Melissa’s and my grandparents have been a huge source of guidance and support while growing up, and over the years we accumulated a lot of memories about each of them.  Melissa’s paternal grandparents used to live in Texas and then Arizona. They always had tiny ice cream cups with wooden spoons in their upstairs freezer for the kids.  Grandpa was a rock hound; he and Melissa used to fight over eating the fried fish tails.  Nanny made fudge and Christmas ornaments for the grandkids every year, which might be why Melissa now enjoys getting a new ornament each time we travel, then recounting stories about our trips when we put them on the tree.  Mimi and Grandaddy also lived in Texas.  He would usually grill food during the family visits, and would give “sample meat” to the kids, a term that persists to this day in the Barber household.  He would also take them to “the river”, which is either a snake infested shack or a refuge from life in the city, depending on who you talk to.  Mimi liked to play poker and loved to play bridge.  She also made lemon pies with the kids and always left just a little bit of eagle brand sweetened condensed milk in the can for them to eat.  She was with us until December, 2007 and was able to meet Everett in utero before she passed away.

Next week we are taking Everett to meet Chris’ paternal grandparents in Houston.  They lived in Iowa for most of their lives before retiring in Texas several years ago.  Chris and Sean used to visit them on the farm almost every year while growing up, sometimes during summer and sometimes during winter.  Gramsy introduced us to all kinds of Midwestern treats like hamballs, rootbeer floats and hot dish.  She is a historian, a genealogist and a former schoolteacher;  from time to time she would take us along on historical tours or share with us the history of our family.  Grandpa accumulated quite a few toys as a farmer, the kind that we really didn’t get to experience while growing up in Bethesda but couldn’t get enough of during our visits: tractors, ATVs, motorcycles, Bobcats and snowmobiles (11 of them!).  Chris’ maternal grandmother Jodi Donnelly was with us until 2000; I can still hear her voice, and I can still smell her house and her cooking.  When I was young I remember riding in the passenger seat of her yellow Lincoln Continental, an absurdly large car, the size of which was further exaggerated because she was scarcely 5 feet tall, if that.  Seat belts simply were not used, and car seats for children were non-existent.  So she would drive around with a cigarette and the steering wheel in her left hand while her right hand was on my chest to keep me from toppling over during high-speed traffic maneuvers.  Keep in mind that this was in Washington D.C. where the mantra for drivers is “Never use your blinker: it gives away your next move”.  Also, Grandma was Italian and spoke with her hands quite a bit, so our conversations were interspersed with short diversions where she would convey her feelings to those around us about their driving ability (or lack thereof).  Sometimes this required freeing up a hand, other times an open window would suffice.  I think this is where I first learned to drive.  And there were many other things I learned from her such as: when you are sick, you go to grandma’s house and lay on the couch until you recuperate.  She was not would I would call a rule follower.  Her attitude was: rules are good to have; however, they do not apply to me.  I only had a couple years to get to know Mimi, but from the stories she told me I sense that she was not always a rule follower herself.  I so wish the two of them could have met each other – I think they would have gotten along famously.  I also wish they could have met Everett, for his sake but also for me and Melissa, to show them such a joyful part of our life together.  What a gift it has been to have our grandparents with us through childhood and adulthood.

One of our biggest regrets about moving to Wisconsin is that Everett’s grandparents aren’t closeby.  Nonetheless, he has been able to see them quite often, many times because of their willingness to travel to see him.  And we are looking forward to hearing the stories and memories that Everett gathers about each of them.

Everett had his 9 month checkup last week.  After the exam, the doctor had no concerns and reassured us that he appears healthy and is doing well.  Later that night when I glanced at the materials sent home from the doctor’s office I couldn’t help but notice the hodgepodge of units that were used to measure him: weight in pounds, height in inches, head circumference in centimeters, and medication dosages in milliliters and teaspoons.  I suspect this has to do with who manufactured the different gizmos they have around the clinic for doing such measurements, but it could also be a reflection of the Standard & Customary system of units we use in the US, with a heavy emphasis on Customary.  I call it the Weights & Measures Variety Show.  For example:

1. Why do the units of volume depend on what is being measured?  Why is corn measured in bushels, beer in kegs and oil in barrels?

