the eric update - day 453: the littlest scientist. finding even newer ways to prove that things fall when you drop them.

the littlest scientist is always formulating, testing and revising all manner of theories about his environment and many of his investigations involve testing nuances of the effects of gravity.

his latest study involves climbing exactly five stairs, and dropping his toy cars and trucks through a very specific circular opening in the stair railing. like any good scientist he repeats the action in exactly the same way again and again, undeterred by the fact that he must climb up and down and up and down the stairs.

he must be reading up on designing a proper study because he seems to understand that having a large sample size is key to being confident on the conclusions.

the postcard project: dumfries, scotland.

update: after further clarification the postcard project judges have officially ruled that this entry is from dumfries, scotland and not manchester, england as they originally thought.

we'll definately have to visit manchester, england since vanillasky ( and here ) has already sent odin one of our favorite postcards and a favorite shirt in addition to this lovely card featuring a castle that we presume is near manchester.

perhaps she can give us a little more detail about exactly where it's located so we start planning our england adventure :-)

words can't really convey how much it means to us when someone we've never met spontaneously sends a postcard to odin to encourage him ( and us ) to come explore.

i like to imagine that when he's older we'll have lots of fun sifting through postcards learning about all the locales trying to decide which place to visit next.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 452: all the better to eat you with!

what with his ever growing set of teeth and his propensity to growl and snort when he's really happy ( while we suspect he learned the former behavior from mauja , we're still trying to figure out the who has been teaching odin to snort when we're not around ), when i snapped this picture i thought how it was quite nice that he hadn't quite figured out that biting can be impressive way to communicate that you want something when you can't quite get the words out.

of course, having merely thought the thought means i've guaranteed that within the next week or so he'll start experimenting with the parental behavior modification technique, which is why i'm reviewing methods for curbing toddler biting since i'm not sure that we can readily transfer the methods we used to train mauja that biting was a Bad Thing :-)

the postcard project: tokyo, japan.

andy wicks ( and here and here. ) puts everyone else to shame by sending a postcard from valkenburg, netherlands and tokyo, japan! but curiously we still haven't received one from his hometown of saint paul, minnesota. sigh.

i guess maybe minneapolitans are perhaps a little more proud of their hometown :-).

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 447: er. yes. we've taken a break.

after nearly four hundred and fifty days we've decided to take a little break. although it's already been a few days longer than i originally planned, we'll be back soon.

i think.

i suppose it's not really fair since we still get to see odin in all lf his cuteness every day :-)

the eric update - day 445: scenes from the dinner table.

perhaps i should start an occasional "caption contest" for those days when i can't think of a witty or thoughtful narrative to accompany the images :-)

more mauja meds

yeesh. between having a mysterious seizure or two, losing a buddy, getting skunk'd, nearly drowning and developing a supposed interdigital cyst, poor mauja has had quite an exciting-in-a-not-so-good-way year.

and if that weren't enough, he's developed some sort of nasal blockage. it's impossible to get a good look at what's causing the trouble without sedating him and taking x-rays ( read: expensive ) so we're hoping that it's just a transient infection that's inflaming his nasal passages that will get cleared up with a round of antibiotics and steriod shot.

the vet thinks it's "probably" not a tumour, but it can't be ruled out especially since we never did find out what was causing the the seizures.

it seems to be irritating him a bit less today, but he's rubbed his nose raw presumably trying to scratch the unreachable itch.

we'll just hope that the meds do their thing and we don't have to make a decision about what to do if they don't.

the postcard project: grand rapids, michigan.

jeeez, louise. you know some things have gotten out of order when i'm finally just uploading a postcard project postcard that was sent by the parents of a family friend from grand rapids, michigan to celebrate odin's one month birthday.

linda and dennis, we really did get it on time :-)

the postcard features the painting, le berceau, ( the cradle? ) by berthe morisot.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 444: reading is fundamental.

certainly there's no doubt that reading is fundamental and as important as is might be to read to full term infants to stimulate brain development, even if it's not scientifically proven, it seems like it might be even more important to read to odin given the micropreemie odds of "invisible" disabilities.

and while we've been reading to odin since our earliest days in the nicu he's spent many of the past few months seemingly more interested in chewing on books rather than reading them.

but every so often, he'll intentionally pick up a book - even occassionally turning it "right side up" - and casually flip through the pages scanning from left to right, all the while looking quite enthralled with the content and not the least bit interested in having mamma or pops lend a helping hand.

