odin's 2005 christmas wishlist!

'tis the season for friends and family ( and occasionally very generous "internet friends" ) to begin asking us what odin would like for christmas and this year, rather than tell everyone the same improvised, ad-hoc list of the same things we thought we'd be a bit more organized and put together odin's 2005 christmas wishlist on amazon.

obviously, anyone can feel free to get something not on the list, but we thought it might be a nice way for odin's friends and family who are scattered all over the world to make more informed purchasing decision. but that only works if everyone cooperates and actually buys the items from amazon, so please try to refrain from buying items on the list from a local merchant because then nobody else will know he's received a gift from his wishlist :-)

nobody should feel obligated to buy odin any gifts. but if the past few weeks are any indication it seems that there are more than one or two people who are interested and this list is for them.

of course, anyone can still feel free to send him a postcard or any other gift not on the Official List using the current address found on the postcards from budapest post.

the eric update - day 513: odin practices his Very Hearty Laugh.

somewhat related to his new, fake smile which odin will occasionally produce if you ask him to smile for the camera is his new Very Hearty Laugh.

we usually start the game with a few fake laughs to get things going but after a few moments we're all guffawing for real.

but he'll only do it for mamma and pops. if we try to play the game in public with friends and family, he'll just put on his best mister serioso countenance and make like we're crazy to ever think he'd ever do something so silly.

but we know the truth :-)

the eric update - day 512: simple shape sorting!

although complicated shape sorting isn't typically mastered until 23 months, at our previous developmental assessment we were given a tip by odin's case worker to challenge him by making a simple shape sorter by cutting one shape out of the top of a can and letting odin practice gaining confidence in his shape sorting skills instead of getting frustrated with his more advanced sorter.

we started out by cutting a narrow slit in the top of the can and giving odin various circular, flat objects ( jar lids, etc ) to put into his simple shape sorter and he mastered that task in short order.

so recently, we decided to make the game slightly more difficult by seeing if he could figure out to fit his cube-shaped one inch blocks through a square hole.

odin took upon the new challenge with great gusto and mastered the task in mere minutes, which i guess means that i have to develop my skills in cutting more complicated shapes out of plastic coffee can lids.

perhaps not coincidentally since gaining confidence in his simple shape sorting skills, odin's interest in the more general skill of putting one thing into another thing has exploded and he wiles away his time finding new things to put together.

in this case he decides to see if his old friend pooh can fit inside one of his stacking cups.

thankfully, pooh doesn't seem overly perturbed at having to suffer such an indignity and proclaims that he's quite happy that odin discovered a new hat for him that fits just about perfectly.

the eric update - day 510: time for a utility belt and powertools?

we thought that odin's first opportunity to play dollhouse with his cousins ruby and evelyn would be a fantastic opportunity to once again subtly reinforce the idea that playing with dolls is just as fun a way to pass the time as smashing toy cars.

but instead of playing with the dolls odin quickly decided that his time was best spent doing odd jobs around the house, including fixing the broken front door.

certainly in this respect, as kris will readily testify, he is not his father's son.

maybe i should get him a utility belt and power tools so he can make some progress on the "honey do" list.

evelyn looks on as odin tries and tries again to figure out how to best fit the door in the doorjamb. anyone who has ever tried to replace a door will know that it's really not as easy as it appears :-) i guess sooner rather than later i'll have to get him acquainted with the wonders of a sawsall.

the eric update - day 509: is there an "ability to master the ipod scroll wheel" developmental milestone?

of there's not perhaps there should be since odin is pretty close to mastering the ipod scroll wheel.

is he the smartest kid, evar(!) or is the scroll wheel just that well designed? as good as he is with the scroll wheel, he hasn't quite figure out how to "unlock" his recently retire dipod, but i'm guessing that will only last for a few more weeks.

and yes, odin is listening to "barnyard blues" from the happy lemmons album [sic] from the universally popular ralph's world.

the eric update - day 509: chicken soup for odin's soul.

