My Truant Pen

Cloud change

I am here to tell you that the second age of personal computing is over, and the third has begun. This week, we bought a netbook. (Pauses for gasping intakes of breath!) (Is disappointed by heckler in the imaginary crowd shouting out “So what?!”)

“So glad you asked. Let me explain.”

My family got our first personal computer in 1982 or 1983. I was four. Mom and dad took the plunge in a very financially hard time, I believe because it was good for dad professionally. Also because my father is the earliest of early adapters (let us discuss the LD player, shall we?). That was the first breaker of the first wave of personal computing. That computer had a word processor (was it Wordstar 2000?). It booted from a 5 1/4 floppy. It hooked up to an electric typewriter as a printer. (We called them Doc and Olive — Olive was an Olivetti whose usefulness far outlasted Doc’s.) I remember a banner spelling out my name in huge letters, with each letter made up of smaller letters. We got this computer before I could read.

That first wave of personal computing involved dumb machines. There were no connections to anything. Files were moved (rarely) by floppy disk. Computer games were played by yourself at the computer. This went from 1982 until, in my world, 1995.

In 1995 we got a modem and AOL. It was a long distance call. I got an hour a week. I would carefully craft a bunch of emails, connect, send them out and get new ones in, and then spend the rest of my time in (relatively tame) AOL chatrooms. All this was still done on the big tower computers that dominated backrooms and offices — nests of cables slung heavy against dusty backboards.

This second age of computing — the connected but dedicated machine — is the one now passing.

We have an office. We’ve had an office since we first got married. This office has always had two big computers. (We share our finances completely, but we DEFINITELY have his and hers computers!) One of the computers always has a big monitor, a cutting-edge (read: extremely costly) video card and a lot of processing power. The other had these things five years ago (that would be mine). Lately, though, we haven’t been spending a lot of time in the office. It’s ALL THE WAY UPSTAIRS. It’s also not a very kid-friendly room. While Grey is entertained on his own computer (err… what?) Thane thinks the room is delicious. It is not a Thane-ok room. So the upshot is that when we go upstairs, it’s usually late at night and when we feel like hiding.

This poses lots of problems. There are now a bunch of things we can’t do without internet access. “What are we doing this weekend?” “Where is the party?” “Just what does ‘Onogaeshi imasu’ mean anyway?” “What can you do with kohlrabi?” These are all questions that we reflexively turn to the internet to answer. Google docs has most of our documents. Picasa has most of our pictures. Google calendar has the master data about our schedule. Gmail usually has several things in it that require action. Mapping is online. We do not have an encyclopedia set. So either we tromp upstairs, we wait, or sometimes we’ve brought our work laptops home.

Enter the netbook. It’s small. It’s light. It’s portable. It was relatively inexpensive. (If it gets damaged, we will be sad but not devastated.) It connects to that great googly cloud of information we need. It can run games. It has more hard drive space than my current tower.

I have a sneaking suspicion we will never buy another tower. Their day is over. We’re both programmers. But you know what? Both of our work computers are LAPTOPS. My laptop has enough power to run Eclipse and Flexbuilder and Coldfusion server and SQL Server Management Studio and WinCVS simultaneously without breaking a sweat. It’s not even specially tricked out — it’s the same laptop specs that our business folks have. Why would I want an immobile tower? I’ll turn our office into a peaceful craft space — a real retreat. Maybe I’ll even get an armchair for reading up there. I’ll banish the cables.

There was really only one reason we were hanging on as long as we did: gaming. My husband likes to play video games. But the video card on his last computer cost, I think, $600. The monitor wasn’t cheap, either. If our only reason to do this is games, we could probably buy TWO game consoles for what buffing up his computer cost.

Thus begins the third age of computing. This age will be small and mobile. Many devices will be able to access that part of the cloud they need. Instead of one big device intended to serve all purposes, we’ll have many smaller application-specific devices. We won’t have “my computer”. We’ll have the netbook, the laptop, the gaming console (which, if we aren’t there already, will handle your MMORPG too), the phone (which, God willing, will have our calendars and to-do lists on it). Many of our devices will do more than one of these. The netbook, for example, has a built in webcam and does Skype far better than the hard-to-reach upstairs tower.

