Now, the world (wide web) knows.

Number two is due around June 22nd. No word on names or whether it is a boy or a girl, nor are we going to "find out;" except that we already "know" it's a boy because Adam was the 20th boy in a row (on Dion's side, of course).

I just had my first ultrasound last week and luckily the tummy trouble finished just in time for Christmas feasting. I've been indulging even more than usual to make up for two months of crackers.

Pumpkin Patch and 18 month check up

I never figured us for a family-outing-to-the-pumpkin-patch-kind-of-family, but we're game for stuff that other people will organise and it was really fun. Thanks, Rebecca! Thanks also for remembering and lending your camera.

Adam started out really grouchy because
a) He was strapped into the car for so long. and
b) We arrived around 11:30, which is his natural nap time.

But after a short while, he really got into crawling between the pumpkins and finding compfy pumpkin "chairs." He also enjoyed the wagon ride from "Fia" (Sophia Caranci). I'm quite happy about how the blue coat contrasts with the pumpkins. I didn't plan it that way (this year) but I probably will in the future.

Also. At his 18 month-check up, Adam got his last two vaccinations until he's four (not counting flu, which we'll do again every year, probably). He was highly uncooperative with the weighing and measuring but the stats are 28 pounds (75th percentile) and 35 inches (99th + percentile). The old site I used to use to get more accurate percentiles now requires registration, so fuggetaboudit.

caught red-handed

Adam thought that 10am was a better time for bath than after dinner. We had to do a whole proper bath because this soap will give him a nasty rash.

not as yummy as I was expecting.

O hey! Mom! Camera!

uh. We're all good, right? right? I'm smiling pretty, see?

Thanksgiving

hanging out with Clare and Becky

hanging out with Dad

a cool moment

When I went to get Adam up from his nap yesterday afternoon, there was a bright, narrow sunbeam shining through his otherwise dark room. I showed it to him by passing my hand and his hand through it a few times.

"What is it, Adam?" I asked.

"Bubbles."

Bubbles? I looked closer and indeed the small specks of dust in the air were reflecting all the colours of the rainbow.

I thought I understood exponents ...

until I asked my 12U students to make a conjecture about whether an odd or even function taken to a natural number power becomes odd, even, or neither. I didn't ask for a proof, it was just a little 2-mark thinking question.

In case you need reminding: x^2 is even because (-x)^2 = x^2. sin(x) is odd because sin(-x)=-sin*(x).

Anyway, it got me thinking: what does a real number exponent do to the symmetry? What does a real number exponent MEAN anyway? I thought I had a handle on rational number exponents. But even then, the domain (valid x values) gets messed up. And now my real problem (though not real enough for me to look up the "answer....")

What about irrational (or better yet, transcendental) exponents? I'd say, "Who cares? just approximate to a rational," but it comes up in polar coordinates all the time. e^ipi anyone? My graphing calculator seems to tell me that
x^2pi
(x^pi)^2
(x^2)^pi
are all different. Try a table of values. What does -0.7^2pi even MEAN? I don't know how to calculate that by hand. Excel should work for those lacking graphing calculators.
Actually: I was putting x^2pi into my calculator wrong. It's graphed the same as (x^2)^pi.

How's my calculator doing it anyway? Taking an approximation of pi, converting it to a rational, then doing the exponent? Then the different curves (domain aside) are simply artefacts of rounding errors that blow up due to exponentiation? Or Dion suggests that it might be interpolating between two nearby rationals. Rob thinks it probably depends on the calculator but likely it just chooses one nearby rational.

Maybe it all makes sense if exponents are seen as the inverse of logarithms (which were invented first, BTW). But then I would need to understand logarithms.

Discuss.

Uh yeah, whatever, Karen.

The ugliest ...

website I've seen in ten years:

http://math.scu.edu/putnam/index.html

Nap, nap.

Eating

So, I have read that toddlers start eating less when they hit a certain age. What is that age again? Adam could eat us out of house and home. (I exaggerate.) I bought $10 in fruit (nothing fancy at good prices) yesterday and not much is left. Despite eating a goodly amount earlier in the day, Adam ate at dinner roughly:

1 small pork chop shredded and soaked in gravy
.5 apple raw, sliced
8 strawberries
.5 peach
2 apples worth of apple sauce (That is, all of it. Dion and I got none)

30 minutes later, he washed it down with 7 or 8 ounces of whole milk. We had done bath before dinner while we waited for Dion to come home.

Oh and table manners? not so much. photo evidence below.

This is yoghurt-eating.


This is peek-a-boo.

Notice the tarp beneath and behind his chair.

can't quite make out the seventh tooth that appeared last week.

Pals!

