Big Katy's Big 3 Birthday

Celebrated by a visit to the store

to buy 2 forty pound sacks of food,
some toys and then a trip to the dog park.

Watch it there buster!
Ready for kisses!Who wants the first one?

We hit the fabric store today!

Over the weekend I found some awesome jungle theme fabric at esty.com for the baby room and today we bought the coordinating fabric to go with it. I'll be making curtains with horizontal bands in dark kiwi green, a vivid blueberry denim and pretty chocolate. At either the top or the bottom I'm sewing in a band of this fun print by Michael Miller Fabrics called "Jungle Jam."


I also loaded up on tons of coordinating fabric so I can make a diaper stacker (to conceal stacks of clean diapers ready to deploy at a moment's notice), a dust ruffle for the crib, a bumper, a hanging basket or two for stuffed animals, rattles and other toys, and three or four pillows.


For the pillows I'm planning on doing some applique animals out of felt to match the lion, owl and dragonfly in the curtain border print. I should have lots of left over fabric to make all sorts of other things too. As if that wasn't enough sewing, I also got enough fabric to make two quilts. Overboard, I know! They'll be big ones - about 4 x 6 feet.




One will be the funky Alexander Henry 2D Zoo print (top) with a light blue 'minky' fabric on the reverse and the other is the cheerful monkey print (bottom) with a pale lime green minky for the other side.

I ended up getting the rest of the bolt of dark kiwi green cloth at the fabric store today so they gave us the cardboard it was wrapped around.
It became the newest dog toy.



Yuki paraded it around, including from on top of the furniture, until Katy managed to tear half of it off along a perforation. Then Yuki dropped her piece to chase Katy's piece. They ended up shredding their cardboard in separate rooms until Mr. Field Notes eighty-sixed it before it became 386 dime-sized pieces all over the floor.


It ought to be fun to see how the sewing goes with not one, but two, Newfoundlands. Previously, it was just me and Max, and he was oh soooooo helpful, as you can see!

Birth of a baby orangutan

I was going to post on an orangutan who has figured out how to whistle, but the video commentary was inane, and this video of an orangutan giving birth is really neat. I imagine some might find it kind of gross though. After all, she eats the placenta and sucks her baby's head to clean him.



I can't help but to wonder when during human evolution we stopped licking our newborn babies. I've heard some cultures still do this. This sort of grooming also reminds me of some really cool research on mice that found that this initial licking and grooming postpartum is essential for normal physiological development. It kick starts digestion and lays the foundation for how the baby's HPA-axis functions later in life.

The HPA-axis, or hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, refers to the nervous and endocrine system that regulates the physiological response to stress. Rodents that don't receive early grooming grow up to have abnormal reponses to stressors; namely they release too much cortisol under duress.

Chronically high levels of the hormone cortisol have been shown (including among humans) to be associated with a weakened immune system, depression, and brain atrophy. That's really putting into a nutshell what I learned in what may be the most freakishly awesome seminar I took during grad school: Psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI.

If you would like to learn more about how behavior, mood, hormones and the nervous system interact to affect your health I highly, HIGHLY recommend the book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. Although he is as mega-scientist who professes at Stanford, the book is as readable as it is fascinating and entertaining. I freaking loved this book! Of course, he's also a primatologist and he has a wicked sense of humor. His other books are fantastic too, by the way. You cannot go wrong.

I still remember the day back in grad school when I was in the mail room and a fellow (newbie) grad student (who came to study PNI specifically) saw the book sitting on the counter and made some snide remark about how he hated it when laypeople jumped on the stress/immune system bandwagon and didn't know what they were talking about. It was then that I decided that he was an arrogant, ignoramus little snot. He had no clue who Robert Sapolsky was. Maybe Mr. Sapolsky shoulda put his big PHD behind his name on the book cover. In any case, I got the last laugh that day. I don't even know why I even still remember that, honestly, but it evidently made an impression.

Birthing a hyena — OUCH!

Sit down for this one!

I never knew much about hyenas until I discovered them in a book I highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about evolutionary psychology, primatology and motherhood from a female's perspective. It's called Mother Nature, by researcher-primatologist extraordinaire Sarah Hrdy. In the book she describes how hyena moms give birth. It was a real eye-opener to say the least.

From birth hyenas — a female dominant species — get super doses of male hormones. This primes them for the aggressive lifestyle they lead but also has some bizarre side effects. Namely, their genitalia are masculinized: the clitoris grows to male proportions of around 7 inches long, making them literally look like males. Researchers have great difficulty telling them apart from actual males. But what's more — I hope you're sitting down — they give birth through it.

