– We’ve had quite a few visitors this past week! Not counting parents (because once their kid is born, they’re not that important anymore), Emily hosted such honored guests as Daniel, Tom, Elliot, Marina, and Luca. Also, making a special appearance at Chez Zamrycki was cousin Marli all the way from the US via a one-year teaching job outside Paris!

Tom & Emily

– A single smile from Emily has the ability to melt my heart. She didn’t smile for the first three weeks of her life and I found this particularly difficult. I was cracking jokes left and right and all I got in return was a vacant stare (usually slightly cross-eyed). Now, when I get home from work, I am greeted with the sweetest smile of recognition. It usually starts on one side of her face and then grows until her eyes are forced shut and her mouth opens wide revealing her gummy little smile. If it’s an especially emphatic smile, she holds her fists out and her shoulders go up in search of her ears. Sometimes she has happy fits for whole minutes on end. It’s the best. Plus, there’s this joke I tell her about a cat and a dog that she finds absolutely hi-larious!

– With the laughter comes the tears. Emily has recently acquired the ability to produce both tears and drool. The tears started just this morning when – as Jan would have us believe – Emily head-butted her nose into Jan’s chin. I have my suspicions. In any case, Emily proceeded to emit an unprecedented blood-curdling scream and, for the first time in her life, her eyes welled up with tears. It was actually quite scary. Of course, she was absolutely fine just 20 seconds later but she has since used this newfound glass-shattering scream two more times today: once when she was hungry and once when she had a belly full of gas. We hope this whole crying thing is just a phase.

Emily & Luca

– Emily is still loving her bath time. At the moment, I give Emily a bath about two or three times a week and she’s totally chilled out while I scrub her down from head to toe. She even smiled sometimes. We’ve got quite the routine worked out. I think she likes the fact that I narrate the process as we go through it. If I get the time, I wouldn’t mind documenting the procedure on video. If I get the time.

– Emily is still looking to her right about 85% of the time. I hope she straightens out soon.

The sheep and cow used to feel safe
but now receive the occasional smack to the head.

Today, just six weeks after Emily joined our family, the ladies celebrated by attending their weekly pediatrician visit. To show us what a big girl she is, Emily decided to neither pee nor poop nor spit up on the doctor for the very first time! We’re very proud of her.

In another death-defying display of big-girliness, Emily allowed herself to be weighed. Our little prize fighter weighed in at exactly 5 kg (that’s 11 lbs for those keeping score in the US). Since Emily was born weighing 3.5 kg, that means that she has gained 1.5 kg in six weeks – a 43% increase! If she continues to gain weight at the same rate that she has already proven herself capable, when she is 1 year old she should weigh approximately 16.5 kg (or 36 lbs). We may have to move up a size in diapers.

They’re not gonna let us fly to England for Christmas if Emily doesn’t have a passport… so off to the American Consulate we went!

Before going, we had to fill out the 57 obligatory forms and acquire the 163 necessary documents including marriage license, birth certificates, hospital records, social security information, college transcripts, library card, fifth grade dream journal, and other assorted Mad Libs. Oh yeah, don’t forget the two recent color photos:

How does one take a usable photo of a newborn in which they are looking straight ahead with a “natural expression”, eyes open, mouth closed, with no one else in the photo, avoiding shadows on the face and background, taken in normal street attire, and in front of a plain white or off-white background? You can’t. She can’t even support her own head! We just lied Emily down on a white sheet and took the picture from above. At least we got the “Sweetheart” in the photo.

This passport will be valid for five years. Five years. That’s just ridiculous. Emily will look completely different in five months, much less five years. But I guess it’s better than shelling out $147 every year for a new passport.

Emily was very well behaved at the consulate. She was asleep upon arrival but caused quite a stir amongst the smattering of Americans in the waiting room with us when she finally woke up. Now that’s she’s smiling and cooing, no one is safe. She’ll melt your heart and have her wicked way with you. I wish I had brought a camera with me. The photo of the day would have been Jan breast feeding Emily on a large brown leather sofa beneath a menacing photo of Dick Cheney.

If you’re using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer as you all should be, allow me to share a new extension that has just made my life a heckuva lot easier. It’s called Pearl Crescent Page Saver and it lets you capture images of web pages in PNG format. Emailing screengrabs has just got a whole lot simpler. If you want the image on your clipboard instead of a file, you’ve still got your handy dandy prt scr key.

So for those of you keeping score at home, here’s my current list of extensions that make using Firefox even more of a dream than it already is:

• DictionarySearch
• Web Developer
• SpellBound
• MeasureIt
• ColorZilla
• Ook? Video Ook!
• Greasemonkey
• Pearl Crescent Page Saver

Just thought I’d share the love.

I was reading MetaFilter yesterday (as I do everyday) and I stumbled across an article from the Washington Post about how US students are no longer receiving much handwriting instruction in the primary grades because many educators say, “penmanship instruction seems a relic”. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive (that’s joined up writing for you Brits).

This article made me kinda sad. I don’t mean to sound like an old fuddy-duddy, but where is this world heading?! Sure, I agree that learning to type correctly is also a valuable tool in today’s modern era but, as this article argues, studying penmanship plays other roles in one’s mental development.