Have you made the switch from the second to the third age? Do you see it coming? Is there a compelling reason for that tower that I’m not seeing? What do you think?

Board Games

My husband and I have always played a lot of games. In the gravy days, back when we had TIME, we mostly played games in group setting — with friends. But lately, board games have become one of our primary date activities. That’s what we do when we want to spend time together.

Board games (and I’m not talking Monopoly here, people) fall into various categories. There are epic ones, quick ones, medium ones. There are hand-builder games (Dominion), resource games (Agricola – I first played this while in labor with Thane), spatial reasoning games (Richochet Robots), screw-your-neighbor games (You’ll probably disagree with me, but screw-your-neighbor is usually a defining feature of our games of Catan), strategy games (Memoir ’44) and party games (Werewolf).

There are games that play best with 6 or more people, and there are games perfectly balanced for 2. (Although it seems like most of MY favorite games are best with 3 – 4 players.)

Lately, Adam and I have been playing lots of Dominion, Roll Through the Ages and St. Petersburg. We’ve been playing so many games lately, that I’ve started to see and perceive patterns in what makes a game fun for us, and how we’re different in our makeup.

For example, Adam has a slight edge in Dominion, I dominate Roll Through the Ages, and he completely trounces me in St. Petersburg. Reliably. I have a slight edge in Memoir ’44, but that one takes so long to set up we rarely play it. All four of those are games we both enjoy playing.

What’s the difference? Adam is a perfectionist – an optimizer. He will take as long as he needs to figure out the absolute optimum strategy and apply it. I’m more of a good-enough-er; an executive decision maker. I go with what seems like a pretty good idea, make my decisions quickly and change my strategy midstream if it seems appropriate.

Neither one of our personalities is better, not even for game playing. I enjoy games that overwhelm him, like Race for the Galaxy and Agricola. He doesn’t like these games because he can’t really map out all possible outcomes and plan accordingly — there are too many and the fellow players at the table get impatient. He hates Catan because his careful planning usually gets spiked by the moves of other players in a way that feel malicious.

It’s been fascinating to watch how RELIABLY he beats me in St. Petersburg, even though I’m really trying my best, haven’t made huge mistakes, and have a competent strategy. In that game, night before last, the difference between competent and not making mistakes vs. perfectly optimized was a mammoth 30 points.

We’ve played a lot (a LOT) of games together to notice the differences between our decision making styles. I’m glad we have, though, because the styles hold true whether it’s in a board game or in life. I would (for example) win many more games if the scoring included the speed with which decisions were made. It always takes him a lot longer to decide what he wants to do, because he’s weighing all his options carefully. The same holds true for, for example, buying a computer. He’ll investigate all the options. I’ll find one that seems pretty good. Sometimes the difference between the third one on Amazon that seems reasonably priced and has high ratings and his careful research is nil — I end up with the same computer he finds after weeks of investigation. Sometimes it’s terribly significant. I begin to wonder if he should be in charge of some of our more major financial decisions. Or if, alternately, choosing a mutual fund for our IRAs might paralyze him with choice.

What about you? What kind of decision making process do you use? Have you discovered truths about yourself by playing board games?

So many changes

Sometimes it seems like life goes more or less the same for a long time. Then suddenly you look down and your baby is enrolled in college. (Or, you know, going to his first day at preschool. 20 minutes until I can pick him up!)

This weekend was one of those abrupt-changes weekend. Since I’m now down to 19 minutes, let me sum up:

1) The boys switched places. For months, we’ve had one easy and one hard kid. Thane was easy — just drag him along and periodically boop him in the nose with a stuffed bunny while making a funny sound. Grey was hard — he has been known to be quixotic, investigative and opinionated at times. In like the last week they switched places. Thane is utterly frustrated, opinionated, thwarted and messy (we’re at the throwing everything phase of eating). Grey, meanwhile, can entertain himself for 10 or 20 minutes at a time! Amazing.