Yep, that's right. They give birth through what amounts to a penis! The opening is only about an inch wide and babies weigh roughly two pounds — large enough to cause problems. Moms' tissues frequently tear during delivery and maternal and infant death is common, especially among first-timers. Some babies suffocate to death during delivery.

Females also mate through through the organ — giving the guys a difficult task as they try to position themselves just right. Apparently it takes male years to perfect the positioning to be successful.

If you'd like to learn more about sex role reversal and social dominance among hyenas, this article is a good, brief introduction: Establishing dominance.

Angry chimp shows humans not the only planners

An irritated chimpanzee at a zoo in Sweden calmly collected a stash of rocks early in the morning before the zoo opened and then hurled them at visitors when they arrived, confirming that chimps — like humans — can plan ahead.

The story is bouncing all over the wires today after it broke at the academic journal, Current Biology, this morning.

Apparently the 31-year-old alpha male even made his own makeshift projectiles — pieces of concrete he'd managed to dislodge from boulders in his enclosure. Sneaky, sneaky.

Anecdotal observations have been reported off and on from laboratory studies that have created situations that elicit evidence of planning in nonhuman primates, but so far, this is the only report I know of a chimp spontaneously, and unambiguously, planning an activity. Chimps in the wild have been known to hurl objects — mostly branches — during dominance displays but they've never been observed piling up weapons before such displays. Perhaps the materials are so plentiful they don't have to.

In any case, this observation "implies that they [chimps] have a highly developed consciousness, including lifelike mental simulations of potential events," says the lead author of the study, Mathias Osvath of Sweden's Lund University.

Another primatologist, Josep Call, co-author of the best reference book on primate cognition, cautions against over-generalizing the observation. "It could be that he is a genius, only more research will tell," Call said. Not all chimpanzees plan ahead.

The AP version of the story** says that no visitors were actually harmed — no surprise there given that chimps actually have horrible aim.

** And darn it if they didn't mispell Josep Call's name when they quoted him! Grrrr. They think he's Joseph.

Open Mouth Newfy Grin

Katy enjoyed the best hour ever this afternoon — a solo walk followed by a game of fetch and a ride to McDonald's where she got a plain hamburger. The only thing that would have made the hour even better? A swim! The temperature today is just right for that activity, seeing how it's a blustery 40 degrees. Yuki stayed home locked up inside her kennel where she napped peacefully the entire time. Swimming will have to wait for another day..

The Price of Walking Upright

Oh to be a monkey in about 4 months instead of human... things would be so much easier, specifically giving birth.

Labor and delivery is not something I used to think a lot about, outside of the day I spend with my primate behavior classes talking about it. We discuss the impact of skeletal and pelvic bone arrangement on labor and delivery in my unit on bipedalism. They are often amazed when I tell them other primates give birth in about 30 minutes.

Walking upright is a major adaptation on the part of humankind so it's only fitting to devote a good amount of discussion to it. I think it's a really fascinating subject, not just because the transition from 'knuckle walking' to walking on two feet required major changes to the arrangement of bones that made human childbirth incredibly dangerous — and painful — but also because no one yet has any convincing and widely accepted explanation for what drove the shift to bipedalism in the first place.

Was it that our hands we free to carry food, tools, a baby? Who knows. Some think we stood up because it kept our bodies cooler while walking long distances in the African savanna to find food. There are at least 6 other unique theories out there and whatever the explanation — the cost is significant.

The human pelvis became shorter and broader and the opening in the bones, the birth canal through which a baby passes during delivery, took on a more oval shape. The fossil, Lucy, one of the first skeletons to show signs of upright walking, resembles a modern human pelvis more than a chimpanzee's. The shift meant that babies, including ancestral humans, had to turn sideways during delivery rather than coming straight out like other primates.

When other primates give birth, the babies come out face up, more or less looking right at mom. Mom can see the baby the whole time and guide the little guy out all on her own. Not so for humans. If a human mom were to try to pull her baby out on her own, the angle of the head and neck would be off enough to potentially break. The shape of the human pelvis is great for walking, but very bad for solo delivery. It's believed that humans have always had to have a helper during delivery.

Another unique development that made birth difficult for humans is our large brain. Psychologists and evolutionary anthropologists call this 'encephalization.' Based on fossilized skull remains, our craniums and brains appeared to get significantly larger right around the same time we started walking on two feet.

In most cases, the baby's head is larger than the birth canal and without flexibility, the baby couldn't be delivered successfully, and either baby or mom — or both — would die. Even now with modern medical approaches to childbirth, a significant proportion of babies are delivered surgically through C-sections because the baby's head is too large.

