Category Archives: family

dreamlog 20130423

last night’s dream was interesting, and was fortunate enough to actually remember some of it.

i was in some kind of cave with a large room, with some kind of center stage. people were around it and praying or meditating. there was a man in the middle leading it seemed. when that was over i was lead out the cave thru a long hallway, which broke out into what now seemed like a kind of department store. my departed friend, joe, was showing me around now. the first thing noticed was some large display that was a hologram. it had a symbol on it, like a “T” and “S” intertwined, with other oriental-looking symbols around it. looked pretty neat. then we walked over to a table with t-shirts on it. i liked one shirt that had a print of a knight’s helmet with angels wings. for whatever reasons it said “redskins” on it (i dont even like football) and when i asked joe what he thought of that shirt, he simply shrugged and said, “eh.”

then, in another part or another dream, it was as if we were arriving to the united states via a ship, the big arrivals you see in the old movies: lots of people happily gathered, walking down that big ramp off the boat. i was with my buds mikey, dj, and robert, pretty happy to see each other. we were walking and the path turned into this extremely narrow “bridge” – but it wasn’t even as wide as our bodies, we had to straddle the bridge and inch our way across. it was kind of scary and it was a far, far ways down into water or trees. we slowly moved, i was the last of us, and someone behind me kept pushing and rushing us. i kind of bumped my frenz ahead and eventually made rob fall off 🙁 it also felt like we were ants for a while. when we got to the end, i stood up, but was drafting around aimlessly (kind of felt like a gyroscope controller going nuts) and had to “turn off the controller” to stop myself from falling. hah.

there was a third part or dream, will post it up later. g’nite.

the importance of talking to your baby

the difference in total words heard by babies and its effects on their development is startling. for quite some time we have known there exists a gap in academic levels between children in the 3 main socioeconomic classes (poor, working-class, professional). and many theories have been suggested, too much lead? lack of self-control? high-stress? lack of reading? studies from the recent decades has shown that the answer may be easier than thought: talking.

Another idea, however, is creeping into the policy debate: that the key to early learning is talking — specifically, a child’s exposure to language spoken by parents and caretakers from birth to age 3, the more the better. It turns out, evidence is showing, that the much-ridiculed stream of parent-to-child baby talk — Feel Teddy’s nose! It’s so soft! Cars make noise — look, there’s a yellow one! Baby feels hungry? Now Mommy is opening the refrigerator! — is very, very important.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/the-power-of-talking-to-your-baby/

The studies show that poor babies may only hear about 600 words per hour, while working-class babies might hear 1,200 words/hour, and professional families around 2,100 words/hour. “by age three, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words.”

Why such a difference? It may be as simple as the fact that those parents were not aware of the importance of talking to their babies. They may have less access to the latest information, books, and rely more on family and friends for parenting advice.

heard somewhere else something somewhat similar: talk to your kids like they are twice in age, talk to a one yr old like he’s two, a three year old like they’re six, four:eight, etc.

goo goo, ga ga!

sherwood forrest faire

we went to the sherwood forest faire and had a blast. it was outside of austin in mcdade, tx in a nicely wooded forrest like area (ya think?). they did a very good job of being in character and i couldnt help but imagine we were in a real-life everquest. we saw jousting, puppet shows, robin and maid marian, and drank mead. here are some flics.

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