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I meant to post this a while ago, but things have been really, really busy around here, and then when I tried, Orble wouldn't let me log in. Anyway...it's a boy! He was over a week overdue. He was due December 2nd, and we finally decided to induce on December 11th. So our son has the birthday 12-11-10, which we think is kind of cool. He weighed in at 6 pounds 9 ounces and was 19 1/2 inches long. Everything went well overall!
I will write more later, but right now is one of the few free moments I have when both our kids are asleep, so I think I'll follow suit!
Well, here it is, the third post in my series about how important vaccinations are. It won't be as long as I had originally planned, but the article I link to explains things better than I ever could.
This is what happens when people do not get necessary vaccinations. In case you don't feel like following that link, it leads to a story about a kid that caught meningitis from an unvaccinated person (the kid wasn't old enough to have the vaccination) and lost both feet and some fingers to the disease. This disease is preventable with vaccination...if the person he caught it from had been vaccinated, that person wouldn't have been able to pass the disease on to the kid.
Want to hear something terrifying, and also heartbreaking? Australia is having a whooping cough epidemic due to under-vaccination. Several babies died last year and there were over 19,000 reported cases. Whooping cough is preventable. But once again, kids that were too young to be vaccinated caught it from people that had not been vaccinated.
Most articles about vaccination (and the vaccine song I posted about, which I suggest you watch if you haven't) talk about something called "Herd Immunity." Look it up if you want particulars, but basically, if pretty much everyone is vaccinated (and thus immune) to a disease, they can't catch it and pass it on to someone that's not vaccinated. If every adult in a group is vaccinated against whooping cough, they won't pass it on to the kids in that group even if the adults interact with people infected with whooping cough. I may not be putting that into the most understandable terms, but boils down to the fact that if the majority of people are vaccinated against a disease, that disease can't gain a foothold.
Unfortunately, as vaccination rates drop due to anti-vaccination campaigns, herd immunity is dropping, leading to a lot of preventable diseases making comebacks. Measles outbreaks have been happening all over the U.S. in places where vaccination rates are down. I never thought of measles as something to worry about, because I've been vaccinated. But now I worry for my son and my soon-to-be-born child, and will absolutely have them vaccinated as soon as possible and on schedule. Not just for their sakes either-vaccination helps everybody.
Sorry it's been so long since I've written anything! Things have been really busy lately, as you might imagine. We're officially one month from my wife's due date! We thought that my son would be getting over his "I don't like you!" phase, but it's getting worse. He's also saying "Ow" a lot, because he thinks it will get him sympathy. He's a wily one-when something stops working, he'll either ramp it up a level or find something else he thinks may work.
He's absolutely sure that the new baby will be a girl, but also keeps saying he wants a brother. I don't think he really gets what's going on, at least not completely. We're signed up for a Sibling Celebration class at the hospital where the new baby will be born. I'm not sure exactly what they do for it, but I think my son will make something for the new baby. He's been seeing things at the store that he thinks we should get for the new baby, which I think is awesome (though we don't get them). He's thinking about the new baby at least. He's not too keen on sharing his toys though, but I think that will change.
Anyway, like I said in the last post, my posts will continue to be sporadic for a while. I may decide to pass the blog on to anyone willing to take it...I started it to get through some issues that have cleared themselves up, so maybe it can help someone else too. We'll see!
September 29th 2010 01:32
Well, it's official. My son doesn't like me. He likes Mommy.
I'm not taking him too seriously though. He's pretty cranky right now, because his last (thank goodness!) molar is coming in. He's pretty well doped up right now (ibuprofen and baby orajel) so he'll hopefully sleep through the night without any more screaming fits. But he told me tonight that he doesn't like me. He likes Mommy. He mainly felt this way because I was the one that took him away from watching Bolt, when he wanted Mommy to carry him upstairs. Being in her third trimester, Mommy was not really feeling up to it, so it fell to Daddy. Our son was not happy with that! We figured he'd start becoming more of a Daddy's boy as Mommy got less mobile, and for a while that seemed to be the case. But he's reverting in a big way right now! Pretty much everything is "I want Mom!!"
It's been a while since I posted, so here's some updates: I got transferred to a much less stressful job this year. I'm no longer working with kids with behavioral issues. As such, I'm coming home with much less stress, which is really nice. My only current problem with work is that I get a little bored sometimes. Anyway, having less work stress has allowed me to start volunteering with my wife at Salvation Army youth nights every week, which is fun. My wife volunteered there all last year, but by the time I got off work, dealing with more kids was the last thing I wanted to do
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I like science, and try to do things by the scientific method. A while ago, I wrote a post on this blog based on my limited knowledge of cloth diapers, saying that I thought they would be a hassle and I didn't see the point in using them when disposables were readily available and easier. This is a bad practice-you should never make a hypothesis without doing some research first!