Karen, Stephanie, Eva
Adam, Isabel, Jerett

on Jeff's Birthday. This was Jeff's last birthday:
Adam and Jerett. 17 weeks

Sunshine!

words boring. pictures good.

The people have spoken. Or actually, not spoken. Here's your fix:

Ah luvs me a close-up series. Yes, I did exclude some. These are about a quarter of the shots I got at our new favourite playground on St. Mary Street almost two months ago.








I got scolded very abruptly and rudely at Indigo on Bay for using my camera in the store. No "please," "excuse me," or "sorry." Just "It's the law." Yeah right. You're worried about getting sued for copyright infringement or a patron/employee complaining about privacy violation. No one is being charged or sued for photographing her own son, fully dressed, in a public place. Sheesh.


On the swing at Allan Gardens. This hat gets a lot of "compliments." It's pretty outrageous.



PEEKABOO!

randomness

Let's see.

How to mince onions in a food processor. As tempting as it seems, do not use the grating tool. This produces onion puree. Rather, run it through the chopping tool twice. Incidentally, any ideas on what to do with 3 onions worth of onion puree?

Adam's bedtime habits. He's taken to kicking us out of his room with "'Night 'Night Bye Bye" and then proceeding to chat to himself or his seal or walls or something for a very long time. almost two hours once or twice. Tonight it was a only around twenty minutes but it was extra cute. At bedtime he commented on my wedding ring, "Ring!" And so, I started singing, "Ring Around the Rosy." "Again!" "Again!" "Again!" And so later we heard over the monitor: "ashes, ashes, dOWn" over and over again.

Back-to-School Dreams. The usual. not prepared for class in my dreams.

Adam's vocabulary. just for the record, i.e., boring. Words with an asterisk may not be intelligible to strangers but they are clear and consistent. Does not include words where he is merely repeating sounds from a poem or song. He also has two Cantonese words: tek (kick) and ma (wipe). I'm sure I'm forgetting some but whatever. I thought I'd attempt a list before it becomes uncountable. I think I'm happy that mine, me, and Adam don't yet appear on the list.

food/kitchen: bread*, noodle, rice, cereal*, beef, chicken*, fish, egg, bean, broccoli*, onion*, avocado, grapes*, banana, peel, orange*, melon, blueberry, strawberry*, plum, peach, apple*, cheese, milk, yogurt (25), fork, knife, spoon*, bowl, lid, cup*, bottle*, bib, tray*, pot, whisk*, hot, warm (13)

animals: dog, cat, bird, squirrel*, duck, turtle, pig, chicken (only counts once), horse, goat, cow, sheep, whale, lion*, bear*, crocodile*, fox*, monkey*, bunny rabbit* (18), moo, baa, oink*, ruff ruff, bow wow, meow, neigh, roar, tttt* (9)

people: baby, Daddy, Mum, Norm, Matthew*, Dave, George* (7) It was clear but we haven't seen him in a while; so, I'm not counting Rob.

body: hair, head, eyes, ears, nose, cheeks, lips, mouth*, teeth, tongue, arm, (finger) tips, (belly) button*, penis*, bum, leg, knee, toes (18) hat, coat*, shirt*, pants*, diaper*, socks*, shoes* (7)

bath: bath, soap*, pee, pooh, flush, (tooth) brush, (tooth) paste*, comb, towel, wash (10)

"toys": toy, baby (doll), book, disk, blocks, ball, balloon, magnet*, keys, phone*, seal*, choo choo (train), car, truck, beep-beep (15)

other nouns: garbage (can)*, chair*, wall*, door, pillow*, blanket*, zipper*, snap*, button*, piano*, guitar*, ring, light, swing*, moon, money*, wallet*, time (means clock), pen (19)

numerals: 9, 10 (2)

exclamations: yes, no, no-no, hi, bye bye, hello*, again*, more, uh-oh, oops, 'night-'night, please, gesundheit*, help* (14)

particles: up, down, back, this, that (5)

actions: pull, push*, press*, hug*, crash*, close*, open*, sneeze, rock, sit (11)

other adjectives: nice*, silly, mad*, loud, (at/gone) home, wet, mess (7)

Total: 150 English, 2 Cantonese. This is about double what I was expecting to count.

protovocabulary - this time Dion's

I've noticed that Dion answers to Baba as automatically as he does to Daddy. Dion's noticed too.

I've been meaning to post Adam's vocabulary before he gets dangerously close to the 18-month explosion. I'm guessing 50 to 100 spoken words that are intelligible to me. Maybe I do it after my course finishes tomorrow.

fantasticcontraption.com

Thanks Kevin, thanks Sharkey. I've lost sleep I'll have you know. If you want to lose sleep also, try: fantasticcontraption.com.

