AC Capehart capehart

I don’t think he reads my blog, at least not with any regularity, but yesterday my brother-in-law IM’ed me this URL: a newsgroup I posted to in 1991, in which I discuss a variety of topics from the LPMud I was helping run at the time, to the future of VR, to teledildonics — all on a thread started by Howard Rheingold. Does anything on the internet ever really die? Who reads a nntp://sci.

Sam had her first travel of note yesterday. We went from Altoona to the Philadelphia area to start our holiday time with Mom-mom and Grand daddy. It’s about a 4 hour drive. It took us until about 3:30 PM to finish packing up. The timing of getting an infant packed up to travel is tough because we wanted to do so much for her last minute. Change the diaper just before we leave, feed her just before we leave, etc.

Yesterday afternoon/evening we rocked Sam to sleep. This was a little bit of a surprise. We knew that babies liked to be rocked, but we didn’t realize that it was true for both the sway gently side to side definition AND the play or dance to rock ‘n’ roll definition. In this case, the three of us were dancing to Apache Indian’s Boom Shack-a-lak when she konked out. A few of my dance “moves” startled her awake — they would scare most anybody — but she would drift right back to a contented sleep.

I was talking with my friend, Rebecca, the visual artist, the other day. I now forget who it was she was ragging on — some group of geeky or artsy people. She said they had… I think the description she used was, “horribly, ugly home pages.” I thought that anyone who would offer a critique like that must be pretty proud of how her own home page looked, so I googled her.

Carolyn and I have started talking about what Christmas “traditions” we should start to institute. For that matter, we’re also talking about how to present Christmas to baby Sam in the future. In many ways, despite the efforts of some true believers, Christmas has become as much a secular holiday as a religious one. As has been noted earlier, I’m hardly a model Christian, despite agreeing with many of the stated (if not demonstrated) tenets of the faith.

I just love moments like the one we just had. Sam had finished nursing recently, and I was holding her in the crook of my arm, her tiny body across my chest and belly. She looked up at me and exercised various facial muscles, including sticking her tongue out. A brief fuss storm washed over her, at the end of which, she had the good sense to close her eyes. She quickly fell asleep in my arms.

No, it’s not my high school locker combination. It’s my daughter’s “percentiles”. We had a visit to the pediatrician today, and among other things, Sam got some measurements taken. At 8lbs, 13 oz, she’s in the fifth percentile for kids her age (~2.5 months). At 21.5 inches long, her length (height?) is in the 15thpercentile. I’ve forgotten what the raw data for her head circumference is, but it is in the 25thpercentile.

If I’ve seen the movie, the Exorcist, it was a long time ago. As Carolyn will attest, I don’t have a head for movies. But some movies are cultural references as much as they are movies and the Exorcist is famous for the kid’s head spinning around 360 degrees. Sometimes, I’m afraid that’s just what Sam’s head is about to do. We read somewhere that “80% of babies prefer to look to the right.

I now have a new category — Baby Metrics. It’s where I’ll be putting up summary information of the raw data contained in SamTrak. I’m currently using charting software just for the diaper activity. I’m undecided on it. It creates Flash graphs, which are pretty cool, but still rub me the wrong way. Maybe for no good reason. I was looking for a gd-based graphing tool and found jpgraph which seemed pretty neat.

A while ago I asked AC if I could occasionally write a guest post on his blog, as I don’t have time to properly maintain a blog of my own. (Even as I write this now, I should be sleeping!) He was kind enough to set it up so that I too can share my impressions of Sam. In honor of Sam’s 10-week birthday, here are 10 Things I Love about Samantha: