Swords are dangerous

Reuters reports that the UK is banning the sale, import, and renting of samurai swords. Says Home Office minister Vernon Coaker, "In the wrong hands, samurai swords are dangerous weapons."

Swords are weapons? Dangerous weapons? Who knew?

Our cleverness (ongoing)

Beyond the pacifier, Owen's sleep can also be tricky on account of nighttime feedings, which number one or two. "Or" is critical, here, as we've no way of telling beforehand which sort of night this is. It appears that tonight was a two-feeding night, hence the persistent yelling.

Happily, Dr Ferber does have advice on nighttime feedings (reduction of, as eating throughout the night can cause or exacerbate other sleep problems). However, the response is not the same as for de-pacifying. So the Ferberization continues, though maybe we are Ferberizing something other than we had thought. Or, perhaps we are reverting to the better-known technique of making it up as we go.

We'll see how clever we are

We are currently "Ferberizing" Owen. For those readers without babies on the brain, Dr Ferber is the author of a fairly well-known book on infant and child sleeping. His technique for getting a child to learn to sleep better is, broadly speaking, crying it out. Dr Ferber's key contribution to this traditional method, it seems to me, is breaking crying-it-out into smaller chunks of time, by having the parent go in to check on the wailing tot. Ostensibly, this is to reassure the child that he has not been forever abandoned by previously caring parents; it is also a useful way to assuage the parents' concern that the child might be in multiple pieces or have a large, sharp bit of metal stuck in him.

So that's why I'm blogging at 0315: because I'm waiting for either a) the current 15-minute period to end, or b) Owen to stop crying. The difficulties Owen has with sleeping, such as they are, seem to be linked to the pacifier. He's in the habit of sleeping with one. It will fall out during the night, so when he has a normal waking in the middle of the night, he can't get back to sleep. On some nights, it has been a trivial once or twice that we go and put the bink back in his mouth; on others, it's been significantly more trying. We were planning to live with it for a while longer before making a concerted effort to decouple pacifiers from sleeping - perhaps Owen would even learn to find the paci and put it back in his mouth himself - but then he had a couple of nights when he was crying mightily at bedtime, even with pacifier and high-strength cribside comforting from Mom or Dad. In the midst of this last night, we decided, "Dude, if you're going to cry your head off no matter what, it might as well be by yourself."

[Pause to check on Owen. Confirmed: all in one piece; no large, sharp bits of metal. Now for more waiting.]

He only cried for 25 minutes at bedtime last night, and then lightly for another 25 minutes early in the morning. We considered this to be pretty good, so our decision seemed a clever piece of parenting judo, using Owen's momentum towards our own end. But O! - beware the cockiness, young parent! This current round of wakefulness is at 50 minutes and going strong.

Mind the jokes

"Mind the gap," says the pleasant sounding woman on the London Underground. This pleasant sounding woman, Emma Clarke, recently recorded some funny, spoof announcements about tourists, leering at women, sudoku, and other unpleasant aspects of traveling on the Tube. The word from Reuters earlier this week was that said humor, posted on Ms Clarke's website, had cost her her gig with the Underground.

Thanksgiving and O news

We had Thanksgiving in Belpre with a big crowd: Grandad, Dad, AP, Aunt Ann, Cousin E, his sister Michelle, her daughters Christine and Shelby, and Shelby's new baby, Christian (plus six dogs). Lots of time was spent watching and holding the babies (with perhaps a picture or two taken). Christian is only three weeks older than Owen, so it was fun to watch them together. Of course we had a delicious, traditional Thanksgiving meal. Less traditionally, we had some flooding in the basement. Kerry and I were driving Thursday morning and so missed the actual water, catching only the tail end of the wet carpet ripping-up and removal. However, though Michelle and Dad did the lion's share of the work, I did get to help in the laying of the Pergo floor and the re-moving of the furniture.

Owen has new skills and traits:

- He now has a sense of anticipation, mainly with respect to my hands. When we're playing, he'll sometimes get very excited when he sees my hands slowly drifting towards his face (where they can be grabbed and, hopefully, drawn into the mouth). Or, tickle, tickle, tickle - stop! with the hands put behind the back - brings big smiles when he knows the tickling will return.

- He can pass small objects from one hand to the other, and use the hands in tandem for holding larger objects.

- He can hold his body upright pretty well. (Boy, the things one finds newsworthy...) An exersaucer is in his near future.

- After weeks of trying, he can put his foot in his mouth (literally). And no sooner did one foot go in than he was trying to get both in simultaneously.