2. Why doesn’t an ounce of gold weigh the same as an ounce of water?  On a similar note, shouldn’t a gallon represent the same volume of water in England and the US?  (Answer: yes, but it doesn’t)

3. Why do we measure body mass (e.g. kilograms) with units of weight (e.g. pounds)?  To clarify, mass is a physical property of your body while weight is a reflection of the local gravitational field.  That’s why your weight would change if you traveled to another celestial body such as the moon, which has a much weaker gravitational field (but much more sensible economic policies).  At this point you might be thinking “My weight is the same everywhere on earth; therefore, can’t it be though of as a surrogate for mass?”  The short answer is no.  The earth’s gravitational field changes depending on where you are located (see this map for details, or you can view the Google Earth version here), which is perhaps why Grandad Cress sometimes finds high gravity zones where things are more likely to be dropped.

But getting back to babies, a relevant example is the way that we size clothing.  In many parts of the world you can select infant clothes by 1) measuring the length of your baby in centimeters and 2) finding clothing with that size printed on the tag.  It’s a simple, straightforward system.  However, in the US we measure baby length in units of time: clothing is sized according to age in months. So if the tag says 18 Month Boy then that means it was probably made for a baby between 30 and 34 inches and weighing between 21 and 32 pounds.  This makes about as much sense as sizing adult clothing by age, and it is a great illustration of the silliness of our system of measure.  Why don’t we switch to metric?  Probably because most parents, myself included, find metric units non-intuitive (e.g. I have no idea what 20 degrees Celsius feels like).  However, it’s probably more accurate to say that metric units are unfamiliar, since it would be difficult to come up with a system more counter-intuitive than the one we use now, to which some respond “Yeah, our system is strange and inconvenient, but what’s the worst thing that can happen?”  Well, one thing that could happen is medical errors resulting from incorrect measurements or dosages, which is why the National Coordinating Council for Medication Error Reporting & Prevention recommends using metric: “The change to use of the metric system from the archaic apothecary and avoirdupois systems will help avoid misinterpretations and miscalculations.”  Another thing that could happen is that you could incite inter-planetary conflict.  That’s what NASA found out when they flew a perfectly good orbiter into the surface of Mars (see http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/).  Note the first line of the story: “NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because a Lockheed Martin engineering team used English units of measurement…”.  So there you have it: English units cause spacecraft collisions.  $125 million may not sound like much given recent economic events, but keep in mind this was in 1999 so those were Clinton dollars not Bush dollars, before billion became the new million.

I’m getting a bit off topic here.  But I’ll wrap up by saying that we pick clothes for Everett by ignoring the size on the tag and holding him up to the garment, or vice versa, which works great if he is shopping with you but is a challenge for those who buy him clothing but see him less frequently.  And that is a perfect segue into our next blog entry on Grandparents…

Today we made a trip to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, home of the Experimental Aircraft Association which hosts the Airventure show every summer, an event that draws about 800,000 people to a town of 65,000.  But the real reason we went there was because it was the birthplace of Oshkosh B’gosh, maker of children’s clothing.  Before Everett was born, all I knew about children was what I learned from a half hour video on Netflix and that they wear Oshkosh B’gosh overalls, the kind that look like a train engineer’s.  And we didn’t realize until recently that it’s just up the road on Lake Winnebago, so we made a pilgrimage there today.  Other highlights:

-Despite the warm temperatures, the lake was still frozen and we saw an incredible number of fishing huts, trucks and ATVs on the ice.

-We stumbled onto the best restaurant in town where the menu listed Wisconsin fondue: Schlitz and cheddar cheese.  It’s not wine and Emmental, but it wasn’t bad either.

Everett has been learning some new skills that he shares with us from time to time.  Today he started waving when we talk to him.  And over he last few weeks he has become more and more comfortable standing, albeit with a little help.  Today he put it all together, and he even does a little dance partway through.

Today we had to say goodbye to one of our family members.  Marty was a faithful companion to Melissa through many years and many different life stages, beginning with grad school in Baltimore.  He was later joined by Kyra, then Chris, then the cats and finally Everett.  We are so glad that Everett was able to meet him.  He was such a good dog, loved by everyone who met him.

We miss you Marty.  Rest in peace.

Until recently Everett expressed little interest in crawling. He has been able to sit independently for some time.  And he can stand for extended periods of time as long as someone helps him balance.  But he doesn’t really like being on his belly, and when he is he kind of flails his arms and legs around and makes unhappy noises.  Anyway, that changed a few nights ago when he started flipping over on the changing table.  He has become so adept at this (perhaps because the raised sides give him additional leverage) that we now have to change him on the bed or the floor, which provides plenty more room to perform 360 degree rolls.  And in the process of his he has started to pull his knees underneath his chest and make crawling motions.  This also means that we have to get serious about baby-proofing the house, something we have been meaning to do but have been making only slow progress on.

