Monday, May 14, 2012

May 2012

Time flies, kiddo.  It is nearly your birthday month again.  This is a public-ish blog so I really (really really really) don't want to put enough information for the millions of evil identity thieves out there to try and rob you of your future.  A friend of mine had her identity stolen as a baby and before she was 12 years old had $70,000 in credit-card debt without being legally able to to get a credit-card.  Horrible system we have here - I don't want you to be harmed by it.

For the aniversary of your math-mommy and math-daddy we went "up north" to Flagstaff.  We got to see a dormant volcano called "Sunset crater" and some very old Native American ruins.  Native Americans don't like being called Indians because this isn't India.  Native Indians think it is funny to refer to them as "dot" Indians and Native Americans as "feather" Indians, but I digress.  Both you, kiddo, and I (mathdad) were very toast for the actual trip.  I'm nocturnal (and worked on take home-open everything three week long final exam in PhD level stats course - Optimal Design of Experiments) and so I was tired, and you woke up about 4 hours early so you were ready for a nap right after we started driving to see stuff, but you never got your nap.  Your gracious math-mommy put up with our understandable tired, she knows we saw neat stuff and enjoyed the trip.

I love what I learned about optimization from the Ancient farmers.  There was a learning tool at Wupatki national monument that talked about how to grow good corn.  It surprised me to learn that taking the highest yield corn was dangerous because those high-yields variants are less hardy and if you do that then when the dry years come you will starve. 

We saw a TON of lizards.  We hiked on a lava flow.  You were afraid because you knew that volcano's were hot, but it is rocks that have been cool for a thousand years.  There is a hot spot that goes along under the flagstaff area, kinda like the Hawaii hot-spot.  It puts up cones every so often.  It is thought that the San Francisco peaks were actually a single cone that went mount St. Helens in a big way a long time ago. 

You have a Ballet recital this next weekend (Sunday, I think) and I will try to get pictures of you in it.

I have been watching you, thinking about your actions.  I think you go through cycles of wanting to be around me (the typical daddy-hunger that every kid has) and times when you give up because I work so much in school and work.  I am so sad when you give up.  It is a few months of one then a few of the other.  When you are in the give-up phase you seem to have more "negative" behaviors. 

Your new baby sister is going to be born soon.  I will be dividing my time between helping with you, and trying to help mommy.  I think the balance is going to be skewed more to mommy spending majority of her resources on the newborn and me making up for it as best I can by spending more resources on you to cover your loss of her time and attention.  I really hope we can show you the value of helping with the new baby.  She can be a great friend for your whole life if you build the bridges early.  In my family there is a lot of disconnect between the siblings and I really wish that wasn't the case.  I wish we had better bridges.  Although that is something that I no longer have substantiative input for myself it is likely that you can do better and can have a chance at stronger and more healthy connections with your sibiling/s.

One thing that I have had a growing beef toward is the Chinese attitude toward their daughters.  If we adopt/foster then I think we should consider helping there.  Those little girls are treated poorly and I want them to have good childhoods.  The interesting question is how to help them retain their cultural identity - how to have them know their parents and people - unlike my whitebread, ignorant, wanna-be-Scottish self.

Oh, kiddo.  I gotta remember to do the 23 and me thing.  I have a hypothesis about whether my biological father (and his 4 brothers) were all "genetic throwbacks" having substantial difference in form/appearance from their father or were um ... something else less unlikely.  I have some advanced genetics: Smart, no wisdom teeth (not even buds), and very extreme hearing range (in terms of frequency) and it might be good for you to have some sort of track of what strengths and weaknesses contribute to your genetics.  I am slightly worried that someone might try to patent it or use it against you or your kids but my thought is that if it is my DNA and not yours then it can limit in some way the exposure you could have.

Hopes for my next post include:
  • pictures from this spring.
  • pictures from your ballet.
  • maybe a sonogram from your sib
    • As your sister it is disingenuine to call her mathbaby 2.0 because she is parallel, not advanced.  We will have to come up with some fun and relevant nomenclature there.
  • maybe some of the fun quotes from you - you have great one-liners.
I also need to see about getting some blog-management tools so that I can have better interfacing and also better documentation.  It would be a sad waste if my intended letters to you through this were erased by google long before you could read them.

I think I need to try to send (snail-mail) to your cousins who are somewhat incommunicado in the boonies of the desert southwest: I-guy and Bean. 

I love you kiddo.  The thing that keeps me working hard during long nights and the serious social isolation that is my new norm is that I am working to give you and our math-family a good life and a good future.  I work hard - and that shows you that I love you.  I love you and your math-mommy very much.  Goodnight mathbaby.  Sleep well.