Black Lung

I've got to get my family out of Utah County.

The last week of school this semester, I could taste the air while walking to school. The car exhaust just seemed to hang in the air. I was so sure that the air quality would be rated poor, by the way my mouth and throat felt by the time I made it up the hill.

Oddly, the one site I checked gave Provo a green rating. But The Daily Herald reported a different story yesterday:

Utah Valley air ranked worst in U.S.

I hate to think what this air is doing to my kids' lungs.

Utah Valley's only growing, and the bowl that is Utah County is only going to hold all that car exhaust each winter. It's time to go.

Grumpy Rooster

Yesterday, my over 2 year-old niece and my under 2 year-old daughter found some of Grandma and Grandpa's books that they brought back from their mission in Africa. They were good picture books and children's stories. The book they snuck into the other room had a big color drawing of a rooster on the cover: Le coq qui ne voulait plus chanter. (If my French is any good: "The rooster who no longer wanted to crow".) This is a children's story by an Ivory Coast author, Fatou Keita.

My niece was excited when she saw that I was willing to read her the book and we could look at all of the pictures. Turning to the third page as I continued reading my niece stops me.

"I'm gonna get another book."

I know I didn't pronounce every word correctly, but I didn't think my French pronunciation was unbearable. Maybe I'll just finish the book on my own.

* And what better to illustrate a post about an African story in French, than a painting by Spanish artist. At least the title is Le Coq (Joan Miro, 1940).

Insects: It's whats for dinner

Dr. Riley Nelson, one of my academic advisers, hosted an informal potluck dinner for the the Entomology Class, the Entomology Club and assorted members of his lab. Attendees were invited to bring bug-themed foods. Most items were in the form of bugs: sandwiches pinned and labeled like bugs in a museum, foods decorated with legs, or even just labels on the food to remind you that some bugs have those shapes. Laura and I brought chips and salsa because... well... chips and salsa.

There was also one food item with plastic bugs embedded inside, but one brave girl actually fried some meal worms she'd bought at the pet store. Here in the States, mealworms are pet food. Elsewhere mealworms are sometimes people food. The little dish was passed around to everyone. With a little peer pressure more than half of the folks had a crisp treat. They tasted like a burnt chip.

After eating a couple myself, I had one more that I handed Maggie. She held it in her hand for a while. I saw her taste it a couple of times still holding it in her little fist, but by the time we got her out of the car at home she was finishing chewing up her little treat. That's when I let Laura know that Maggie was getting a little extra protein in her diet.

If you go here, you can see a few pictures and descriptions of bugs eaten around the world from Man Eating Bugs: the Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio, a good book. A google search for the book has many of the pages and photos online. (The photo for this post came from Menzel and D'Aluisio's book.)

I like it

I do like cool paper. It's part of why I took a bookbinding class at the University.

I also like bugs.

I think I'm a little partial to green too.

This little guy* is pretty cool.

You can check out the story here at NPR's The Picture Show blog.

!ORAGAMI!

* Leaf Katydid, by Brian Chan

Christmas Music: Not So Cheery

In our house, we've been listening to Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas. It's a collection of 5 EPs that Sufjan originally recorded to send out to his friends. I generally prefer not to listen to Christmas music, but I bought this CD set for Laura one Christmas after we spent a week constantly going back to NPR to stream Stevens' "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". (That song has tragically been removed, from the LDS hymn book, but the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and others still perform it.)

There are definitely some songs/hymns that I really like, but the way that Christmas music has been treated does little to inspire me.

I am wary of any band or entertainer that puts out a Christmas album. I use that word "entertainer" loosely... it was the best I could think of at the moment so as not to use "musician" or "artist" which are more debatable terms under these circumstances. Christmas albums seem like a cheap shot at sales that somehow someone still concedes to produce as another offering to the undiscriminating masses. I consider the Sufjan Stevens EPs as a definite exception because he recorded 5 EPs over 6 years for friends and then decided to make it commercially available.

To me, most Christmas albums are a tribute to those who don't want to bother with making a real choice about what to listen to. "Harmless" is the only requirement. Just think about how many Christmas albums that fall into these categories: adult contemporary, country, and new age - a selection that runs from bland and blah to downright putrid. Just type in "Christmas" while searching for music on Amazon and you'll get a good picture of this bleak landscape. The inspiration that was required for Handel's Messiah or "Silent Night" is wrung out and replaced by the simple sales point of "hey, listen to me... I know all the words", not to mention the smothering by "original" compositions. bleh.

