The tea ceremony
Occasionally we give Devon some chamomile tea before bed; Walt is convinced that it helps her sleep better. I'm not convinced of that, but she likes it, and I'm all for developing a taste for tisanes. Tonight she had a cup and was making a huge production of drinking it -- I think she stretched this tea drinking over at least 10-15 minutes. She'd pick up the mug, take a small sip, put it down. Then a moment later, she'd pick it up again, have another small sip, then offer it to me for a sip and then Walt for a sip. Rinse, repeat. It was taking on almost a ritualized feeling, and Walt was joking that while most people have heard of the Japanese tea ceremonies, very few know about the equally elaborate Devonese tea ceremonies.
She was in a really chipper mood tonight, and spent a lot of time jumping on the bed with Daddy. She's gotten into this game where she'll get on the bed with a parent (or both), look at you and then fall backwards onto the bed. It's like one of those "circle of trust" exercises that you'd do in a ropes course with a team -- fall backwards and assume that someone will catch you. She loves this and will do it again and again -- of course the downside is that it gets her all riled up before bed, so it takes a while to calm her down again. I actually had to get in the bath tonight to lure her in, since she had no intention of going in herself. Between that and the constantly expanding filibuster, she managed to eke out a whole 20 more minutes after her official bedtime.
Devon is getting better and better at mimicking language and subsequently remembering words. Last night as part of dinner she had a tofu dog. We've said this phrase to her before, since she's eaten them in the past, but before last night we had a bit of a dry spell with the tofu dogs, so she hadn't heard the word in quite a while. Tonight while in her high chair she spontaneously called out for a "tofu og," and it was actually a very understandable phrase. I'm also realizing that when I say something, she's often repeating it back to me. She has probably been doing this for quite a while, but it's only now that it's similar enough to the word I said for me to realize that she's repeating. I'm continually amazed at how quickly her vocabulary is growing.
I had an interesting discussion in my staff meeting the other day about design for the web. The designers had gone to a user experience conference and were reporting back on it, and one of the things they mentioned was this idea of illusion in web design. At a very simple level, the concept is that you don't want to show your dirty laundry to your web customers -- so if your system is really messy underneath, you need to create the illusion to customers that it's really simple. One of the concepts they discussed was the idea of mystery -- you want to show enough information to someone to ensure that the information is, indeed, what they want and there is enough to compel them to click deeper into the site.
Later as I was thinking of it, I realized it's the same concept in English as synecdoche, or using a part to refer to a whole (e.g. you may refer to the "sails on the horizon" when you mean a boat is on the horizon). I thought this idea was really quite compelling, however, and that every good web site should employ a significant use of synecdoche at the higher levels of the site. No one wants to be bombarded with tons of details on the home page, and part of the art of a good web site is to make the information that you do present on the home page just tantilizing enough to encourage users to go deeper into the site. I'll have to think about how we can better apply this to the work that we're doing.
She was in a really chipper mood tonight, and spent a lot of time jumping on the bed with Daddy. She's gotten into this game where she'll get on the bed with a parent (or both), look at you and then fall backwards onto the bed. It's like one of those "circle of trust" exercises that you'd do in a ropes course with a team -- fall backwards and assume that someone will catch you. She loves this and will do it again and again -- of course the downside is that it gets her all riled up before bed, so it takes a while to calm her down again. I actually had to get in the bath tonight to lure her in, since she had no intention of going in herself. Between that and the constantly expanding filibuster, she managed to eke out a whole 20 more minutes after her official bedtime.
Devon is getting better and better at mimicking language and subsequently remembering words. Last night as part of dinner she had a tofu dog. We've said this phrase to her before, since she's eaten them in the past, but before last night we had a bit of a dry spell with the tofu dogs, so she hadn't heard the word in quite a while. Tonight while in her high chair she spontaneously called out for a "tofu og," and it was actually a very understandable phrase. I'm also realizing that when I say something, she's often repeating it back to me. She has probably been doing this for quite a while, but it's only now that it's similar enough to the word I said for me to realize that she's repeating. I'm continually amazed at how quickly her vocabulary is growing.
I had an interesting discussion in my staff meeting the other day about design for the web. The designers had gone to a user experience conference and were reporting back on it, and one of the things they mentioned was this idea of illusion in web design. At a very simple level, the concept is that you don't want to show your dirty laundry to your web customers -- so if your system is really messy underneath, you need to create the illusion to customers that it's really simple. One of the concepts they discussed was the idea of mystery -- you want to show enough information to someone to ensure that the information is, indeed, what they want and there is enough to compel them to click deeper into the site.
Later as I was thinking of it, I realized it's the same concept in English as synecdoche, or using a part to refer to a whole (e.g. you may refer to the "sails on the horizon" when you mean a boat is on the horizon). I thought this idea was really quite compelling, however, and that every good web site should employ a significant use of synecdoche at the higher levels of the site. No one wants to be bombarded with tons of details on the home page, and part of the art of a good web site is to make the information that you do present on the home page just tantilizing enough to encourage users to go deeper into the site. I'll have to think about how we can better apply this to the work that we're doing.
posted by Devon Szalva at
9:30 PM
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