Without some modification through evolutionary processes the human species, with it's unique gait, would have gone extinct. Two adaptations worked against this:

• relaxation of ligaments that hold together bones of the pelvis, hips and back

• gaps in the baby's skull

Both ultimately helped make birthing big brains possible. The 16-30 hours of labor are just one cost. In contrast, other monkeys (with a few notable exceptions) and apes give birth in about 30 minutes!


Although that may sound idyllic, it's not something I or any other pregnant woman is ever going to experience. But we can be very thankful that human birth and labor is not nearly, not even remotely as awful as what female hyenas endure. More on them next time... It will blow your mind!

Newfoundlands really know how to share..

A person already occupying a chair is no deterrent for Katy. She'll happily climb up and wedge herself into any available space, no matter the size. This morning she detected that I might like to sleep in a little and took matters into her own paws. When I sat up to get my glasses, she climbed into bed and wedged herself onto the pillows at the head of the bed in such a way that I could not lie back down, comfortably anyway. Normally when she jumps up on the bed, to sleep, she does so at the foot of the bed, arranging herself conveniently nestled behind my knees. So, I know today was all about getting the show on the road: breakfast and the rawhide chew stick she gets before Mr. Field Notes and I leave for the day.

We pay her back though:

Ema - Japanese Prayer Plaques

One of things we love to do when we go to Japan is collect 'ema' from Shinto shrines we visit. Ema are small wooden plaques upon which people write prayers or wishes they want the gods, or kami, to grant: getting good exam scores, having a safe and easy delivery, finding love, winning a sporting event, etc.




People hang them up at the shrine in a dedicated place, and each shrine has its own unique ema imagery — sometimes more than one.

Animal themes are common: cows and oxen, horses, fox, pigs and boars, rabbits, and birds (often crows and cranes) are easy to find on ema as are the 12 animals associated with the Chinese zodiac. Much to my great disappointment, however, monkey-themed ema are incredibly hard to come by, unless I would guess, you happen to be in Japan during the Year of the Monkey, then I would imagine they are all over the place. Next time I go to Japan, I would really love for it to be in the year of the monkey!

Most ema are painted, some by hand, while others appear to be silk screened. Some shrines sell ema that are blank on both sides so you can paint your own. And some ema, like the fox-faced ema pictured above, seem to be made so that people can embellish them. Ema range in price from 300-1500 yen or about $4-20. The one above is one of the more expensive ones. I think it cost 1200 yen ($15).

Ema tend to be fairly uniform in size and shape, typically about 3 x 5 inches in the shape of well, a house. But every once in a while we came across ones that were pentagonal, square, round, covered in fabric/paper, burned, 3-dimensional and faces with jaws that clack.

Some shrines have larger than life ema — 18 feet across and 10 feet tall. While others have ema of various sizes tucked into unusual places like eaves and at the writing desks.


I love looking at the inscriptions people leave on them, as well as the variety of ema hanging at each individual shrine. They range from brand spanking new to well-weathered and apparently old ones. These Navy-themed ones were unusual. There were no other ema like them at the shrine where we saw them and looked entirely handpainted in the DIY tradition, which is pretty uncommon itself, so these modernish, yet obviously weathered military-themed ones really stood out.

When you buy an ema that you aren't going to write on and hang up, the proprietor, who is I think some sort of religious functionary-in-training, carefully places it in a white paper bag and hands it to you with both hands and a bow of the head. Very, very rarely — the priestly guy blesses it. And also very rarely, they assume you are actually going to write on it and hang it up even though you are obviously a really big strange white person who isn't there to worship.

I'm not sure exactly how many ema Mr. Field Notes and I have collectively acquired during our trips to Japan, but they could easily fill a wall of our house. One of the 'home improvements' on our agenda this spring is to hang them all. Finding the right place is a bit of a challenge because they have to be kept out of dog reach, being that they are wood and one little vandal, Yuki, still has a penchant for gnawing on wood. The other challenge is how to hang them in such a way that we don't end up putting 200 holes in the wall.

Newfie Laser Light Show

This is, apparently, how to have cheap fun during a recession.

Home Improvements Meet Canine Approval

All home improvements are made for the comfort of the residence's two canine guardians. We bought those couches for them, so they'd have a comfortable place to chew toilet paper stolen off the roll in the bathroom. And, although we put a lot of thought into how much Katy would appreciate the cool temperature of the wood floors, she has made her preference clear. Somewhere behind those couches a third Newfie grows tuft by tuft, day by day. The only question that remains is how large will I let it grow before I move it to its new home in the innards of the vacuum cleaner, a device purchased solely for the entertainment of the Newfies.

