I don't know how many people have been reading this, but I know that I've been a bad blogger this summer. I checked my email just now to find 45 unread emails (and this was my gmail account that I only give to friends!!!!) My yahoo email had 119 unread emails.

Apparently I need to catch up on things. I don't use the internet at home much because its a dial up. I hate the stupid slow thing and I can't justify getting high speed because I don't have a job. Something about food and diapers coming first, or whatever.

Anyway, I'm done with my externships, so my summer can officially begin. Yeah!!!

I haven't posted anything for a while. I'm not sure if there are a whole lot of people who read this anyway, but I hope no one was much disappointed. I've been at an externship most of the summer. I thought I'd finally put something on here.

Our daughter is a whopping year old now. Her birthday was July 8^th. Sydney got quite spoiled from all of us. We had a birthday party up in Logan with some of Sydney’s friends. Birthday parties for one-year-olds pretty much consist of kids playing with toys and adults chit-chatting. We gave Sydney cake for the first time in her life. We made a whole cake for her to destroy, but then she got really shy about it. She was so dainty about eating the cake. The one time we were encouraging her to make a mess and she refuses. I finally had to help her get a real handful. She was really confused about the whole b-day song and candle thing. We tried to get her to blow out her candle, but she wouldn’t do it. She just looked at it as if saying “What the heck am I suppose to do with this?”

We also had a family party celebrating the July b-days in Lindy’s family. Sydney, of course, got all the attention. She got the little people barn and doll house and a lot of clothes. (It’s a good thing because the kid keeps growing out of clothes.) At this party she got a cup cake and we sang to her, but this time she didn’t like the ritual at all and she openly protested.

Sydney’s finally learned how to crawl and has relished in this new found freedom. She’s also given her parents a run for their money. We’ve been scrambling around trying to baby proof our apartment as quick as possible. Sydney quickly learned how to pull movies off of shelves. Anyone who knows us knows that we have a lot of movies. So, now we’re scrabbling around to figure out where to put movies on the lower shelves. She loves to get into anything that we don’t want her to get into. We she knows that she’s in trouble she’ll look at us and give a big smile so that we won’t get mad at her. We try so hard to keep a straight face, but it’s so hard (for both of us). I’m amazed at how quickly our little ones learn to manipulate us.

Lindy's counsin made a blog for his 4 year old kid called The Dinosaur Boy. It's completely awesome. If you ever wondered about the inner workings of a four year old this is the place to go. Lindy and I read it as often as we can because its so funny/cute.

Here is a sample:

Some bugs are nice and some are mean. Sometimes I wonder why Jesus made mosquitoes have sharp noses. They stick their sharp noses into your skin and suck your blood. They eat blood because that’s what they’re supposed to eat. Some nice bugs are potato bugs, lady bugs, brown ants, butterflies, dragonflies, caterpillars. Lady bugs choose to be nice. They just crawl around and sometimes fly when they see a bigger thing than them.

Spiders are bad bugs. Spiders are not bugs but they look like bugs. Red ants are bad. Flies eat guts! They land on guts and eat them. But flies aren’t mean. We smash mean bugs.

Today I was collecting brown ants and Weston was collecting potato bugs. I put all the brown ants in my dump truck. One ant was carrying food and I took that food he was carrying and put it in the dump truck and I put that ant in the dump truck too. Me and West were smashing red ants. This is a picture of us smashing the red ants.

You'll have to check it out, www.thedinosaurboy.com. It will put a smile on your face.

We're still doing good up here. Lindy ripped one of her contacts, that wasn't good. I didn't know that it was possible to rip them. Sydney got a new car seat because she's getting so big so quick. Now we can’t just let her sleep in the car, because it isn’t the type that you can easily pull out. She seems to have new tricks every week. She’ll try to do patty cake now. She likes attempting to sing. And of course she still loves talking all the time.

I can't believe it’s almost Sydney’s first birthday. She's attempting to crawl forward, but she's not quite there yet. She'll lean forward and grab things, but like I said before, she's much better at scooting backwards. She can however kind of get what she wants because she'll scoot backwards and then turn around. She's funny though. If she can't get something she gives up and starts trying to get something else, or she'll cry.

