The 5 Best Toys of All Time | GeekDad | Wired.com:
I agree with all of their picks.
2011 09 23 Friday
Why Cyberbullying Rhetoric Misses the Mark - NYTimes.com:
Really excellent read on teenage bullying drama:
But if the goal is to intervene at the moment of victimization, the focus should be to work within teenagers’ cultural frame, encourage empathy and help young people understand when and where drama has serious consequences. Interventions must focus on positive concepts like healthy relationships and digital citizenship rather than starting with the negative framing of bullying. The key is to help young people feel independently strong, confident and capable without first requiring them to see themselves as either an oppressed person or an oppressor.
2011 08 12 Friday
If I “disappear” from Google+ over the next few days, it is due to Google’s policy on requiring that users use their real names: they’re banning the use of pseudonyms. My stance on this policy is that they have every right to do whatever they want with their service, but that by making this decision they’re severely limiting Google+’s potential.
I don’t use my real name or those of my family members on services or sites that I intend to post publicly on. If you’ve read my blog or my posts on twitter or tumblr you’ll know that I never use my last name and that I use nicknames for my daughters.
My first and last name are uncommon enough that I am easily searchable online. Because of this, if I were to post publicly using my real name I would be creating a fairly direct connection between my online activities and my offline life. My offline life includes my wife and daughters.
The major problem with this is that the internet is not a friendly or safe place. While a lot of the danger and unfriendliness comes from the internet being mostly anonymous, forcing everybody that uses Google+ to use real names won’t fix the problems this anonymity causes. The real name policy will not change the fact that public posts, or comments made on posts that are public, can be read by the anonymous internet.
Discounting my own right to privacy I must also consider my daughters’ rights to privacy, their right to decide which aspects of their lives they want to disclose or keep secret from the rest of the internet. Part of being a parent is making these kinds of decisions for my children until they are mature enough to make these decisions on their own. The problem I and other parents have with decisions regarding information disclosure, on- or off-line is that once information has been disclosed, it can never really be taken back.
As my daughters get older, they may decide that they’d rather not have certain aspects of their life known to the world at large (the internet). I would like to be able to share information about my (their) life now in a way that will protect their right to disclose information later in life. Using a pseudonym offers that protection.
If I had to use Google+ with my real name, I would have to sever all connections between Google+ and any other service I use as these other services use my various pseudonyms. These connections would create more links between my online and offline lives. I would also not be able to post or comment on anything public. How I use Google+ would be severely limited due to the risks I, and I’m sure there are others, feel are involved. I would need to use Google+ like a “walled garden” in very much the same way I now use Facebook. Google+ could be so much more than that.
2007 04 12 Thursday
Since my last post two weeks ago, I have been up in the night to rock Helen back to sleep just two times. Hooray! I still get up once or twice to move her (she tends to get herself stuck in crazy positions in the corner of her crib) and give her a pacifier and a pat, but she falls right back asleep again. I am hoping once she is more mobile and can move herself out of her little jams on her own that will not even be necessary. What was the secret? A lullaby CD which now plays on repeat in her room 24 hours a day. I believe she still wakes up, but she hears the music and falls right back asleep. Her sleep is much, much more peaceful than it used to be as well. She no longer grunts, groans, and stiffens like she used to and has the most relaxed sleep posture I have ever seen:
Helen just saw her pediatrician for her nine month check up as well. He was pleased with her progress and is not at all concerned about the fact she has not rolled over, since she has met most of the other developmental milestones. He doesn’t think she needs any intervention, just more tummy time. I have to confess that for all my talk last post about letting her cry for a few minutes during tummy time that only lasted the one day. I still try to get 20 minutes of tummy time in a day, but it is broken up in smaller increments and I just do wild and silly things to amuse her and keep her from crying. She is so incredibly close to rolling from tummy to back on her own I am sure she will be doing it any day now. She still requires me to lightly touch her hip to make the turn, but the movement itself is all her. Funny that she thinks she still needs that little “push”.
2007 03 01 Thursday
It has been a relatively uneventful week around our house. We had hoped to travel to Stevens Point last weekend to visit Jeff and Jess and meet baby Cameron, but the weather thwarted us, and threatens to do so again. Hopefully the cousins will meet while they are still in diapers.
Helen went back to the lab today for her fifth attempt at a blood draw. This is something we have been struggling with since we got home. The phlebotomists are having a very difficult time finding veins in her chubby limbs. The first try at her pediatrician's office was VERY traumatic. They couldn't find a vein and were literally digging for one. Helen was screaming and J and I were near tears ourselves. This was less than a week after she got home, and we were not happy. We took her back a week later, but I wouldn't let them stick her unless they could actually locate a vein first. They ended up doing a heel stick to get a little bit of blood and test what they could. Besides the genetic diseases they usually test infants for with a heel stick, they also did a panel which included WBC (white blood cell count). This came back astronomically high – a level that is generally only seen in people with certain types of advanced and highly malignant cancers (like leukemia). The doctor was pretty sure this had to be an error, but needless to say we were concerned.
The next day we went to the main clinic downtown to see the most experienced phlebotomist in the health system, Meredith, for a stat re-do to check her WBCs again. Meredith was wonderful. She didn't find a vein in Helen's arm either, but found one in her hand. She was so gentle that Helen didn't even whimper. They still didn't get enough to test for everything her doctor wanted, but they did get enough for the re-do. We had the results about an hour later showing everything was fine, and, as expected, the initially high WBC was an error.
Since then, we have been going back to Meredith weekly. While I actually have few fears and trust the testing that was done in Ethiopia, our doctor wants to retest and screen her for EVERYTHING – and that requires a lot of blood. We don't want to hurt Helen and don't feel the need is urgent to get everything done right away, so they just draw what they can, and test the most important stuff first. They still have not done a successful arm stick on her, and can only get a couple mL at a time from her hand, but it is not traumatic for her at all this way. We are going to wait two weeks this time so she can totally heal before we go back, but hopefully our next visit to the lab will be our last for a while.
We have some new photos posted of Helen in her "Sunday best". She seems to enjoy the baby room at Church and, like anywhere she goes, charms everyone she meets.
Her sleep is still the same – waking every two to three hours, requiring rocking/bottle about two times a night – but after consulting with the experts (other adoptive parents on my forum) I am going to continue to be at her beck and call at night for the next few weeks. We have started to transition her to her crib for her daytime naps, which will hopefully make it easier to get her there full time in the near future. Wish us luck!
2007 02 16 Friday
While looking around at Parent Hacks the other day, I noticed a link to the Thingamababy website. The site says it is "a dad's look at baby and toddler stuff from birth to kindergarten". Basically they do reviews of kids stuff and offer tips and observations on parenting from a dad's perspective; really a great site.
The link that brought me to Thingamababy was in reference to two really good posts regarding the partnership that Born Learning and The National Fatherhood Institute have with the Ad Council:
These groups got together and made some excellent public service announcements about parenthood/fatherhood. I especially got a kick out of these two:
You can view all of the ads at the links to Thingamababy listed above.
I really like the focus these ads have on not caring how much of a fool you make of yourself with your kids: if my little girl is having a good time (heaven forbid learning), that's all that's important :)
There's another ad with a lady waiting in line to use the ATM that really cracked me up, but I've already linked to two ;) They're all so good I'd link to them all, but as said before you can check the others out at the Thingamababy site.