Bonobos hunt, eat monkeys

Bonobos have been popularized by many to be a peace-loving species. They've been called the "Make Love Not War" ape. They've been held up for contrast with chimpanzees, a very closely related ape biologically-speaking, but one that is very different behaviorally. Chimps are strongly male dominant and are physically violent to the point of engaging in deadly gang-style warfare with their neighbors. Plus, they assemble organized male hunting parties that target monkeys. Red colobus are their favorite prey. They share the meat too, favoring their allies and friends. Bonobos, in contrast, lack male dominance (about half of troops are female-led) and are far less physically violent with each other, preferring to solve conflicts through other means. They've never been observed perpetrating gang warfare on neighboring troops or hunting meat, let along eating it.

Now, two reports have been published that may upset what was understood to be unique about bonobos. One study reports that researchers combed through wild bonobos' poo and found something surprising — monkey bones. Picking through monkey doo may not be a glamorous job, but it is the best way to find out what primates actually eat. It turns out bonobos eat monkeys. The other study reports that research actually observed their hunts.

Five hunts were observed. Three were successful and 2 of the 3 kills were made by females. It's a small sample of hunts so it's really not enough to decide whether there is a sex difference in hunting. But, if there is, it would stand in stark contrast to chimpanzee hunts which are overwhelmingly male affairs.

Time will tell whether this milestone research changes what we think of bonobos. Perhaps they'll shed some of their peaceful reputation — or maybe they won't. After all, just because you eat meat doesn't mean you're violent.

Current Biology. 2008. Primate hunting by bonobos at LuiKotale, Salonga National Park.

Folia Primatologica. 2008. New Records on Prey Capture and Meat Eating by Bonobos at Lui Kotale, Salonga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo.

'Little Baby Thumpins'

You wouldn't think that reading Developmental Psychobiology journals on a Friday night was at all fun, but I love that stuff! What can I say, I am a nerd. I read college level astronomy textbooks when I was in 6th grade. That probably makes me a dork, but I don't care. Knowledge is thrilling. Science is thrilling.

My reading was sparked by a question I had, based on an observation and a hypothesis. See, my developing baby is now kicking. Even Mr. Field Notes can feel it. Most first-timers can't detect the baby's movements this early so I chalk it up to being highly observant. The kicking got me wondering if babies who move and kick a lot grow up to have highly active personalities. Do they grow up to be more extraverted and bold? That's the question I had in mind when I started my mini lit review.

All good literature reviews begin with knowing which key words to search for. I think a lot of students have trouble at this stage, which makes sense. They don't yet have the jargon of the field down enough to know which terms will quickly get them the relevant research. I also think they don't realize that they don't know which terms to search for and don't ask for help early enough so they waste time searching around for stuff like "baby personality development" and maybe adding in something like "movement during pregnancy" when a simple "fetal movement infant temperament" would return the landmark research right away.

In psychology, temperament is the key word. It's like personality — in the sense that it refers to an individual's pattern of behavior and emotional states (level of arousal, motivation, mood) that are apparent and stable over time. But — it's a little different in the sense that temperament typically only refers to what is seen in infants and it's more often thought of as genetically based, if not nearly completely genetically determined.

Temperament varies from individual to individual. Babies may have the same level of motor development and ability level but differ in their mood (calm to irritable), how distractable they are and their ability to adapt to changes. These patterns are believed to be dependent on inherited physiology — concentration of neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and epinephrine as well as density of receptors on the brain's neurons for those neurotransmitters. They form a biological basis for personality development.

I would go so far as to say that all animals have a temperament. Even some paramecium are more active and mobile than others. Behavioral differences are one of the variables that make evolution possible. These difference fall into three broad areas:

• Emotionality: calm vs. irritable, easy vs. difficult to soothe during distress, frequency of crying and tantrums
• Activity: lethargic vs. energetic
• Sociability: reclusive vs. social, prefers to be alone vs. with others

Katy and Yuki, the lovable Newfoundlands that grace these pages now and then, have remarkably different temperaments. Katy is incredibly difficult to soothe if she's upset and is a bit of a loner. Yuki on the other hand, calms down easily and strongly prefers to be with others. These two are very different in temperament in spite of growing up on the same farm, with the same family and having the same biological parents. I suppose Forrest Gump would now say something like: DNA is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get!

But, I sure would like to be able to predict whether Baby Field Notes is going to be hell on wheels or a relatively easy baby. I thought perhaps fetal movement would be associated in some way with later temperament.

These are precisely the kind of thoughts that lead scientists into new avenues of research or at least a decent start at a thesis or dissertation topic. My brief review of the literature suggests there's no need for me to embark on a new field of research — it's actually already been done before and the question is answered.** It turns out there is evidence that the roots of temperament begin during the prenatal period and can be observed in fetal movements. Cool beans!

