Weekend update

Allison has a new favorite game.  It's called "Hey, Wait for Me!"  It's a pretty simple game.   In her words:  "You sit on the green couch.  I run by, and you say 'Hey, wait for me!'"

So we sit on the green couch, pretending to not know what's coming next.  Allison goes into the kitchen and says "1..2..3…  Marks, set, GO!" and runs around the corner and right by us.  We pretend to just notice her as she runs by, and exclaim "Hey, wait for me!" (this is where the name of the game comes from, see?) and run after her.  After a few laps around the kitchen/family/living room circuit, we collapse into a giggling heap on the sofa.  Repeat as many times as necessary.

There is a variation, called "Hey, Wait for Me, Guys!" in which Allison AND Daddy run by, and Mommy chases them both.  Good times.

The other day, I had the TV on and flipped through a college basketball game.  I pointed out to Allison how they throw the ball through the hoop.  She disappeared, and returned a few moments later with her Nerf basketball.  My heart swelled.  I set up her hoop and made a little free-throw line and she tried to make baskets.  She actually made one from a few feet away, which is notably because it required previously impossible muscle control.  Her throws are pretty much 100% all the time, so throwing something lightly and gently with accuracy was a new concept.

The whole family had a great weekend.  I geeked out over at Baditudes on Friday night, playing Age of Empires III, The Board Game.  Not a bad game, but not a favorite.  Similar enough to Puerto Rico that I'd probably just rather play that (but I guess AoE supports more players, which is probably why we played it).  The next morning, some work friends came over with their daughter for a playdate.    That afternoon, I took Allison to the park.  On the way back, we saw some hot air balloons filling up in a nearby field.  I was able to park nearby and we walked over and watch them launch off.  That was really fun little unexpected adventure.

Sunday, Diana took Allison to the park in the morning, and we all headed over to the farmers market for lunch, meeting up with Mike and Gwen briefly.  The farmers market is usually a nice outing.  Diana gets delicious fish and food while Allison and I play, then we enjoy a nice lunch in the sun before naptime.  Works out well.

Unfortunately, Sunday morning at the park, Allison fell and apparently hurt or twisted her knee.  She's not limping outright, but she's definitely not running around as much as usual.  So we're keeping it under observation for the time being.

That afternoon, I watched the end of the Indy/Jets game at Mikes, and was able to see the end of the Vikings/NO game in the evening.  The one thing that I'll always remember about AFC/NFC Championship day is that is marks the anniversary of finding out that we were pregnant.

It feels like Allison is in another mini renaissance period.  She's eating and growing and learning a lot.  Her behavior is much better recently.  Not nearly as much "yuckiness" as maybe a month ago (hitting, spitting, general rebellion).  We entice her good behavior with the promise of Cinderella panties, which she'll show off at a moments notice, (probably cementing her future career as a stripper, but we'll cross that bridge later).  Diana and Allison and Anna and Lilly have a date for "Disney on Ice" next weekend, which will be an adventure.  I don't think Allison has ever seen ice-skating, and isn't familiar with too many Disney characters yet.  It might just blow her little mind.

Life is good.

Pushing Boundaries

This weekend, we headed up to the OC where Gabe and Rhiannon were hosting a party for watching some dumb football game on TV.  At first, Diana and I weren't sure what to do, and we fell back to our default position, which is that I'd go, and Diana would stay home and Allison would take her nap at her normal time and stick to The Routine.  Allison takes a hour-and-a-half nap in the afternoon, and we work pretty hard to keep that consistent.  If she's sleeping until 3:30pm, and dinner/bath/bed starts around 5:30pm, that doesn't leave much time for a 50 minute drive each way.

But then Norm and Teri announced that they were heading up with their entire family for the game.  "The kids can nap in the car," they said, "or maybe they just won't nap at all."  It struck me as a good time to try to expand our comfort zone and push the boundaries a little.  Diana was down with the idea, so we headed up a little early, had lunch and played for a while.  When it came time for her nap, Allison spent a good bit of time fussing around in her crib.  With ten minutes before kickoff, I went in and pulled a manual override, rocking her in my arms until she fell asleep (putting females to sleep is apparently my secret X-man power, I'm discovering as time goes by).

