One more cup of coffee

Happy Birthday, Adam.

Adam celebrated his first birthday today. His first couple of weeks were a little hectic, but the 50 weeks or so since then have been much better.

From when he was eight days old, cooped up in the NICU and not exactly loving life:

To earlier today:

Happy birthday, kid.

You should be doing that, Dad

Nathan and I were driving back from the store last night when the radio played a commercial from the US Department of Health and Human Services on 'hey, be a Dad.' The commercial had some woman talking to her Dad about how great the sandwiches were that he made when she was a kid, when he cut them into four pieces, and cut all the crusts off, blah, blah, blah... "You never know what they'll remember. Call [some 800 number] or go to fatherhood.gov".

About sixty seconds later, Nathan says, "I guess you should be doing that."

Me, having already forgotten this commercial: "What?"

N: "Since it said it was for fathers. And you're a father."

Me, remembering: "Ahh... so what did they say on there that you think I should be doing?"

N: "Well ... he cut the sandwich into four pieces for his kid. You could do that for me. Or... [warming to his topic] you could cut up a tortilla into four pieces for me. That'd be great."

...

Nathan is always listening.

Failure to communicate

Nathan: "Can you guess what that J word is?"

Meredith, looking down at the book of hers that Nathan was holding: "Jesus."

N: "No, no, can you guess?"

M: "Jesus"

N, getting more frustrated: "No, can you guess what that J word is?"

M, getting frustrated herself: "Nathan, I don't understand what you want. The word in the title that starts with J is 'Jesus'"

N, practically hopping up and down in frustration: "No, YOU say: 'can you guess what that J word is?'"

M: "Can you guess what that J word is?"

N: "Ummm ... is it Jesus?"

One of these things is not, in fact, like the other

Nathan is reading and writing more and more, and keeps asking how to spell certain words or what something says. Sometimes he doesn't quite get it, of course...

"How do you spell Stanford?"

"S-T-A-N-F-O-R-D"

[nods] "That's like 'Preparation'"

"Oh? How is that?"

"Because they both have "I" in them."

OK, then.

This one actually didn't have to happen eventually, but it did anyway

Meredith called me at work today to say that Adam had evidently swallowed a toothpick. Or something like a toothpick. Evidently she picked him up for a change and saw something that looked wooden and about an inch and a half in the back of his mouth. She couldn't get it out, and it disappeared, seeming to suggest that he had swallowed it.

On the advice of our doctor's office, Adam went into the ER, where I met them. They did a chest X-ray, but it didn't pick anything up, which they seemed unsurprised by for something wooden. The doctor talked to the GI doctor on call at Children's to decide whether or not they should put a camera down his throat, but they decided not to now. Eventually we were discharged with instructions to give him an all liquid diet for 24 hours and take him to the doctor tomorrow to get checked on.

He seems basically fine. If you didn't know he'd swallowed something, you wouldn't guess it from the way he was acting.

Kids...

It had to happen eventually

Another first for Adam: today he crawled off the bed and discovered gravity.

(He's fine.)

Reading

Nathan, in the car: "Why does that say dog?"

We look around outside and Meredith spots the hot dog stand.

Meredith: "Can you read what it says before dog?"

Nathan: "H ... ot ... H ... ot ... Hot!"

Meredith: "So what do you think it is?"

Nathan: "Hot Dogs!"

Independence

The other day, I walked upstairs to find Nathan running out of the office.

"Nathan, you're not supposed to be in there. What were you doing?"

"Nothing!"

I walk into the office, with him following.

"What are you doing?"

"Just looking to see what you were up to."

I find my PC sitting at the logon screen with an error message about a bad password.

"Nathan, what were you trying to do with the computer?"

"Umm ... Play World of Warcraft."

At least it should be a few years before he can hack my account.

Facebook's ad platform has some very interesting notions of me.

Facebook's hopes of monetizing their platform would seem to rest in ads. It makes sense; Facebook knows tons of information about me, from my age, address, marital status, things I claim to like, friends, etc. In fact, one of the ads I see occasionally is from Facebook touting their own system.

OK, so let's see what it knows about me from my profile:

That's a fair amount ... married, work for Microsoft, live near Seattle, and of course Facebook has my actual birthday, so they know how old I am. So let's see what I get for ads:

Expecting my first? No ... and no. And ... just no.

Okaaaayyyy....

Baby carrier, sure ... but ... Mommies?

Hey, here's one that at least seems targeted at the correct gender:

So maybe they don't think I'm married. Or they think I want to cheat. Actually, given the way this is going, the most likely explanation is that they think I'm a married lesbian who wants to cheat.

Maybe I can get some non-gender specific ads in here...

UC Davis? Sacramento? Kirkland, WA is near Seattle. I don't even think I have a friend on Facebook that lives near Sacramento – the Bay Area is as close as I get with friends, I think. Hey, here's one that's not for Sacramento:

Only it turns out that Foothill Ranch Dentistry is in Southern California – about 1200 miles way. "Just [ten thousand or so] blocks away." Yay!

So, in summary, Facebook's "highly targeted ad system" believes that I am a lesbian mother, who lives in Sacramento, but works in southern CA, and is looking to hook up with a hot chick.

OK, then.

I hope their advertisers aren't paying a lot for this awesome ad system.

3 1/2 going on 30

Nathan: "There's pulp in the bottom of my apple juice. You must not have shaken it up enough, Daddy."

Me: "Oh, I'm sorry, Nathan."

Then he moved in for the killing blow.

"When you were a little kid, did you like it when your mama or daddy forgot to shake up your juice enough?"