Happy Father's Day

                        Happy Father's Day to Chris, the guy who is always up for a roar, the dad who is playful, curious, up for the challenge, firm yet loving, amused and involved. Totally grateful for this guy.

a minute of gratitude

                Yup, Chris is  standing! Standing and starting to walk. The docs gave him the all-clear to drive and said things are coming along with his healing, so he is starting to put weight on the leg. He says it's like pins-and-needles, but it's good to be doing it. We also learned that his bone density is not good, which explains why it's so easy for him to break bones. (The man lived in the PNW for 20 years and never took his Vitamin D. Let this be a cautionary tale.) But, the good part of that is that it's reversible with diet and vitamins and exercise. It may take years but he can turn it around.

I am in awe of his determination to get better, and how quickly he's been able to do it. We're not all the way there, not yet, but when I think about how far he and our whole family have come, it really is so much better than it was.

In Quaker speak, a minute is a statement of strong belief that a Meeting or an individual would like to publicly share. Ever since the accident, I've been writing a minute of gratitude in my head. It's been hard and painful and scary, but we've also been so lucky and supported and nourished.

When Chris called me while waiting for the ambulance, I frantically texted some friends and asked for Light. From those first panicked horrible minutes when I knew he was hurt but I didn't know the extent of it, I knew we were being held, and it kept me going through the fear and anxiety.
That was the beginning of our communities coming forward to support our family, and when things were
really stressful, I would just recite my list of thank yous in my head.

For the friend who came over and just helped me think through what decisions I needed to make in those panicked early moments.
For the people who watched my kids, sometimes for most of a day on short notice.
For the people who brought us food, almost every night for five weeks.
For the friend who came over and jumped my car, when my distracted self had left the inside light on.
For the friends who conspired to send us each a gorgeous flower arrangement and give our days some beauty.
For the friend who came over and moved my couch so we could make space for Chris's hospital bed.
For my amazing mom who said "when can I come?" and co-parented with me for weeks. She's the only reason my kids had Halloween costumes, and the only reason I didn't go insane.
For the family who sent us love and support from afar.


I don't know what we would have done without all of you. I really don't.

I also really loved the honesty that people gave me. "Cooking is just not how I'm going to help you guys."
"I really can't do childcare but I could do this." I loved the gift of people being realistic about what they are capable of and offering only what they could. Because that gift of being authentic and honest is so valuable and precious.

I've been on the other side of this equation, I've been the one bringing meals and organizing the gifts. That part is fun. It's fun to give and feel generous and useful and connected.
Being on the other side is hard. It's hard to be the one who needs help. It's hard to feel vulnerable, to know that you can't do it on your own.
We all have our chances to be the giver and the receiver, all our lives. I hope that next time I am the giver, I can be as honest and realistic as the ones who have helped us. I hope that next time I am the receiver (please let that be many many years from now)  I can remember that we all have our seasons of needing help.

Meister Eckhart said "If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."

I can't decide if they are the smallest words or the biggest words I know. Both, I think.

Thank you.

Trends in Baby Names, Part 2

At the risk of taking over this blog with more baby name graphs and analysis, I thought I would put a couple of more interesting ones I made, based on Polly's assertion that the name Brixton will eventually be one the top 1000 names for boys.

The Social Security name data for lists 14,258 unique spellings for names given to 5 or more baby boys who were born in 2011.  With 66 of the 1.8+ million boys being named Brixton you might think that it would be quite a while before Brixton cracked the top 1000, but the funny thing about names is that parents tend to like a lot of the same names, especially for boys.  

The top 10 names account for 8.8% of the number of baby girls and 9% of the number of boys.  The top 100 account for 34.3% and 46.5% respectively.  Or, nearly half the boys born in 2011 were given names in the top 100! 

This is further complicated by the fact that people often use alternate spellings for names which are pronounced the same way (i.e. Jayden and Jaiden). But the SSN treats them as unique names, so I will too.