2) We debated a long time about Grey’s “Saturday activity” — something we’ve done since last summer. After a year of not-wildly-successful dance classes, we weren’t doing that anymore. I was interested in gymnastics but ugh. I did the math and they would cost between $16 and $19 per 1/2 hour session. That’s a lot of loot. Finally, building on Grey’s interest, we’re sending him to aikido classes at the same dojo my husband practices at. He had his first class on Wednesday. He loves being like his daddy, and I think aikido will teach him a lot of the body and self-control things I hope for. Also, it comes to like $6 per 3/4 hour class — assuming he never makes it to the Wednesday classes. I think this is a win.

3) We discovered that Grey really likes music. Duh. There was a MOMENT. In the tent two weeks ago during Hurricane Bill’s driving rain, I pulled out a Calloiu song-book with color coding and an attached keyboard. I was bored. I showed Grey how it worked and how to break the code. I played through the entire songbook.

He was entranced. Not a day has passed since then that he hasn’t supremely carefully sounded out “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and sung “Six Little Ducks”. (The wiggle waggle still slays me.) He has, for a three-nearly-four year old, quite a bit of patience with this. He has a really lovely singing voice. He’s very interested.

I got a mediocre “teach your preschooler piano” curriculum. Which, of course, starts with “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.

So here I present to you my young Mozart:

From Grey playing piano

(Let’s see if this is working … I’m skeptical. Hey! It does! But the quality is pretty bad. Picasa is not doing it for me video-wise. Still, that’s what you get because it’s time to pick Grey up from preschool!!!! Woot!)

The first first day of school

This time of year is commonly called “Back to School” time. Ah! How I have loved it. I have this mismash of memories: the sharp box of crayons all lined up by color, the cut brown and orange leaves hanging on the wall, the course outline printed next to the computer, the syllabus slipped into the front cover of a blank notebook, the snap of a trapper-keeper with a ream of paper and a pencil holder in front. I loved every bit of it. I loved the newness and the fresh start. I loved the office supplies. I loved school. In college, I loved all parts of it: social, cultural and academic all swirling together in one caffeinated delight.

Perhaps one of the things I miss most in my working life is the ‘back to school’ sense. My job is the same: winter and summer. It is never finished or finishable. It doesn’t change. I miss that fresh trapper, new syllabus feeling.

The older you get, the fewer firsts you have. My first day of school, ever, I do not even recall. My first kiss is a dim memory. My first job, apartment, pregnancy, home purchase and production database mistake are all in my past. Today I have another first.

Grey channels his inner Calvin while Thane squirms

Today is my first first day of school as a parent. Grey started preschool this morning. He’ll be going all day, three days a week. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he will be a Caterpillar taking his first steps down the path of education. Who knows how far he’ll walk down that path. Will he love it? Take to it like a fish to water? Will he struggle? Will he excel in fields I never considered? He will go into that preschool classroom with a Spongebob blanket for naptime, a command of the alphabet and his own charm. He will fall deeply in love with his teacher, or not. He will make friends. He will make enemies. He will make mistakes. He will make pipe-cleaner art projects we will put proudly on the wall. He will decide he loves school. He will decide he doesn’t. He will go with the flow.

It is too much to say that this is the first step on the path to the rest of his life. He’s already trod down that path. He does know how to read – a little. He knows his alphabet. He can count to sixty before getting bored. He knows how to make friends and play tag. This is just the next step on the path to which his feet have already been set.

But still. This is our first first day of school.

Grey in his classroom with his new TA, Melissa

A lump

Like every blogger in the universe, I struggle with how much I should talk about. My mom and my mother-in-law both read this blog. A future employer will very likely find it. (Hi future employer! Hire me!) Who knows – my sons may someday find themselves reading about it. (“Mooooom! How embarrassing?!” “What? Your Iron Man undies were soooo cute!”)

So it is with a certain hesitation that I tell you that I found a lump in my breast.

But wait! Before you panic, I’ll also tell you: the story is completed and it ends well.

I’d noticed the lump a few months ago, but as a nursing mom, well, Tigris and Euphrates are moving targets. They change a lot, all the time when you’re nursing. So I didn’t worry much about it. But now that I’ve dialed back and the girls seem to be returning to more normal proportions, it was time to pay attention to the lump that didn’t go away.