the eric update - day 443: no. apparently we're not really ready for daytime nail clipping.

typically when it's time to clip odin's fingernails - which somehow seem to be ready for trimming nearly every day - we follow the advice to only attempt the grooming act when he's sound asleep and apparently oblivious to the fact that we're torturing him.

but every so often we try and see if his fear of clippers has abated with the passing of time.

apparently that time has not yet arrived.

we try to convince odin that it's much safer to trim his nails in the daytime rather than use his tender fingers to hone our ability to clip them in the dark, but he doesn't seem to think much of our argument.

perhaps an irrational fear of fingernail and toenail clipping is genetically determined, since i do know that at least one of his parents abhored the concept.

the eric update - day 442: Ahoy, me hearty!

since september 19th is international talk like a pirate day but odin is quite old enough to actually talk like a pirate ( although he certainly do a fantastic growl that's pirate-ish ), we thought we'd still do what we could to get him into the spirit of the day.

who knows, maybe by next year, we'll have an eye patch to compliment the outfit ( that's a bit of prematurity "humor", we haven't seen any signs that he'll actually need an eye patch ) :-)

he has the aaaaarrrggghhh part of "Arrgg, Matey!!" down, which he thinks is lots of fun. we're practicing the rest and something tells me we'll have it all worked out in time for ITLPD 2006.

the eric update - day 441: two great things that go great together.

you'd thing that if we know that odin loves climbing stairs - even if he might not quite have thoroughly mastered the safest way to back down them - that we might have cleverly surmised that rather than blocking him from the stair entirely with The Gate that it might be better to rig it so that he could climb up a few steps, providing him with the opportunity to relatively safely experiment with a variety of techniques for getting back down the stairs without risking grevious bodily harm.

some things are a lot more obvious after a sister-in-law with a kids of her own points them out to you.

after tumbling down the couple of steps a few times we're happy to report that odin is safely discerning the the relative risks associated with the stairs without suffering any additional Really Big Ouchies.

it's amazing how much a relatively simple change in his environment can instantly create an opportunity for him to challenge himself and gain confidence in his own abilities.

the eric update - day 440: goodbye bathseat!

what's amazing about bathtimes these days is not how long one can look at odin's wet head wondering whether or not his hair has grown a mere millimeter in the past 48 days.

no, what's really amazing is that he seems to have finally mostly outgrown the need for his bath seat and related paraphernalia meant to provide infants with some semblance of safety during bathtime.

we could still probably use a good bathmat to prevent accidental slippage but it's been our experience that nothing that's advertised to stick on the bottom of a tub actually does works as promised, so - as always - we'r open to suggestions.

happy seventh/fourteenth anniversary to us!

although technically we're celebrating our seventh wedding anniversary today, we'd "been together" for seven years before tying the knot so we really consider this our fourteenth anniversary, which i think is some sort of record in this day and age and also explains why sometimes we act like the old married couple that we apparently are :-)

the eric update - day 439: eating the DIY way.

sure, odin has enjoyed the benefits of feeding himself with fingerfood but he's also been happy to have us feed him foodstuffs which has the added benefit of making mealtime mightily unmessy. i mean, we could feed him stuff that would make other parents cringe at the thought of the loads of laundry that could result from the mess without a bib!

that is, until recently.

it seems that he's decided, for reasons known only to him, that he'd really rather feed himself without any help from mamma and pops. thank you very much.

in the span of a week or so, he's gone from happily gulping whatever we might direct his way with a spoon to outright refusing anything that he doesn't put in his mouth with his very own hands.

we're trying to not take this turn of events personally and are instead focusing on how we can substitute all the pureed food we used to feed him with eats more appropriate for feeding oneself while one is still working on one's utensil wielding skills.

annie's organic whole wheat shells and cheddar cheese seemed as good a choice as any, but of course, he's too smart to actually choose to digest the whole wheat shells and instead chooses to spit them out after sucking all the cheese off the pasta!

it might not look like it from the picture, but he really does enjoy it - at the least the cheesy portion of it.

on the recurrence of pre-eclampsia across generations

some might recall that odin's unexpected ly early arrival was caused by a freakiskly aggressive case of pre-eclampsia which quickly developed into what's known as hellp syndrome.

