iMurphy

I’ve been trying to prepare for life after the baby is born. I’ve spent so much time learning about pregnancy, but that only lasts nine months! So, I’ve been attending La Leche League meetings to get the scoop on nursing, and I’ve met a lot of great ladies in the process. I’ve heard so many horror stories about nursing, so it’s been good to talk to women who are actually in the midst of it.

One of the women I met has also sold me on these great all-in-two cloth diapers from My Precious Baby by April. They’re kind of expensive, but extremely well-made. I ordered a couple to try them out. If they work well, I think they’ll be well worth the initial investment. And they’re so much more fun to look at! I’ve also been checking out an online forum on cloth diapering. I’ve found some helpful tips there, but sometimes it seems like they’re making it far more complicated than it needs to be!

I’m also attempting to make my own Maya Wrap baby sling in order to lug our little bundle around. They actually give you the pattern and sewing instructions on their site, as well as free access to their instructional video! That’s a great company, if you ask me!

I’ve been reading a bunch of books, too, while I’ve got the chance. I read The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, written by La Leche League. It had a lot of good, basic information on breastfeeding - sort of the Breastfeeding for Dummies - but there were definitely some aspects of their philosophy that I did not agree with, particularly their view of disciplining children (I still don’t understand what that has to do with breastfeeding anyway!). I’m also reading Your Baby’s First Year: Week by Week and The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Book of Pregnancy and Baby Care. I think these will be much more useful as references once our little test subject has arrived. Robert is reading Becoming A Father. He also gets to hear all of the highlights from my books!

We both intend to read The Happiest Baby on the Block since we saw the video in our childbirth class. The author also has a website. Anyway, the gist of the book/video is that the first three months of a baby’s life are really like the fourth trimester in that they really miss the womb. So, this Dr. Karp has outlined five different steps for calming the baby by simulating aspects of the environment of the womb. Really, it’s not as messy as it sounds! These five things are swaddling, side/stomach position, shushing, swinging and sucking. The great thing about these steps is that they’re all actions that the father can do just as well as the mother, so Robert is really excited about trying them out.

I just got done burning the DVD-R of “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder. I was going to include a link to the script, but I discovered it is still copyright. I took our VHS recording (we bought at a garage sale), and brought it in on our Dazzle card to iMovie. I then used iDVD to make it into a DVD, since it’s under 90 minutes. It’s in black and white and differs a little from the play, but I really love it. The third act is all about living life to the fullest and speaks quite meaningfully about death. I have thought highly of this play since high school, when I had two friends die before I even graduated. I highly recommend this movie to any one and will give our copy to whoever buys us the real DVD!

Well, Robert caught me writing an email to a friend about this movie, and that, apparently, means that I must “blog” about it. This “blogging” is obviously very important to Robert since he is willing to give up the computer to let me do it.

Anyway, about the movie, I am one of those people who suffered from STDS (Star Trek Deprivation Syndrome) as a child, but I greatly enjoyed the movie “Star Trek: Nemesis.” It’s not the best movie in the galaxy; in fact, it’s definitely got it’s cheesy, Star Trek/Sci-fi moments, but it was quite enjoyable. It contained a healthy portion of what I like in Sci-fi movies - insight into human nature - as well as some good action. It was also a little darker than most Star Trek movies/episodes.

Some of the more recent Star Trek movies were directed by one of the cast, Jonathan Frakes (Commander Riker), but this one is directed by Stuart Baird, who directed “Executive Decision” and “U.S. Marshals.” Nemesis is as much a dark action movie as it is a sci-fi movie, so you don\’t have to be a Sci-fi nerd or even a regular nerd to like it. The director even admitted that he’s never really watched the show or the movies except as a quick review in order to make this movie! He wanted it to appeal to people who had not seen the show, and I think he accomplished that.

I went and saw The Matrix: Reloaded for the fourth time last night. But this time we saw it at the IMAX in Canada. It was great. I’m ready for the next one now, though. A lot of people have been saying how they’re not happy with the quality of the movie, both in effects and plot. I disagree, however, and I think it is great! The motorcycle chase is fantastic and the effect of have the camera go under the wheels of the semi is amazing.

Some people think that Neo now has powers in the real world, or that the “real world” is just another level of the Matrix. I don’ t think so and here’s why: Neo says he can “feel” them [the sentinels], not that he has acheived Nirvana in the real world. I think that his experience with the Architect has left him more in touch with the machine world and he can control machines from within the Matrix, just as the agents ordered a strike in the first movie.

How will it all end? I think that a few facts give away the ending. On the official site they show that there will be an M.M.O.R.G. (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game) that takes place in in the Matrix and after the end of Revolutions. This tells us the matrix will go on. Second, the conversation with Councilman Hamman about people needing machines and machines needing human can’t have been in the movie for nothing. I think that some kind of resolution must be reached where people choose to stay in the matrix.