All smiles

It took a while but we finally managed to get a picture of Kirin while he was smiling. He obviously enjoys being on his tummy.

Kirin in China

Google announced last week that it will censor its services in China in return for gaining greater access to the massive potential market. A lot of people have been pretty unhappy about the move by the company whose unofficial motto is "Do no evil".

The only reason I mention the story on this blog, is that it appears the Chinese state had been censoring a lot of sites anyways - including this one. A college friend of Johanna's who lives in Shanghai was unable to see the blog until he went on holiday to Thailand. It must be all those mentions of Tiananmen, Tibet and gross human rights violations. Or maybe it's because Kirin is also a Japanese word. Remember Nanking?

Long live "free" market capitalism.

An online poll

Parenthood introduces you to a dizzying array of interesting facts and new discoveries. One of the most fascinating has to do with the physical attributes that a child inherits from his/her parents.

Most people have said that Kirin is a carbon copy of his dad. Initially, it seemed that this was because Kirin has always had a lot of crazy looking hair (including a sweet pair of sideburns) and the fact that many of the people making these assertions were from my side of the family. In fact, the reality is rather more interesting.

The following is from Child of our Time, the book that accompanies the brilliant BBC series charting the development of 25 children born in January 2005 for the first 20 years of their life:

One of the risks a newborn faces is losing the active protection of his father. Fathers are more likely not to be there at crucial moments. And without positive feedback from a well-fed baby or the beneficial effects of feel-good hormones sweeping through their bodies, fathers are more likely to be overwhelmed by the responsibility of parenthood and, sometimes, an urgent desire to run away. To counter this, babies have evolved to win over their dads: both boys and girls are born looking more like their fathers.

In other words, we are genetically programmed to look more like our fathers when we are born so that they don't desert us. Is that amazing or what?

So, we have decided to put up a couple of pictures of the two of us as babies so that our faithful readers can compare and contrast. The ages are a bit out of sync - Johanna was 11 months old in her photograph and I was probably closer to Kirin's current age of four months - but I think there is a bit of both of us in our beautiful little boy.

In any case, we would love to hear what you think. So, join in our online poll by clicking on the comment link at the bottom of this entry and letting us know what you think.

Reunions

Last week, we had visitors. The Browers are old family friends of the Mattus. In a nutshell, our families knew each other more than 30 years ago, when we all lived in a small Alberta farming community called Wainwright (where I was born). As the two families moved on, contact was lost until son Derek and son Ravi met while both working at Prospect in 1997. Crazy, eh?

Derek, Sandra and Leon (pictured above) Brower are spending an academic year in St Petersburg (Derek is doing a PhD on Russian literature-related stuff and Sandra is on maternity leave from her PhD), and they were back in the UK to visit family and friends and, in Derek's case, a few pubs.

Derek and Sandra have been incredibly good guides to both of us on being new parents, by offering a lot of practical and encouraging advice, giving us tonnes of baby stuff that has proved more useful than we ever imagined and, perhaps most important, giving us the idea for a blog. (I mentioned the Browler in my first entry). And Leon is about twice as old as Kirin, a fact reflected in the size differential.

Finally, a few brief words of guidance on how to maximise your use of the blog:

• You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.
  
• Any text that is highlighted (like the words"Prospect" and "Browler" above) is a hyperlink that I have inserted. Just click on it and you will find yourselves in a parallel world of online delight.
  
• At the end of each entry, there is a comment button if you want to offer any thoughts. So far, the Hinckley-Australian Auntie Sarah is leading the way but all communication is welcome. And don't worry - I vet everything before it is published.
  

Getting ready for the bath

I had just had my massage, and then this massive flash appeared out of nowhere. You would be a bit surprised, too.

Two heads are better than one

On a dreary January afternoon, Kirin and Ravi challenged me to a game of Scrabble. I lost. Normally, I'm a pretty good loser but I have to say that this time I had the worst selection of letters that could be imagined. At one point, I had seven vowels and for most of the game I had six. I tried laying EIEIO (of Old MacDonald's Farm fame) but this was rejected by the editor and his son. I only managed to narrow the margin of deafeat at the last minute with a triple word score using a Q.

Next time we'll play Monopoly and I get the baby on my team.