The rest of the afternoon was interesting for Allison.  Gabe and Norm's oldest kids are much older and bigger and louder than she is, so she viewed them with a great deal of caution.  She warmed up to Norm's middle kid Tyler, who is closer to her age and a little calmer when he's not under the influence of his older brother. 

And in spite of how much she talks about them behind their backs, she still is pretty nervous around my group of friends.  I'm trying to be patient, but I really am looking forward to her opening up a bit around them.  It was so cute to watch Eryn read a Lego book with Colton, and see how much fun both of them had.  Allison recently learned about Spiderman, and frequently says "Spiderman makes webs from his hands… like this!" and she'll shoot a hand out, fingers splayed, and go "PSSSSSSSSSS!" with a big smile on her face.  At some point, I said "Allison, my friend Mike likes Spiderman.  You should show him that!" and she really seemed pumped on the idea.  But when the time comes, she clams up and says "No, Daddy, you do it."  I know it will change as she gets older, but it's just too bad that they don't get to see the same little girl that brings us to much happiness.

Speaking of adventures, we hit up Legoland on Saturday, and discovered that Allison was big enough to ride the roller coaster.  She's seen roller coasters in her books, and watched the one at Legoland many times, and always looked forward to the day that she was "bigger, bigger, bigger!" enough to go on them.  Well, Saturday was the day.  We waited in line, Diana and I constantly wondering if this was really a good idea.  It's not a huge coaster by any stretch, but it goes ten times as fast as any other ride she's ever been on.  We got to the front of the line and on board.  The safety bar was a belt for me and a chin-strap for Allison.  I told her to hold on tight, and we headed up the incline.

She did a good job on the ride.  She cried out "woo!" a food times, mimicking me, and even raised her hands up in traditional roller coaster style for a second (which I didn't do, but she must have observed others doing).  She didn't seem scared or cry or anything, but didn't appear to have a good time, either.  When it was all over, we talked about it.

Me:  Allison, you did such a good job!  What a big girl you are!  Was that fun?
Allison:  Yeah!
Me:  I was a little scared, but sometimes being a little scared is fun.  Were you scared?
Allison:  No…
Me:  Do you want to go on it again?
Allison:  No!

We decided that we might try again "someday", when she's a little more "bigger, bigger, bigger".

You know what I don't understand?

Pharmacists.

I understand that you have to go through lots of school to be a Pharmacist.  And my limited understanding is that your job then entails counting pills into containers (or supervising said activity), and then reading the pre-printed instructions out loud to people.

"See, it says right here.  Take ONE pill THREE times a day..."
*nod*
"... with food.  So, for instance, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner."
*nod nod*
"It also says here that it may cause constipation..."

OKAY LADY... I get it.  I can read.

Can anyone help me out here?

Weekend

What a nice weekend!

Allison's friend Lilly came over on Saturday morning, with Lilly's mom Anna.  Mostly Diana and Anna chatted while Allison and Lilly ran around like crazy, jumping and giggling and dancing and playing with toys, and I floated back and forth between the two.  It was really fun to watch Allison so happy and interactive with a friend.

Today was a lazy day for me.  Diana let me sleep in a bit (maybe in repayment for her coughing keeping us both up last night).  Diana signed up for a "Mommy and me" type playgroup that meets at various parks and stuff, so she went to her first "meetup" in the morning.  Just as she left, I got a text from Mick saying he was going to play some TF2 for an hour before football, so we did that.  I just got a new gaming headset, and it was fun to play with voice chat turned on.  We schooled peeps, as usual.  I then watched New England get trounced by the Ravens, which warmed my heart.

A happy mommy and Allison returned, and after a little playtime, it was time for nap.  After being left in her crib, Allison went to sleep ALL BY HERSELF, with no crying or whining or (more usual these days) taking off her clothes and diaper.  She slept for an hour and a half, then woke up, groaned a little, shifted positions, and slept for another half an hour.  Diana did some schoolwork, so I killed time by playing some GTA IV (which I'm replaying and loving).  We also watched some more Lord of the Rings (more on that later).