I’ve found lumps in my breast twice before. The first time I was maybe 23. I was newly married and so in love with my husband (still am, for the record, it’s just too late to die as newlyweds) that I was superstitiously afraid it would be poetically appropriate for one of us to die young because the universe just doesn’t like for people to be that happy. I spent a week convinced I was going to DIE of breast cancer! I went to my dr. She agreed it needed to be looked at. I went to the Breast Center at Faulkner Hospital (to which I could and did walk). They ultrasounded it. They mammogrammed it. They let me feel up a model boob. The result? Just normal but lumpy breast tissue. No problem. Let us know if it grows big or something, but it won’t because it’s just normal breast tissue.

Phew.

The second time was Grey’s first birthday. I panicked only slightly less than the first time because I had a baby! Imagine him being orphaned, never knowing how much his mother looooooves him. (Good thing I have the blog so he can now read about it in excruciating detail should I die in a tragic chopstick accident, eh?) I went to Lawrence Hospital and they ultrasounded and mammogrammed me. Shockingly, this too turned out to be lumpy breast tissue and perfectly normal.

So you can understand that I wasn’t ready to get all that worked up about what felt to me very much like lumpy breast tissue. But, as it remained through weaning etc., I decided that even though I was pretty darn sure that this one is just like the others, and even though due to changes in our health insurance, this time I’d likely have to pay for a good portion of that testing myself, it would really suck to self-diagnose as lumpy breast tissue and be wrong.

So I went to my midwife. And I went to get ultrasounded. I provided them entertainment by being a nursing mom (still at night) which totally messes up mammograms, so they didn’t even bother. The diagnosis? Well, as the charming, Russian-accented radiologist said, “Your breasts are lumpy-bumpy-happy.”

I do very much think about how this kind of health care plays into the larger debate. On one hand, all three of these lumps were significant enough that my primary care physician could feel them and not be certain that they were normal. (Of course, how much malpractice plays into that, I can’t say.) For two of the three, even after an ultrasound they wanted the second look with the mammogram. (Fun!) But none of these are dangerous, precancerous, anything. I would be perfectly 100% healthy if I’d never seen a doctor for any of them. What is the responsible healthcare decision to make? Should I keep going in every 3 years when I get a new lump? Is the best systemic financial decision for me to get some training in the difference in feel and morphology between my normal lumps and cancerous lumps? Is it best for my family and the system if I go in every single time to get them checked out, even though past history indicates my boobs are lumpy? How much does that cost? How much would it cost if one of them was a problem and I missed the chance to catch it early? What about studies that show (ok, that I think I read like 5 years ago) lumpy boobs are more likely to eventually get cancer? What is the rational treatment for the ongoing care of my lumpy ladies?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. The part that dismays me is that I’m not sure anyone does. My healthcare providers default to doing all the tests because THEY have no motivation to do otherwise. I follow their recommendations because I can, because I’m not a trained medical professional, and because the cost of being wrong is so high. But I’d love better training instead to know what cancer looks like and how it acts, so I can spot the difference. Or a statistical study saying that 90% of lumps aren’t cancerous and you should only go in with these criteria. Or even a study that says the most efficient outcome is to get every lump checked, every time.

I hope you will forgive me if I fail to include a picture with this post. My future employer and sons are reading.

Brownsmith

The summer we lived in Bonner’s Ferry, I was five, or maybe six. I remember that summer fondly — the first of the golden buzzing summers in the Northwest. I remember one of my favorite things to play: Brownstone. I would walk out of the house – on the side with the big tall trees toward town, not towards the deep forests – holding a full cup of water and a spoon. Then I would creep under the porch. There was dappled light down there; more than enough to see by, but not enough to nourish plants. It was just plain dirt. Not dirt with construction waste mixed in, or dirt with old roots, or rocky dirt. Just, well, dirt.

And with the consummate care of an artist, I would spend hours under there transforming that dirt into mud. There’s a particular delightful state of mud when it’s nearly solid, but the surface gleams with smooth moisture. I can see it a lifetime later in my mind’s eye. My goal was to create patties of this delightful stuff. I named myself a brownsmith. A blacksmith works with iron, but a brownsmith’s stuff is mud.

From the eyes of a parent, I have to suspect that what this looked like was an hour of silence followed by the need for a bath. Funnily enough, I don’t remember the baths at all. Just the way the mud looked.

