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November is Prematurity Awareness Month. This is especially important to our family because our son, Eli, was born prematurely. He spent 12 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) but thanks to the hard work of all of his doctors and nurses, he prospered and is now a happy healthy baby boy.

The March of Dimes is working to reduce premature births and their website is an amazing resource. Take a few minutes to read more about premature birth. And if you’re expecting, learn what you can do while you’re pregnant and before pregnancy to help you have a healthy full-term baby. And for new families, learn more about parenting a baby in the NICU.

And of course, consider donating to the March of Dimes when you do your end of year charitable giving.

Also, I’ve tweeted about her in the past, but we wouldn’t be where we are now in terms of neonatology if it wasn’t for the amazing Dr. Apgar who effectively founded the field. Read more about her in this WSJ article.

As Nicole will attest, I’m constantly reading newspaper articles and blog posts on my iPhone, on the computer, while shaving, etc. Here are the three most interesting ones I’ve read this week:

Did a Time-Traveling Bird Sabotage the Collider?

In a series of audacious papers, Nielsen and Ninomiya have suggested that setbacks to the LHC occur because of “reverse chronological causation,” which is to say, sabotage from the future. The papers suggest that the Higgs boson may be “abhorrent to nature” and the LHC’s creation of the Higgs sometime in the future sends ripples backward through time to scupper its own creation.

Computer Productivity: Why it is Important that Software Projects Fail

As the primary net effect of software is to facilitate bureaucratic complexity it is therefor essential that software projects fail if society is to function effectively. In this way the heavy burden of guilt can be lifted from the shoulders of the numerous project managers that have subconsciously devoted their careers to ensuring that projects rarely, if ever, succeed.

Leaked ACTA Internet Provisions: Three Strikes and a Global DMCA

… the US government appears to be pushing for Three Strikes to be part of the new global IP enforcement regime which ACTA is intended to create – despite the fact that it has been categorically rejected by the European Parliament and by national policymakers in several ACTA negotiating countries, and has never been proposed by US legislators.

Sorry this post is a week late: Eli has just been keeping us so busy. Eli turned 9-months old this past week. With that achievement came a visit to the pediatrician. Eli has slimmed down just a bit relative to his peers, weighing in at 21 lbs (50th percentile), but he continues to get taller and taller, topping the charts at 30 inches (90th percentile).

Eli spent much of the past month up on all fours, rocking, and crawling backward. Yes, backwards. This would be quite impressive except that he was actually trying to go forward. We could imagine the frustration of trying to get to your favorite toy/person only to find yourself further away each time? Luckily, a few days ago he figured out how to put in drive and successfully crawled a few steps forward (captured on video below). Now he’s crawling all over the place! He’s also able to get himself into a seated position from laying down.

Eli continues to babble up a storm. He often says things that sound like words but don’t yet have meaning like “mum”, “hey”, “hed”. He really enjoys it when we repeat what he says and will go back and forth having a “conversation” for a few minutes.

Feeding Eli has been interesting this month. He’s not really that into breakfast yet, but for the first part of the month was eating quite a bit of pureed fruits and veggies for lunch and dinner. Within the past two weeks, however, he’s started only eating about half as much as before and then he will try to wrestle the spoon from us after a bit. But he’s started eating more finger foods (puffs, cheerios, cheese, carrots, string beans, etc.) and on Halloween we discovered he’s a big fan of garlic bread.

We thought our sleep troubles from last month had resolved themselves but Eli again started waking up 1-3 times a night and getting up earlier and earlier. Daylight Savings did nothing to help the problem (whoever invented time changes clearly didn’t have a baby). We’ve recently started some sleep training which is having good results. Eli can put himself to sleep at bedtime and naps with only a modicum of crying. He’s slept through the night the past couple of nights from about 8-5:45 (one morning til 6:55!) so now we’re just hoping to move the wake up time to a little later each day. It’s been suggested that, while counter-intuitive, an earlier bedtime will actually cause babies his age to sleep longer so we’re going to slowly try that too.

Eli is currently drooling like a waterfall. We can see two bottom teeth below the gum line and the pediatrician said they should both pop through any day now.

You can find Eli’s Halloween pictures below and see all the pictures from this month on Nicole’s Smugmug site. And I hope to shortly have some videos of Eli up.