More fetal movement is associated with being easier to calm but also to being more active, and perhaps hyperactive. I can handle that. But, I still don't know whether 'Little Baby Thumpins' kicks any more or less than other developing fetuses. I guess I get what I get! I'm excited either way, but I really would love love love to have an "easy" baby. Mine just seems to kick and squirm an awful lot!

DiPietro et al., Child Development, 67(5):2568-2583, 1996

Hello Wood Floors! A little photo tour...

It's finally done! The carpet is out and the wood floors are in. We just need to finish staining the wood transition pieces that go between the dining room and the living and it will be complete. I spent all of yesterday afternoon putting the new decorative touches on the living room... and cleaning off the dining room table that had an absolutely hideous amount of stuff on it.

Katy made herself right at home right away. 'Moving in' to a new room gave me the opportunity to decide what to keep, what to move, and in some cases — what to get rid of. I had a lot of fun combing through our collection of handmade art to redeploy it in new spots. I find that if things don't move, they fade into the background where they are eventually unseen. We have a large collection of raku pottery that is now displayed on the shelving unit behind Katy. I decided to keep the funky blue and white fish noren from Japan that hangs in the doorway to the baby room.

Next to the entertainment armoire I deployed some iron lantern candle holders on top of our speakers. I left the wall ones where they were at. My little bamboo plant sits behind one speaker and I moved my gardenia plant to the floor next to it. Hopefully it will get enough light there. Now that it's in a more public place it is bound to get more watering. I've also got a big umbrella 'tree' in the opposite corner that is also on the floor. Time will tell how ill-fated this move was to the plants, but I really like where they're at now and we haven't had any disasters or even any close calls yet.

The table in between the newfs' favorite "Big Comfy Chair" and our couch now has a chimp candle holder and a glorious wooden box that Mr. Field Notes mom gave us for our anniversary one year. It used to be way up on top of the entertainment armoire where it just gathered dust. I love having out in the open where I can better appreciate it. It's definitely among my favorite pieces of art. The stargazer lilies are from Mr. Field Notes for Valentine's Day. They are my favorite cut flower. The smell is intoxicating. Like jasmine and gardenia. Mr. Field Notes thinks they smell like urine but he gets them for me anyway. What a hero =D

The 'baby room' still has a ways to go. I'm not going to mess with it until sometime in April. We had planned to take the shelves off the wall and move them to the dining room but then Mr. Field Notes told me that as a kid, he would have thought a room with this many shelves and books was way cool. That it would have been perfect. And I got to thinking about it too and agreed that I would also have liked to have that much shelf space for books and to display my stuff.

Many of the books are still going to move to the dining room because I am not about to just hand over all of my primatology, psychology and evolution books to Baby Field Notes. Maybe BFN won't even like primates. Maybe monkeys will be boring because that's what mom does. Who knows. But the kid should and will have her own books, or his own books. So the shelves are staying.

But, the hideous orange curtains are going once I figure out what new colors to make the room. NO pastels! That's for sure. I like this baby bedding set at Overstock.com but it's not very 'babyish' in the sense of bunnies, teddy bears, bouncing frogs and whatnot. It's rather mature. I like it though, but then again, I've been mature since I was born. Just ask my parents.

Why Chimpanzees Should Never Be Pets

I'm sure by now you've heard about the chimp who was stabbed by his owner then shot to death by Connecticut police after he attacked the owner's friend.

Sandra Herold had owned the 14 year old chimp, Travis, since he was three days old, the AP story says. The friend almost, and may yet, die. Chimpanzees, even 'domesticated' ones like Travis are incredibly unpredictable and incredibly strong. They are extremely dangerous. In fact, all great apes and most large monkeys, such as baboons, are strong enough to literally rip human limbs off.

Why on earth anyone keeps them as pets is beyond me but even more so, why they are even allowed to be kept as pets anywhere is puzzling. I guess people here about Jane Goodall's studies and human-like they are and think they can actually be domesticated. Well, they can't and anyone who tries is a god-damned idiot.

“It’s a horrible thing, but I’m not a horrible person and he’s not a horrible chimp,” Herold the owner said.

Well, I agree. He probably wasn't a horrible chimp. But she is in my book a horrible person who should go to jail for manslaughter. I am dead serious about that.

Apparently the chimp starred in Old Navy and Coca-Cola TV commercials, rode around town in her truck, and made appearances at casinos. She had to have profited off of him. I think it's disgusting all around. No private individual has any business owning an endangered species, as chimpanzees are. And no one should be allowed to keep them as pets.

Thankfully the one bright spot in all of this is that it just might lead to the changing of laws on keeping exotic animals. Currently, CT like some other states, doesn't prohibit primates being kept as pets but that may change if the head of CT's Department of Environmental Protection gets her way. She's asking the legislature to support a proposed law to ban all potentially dangerous exotic animals from being kept in residential settings. That would include chimpanzees, crocodiles and poisonous snakes. Another similar law banning all primates is also being considered.

