iain.blog

I am no where near finishing up with organizing and editing the pictures and video from vacation, but I do have a few published on Flickr.  I also put together a quick collage on Scrapblog with the pictures.

What do you do if you are writing your master thesis, and need some pictures? You turn to the treasure trove of creative commons licensed pictures on Flickr thats what you do. It happens to be exactly what some German masters students did when they needed pictures of children for a paper on childhood development. The odd thing is that they choose pictures of Iain and I. Well mostly Iain, but I am in one.

I e-mailed the papers author to find out why they chose our pictures, and got this response:

“…it is a part of the Master-Thesis of Mrs. Klein-Schwind. Mrs. lein-Schwind and I searched for a picture which shows the idea that “Im buddhistischen Sinne ist jedes kognitive Schema ein “Greifschema”" (”in buddhist epistemology every cognitive schema is a schema of “Grasping”", i.e. we get to know our world, explore and “conquer” it by “grasping” (in the large meaning).”

I think this is a pretty cool example of how the internet is shrinking the world. After having these pictures used in this fashion, I am happy to continue to make my photos available for this type of use via Flickr.

OK…sure…it has been a while since this page was updated.  Hopefully you have been checking out Flickr to see some of the things that Iain has been up to in the mean time.  However, to get things caught up I offer the following new things that Iain does which I am sure some people will find to be very cool.

1. Stair Master:  Up stairs, down stairs, usually walking.  This can actually become an activity that lasts 20 minutes or more.  He will go down, and then back up again and repeat.  He loves stairs and is pretty good at them.  Every once in a while though he will say carry, and decide that riding is better than walking.
2. Colors:  Iain knows his colors very well.  On occasion, every thing will become purple, but generally he knows purple, blue, red, yellow, green, black, white, and sometimes orange.
3. Numbers:  Iain has gotten pretty good with his numbers and can say the numbers up to about 8.  I think he understands the concept behind 1 and 2.  If you ask him how many toes he has he will count to five.  However, if you ask him how many ears he has it is possible he will count to five also.
4. Letters:  I am not sure how far he knows his alphabet, but I think at least through o.  He does a good job singing along up to l for sure.  I don’t think it is anything more than a song at this point though.
5. Songs:  Iain’s favorite songs are Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus, and If your Happy and you Know it.  He does a very cute little diamond in the sky.
6. Speaking:  Iain knows a fairly large number of words.  He loves trucks and cars and buses, and is often heard saying those words.  He also like airplanes and helicopters.  He knows the names of all of his class mates, although he seems hesitant to learn his own name.  He knows lots of animal names, and sounds.  He says broccoli and banana and chicken and applesauce.  He knows lots of others as well, too many to list here.

So there are a few things that Iain knows and is doing these days.  He is pretty much done learning to walk, and has moved on the running and jumping stage.  He is starting to learn about the potty, so we will see how that develops in the coming months.

Last night we went out to dinner after a long day at work.  Iain and I went to grab his highchair, and we brought it back to the table.  He didn’t look like he wanted to get in though, and instead started pulling at one of the chairs.  I decided to run back to the highchairs quick and grab a booster seat instead.  Now Melissa was still in line to order at this point, and she had not noticed what I was doing.  Sure enough though, I put the booster seat down, up went his arms and he let me lift him into the seat.

Mom came back to the table, let me know what she wanted and as I was going to get in line I asked her if she noticed.  She had not yet, but finally did.  Iain was joining us at the actual table, in an actual chair.  He did very well, staying in the chair through all of dinner, and he did a pretty good job of eating to.  He got a bit fussy at the end, but a little helping of fried ice cream cleared that right up.

I am not sure if we will be letting him eat from a booster seat every time we go out, but I think if he is in a good mood that it is a strong possibility that we will.