A blog about a kid. I like her.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Concerned


15 Months, 15 Days

Saturday, October 27, 2007

How People Get Here

These are two weeks' worth of Google search queries that led people to our blog:

aletheia pronunciation
aletheia pronounce
gone baby gone
aletheia pronounce
pediatric dentist
first dentist or first dental or 1st dentist or 1st dental or first trip to the dentist
before haircut
large head size for 15 months
aletheia name
aletheia update
aletheia name
Apparently this is one of the most popular destinations on the internet for finding out how to pronounce Aletheia (see the Aletheia Name FAQ linked at the bottom of the page). We also provide reassurance to Mommies of large-headed infants who are going to the dentist for the first time while Daddy skips out to see a child-abduction movie.

And they said the internet didn't do any practical good for people.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Allisaurus


Aletheia and her mommy at a Halloween festival. Aletheia was really tired and didn't stay long, but the church party is this Wednesday and we'll try to be sure she has a good nap before it starts.

15 Months, 24 Days

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Gone Baby Gone


I snuck (sneaked?--I never know) out for a movie tonight and saw "Gone Baby Gone." Dennis Lehane is one of my favorite mystery writers and I remember devouring the novel in one sitting the day it came out. That was almost a decade ago, and I haven't read it since, so the details were pretty fuzzy. I just remembered thinking it was the best of the series, and the movie has been getting outstanding reviews. So I went.

The plot revolves around a little girl being abducted. A little girl with big brown eyes and light brown, almost blondish hair.

Once upon a time, that didn't bother me. But that was then. I'm glad the theater was almost empty tonight.

It's hard to watch that sort of thing without thinking about how I would react if something happened to Aletheia. I'm a minister, and theologically I'm more or less in the pacifist camp, so I hope that I would try to move toward the forgiveness and redemption of the offender.

My brother, on the other hand, is a great big cop, and he went to police academy, not seminary. So, just a note to any potential bad guys out there. You mess with Aletheia, and you'd better hope that I have time to save your soul before Uncle Kasey tracks you down. Dental records might not be enough to identify you when he's finished.

Just so you know.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Still Doing the Sideways Smile


15 Months, 9 Days

We bought a Halloween costume tonight for the kid. I think you'll like it.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

First Trip to the Dentist

If we were really good parents, we probably would have taken Aletheia to the dentist around her first birthday, just to make sure that everything was going well with her incoming teeth.

We're not that good.

I was feeding Aletheia lunch last Friday when she jerked in her chair and screamed, clearly in pain. So leaned in and opened up her mouth and saw this:

20071012 Aletheia APOD

I'm not a dentist, but to my untrained eye, that looked bad. Really bad. Here's the close-up so you can get a better look at the badness in her mouth.

20071012 Aletheia APOD m

I thought she had maybe broken a tooth, because she took a bad spill in the church nursery recently and split her lip. So I called every single dentist in our town right then, and--get this--not a single one was working that day. None of them. It must have been the Greater Southwest Dental Conference or something. I briefly flirted with the idea of taking her to a dental clinic across the border--and there are some really good ones there--but decided instead to take her to a pediatrician just to get a professional opinion.

Dr. Herndon isn't a dentist either, but he thought it looked bad. Really bad. Using his magical doctor networking skills, he managed to get a call through to a pediatric dentist, who agreed to see Allie on Monday.

Long story short--the tooth is fine, but somehow her gums got really infected--probably as a result of some damage to the gumline in last week's fall. So, antibiotics and wait for it to clear up. Good news over all.

Then yesterday was the aforementioned 15-month check-up, and our regular pediatrician took a look and said she had never seen that happen before. So, altogether our kid has above-average height, a freakishly big head, and a bizarrely rare infant gum infection. I'm sure she deserves some kind of ribbon, but I'm not sure what color it should be.

15 Months, 9 Days

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

15 Month Check-up


It's pretty obvious what's happening in the picture, so I'll spend our time together telling you about Aletheia's 15-month update.

The stats:
weight--23 pounds (about average)
height--32 inches (85th percentile)
head circumference--19 inches (a whopping 99th percentile)

Our daughter has a freakishly big head. That's important in her particular case, because it's being used to contain her massive, massive brain. She's way ahead of average on verbal acuity and fine motor skills. At least, that's what it said in the note Aletheia wrote for me.