So it actually was about 4pm before I actually stepped outside and did anything productive.  Diana said it was really warm at the park today, so thought that going swimming might be a good idea.  We thought about going to the YMCA, but decided to give Mike and Gwen a call to see if we could borrow their complex's pool, and we headed over there.  The pool was probably a better idea than in practice... it was pretty chilly and maybe not worth the effort, but nice for the whole family to get out and see friends.

We also borrowed a Lord of the Rings board game from them that I'm excited to try with Diana.  Mike and Gwen started a holiday tradition of watching the entire extended edition every holiday season.  I've unabashedly stolen this tradition because it's so utterly awesome.  We're halfway through Return of the King, watching in chunks of an hour here, hour and a half there, and it's been awesome.  I like watching it with Diana, because she asks lots of questions about Lord of the Rings mythos that I feel smart (is that the right word?  Nerdy?) for answering.  She also asks lots of questions that I don't know the answer to, mostly about Gandalf and why doesn't he use more magic to school more peeps?

Allison has two more teeth coming in.  So far, she has her two front top, and her two front bottoms.  She has all four corner molars.  On the left side, she has the top and bottom next-to-center teeth about halfway down, and is just cutting the right side next-to-center top and bottoms.  Pretty late teething!  The whole family has had some extended bronchitis that we're all getting over (hopefully), so I'm hoping that Allison will be a bit more comfortable soon.  These past couple weeks have been a little trying with all of us not feeling 100%, but this weekend was great.  Hopefully this trend continues!

New Year's Time Lapse...

Not as cool as I hoped, but still kinda cool...

"You Can't Prove a Negative"

I've always been annoyed when I hear this phrase.  People tend to claim it, loud and proud, in a very authoritative way, but it's never sat well with me.  Before now, I never put a whole lot of thought into it, but why can't you prove a negative?  Don't we do this all the time?  A little Googling makes me feel better.

The misconception appears to stem from inductive reasoning.

For example:
1)  We have searched extensively for Bigfoot
2)  We haven't found any evidence of Bigfoot
3)  Therefore, Bigfoot doesn't exist.

Using this kind of inductive reasoning, we have NOT sufficiently proven that Bigfoot doesn't exist.  We haven't looked everywhere at that exact same time, so he could still be hiding out there.  He PROBABLY doesn't exist, but we certainly haven't proven it.

But by the same reasoning, you can't prove POSITIVE statements, either.  The famous example is this:

1)  Every swan we've ever seen has been white
2)  Therefore all swans are white.

This held true for a long time, until black swans were discovered.

So are all swans either black or white?  Can you prove it?

Inductive reasoning provides a good framework for what is probably true (that the sun will come up tomorrow, that Bigfoot probably doesn't exist), but not always for proving them to be so (see black swans).

I think people tend to use the phrase "You can't prove a negative" with regard to this kind of reasoning.  Within this context, it's true.

A couple problems with the original statement:   For one thing, "You can't prove a negative" is itself a negative statement.  If you were to prove it to be true, it would no longer be true (Yeah, that was your mind that was just blown…)

And you can always prove a double negative.  If something is true, then it's always not not-true.  Try it out on anything that you can prove to be true!  For instance, I can prove that I'm not dead, for all practical, legal, and scientific purposes (I think I'll go for a walk…) 

And finally, I can prove that there are no hot air balloons in my section of cubicles this morning.  If there were a hot-air balloon in here, I would see it.  I don't see one, therefore I can conclude that there aren't any here.

1)  I don't see any hot-air balloons in cubicle
2)  If there was a hot-air balloon nearby, I would see it
3)  Therefore, there aren't any hot-air balloons in my cubicle

Of course, I could misunderstand what a hot-air balloon is, or where my cubicle is, or where I am, but for all practical definitions and to the extent that anyone can know and observe anything, I can prove that there aren't any here.

Proving something doesn't exist or isn't true isn't a logic problem, but a scoping problem.  It's very hard to prove that something isn't so, because it's very hard to observe all of the possible range at once.

"You can't prove a negative" is frequently used by Bigfoot lovers who want to use "You can't prove that A is false" as evidence that "A is true".  This is bad.  This is no.  Keep your ears open, and you may be surprised at how often this comes up.