we're still not positive if odin has his first cold or not, but certainly something is giving him a runny nose that's inducing a cough while he is sleeping.

and after his Thanksgiving Meltdown we had a "challenging" morning, but after a three hour nap he was a much, much happier baby and he appears to magically have much less post nasal drip. so maybe he slept it off?

either way, we thought it'd still be nice to give him some homemade chicken soup which according to mothers around the world ( and even some scientists ) soothes the symptoms of the common cold.

the eric update - day 508: happy thanksgiving from odin and us!

in one sense, thanksgiving was a lot less eventful this year since we didn't have any early morning dog seizures.

but maybe it was travelling almost 1000 miles ( 1609 kilomters ) over the past week has finally caught up to him, or maybe it was because odin has had 5 new teeth come in over the same time, or maybe he's getting his first cold ( we've noticed that he's had an increasing amount of post-nasal drip that is apparently irritating his throat and causing a cough. maybe it's a cold or maybe it's an effect of all the teething? ) - whatever the cause, odin spent much of the afternoon after this picture was taken having a prolonged and uncharacteristic Really Big Meltdown. he's usually quite laid back ( as long as mamma is close by ) but i guess today he decided that enough was enough.

oh well, at least he got to enjoy a small bit of his very first thanksgiving dinner .

and yes, it does take a lot of skill to take a picture when exactly nobody is actually looking at the camera :-)

the eric update - day 507: baby bear gets prepared for winter walks!

this winter odin is certainly too big for his warm and snuggly "bundle me" so we thought we'd give the sherpa/fleece bunting from onestepahead to see if its "...fold down the paw-style mittens and booties..." would be an adequate solution for our mitten and shoe conundrum.

thus far, the results have been positive, he didn't seem overly interested or wasn't able to get his hands or feet through the mittens or booties which is quite a success considering mittens are usually efficiently removed mere moments after we put them on him.

with a proper amount of winter clothing underneath, i think he'll stay plenty warm on moderately cold days, but if the wind was blustery we'll probably use our stroller shield.

now, if i could just find the time to get back into the habit of using the jogging stroller as it was intended.

if you look closely you might see the look of playful suspicion in his eyes.

that's right, mauja is no longer anticipating snow since we're forcasted to get up to 12 inches ( 30.5 cm ) over the next few days. i guess it's not surprising that his winter coat has grown to a wooly warm thickness - the bulge on the right side of his head is actually almost all fur that is padding his shoulder.

when the snow flies he gets quite playful and if you look in his eyes you might be able to see that he's looking at me wondering if i'm going let him tackle me. it's a subtle look, but i know it's there :-)

if there were more snow on the ground i might be up for some roughhousing but neither one of us is as young as we used to be, so i'll hold out for more fluffy padding.

Study: Premature birth raises blood pressure risk

this study is not just of interest because i am former micropreemie ( is "former" really correct? unfortunately the evidence seems to indicate that "once a micropreemie, always a micropreemie" ) and i'm the father of a micropreemie, but also because it's one of the few studies that i've seen that exams the long-term effects of being born very, very early.

sadly there have not been more papers published on long-term outcomes because until relatively recently it was exceedingly difficult to design the studies since the sample size was too small ( pun intended, i guess ) as most the of would-be subjects died soon after birth. the article mentions that 329,495 were enrolled in the study, but i'm guessing that the number of men born premature was a small subset of the total number participants.

presumably over the next decade we'll see much more research being published thanks to the always-increasing odds of survival for infants born prior to 28 weeks.

and for the record, i don't have a history of high blood pressure - it'd be interesting to know if the effect was only detectable after a certain age.

the eric update - day 504: odin's first sauna!

i've written previously how the local finnish-americans love their saunas and since odin is his mother's son, i guess there's little hope that i can stop her from exerting an early influence on him even if i've never fully understood the attraction to sweating in a cedar box and beating yourself with birch twigs.

not a buckless yooper.