Assigned reading: "Big Head, Smart Baby?"

15 Months, 12 Days

Monday, October 15, 2007

Rocking Together


Memaw and Pawpaw came to visit us today, and Aletheia spent some fun time rocking beside her great-grandmother.

15 Months, 12 Days

Friday, October 12, 2007

Reading Again


15 Months, 8 Days

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Welcome Interruption


While I was trying to get a good picture of Aletheia in her new rocking chair, the kid decided that the camera was much more interesting than the rocker and ran up to hang out with me for a while. Here's a simple, unglamorous candid shot of Aletheia in mid-laugh. She was looking at herself on the camera screen and having a good time.

15 Months, 3 Days

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Current Vocabulary List

A couple of months ago, I was a little worried that we weren't seeing more signs of language acquisition from the kiddo, but since then she's really blossomed. Here's the current list.

1. Dada
2. Mama
3. Ut oh (used mainly when she drops something)
4. Wow! (whenever she's excited about something she sees)
5. 'Men (Amen, after our evening prayers)
6. No! (Her generic answer to anything she can tell is a question. The result is often pretty funny, so I think she does it to make us laugh. When she really means "no" she combines it with a vigorous headshake.)
7. Hi! (She's getting pretty good at this one.)
8. Agua (Water, but mainly used in reference to her bath. Yes, the kid's bilingual. The lady who watches her on Wednesdays speaks Spanish and taught her this one. It's a lot easier to say than 'water' and it's a pretty handy word to know.)
9. Duh (Duck, in reference to her rubber duckies)
10. Die (Diaper)
11. 'Nana (for both a banana and her Nana Freda)

Those are the ones we are sure about. She's made noises that seem like she's trying to say "hello," "thank you," and "I love you," but without clear l, k and th sounds it's hard to say for sure.

Words and phrases that she clearly understands when she hears them:
"Show me your..."
tongue
teeth
mouth
nose
hair
ear
eye
foot
toes
hands

sit/stand
up/down
chair
nap
smile
come here
eat
food
milk
phone
bath
stop

All in all, that's pretty good for a 15 month old. We're not worried about language acquisition any more.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Rock On


Aletheia likes climbing up in our chairs so much that I thought I'd get her a chair of her own. She's really taken to it, although she likes standing in it as least as much as she likes sitting in it.

15 Months, 3 Days

Monday, October 08, 2007

Upward Bound


Another week without many updates. I had a conference in Dallas this last weekend, and I took Aletheia with me so she could spend the weekend with her Grammy and Granddaddy. It's interesting being a father flying with your infant daughter. Lots of fairly obnoxious comments from strangers.

"I bet she's a real handful."
Not really. She's pretty calm and usually refrains from making unflattering assumptions about the people in line with her.

"Are you flying alone?"
Congratulations! I see that the cleverly designed android in my arms didn't fool you. Yes, I am flying alone.

"Are you taking her to see her mommy?"
Actually, I don't know who her real mommy is. She was left in the video store where I work, right in between "The Bad News Bears" and "Leprechaun IV."

Okay, I didn't actually say those things, but after a while the weird comments started getting pretty annoying. When my wife flies with Aletheia, she gets comments like. "Oh, what a precious little girl." "Are you going to see Grandma?" "Didn't I see her on a blog somewhere?"

I wouldn't have thought that Daddies flying with their kids would be that unusual these days, but I guess I was wrong.

Today's picture was taken at Aunt Lisa's house up in the mountains. Aletheia scrambled up on top of the table on the back deck. She was very proud of herself.

14 Months, 26 Days

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Airing Our Dirty Laundry


Mater Aletheias walked into our bedroom the other day to find Aletheia playing in the laundry basket. All kinds of things are fun when you're 15 months old.

14 Months, 25 Days

Monday, October 01, 2007

Basket Case


Emptying out the basket (which normally holds her wooden blocks), sitting in it for a while, and then refilling it--Aletheia's new favorite past-time.

14 Months, 22 Days

About Me

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I'm a guy with a small daughter and a big bookcase. You can reach me at gate42b(AT)yahoo(DOT)com

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diapers since July 19, 2006