I think that the hardest part for me about Christmas music is how it is rolled into the mass marketing of the Holiday season. I am frightened of those, and I'm mainly talking about commercial enterprises, who play Christmas music as soon as the turkey's off the Thanksgiving table. Few things are more grating than the barrage of pop-culture mediocrity. There were some definite music fiends that I had to listen to as a missionary because of my inability to convince some of my missionary companions that any album with "Christmas" in the title was not automatically "inspirational" music -- Boyz II Men are definitely going to hell for what they've done.

Sufjan is half of the reason I am writing this post. The other half is because I heard a review of Bob Dylan's new Christmas album on NPR. After listening to the few samples of the songs that were included in that story, the first thing I'd like to say is: ¿Can someone please find Bob a losenge? His throat must be killing him..

Secondly, I do like Dylan's music. If you're not a fan of Bob or even dislike his music, one thing that can help you better appreciate his writing talent is to hear someone else sing his songs: Tim O'Brien's version of "Forever Young", nearly anyone's version of "Girl from the North Country", but I do like Sam Bush's rendition, and there are definite reasons why so many people have covered "Don'tThink Twice It's Alright" and "All Along the Watchtower".

With that preface, I have no idea why. ¿WHY?

¿WHY did Bob Dylan record a Christmas album?

Maybe you can listen to a track or two and tell me.

NPR's All Songs Considered has their yearly selection of Christmas Covers up and running, and The Annoying Music Show also has this year's post. Both programs have Bob Dylan, if that means anything.

* I stole the photo from New York Magazine.

Pop-culture Icons

This video is just over a week old and last i looked, the video is less than 15k short of reaching the 8 million mark. That's crazy. It's easy to understand. I loved "Bohemian Rhapsody" well before the Wayne's World revival, and the Muppets from even earlier. Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that this is a good mash-up of pop culture.

Will nearly 8 million views, you've probably already seen this. In case you haven't, here it is:

Some are smart - others, silly

i was digging around on the internet looking for some alphabet flashcards for Maggie. Yes, Maggie is learning her letters. She has started to identify them off of labels, T-shirts, boxes, her blocks, etc. i was hoping to find a set of flash cards to use with Maggie so that we could have a little play time around letters - reward some of her curiosity with something easier to handle than shuffling through the letters on her blocks.

i found a few sets of flash cards with okay fonts, but i also found someone's not so bright idea: American Sign Language alphabet flash cards. These cards have the letter and the hand sign printed together. There is an important word in that last sentence.

If you know the ASL alphabet, there is this wonderful teaching tool generally located just past your wrist. If you want to teach your kids the ASL alphabet, learn the alphabet and then use your hands as the flash cards.

i know that the flash cards could be used to help an adult as a starter to learn the ASL alphabet, but they were in a section for kids. When i found the cards, they just seemed plain silly to me. Maggie would be served better by trying to read my finger-spelling than trying to interpret the drawings of hands on the cards.

Maggie's favorite letters so far: Z (a fun action letter), X ('x's are everywhere), R, P, Q and sometimes Y.

Baby Talk

¿What's more fun than listening to an 18 month old say, "Ahhhh, Shirt"?

Well, having her tell you that she wants to "sit" with her soother still in her mouth is at least a close second.

Astonomy Hiatus

I was too tired, too lazy, and too unorganized to go out and watch the Perseid meteor shower tonight. Even Google had said that it was a good idea to go watch.

Instead, I put in a DVD of Deep Impact. Stuff falls out of the sky in that movie.

Turns out I was too lazy to watch a movie too.

Well, maybe next year -- for the movie. (Maybe in two years or so I can work up to watching real meteors -- don't pressure me.)

We'll never get their names right

The Baby = Maggie
Chloe = The Baby
Chloe = Maggie

We will never sleep

When you have a sixteen-month old and a two-week old, you should not still be losing sleep because of the sixteen-month old.

There's always someone who'll do it

Nothing says "Sunday Evening in Provo" quite as well as shorts, dark dress socks and flip flops.

There is nearly always something extra to see at the botany (duck) pond.

A Different Experience

While this visit to the hospital didn't exactly feel new… we're only 16 months removed from the last c-section… this visit was definitely different.

Unfortunately for Laura some of the differences were not so pleasant. For example, receiving the epidural was much less comfortable. Less comfortable isn't quite right. The epidural was beyond uncomfortable. Laur was quiet, but I saw a long chain of her mouthing "ow, ow, ow, ow" as the doctor jabbed a needle into her spine. And this epidural didn't block out as much of the feeling as the epidural for Maggie. Laura felt much more of the work done on her in her c-section. With Maggie, I had to tell Laur that people full-on yanked with their body weight on her stomach. This time, she was much more aware. This extra level of sensation wasn't so good for getting sewn back up.

