10 Months Old Baby Quotes

I`ve got a black woolen hat and it`s got Pervert written across the front of it. It`s the name of the clothing label. And I was with my wife and my baby at the supermarket and I didn`t think. I just put my hat on Clara`s head, because it was cold. And the looks. I couldn`t figure out why I was getting death looks. And then I realized my 10-month old baby`s wearing a hat with the word Pervert written on it and these people were like, `There`s Satan! There`s Satan out with his kid!` And then I made a point of her wearing it every time we went there.

It was an old tradition: landlords barring children from their properties. In the competitive postwar housing market of the late 1940s, landlords regularly turned away families with children and evicted tenants who got pregnant.3 This was evident in letters mothers wrote when applying for public housing. “At present,” one wrote, “I am living in an unheated attic room with a one-year-old baby….Everywhere I go the landlords don’t want children. I also have a ten-year-old boy….I can’t keep him with me because the landlady objects to children. Is there any way that you can help me to get an unfurnished room, apartment, or even an old barn?…I can’t go on living like this because I am on the verge of doing something desperate.” Another mother wrote, “My children are now sick and losing weight….I have tried, begged, and pleaded for a place but [it’s] always ‘too late’ or ‘sorry, no children.’ ” Another wrote, “The lady where I am rooming put two of my children out about three weeks ago and don’t want me to let them come back….If I could get a garage I would take it.”4 When Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them. Some placed costly restrictions on large families, charging “children-damage deposits” in addition to standard rental fees. One Washington, DC, development required tenants with no children to put down a $150 security deposit but charged families with children a $450 deposit plus a monthly surcharge of $50 per child.5 In 1980, HUD commissioned a nationwide study to assess the magnitude of the problem and found that only 1 in 4 rental units was available to families without restrictions.6 Eight years later, Congress finally outlawed housing discrimination against children and families, but as Pam found out, the practice remained widespread.7 Families with children were turned away in as many as 7 in 10 housing searches.8

The last case that Higdon presents is that of Emile, who is from Louisiana and in 1983 was visiting his sick parents at the hospital. One evening while he was at the hospital, a nurse named Debra offered to perform oral sex on him, but only if he wore a condom. After the act was complete, Debra offered to get rid of the condom filled with Emile’s sperm and must have impregnated herself, because nine months later genetic testing showed that Emile was the father of her baby. “The two never had sexual intercourse, only the one instance of oral sex with a condom.”10 The commonality in these three cases was that a man or boy was forced into fatherhood against his will and was then forced by the court against his will to pay child support. Can you imagine the uproar if a fifteen-year-old girl had sex with a thirty-four-year-old man and she was obligated in any way to him by the courts? Or if a woman passed out at a party and a man had sex with her and she was then forced to have the baby? As Warren Farrell says about reproductive rights for men:

Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, LORD, have never forsaken those who seek you. PSALM 9:10 SEPTEMBER 29 A missionary’s wife in central China during World War II knew the Japanese were approaching her city. She was with her baby girl, two months old, and her son, just over a year old. Her husband had been taken to a hospital, himself ill. He was one hundred and fifteen miles away and would not be back for perhaps a month. The poor woman was filled with fear—she was alone and unprotected, in bitter January weather. When morning came, she realized that she was without food for her children. She pulled off the calendar page. That day’s verse stated simply: “So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children” (Genesis 50:21). There was a rap at the door. “We knew you would be hungry,” said a longtime neighbor, “and you didn’t know how to milk the goats. So I have milked your goats. Here is milk for your children.” Will you try to explain this away, handle it on an intellectual basis as just pure coincidence? When you come right down to it, what is coincidence? It is an act of God in the midst of time.

