the new pair of shoes

Well I have been tired of my blogs style for over a year now, so I finally decided to do something about it. I am not totally crazy about it, but have gotten some good feedback from a few people. Leslie is not crazy about having links on the left and right. I kind of like them though.

I know I have a lot of people who read this blog who don't comment, so if you would please oblige me with a comment and let me know what you think. After all you might me looking at this layout for the next year and a half.

So what do you think? Here is the before and after if you need a refresher.

new perspective

I hardly have the words to describe this guy's blog\online magazine. Moving, is not quite adequate. If you need a new perspective on the war then read his post on Gates of Fire.

Here is an article if you need more.

bored?

This is pretty neat.

hat tip Jon

optical illusion

A friend at work forwarded this to me. I wish I knew who originally created it so I could give them credit.

To make the optical illusion work you need to first look at it up close, notice the mean guy on the left. Now move at lest 8 feet away from your monitor. The mean guy will switch to the right.

the cashew

your friendly cashew

So I got to talking with a coworker this week and he mentioned that cashews came from an apple. So I put the cashew on the list of things I needed to google. Well, here you have it -- the cashew apple. Evidently the shell at the bottom of the apple is toxic so they have to take special care not to get any of the resin on the cashew itself. I don't have too much more to say about the cashew apple besides who would have thunk it?

Here are a few links if you want to know more:
living foods
killer plants
tropi lab
kraft

Y'all got anything else that you think I would be interested in googling? If so, leave a comment.

sir goony's

yea, I pretty much rock

the snake charmer

Elliot Teething

Well if you have a good connection then you might want to check out the video of Elliot teething. It is funny and sad all at once. He must have used John David's toy sander for a half hour or more. We finally had to take it from him because his lip was getting real red. If you have a good connection then feel free to click the image. I think the movie is about 7 megs.
Enjoy.

teething

childhood amnesia and helping your child remember

I have always been surprised when talking to people how little of their very early childhood they remember. I'm one of those people who have an inordinate amount of memories of those very early years. My first memories start somewhere around 2.5 years of age. It is possible that I have memories stretching back before the age of 2.5 but I am not able to tie all my memories to a dated event. Though, I just have too many memories for some of them not to be much closer to 2 than 2.5.

Well, a month or so ago I started doing some research on early childhood memory and why I seemed to be the only person that I knew who had very early memories. Evidently Freud called the phenomenon childhood amnesia and of course he had some off the wall reason for it occurring. He theorized that childhood amnesia occurs when a young mind blocks out unsuitable impressions or emotional trauma, which he considered a universal human experience. It is funny to think that if I used his reasoning then I had the most normal childhood of anyone I know. I did have a pretty good early childhood thought, but I don't think it was that good. The vast majority of my memories are of time spent in groups of three or less. I guess I have a dozen or more memories when my whole family was together in the same room. On the other hand I have at least a hundred memories of time spent with just one or two other people.

That said, I ended up tracking down this article from the American Psychological Association's Monitor on psychology. I have been kind of excited about it ever since I found it. I guess it just answered a lot of questions that I have had floating around in my head for years. What surprised me the most is that a child's ability to remember his\her early childhood has more to do with the culture the child was reared than anything else. For example:

Researchers have found that depending on your culture there can be a two year span between early memories. What helps someone remember or not remember their early childhood is the way parents and other adults discuss--or don't discuss--the events in children's lives.

I'm not really sure if there is any benefit in having early childhood memories, but for some reason Leslie and I want to promote it in our children's lives. Before John David could really communicate we started talking to him about places we just went or activities we had just finished. For instance if we went to a lake and saw boats on the water we would talk to him about the boats on the way home and ask him if he remembered them or we would ask him if he liked the boats. It wasn't too long after he could somewhat communicate that he started saying "member" "member" when we were talking about something.

I think along the same line as John David's "member" "member" I don't remember to much conversation. I just see the events as I would see a movie with the sound off, but I still have some kind of running commentary in the background. For the most part I think this is due to the fact that I was very young and my speech was probably quite limited.

In the article they have a section on "high-elaborative" versus "low-elaborative" mothering.

One of my favorite things to do is after the bedtime books have been read and the lights are off and things have gotten quiet I will ask him if he remembered either something about the story we just read or about something we did that day. It must be working because a few days ago it had gotten too late to crack open a book so I just put him in bed without reading anything. He really was not going to take me not reading him a book, so I decided to compromise by trying to tell him a story. Within a few seconds he got real quite as I told him the are you my mother story. After telling him a story or two I asked him to tell me a story, and to my surprise he busted out into a song. He was singing a song about his Grandpa Losch and some of the events that transpired during the visit during Christmas. He was even singing about Lindsey and her stuffed animal puppy. It really surprised me because he is just 34 months and he was singing a song about an event that had happened more than a week earlier.

Again, I am not sure that having early childhood memories is an important thing, but if two years is the spread then it seems like an awful long time not to remember anything. I look back on those early childhood memories quite fondly, so I want to foster that in our children. So I guess the word is, if you want to foster early memories in your child's life then get started with some good open ended questions.

So, when were you first memories?

Blonde Joke ;-)

This one is a really bad blonde joke. Please don't be hate'en.

hat tip TulipGirl

I'm Looking for a Joseph

So, I am having this recurring dream. Well I have had the dream a half dozen or so times over the last year. But every time I have it I wake up all stressed out and I can't go back to sleep. The dream is not the same exact dream every time it just follows the same story line.

The dream:

For some reason I end up back at our old house at 214 Signal View Street. In the dream it is not our house anymore and the new owners are on their way home. Leslie just keeps trying to wrap up some odds and ends before we leave. The problem is it is not our stuff and I am trying not to freak out while waiting on her. I get so nervous that the new owners are going to come home before we get out of there. What was particularly odd about today's dream was that it took place at night and my parents showed up. I tried to explain to them that we no longer lived there and that we had to leave, but my dad started to get ready for bed and my mom would not get out of the bathroom. Leslie was doing something in the kitchen and I did not know what to do. I just ended up waking up with a knot in my stomach.

So what does it mean?