Betsy surprised me a few days ago with this, which she claims is either a late birthday or early father’s day present: a signed, numbered, limited edition of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
It’s put out by Subterranean Press, and is gorgeous. Subterranean is a press that specialized in high quality printings of limited edition fantasy, scifi, and horror…I want to own nearly everything they print.
But for now, I will just stare and covet my copy of my preciou….I mean, Snow Crash.
So my first Mother’s Day was tainted by the fact that I had to “work” (Sewanee always has its graduation on Mother’s Day). No matter. It was still amazing to wake up and know that I, too, am a mother now. Still a bit surreal.
Eliza couldn’t pick out my gifts, but Dad did an awesome job. A beautiful cedar trunk to put her keepsakes in, something I hope to pass down to her. A “peanut” charm for my bracelet, since that’s what we called her before we knew she was a girl. And a brand new coffee maker to help take the sting out of early mommy mornings.
I made my first batch of Eliza Food today. It went like this:
went into this
then I put together this contraption
and put the sweet potatoes in like this
and then portioned it out into 4 oz tupperware like this
and ended up with this
All in all, 9 servings of sweet potatoes that are, unlike processed baby food, delicious. Plus it’s kinda fun knowing exactly what she’s eating, and being able to fix it myself. I’m looking forward to doing this on weekends, and throwing a weeks worth of food in the freezer for her.
Here’s how we know Eliza is teething:
Overall, our verdict is that this teething thing sucks (pun intended). I understand that it’s necessary, but it’s hard on poor little babies who have no idea why this is happening to them. Can’t wait to see a little tooth pop up, though. Problem is…it could be a month or two of this before we see any results!
Eliza is outgrowing all her baby seats. As you can see, she’s trying desperately to sit up. So…even though she is strapped into this cushy, soft, vibrating seat , she is trying to get out of it. She has several little “chairs” but they all recline, so she isn’t fond of them anymore. She wants to sit straight up and see the world. No chilling out for little Eliza! Are you kidding? There’s too much to see and do!
Everyone always comments on Ellie’s eyes…how clear, how attentive they are, how pretty. She’s always had great eyes, even from birth. She wasn’t out in the world 5 seconds before she popped her eyes open and was looking around. Heck, we’ve even got a 3D Ultrasound of her with her eyes open In Utero.
We’ll see about the color, though…both Betsy and I have greenish eyes, while Ellie is still deep blue. She’s still got time for them to change, though.
We gave Eliza avocado for the first time yesterday. She was skeptical but ate quite a bit, despite the look of confusion on her face. We’ll try again today.
In other news, we’re having some tough sleep issues. The little monkey has learned to roll over onto her belly, which means the swaddle is no longer effective or safe. Yet it is hard for her to settle down without being swaddled. She is also rolling onto her tummy and waking herself up in the middle of the night. She doesn’t know how to roll onto her back yet, so she either screams for one of us to help or sometimes will eventually settle down and stay on her belly to sleep. Not the safest thing in the world, we realize. So…”sleeping through the night” is a distant memory. But hopefully we’ll get there again.
I’m very, very excited to announce the next step in the continuing attempt to take over the world illustrate modern communication methodologies and community building for the larger LITA and ALA types:
This is a place for members and potential members and interested parties of the LITA Interest Group BIGWIG to gather, talk, and most importantly: do stuff. The site is open…anyone can create an account and participate in the site, add content, etc. It gives us a place to meet virtually, and a place where I hope good ideas are filtered and implemented. Consider it a BIGWIG-driven playground.
The site is Drupal based, and will be chock-full of open source goodness over time. We’ll also continue to experiment with Web 2.0 tools and hope that people use the site to do so.
So: Join us virtually, and then decide if you want to join us at conferences and such. Either way, we’re happy to have you participate in our playing. Come join us!
After being tagged by Amanda, and looking back at the Michael Stephens post that tagged her, I decided to take her up on it. The meme:
Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about and give your picture a short title.
It was terrifically hard to come up with any one thing that I am passionate for kids to learn about, simply because there are so many AND because both Michael and Amanda hit solid homeruns with theirs. But here’s my attempt (and here’s a link to the original photo).
Connections are Everything. This isn’t just personal connections, although as you go through school, read online, join groups and such, the personal connections you make are central to your success in life. My connectivity to individuals in libraries around the world have made me better at what I do and enabled me to build a rich understanding of practices different than just those I am surrounded with on a day-to-day basis. Maintaining these connections are incredibly important, and the social capital gained from them (both bridging and bonding) is a key to being successful in the modern age.
Read another way, connections are everything in the very technical sense that understanding and interacting with modern information technology can be seen as the management of connections. How do you connect two disparate pieces of IT these days? An API, RSS, JSON, or some other standard. TCP/IP is the connection that runs the world. Building better technological connections make for richer and deeper options for our users, in ways that we may not entirely predict or understand.
If you focus on maintaining and understanding connections, you’ll be a better librarian.
EDIT: The lovely Jenica and Dorothea chime in as well with their take. These are all amazing, and if I taught at a Library School I would seriously think about designing a syllabus around them.
IMG_2811.JPG, originally uploaded by griffey.