My research class ends this week. Summer can officially start now (or at least when I’m finished with my proposal). It was actually a fun class. I know, is it possible to have the words fun and research in the same sentence? It was mostly because of the teacher, Dr. Blair, and he was a riot. He has a PhD in Audiology and he use to be the head of department. He's very sarcastic and dry witted. I still don't want to do research as a career, but I came somewhat close to the idea. Now I’m not against doing research in my practice. Okay, I’m boring everybody here who isn’t going into speech-language pathology (and probably many who are!).

For Memorial Day weekend, dad cooked us steaks (second time in one month) and we went to see Mission Impossible 3. It was actually better than I thought. I was expecting a repeat of Mission Impossible 2 (which was completely over the top). I guess low expectations is the key to enjoying the summer line-up of movies.

I’ve haven’t heard good things about X-Men 3 so far. Kelsey didn’t like it at all. I still have to see it because it’s the X-Men, but should I wait to see till the dollar theaters, wait till it comes out on DVD, or go ahead and see it now?

Well, we're keeping busy. I have a research class (I need to be working on my paper for the class right now), I only have a week and a half left of that. We get to write a research proposal and its all due by next Friday. We’re all really excited about spending our summer with such fun events.

Lindy is enjoying the fact that she is done with school forever. She got a lot of money between graduation and her birthday and her first mother’s day. She bought a Nintendo game cube and the games Donkey Konga 2 and Mario Kart, Double Dash. That's been fun. Lindy is becoming an expert at the Donkey Konga game.

Sydney is starting to move around a lot more. Right now she's really good at scooting backwards, but not forwards yet. We're working on that one still. She has decided that everything furry is a doggie. She calls Jack a dog, and teddy bears, and pictures of other furry things. She loves the music on Gillmore Girls; she does a little dance to the music on the closing credits. Overall, she's a very happy little girl. She’s starting to get her sixth tooth in. She keeps getting bigger. We’re not sure how to stop this rapid growth. We just want her to be cute and small forever, but we know we can’t do anything about that.

We have a lot to look forward to during the summer. I have two different externships in speech-language pathology to keep me busy. Sydney’s first birthday is coming up in July. We have our big family reunion in August. Oh, and my birthday is coming up next month!!! Well, it looks like we’ll be keeping plenty busy.

What ever happened to virtual reality? I remember it being the biggest craze. All the videogames were going that way. There were places you could go to play virtual reality, instead of bowling (which kind of is a virtual reality in of itself). It was in, but at some point in time it went out. Or so I thought.

I recently read an interesting book called City of Golden Shadow (Otherland, Volume 1) by Tad Williams. I only suggest you read this if you are big into science fiction. If you are not go read some nice romance novel or something. Anyway, in this book the internet was completely virtual reality. They even had an online game similar to World of Warcraft, but it was completely virtual reality. I thought it was interesting; so, I decided to check out if anyone still is doing the whole virtual reality thing or if it completely went south.

People are actually still making this stuff, but it’s ridiculously expensive. Apparently Iowa State University recently announced an upgrade for their C6 virtual reality room (10x10x10 feet room). It’s costing them about $4 million dollars just to do the upgrade, but people are paying for it to do research and such.

There are whole online virtual communities like Second Life where people can have a virtual life when their bored of their own life I suppose. There is actually an ever going exchange rate for products in this virtual world. You use this money to buy houses or toys or services or whatever. One US dollar exchanges for about 250 Linden Dollars (the currency used in this world). Rates are based on supply and demand and fluctuate just like they do in our real market. Weird.

Virtual reality products are expensive, but their getting better and better. I found this website that was selling all sorts of this stuff. It seems virtual reality never left it just got quiet for a while.

The geeks are still out there making this stuff apparently, but I'm guess us poor geeks can't afford to play with it.

Sydney is now a whopping 10 months old. Here she is showing off her music talent. What she's really doing is attempting to grab the hymn book. She loves books, but not for reading. She likes to eat them. She’s really in to grabbing things. She also loves to play with anything electronic (ie., remote controls, computer keyboards, cell phones, etc. See previous post). She sits up completely on her own and is starting to attempt to crawl. Usually this is an attempt to grab some kind of book or electronic item that’s just out or reach. She also loves her toys. She loves to drop them when she’s in her high chair so that mom and/or dad have to keep picking them back up for her. We’re not quite sure if this is a game for her yet, but it’s quickly getting there.