not much is known about pre-eclampsia and even less about what might cause uber-aggressive cases of the condition which is one of the reasons why we'll probably adopt if we ever have more children.

so any new studies usually catch my eye, even when they have the boring title of "Recurrence of pre-eclampsia across generations: exploring fetal and maternal genetic components in a population based cohort" which one online publication more bluntly translated to "Father's Genes Can Trigger Preeclampsia".

futhermore, the study concludes that "[[a] familial association predicts more severe pre-eclampsia.." and that "Men born after a pregnancy complicated by pre-eclampsia had a moderately increased risk of fathering a pre-eclamptic pregnancy..." which certainly could be quite pertinant to odin when he gets a little older.

and it's of course interesting to note that kris' mom had pre-eclampsia during her birth and although it was never an official diagnosis, the fact that i was born a 26 weeker back in the day makes me scratch my chin and say "hmmmmmmm" quietly to myself.

the eric update - day 438: autumn is in the air. or at least on the ground.

yes, there's no denying it. one need only look to the ground to see the evidence that autumn is fast approaching with the rapidly accumulating debris of fallen leaves that can be found on the ground.

the leaf peepers in western michigan may be more than a little disappointed this year since the extreme drought - it's been dryer than it's been since the dust bowl - is causing the leaves to fall earlier and with more drab colors than normal.

the eric update - day 437: o.j. did it!

we've finally won at least this battle in The Great Butt Rash War and - to mix a metaphor - the prime suspect is o.j..

we didn't suspect orange juice immediately because although we had only recently started giving odin juice in his sippy cup and the occasional slice of orange and it didn't seem to instantly be associated with a rash. perhaps it takes a little time to develop a tendency to rash? in any case if we take away everything with orange juice in it his rash clears up quite quickly and if we reintroduce the juice it comes back.

apparently citrus fruits in general can be a common cause of allergies and rashes, an effect that presumably dimishes over time.

but i wonder how long he'll have to wait, because odin sure is going to miss his oranges.

the postcard project: grand rapids, michigan.

with so many postcards from all over the world, you might think we'd more than a few from our hometown of grand rapids, michigan. but alas, this card from odin's aunt jolene, uncle scot and cousin mitchel is actually only the third card we've received! not that any local family and friends should feel guilty. no sirreeeee :-)

this card shows "la grand vitesse" which was a sculpture produced by alexander calder in 1969 and sits in front of city hall.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 436: Sipping From a Straw!

while odin has been messily drinking from a "real" cup for awhile and despite our mild reservations he's mastered the sippy cup but we thought it might be nice to see how he might fare when challenged with the more complicated task of drinking from a cup with a straw if only because the motions needed to sip from a straw can be considered a fun and easy form of oral motor therapy:

"In English, in order to have connected speech (co-articulation) and speech clarity, we have to stabilize the back of our tongue on the back of the palate. Whatever else our tongue is required to do, it moves from that position of stability.

The tongue elements work with four basic movement components:

* retraction/protrusion,
* back elevation/depression,
* tip elevation/depression, and
* the ability to spread the sides of the tongue.

At birth, babies have approximately a 50 percent back and 50 percent forward movement from the resting position called a suckle. As children get older and begin spoon and cup feeding, they achieve about a 75 percent retraction and 25 percent protrusion. They do not stick their tongue out during feeding.

Those who do frequently present with feeding problems. Straws have been prescribed routinely for these occurrences because, at the very least, the client can return to the 50-50 suckle through straw feeding."

"It should be mentioned that sippy-cups, a popular feeding tool, encourage suckling, once again falling short of the preferred 75 percent/25 percent retraction/protrusion goal."

"Normal straw drinking requires complex movement from the jaw, lips and tongue. Through the coordination of these movements, a vacuum draw is created. Each of our speech sounds are made with a different combination of these graded movements."

now, other than an issue with gagging on foods that was recently overcome we haven't yes seen any signs that would indicate odin might have a significant problem with oral/motor delays, but sometimes they can be fairly subtle and it's never a bad practice to encourage odin to practice the complex skills since delays are quite common in infants born weighing less than a thousand grams.

we thought it might be quite a challenge to teach him how to drink from the evenflo "dazzler" cup, but of course - as always - he proved us wrong.

after blankly staring at the cup for a few moments wondering what on earth he was supposed to do next, we decided to test his rapidly developing ability to imitate by simply showing him in an exaggerated fashion how to purse one's lips and suck on the straw.

he watched very intently and figured it out on the first try, which - if i'm not mistaking the look on his face - made him quite proud :-)

the postcard project: ann arbor, michigan.

ed vielmetti was kind enough to send a second postcard from "the people's republic of ann arbor" ( some fellow michiganians might "get" that joke ) :-)

hopefully we'll get a chance to come over and visit soon since ann arbor is one of my favorite towns in michigan.

