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Wednesday, 12 August 2009

Currently
The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
By Diane Ackerman
see related

Wordless Wednesday

Tuesday, 11 August 2009

Currently
The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
By Diane Ackerman
see related

Newsday Tuesday

What's new in the Harris household? Sailor's walking everywhere and getting into everything as usual, so I guess that's not new. She's using six words at the moment: mama, dada, this, that, book, and cheese. She's sleeping longer stretches now that I've night-weaned her, but she is still waking a couple of times a night. At least it's only for 2-3 minutes at a time now. Still, it's frustrating that the books say, "almost all babies will begin to sleep through the night if they can fall asleep on their own and are not being fed during the night." Someone please tell my child this. But, this too shall pass, and all too quickly I'm told.

I'm looking forward to next week, as Frank will be on vacation. We're going to have a "staycation," although I hate that word! It just irks me for some reason. But that's what we're planning to do. Lord willing, we will take Sailor to the zoo, Fairytale Town, Lake Tahoe, the California State Fair, and Old Sacramento. Now that I stop to think about it, we are blessed to have so many fun things to do in our immediate vicinity.

A pic of my favorite small person:

Thursday, 06 August 2009

Thursday Thirteen

In my chronically sleep-deprived state I’m a little concerned that my brain is starting to atrophy. To reassure myself and my loyal readers, I decided to see if I could come up with

Thirteen Things I Recently Learned
That You Might Not Know Either
(is that a title or what?!)

1. What a “cousin once removed” is. I’ve always wondered about this and Cynthia’s recent post prompted me to look it up. I get it now, but I’m confident I can’t explain it better than this Wikipedia post.

2. There’s this interesting thing called “Rear-view captioning.” It’s for hearing impaired people. I offer you Travis Boman’s explanation: "Rear view caption is where they have the words in back of theater and we use the reflector that reflects those words so we can read them. That device goes into the cup holder and you can adjust it to where you can see the words."

3. Things are starting to get a little bit better in Zimbabwe, now that Morgan Tsvangirai is Prime Minister. According to the BBC, “He has had to fight what one western diplomat called ‘trench warfare’ against hardliners seemingly determined to undermine the power-sharing deal with President Mugabe's Zanu-PF.” Nevertheless, the foreign press has been allowed back into the country, there is food on store shelves again, children are back in school, and optimism is on the rise.

4. On a related note, Zanu-PF Chairman John Nkomo is delusional or thinks we are all stupid. He insists, “I don't think there are any hardliners in Zanu-PF…President Mugabe… is a principled man. Once he agrees on a program he wants it implemented. It is in the interest of the whole of Zimbabwe that the agreement succeeds."

5. The “E” in Chuck E. Cheese stands for “Entertainment.” His full name is Charles Entertainment Cheese.

6. Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels, was a real-life spy and much of what he wrote was based on actual events.

7. If you were a Jew in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation and your name was Aryan-sounding, you were forced to change it to “Israel” or “Sarah”. I’m reading a fascinating book at the moment called The Zookeeper’s Wife, which tells the true story of a zookeeper and his wife (title, duh) who saved over 300 Jews by hiding them in the Warsaw Zoo during the Holocaust.

8. The sign for “cheese”. Sailor’s word for cheese, “chis” sounds an awful lot like her “this” leading to much confusion. I’m hoping the sign will alleviate this.

9. Babies Sailor’s age need approximately 13 hours of sleep per 24-hour period.

10. Swine flu is especially dangerous for pregnant women, so they will receive the vaccine first when it becomes available.

11. If I were not insured, my insulin pump supplies would cost approximately $100 per month. Glad I don’t have to pay that!

12. Baby eczema is very common and infants often outgrow it. I hope this is the case for Sailor.

13. If you begin using a tanning bed before age 30, your skin cancer risk increases by a whopping 75%! Pale is beautiful, people. Look at what it’s done for Edward Cullen.