Turn that seat around, again

I flipped the car seat around in my car, and then I read this....

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/21/car.seat.guidelines.parenting/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Now they recommend a backward facing seat till the age of two.   That sucks for the little guy, because he was just starting to have fun.

Turn that seat around

Nate turned one today, but he didn't seem all that concerned about it.    He got a cupcake out of the deal, and will get a bigger cake to disassemble, along with a lot of attention, tomorrow.

I drove him to daycare, but I took a few minutes to turn his car seat around before leaving.   This was his first drive facing forward in the car.   He had big eyes every time I had a chance to look back, and would giggle at the slightest prompt - probably just the shock of being able to look up and see what the parents were doing during the drive all this time. 

Flipping the car seat was something I was looking forward to for a long time, since it was such a great experience with Lily.   She also got wide eyes and bewildered on her first forward facing drive. 

The Birthday Season

Tomorrow is Nate's first birthday, and it kicks off sort of  a season of birthdays.    A week later we'll celebrate our 5th Wedding Anniversary.  A week after that Cindy turns 29, again.    A month later, Lily and I celebrate birthdays - the 3rd and 39th, respectively.

We have 4 birthdays and our anniversary in the span of a month and a half.   It's kind of strange how that works out.

Flash Cards vs Playtime

This is a great blog post that reinforces what all the science says about the value of play.

The Virtues of Play

There are a lot of things I want to teach our kid's, and I must constantly remind myself that this just isn't the time for it.   It goes against conventional wisdom of the obsessive parent to avoid being a flash card parent, dousing the children with facts, but the science leaves little doubt what best aid's the child's development -- play.

There will be more than enough time for the heavy stuff later.

It's all in a name

We named our son Nathaniel.   This is a slightly less common version of the list of names that borrow from the Hebrew word for 'gift', the most common being Nathan.   The 'el' a the end of Nathaniel means 'God' in Hebrew, so his full name means 'Gift from God'.   I thought that was meaningful enough to warrant the longer variant, and was the driving force behind choosing Nathaniel over Nathan.

The truth is that we never call him Nathan or Nathaniel -- it's always Natey, Nater or Nate, or anything that rhymes with that (Ralphy Nater, Nater-Baiter, etc).   I'm sure he'll use a shorter form all his life, similar to how his mom is never called Cynthia or his dad Thomas.

It felt awkward applying names to both of our kid's.   Giving a new baby a name seems like an arbitrary label at first, but as that little individual's personality fills in what the name means, it all starts to make sense.   I'm sure if we called him Paxton, as we almost did, that name would have come to mean everything Nate has (but, lets just say that I'm glad we chose like we did).   With the exception of really bad names (Hugh Jass, Justin Sane, etc), you really can't go wrong.

I feel like I know Nate now, or am at least getting to know him.   His name isn't an arbitrary label anymore, because now it's the little guy who gets excited when he sees me and does whatever he's doing faster as soon I yell for him to stop.

Backseat Driver

I was driving the kid's home last night, stuck at a traffic light, and Lily told me to 'drive'.   I explained how we had to stop at red lights and could only drive through green ones.     Then this morning, while waiting in the left turn lane during a green light, she told me to 'drive' again.   I did my best to explain why I was waiting.

What's interesting about it is that she must be observing driving very closely.   We had passed a number of green & red lights before getting delayed in the left turn lane, so she was likely very aware what I was doing.