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 435: The Awesome Appeal of the Refrigerator!

odin has recently discovered that the refrigerator is a source of endless enjoyment rivalling even the Captivating Container Cupboards and certainly much more fascinating than the Forbidden Foliage.

what possibly could be more perfect than having a seemingly infinite number of oddly shaped objects close at hand perfectly sized for little grasping graspers?

all complete with easily removable paper labels that are presumably quite tasty!

surely it's no wonder why as soon as he hears the refrigerator door open, he comes quickly crawling to take stock of shelves.

i wonder what sort of countermeasures are available to help us when he figures out how to open the door all by himself.

the eric update - day 434: look ma, no hands!

aha! i finally caught odin standing unassisted! some might remember that he's really pretty much almost probably just about standing unassisted for a few weeks and he's quickly spending more and more time standing on his own two feet.

perhaps not surprisingly, he's decided that he'd to use both hands to play with a set of keys.

kris claims that he took a few steps today but i'm not sure i'll believe it until i see it :-)

shooting in the RAW (mode).

even though it supposedly offers all manner of advantages, this is the first photo i've taken in raw mode.

i never really got into the habit of shooting RAW partly because it seemed like something only "real" photographers do, and everyone knows i'm not a real photographer :-)

but more importantly i've also never really been comfortable with the idea of locking my originals on a proprietary format that render them inaccessible with the next software upgrade and i think the odds of everyone adopting an open format open standard are slim to none.

so are you shoooting in RAW mode? and if you are how do you get around the fairly significant downside? trust that it will never become a significant issue? double your "workflow" and storage needs by saving the RAW original into another less risky format?

the eric update - day 433: odin's first football game!

the return of football is a sure sign that autumn is fast approaching in the midwest.

but one this particular day summer hasn't completely given way to fall and these poor 10 year olds have to play in 90 F ( 32 C ) heat in full regalia. ack!

odin's cousin mitchel plays for the team in black who had a hard time finding their game against the green team who one parent remarked come from a school district that seems to breed outstanding players.

i can't say odin thought much of the football game what with the a set of infinitely more interesting keys laying around. but even though he was nap deprived and forced to sit for what must have seemed to have been an interminable length of time in insufferable heat ( and yes smartypants, he was actually sitting under an unbrella in the shade for most of the time ), he was a superchamp and didn't complain once.

it's still almost impossible to fathom how different things were exactly a year ago when we snuck away from the nicu to watch a football game on a day when the big news was that odin was stable enough to wear pajammas with footies.

today he was stable enough to impress everyone with his ability to stand unassissted, although i'm still not fast enough to catch it on "film" :-)

could it be possible that next year at the start of football season, he might be big enough run up and down the sidelines yelling encouragements to his cousin?

the eric update - day 432: everything is more enticing when you have to stand on your tippy toes to get at it!

wow! not only is odin really pretty much almost probably just about standing and forcing us to batten Down The Hatches with his extreme interest in what's in the cupboards, but today we discovered that he's also getting tall enough to spy what might be on the edge of the last safe zone in the house - the top of the kitchen table.

of course, the vast expanse of unexplored space ( at least from this angle, he usually gets a good view of it from his highchair ) is all the more interesting because it requires one to stand precariously on one's tippy toes just to get a look at what hidden treasures might reveal themselves to just within reach, which is this case is a bottle of tea tree oil ( thankfully with it's cap securely tightened ).

we use tea tree oil like other households might use duct tape or maybe butter and it's currently being recruited in the The Great Butt Rash War.

i have no idea if it actually helps alleviate the symptoms, but hey, i guess it can't hurt. who knew the aussies had an academic tea tree research group?

the eric update - day 431: when in doubt, air it out!

or at least that's our newest salvo in The Great Butt Rash War. i might also add that we're temporarily withholding orange juice since it may, or may not depending on how closely, be exacerbating the redness.

