Kyle's Brain Feed

Joseph is already a week an a half old…hard to believe. So far he’s a super mellow kid–hardly any crying, sleeps long stretches during the night, generally content to just hang out and look around. Corinne and I are amazed at how easy he’s been so far, and that extends to his birth as well.

Corinne was uncomfortable but not in unbearable pain late monday night when she went into labor. When we finally decided to head into the hospital, the doctors didn’t really take her seriously because she was so stoic about the whole thing.

(*a side note about Corinne: She will be sure to let you know about paper cuts, stubbed toes, mild headaches etc. But when she’s in real discomfort, she turns inward and goes completely calm. This is surely a sign of intense inner strength, and it makes doctor evaluations difficult.)

By the time the docs got around to checking her out, they discovered that we needed to get moving or the baby would be born in the triage ward. An hour later, Joseph was born, Tuesday morning at 5:49am. It took three pushes.

It’s been fairly smooth sailing since then. The whole family was home on Wednesday afternoon, sleeping soundly in their own beds. Corinne’s mom came Thursday, and has been a huge help with Joseph and Ada, especially since I’ve been working long hours this week to support my team at the Consumer Electronics Show.

We’re anxious to see how tiny Joseph changes in the coming weeks. We’ve been told that babies start to show personality after two or three weeks, but I’m hoping he stays just the way he is now: a happy, adorable little lump.

First of all, if five-year-old Kyle knew that someday he would live two blocks from a McDonald’s, he would have reacted just like this. But then I saw Super Size Me and it totally ruined everything–I now allow myself a Big Mac once a month. I could eat them every day.

Anyway, I’m walking home after picking up family dinner at McDonald’s tonight, a situation that has literally NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE, but Corinne was desperately hungry and didn’t feel like ordering from the falafel place that we usually go to when she’s desperately hungry. So I’ve got my big bag of food and my other bag of drinks, and I’m feeling pretty good about things. I’m a provider, I’m thinking. I work hard, and I keep my family fed. Like a dad should. 

I get home and lay out our high-calorie spread. It’s Ada’s first Happy Meal, so we marvel at how adorable the tiny fry carton is, how sensible the apple slices are. Corinne suppresses her gag reflex over Ada’s McNuggets, opens her Chicken Selects, and we tuck into our food.

Only Ada won’t eat anything. Not fries, not McNuggets, not apples, not anything. She only drank half her chocolate milk! We were confounded. Billions of dollars in R&D and consumer research have been spent to scientifically guarantee that children will like Happy Meals, and she won’t eat it. She’s flying in the face of decades of science!

Guess that was our first and last family meal from McDonald’s. I suppose that’s fine. But, they did just install a new soda dispenser that lets you use a touchscreen menu to add in syrups and flavoring. Pick from the 34 base drinks, and then add orange, cherry, strawberry, raspberry, lemon/lime, or whatever else. There’s gotta be at least a couple hundred drink options.

(Word of caution re. Raspberry Coke Zero: don’t do it.)

We went to Josh and Carly Maready’s house tonight for a small dinner party, and of course Ada whiles away much of the time watching YouTube videos on Josh’s MacBook Pro. She was a bit stymied by it, though; she kept pressing on the screen, expecting to be able to navigate the way she does on our–really her–iPad.

She has moments like this from time to time. The way she’s taken to the iPad is, in some ways, very heartening for a geek like me. She’s intuitively known since she was 18 months old how to navigate on the iPad and our iPhones, launching YouTube or Netflix and selecting the videos she wants to watch. Or she can pick the game she wants to play. I tell myself she’s a technological genius, but it could just be that iOS is THAT good. (She certainly hasn’t figure out how to use my Windows Phone.)

The problem with her iPad affinity is that I use it as a solution to sticky situations. When she’s grouchy or I have something I need to get done, I can hand her the iPad and she’ll happily watch videos as long as I let her. We use Corinne’s iPhone to keep her occupied when we eat out, and she eats more when she’s staring at a screen (but then so do I).  I might have even (gasp) let her watch Curious George with the sound off in church this morning. Part of me says “Anything to keep her quiet through the meeting!” and the other part says “You’ve ruined her forever…she’ll never sit still again!”

That’s Issue #1: A video screen takes the place of behavior training.

Issue #2 is, I think, potential more impactful: She never sits with a show for more than a couple minutes. She’ll watch a bit of Curious George, then move on to Winnie the Pooh or Jungle Book, then on to Yo Gabba Gabba and then Dinosaur Train and Kipper. And, of course, she eventually ends up floating in the lake of swill called Disney Channel programming (the worst in the industry, by far).

What happens to a brain that can jump around between entertainment options in 30-second increments? We probably don’t know…Ada might be the first generation to be exposed to such an environment.

And should she be? This is a terrible question to be asking right before winter starts and she’s stuck inside for four months. Sorry Corinne!

P.S. — We really do try and limit her TV consumption and find other things to do, as is evidenced on Corinne’s blog. For instance, today we put on Bing Crosby and decorated our new Christmas tree. It’s the first natural tree I’ve ever had in my life (my family is allergic), and the first tree that Corinne and I have had in our 8+ years together. Fun!