Kirk blAug

I was going to write something today, but then I got sidetracked and played with iMovie instead. Enjoy!

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

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.

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

Ragu , Pampers , and a bunch of other companies still do not get how they are hurting their sales sales by making marketing assumptions which only moms to be parents. But at least some companies are getting it right. Check out these Tide commercials: [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1qW7Po-1KI?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28l-6LUp3w?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360] I do have a slight problem with the term "Dad Mom". It still implies that primary caregiver is a position inherently for moms. But it is an improvement over some of the insulting marketing we have seen. I do not use Tide, but it is always good to have the recognition. In the event that I am looking for another brand because the store is out of the selection of All that I usually get or something else happens with the brand I am using, maybe I will consider some Tide. (via The Real Matt Daddy )

According to the Guardian , there are many more at-home dads in the UK than there used to be: There are now 10 times as many stay-at-home dads in the UK than a decade ago, with one in seven fathers (14%) now the main childcare provider, according to research from Aviva. It says about 1.4 million men are now the primary carer in their households. The rise is unsurprising. It seems the more egalitarian we become, the more women are going to be making comparable and better wages than their male spouses. There are also more adoption agencies willing to adopt to gay male couples , which account for at least some of the stay at-home dad count. Related, is the increase of single father households. As culture here and in the UK gets less patriarchal, the difference between primary caregiving moms and dads will continue to even out. We are still a long way away from that, but studies showing improvement are encouraging.

When you have a newborn, you get a lot of baggage to carry around. I mean that literally. You get a diaper bag, and you put stuff in it that the baby needs when you go out. At first the bag was a hassle. We had a big black one with many handy compartments. It did not have a shoulder strap which cost the use of one of my hands while carrying it. It was also a bit of an awkward shape. I carried it around for quite awhile. I got used to it. I learned to enjoy the convenience of having so much stuff with me. Eventually, Chris got me a new diaper bag that was way better. It had a shoulder strap. It had dedicated compartments for bottles, diapers, a changing pad (also a good place to tote my iPad), and smaller items such as straws, bandages, tissues, etc. It also had a built in refillable wipe container. This was a bag I did not mind carrying. It did not take up any of my hands and I could even put my own personal items in it. Fast forward about another year, and I do not need to carry arou

Jupiter loves using the iPad. He loves it for games and learning. I am pretty sure he learned most of his animals and what sounds they make from it. Sure, we take him to the zoo and he loves it, but how often does an animal at the zoo make the sounds associated with them in the few minutes you spend looking at it? Jupiter also likes to color, as most two year olds do. I had noticed that Griffin had teamed up with Crayola to release the iMarker which pairs with the ColorStudio HD and Paint & Create apps for the iPad. I thought this might be something that he would enjoy so I picked one up from Amazon . Luckily, it arrived from the parcel service during nap time. This gave me an hour to play with it first. I was impressed. But the real test would be whether Jupiter liked it. At first he had a bit of a hard time figuring out how the app works. He was easily distracted by all those other apps on the home screen that he already knew how to use. But after a little while, he started to

Occasionally, I come across some silly parenting product or another. However, this one I actually think is useful. I also think it is impractical though. It is a solution for those times when you are out with the baby and you need to use the privy. It happened to me a lot when Jupiter was a baby. I would be out getting groceries or running some errand and nature would call. What do we do in this situation? Well, as a guy, during a stand up situation I could manage a baby in one hand and my equipment in the other. This does not really work for moms or sit down situations for dads though, so sometimes putting them on a blanket on the floor is all you can do. The Babykeeper is meant to hang from the door to keep that child off the dirty floor an on the dirty door instead. Honestly, I would prefer the door, but the keeper seems way to big to fit into my already overflowing diaper bag, and certainly will not earn that space with the limited use it provides. There are solutions that the own

I get a little peeved when someone says to my son, "do you have a girlfriend?" or, "is that your girlfriend?" or some other such sexual orientation attribution. Why do people think it is okay to lay the groundwork for orientation long before children even have any interest in sexual mates? I think it seems a bit presumptuous. Say my son does one day realize that he prefers the company of others of the same sex where intimate matters are concerned. With a lifetime of build up of this expectation that he is supposed to prefer the opposite gender, he will undoubtedly feel guilty for going against the expectations of all the people he has grown to admire. I think the expectation that people need to pair up at all is ridiculous. Just because some of us choose to make a commitment to be with someone does not mean that one should have to be looked upon as a social outcast if that is not their own desire. I was single and in no relationship for years before I started dating

According to this article on CNN, Sesame Street's YouTube Channel was hacked earlier today and filled with porn: Hackers appeared to have commandeered the YouTube page of the venerable "Sesame Street" children's show Sunday, reprogramming the page with content brought to you by the letter "X." The show page was taken offline Sunday afternoon, and visitors were greeted with a message from the video website informing them it had been shut down "due to repeated or severe violations of our community guidelines." Users who called up the account earlier had found explicit sex videos instead of Muppets. It is a little bit funny. I can imagine some parent letting their toddler get on YouTube who ends up watching porn on the Sesame Street channel and then being outraged that the world is not safe for their kids. To those parents I would say, one, if you think you can protect your kids from porn, then you better be prepared to supervise your child's int

In the car, in the air, get your ultrasound anywhere! From the Mobisante website : We have created the world's first smartphone-based ultrasound imaging system MobiUS™. This award winning system, cleared by the Food & Drug Administration, brings ultrasound imaging within reach of health care professionals everywhere. MobiUS fuses the power and wireless connectivity of a smartphone with the Internet into a game-changing diagnostic solution that is personal and accessible, helping health care professionals practice better medicine and reduce costs. I could see this being a handy device for in-home doctors, midwives, and physicians who work in third world countries. It also seems like it it much less costly ($7,495 according to GeekWire ) than the traditional ultrasound system (up to $100,000) you see in the typical OB/GYN office. I would guess that comes with a bit of a less feature rich experience as well, but that is an understandable tradeoff for what I would expect to be it&#

I have heard this phrase from a couple of people lately. It is said with a tone of surprise. As if, when most of your friends and family are on a certain social networking site, there is some better way of announcing news such as, "our baby was born", or "we are moving". Let us set aside for a moment the fact that the people in question do not even have a Facebook account and thereby did not really hear about it on Facebook, and go through the scenario step by step. Baby is born. Parents are very excited and want to revel in the joy the addition to the family. I make a single post on this blog about the event. I share it on various social networks to inform my friends and family and anyone else who might care. Done. This process, because the blog post was pre-drafted with blanks to fill in, takes less than a minute. Now I can spend time with my family. Now comes along some asshole who expects me to go old school and spend the first half hour of my child's life w

When Chris ran a half marathon while she was only half way through her pregnancy, she got some interesting looks. I commend her for it. It looked hard. But this gal ran a half in the Chicago Marathon and gave birth on the same day! "I got the OK from my doctor to run half, and my husband ran with me and supported me along the way," Miller told WGN-Channel 9 from her bed at Central DuPage Hospital. "I ran half and walked half, that's how I finished. "Everybody just kind of stared as I'm running by.” It used to be common to discourage a lot of exercise while pregnant, and some people are still of that mind. That is why people give strange looks when pregnant women run races. As long as you are not just getting started with running, most doctors will give the okay and even encourage it as long as you are being smart about it.