Yesterday I had a reprieve from my usual schedule. A friend was coming, and she was bringing dinner. So instead of tying my children to my apron strings as I cooked a proper meal for them, we all sat in the front yard together. Thane sampled the tasty bubble rods. I drew an outline of Grey on the sidewalk and added antennae and a spaceship, having way more fun with it than he did. But finally he noticed the flowerbeds. I had mulched them, but they need loving care again. Apparently you have to deal with your lawn more than once or twice a summer — who knew? Anyway, he asked if he could dig in them. My first reaction was: no! You’ll mess up the flower beds.

Then I thought, “Am I the sort of mother who won’t let my son play in the dirt?” and I said yes.

Then he wanted to use some bricks to plant brick seeds that would grow into brick plants. And I thought, “What a mess this will make!?” and then I wondered. Am I the sort of mother who won’t let my son play with blocks in the dirt? So I said yes.

For 20 minutes my son happily built a brick hovel and piled intermixed dirt and mulch on top, while Thane sampled the fine vintage of grass clippings on the lawn. I played Bingo with him for the 30000th time. The sun shone dappled through the trees, and I remembered the dim recesses of Brownsmith.

Maybe tonight I’ll give Grey a spoon and a cup of water, too.

Insert thoughtful educated post here

Let’s see here. I’ve done the milestone “see how big they’re getting now!” post. I’ve done the “here’s what I’ve done with the house” lately post. I’ve done a Domestic Diva post. I haven’t had any adventures in the last two weeks, unless you consider getting lost in Boston adventurous. That means I’m due for a “Deep Thoughts” post. (Sorry to pull back the curtain.)

Just one problem.

Right. No deep thoughts.

I’ve been contemplating this issue all day, trying on topics to see which ones would work. I’ve listening to Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga lately on audiobook and just came to the stunning revelation that Sergyar was named for Prince Serg. But aside from a psuedo-English-major essay on how Miles Vorkosigan is a namer as defined in Madeleine L’Engle’s books, I don’t think I have a lot to contribute on the topic.

I have been programming in a new language at work, but I’m still at the confused stage, so I don’t think I have anything valuable to add. Plus, a readership nourished on cute kid stories probably doesn’t want to hear my rant about WHY we can’t just have one standard universal data typing scheme so I don’t have to remember if it’s a float or number or numeric or if it’s a varchar or char or character or string or text.

I have played several new board games lately. I enjoyed Pillars of the Earth even though I lost badly. I think Roll Through the Ages is one of the best-designed two-player games I’ve played possibly ever and am sad that my six consecutive victories makes it unlikely I’ll be able to con my husband into it again soon. I liked St. Petersburg, but need to play it again to completely master the intricacies.

I just discovered to my shock and dismay that the Red Sox traded Justin Masterson while I was on Mt. Rainier and unable to use my psychic powers to protect him.

Let’s not even get in to politics, eh?

So here you have it. I have managed to write a 350 word post about how I have nothing to write about. I’ll attempt to salvage my bloggy-honor by promising that next week will be a meaningful post. And maybe I’ll do something interesting in the next 24 hours that I can tell you about tomorrow.

Baby steps

Part of my wild weekend of hedonism and home makeovers was a BBQ in Watertown with some friends. The place was (quite literally) crawling with babies. Happily, it was a great spot for it. I plopped down on a lovely quilt with my son, snagged some delicious food and settled in to felicity.

Grey – the oldest child present – had a great time bouncing between groups. He’s getting to a point where we can take a step back in supervision. He usually makes pretty good decisions, doesn’t run off (although every once in a while he hides — happily I can almost always find him by following the giggling) and does a good job of following rules. This earns you a longer leash.

Thane, of course, still needs to be kept very close. As I mentioned, Thane has been increasingly interested in standing and walking. With a friend and my mother-in-law, we attempted to talk him into taking a few steps between waiting arms. He tried a number of amusing not-walking things. (Aside: what trust a child has to lean all the way back into your waiting hands. If had let him fall, it would’ve hurt. He did not think that I might let him fall.)

Thane loves loves loves clapping. BINGO is his favorite song. (He’ll clap along.) After he NEARLY took a step, I clapped in delight for him. Eager to get more clapping, he took two steps to me and was duly rewarded! Yay! 10 months old. His first, halting, head-long steps came just as he turned 10 months. More will follow, quickly.