I think it's very good idea. If you'd like to keep up with the latest developments on this story, The Stramford newspaper's website is the place to go. Just click here.

The Agony of Home Renovations

Really, why do they all have to take six times longer than you estimated?

Over the weekend Mr. Field Notes and I decided, after one of our usual 'Yeah, I totally agree with you' brief-but-weighty conversations, that we would rip out our carpeting and install wood flooring.

Good Bye Carpet

With a baby on the way and carpeting that just three years ago was brand spankin' new but now is worse than horrid, we thought it was time to do something about it. I know you can't tell in the photo, but that carpet is seriously stained and spotted.

You see, the youngster Yuki (worst Newfoundland puppy on the planet) continues to not sleep through the night and then pees all over the carpet when no one magically wakes up to let out Yuki, the silent dog standing by the back door in the dead of the night who expects people to just know when she's communicating via mental telepathy that she needs out. Her communication is piss poor.

This was never a problem with Katy. She always cried at the back door to go out. No matter where you are in the house, you know when Big K needs to go out. She cried to go out early on so it was easy to reinforce. With Yuki, the only way she communicates is through barking. But never at any point did she spontaneously use that bark to go out. Very, very, very rarely she cries to go out. It's almost inaudible, but everytime we hear it, we let her out immediately. You'd think she'd learn but no. No one is up in the middle of the night to correct her for peeing on the rug. I know we have got to figure something out, and I have some ideas, so at least until we get that worked out, clean up will be a lot easier.

You'd think Yuki is the only impetus for the house transformation, but Katy isn't perfect either by any means. Katy (most sensitive Newfoundland on the planet) has done a number on the carpet her fair share of the time. She throws up, not constantly, but just enough to be annoying when it's on the carpet — which for her is nearly every stinkin' time. She has hang-ups, one of which is that vomiting cannot happen on any other surface than carpeting.

So, we decided to make clean-up easier and improve the smell of the house in one easy step: Install wood floors. Piece o'cake.

Heh.

We're 2 days into the project and it is looking really, really good. But, like all DIY home improvements, problems ranging from small to large creep up. Non-square walls, non-level sub floors, transitional wood pieces that don't fit right, etc. It can all be fixed, but it takes time.

We've got all the furniture (except for the bedroom which we're leaving the carpet in) crammed into the dining room which already has wood floors. It's a real obstacle course. And we had to unhook the internet. We've got it going again now that the "Baby Room" is finished enough to plug the Airport into.

Yeah! Internet again! It's kind of crazy how dependent I am on the internet, but when it goes out it cramps my style like nothing else. I think I'd sooner do without hot running water. Okay, maybe not, but that's the best thing I could come up with for comparison.

Hopefully I'll have some finished pics to show off by the weekend. Right now it feels like we're just moving into a new house. It's fun and exciting and a pain-in-the-butt all at once.

But these floors are looking sooooo good and the house already smells a thousand times better.

Cucumbers & Morning Sickness by Design

Cucumbers must have some highly toxic components because they continue to be a food that smells absolutely disgusting to me. Unfortunately, someone who sits near me at work loves them. Fortunately though, the scent aversion is all part of the mind's design — a pregnant mind.

Morning sickness, or rather pregnancy sickness for it truly occurs at any time of day, appears to be a bona fide adaption in an evolutionary sense. It's adaptive, meaning it is helpful for us as a species, but more than that, it is an adaption — a mechanism with enough complexity, precision, and efficiency to indicate a functional design.

Long, long, long before I ever became pregnant I read Margie Profet's landmark research on the evolutionary significance of morning sickness and was impressed enough to remember that although it is seriously annoying — it is actually a very good thing to experience while pregnant. It means the baby has a higher chance of being healthy and a lower chance of miscarriage.

What I didn't recall, until I recently reread the paper, is that the evidence is actually quite impressive. I also learned that the author herself is impressive. Having never formally studied biology or evolution and with only a BA degree — and a brain — she scored a $250,000 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant to study the phenomenon. Freaking awesome! And jealous! I could have spared myself all those wasted years slaving away in grad school... grrrr. However, they did land me a couple of killer teaching positions!

So, McGenus Profet accumulated the evidence that showed that the nausea, food and scent aversions, and vomiting associated with the First Trimester of pregnancy represent an adaption. Previously, it had been thought that it was all a sickness, a side effect of pregnancy hormones with no benefits, only costs. And, those costs are significant. Women who experience pregnancy sickness can experience weight loss and inadequate nutrition from avoiding and/or throwing up nutritious though unpalatable foods. But there is a method behind the months of madness.

