That’s my girl!
Category Archives: Fatherhood
My reflections on fatherhood
Things I must teach my daughter
Everytime the doorbell rings or someone knocks on a door, it is NOT ALWAYS a man delivering pizza. Just sometimes.
But we do know her favorite food, I guess.
Top ten reasons geeks make good fathers
Parent Hacks pointed me towards a blog entry that makes a top ten reasons why geeks make good fathers. It seems dead on to me.
Okay, maybe not, the you can’t go wrong with list that includes legos, video games, and gadgets.
COME, SON OF NICOLAS CAGE, KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!
Its been in the news that Nicolas Cage has named his new baby boy Kal-El. Us comic geeks know that Kal-El happens to be Superman’s birth name. Not sure if this is better or worse than Harley Quinn Smith, Kevin Smith’s little girl. I’m thinking Kevin wins here.
In any case, this makes me feel less bad about how Sarah and I named our daughter.
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I don’t need no one to tell me about heaven, I look at my daughter, and I believe.
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Today is Dinah’s first birthday. As cliched as it sounds, it doesn’t seem like that long. I have no idea where the time went. In the past year she’s gained over ten pounds and gotten quite a few inches longer.
Its a milestone in her life, and in mine and Sarah’s as well. All three of us have survived the year and are happy as we can be. I’m really not sure which is more shocking, her making it or Sarah and I making it.
There’s been “rough times” in the past year that involved Dinah not sleeping through the night and us being up (usually as a result of illness.) But that’s as bad as its been, and that’s really not all that bad. All in all we’ve been blessed with a happy, healthy, and friendly daughter.
We’ll have a birthday party, cake, a smash cake, all that fun stuff planned for today.
Something that only excites a parent
One of the things that only excites a parent is the quality of a baby’s bowel movement. Especially when the bowel movement quality has returned to normal after a week.
This shouldn’t really be news to anyone, but its something that has been stuck in my head for about 13 hours. I think its to be noted when you’re excited enough to say out loud “hooray! Its normal poopy!” Of course, others would argue that I would say that long before Dinah was around.
Dinah development update
- Thu Nov. 18: first tooth
- Sun Nov. 20th: started crawling
- Fri Nov. 26th: starting pulling herself up on stuff
- Mon Nov. 29th: started sitting
- Fri Dec. 3rd: 2nd tooth starting to push through
- Sat Dec. 4th: Parents totally exhausted
- Tues Dec 7th: 7 months old
It seems like she was really trying to cram a bunch of development right into a two week span. When Dinah started crawling, she went from one or two “steps” to across the room at high speed in about 2 or 3 days.
Its been pretty cool, but pretty exhausting as we’re baby proofing on the fly, or just chasing her around to keep her away from things she shouldn’t get into. The top things she loves to play with that she shouldn’t are lamp cords.
pre-Halloween photos
Sarah and I finally got around to taking some Halloween pictures of Dinah.
Yes, its not actually Halloween yet, but we wanted to have the pictures on Halloween (or just before) to show off and so the grandparents can do the same. We took these pictures out in our backyard. Ideally, I should have done it earlier in the day when the sun would have been more to the east, as the forest is west of us. However, they turned out great anyway. Also, she’s not sitting up on her own yet. The ones where it looks like she is, she’s either propped against something or Sarah moved her hand away as I snapped the picture in the scant seconds before she starts to fall over.
I’m a biased observer, as she is my kid, but damn she’s cute.
Brodie (from Mallrats) was right!
From the Kevin Smith movie Mallrats:
Brodie: Listen, not a year goes by, not a year, that I don’t hear about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid which could have easily been avoided had some parent – I don’t care which one – but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect that escalator.
The guy who died at miller park after falling off the escalator was a man, not a child. However, Brodie’s advice still stands. This man did not fear and respect the escalator.
When my daughter is the correct age, she will be taught to fear and respect the escalator.
Sorry again, Dinah
For as long as I can remember, when I’ve walked outside and its sunny out, I’ve sneezed. I can usually count on a good two or three sneezes. In the past few years, I finally was curious enough to do some research and found out that I have the condition called photic sneeze reflex.
Photic sneeze reflex (also whimsically called ACHOO, a backronym for Autosomal dominant Compelling Helio-Ophthalmic Outburst) is a medical condition by which people exposed to bright light involuntarily sneeze. It has been suggested that the photic sneeze reflex occurs only after someone has been adapted to the dark for at least five minutes, although this is not certain, and is not uniform amongst people with the photic sneeze reflex. The condition occurs in one-sixth to one-quarter of humans, with more common occurrence in Caucasians than other human races. The trait is passed along genetically, with a 50 percent chance of inheritance.
The probable cause is a congenital malfunction in nerve signals in the trigeminal nerve nucleus. The fifth cranial nerve, called the trigeminal nerve, is apparently responsible for sneezes. Research suggests that some people have an association between this nerve and the nerve that transmits visual impulses to the brain. Overstimulation of the optic nerve triggers the trigeminal nerve, and this causes the photic sneeze reflex.
Lately, I’ve noticed that Dinah has been sneezing when exposed to bright light. Looks like she inherited it from me.
Sorry, kiddo.