Occasionally it sounds like Sydney intentionally uses words. For example: the other day Lindy took Sydney upstairs. Sydney was incredibly excited and kept saying “da, da, da, da.” When they got up stairs Sydney looked all around, apparently searching for something or someone. She must have not found what she was looking for because she got upset and started to cry. My wife thinks that she was looking for me and when she said, “da, da, da” she was referring to dad. Unfortunately, I was not upstairs because I was at school. I especially like this story for obvious reasons. Was she actually trying to say dad or was that just a coincidence. We like to think otherwise, but we’re not quite sure at this point.

Sydney also likes to clap. She will almost always start clapping in imitation to someone else clapping. She likes to play patty cake, but she just leaves her hands out so that you can clap them.

She just a bundle of fun at the stage she’s in right now.

Finals are finally over!!!! And now summer can begin. Of course that means I'll be starting summer school next Monday. Oh well.

Here are some Easter pics Sydney. She's our little cutie.

You may have read my previous posting about my interdisciplinary training program, but we got to have the experience of being in a wheel chair. In this class, we learn about different disabilities and we sometimes get to go through simulation experiences so we have a little bit of understanding what it would be like to have a disability.

Last week we learned what it would be like to have a mental disability (like schizophrenia). We got to go through the Hearing Voices Simulation. Basically, it was the “voices in my head” simulation. This is where we got to put on head phones and listen to a simulation of what some one that hears voices might hear on a regular basis. We weren't allowed to talk about what we were hearing with anyone at the time because hearing voices is a very personal thing. While we were listening to the voices we had to do some lovely cognitive tasks like reading an article and then answering some reading comprehension questions about it. We were suppose to put a bunch of toothpicks in a certain shape and then change it by only removing a certain number of toothpicks (personally I don't think I could have done that with or without voices, I'll leave the confusing puzzles to Jim). Then the person putting together the presentation gave us a psychiatric exam, which we all failed (mostly because the stupid voices kept drowning out everything else). Then we were suppose to socialize with the other IDT trainees while still hearing the head phones. We were still not allowed to talk about what our voices were saying, but now that I'm not hearing them anymore (at least not from the head set).

The voices were weird. There were a couple of people in the back ground that were whispering in a way that I couldn't understand what they were saying. There was some kind of heart beat sound in the beginning. Some lady started to tell me that I was the "one" and that everybody believed in me. Then this rude guy started to tell me that I smell like @#$# and that everybody was looking at me and knew what I did. That voice was a little psychotic. He kept swearing at me and yelling at me while the two that I couldn’t understand kept talking in the background, laughing at me.

It was kind of weird. I had a hard time talking to anyone because I couldn't hear them and I was a little distracted. I'm just glad the voices in my head did argue with the voices on the recorder. That would have been really disturbing.

Well, this was Sydney's first Easter. She went to the family Easter egg hunt and everything. (We helped her out a little bit.) Every year Lindy's mom's family has the Easter egg hunt at Granny's home and all the kids look for eggs. They get to have three small eggs and two big eggs. The big motivator is the fact that there is money in the eggs and a couple of them have a lot of money. This year there was a fifty dollar bill, twenty dollar bill, and a ten dollar bill in one of the eggs. I think there were some fives too, but the rest of them had ones. Our dang cousin Carly got the fifty and the ten! Errr.

Sydney had so much fun shaking her eggs. She's only nine months right now so she didn't do much of the work on her own. Next year.

Spring is back and in full force, thank heavens. No more snow. However, can one really enjoy Spring before the end of the semester??? It taunts us with the beautiful greenery and sweet smells while we still in overly warm classrooms learning about who knows what. I just want to be outside 24/7 when we're getting this perfect weather.

Well, I don't have time for this posting, but if everyone else in Utah was going to post about this ridiculous weather than I want to also. Yes we have snow in April. Luckily it’s not sticking to the ground, but it is suppose to be spring. My friend Racheal put it in her blog this way:

"We have been taunted and teased with the prospect of spring. It has been warm enough for the kids to play outside. It has been warm enough for me to wear shorts once, and sandals on numerous occasions."

We have been teased and taunted; toyed with the prospects of warmth. Hopefully the end of the semester will still come at the beginning of May.

