At 8:45pm last night Evan took his first 5 steps. When I put him down he was standing and I could tell he was going to try a step so I prompted Cathy to look and with each step I said the word "step" which sounded like a machine gun since he walked so rapidly. After the 5th step he fell forward, caught himself on his arms, rolled to a sitting position with a grin that Gerber would have paid to photograph, and immediately tried to stand up again. He almost made it to standing; left foot extended and on right knee. Then he bounced and I swear he said, "step stepstepstepstepstep!" It was quite the special moment.
Author: Doug McCaughan
Father of 5.
Juggler.
Ticked off at blogger.com.
From the mouths of babes
Noah had a friend over so we let the stay up late but when I heard shuffling at 4:30am I asked them to turn the tv off. At 6:30am the television was back on.
Dad: "I asked you to turn the tv off at 4:30 and now its still on at 6:30."
Noah: "But Dad, we’ve been asleep for 3 or 4 hours!"
Wrist feeling better
For the past two weeks or so, my left wrist has hurt so bad that I almost could not type. I had problems picking things up or squeezing for a length of time. I did some exercising to try to help but nothing terribly focused.
As I type this I can still feel a twinge of pain but it is mostly out of my wrist. Now the pain is in my upper arm. If I hold a reem of paper and try to extend my left arm out to my side I can’t pick it up much above my waist.
Time to get back to stretching and unpinch what nerve is not happy with me right now.
Bicycle Pacman Chases Ghost
What a brilliant idea for the wheels of a bicycle!
Improvised Bed Rails
Evan hasn’t learned to sleep in the crib. He prefers to sleep in his swing. But sometimes he needs to sleep between Cathy and I which is nice. Sometimes he is in the bed when I want to get up and work. It was around his age that Amy fell from the bed to the concrete floor and scared me to death so I will sometimes stay in bed thinking how nice bed rails would be when I should be up working.
This morning I figured it out! The crib is near the bed so when I rose, I simply rolled the crib up against the bed forming a nice wall.
What gives?
Some consessions I have made in my life:
- Out of date medicine still works
- Sick days are not an option
- 8 hours of sleep is not an option
- Baths take away from productivity
3-D Modeling Project
Of Grasshoppers
Student: Why go on?
Master: To make a difference.
Wednesday comes around every week
It’s that Lost day again.
It’s the Simpsons!
And just incase anyone has been living in a cave for the past week, here’s the incredible video of the Simpsons introduction using live actors instead of animation. And incase your cave is REALLY deep, here’s the Internet Movie Database’s info on The Simpsons.
Get a new domain name for 50 cents
Slickdeals.net tells us that today between 5pm and 6pm EST or until all coupons are gone (think within 3 minutes) that Dotster will be issuing a 50 cent coupon for a new domain name registration if purchased today or tomorrow.
One coupon per order, per account and/or per IP address. There will be a total of 1000 coupon codes. The promotion will last for 1 hour or until the 1000 coupon codes are gone. The coupon will be valid on March 9 & March 10, so the Happy Hour will ONLY be to GET their individual, unique coupon code, they can’t actually purchase their domain until the next day.
Exercise + Food = Strong Mind
BoingBoing points to another study showing exercise and proper eating being very beneficial to our brains. This complements the information in Make Smarter Children.
Blingo March Freenzy continues!
Have you signed up with Blingo yet? No spam. No catches. Signup under someone and that someone wins too. More info.
A couple of brief notes regarding Blingo. The main rule to be aware of is that each household is limited to winning 2 prizes per month. If I win a movie ticket, since I signed up under my wife, she also wins. She has the option of turning it down but if she accepts that means our household has won 2 prizes and within that month and we are no longer qualified to get more prizes. I wrote Blingo to ask if during their freenzy they would temporarily increase the number of prizes each household could receive and, with a very nice letter (unlike the evil Blogger.com employees), Blingo explained that the freenzy is to help increase awareness of Blingo and that the prize limit has to remain at 2 per household even during the freenzy.
Could you, would you save a life?
Yesterday a 13 year old girl, Megan, on Sarah’s Bearden Middle School bus fell over with a heart attack. The girl beside the victom screamed. The bus stopped, students evacuated the bus, paramedics brought in a AED, rushed the girl away, and that’s all we know.
Poor Sarah. Bomb threats, lock downs, and possibly death. Too much reality for a 12 year old. The sad thing is Sarah keeps everything locked inside of her and I can’t get anything but stoic, short answers from her. I was the same way at her age and it pains me because I know that keeping things bottled up can only last so long and eventually it all has to come out; the longer she waits, the harder it will be to deal with the bottled up emotions. I bet she thinks she is being strong; strength would be talking. At least she has caught blog fever and perhaps we can communicate that way. She shared more information about the incident in her blog than I could have dragged out of her with any other means.
Taking advantage of the situation we had this dialog:
Dad: "So Sarah, would you have liked to known CPR to be able help?"
Sarah: "They taught us CPR at camp."
Dad: "So did you try to help?"
Sarah: "She didn’t need CPR. She needed those paddle thingys."
Dad: "An AED? A defibrillator?"
Dad takes a moment to explain CPR, the functions of the heart, lungs and brain, and why CPR saves lives until an AED can be brought on the scene.
Sarah glazes over and tunes Dad out.
Dad asks: "Would you like to be trained in CPR?"
Sarah, exasperated: " I don’t want to learn that medical stuff!"
Dad, starts to explain how she could have helped the girl today, or perhaps her grandparents or even parents.
*Ring ring*
Saved by the bell. The phone rings to end the conversation.
I have to say I found the conversation a little disheartening. More people should be trained with the American Red Cross.
My Famous Wife
Silenced and Pseudo-Instapundited in the same day.
