a diaper aged kid. In most cases, I end up using the floor. In some cases, when I am feeling feisty, I enter the women's restroom to do the job. Older parents will likely say, "Well, back in my day when we had to walk up hill both ways through 500 miles of blowing snow to get anywhere, the floor was all we had!" I understand that. I agree. The floor does the job. I do not take issue with the floor versus modern baby changing technology. In many cases, the restr