Well, now that I’ve wasted some time, I had better get back to school work.

Now, I don't want you guys to think I'm a big slacker (I am, but I don't want any of you to think it). The only reason why I'm justifying making this blog entry is because I'm staying home with my sick daughter. I wrote this on Friday, I just thought that I'd put it up now. It's a little longer, but one long blog every once in a while is permissiable.

I'm in an interdiciplinary training class where I work with all of these different professions related to working with people with disabilities (For example: social workers, psychologists, audiologists, and of course, speech-language pathologists). We also have people with disabilities and parents of children with disabilities participate so we can get there perspective. We get to learn about each others' professions and other disability related topics.

Well, on Friday we were having a disability awareness day. We all had assignments were we had simulated disabilities. We were grouped in pairs for these assignments. One person took the turn with the disabilities and the other was an observer who couldn't help. My group had three people, Amy (audiology), Eric (as he would call it: hit by a truck), and myself (speech-language pathology). Our assignments included using a manual wheel chair to go to the other side of campus to the library to check out a book, hold an umbrella while wheeling our way across campus and getting into a bathroom stall with the wheel chair.

I have a lot more respect for anyone that uses a wheel chair. They are not the easiest things to maneuver. Trying to keep the stupid thing going straight while Eric was making fun of me. He was pretty excited to watch because he had to spend many months in a chair after his head injury. He told us that watching us struggle was "Kicks and giggles" for him. Because of his hemiparesis he could only use one hand to wheel himself around. Eric said that he spent many hours in physical rehab going in circles.

Trying to get into the library was a trick. I couldn't find the handicap button in the vestibule; so, I was forced to open the door by myself, which was a bit of a trick in a wheel chair. The door was so heavy that when I opened it, the chair would be pulled to the door, making it near impossible to open. People walking by probably thought my friends were pretty big jerks, but they weren't allowed to help me. It didn't help that they were making fun of me. More kicks and giggles for Eric.

Holding an umbrella while trying to wheel yourself proved to be quite the trick for me and Amy. (Eric had already completed his tour of duty; so, he was exempt from the wheel chair.) I attempted to hold the umbrella with my knees. That didn't work well unless I hunched over, which just looked silly. I also tried to hold the umbrella with my neck, which was not working. What I ended up doing was trading off the umbrella between each hand while the opposing hand wheeled forward. This turned into a slow zigzag formation. I decided that if I used a wheel chair that I'd rather just get wet than bother. Amy figured it out better than I did. She put the umbrella handle down the back of her shirt and leaned back. She still looked silly, but it did the job.

I won't even talk about the difficult with getting into the stall with a wheel chair. Let’s just say you should go before you have to go or you'll be in trouble.

I think everybody should have this experience. You'll realize that even though places are technically accessibly they may not be practical. Sidewalks are not was smooth and even as you think. Again I have a lot more respect for people who spend there lives in their wheel chairs.

You'll notice the lessening of blog entries as we enter April. We're approaching the wonderfully dreaded finals for spring semester. It’s sad that the most beautiful time of year has to be associated with such a heinous thing, but thus is life. However, this is not a rant as Scott might think, but rather just a notice that there won’t be as many postings for the next month. If I manage to post anything from now until May you will know that I am procrastinating doing any kind of studying (which I am doing right at this moment). So, until May… it was nice knowing y’all.

Show and Tell

Long Tail Lizard and Anole
Originally uploaded by bob jb.

I wanted to bring my pets to show and tell today here on the blog. I have two fire belly toads, Joey and Cleo. One long tail lizard with no name, I have no idea if its a male or female. And I have an anole. I use to have two, but one disappeared, either escaped or died. Oh, and I have a fire belly newt. We call him newty newt. We've had so many animals die that we don't always name them now... well sometimes we're just lazy. Here's a pic of the long tail lizard and one of the anoles.

Well, when I have a lot of homework that I need to do, I tend to look for other things that are not quite as important to do. For example: I've spent a good deal of time putting more picture on the flickr page. Just so all of my procrastination time doesn't go to waste you'll have to look at the pictures. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobbateman/ In order to see specific pictures its best to either look through one of the three sets (they only let you make three when you are doing the free version) or look up the tags.