Evidence pregnancy sickness is an adaption

• Many foods contain compounds that can produce malformations, sometimes fatal ones, in developing embryos.
• Women who have pregnancy sickness selectively avoid foods that indicate those toxic components are present.
• The onset of pregnancy sickness coincides with the time the embryo becomes vulnerable to the toxins.
• Pregnancy sickness ends when the embryo's need for calories for growth outweighs its vulnerability to the toxins.
• Changes in the olfactory system of a woman who has pregnancy sickness cause her to avoid substances with those toxins. Basically, a more sensitive sense of smell and lowered threshold for finding scents disgusting help a woman avoid foods that could harm the developing baby.
• Finally, and most important for establishing pregnancy sickness is adaptive, women who experience moderate to severe pregnancy sickness have greater pregnancy success rates.

Cool beans if you ask me! The part I forgot was the 'sickness' ending when the fetus isn't as vulnerable as it is hungry.

So the list of no-go foods? The article pointed out that celery, cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, bananas, oranges, apples, potatoes, soybeans, black pepper, cocoa and nutmeg (among lots of other foods, especially green, leafy veggies) all have compounds that are known carcinogens. Although they are in small enough quantities to be safe for adult consumption, they are harmful to a fetus.

So glad, in way, to have experienced the morning sickness phenomenon! Equally glad, if not more so, that it is going away!!

Baby Monkey Faces & Feeding Time

Baby monkeys, to me, are some of the cutest critters on the planet so I was really excited when I got to see them at the hot springs in Japan. The one to the left and on the left in the above pic was having fun soaking in the water until her little friend left. I caught her mid-holler when she was crying out. She carried on crying for quite a while until deciding her friend wasn't coming back. Then she just got out of the pool and ran off. That was just one of many instances of vocalizations I heard at the monkey park. It was raucous at one point during food distribution - monkeys chasing each other, fighting, shrieking, biting, wrestling, mounting — you name it.

Wild monkeys are provisioned in Japan. Provisioning, or giving the monkeys food, is a technique for getting monkeys to stick around close for closer, and longer, periods of observation. It's a much criticized technique in primatology because it distorts natural monkey behavior, i.e. creating situations that would otherwise not occur. Nevertheless, it is used because sometimes it is the only way to actually observe monkeys in the wild. Jane Goodall used the technique during her early observations of chimpanzees and was criticized for it, but it did help her gain the trust of the chimps and allowed her to accumulate a wealth of previously unknown knowledge of their behavior. Her observations are now widely accepted. Also, zoo and laboratory observations and studies continue to make up a good deal of research in primatology and they are surely a lot less ecologically valid. Anyways, enough primatology methodology talk - back to the monkeys!

During the winter in Japan, food is scarce for the snow monkeys. But, provisioning is not something done to keep the monkeys alive and fed during this time. They eat mostly bark and whatever leaves or winter shoots they scrounge up. Monkeys also bulk up in the months prior to winter and babies are born in advance enough to make it through the rough winter. Together, it's enough to get them through the lean months.

As I learned at the park, snow monkeys are provisioned with less desirable food than is available in the wild. So, sometimes during the fat months, monkeys don't even bother to come down for the easily available barley when the have berries in the forest.

The You've Got to Be Kidding Me Panties.

Here I am minding my own business, quite literally, and I click on a link for what I think is going to be forget-me-not pansies information. See, for a client I would like to include growing zones and re-seeding information with the paper germination instructions. So I click on the link to read about Forget-Me-Not Panties, thinking it's just a misspelling of pansies.

Oh so veeeeeeeery wrong.

With forget-me-not panties, you can "protect her privates" according to the ad copy.

* Ever worry about your wife cheating?

* Want to know where your daughter is late at night?

* Need to know when your girlfriend's temperature is rising?

Evidently this amazing underwear uses a GPS and sensor to give you up-to-date temperature, heart rate and location of the wearers nether regions. All it needs is regular watch battery — and a payment of 180 bucks. For one.

And what's perfect is these puppies are made in Japan.

Giggling my pants off now... though not literally. Whoever is tempted to buy a set of these babies surely has to recognize that women are smart enough to figure out something fishy is up with with that weird little flower and funny bump that feels an awful lot like a watch battery — and remove it. And, how the heck do you wash those things and still maintain the integrity of the electronic chip?

The website doesn't say, but don't worry, they apparently aren't for sale anyway.

Jigokudani Monkey Park: For watching snow monkeys bathe in hot springs!

