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One of my kids' favorite things to do is sit at the kitchen table and color, play with play dough, cover things in stickers, make stamp collages, or just anything that involves creating things. This usually entertains them for hours a day. Claire especially loves play dough. She gets up in her chair and says "puuuush puuuush" as she flattens the blue, pink, and green lumps of dough.

Emily is a bit more refined in her crafts. She likes to do stamps the best I think. She'll color the stamps with markers and then stamp them all over her big art pad. She also likes stickers; you should see her lunch box! Today I sat her down with a bag of crayons and a coloring page with a fish. She had specifically requested to color a fish. She's gotten pretty good at coloring and I am usually amazed at what she comes up with, but today's output seemed particularly creative and vibrant to me, so here it is!

Get ready for a blast from the past. Actually, most of you have probably never seen these questions. They are the beginning of the video game "Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar." Each question asks you to choose between two of eight "Virtues." The eight virtues are Honesty, Compassion, Valor, Justice, Sacrifice, Honor, Spirituality, and Humility. The virtues are loosely based in many religions, mostly Buddhism I think. I found the questions interesting to ponder because I believe in every situation there is one "right" way to act, according to Scripture. In many of these questions the right answer is easily discerned, but sometimes it is more difficult. Usually the difficulty arises because there is not enough information given, or because the right thing to do is not actually presented as a choice.

Here they are, for your perusal:

Thank you Kevin Nalts. Made my day.

I couldn't believe my eyes...or my ears. Resounding silence...

A sleeping baby

A sleeping 3-year-old

And a sleeping 1-year-old!

I really like the Live Photo Gallery software, but currently there is a problem with their Quicktime integration. Whenever I click on an MP4 file from my new camera, there is a long delay while Live Photo Gallery does something (attempts to build a thumbnail?) with it. It happens again if I click the same file again later, so if it is building a thumbnail then it is failing.

Microsoft KB article 944563 seems to have a temporary fix for this--a couple of batch files to disable/enable Quicktime support in Live Photo Gallery. Seems to work. Uninstalling Live Photo Gallery also works, if you don't need it. Hopefully they'll be able to actually fix the bug soon (though since they're using the Quicktime API, it might be Apple's responsibility).

Other people seem to have run in to this problem, and it seems to affect all filetypes that Quicktime would normally handle (.MOV, .MP4, .3GP, .M4V, etc):

• http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1226700
• http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/windows-xp-support/201615-media-programs-spike-cpu-after-closing.html
• http://bonj.blogspot.com/2007/12/windows-live-photo-gallery.html

I'll update this thread if the problem is ever fixed.

Update: For those of you looking for a quick fix to get you by, try turning off the sidebar ("view->folder options" or "organize->folder and search options") and using a view that doesn't show you thumbnails. That should prevent the hangups (still doesn't give you the thumbnails though).

USA Today reported yesterday on a clinic in India providing surrogacy services to couples from across the world. The article says that there are many such clinics in India but that the numbers are hard to track. Surrogacy is actually a pretty neat concept and sometimes the only option when a couple wants a child, though I'm sure most couples consider it a last resort. But has the world become so global that even our own fertility is being outsourced?

A co-worker told me today about his friend that works for a self-insured company. If an employee of that company needs a major surgery, the employee is flown to India for the surgery at the company's expense. Even with the cost of the trip, that option is cheaper than having the surgery in America.

A friend of my wife was at one of her first pre-natal visits and her doctor actually asked her, "Have you thought about whether your are planning a vaginal birth or a Caesarean?" My cynical mind is just wondering...how long before couples who already have elective C-sections start to just send off to India for someone to have their baby for them, and forgo even the nine-months of pregnancy. The article states that the cost of the surrogacy is often below $10,000. That seems cheaper than a C-section or even a normal hospital birth. How long before insurance companies prefer it at that price? How long before farming out your pregnancy becomes the social norm?

Let us hope that it does not, and that this service continues to be used only as a last resort for infertile couples who feel called to raise children.

We sleep (however rarely, these days) about 10 feet from the very spot where our son was born. I think about this each night as I lay down next to him and his mother.

I've put off writing this post because I'm never sure what to say after a birth. Even though I participated to the fullest extent possible I feel like there is much of the experience that only my wife can know.

She woke me up at 2:30am. It only took one sentence to write that, but she tells me that it was much harder to actually do it. I don't know what she tried prior to this, but I woke when she said "Steven, I'm having a contraction!" This being our third child it didn't take any more for her to let me know that this was the real thing. We got up and sat on the couch for a while. She was worried that it wasn't actual labor but I was pretty sure it was.

We got the birth tub ready, called the midwife, and by 7:45 or so Rebecca was in the tub, Claire was being cared for by a friend, and Emily was settled with her special box of coloring items and toys that we had prepared for the birth. The flurry of activity settling down gave Rebecca the space she needed to concentrate and this is where the mystery starts for me. I can not tell what goes on in her mind during labor. I offered her what support I could--encouraging words, gentle massage, a shoulder to lean on, a hand to hold--and I know she was comforted by me, but she was totally focused on her task.

Rebecca kept saying up to this point (laughably, in retrospect) that she was worried that  this wasn't real labor. It did seem unbelievable that the baby would actually come on his exact due date, but it was obvious to me that the baby would come soon. The midwife was finally able to convince Rebecca that it was real labor somewhere in the middle of transition.

Emily was absolutely perfect. She had her toys to keep her entertained, but she would come in often to check on her mommy. She would give Rebecca a hug and usually stand silently watching. We had prepared her by watching birth videos and telling her what was to happen. She seemed to understand and I think Rebecca liked having her there.

Just before the baby came Rebecca had a moment where she did not think she was capable of pushing the baby out. I watched as she went through this moment of panic and then pushed it away as quickly as it had come on. The baby was out and he was beautiful, resting on his mother's breast. I am happy to say that Emily witnessed this amazing moment and seemed entranced by its magic. I can't say enough how special it was for her to have seen this. She is proud of her baby boy brother and likes to tell everyone how he came out of her mommy's tummy (a not always appropriate, but always heart-warming conversation).

And now we are outnumbered.

Emily Christian May '04	Claire Olivia March '06	Joseph William December '07

According to Microsoft, some computers may randomly play It's a Small World or Für Elise. I'm putting the full URL at the bottom of this post so that you can see this is a real problem. I'm not making it up. No, really...what's that? you're computer doesn't do this? Ah, I suppose that might be because it only applies to certain older computers with obscure motherboards that you'd never find in a Dell, HP, Toshiba, or any other name-brand computer. Too bad, I kinda wanted to hear Für Elise.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;261186