we initially thought the balmex would be a magic bullet and while it's helping, it's not completely eradicating they symptoms.

since there's no more blistering apparent and it doesn't appear to be "yeasty", we're attempting more frequent contact with the open air, which of course, overjoys odin and seemingly makes him believe he has a free pass to pee on anything and everything.

i wonder if he's taking notes on our walks with mauja and trying out what he's learned :-)

the eric update - day 430: the photographic times, they are a changin'.

for a few weeks, i've been trying to take a comparison shot of odin with pooh to compliment the one we took 213 days ago (!), since you can still get a good calibration of how much he's grown since his birth by looking at the pooh photo pool.

but trying to get a "nice" shot of him with pooh has just highlighted that fact that it's he's getting more and more difficult to photograph, since getting so mobile and so quick and mostly not interested in anything i'd obviously like him to be interested in ( maybe i should have just velcroed the remote control to pooh ) for longer than 30 seconds.

yes, there's a reason why he's sitting in his highchair for so many shots, as it's the only place i have a reliable chance of getting him to sit still!

he's soooooo fast ( just how fast is he? ) that it really is just about impossible for autofocus to keep up ( although even as i type this i wonder if maybe there's a better AF setting on the the d70 that tracks moving subjects...where's that manual anyways? ). which is all a long explanation for why i'm thinking it's time to expand my photographic skillset, because an endless series of pictures on the highchair could get mighty boring for everyone involved.

there must be some sort of guide filled with tips and tricks for photographing your 12-to-36 month who won't sit still and refuses to take direction :-)

in other words, we welcome your suggestions!

the eric update - day 429: that which goes up ( the stairs ), must eventually come down.

while odin has been The Stair Master for quite some time, his skills have much favored crawling up the stairs; after making it to the top of a set of steps, if and when he decides that he might like to come down he seems to have not quite proven to himself whether or not coming down head first is more or less risky than attempting the task feet first.

i think he might intuit that although there are certain benenfits to be gained by getting a good look at where he's going, it can carry a heavy penalty if he looses his grasp. but he usually tries the feet first method only after going with his head first.

i wonder why, but of course, he's not telling :-)

the eric update - day 428: the unofficial end of summer. or time to put away the white clothes?

although i guess i can't speak for the rest of the northern hemisphere, the labor day holiday marks the unofficial end of summer here in western michigan and the united states. which means we've begun the process of mourning the fact that the green grass will quickly wither and turn brown and perhaps more importantly that rsv season will soon be upon us which will mean we'll be hunkered down avoiding snotty, sickly carriers of infections, waiting once again for hope to spring eternal.

but for now, we'll enjoy the last remaining weeks of warm weather and green grass and admire how odin seems unperturbed by the fact that we're making him play on such a steep hill :-) just the other day we discovered that a pair of shoes made by the van doren rubber company ( a.k.a "vans" ) that were given to odin by his aunt candy when he was much, much smaller than he is now finally fit him properly! in an amusing coincidence, when his pops used to wear vans as part of his skater uniform, labor day was also a much lamented holiday because it meant an rapid end to the skating season, which really was the worst for of torture that could be endured by teens didn't have access to indoor skate parks.

completely unrelatedly, the bright, white rubber on his shoes makes me wonder if they're immune to the custom that prohibits the wearing of white after labor day? we certainly wouldn't want to be accused of forcing odin to commit any unintentional fashion faux pas :-)

the postcard project: myrtle beach, south carolina.

odin's cousin's ethan and adam sent this card ( maybe with just a little bit of help from their mother ) from myrtle beach, south carolina where they recently vacationed.

perhaps someday they all will get a chance to find treasure in the sand and watch crabs with flashlights!

[ see the postcard project slideshow. ]

the eric update - day 427: this is the face of a boy about to be abandoned.

or rather, this is the face of a boy who doesn't care that he's about to be abandoned. o.k. really, he's not going to be abandoned, as he's about to spend the afternoon and evening with grammy pam while we go out ( again! ) for some unofficial end of summer golf, grilling and adult beverages.

we're almost saddened to hear that odin apparently doesn't even notice when we're gone for hours and hours and seems to enjoy playing with grandma without the slightest hint that he'll ever get distressed at the prospect that we may never return, even when we don't get back before bedtime!

you'd think he could at least feign at least one or two episodes of hysterics just so we could feel missed :-)