A relatively young, probably female, snow monkey relaxes in the sulfurous natural hot springs in January at Jigokudani, Japan. The mountainous valley is part of the Joshin-Etsu Kogen National Park and is near Nagano, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics. The area gets plenty of snow during the winter and is quite cold, but the monkeys have adapted to the environment, growing thick coats during the harsh winter. They are the northernmost dwelling monkeys in the world and are native to Japan.

The area was difficult to get to. However, that did not stop throngs of tourists from being there. I think the vast majority of them arrived on tour buses. We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Nagano and then hitched a ride on a series of much, much slower trains to the town of Yudanaka. There, we caught a bus up to Kanbayashi Onsen after which we walked the 30 minutes to the entrance to the monkey park. It took 4 hours all told.

There was apparently a direct train we could have been on that goes more or less straight to Yudanaka, but we unfortunately ended up on about 4 different trains, having transfered from one train to another repeatedly — and spent about 45 minutes standing around for a train in the middle of nowhere at one point. It was super cold. And, the path to the monkey park began with a very steep slope that, being winter, was icy and very difficult to safely negotiate, especially coming down. So, if you plan to visit this monkey park at the best time of year (when the snow is falling) be prepared and carry a walking stick or crampons or something. And, be sure to catch the speedier, direct train to Yudanaka!

After all was said and done, the monkey park experience was well worth the effort. Once there, we got to watch monkeys swim, dive in, fight, groom and play until we just got too cold to stand it any longer. Standing near the hot spring kept me warmer, but it smelled strongly of sulfur and the rocky rim was covered with monkey poo. That didn't stop me from getting in close to snap some photos though!

Instead of elbowing my way into the crowd of photographers with huge camera lenses and expensive looking cameras, I bided my time and figured out the rhythm of the place. Once feeding time came, the monkeys cleared out of their swimming hole and so did all of the people. When I sensed that the monkeys were just about done eating, I headed for the poop-coated rocky edge of the hot springs and staked out a spot. Soon I was joined by the throng of cameras. You'd think Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were there skinny dipping!

The monkeys didn't mind the paparazzi presence at all.

Spectacular Japanese Signs you have to see

Signs in Japan are nothing short of spectacular. Sometimes spectacularly bad. I think a good sign communicates an unambiguous message. The truly awful ones in Japan, and there are an impressive number and variety of them, all leave much room for interpretation. Here are two of the truly great signs followed by the most spectacularly awful sign I may have ever seen.

The Inscrutable Sign

Its meaning was the subject of much conversation. If you can provide a convincing interpretation of what the sign means, I have a green tea KitKat candy bar I'll send to you as a reward. We are still puzzling it out ourselves.

In case you have difficulty reading the sign as an image, here's the text:
Please do not see it while drinking drink. The PET bottle caps it and put it in a bag, and please carry it. Please see the thing which the chief does not have after finishing drinking.

And here is the sign in context, on a vending machine near a rest area on the grounds of Nijo castle in Kyoto.
And, just in case you come away thinking that only the dog-related signs in Japan are clear, here's one to dispel that notion:


To me, it looks like a dog giving a pair of cats a lecture about garbage, but really, your guess is as good as mine!

My Own Snow Monkeys

True to form, newfies love water in whatever form it takes. Before we left for Japan, we got hit with a couple of big snow storms, one after the other — much to the newfies delight. Yuki, whose name means 'snow' in Japenese, really got a huge treat. We had trouble getting them to come back inside, and even when we did lure them in with treats, they whined at the back door ten minutes after refueling (read: gulping water and drooling it all over the kitchen floor).



I've had to clear out saved video on my hard drive to make room for photos from Japan, so that's why I'm using 'old' material!

I'm back - And with loads of NEWS!

For the last 2-plus weeks I've been in Japan! And, for the last 4 months I've been... pregnant!

See here for why that is actually a very, very big surprise. I am not a believer in miracles in the religious sense at all, but as far as miracles might represent statistically improbable events, me being pregnant is very much a miracle. Now that I'm out of the first trimester, I finally feel comfortable talking about it with others. Sometime around the end of July/beginning of August we'll have our lives rocked. I know what to expect, but also have a healthy (?) amount of anxiety over what I am sure is totally normal stuff.

Over the next few weeks and months, I'll share plenty of stories and photos from my travels in Japan and no doubt news and articles about pregnancy and parenting. It's a subject matter perfect for an evolutionary lens. Not that knowing the evolutionary underpinnings of morning sickness makes it at all easier!

And, for those of you dying to know whether I saw any of Japan's famous snow monkeys — the answer is YES! And I have photos and video clips too. Here's one of my favorites.

Yes - my blog is on hiatus - but it's temporary!

A note to my readers who have noticed I haven't posted in a while: I will start blogging again around the first of February after a much needed vacation, so please stop by then and see what I've been up to all month =D