Part of being a scientist is being willing to admit when you're wrong. When I wrote that post, the only cloth diapers I knew about were the ones that we used as spit rags for our son. They were just straight cloth, and they would have had to be pinned on and truly would have been a hassle to use. So I was against using them for our next child when my wife suggested it.
However, I now know that cloth diaper technology has advanced far beyond that. We've been using some cloth diapers on our son to help potty train him, and they actually aren't that bad. I think they're Tiny Tush brand, but I may be wrong. Anyway, I thought they'd leak all over the place. They don't...they're actually surprisingly absorbent. We haven't had a mess from one of them yet. And they're just as easy to put on as disposable diapers. The only real hassle so far is that you have to clean them a special way
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As I write this, it's 1:30 in the morning. I've been away from my wife and son since Wednesday (it's Saturday morning). I've been in Illinois the past few days for a golf outing that I do every year that's a lot of fun.
I got back from a bar about an hour and a half ago. I was there with my brothers, their wives/girlfriends, and my sister in law and soon to be brother in law. We played darts, pool, and beanbags. I won our first game of darts with three bullseyes in a row, and our second one by a hair with another bullseye. It was, quite frankly, epic.
What I realized around midnight is that, though it's fun once in a while, I really don't miss this. I don't miss going out and drinking every weekend night at a bar. What I miss is my son and my wife. I enjoy spending time with my brothers. I like playing darts and pool and beanbags. To be a bachelor for a weekend is fine...but a bed with just me in it sucks. No matter how much I sometimes feel trapped at home and not able to do what I want to do, the occasional weekend away shows me that I've actually got things pretty good
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Those of you who've read my earlier posts (this one and this one, specifically) know that I've been having some issues with my wife's current pregnancy. Which I felt bad about-we went through a lot to get to this point, and I couldn't even enjoy it. If it wasn't feeling bad about being pregnant when others we knew weren't, it was feeling mad that the pregnancy was taking so much out of my wife.
Most of these issues have been resolved now. Lately I've been feeling a lot better about things in general. The few people that weren't pregnant now are, and their pregnancies are looking good so far. EDITOR'S NOTE: there are a few who still are not, and for those, we are sending hopeful vibes your way! One of my wife's good friends up here is due a week after her, which is just awesome! My wife is feeling way better overall. She still has some trouble with various things but not nearly as badly as earlier in the pregnancy. She's gotten a lot of her energy back and is able to do more than just lay in bed and try not to throw up! All of this is making me feel a lot better about the pregnancy and life in general. It's great to finally be able to just be happy about the new baby that's soon going to come into our lives!
Take that, Mom and Dad! And Wife! Making the bed is bad!!!
Turns out, a bed that has been made is a great breeding ground for bedbugs and mites. They're all warm and cozy in there. When the bed's not made, however, it gets too hot and dry for them and they die. This news has been around for a while, but a new set of studies just started making the rounds on this particular subject. I, personally, have known for years that making the bed is bad. Which is why I never do it except when I want my wife to think that I've actually done something with my day (just kidding, honey!) or when the covers get so messed up that we can't evenly distribute them between us. That never used to be a problem-wake up in the morning, flip the covers off, go to bed at night, flip the covers right back on. It's far more complicated when there are two of us. Especially when one of us, not mentioning names, is a cover hog!
Admittedly, there's nice aspects to a made bed...but really, what's the point? Skip it! Save time! Your kids will love you for it (still make them clean their rooms though...I doubt there's anything healthy about a messy room!). Declare war on bedbugs and mites! Down with bed-making!
I was surprised to realize today that I'm about halfway through summer vacation already. I wrote a Daddy Do List a while ago about my goals for things to do with my son this summer, and I figure now is a good time to check on how they're coming along!
Goal one was teaching him the alphabet. He's actually doing pretty well on that, though it's not going as orderly as I originally intended. He learned A, B, and C really easily, and frequently points out the letters when we're out and about. I get a little thrill every time he says "That's an A!" However, just like he has a mental block about the number four, he can't seem to pick D up. I've also noticed he does much better if it's him directing what letters he wants to learn. If he actually asks about a letter he sees, he learns it a lot better than me showing him a letter and telling him what it is. That's how he learned O, E, S, and V-he saw them and asked about them, and now he remembers them. So now he knows something like 8 or 9 letters, which I think is a good start
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As you may have figured out by now, I'm very strongly in favor of kids getting vaccinated. Eventually I plan to write a third and final part of my Vaccinate Your Kids series about how preventable diseases are making a comeback, but in the meantime, I give you "The Vaccine Song" by Ted Willmore, which is just plain awesome. I tried to embed it, but it's apparently too big for this blog format so you'll have to follow the link. Enjoy!
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Comment by Matthew Adams
on Nature vs. Nurture
Parent Adventure