But what really made me upset was reading the comments left by the MeFi community. The overwhelming majority of the people who left comments were in favor of the extinction of cursive writing! I got the feeling that most of them were annoying little US teenagers who had some sort of a vendetta against their third grade teacher. They use arguments like, “No one can read my chicken scratch anyway. Good riddance!” I bet if Shakespeare or calculus were removed from the curriculum these same kids would be dancing in the street because they never excelled in those subjects either. Same kids who can only tell time using digital clocks. They probably can’t wear shoes that don’t have velcro, either.

According to the commenters on MeFi, this appears to be a strictly US trend at the moment. But who’s next? I don’t like the idea of Emily not being able to write in cursive. Though she’ll undoubtedly be able to type better than I can. This train of thought has inspired me to learn how to touch type correctly. I have spent the past two hours online going through typing tutorials and exercises. Looks like I can “hunt and peck” at around 40 words per minute but, at the moment, I’m touch typing at around 16 WPM. I even tried to type this blog entry “the correct way” without looking at the keyboard but the first paragraph alone took almost five minutes and so I got frustrated and gave up. I guess practice makes perfect.

But I digress. I’d like to know if I’m alone in my sadness on this one. If you have a moment, read the article and (more importantly) the comments and let me know how you feel about these times that are a-changin’.

I never said it was pretty

It’s getting harder and harder to write new blog entries what with the new rugrat and all, but I must be strong. The people want to know.

Last week Emily celebrated her One Month birthday! It was kinda awkward when all her friends showed up at the door (we didn’t know any of them!) and Emily asked us if we wouldn’t mind leaving the house for a few hours. And then she asked for the keys to the car! I knew we should have been a little more strict with her when she was two weeks old.

Eye Contact (sorta)

To celebrate the big day, the ladies and I traveled down the coast to the bustling tourist town of Salou where Jan’s parents and sister were staying for the week. We left on Friday morning – just two days after Barcelona’s first “Pants Day” of the year (or “Trouser Day” for you Brits). Yes, the summer had ended and Fall had fallen. And then, as if we had traveled to some foreign exotic land, we were greeted in Salou by some of the hottest and most beautiful weather we had seen all summer!

Mum & Granddad

We sprang for a room at the same hotel where Jan’s family was staying (but in a different room strategically located on a different floor). Highlights of our stay at the Hotel Playa Park?

• swimming pool with a bridge
• just a two minute walk to a remote cove of a beach carved out of the side of a mountain
• gargantuan dinner smorgasbord
• night 1 entertainment: Casio Man playing all of last year’s hits!
• night 2 entertainment: Polynesian dancers!
• eavesdropping on the plethora of insane British tourists
• proudly fielding questions about Emily from everyone we met
• not having to cook or clean for three days
• spending quality time with mum & dad

Monday Night Football

If we want to retire early and live the good life while Emily takes care of us, she’s gonna have to get a decent job. And to do that, she’s gonna have to be smart. That’s why I thought it would be a good idea to stimulate the development of Emily’s brain as early as possible.

In the first years of a baby’s life, the brain is busy building its wiring system. Activity in the brain creates tiny electrical connections called synapses. The amount of stimulation a baby receives has a direct affect on how many synapses are formed. Repetitive stimulation strengthens these connections and makes them permanent.

At almost one month old, Emily’s vision is so poor that she still can’t make out any definite shapes. If she were to take an eye exam, she wouldn’t even be able to make out that giant E at the top of the chart. Not that it would make any difference if she could because she wouldn’t know what to call that letter anyway when the old guy at the DMV asked her. She won’t be reciting the alphabet for another few months. But I digress.

So how does one stimulate a baby without using expensive alternatives like electro-shock transistors? (maybe they’re cheaper in the US, I don’t know) Black and white pictures meticulously held 12 inches from their face, that’s how. Researchers have discovered that infants not only prefer to look at high contrast graphics, but that such images can help increase concentration skills, stimulate the creation of synapses (brain cell connections), increase an infant’s attention span, calm a baby (when she is bored), and enhance curiosity. We noticed this first hand when we realized that Emily would hypnotize herself with the shadows cast on the wall next to her crib at night. Hence the “infant stimulation graphics”:

I’ve printed these bad boys each on their own piece of paper and strategically placed them around the house. The top-left one is in her Moses basket. The top-right one is in her crib. The bottom-left one is hung on the wall just beside her changing table. And the bottom-right one is floating around the house for general all-purpose use. And Emily loves them! She could be in the crankiest mood from putting up with five hours of stinky neglect in her little diapers, but once she catches a glimpse of that checker board next to her changing station, she settles down and stares intently at the design for upwards of two whole minutes (we’re still working on that attention span). I’ve got a bunch of other high-contrast designs I’m planning on printing out and testing. I’ll report back as to which ones Emily prefers in case you want to try it out at home with some other baby you may have access to.

As the most observant of you have probably already noticed, I have added a new section to the navigation bar atop this blog. Behold the “photos” section! The idea is to create a homemade photo gallery that doesn’t rely on any remote web services (see: Flickr). It should be easy to navigate, integrate itself into the current blog appearance, and offer users the opportunity to download a high resolution version of any picture they like. Feel free to have a peek at the first stages of this cutting edge technology but keep in mind that this is very much a work in progress (at the moment, there isn’t even a link back to the blog). I’d like to eventually replicate all of the photos that are currently hosted on my Flickr account and add new albums every month or two. Any suggestions to make this better?