From when he was eight days old, cooped up in the NICU and not exactly loving life:

To earlier today:

Happy birthday, kid.

About sixty seconds later, Nathan says, "I guess you should be doing that."

Me, having already forgotten this commercial: "What?"

N: "Since it said it was for fathers. And you're a father."

Me, remembering: "Ahh... so what did they say on there that you think I should be doing?"

N: "Well ... he cut the sandwich into four pieces for his kid. You could do that for me. Or... [warming to his topic] you could cut up a tortilla into four pieces for me. That'd be great."

...

Nathan is always listening.

Meredith, looking down at the book of hers that Nathan was holding: "Jesus."

N: "No, no, can you guess?"

M: "Jesus"

N, getting more frustrated: "No, can you guess what that J word is?"

M, getting frustrated herself: "Nathan, I don't understand what you want. The word in the title that starts with J is 'Jesus'"

N, practically hopping up and down in frustration: "No, YOU say: 'can you guess what that J word is?'"

M: "Can you guess what that J word is?"

N: "Ummm ... is it Jesus?"

"How do you spell Stanford?"

"S-T-A-N-F-O-R-D"

[nods] "That's like 'Preparation'"

"Oh? How is that?"

"Because they both have "I" in them."

OK, then.

On the advice of our doctor's office, Adam went into the ER, where I met them. They did a chest X-ray, but it didn't pick anything up, which they seemed unsurprised by for something wooden. The doctor talked to the GI doctor on call at Children's to decide whether or not they should put a camera down his throat, but they decided not to now. Eventually we were discharged with instructions to give him an all liquid diet for 24 hours and take him to the doctor tomorrow to get checked on.

He seems basically fine. If you didn't know he'd swallowed something, you wouldn't guess it from the way he was acting.

Kids...

(He's fine.)

We look around outside and Meredith spots the hot dog stand.

Meredith: "Can you read what it says before dog?"

Nathan: "H ... ot ... H ... ot ... Hot!"

Meredith: "So what do you think it is?"

Nathan: "Hot Dogs!"

"Nathan, you're not supposed to be in there. What were you doing?"

"Nothing!"

I walk into the office, with him following.

"What are you doing?"

"Just looking to see what you were up to."

I find my PC sitting at the logon screen with an error message about a bad password.

"Nathan, what were you trying to do with the computer?"

"Umm ... Play World of Warcraft."

At least it should be a few years before he can hack my account.

OK, so let's see what it knows about me from my profile:

That's a fair amount ... married, work for Microsoft, live near Seattle, and of course Facebook has my actual birthday, so they know how old I am. So let's see what I get for ads:

Expecting my first? No ... and no. And ... just no.

Okaaaayyyy....

Baby carrier, sure ... but ... Mommies?

Hey, here's one that at least seems targeted at the correct gender:

So maybe they don't think I'm married. Or they think I want to cheat. Actually, given the way this is going, the most likely explanation is that they think I'm a married lesbian who wants to cheat.

Maybe I can get some non-gender specific ads in here...

UC Davis? Sacramento? Kirkland, WA is near Seattle. I don't even think I have a friend on Facebook that lives near Sacramento – the Bay Area is as close as I get with friends, I think. Hey, here's one that's not for Sacramento:

Only it turns out that Foothill Ranch Dentistry is in Southern California – about 1200 miles way. "Just [ten thousand or so] blocks away." Yay!

So, in summary, Facebook's "highly targeted ad system" believes that I am a lesbian mother, who lives in Sacramento, but works in southern CA, and is looking to hook up with a hot chick.

OK, then.

I hope their advertisers aren't paying a lot for this awesome ad system.

Me: "Oh, I'm sorry, Nathan."

Then he moved in for the killing blow.

"When you were a little kid, did you like it when your mama or daddy forgot to shake up your juice enough?"

Me: "Does he?"

Nathan: "Yes. Because he loves Pippin, and Pippin is a predator. So Adam loves predators."

Like all great Nathanisms, this came completely out of the blue.

We took the boys to see the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Baily circus on Saturday. Adam napped for part of it, then woke up in time to see the trapeze acts and LOVED it. I wouldn't have guessed he'd really be that aware of it, but he had a blast. Nathan's favorite part appears to have been the toy sword we bought him afterwards.

Adam has outgrown (in height) his infant car seat. So yesterday we converted Nathan's car seat / booster seat from my car into a booster, and Nathan's convertible car seat from Meredith's back into a rear-facing seat for Adam. We're sad to lose the infant seat, mostly because, since Adam can't really sit reliably, not being able to pick up his car seat out of the car means that doing things like riding in shopping carts or sitting in restaurants / church / wherever is a lot harder.

Nathan also appears to be in a growth spurt of some kind. One day last week, he came downstairs in the morning, ate three pieces of toast (usually getting him to eat one first thing is a stretch), then asked if it was snack time yet. He continued to just inhale food the rest of the day.

Giuliani launches attack on Obama
Women, children among as many as 20 reported dead in cross-border raid.

Or maybe MSNBC had a problem with getting the wrong sub header under the main headline.

"Owl wants to read with us."

"OK", I said, reaching down to get Nathan's small stuffed owl and carefully place him in the chair next to Nathan on my lap.

I reached over to the shelf to pick out some stories. "How about Frederick?"

"OK."

Frederick, in case you do not spend all of your time reading stories to three-year-olds, is a story about some mice.

I opened the page and began to read.

Nathan, interrupting: "That's a mouse."

"Ummm ... yes."

At this point, the owl lept up in the air and landed, face down, on top of Frederick and devoured him. Because, you know, owls eat mice.

We had to pick a different bed time story.