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Posts Tagged Katherine

Rebooting the Blog

Sep 6

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family, Writing and Philosophy | 2 Comments

The blog has been out of action for about 10 months or so, give or take a post or two.  Competing in IFComp 2010 took an enormous amount of effort, and I burned out hard after the competition was over.  I let pretty much all of my creative activities drop, and am just starting to put the pieces back together.  This blog was the last piece of creative expression to go and will be the first to come back, but I’m going to pace myself this time.  I’ll start with a post a week, and if I can sustain that I’ll try to move back to two or more posts if I have sufficient content and time to write.

It’s not that I lack for material — far from it!  A lot of things have happened in the intervening time.  We’ve had wild and wooly changes with Katherine’s autism — most notably, she now has diagnoses for autism and Tourette’s Syndrome, and is on medication to help with the severe tics she has as well as the anxiety those tics create.

I’ve read tons of good books, seen a lot of good (and bad) movies, and have played some of the most cinematic, richly-produced, narratively advanced PC and console games I’ve ever seen, all of which I’d like to discuss and review at more length as the weeks go by.

On the personal front, I injured my knee (again) and recovered, got back playing racquetball regularly, and started lifting weights, which puts me in probably the best overall physical shape I’ve been in for years.  The kids continue to grow and develop.  Thomas continues doing well in school and competing in various sports (flag football is the newest addition).  Jonathan has developed into a little charmer, talking constantly and grinning at you with his winning smile — at least when he’s not throwing a full-bore terrible twos tantrum.  Robin continues to do the impossible on a daily basis, keeping the kids and Katherine’s staff organized and productive.  When Jonathan goes to school and she’s ready to work, she should be able to step right into a CEO or COO position without blinking an eye.

And, of course, when October rolls around, it’s going to be IFComp season once again.  I don’t have a game in the Comp this year, but that means I can write reviews while it’s in progress, and I’m planning to cover every entry this year.  I can’t wait to see what returning veterans and new authors alike have for us this year!

Finally, I’ve also linked the blog to Facebook, to provide folks that prefer social networking an easier portal to see content here.  I hope it works properly — let me know if something seems messed up.  So watch this space in the coming weeks for more updates.  We’ve got a lot of catching up to do!

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A Special Morning at the McDonald’s Playplace

Jul 6

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

On our last day of our 4th of July staycation, the whole extended family went out to McDonald’s for breakfast.  We chose this for two reasons:

  1. We’d eaten all the eggs and didn’t have anything prepared for that morning, and
  2. It had been raining constantly for the last 24 hours and we wanted to get out of the house and go somewhere the kids could play.

So we ended up at Mickey D’s.  We deliberately chose the one nearby that doesn’t have video games, so we wouldn’t have to constantly chase the kids away from them.

When we got there, there was only one other family there.  A deaf man was there with two cute little toddler girls.  We couldn’t tell whether they were hearing or not; they just signed to communicate with their dad.  Over the course of breakfast, several other families arrived as well.  Towards the end of the meal, Thomas was walking around with a little Hispanic girl that either couldn’t or didn’t speak, and who looked slightly dysmorphic.  She was hugging him with a huge smile on her face, and wanting to hold hands as they went around the play area.

It was fairly obvious that she was special-needs of some sort; after Thomas and the girl played together for longer, her mother came over and told us how wonderful she thought Thomas was, as he was “the only child that was ever nice to her”.  Even allowing for a bit of maternal exaggeration, we were extremely proud of Thomas for his kindness and tolerance for being hugged and fussed over, even though it was obviously a bit embarrassing for him.

Shortly before we left, another young boy came in with his parent or caregiver.  He was an African-American boy who looked to be about Katherine’s age, and he was also either mostly or completely nonverbal.  He bounced a lot and hooted, and was approximating some sign language.  He had the hugest grin on his face the whole time; it was obvious that he loved being in the Playplace and was having a great time!

So, counting Katherine for our family, there was exactly one couple there who did not have a special-needs child at the Playplace that morning — Robin’s sister and brother-in-law Polly and Rick.

I think before we had Katherine and learned to understand and deal with her autism I would have been really freaked out with that many special-needs kids around.  But given where we’re at and what I’ve learned over the past few years, I just enjoyed the fact that everyone was playing together really nicely and having a great time, whether or not they had any disabilities or differences.

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Flash Photography

Jun 29

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

We recently picked up a new toy, pictured at right.  When Robin got her new phone, with the built-in flash video camera feature, we found ourselves taking quite a bit more video.  It’s very convenient to just pull it out and start filming, and it’s very easy to get the resultant video out into a form where you can do something with it.