there's obviously a long story behind most of these pictures. with me there's always a story, but there's a particularly long one associated with my very first experience with what's known simply and understatedly as "deer camp". but until i find time to write it, i guess maybe you won't get to hear the real story unless we're sitting by a fire trading tall tales.

if you don't know me and you're suprised to find out that i've gone white-tail deer hunting you don't have to feel odd, since most of my friends and family are probably just as surprised. but sometimes it's good to surpise everyone - even yourself :-)

and for the 99.99 percent of people who are confused about the title, it's a reference from the movie "escanaba in the moonlight" in which the lead character is an aging man who is such a bad hunter he's never downed a male deer ( a buck ) and is derided by all the local adults and schoolchildren ( escanaba is a real town and not far from our own deer camp ) as "bambi's best friend" and a "buckless yooper". and i suppose it might help to know that residents of the upper peninsula of michigan are commonly referred to as "yoopers". see, it's really quite a clever title even though nitpickers will nitpick that i'm not really a yooper.

none of the deer pictured were harmed, but i am - in fact - no longer a buckless yooper.

be a daddy type and support prematurity research!

i'm more than a few days behind on everything because i'm doing my best impersonation of a manly man in da UP, but i'd be remiss if i didn't point out that after being gently reminded about prematurity awareness day greg over at daddytypes has pledged to donate all profits from the sale of daddytypes shirts through the end of november to the march of dimes.

so you can support a great cause and get yourself a snappy shirt that i hear is the fashion item for new and not so new daddy types.

mention that odin sent you and greg will also send you a new ipod that's a joke for the humor impaired.

i haven't looked at the fine print, but i'm sure any types can by a daddy type a shirt too :-)

the eric update - day 499: legally blind?

some might recall that six months ago after odin's last follow-up exam to keep track of any lingering effects from his retinopathy of prematurity that we discovered that he had started to show signs of nearsightedness.

and six months later it appears that his vision has continued to degrade and while he certainly still has sight, it's now entirely possible that he could be categorized as legally blind in both eyes with a prescription strength of -5.0 ( i can't remember exactly what visual acuity value that prescription corresponds to, but i believe it's worse than 20/200 - maybe somebody can correct me on that ).

as you can see, it's getting more and more difficult to accurately measure his vision since he's much more vocal about his displeasure with the dilation drops and bright lights being shone in his eyes so it's possibly that his vision isn't quite as bad as we might believe but at this point we're just going to assume that he'll require some form of corrective measures much sooner than later.

more positively his peripheral vision is "good" which is encouraging since it's not uncommon to completely lose the capability as a consequence of ROP induced damage to the retina and from the ROP surgery itself. and his retina also appears to be "on center" and not gradually being pulled to the side due to a complicated effect from the ROP scar tissue and the developing eye. if it were to begin being pulled off center odin might have to learn to live with people constantly wondering why he wasn't looking at them when they were talking, even though he was, in fact, looking right them.

i know some people were really hoping that odin's eyes would just get better, but we've been aware that this was a possible outcome and i'm sure odin will overcome whatever challenges result from his changing eyesight, even if it gets much worse which is more likely than not.

november 15th is prematurity awareness day.

i was recently reminded that november 15th is prematurity awareness day and you can visit the march of dimes to find out all sorts of ways that you can help out the fantastic organization that helps fund the research that will hopefully someday stop premature birth from being the number one killer of newborns.

certainly, much progress has been made - but there is still much more research to be done to improve suvival rates and reduce the risks of long term disabilities.

the conspiratorial homunculus. or a peek inside my brain.

no. my brain has not become a burning candle. but as i sat and stared the candle wick i wondered if combustion, transubstantion and transmogrification were all synonymous ( obviously ignoring the christian doctrine and merely considering the narrow definition of transubstantiation as the "conversion of one substance into another." ).

and what i was most interested at that particular moment was not the answer to the question per se, but rather why my brain enjoys playing these little games with me - knowing full well that with no power and internet access and no proper dictionary that i'll sit and mull over the question endlessly. even likely dreaming about it.

