Baby update

Well, Baby turned one year old a few weeks ago. Things have been crazy and I haven't had the time or the energy to post much. Anyhow, we had a little party for him and he had his first taste of cake and ice cream.

We are just overwhelmed with toys now. Between the gifts for his birthday and xmas...ugh. We were tempted to stop at Goodwill and unload half of his xmas presents on the way home from visiting grandparents and aunts and uncles on xmas.

Baby woke up with two new teeth on Christmas morning, so he now has eight teeth. I also noticed a big purple-blue spot on his lower gums right where his 12-month molar will come in. The poor kid had to be in pain but he was as pleasant as he always is. The next day he had a cough and some congestion. After he finished his breakfast he had a coughing fit and gagged himself until he vomited. Yuck.

He has been signing lots of new words and repeating words when I read to him. I took him to the shoe store a few weeks ago and as he was trying on shoes he was signing "more". I thought that he was hungry because sometimes he uses "more" when he wants to eat. Then we got home and I told him I was taking his shoes off and he did it again. I finally realized that he was trying to sign "shoes" which is very similar to "more". I was kind of surprised that he remembered the sign for shoes because it is not one that we used a lot.

Today he was sitting on the floor looking through his "Ten Little Rabbits" book and he turned the page and there was a picture something like this and he looked up at me and put his hand in front of his mouth and said "hushhhh". That is what we do when we read "Goodnight Moon" and we get to the old lady whispering hush. And she looks like the rabbits in the book he was looking at. Sometimes I am amazed watching his little brain work.

We go for his twelve month check up and shots in a few days.

Cops suck

We had to drop off the car at the garage this morning and it was fairly nice for a December day so instead of packing up Baby at 7:30am and taking two cars Baby's Mom said that she would take it and walk the mile and a half back home. She started back from the garage, which is just outside of town, and she heard dogs barking. She saw that there were three large dogs in a fenced yard running toward her. She stopped in fear and just then a truck pulled into the driveway of that house which was across the road from her. She continued on and a few minutes later a police car pulled up to her and the cop asked what she was doing, where she was going, etc. She asked what this was about and he said that they got a report of a suspicious person standing on the road watching that house. She then came home and told me about it and she was upset.

It turns out that the house with the dogs belongs to another cop. That explains why there was a car there within minutes. She also was wearing a big winter coat and an Elmer Fudd hat with ear flaps that connect under the chin. It is possible that she could have been mistaken for a teen aged boy instead of a woman with a PhD.

This is just another example of abuse of power--a very minor abuse unless you are the one being harassed. How long do you think it would take the police to send someone out if I reported a suspicious person in my neighborhood? And do they regularly stop people for looking suspicious?

Impeach Bush

Even Barron's wants him impeached:

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.

War on Xmas

I have been unable to blog for a few weeks. I don't want to miss out on the fake War on Christmas which is being promoted by Fox News and the American Family Association. Do these people have nothing better to do than start some kind of pseudo-controversy? If they want to boycott stores which use the phrase "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" that's fine, but let's not get carried away and pretend that there is a "War on Christmas" in the United States or that Christians are being persecuted.

I am all for a right-wing christian whacko boycott. But let's not be hypocrites. Why don't you persecuted christians boycott stores that do not "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.." Surely, those stores that choose to break one of God's commandments in order to make more money should not be patronized by Christians.

This country is really losing it. I don't really have anything to add to the discussion but I wanted to go on the record here and say how stupid this whole thing is.

Gia has an excellent response to the War on Christmas nonsense. Welcome back Gia! We have missed you.