Robin has also wanted for some time to do some video therapy for Katherine.  She learns very well based on what she sees on video, so Robin wanted to get the therapists and our family on an instructional video they could use to do some of this type of teaching.  If we had gone with our original tape-based camera we’d be sunk; it would be very difficult to get the video off the tape, convert it, and get it edited.

Enter the new Handycam.  We knew we wanted a flash-based camera (no tapes or mini-DVDs), and since we already had what amounts to a flip camera built into Robin’s phone, we figured we go for something with good optics and image stabilization.  We are extremely happy with the new camera.  It’s very light, very easy to work with, holds charge for a long time, and takes great-looking video.  We’ve probably taken more video in the week we’ve had this camera than we used to take in a year with the old one, and it’s incredibly easy to get at the video.

There’s no way we’d ever go back to a tape-based camera — once you use a camera that stores directly to RAM and links via USB to your computer, you’ll never look back!

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Swimming Weekend

Jun 21

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

We had a pretty good weekend!  My mom came down to watch Thomas’s swim meet on Saturday morning, but also got to see his baseball game on Friday night.  Thomas got two good hits but never really got the ball in the field.

At the swim meet, he demonstrated improved form in his freestyle, breathing on both sides and getting his arms out of the water, but his kicking is still pretty weak and not propelling him enough.  He ended up either fourth or fifth out of six in freestyle.

He was last in backstroke — we definitely need to work on that stroke — but in breaststroke he did great!  He was second place in his heat and his form looked great — if he hadn’t kept looking to the side to see how he was doing against his competitors I think he could have won.  He also had by far the best breaststroke form in his heat, so he should only get better with time.

The rest of the weekend was fun also, although Katherine had an upset tummy early Sunday that really made her miserable.  Fortunately, she had recovered by evening and had a good time swinging out back before bath and bed.  Before my mom left, we went to the new Fritz’s Railroad Restaurant up in Shawnee, where the food comes out on overhead tracks to your table.  That was pretty fun, and was a nice way to end up the visit.

Below are some movies of Thomas’s swimming. In freestyle, Thomas is second from the right. In breaststroke, Thomas is in the far left lane.

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Katherine the Chef

Jun 10

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family, Humor | No Comments

Katherine has been very interested in grocery shopping and cooking lately.  Many times she will suggest a trip to the grocery store to Robin, where she insists on helping to load and unload the cart, and gets upset if the trip is too quick.

If she can’t go to the actual store, she will often pretend-shop at home.  She gets food from the pantry and refrigerator, loads it up in her toy shopping cart, and pushes it around the kitchen.  When she’s done with that, she gets plastic shopping bags from the pantry and bags the groceries, leaving them arrayed on the floor for us to gather up.  We have not yet been able to get her interested in the process of unloading the groceries and putting them back in their proper places, unfortunately.

But recently that has not been enough to fully satisfy her.  We came downstairs after doing some cleaning to find that in a remarkably short time, Katherine had gotten out a bowl, a spoon, soy milk, oil, eggs, hot chocolate powder, and Folgers instant coffee crystals, and had mixed them all together in what can only have been an attempt to make brownies.  In what may have been a tactical error, we praised her for the attempt because we thought it was incredibly cute.  So the next day she followed up with an even grander concoction of graham cracker crumbs, a full container of maple syrup, about two dozen whole strawberries, and milk.  We think the intended end product was strawberry shortcake.

She also had a can of blueberries from a blueberry muffin mix and had gotten the can opener out and set it next to it, which is pretty amazing since we open cans about maybe four times a year.  She’s obviously more perceptive and holds more in her memory than we sometimes give her credit for!

That attempt wasn’t praised.

Since then we haven’t had any more solo cooking exploits, although Robin has done a lot of cooking with her to keep her satisfied.  I’m just glad that she didn’t try to flambé anything.

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Baby Katherine

May 10

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

It’s not a secret that Katherine is jealous of baby Jonathan.  She certainly makes no attempt to hide it.  In the first days after he came home she would make an extremely obnoxious noise when he was nearby, and was prone to telling us “Down baby!  Down baby!” when we carried him.  There’s still quite a bit of direct jealousy, but currently her preferred expression is to try to emulate him.  Well, either that or to say “No baby cry!” when he’s being fussy.

She started her emulation process by trying to climb into his high chair, which didn’t work particularly well.  She then moved on to his Boppy seat, which she can just barely wedge herself into.  She also spends a lot of time in the rocking chair in his room, which is where Robin nurses Jonathan.  Lately she’s been trying to swing in his motorized swing.  It has a weight limit of 25 lbs. — she’s 45.  She’s now also developed a fake “baby cry” that she uses when she’s playing sometimes.