During my Spring break I've been volunteering at an adult day center (basically day care for the elderly). Before I start sounding too altruistic I must state that I am required to do a certain number of volunteer hours for a class of mine. On top of that, my wife doesn't get Spring break with me because she's doing her student teaching this semester. So, I'm not going anywhere anyway…. and I have to get these hours in sooner or later, so it might as well be this week Well, my motives might not have been as pure as they could have been, but that's okay, no one is perfect.

I started to talk to this elderly gentleman that I'll call John. Our conversation wasn't exactly deep, but it was pleasant. Later, John introduced me to some of the other people there as his “old friend that came to visit”. As far as John was concerned, we've been life long friends and I just came to visit him (not any of this homework stuff). All of the people there were very nice to talk with. I may have had to introduce myself a few times to the same people, but hey what do you do.

There seemed to be a reoccurring theme in my conversations with these elderly folk. Their family was the most important thing in their lives. Life goes by quicker than you may think. Your kids will grow up in a blink of an eye before you know it; so, don't miss out on them especially while they are small.

I got thinking about how beautiful and cute my little girl is at this moment. The idea of her growing up seems so remote. After talking to my new found friends, I get the feeling that Sydney will grow up before I know it. She’ll be transitioning from diapers to cars and boys in a heart beat. I just know that I’m going to be having a hard time letting my little girl grow up. I figure that I had better enjoy my eight month old while I can.

I also was reminded that people need people, even if they won't remember you tomorrow. John and his friends we’re so happy to talk to me. I’m not sure how many visitors come to the adult day center in our town. These people have so many stories to tell. They are just fascinating to talk to, but we generally don’t have time. Well, I for one don’t have time because of grad school and my little family, but I’m going back again.

I’m going back again to visit my old friend John.

My daughter, Sydney, seems to have a fascination with technology at quite the early age. She’s a whole eight months old right now. She's just like her father in the fact that any kind of technology gets her excited.

For example: the cell phone. If Sydney sees someone holdina a cell phone she drops anything (literally) and seeks to get the phone. When she succeeds, which she does many times, she then attempts to see what the phone taste like by quickly shoving it into her mouth. At this point, we usually attempt to trade the phone with a more suitable chew toy. This is pretty upsetting to Sydney, which she tells us with her healthy lungs.

She also thoroughly enjoys pounding on the keyboard and drooling on the mouse. In fact, she’s a little up set that I’m not letting her do this right at this moment. Well, maybe just for a moment.

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Well, there you have it.

When you begin to learn a lot you realize just how little you actually know. In grad school you learn how much you actually don’t know. Before hand you were in ignorant bliss, but now you know that you don’t know. Most of us would like to return to the beautiful state, but there’s no going back. The funny thing about this whole process is that no one else really cares what you know as long as they don’t need to know it.

When one of my friends who are also college students (particularly grad students), that are going into math, engineering, microbiology, genetics, or whatever, whenever they try to explain to me what they are learning I get lost and/or confused. Part of me really wants to learn what they are talking about and part of me would rather care not. Since I have no time to try to learn all of these fascinating subjects I tend to lean towards the later (it would probably take too much work anyway). All the information comes in one ear and out the other. These conversations generally go no where quickly.

My problem with this whole dilemma is that I am beginning to see the flip side. I’m in school all day learning about speech-language pathology. Naturally, I can talk about this subject extensively; however, as my friends have already learned, no one cares. I’m glad that someone is learning all about math so that I don’t have to. I assume that someone is glad that I’m learning all about communicative disorders so they don’t have to.

In this whole process of becoming educated we learn that we know nothing and anything we do learn we can’t talk to any body about, but we know deep down that someone is glad that we’re learning this stuff so they don’t have to.

Today my little family and I went to Boise, Idaho and watch our cousin's family get sealed in the Boise Temple. It was just amazing to see this family dressed all in white. It reminded just how much I love my little family and how much I want to live with them forever.

The family had been fighting to stay together. They adopted a couple of little girls. One of the fathers (who was in prison) was fighting for the custody even though the mom wanted this family to adopt her girl. She realized that this would be a better life. The father just wanted to get out of prison early. Well, after many appeals they finally won. We're so excited for them.

I just couldn't imagine having to wait for three years before I could know for certain that I would be able to keep Sydney. We're just so excited for this family.