Isaac's first weeks November 30, 2005
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , 1 comment so farIsaac is 20 days old now. I’m back to full-time work.
We switched to bottle feeding after a few days because we were having the same problems we had with Emily and Bree feels uncomfortable with the whole experience.
Isaac was a dream for the first week or so. Basically, he would sleep. We’d wake him up to eat and then he’d go right back to sleep again. We think it’s because he was 2 weeks early. He’s been getting better so that seems to prove our theory. Of course, the sleepiness thing has it’s downsides. We were made to stay and watch a nurse force-feed Isaac before the hospital would let us discharge. I think we were supposed to learn something but all I observed was that feeding 70ml of formula to a baby that only wants 60ml results in 10ml of milk spew. Strangely, the very same nurse said it was fine to let Isaac decide when he’d had enough at the 1 week checkup. At the hospital they insisted he needed to eat 90ml each feed.
Isaac stayed at 60ml until recently when he started going to 80ml. Just last night he did 100ml and this morning he ate the whole 125ml bottle. He’s happy to be awake now too.
Since we are bottle feeding, I’ve been given night duty. This means staying up for the 10pm feed and getting up for the 2am feed. Needless to say, I’m getting tired. I can’t wait for him to drop the 2am feed. Emily did it at 8 weeks so we’ll see how it goes.
We don’t subscribe to the “feed them when they cry” mentality. Instead we subscribe to the “flexible routine” mentality. This means we feed at the appointed time unless he’s hungry (and we check that he’s actually hungry, not just crying). The most significant reasoning behind the flexible routine mentality is that regular feeds help to develop the baby’s metabolism. This results in more predictable hunger from the baby (ie. less “early” feeds, which we’re seeing already) and an easier transition to less feeds per day. For example, Emily was sleeping 12 hours a night at around 10 weeks of age. We didn’t force this on her, she just refused to take her 10pm bottle one day and slept 12 hours from then on.
A romp in the park November 13, 2005
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentEmily came to visit again today and we went for a romp in the park. It was really windy and the inflatable beach ball kept blowing away. Emily loved running around and we said hello to a man with a dog. The hospital room faced the park so we even got to wave to Bree.
I found a strange thing to do with the ball. Since it was blowing so hard, I could hit the ball into the wind and it would come back. To control it’s position a bit, I’d hit it in a downwards motion so that it had backspin. It would arc towards the ground, then rise up into the air before coming back to me. If I aimed just right, it would hit the ground just as it slowed down and roll back so Emily could try to catch it.
A day at Sea World November 12, 2005
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentSince Emily has been a bit funny about Isaac, I took her to Sea World today (Saturday is normally Gymboree day but it’s an hour and twenty minutes away from the hospital). It was just me and her and we had lots of fun. Emily actually wanted to go on the carousel this time and she didn’t fall off the horse. We also did the helicopter ride and she tried to press the button (but she’s not strong enough to do that yet). Her favourite attractions, the polar bears and shark bay were a hit again.
Since Bree wasn’t there to stop us we got to do some things we don’t normally do at Sea World. We went on the gondola and Emily seemed to enjoy being up above everything. We also went on the bounty replica and saw some dolphins. Most fun of all was the mini pizza that Emily got for lunch (we had no food packed).
I’m surprised that Emily lasted as long as she did. She normally has a sleep around 11am but we didn’t leave until 1pm. However, she must have been tired because she fell asleep before I’d even left the car park.
It's a boy! November 11, 2005
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At 8:50am on Thursday 10 Nov 2005, Isaac Hamish Ramsay was born. He weighed in at 3.7kg (that’s 8 pounds 2 ounces for the oldies out there) and was 50cm long.
A New Monitor November 7, 2005
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentMy previous monitor was a 21″ CRT that could do a whopping 1920×1440@75Hz. I absolutely loved the feeling of space this monitor gave me. The resolution meant I have a high DPI so even small fonts were easy to read.
The new monitor is a 20″ LCD. I think that means it’s the same, if not slightly bigger in the viewable area department. However, it’s only able to do 1600×1200@60Hz. The refresh thing isn’t as important as on a CRT (just the way LCDs work) but the resolution drop is kind of annoying. The drop in DPI meant I had to increase the font sizes I used so that I could read the text. Interestingly, wearing my glasses seems to significantly improve the readability of this monitor.
I have 3 different systems at work connected to the monitor through a KVM. There’s Mac OS X, which doesn’t let you change font settings. I went from having smaller-than-I’d-like text to nicely sized text. There’s Windows which has truly retarded font handling. I went from using the 120DPI font size (which screwed everything up but generally gave me decently sized fonts) to the 96DPI font size which is small but ok, due to the lower res of the monitor. Finally, there’s my main machine running KDE 3.3 (on SuSE Linux). I had to increase some fonts and decrease others but it largely feels about the same.
So… on to the problems.
My Linux was set to boot into a display mode that is horrible for viewing on the LCD. I currently have a standard 80×25 text console so that I can actually read stuff when I need to use the console.
It took me 4 hours to convince my Windows machine to drive the LCD at 1600×1200. I had to install drivers, uninstall drivers, re-install drivers, reboot a hundred times and plug the monitor directly into the machine before it started working. I really have no idea what was wrong but my respect for Windows went down a few notches after that effort.
The nice things about this monitor are it’s size and weight (obviously) but also it’s ability to have the image go all the way to the edges of the screen. It’s actually a little off because each of my systems are using slightly different pixel clocks but it’s close enough.
Chase The Sun November 2, 2005
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentI’ve been wanting to know what this song is for sooooo long (it was released Jan 2001!). I knew how it sounded, having heard it on the radio and stuff but I’d never been able to find out what it was called. Finally today I found out it’s called Chase The Sun and it’s by Planet Funk.
On the topic of good music, I really dig the Doctor Pressure song (ie. Mylo vs Miami Sound Machine – Doctor Beat vs Drop the Pressure).