Family snippets

Well, I can authoritatively say that 41 weeks is a Very Long Time to incubate a baby. I am ready to see her on the outside. Ironically, waiting has gotten easier as more time passes, because I know that I have less and less time to go: no matter when she comes, I am getting closer to her delivery every day!

Jared is the nicest pregnancy companion imaginable. He cleaned all of our wooden floors for me this week, has procured hamburgers and ice cream on command, and generously supplies shoulder-and-hip rubs to his cranky wife. (He also understands that every evening I go through a "woe is us, this baby will never come" phase and therefore is not alarmed if I suddenly start to cry or mope about.) I'm grateful to have him around so often, rather than working till midnight on the house like last time. Ellie's explosive energy wears me down during the day and I need somebody to take over toddler duty after dinner!

Ellie is starting to understand the concept of color, but does not realize that colors have names unto themselves. Instead, she associates them with particular objects. So a brown crayon is "chocolate," an orange car is "clementine," and white yogurt is "snow." I love seeing how her brain works. She learns at lightning speed, and I don't know how she fits all the information she's cramming into that memory of hers.

Weekend linkage

This one is funny: "Ayn Rand Reviews Children's Movies."

“Old Yeller.” A farm animal ceases to be useful and is disposed of humanely. A valuable lesson for children. Four stars.

From The Economist: "Home of the Unbrave."

Perhaps it's better to be safe than sorry, but one wonders whether we won't become sorry to have made such a fetish of staying safe. In much the same way that dominant firms, jealous of market share, tend to become over-cautious and lose their edge, America the weak-kneed hegemon risks losing the can-do, risk-taking, innovative pioneer spirit that made it the world's dominant economic and military power. Is it worth devoting so much zeal to protecting America's young minds from brain damage if the finest among them wind up too conservative to seek anything but a sure paycheck?

From Forbes: "Architecture Continues to Implode." A sharp look at the self-congratulatory, insular world of high concept architecture and the widening disconnect between elite "experts" and real people.

Here is a neat story: "The Search for Australia's Lost Hospital Ship."

"What Happens To A Woman's Brain When She Becomes a Mother." Or, science can finally confirm what we've known all along! (No really, it's interesting, and these findings also offer the opportunity to help moms and babies who, due to brain damage or chemical imbalances, struggle with post-partum depression or attachment respectively.)

I think I need to make this pie.

Here's a great post on P.G. Wodehouse that is technically part of the LMLD Library Project (good in itself) but ends up rambling far afield, discussing how an obsession with equality or "leveling the playing field" retards children's education by wilting our expectations.

The way I knew this word, and so many others far outside my ken, was of course by reading. And a further irony is that the more energy one spends worrying about testing and whether or not it rewards privilege, the less energy is left for reading and looking up words and thereby righting any inequalities of privilege.