My cold-weather gear left a lot to be desired: black maternity leggings under boot-cut maternity jeans, and a couple of Marlboro Man’s white T-shirts under an extra-large ASU sweatshirt. I was so happy to have something warm to wear that I didn’t even care that I was wearing the letters of my Pac-10 rival. Add Marlboro Man’s old lumberjack cap and mud boots that were four sizes too big and I was on my way to being a complete beauty queen. I seriously didn’t know how Marlboro Man would be able to keep his hands off of me. If I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the feed truck, I’d shiver violently. But really, when it came right down to it, I didn’t care. No matter what I looked like, it just didn’t feel right sending Marlboro Man into the cold, lonely world day after day. Even though I was new at marriage, I still sensed that somehow--whether because of biology or societal conditioning or religious mandate or the position of the moon--it was I who was to be the cushion between Marlboro Man and the cruel, hard world. That it was I who’d needed to dust off his shoulders every day. And though he didn’t say it, I could tell that he felt better when I was bouncing along, chubby and carrying his child, in his feed truck next to him. Occasionally I’d hop out of the pickup and open gates. Other times he’d hop out and open them. Sometimes I’d drive while he threw hay off the back of the vehicles. Sometimes I’d get stuck and he’d say shit. Sometimes we’d just sit in silence, shivering as the vehicle doors opened and closed. Other times we’d engage in serious conversation or stop and make out in the snow. All the while, our gestating baby rested in the warmth of my body, blissfully unaware of all the work that awaited him on this ranch where his dad had grown up. As I accompanied Marlboro Man on those long, frigid mornings of work, I wondered if our child would ever know the fun of sledding on a golf course hill…or any hill, for that matter. I’d lived on the ranch for five months and didn’t remember ever hearing about anyone sledding…or playing golf…or participating in any recreational activities at all. I was just beginning to wrap my mind around the way daily life unfolded here: wake up early, get your work done, eat, relax, and go to bed. Repeat daily. There wasn’t a calendar of events or dinner dates with friends in town or really much room for recreation--because that just meant double the work when you got back to work. It was hard for me not to wonder when any of these people ever went out and had a good time, or built a snowman. Or slept past 5:00 A.M.

probe indicates that Naxals don't want any development in their area. They don't want the children to be educated, they don't want roads to be built. They want tribals to remain in the dark. And to achieve this perverse end, they can go to any extent of violence, even if it means killing an infant. A four-month-old baby was killed in a Jan Adalat in front of her mother as her father was a suspected police informer. Naxals burn mark sheets and transfer certificates of 10th and 12th students, so that they cannot go for further education and migrate from their villages.

None of them could afford to go back and think about that tragedy right now. Amy needed to believe in him. And he had to stay focused on this mom and this boy. He refused to consider the possibility that this was anything more than a missing child. Anything else took him down a road he couldn’t bring himself to travel. That didn’t mean that he didn’t understand the urgency of finding Josh before his mom freaked out completely or before the situation turned into something worse. Any location that attracted a lot of children also had the potential to draw those who preyed on them. With the security staff fanning out, he turned back to Amy. “Let me take the baby, okay? Then we can leave the stroller here with Trish,” he said lightly. The little sweetheart with her blond curls and pink bow in her hair immediately beamed at him in a way that made his heart ache. “Who’s this angel?” he asked, responding to that smile with one of his own. “Her name’s Emma,” Amy said. “She’s eleven months old. Are you sure you want to hold her? I can keep her.” “I don’t mind. I have a niece who’s not much older,” he told her. He gently patted the baby’s back till she settled

