after nap

a little groggy, a little pillow-face creasing.

penny for your thoughts?

Wayne and Sharon's Wedding Dec.20, 2008

Adam was gettin' his groove on most of the night.

our little echo

While I was reading to Adam on the couch, we came across a monkey a library book. He asked after the whereabouts of his (stuffed) monkey. After I told him it was in his bed, he said,

"jussa minute. I'll be right back."

And he was. With the monkey, of course.

Siu et al Christmas 2008

absent: Kat, Kevin, Tiffany, Yee. We missed you guys!
not pictured: yours truly, the one behind the camera.

Very Tall Towers

Adam loves building "vehry vehry vehry tall tower"s. Here's one from around a month ago and one from over Christmas.

Hair

Hair has been quite a nuisance around here lately. Adam`s hair gets longer and longer as he simply refuses to let anyone cut it. A barber? God Forbid! The length can lead to some pretty wicked hat-head and bed-head. Since these photos were taken two months ago, I have managed to crop around the ears only, one clip at a time. Adam's getting really shaggy.



My own hair has been a nuisance too. Since Adam was born, it's been growing in, well, not straight. It's not curly, not wavy, but definitely messy. Just not straight. Not straight, like it used to be. Not straight, like I liked it. I wonder if there is a cut out there to cure it. But given my aversion to morning showers, hair products, and blow dryers, I'm not holding out much hope.

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!