Yesterday she tried jamming herself into Jonathan’s rear-facing infant seat.  She was able to do it — by squeezing her knees up to her head.  Robin took the opportunity to fuss over “baby Katherine” and put Jonathan in the booster seat, which greatly amused Katherine.

I’m just concerned that we’re going to find her lying in his crib, or trying to put on one of his diapers one of these days.

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Family Gallery

May 3

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

Thought I’d share a selection of some of the best pictures from the last couple of weeks.  Here you go!

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A Singing Turnip, Benjamin Franklin, and A Real Baby Doll

Mar 22

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family | No Comments

It’s been an eventful last few weeks with the kids.  I haven’t had the pictures downloaded, so I’ve been putting off writing about what’s been going on, but now that Spring Break is here I can catch up a bit.

Thomas has had several school activities, including his school musical and a major history project.  For the musical he was one of the vegetables.  He chose to be a turnip, so Robin made him a purple turnip costume.  He had a speaking part (one line) but sang all the songs as well.  The performance was very cute — I wish I had video to upload but our video camera’s battery was dead.  I took quite a few stills and got most of his classmates.  Here’s a pretty good one of Thomas delivering his line:

He had some difficulty with the hat, but other than that he had a great time and did very well!

For his history project, he chose Ben Franklin.  He didn’t know a whole lot about him before he started, but by the time they were done with the project he’d researched quite a bit.  We helped him do a timeline and a name poem, and Thomas chose a representative sample of his inventions to feature on his trifold poster.  And of course, he had to dress up like Benjamin Franklin.  Unfortunately, this project came right on the heels of the musical, so Robin had to make two costumes in quick succession.  Luckily, Benjamin Franklin isn’t that tough of a costume.  Here’s what it looked like:

One of the nice side effects of doing this project was that he got more interested in inventions and electricity.  He’d gotten an electronics kit from my folks last year, and had played with it a little, but after doing this project he got it out and started making all sorts of circuits and playing with all the components, and generally having a great time with it!

Lastly, Katherine and Jonathan have had their share of playtime as well.  He’s a very sweet baby and very tolerant.  Katherine sometimes shows interest in interacting with him and sometimes doesn’t.  But recently, she wanted to feed him a bottle.  So we… well, a picture is probably worth a thousand words here:

As you can tell, Jonathan thought this was hilarious, although he may have been confused as to what the bottle was actually supposed to be, since he doesn’t take real ones.  This cute scene didn’t last long, as I’m informed, but it’s typical of how she wants to play with Jonathan.  That’s not all that’s been going on with everyone, but it’s a good sample of the pictures we’ve gotten.  I have some good video of Thomas playing basketball, also, that I’ll try to upload soon.

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Close Dog

Mar 3

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Family, Humor | No Comments

I’ve already written about Katherine’s reaction to having her four lower teeth extracted (“I want glue teeth“).  Lately she’s been a bit more OCD than usual — it comes and goes, but at the moment she really wants cupboard doors closed and pots centered on their trivets, etc.

Robin was privileged to see the newest manifestation of this yesterday.  Katherine was in the office with one of her teachers, working on programs, while Robin was working on the computer.  Also, Aurora (Rora), our female Sheltie, was in the office as well.  And she was panting — likely due to the fact that with all the floor lamps on in that room as well as the computers it turns into a reasonable facsimile of an Easy Bake oven.

This canine behavior, though, was apparently unacceptable to Katherine, so she expressed her objections forcefully:  “Close dog!”  “I want close dog!”  “Yes close dog!”

I’m not sure whether Robin took the dog out of the room or if Rora just settled down and stopped panting, but apparently the problem was solved without the use of duct tape, so all was once again well.

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So I Rewired It…

Mar 1

Posted by Matt Wigdahl in Computer, Family, Humor | No Comments

One of Katherine’s more annoying recent habits is to flip off the light switch in our office.  That wouldn’t be so bad, except that the switch is a half-hot that controls some, but not all, of the outlets in the room.  My webserver and my own computer are not on it (although the monitor is) but the main email computer and the one Robin uses for her work are on it.

So after about the fifth time Katherine killed power to Robin’s computer this past week I decided to rewire the switch to a flat plate and remove the control over the outlets.  This was a pretty trivial change compared to some of the work I’ve done in our basement over the past couple of years, but it was pretty satisfying.

So far Katherine hasn’t made any comments about the lack of the switch — we were out of the house enough yesterday that I’m not sure she noticed.  I’ll be interested to see her reaction when she finally figures it out — I hope it won’t be to go over and shut down the computers manually…

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