The importance of baby learning a second language

I cannot overemphasize the importance of teaching your child not just any second language, but the correct second language.

(via Wondermark)

Won't somebody please think of the children?

(via SMBC)

President Obama seems to like kids

I know there is the hoary cliche that politicians must like babies and go around kissing babies to get votes, but these photos of President Obama and some of his staff's children seem to show that he genuinely likes and is comfortable with kids. He must have gotten good practice with Malia and Sasha. It may also be that he is a young president, still rearing his own children, in contrast to the past several presidents.



These children from at the U.S. Embassy in Bejing look absolutely delighted to meet the president, and every single kid seems preternaturally cute.



I like this photo of him playing peek a boo with a staff member's daughter. It makes him seem human, just like the rest of us.


Here he is with the very cute granddaughter of Nancy Pelosi. The baby steal the scene with the angel outfit. Who wouldn't want to hold that angel baby, even if he were president.

Now for us to wrangle a legitimate invitation to the White House so that Linus can meet President Obama while he is still his cute baby self (before he turns into a cute toddler).


(via the Whitehouse Flickr pool, children at embassy, peek-a-boo, baby angel)

Burglar warms bottle for baby

Apparently a burglar with a heart of gold warmed a bottle for a baby in the house he was robbing. The burglars had forced their way into a house and were robbing the place , but one stopped to warm a bottle for the crying baby and gave it to another child to feed the baby.

I wonder if I could get one of the burglars to come and help babysit Linus sometime. Certainly loving children is a prerequisite for babysitting. But holding a gun to the parents head during the robbery and pistol whipping the other adult present probably indicates this isn't a good idea. He was caught after the burglar's aunt recognized him on surveillance video which showed them at the scene of the robbery. One is still at large.

(video at WISHtv.com)

Teaching Klingon to the baby.

BoingBoing references a story about a linguist who attempted to teach Klingon as a first language to his son. He only spoke Klingon to the child for the first three years of his life. The father thought that his son was really starting to pick up the language. Although it appears that it didn't stick, from the article:

"As for Speers, who still gets nostalgic when he recalls singing the Klingon lullaby “May the Empire Endure” with his son at bedtime, the experiment was a dud. His son is now in high school and doesn’t speak a word of Klingon."

Speers, the linguist, puts his skills to work at a company called Multilingua, which writes translation software for more common languages, and also Klingon.

In a similar experiment I "speak-a to Linus, ina da brokena English, so dat he canna learna da' Italian of-a my ancestors", or I "talk with zee Fwench accent, ah, hah, hah ,hah". I am not sure it is working. Every day I myself fight the urge to turn my child raising into a grand sociology experiment. I suppose only an ethics board review and jail time keep me from enacting this dream.

(Klingon stroller and bassinet from this post)

Linus in argyle

One of the fun things you get to do with your infant son is dress him in all the cool clothes you want. Another advantage that Linus has is his extreme cuteness. He can pull off many more outfits than I could, I am a little jealous. A few weeks ago he was dressed to the nines in his argyle sweater, white shirt and khakis. He agreed to pose for some pictures.



He is a delight to watch when you get him laughing.






Another thing I like to do is get close in front of him on the ground to get a picture, but now that he is crawling so quickly it ends with me retreating around the room as quickly as I can and him chasing me in a dead run (crawl?) as fast as he can.







I like the looking into the camera effect when he almost catches me crawling and I haven't had time or space to back up away from him. He loves chasing the camera.




Mommy helped distract him from chasing me in the last picture.

Pirate Linus

By "coincidence" Linus and I had our pirate shirts on last week and that called for a photo to memorialize the event. We couldn't quite get Linus and me to be ready for the picture at the same time. Here are the outtakes, but still the best pictures we have.

Linus wasn't ready for that first picture.