J. Michael Andresen

Max has already had two friends of similar age to have play dates with. His first play date was with Griffin, back in July. Max was in a bit of a mellow mood, but Griffin was quite rambunctious! A couple weeks ago, Max met Brennan for the first time. We put them on a blanket together and they seemed to be having a good time. Max is a month older than Brennan, but Brennan still jumped out to an early lead in the wrestling match by grabbing Max's ear. "Ow! That hurts!" "I'm free!" "Now it's your turn, buster!" Brennan is down for the count (but doesn't seem to mind so much). We broke up the brawlers, but Max still felt like taunting Brennan with some of his four-month-old skills, like holding his head up. (Brennan will get there very shortly!) Max then proceeded to amaze us all by rolling over for the very first time! Mom and Dad were very proud! (And thanks to Heather and Ryan for hosting!)

We have started Max on solid foods! We've decided that it's time to start trying him out with some yummy (or not) rice cereal. I fed Max the cereal mixed with a lot of water. (Does a precipitate count as a solid?) A lot got on his bib and elsewhere, but we had lots of fun. Katie fed him some cereal on another day and made it thicker. All the better to stick to his face!

Today at work I was researching the tissue origins of different cell culture systems that we have available to use in the lab. "Cell culture" refers to the process by which we can take mammalian cells and grow them in petri dishes. Mammalian cells are much more complicated to grow than bacteria, and the best growing cells are usually derived from tumors, which have already escaped the normal growth inhibition experienced by most cells in the body. I study the brain, so I was looking up various cell lines derived from brain tumors. For extra background, I looked up information about the cancers on Wikipedia. Neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma are particularly nasty brain tumors that appear most often in children. My career in medical research often requires me to read horrid descriptions of truly awful diseases, and I have become impervious to emotional reactions of any kind when reading about diseases. Today, though, I was gripped with horror as I read the descriptions. Inst...

Tiger Woods came very close, but lost the PGA Championship this past weekend. He was leading by two strokes going in to the final day, and he had never relinquished such a lead in his past. This time, Y. E. Yang outplayed Tiger and won the PGA Championship. This is as close as Tiger came to winning a Major this year. In the end, he was shut out for 2009. That means that the answer to Question 9 of the 2009 Prognostication Quiz is E. Tiger will win no Championships . Eleven people wished lots of bogies on Tiger and advance one point: Ted Pete C. Matthew Grant Katie Larry Michael Adrian Missy Rob Cameron This breaks the tie between the husband and wife previously atop the leader board: Ted now advances to six points, while Zoe stays behind at five points. Pete C. and Matthew also advance to join Zoe in a tie for second place. Leader board 6 Ted 5 Pete C. 5 Zoe 5 Matthew 4 Grant 4 Tina 4 Katie 4 Stephanie 4 Ben 3 Ekrem 3 Pamela 3 Liz 3 Jeremiah 3 Larry 3 Leanne 3 Heather 3 Peter M. 3 Glo...

We are in the habit of keeping the camera nearby and at the ready in case Max does cute things that need to be recorded. Katie was preparing some beets for our dinner and I guess she decided that the beets were doing lots of cute things. She deemed them worth of an entire photo essay: Reading over my shoulder, Katie exclaimed, "I didn't think they were cute! I thought they looked like rats!" She likes how she made this one bleed: Whew! That was scary!

Today is Max's third birthday! Happy third birthday to Max! (This is, of course, only true for the cardinal sense of third , i.e. he is one-third of a year old. It is not true for the ordinal sense of third in that Max has not had his first or second birthday yet.) I've mentioned before that at two months, Max turned from a baby who almost never cried to a rather fussy baby. That trend has continued, sadly, and has taken some sad turns. First is that Max is not the best napper. When he naps like the books say he is supposed to, he is usually quite happy and contented in between. The problem is that he hates napping for some reason. Left to his own devices he will take 30-minute catnaps and then rub his sleepy red eyes and cry the rest of the time. Katie can extend his naps to a more helpful two hours but only so long as she is holding him. If she puts him down in any of the dark, comfortable, climate-controlled sleeping spaces that we have in the house (even the ones that vib...

Max's favorite new game is to lie in his activity gym and kick. When I set him up correctly, a bulls-eye kick does two things: it activates the shake sensor on the music to advance to the next track, and it shakes the rattle above his head. I was getting some pretty big smiles, which prompted me to take this video, but Max just had one big smile left for the video camera. It happens fifteen seconds in. After that he does lots more kicking, but he's more taciturn.