Everett is now on a regular schedule for semi-solid food: one meal in the morning and one in the evening, usually rice/barley/oat cereal plus one fruit plus one veggie.  During the first few meals he would grimace at new foods, something we tried to capture with the camera but now he hasn’t done it in weeks – he happily eats just about everything.  He has also grown two bottom front teeth which he uses to crunch on rice puffs.  He seems fascinated by this newfound ability and the crunchy sounds, less so by eating the puffs.

Lately he seems to get a fair amount of entertainment from watching me and Melissa.  A few days ago he went into a fit of shoulder-shaking belly laughs at my reaction to a particularly messy diaper.  Our neighbor Dan (the same neighbor of pie fight fame) reported that one of his sons walked up to him many years ago and said “Dad, poop is funny”.  And apparently it is.  Or maybe this is only true for boys – we haven’t yet been able to perform a control experiment.

Lastly, for those of you who haven’t met our dog Kyra, let’s just say that she is extremely independent and treats the adults in the house with a certain amount of disdain.  However, she adores children and seems to have an infinite amount of patience with them.  Everett has now reached the age where he recognizes her and interacts with her.  We are trying to teach him gentle hands, but in the meantime Kyra doesn’t seem the least bit bothered by him grabbing her jowls or ears.

We spent Christmas 2008 in the Washington, D.C. area with Chris’ family.  This was the first time we had the entire new family together: Kathy met Everett, Chris and Melissa met Connor, Everett met his cousins.  It was a great holiday visiting with family and friends.  And thanks to our layover in Cincinnati on the way back, and to Amanda and Cress for driving to the airport, Everett was able to see all of his grandparents in a single trip!  Photos of the trip are here.

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas to each of you and your families.  And Happy Birthday Sean!

Chris, Melissa & Everett

Parenthood cures modesty, or at least lowers your internal threshold for what constitutes normal public behavior.  The process of giving birth is the first big plunge.  If you are in a hospital then as soon as you are admitted you get accustomed to lots of people coming and going from your room.  And as the delivery draws near, two things happen.  First, the number of people gathered in the room increases to an almost implausible level.  No wonder delivery rooms are so large!  Second, the mother to be is more and more exposed until finally all pretenses are gone.  At least that’s how it was for us.  It turns that the process of sleep deprivation and exposure during delivery turned out to be good preparation for parenthood.

Since Everett was born I have been entertaining a hypothesis that babies emit some kind of mind control pheromones.  The primary evidence for this is that Melissa and I continue to do all sorts of goofy things in public to make him happy, no matter how much sleep we lose on his behalf or how long we need to console him for idiopathic crying.  This effect appears to get stronger as he becomes more interactive and playful.  Over Thanksgiving he was pretty sick with a cold and ear infections and a few other problems that I won’t go into for HIPAA reasons, which has had two effects.  First, both of his parents also got sick and therefore needed more sleep than normal.  Second, because of his illness, the sleep schedule that everyone worked to so hard to establish with him was shot to hell, which caused his parents to get even less sleep than normal.  Despite this, we found that we would still do almost anything to get him to smile in the morning.

One of our favorite local restaurants is called the Chancery, where they serve all kinds of Wisconsin specialties that are so bad and yet so good, like fried cheese curds or a cheeseburger with a half pound of kielbasa on top (the “Stomp Burger”).  It is sort of a pub, but prides itself on being family friendly, and their accommodating attitude toward children makes us like it even more.  Anyway, they sell a t-shirt that says “You don’t scare me, I have kids”.  This is beginning to make more sense.  The loss of control that comes with bringing another person into the world has changed our opinion on what is considered unusual behavior.  For example, the duck that was wedged into Melissa’s bra when I returned home from work a few nights ago was not considered unusual enough to warrant questions or comments.  Grandad Cress, the father of two children himself, recently donned a homemade aluminum foil helmet for Everett’s amusement.  For my part, I never imagined that I would walk through the grocery store making exaggerated faces and speaking gibberish to my six month old son, all with a frightening lack of awareness that I am in public.  Or that Melissa and I would stand in the airport discussing poop and pee, periodically lifting Everett’s behind to our noses to provide a more accurate diagnosis.  I feel confident that none of this is surprising to experienced parents.  But it is an incredibly large and abrupt change compared to our pre-parent state, and has pushed us to realize what is surely self evident to most parents: you will see each other in completely new ways, both literally and figuratively.  The mind-control pheromones seem to be doing their job.