Adding to the discomfort of the surgery, our new baby girl is a big one. Chloe was measured at 9lbs6oz and 21 inches, and there was some major pulling to drag her out. The doctor even took the salad spoons after her. I'm amazed at how durable a baby is; the way they are yanked out into the world. The doctors pulled pretty hard on Maggie's legs to drag her out, and they lifted Chloe by her head and neck and she's still in one piece.

I watched both c-sections, although the anesthesiologist this time started out trying to tell me to stand at the head of the operating table. I did eventually move down to the foot of the table to watch like I did for Maggie's birth. This time, I had the camera. We didn't even think about bringing the camera in last time. Last time I wasn't sure if I was going to watch the whole operation or not, or how much help Laura would want from me. I got a few pictures and a few video clips of Chloe's exit.

Laur's anesthesiologist didn't give her the running play by play like the last one did, but he did pull down the curtain so that she could watch Chloe's exit. Between that and the video, Laur has seen a lot more than last time.

I don’t think that there was as much fluid with Chloe, but there was still a lot. Chloe's exit was less stressful (from the point of view of the baby) than for Maggie. Maggie had her cord around her neck, and was zipped right out to the NICU doctors to make sure things were okay. Chloe came out and had plenty of time to start yelling in the OR. What a screamer. I didn't follow Chloe immediately out, so I had time to check up on Laur for a minute and to see the placenta get pulled out. The placenta was a huge, lumpy, uneven, red mass. Between our giant baby, the copious amounts of fluid and the mass of placenta, Laur is easily down 20 pounds. Yeesh.

Fortunately Laur's recovery seems to be easier this time. She seems less sluggish, and getting out of bed for the first time seemed earlier and easier.

Chloe, being big, gave the doctors a few concerns. There was a lot of fluid to expel from her lungs, in part because she was a c-section delivery, and she was breathing a little fast when we got to the nursery; nothing too serious, but just enough to make them watch. They tried an oxygen tent for 15 minutes but eventually we went up to the NICU for a CPAP. Again, nothing too serious, but they just wanted to get her lungs expanded fully so they wouldn't have to worry the whole day long.

Probably the worst difference with this delivery was the waiting. For me, it seemed like the c-section with Maggie was so quick after the arrival in the OR. This time, I felt like I had to keep getting out of the way to wait some more for the initial incision. Laura had much more waiting time than me. Chloe was born at 1:21pm, but by 2:30 or so we were in the NICU. The NICU was supposed to be a one to two hour visit. The CPAP was supposed to be on for an hour. I visited Laur in recovery for a few minutes at 3:30, but it was a while before I really got back to her. There were a ton of births at the hospital yesterday, including at least two sets of twins, so everything was delayed. I sat in a rocker with Chloe for close to an hour waiting for the nurse to come and do the final check out from the NICU. We left the NICU around 6:00pm, and had to go back to the well-baby nursery to get all the stuff done that they didn't do in our last visit. I got to wait there for the nurses too. Laur didn't get to hold Chloe until almost 7:00pm. Laur could have been happier.

Above all, Chloe is a different baby. She looks like our baby, but she's not Maggie's clone. Chloe might have a chin dimple, but if she does it will be like Laura's: mostly hidden, but there if you look for it. Chloe does have big cheeks and a tiny chin, but she has more of a double chin than Maggie did. Chloe has a small mouth, with thinner lips – AND she closes it. Chloe has hair; maybe not as much as Maggie did, and not as much of a curl on top, but some wave to it. Chloe's hands and fingers seem different, and Laur thinks that Chloe is going to have Grandma Phyllis's nose. Chloe's nose does seem pretty distinct.

It's hard not to compare a little here at the beginning, but I think I've always had in mind that our two girls were going to be different; different looking, and different experiences. It will be fun to see how Chloe's temperament will develop. I'm excited to see her personality. It's good to have our baby here. Chloe has had lots of cuddle time with her mama, as they've caught up on some rest after their hard work yesterday. Laur is happy for this baby to be here.

"I can't believe it's all over… there was a lot of baby in there." -- Laura Dee Betts, 1:31am Jul 28, 2009

Chloe Dee Betts

Chloe Dee Betts
9 lbs. 6 oz., 21 inches
1:21pm, July 27, 2009

Not a good day

yesterday was a bad day. i'm just going to list two of the symptoms.

first of all, it was Saint Patrick's Day, and i ended up on campus without a single green article of clothing. if you know me you know that not wearing something green even at random is somewhat of a feat -- not one of my multiple pairs of green shoes, not one of my green ball caps, not even my green belt. no green from this little fish.

the second symptom requires some mental imaging: two giant spoonfuls of Life cereal through the nose (along with the rest of the cereal and milk that came out of my mouth). that's what i get for eating too fast and having a bit of a cough in the middle of gulping down the milk from my bowl. Life cereal is a little reluctant to leave your sinuses. cleanup wasn't the best.