AC Capehart capehart

Yesterday, Sam got another birth card. This one (ostensibly) came from Governor Ed Rendell, and his wife, Midge. The front looks like a normal congratulatory card. The cover says “Welcome Little One” and on the inside, “The world is one baby sweeter now.” And then comes the “personal” message from Midge & Ed. In handwriting-font, it says “As parents, we know how precious your baby is to you. Keeping your little one healthy means starting immunizations by two months of age.

Maybe I just have a dirty mind, but it took me a moment too long to parse this correctly when I heard it the first time: “OK, It’s time for floor play. Do you want to touch your turtle? Here. Touch your turtle.” — Sam touches her turtle.

In response to this query, I ended up with a 15″ powerbook. It’s a pretty sweet machine even if they did just replace it with the “4-times more powerful MacBook.” I tried an Ubuntu install, but it failed to recognize the Superdrive as a source for the CD — apparently Apple made some change to the drive with the October(’05) model updates. There’s a patch in Gentoo, but not (yet?) in Ubuntu.

Pop-pop (my dad) arrived yesterday evening, and in so doing, Sam has met her last biological grandparent — She still hasn’t met “Gramma Carolyn” — Pop-pop’s wife. I picked up Pop-pop from the Altoona train station after pretty much an all-day Amtrak trip from Richmond, VA. At least the price was right — less than he’d have paid in gas to make the drive. In a sense, he met Sam at a good time.

I didn’t track the first time she did this, but it’s also of note that Sam has supported her own weight on her legs, and has been doing so for at least a week. She’ll “stand” up in our laps. I can hold her just above her waist, helping with core balance a little, but she can do all of the standing herself. I think if she just weren’t so top-heavy with her head, she could probably stand briefly on her own.

The theme for this week’s Word-a-Day is interesting. It’s all about the positive versions of words we always hear in the negative. Here are the introductory paragraphs from today’s word (sipid): Why is there so much negativity around us? Open a newspaper, watch TV, listen to the radio, and you find nothing but negative words. Ever wonder why some words almost always appear in their negative

Sam rolled over twice today from the much-despised tummy time on to her back. She is 15 weeks old today. I went to get the camera to capture the third time, but there was no third time. Instead, I recorded a couple minutes of a child fussing because she didn’t want to have to lift that heave head one more time. Or, maybe it was performance anxiety.

I enjoy puns, and wordplay, possibly to a fault. If I remember, I’ll post some shaggy dogs at some point. I read somewhere earlier today about someone sidling up to a bar, and that made me think about the word sidle. It’s one of those words I only know from context, and that context is alwasy sidling up to a bar. I inferred that the definition was just “to approach”, but I looked it up today to learn that it means to approach or move sideways (or furtively).

It’s curious, though I guess not surprising, that becoming a father has given me some insight into my own childhood and my relationship to my father. A few things are starting to make a little more sense. The first among these is bear hugs. I’ve been getting bear hugs from my dad for as long as I can remember. I always kind of figured it was an “alpha male” thing. He was showing me that he was big and strong, and I’d better keep in line.

It was one year ago today that I started blogging. This would be a good time for self-reflection on what’s changed in the past year. However, one of the things that’s changed in the past year, has me up at 3:00 AM warming up formula to feed her, and so I’m too woozy from need of sleep to be introspective. Maybe something more appropriate will come to me during nap time later in the day.