It’s also been amazing to watch him start to talk. He likes to play with hands. So he has this trick he does where he’ll turn his wrist in a wave and say “buh-bye”. Of course, grownups can’t resist waving back. And then he can grab your hand and play with it. I think he may also say “ball”, “da da”, “hi” and (I swear) “Gwey”. He parroted a phrase I said this morning in the car. (It was like “I think so”. And he made similar sounds in the same cadence.)

Where has my baby gone? Who left this big boy in his place? This walking, talking, thinking, laughing human being with teeth? Amazing.

The walker shortly after his first steps

The real reason for home ownership

I would like to submit Exhibit A for evidence that I do not learn from experience.

This week, we painted our bedroom purple. It had been extremely dull before. Imagine a white carpet (plush), white cheap panelling, white curtains and a white drop ceiling. Strew liberally with excess papers, clothes that didn’t quite make it into the dirty clothes, bedside reading and shoes, and you have a pretty good view of our bedroom. I paint this word picture because what I do NOT have is a single solitary PICTURE of our bedroom. Not from the home inspection, not in the move-in pics, not in the two years we’ve since spent in the house. Brilliant. The very best I can do for you is this picture of a recliner I’m trying to offload:

Bo-ring!

Having painted the boys’ rooms fantastic colors (green for Grey and blue for Thane) the utter blah-ness of the color scheme became even more noticeable. And my mother-in-law kept asking what project we wanted her to do when she came up.

I vaccilated between the lilac color I actually wanted and the sea-green in our attic which is rather more grownup than the lilac color I actually wanted. I kept hearing in my head the commentary of the guys on “Sell Your House!” on HGTV wondering for a national audience just WHAT these people were thinking?!?! Then I realized: screw them! I’ll paint it a boring color if I ever want to sell the house!

A very short time later, the walls became a spectacularly warm and joyful color of purple, thanks to the hard work of my mother-in-law.

But wait! There’s more!

Our house was built in about 1900 — an era when women actually sewed clothes and 6 or 7 outfits was a plentiful wardrobe. (Well, or so I imagine.) For that era, the closets aren’t that bad. This means that they are tiny and few, but do exist. My clothing collection is, er, perhaps larger than necessary for strict modesty even granting our lax frequency in doing laundry. (Ok, ok, it’s outrageously large. But, er, so it is.) This has lead to me putting my hanging clothes in Thane’s room and the upstairs room. And this, in turn, has lead to me wearing many of my fun clothes less often because I forget they exist. Also, it’s cold on winter mornings. I’d had a plan for quite a while, but building on the energy of my MIL we took a trip to IKEA. And lo. We returned with a wall worth of wardrobes.

A shockingly short time later they were assembled. And then they were populated with appropriate clothings.

There are finishing touches left. We plan on putting curtains over the wardrobes (doors were expensive and we couldn’t get the ones we wanted in the size we wanted — I think curtains will be fun. And if they’re not, we can always go back for the doors.) We need to, you know, clean up the room.

But voila! Much more storage and much less boring!

Thane at ten months

At some point the rate of change slows and you go from weekly updates to monthly to quarterly to, eventually, annually. We are still firmly in the “monthly changes” zone with Thane.

My last monthly update with Thane, I believe I confidently promised he’d be walking by the time I went to update once again. I was wrong. Thane isn’t walking yet. This might be because he’s so darn busy growing up in other ways. It’s harder this time, though, because the changes are extremely clear and important, but hard to write about. So I’ll start with the easy ones.