Another way of looking at this is at how many babies were given the name which falls in the 10th, 100th and 1000th most popular names.

You can see from this that in order to break into the top 1000 names, there need to be around 192 babies named Brixton in a given year. Breaking the top 100 is much more difficult, while the top 10 is reserved for old favorites like Daniel, William, Michael, and Alexander.

There's a couple of neat graphs which can be made showing the percentage of the total each baby name represents and the cumulative percentage (shown for the top 1000 names).  You can see that the curves that the top boy name account for a larger percentage of the total than girl names; meaning that there is more diversity in girl names.

There's actually a name for this type of distribution in mathematics: The Pareto (or Bradford) distribution.  There's a bunch of math which would give you a formula that would describe each of the curves, but I'm not that much of a nerd. For analysis on a more nerdier level than I can accomplish, check out this research paper on the effects of popular culture on the naming patterns in France.

So, the question then is, about how long will it take for Brixton to break into the top 1000 if the popularity of the name keeps increasing at the same rate?  For this question I'm a little fuzzy on how to estimate the formula for the curve, but Excel has some cool formulas (LOGEST and LINEST) for estimating logarithmic or linear formulas based on statistical data.  So here's a projection based on existing data.

If trends continue at the same rate, Brixton may crack the top 1000 names around 2016. However, parents are fickle beings, and the popularity of names with 'x' (Paxton, Braxton, Brixton) may wear off, especially as more and more kids carry those types of names.

All I can say is that we've done our part for the name Brixton, it's up to the rest of America now.

Trends in Baby Names

For those that don't know, Polly spends quite a bit of her waking (and sleeping) hours thinking about names.  She reads name blogs, discusses names in online forums devoted to the subject and looks forward every year for the big holiday for names and the people who love them: Mother's Day. That's the day when the Social Security Administration releases their baby name statistics and name devotees can discuss trending topics in names.  

Sometimes Polly will ask me, apropos of nothing, whether I like name A or B more.  I am horrible at this game, since I can barely remember my own name, let alone other people names, and will answer A or B almost at random.  Then Polly will ask me 'why?' and I will mumble out an answer usually along the lines of 'I donno' or 'just cuz.' 

Sigh. I'm sure this is insanely frustrating, sort of like if someone didn't think 3-D printers or a $25 computer the size of a paperclip were inherently cool. To make it up to her I try to put my elite hacking skills ('findstr' and Excel) to use making some more nifty graphs which show the trending popularity of some specific names. 

Polly, I love you, here are some more graphs!

Polly is convinced that the name 'Brixton' will eventually be in the top 1000 names for boys (due to the similarity to Braxton and Paxton).   Thoughts?

Trends in Reading for Q2 for Polly

We are pleased to report to shareholders that Polly has shown steady growth in reading for the second fiscal quarter of the year (and a sneak peak at the third quarter). While the number of books per month has remained steady, the number of pages per month has shown growth, with an impressive 3901 pages in April. Even more impressive are trends in the average number of pages per book, which show an increase as well, leading us to think that Polly has been taking on larger books during the spring, which investors need to see for sustained reading growth.

However, statistics from February show a large number of books read, with the smallest number of pages per book and the largest number of pages per day, leading analysts to believe that Polly focused on what the industry refers to as 'young adult' literature during the doldrums of the middle of winter. This shows the versatility of Polly as she reacts proactively to ensure sustained reading in a volatile market.

Overall results were 8,219 pages for the quarter from 26 books, with an average of 90.32 pages per day. Polly is very pleased with her results for the second quarter of the fiscal year and the initial statistics for the third quarter suggest similar strong growth for shareholders.

Please note that these statistics do not reflect reading in the 'children's books' and 'magazine' categories which may also impact shareholder dividends.

Papa's home!!!

Happy Birthday Chris!!!

Happy Birthday Chris! We love you love you love you.