The Connecticut River March 2, 1704 Temperature 10 degrees “My theory,” said Eben, “is that being a captive is an honor for the strong and the uncomplaining.” Sarah and Mercy considered this. “Then why is Ruth alive? She complains all day long,” said Sarah. “But she isn’t sobbing,” Mercy pointed out, “and she isn’t actually complaining. She’s calling them names. She attacked her own Indian this afternoon, did you see? She was going to stab him with his own knife.” They giggled. It was scary to watch Ruth, and impossible not to. Instead of a blow to the head, though, Ruth was usually given food. It wasn’t a method anybody else wanted to try. “But Eliza doesn’t fit your theory, Eben,” said Mercy. “She hasn’t spoken since they killed Andrew. If you let go her arm, she stops walking. Yet they’re patient with her.” “I admit Eliza isn’t brave,” said Eben. “She’s in a stupor. Maybe they respect her for caring about her husband so deeply.” Mercy had never liked thinking about Eliza marrying an Indian. But what was her own future now? Would she, would Sarah, would Ruth, end up marrying an Indian? The image of Ruth Catlin agreeing to obey an Indian as her lawfully wedded husband made Mercy laugh. “And they let Sally Burt live,” Sarah went on, “and she’s about to give birth right on the trail. They’re letting her husband walk with her, and he’s the only one they let do that.” Sally’s courage was inspiring. Eight months pregnant, big as a horse, and she bounded along like a twelve-year-old boy. She had even taken part in the snowball fight. “I’m having this baby,” she had said when Mercy complimented her. “It’s my first baby, I know it’s going to be a boy, I know he’ll be strong and healthy, and I know I will be a good mother. That’s that.” In Mercy’s opinion, Sally Burt was holding her husband up and not the other way around. If she could be half as brave as Sally Burt, she would be satisfied.

Figure 2.1 Cortical connections over two years adapted from Conel The top row shows the baby’s cortex at birth, then at one month and at three months. They all look about the same, don’t they? But look what happens at six months (bottom left box): the number of cell bodies remains the same, but the number of connections has multiplied exponentially. The connections grow so quickly in the first three years of life that neuroscientists call it neural exuberance. Neural exuberance! The name is well earned: The baby’s brain makes 24 million new connections every minute, and this continues for the first three years of life. Each neuron may be connected to 1,000 other neurons — that multiplies out to 100 trillion possible connections between neurons, more than the number of stars in the universe. This high level of connectivity between brain cells leads to the cortex of a three-year-old being twice as thick as an adult’s! As connections are created, new abilities emerge. For example, when connections grow in Broca’s area — speech production — around six months, then children begin to speak. Around nine months of age, the frontal areas (behind the forehead) become more interconnected, and that’s when most children develop object permanence: knowing that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight. Before object permanence develops, when Mom is out of sight she’s no longer in the baby’s universe. This is why young babies are inconsolable when Mom leaves. Once they start to develop object permanence, babies can hold on to an internal image of Mom. This is about the age that babies play peek-a-boo. Mom disappears when she puts the blanket over her head, but the nine-month-old knows Mom’s still there even if he can’t see her. The infant tests his “knowledge” when he pulls the blanket off and sees — sure enough! —Mom really is there! What is the use of so many brain connections in the first three years of life? These connections are ready-made highways for information to travel along. The toddlers’ ability to quickly adapt and learn is possible because they have a vast number of brain connections available for making sense of the world. Thanks to neural exuberance, the child does not need to create connections on the spur of the moment to make meaning of each new experience; myriad connections are already there. Pruning of connections The number of connections remains high from age 3 until age 10, when the process of neural pruning begins. Connections that are being used remain; others get absorbed back into the neuron. It’s similar to pruning a bush. After pruning, individual branches get thicker, fruit is more abundant, and the whole bush gets fuller. This seems a little counter-intuitive, but pruning works because it allows the plant’s limited resources to go to its strongest parts; water and nutrients are no longer wasted on spindly branches and dried-out roots. Similarly, when unused brain connections are pruned, neural resources are more available for brain areas that are being used. This results in a more useful and efficient brain that’s tailor-made to meet each individual’s needs. This process of pruning occurs in all brain areas. Figure 2.2 presents findings published by Sowell and associates. They measured Magnetic Resonance Imaging in 176 normal subjects from age 7 to 87 years. The x-axes in these graphs present years from 10 to 90 years. Notice there is a common pattern of decreasing connections in all brain areas. In some brain areas this change is steeper, such as in frontal areas, but is flatter in other areas such as temporal areas in the left hemisphere.