Food: We’ve mostly weaned. We haven’t entirely weaned. At night, before I go to bed, I take a 99% asleep baby out of his crib and kiss his curly head and nurse him – every night wondering if I’ll do it again tomorrow night. I am not sure if he gets a lot of milk that way, although I hear swallowing. I do know it’s desperately sweet to hold him in the dark quiet before bed and it appears to be working. So we’ll be keeping up this night nursing until we don’t. Other than that, Thane is quite an eater. He loves loves loves dairy. His two favorite foods in the world are whole yogurt mixed with fruit (usually applesauce) and chunks of cheese. He also adores beans – kidney beans, black beans, etc. He does a great job of feeding himself carb-type foods: small bagels to gnaw on, pieces of bread or crusts of pizza (he likes pizza), graham crackers, Cheerios, etc. He’s less enthused about carbs that are fed to him, like oatmeal or baby cereal. After a torrid love affair with blueberries, he now disdains them like a snooty suitor who found a richer wife, but will still eat other fruits such as strawberries, peaches, bits of apple, etc. He really likes yellow squash and zucchini, which is good because so does Farmer Dave. It’s hard to tell when Thane is hungry, because even when he’s OMGSTARVING he’ll vehemently refuse a food which isn’t the food he desires. You have to try a few kinds of food before concluding he’s not hungry. I’ve learned this one the hard way. Thane’s an adventurous eater and will try some of pretty much anything – including raw lemon. (Mean ol’ daddy….) In fact, there’s many a dinner when Thane has eaten more of the main meal than Mr. Grey.

Teeth: This week has heralded the appearance of two new teeth, poking not-quite-evenly from the top gum line. One is right before eruption, one is right past. Chomp! Imagine what he’ll be able to eat with double his current number of teeth!

Movement: Here we start getting into the ambiguous and hard to describe. The idea of walking just completely turned on for Thane last week, as he and I walked out of White Lake in the intermittent summer sun. Since then, he’s been very, very interested in standing and much more stable. He’s cruising from surface to surface instead of crawling between them. He stands by himself. He can almost stand up by himself, without holding on to anything. It’s amazing how many steps there are between crawling and truly walking, and how each small improvement looks so large and yet isn’t actually all the way to walking yet.

And now for the hard ones. Let’s see.

Thane loves loves loves books. He’ll sit for more books than I have patience for. The other day when he was sick, I read him 8 consecutive books. He turned the pages correctly, at the correct time. The last book we read was a book of opposites. On the last page it says “Hello. Goodbye!” When I read “Goodbye!” he waved to the book. (I, of course, melted into a puddle of goo.) He’ll be quiet for a book when he’s really fussy, even when he’s fussy with good reason. He steals his brother’s books out of the toy bin in the back seat. He looks at them intently and with great patience.

Thane’s at the throwing stage. There’s this fantastic stage of childhood when kids throw everything, including things they want. Dinner in the high chair? Toss. A bowl within reach? Down it goes. Toys in the car? How far can I throw them? And then the kids get very upset because they don’t have any fooooooood and there are no tooooys for them to play with. WAAAAAH! This is how you learn cause and effect. It’s also incredibly annoying.

Grey and Thane are having a great time being brothers – most of the time. It’s actually going way better than I expected. Although Grey can get a bit snippy when Thane wants to play with his toys or when Thane is whining in the car (see also: throwing all your toys out of the carseat), most of the time it’s easier having the two of them. Grey hates being alone, for example. But with Thane counts as not-alone. They’ll play together in a room with Thane providing the part of observer. (Which parent hasn’t gotten tired of the “Mom! Mom! Look at this!”?) Yesterday in the car driving home was a delightful example. Grey was putting a book on his head and having it fall off. Thane thought this was quite possibly the funniest thing EVER. For 10 minutes all I heard was Grey hamming it up with the book and Thane laughing as though his sides were about to split — this great laugh halfway between baby and person. It was awesome.

Thane is also beginning to show appropriate (if sometimes frustrating) personality. If you take a toy away from him, he will weep. Bitter, bitter tears. Sadly, he considers my coffee a desirable toy. If you take my coffee away from me, I weep bitter, bitter tears. This is something of an impasse. Most of the time, though, he bounces right back from disappointment. He generally has a sunny and joyful nature.

There are the beginnings of language with Thane. He says “da da” in a convincing way. I swear that I heard him say “Gwey” — I have witnesses. He doesn’t usually say “ma ma” unless I prompt him to. He certainly knows his own name, but that will be a tough one to pronounce. Grey still calls him “Dane”. He clearly understands plenty of words (see also: waving “bye bye” to a book)

Thane hates hats and bibs with a blinding passion. He sucks his thumb when he’s upset and sleeps with his butt in the air. He loves playing with spoons. He waves his arms when he’s excited. He has the sweetest curls.

He is a joy.