Garden Gnome

Stomp!

Little boys, big fun.

Sickie Pants

If RSV and bilateral ear infections get you down, wear your warm bits inside and look as pitiful as possible.  Then daddy will feed you cookies all day.  Worked for this guy.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

Ollie is walking!

He hasn't been on the fast track for any milestone, which is more than fine by us, as long as they happen.  He's more of a calculated risk kind of guy.  Once he knows he'll be able to do it, he just does it.  None of this messing about, trying and falling stuff.  When he started crawling, he had only just figured out how to sit himself up and then once that happened, he just went.  No commando style, none of that modified crab walk crawling.  Just plain old crawling...when he was absolutely ready.

It was the same way with walking.  He started out being pretty stable standing, so we encouraged him to take a couple steps, which he reluctantly would do, but more often than not, he would just sit himself down and crawl.  Rather than walk, he started to do some knee skating.  This allowed him to a) not walk and b) carry stuff around with him.  He got pretty good at it!

Knee Skating

Then, the day after Christmas, we were putting his pajamas on in his room and he just took off--all the way across the room!  And that was that.  Here's a demonstration on New Year's Day.  

New Year's Day was a bit dreary here, weather-wise, but Ollie passed the time with a bit of reorganization.  He spent quite a lot of time taking cat food out of a bag and relocating it under the bench.  We repacked the bag after he was done each time and he'd start over.  He clearly inherited his dad's compulsion to organize.

Everything in its place!

Very pleased with himself!

HallBirthODayWeen!

For Ollie's Birthday we let him crash sailing boats in to each other...

and then dressed him up as a tiger, which he seemed to think was the best thing this side of an actual tiger.

Last week he attempted to take his grandfather's MGB out for a spin, with his cousin as an accomplice. Doesn't bode well for the teenage years.

People let me tell you 'bout my best friend...

"...He's a warm hearted person who'll love me to the end.
People let me tell you 'bout my best friend,
He's a one boy, cuddly toy, my up, my down, my pride and joy."

I love these lyrics from "The Courtship of Eddie's Father."  And yes, I think both the Blob and I feel this way about our little ginger nut--that we want to tell everyone about him and that he's our pride and joy, etc.

But sadly, I'm pretty sure our babything thinks of another being this way...and the feeling is mutual.

From the day our babything came home from the hospital, Gio has been all up in his business.  Blob made a screencover for our co-sleeper to keep that cats out, but that didn't dissuade Gio from inspecting.  Wish we had a picture of this!  As soon as we all fell asleep each night, Gio would creep onto the top of the co-sleeper cover to sleep for the night, hovering above the babything until we woke up and shooed him away.  It was pretty sweet actually.  Thankfully the Blob built a bomb-proof cover that was able to support Gio's weight easily.

Our babything has been equally enamoured with the cats.  All of them really, but especially Gio.  To show how much he loves cats, his first, real, identifiable, fully-pronounced word was cat.  He was chasing Gio at the time and it's been highly repeatable and often repeated.

Hey guys, look!  It's a cat.  In a box.  I put him there myself!

Gio waiting patiently for the babything to follow him through the cat door.

We have other cats.  None of the others seek him out, want to be near him, need to be part of whatever he's doing in quite the same way.  Still, they're pretty good with the babything too.

Gio was an accidental acquisition (he and his sister were and example of foster failure).  What a happy accident!  It hurts my heart to think that we might have deprived them of each other.

Best buds.  Hangin' under a bench.

I think they get along so well because they match!  What do you think?

Our Little Pumpkin Head

Quick warning: this post may be a bit boring for those of you not interested in genetics or how genes are expressed.  Also, I don't understand it much myself so I may have over simplified it a bit or just plain gotten it wrong.

Oliver has red hair!

What!  How did that happen?  Since I always imagined having little brown-headed babies and Blob always imagined having little blond monsters running around, we were both surprised to learn that our baby is a ginger.   Because I can't help myself, I looked into how it works and what the chances of having a ginger muppet were.

I have brown hair.  Blob has blondish hair.  Before looking into this, I assumed that I was solely responsible Ollie's orangey-red locks since my mom has firey red hair and several other member of her family do as well.

But no!

Red hair is a recessive trait and needs two copies of the recessive allele to be expressed.  So in fact, both Blob and I had to contribute a recessive red allele.  We're both carriers!

The Red Hair Gene: MC1R (RR, Rr, rr)
The gene that determines whether or not someone has red hair is called MC1R (I have no idea why!). Let's call  the alleles "R" if it is dominant and "r" if it is recessive.  When it works, this gene creates a protein that converts hair color pigment from red to something else.

If a person does not have red hair, then at least one copy of the MC1R allele is on/working (R).  That means at least one or both parents contribute a working copy  (either Rr or RR genotype).  With one or more working alleles for the gene, a person can convert hair color pigment from red (pheomelanin) to not red (eumelanin).

If  each parent contributes a recessive allele (rr), the MC1R gene does not work.  Pigment stays red (pheomelanin).  So, all redheads have the genotype rr.

Pigment Bunches (pppppppp to PPPPPPPP)
Each person has 8 alleles that determine how dark his/her hair is.  We get 4 alleles that code for pigment from each parent.  The spectrum runs from the lightest light blonde hair, which is pppppppp, to really dark or black hair, which is PPPPPPPP.

Our Genotypes
My genotype for MC1R is Rr.  Since my mom is a readhead, she could only contribute a (r) recessive allele to me.  Since my hair is not red, I also have a working copy (R).  So, my genotype has to be Rr.  It's easy to tell with me because my dark hair is accompanied by red highlights and freckles.  I have dark-ish brown hair, so my pigment making bunch probably is either PPPPPppp or PPPPPPpp.

Blob's genotype for MC1R is Rr also.  We know his since our baby-thing has red hair (rr), but Blob doesn't have red hair.  That means that Blob has to be a carrier of the recessive trait (Rr) and passed his (r) recessive allele on to the baby thing.  It's a bit harder to tell that Blob is a carrier, but after doing a bit of reading, we learned that we should have been able to tell since his beard grows in with red hair.  Neither of Blob's parents have red hair either, so one of his parents also has to be a carrier of the recessive trait (Rr).  We're guessing it's probably his dad.  Rob has blondish hair, so his pigment making bunch probably is either PPpppppp or PPPppppp.

Oliver's MC1R genotype is rr.  We don't yet know what his pigment bunch looks like.  If he's a strawberry blonde, he'll have less pigment (e.g., PPpppppp).  If he has bright orangey hair, he'll have a split (e.g., PPPPpppp).  If he has auburn hair, it will be more like (PPPPPPpp).


Phew.  That's all the boring for a bit.  Here are some cute baby pictures.

And here is where most of my info came from:
http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=189