Family Tales

All of my Houston-area-based family members seem to be relatively unscathed after Rita’s passing, but my Dad’s place — ironically the location where my brother and his family decamped to, to escape the storm — is still without electricity. He’s making do with generator power which, at current gas prices, isn’t cheap. He’s lucky, though, in that he still has water. A friend from another part of town says her area doesn’t have electricity or water. And they’re at least 3 hours from the coast.

Here’s more video (click on the picture) of Callum’s chattering. He gets in these moods where he just talks away — mostly to his mobile or to the lights/sounds/smiley face in his gym. But he also talks to us. And, of course, we talk back. It’s a delight.

As Rita makes her inexorable journey toward the Texas coast, a number of members of my Houston-based family are fleeing. They’re headed North, to the homes of other family members, some of whom are still close enough to have laid in supplies — water, gasoline (for the generator), charcoal, etc. — just in case the power is out for an extended period.

I’ve just learned my brother and his wife have arrived at my Dad’s with their newborn baby boy (born just a couple of weeks after Callum), two young girls, and my sister-in-law’s mother. They left last night and it took more than 6 hours to make a trip that usually takes 2. I’m a little worried about my Dad, who needs electricity to run his oxygen machinery. They’ve got a generator, thankfully, and are out getting gasoline (and more back-up oxygen) as I type. I hope supplies are readily available.

I got a text message from my aunt earlier, saying they were on the road. When I last spoke to her, last night, she and my uncle were prepared to hunker down and ride it out. I don’t know what changed between then and this morning, but I must say I’m relieved to know they are headed out. I’ve got a big family, though, and I don’t know what others have decided to do.

Growing up along the Gulf Coast in Houston, the threat of a hurricane always looms. (Don’t even get me started about the hurricane-related information drilled into us when I worked at KTRH Radio, where we expected to be the sole source of information when power went down and people depended on their radios.) People are now thinking back to Alicia in 1983, remembering where the flooding occurred and wondering what fate awaits the city over the next few days. Rita appears to be a wholly different animal than Alicia, though. People seem to be frightened in a way I haven’t seen before. Of course, much of the emotion is due to the aftermath of Katrina, but there’s also the fact that this is just a big storm. Very big.

Note: This is a cross-post from The-River.net, my other blog.

Callum went to the doctor this week and he’s officially weighing in at 12 lbs and 2 oz. He’s grown 75%, weight-wise, and he’s now 23 inches long. This was also the big visit when he got his first immunizations. He was a brave boy and came home with two Tasmanian Devil band-aids on his chunky little thighs. The doctor commented that he’s very talkative. Indeed, he is. He likes to talk to us, and to his toys.

Right now his two favorite places to hang out are under the mobile in his crib, and in the Tiny Love gym, where he watches the lights move to the music. The gym has a “motion” setting, to where the music only starts when someone grabs a toy or otherwise moves the overarching bars. We set it up with a toy turtle hanging down, so that all he has to do to keep the music going is wiggle enough to jiggle the turtle. He is able to keep the music going himself all of the time. I’m not sure if he’s figured out the cause/effect relationship between his movement and the music, but he’s doing the right things, all the same.

Hearty congratulations are in order for my industry colleague Pete Blackshaw and his wife Erika, who have recently become parents of twins. It’s a wild ride, this parenthood thing. Of course, Pete is blogging about the whole experience.

Last weekend, the whole family piled in the station wagon and we cruised out to Pleasanton, a town south of here and a bit more inland. And in this area inland = hot. Despite this very un-Scottish weather, we were off to a very Scottish gathering. The annual highland games in Pleasanton is said to be one of the largest (if not the largest) in the country. While there, we were treated to a wee dram from the folks in the Sinclair clan tent, we heard pipe bands play, and we enjoyed Scottish delicacies (?) like meat pies and peas, and Irn Bru. This picture is dad (all kilted up, of course) and son — who, of course, needs to start getting to know his culture. (Don’t worry, folks, he’ll get to know Tex-Mex culture, too.)

Also, some of you might have been hesitant to download the earlier-posted videos because of their large size, or you might have had technical issues. So I spliced them all together and put them in a different (Windows Media) format, which should be friendlier to slower connections. If you’re interested, here it is.

Today I came across an article that’s a few years old but really fascinating. The title? “Scientists in the Crib Use Adults as Lab Rats.” Basically, the piece is a review of a book called “The Scientist in the Crib,” which talks about babies’ brain development.

From the book review:

Before preschoolers enter kindergarten, their brains are more active and more flexible, with more connections per brain cell, than the brains of adult human beings, the researchers discovered. By age three, the child’s brain is actually twice as active as an adult’s. It has some 15,000 synapses or connections per neuron, many more than the adult brain.

I’d suspected that Callum was a genius (a mad scientist, even) but this cements it.

BTW, people on Amazon.com recommend “What’s Going on In There” as an alternative and complement to the crib scientist book.

This post is another test to see if the e-mail subscription link (now migrated to Feedblitz, thanks to Gotham Gal’s example) is working. I was never convinced that the Bloglets list actually worked, mostly because I was on the list and never got an e-mail update.

UPDATE: This appears to actually work now, so subscribe away!