Move the pink object into the pink goal area with sticks, wheels, and motors placed within the blue box. Dion built a catapult but I like my simpler device better.

SCENARIO: "Unpossible"
INITIAL CONDITIONS
FINAL CONDITIONS

summer fun videos

Sorry I haven't been blogging. I've been working a lot on a summer course but got a little respite yesterday and I took the day off.

Adam and I spent almost the entire day with Clare and Rebecca yesterday. Over the course of about 6.2 km of walking, we managed to lose and retrieve my keys and Clare's bunny and to get two half-hour naps out of Clare and one one-hour nap out of Adam.

During Clare's morning nap, Adam managed to get himself seated and stuck on their wheelbarrow. He was asking for help down by the time I got their Flip. I was really surprised that Adam understood me so well. He understands so much these days. We also got some footage on the swings at Withrow Park.

"Down" Scene I.

"Down" Scene II

mental models

A fellow student in my Honour's Specialist Physics course online quoted Edward F. Redish with:

"Mental models tend to minimize expenditure of mental energy. People will
often do extra physical activities -- sometimes very time-consuming and difficult -- in
order to avoid a little bit of serious thinking."

Sooooo true. It may frustrate me that my students refuse to THINK about their answers, the lab, my question, and so on but I can be equally guilty - in my lesson planning (not much, I hope!) and every day life: cooking, filing ....

Bath Time

The photo above had a little nip and tuck. The following are originals.

Grace Tsang's 1st Birthday party

Jesse, Grace, Nathan, and Pam

Music Appreciation and Performance

Adam knows a lot of song lyrics. And now he can "sing" some of them rather than just do the gestures. He puts do's in the right spot in "do-re-mi" and the w (often doh-doh-ooh) in the alphabet song and tonight we had some fun with the Kink's "Lola."

First it was the misheard lyrics. I started singing "Lola", quite out of the blue, and Adam made a beeline to the piano keyboard, played at the LOWer end while looking for approval. We cracked up. We had in the past few weeks been playing looooooow...... high on the piano, ala neeeeeeear...... far of Grover. Then as we sang "Lola", Adam started singing along with approximately correct phrasing, some pitch and lola-like sounds. Loooooooow- WAH! Most previous singing attempts have been more spoken word-like.

Quite some time ago, there were some more misheard "lyrics." Adam was being pretty pouty and miserable and one of us asked him, "What is this all about?" At which point, he started clapping and spinning. "That's what it's all ABOUT!"

recent photos

Here are some of the cute recent shots.

I'm too sexy for my hat,
too sexy for my hat,
whatcha think about that?!


Adam is well on his way to mastering the zipper. When I got him out of bed this morning, he had almost gotten his entire body out of his sleepbag. grrrrr.....

How did it only occur to me today to put his highchair at the piano? Also, it's just far enough that he can't drool on the keys. There's been a lot of drool lately.

LOL

Cameraphilia
Adam still wants the camera whenever he sees it but I won't let him touch it. And so, we're still getting a lot of photos like this:



and this:

and this:


and this:


Playground Fun
Most days, Adam gets two trips to a playground: one with Poh-Poh/Gung-Gung and one with mom. We're lucky to have lots of play areas within easy stroller distance. On rainy days, we'll go to the Bay/Bloor Indigo to play with the trains and other toddlers. The Ontario Early Years Centre that Adam attends in the mornings with Poh-Poh or Gung-Gung has a playground out back. I take him there in the morning on weekends. We un/fortunately usually have the place to ourselves. After his/our daily nap (usually 2+ hours!!!) we go to the playground at our local K-6, Church Street Public School, which has three slides. We meet lots of moms and kids there and the occasional dad, too. Yesterday, Adam played with a kid I'd guess is in grade 2 or grade 3. The big kid's friends had just left and Adam started begging for the kid's ball. So the two of them passed the ball to each other and played peek-a-boo for almost half an hour.

These are from Church Street today.

at the top of the slide.

at the bottom of the slide

Climbing on-and-off the slide is a favourite pass-time.
As is trying to climb up the slide.

It's hard to tell from this photo but I got my hair cut Thursday. Birthday present to myself, I guess. I was in the middle of another errand and just popped into one of the umpteen nail/nail-and-hair places along Yonge. I'm happy with the cut but I'll never go back. The fumes from the nails were suffocating. But "interestingly", for the first time in my life, I was accused of having curl in my hair. I've had hairdressers blow my hair smoother with a brush and dryer now and then but my hair's so straight that I hardly had curl when I got one of those spiral perms in Grade 7. This hairdresser actually used a flat iron on my hair. no kidding. Aren't you all glad you know so much about my hair?