sometimes i suspect there's a conspiratorial homunculus in my head that simply enjoys confounding the "real" me with mundane questions that are unarguably pointless.

the eric update - day 497: where are the candles and thermal underwear? or who didn't plan for an unexpected 30 hour power outage?!

o.k. so it wasn't really a thirty hour outage. but that's what the power company's helpful automated phone system was claiming when i shot the picture. and it ultimately did end up being almost a nine hour distruption in service, which can be a bit disconcerting when the outside temperature is only about 38 F ( 3.3 C ) and the winds are gusting up to speeds of 50 m.p.h. ( 80 k.p.h. ) as darkness arrived.

while not a disastrous calamity by any means, we did feel underprepared ( again! ) for anything but the mildest distruption in the usual routine. i'm not saying that we need to go out and contruct a fallout shelter or start hoarding tamiflu but we could probably use the slap upside the head with a clue stick and by some more batteries and candles and whatnot ( see, i clearly could use some more time expanding my disaster preparedness list beyond two items :-) ).

oh - and if you can't tell from the picture, odin is mesmerized by the candle during dinner.

and no, smarty pants, it might be a little difficult to tell lately but he really does have a life outside his highchair.

the photographic times - they are still a changin' :-)

the eric update - day 495: i guess after not seeing me for three days that this is odin's version of unbridled excitement.

but to be fair, i did get home close to his bed time and neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor his pops' late arrival shall keep odin from his appointed sleep schedule :-)

i can't believe in three days i missed out on him going to his playgroup for the first time, which i hear was just about perfect with just a couple of kids and parents that were seemingly quite conscientious about cold and flu season.

and he had two new upper molars that broke through his gums and what looks like it is probably an upper cuspid has also appeared!

and i missed his first rsv shot of the season. as he gets bigger the shots contain a greater volume of serum doesn't make him very happy.

and when they weighed him in preparation for the shot, kris learned that he gained a whole pound in less than a month, so he's now 30 inches ( 76 cm ) tall and tips the scales at a whopping 23 pounds ( 10.3 kilos )!

and i think he looks a lot older than the last time i saw him :-)

a sonoran sunset.

being naturally amenable ( with a surname of "snowdeal" what did you expect? ) to the northern climes it can be difficult to fully appreciate the natural beauty of the arid desert that surrounds scottsdale, arizona.

but the sonoran sunset is certainly not easily trifled with.

sweet dreams! and i did none of these things today.

you can click on each picture to see a brief description.

the eric update - day 492: this is the last time i'll see odin for a few days. sniff.

tommorrow, i'll be heading off to scottsdale arizona for the rest of the week which means that i'll be leaving odin for the longest time since he's been born! ack!

i'm sure he'll be just fine with just his mamma, but still. i'll even be missing his first rsv shot of the season. oh well, maybe i can give kris a quick lesson on how to operate the odin cam.

regardless, odin doesn't seem to care one whit and just wants me to put the camera down and help him wash up in the bath.

and just what am i doing in scottsdale, you might ask? it's top secret. it doesn't have anything to do with google's new engineering center in the area, but if all goes well it could be quite interesting indeed. or maybe it might not lead anywhere - i guess only time will tell :-)

the eric update - day 491: molar madness!

of all the processes we might fret more or less about being delayed, odin's teething timetable isn't one of them.

ever since our first sighting of tooth enamel his central and lateral incisors have popped through right on schedule and today we discovered that his 12-16 month molars are super duper close to busting through his inflamed gums, which i suppose might explain his recent, occasional fits of uncharacteristic unhappiness in the middle of the night.

all things considered, given how inflamed his gums seem, he's really not terribly cranky. at least not nearly as cranky as i might be :-)

that said, maybe it's time to revive the the ol' washcloth trick.

odin at 23 weeks.

browsing through some cds the other day i happened upon some sonogram images of odin taken during a routine prenatal visit.

i remember very clearly the profound excitement at seeing him looking so healthy and wondering how i was ever going to be able to wait until his due date in october.

of course, none of had the slightest suspicion that he'd be born in less than two weeks.

when i see this image it always reminds me just how quickly and unexpectedly things can turn out quite differently than you planned. which i know sounds impossibly trite, but it still seems worth contemplating every so often.

and if you're wondering why we were having a "regular" prenatal ultrasound at 23 weeks, instead of the more normal 18-20 weeks - our "backup" ob/gyn told us to find someone else to deliver our child when we revealed that we were hoping to have a homebirth with a midwife and it took us a couple of weeks to find a new doctor who had a more enlightened opinion of homebirth. to this day, i still can't believe she absolutely refused to deliver odin because she didn't want to risk having to "clean up someone else's mess". but having said that, while we're still very big fans of homebirths, we're also even bigger fans of making sure that you have a trained ob/gyn in the loop in case the unexpected happens.

the eric update - day 487: mozart effect or not, odin loves strumming the six string.

while we're not sure if all the benefits of the purported mozart effect have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, odin has been listening to music almost since the day he was born ( and every day since ) because there's at least some evidence to support the notion that music therapy for premature infants can be beneficial even if it doesn't causually increase their intelligence quotient.

and even since he's been home, we've tried to give him a variety of opportunties to get his groove on from watching his pops play guitar to playing the piano. and occasionally we'll even try to see if knows the correct diatonic scale :-)

and even if it's not ultimately true that music lessons might boost your child’s IQ or verbal memory it's at the very least a fun way to pass the time.

and besides, odin really does need to get his licks in so that he can contribute to sufactant's first single - central line ( yes, that's nicu graduate humor ).

the eric update - day 486: how big is odin?! or creating communication opportunities.

some might recall that odin scored on the low side of "normal" for communication skills during his recent developmental assessment when compared to age adjusted peers. and while nobody is saying that he's delayed in his speech skills, we were encouraged to keep a closer account of how he's progressing and most importantly to actively attempt to increase the number and complexity of our "communication opportunities" during the day.

one simple suggestion was that we more frequently play the "so big" game where we emphatically ask "how big is odin?! and pause before answering with our hands raised above our hands, "Sooooooooo big!"

he's a quick study and it only took a repition or two before he was exitedly raising his hands in response to our question. he's not interested in verbally responding yet, but the hope is that will change with time.

another interesting suggestion was to more frequently offer odin two choices to get him to think beyond "yes" and "no". so at meals, instead of asking "do you want water?" as we hand him the cup of water, we should offer up two glasses and ask him "do you want the water or the milk?"

a visitor on the website left a comment recommending the hanen center as a useful resource for books that seek to "coach parents on how to create the maximum number of communicative opportunities for their babies" which looks quite helpful.

of course, we're always interested in other suggestions!

because we've already heard from parents who think we're making much ado about nothing ( in the best possible way, really ), i should reiterate that we're not overly concerned about odin's communication skills at this point, but since over fifty percent of infants born at 23-28 weeks need some sort of help with speech by the time they reach school age, we think it's not a bad idea to err on the side of caution earlier rather than later.

the eric update - day 485: odin's epicurean adventures! roasted pumpkin seeds.

while he can't eat them yet because i think they're probably the very definition of "choking hazard", but that doesn't mean that odin can't enjoy the smell of fresh pumpkin seeds roasting in the oven.

we're traditionalists when it comes to roasting pumpkin seeds and generally frown upon adding any fancy schmancy ingredients that distract from the simple roasted pumpkin flavors :-)

ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups pumpkin seeds ( about what you get from a mediumish sized pumpkin )
- 2 tsp. melted butter
- salt to taste

Preheat oven to 300° F. Mix pumpkin seeds in a bowl with the melted butter and salt and spread in a single layer on abaking sheet.

Bake for about 42 minutes - until golden brown - stirring occasionally.