Male pattern baldness comes down through the female parent, though, so Wallybee's dad shouldn't influence Ryan atall. Um, hair-wise, that is.

If the gene is on his X chromosome, then it's on one of Wallybee's X chromosomes, so there's a 50% chance that it's on Ryan's.

Thanks Steph. and that wedding will not be dull.

It is oddly humid today.

There is a company making helmets so that babies won't bump their heads while they're learning to walk. [link] Their website even has a page of techniques for helping your baby learn to walk. [link] It's amazing that any of us survived toddlerhood.

The woman who let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone has a book out - she's interviewed in Salon here: Stop worrying about your children!

They talk about those helmets.

eta:

Kids have been toddling -- it's a whole stage we actually call toddlerhood -- ever since we started walking upright, which has been a pretty successful experiment for the human species. But now you're supposed to think that it's too dangerous for a kid to do without extra protection and without extra supervision and without this stupid thing you can buy.

There are kneepads that you're supposed to put on your kid because crawling is considered too dangerous for the knees, as if knees weren't built for crawling. That's why they're cute and dimpled and fat.

Everything that we do has a product that we can buy that's supposed to make our kids safer, as if they're born without the requisite accoutrements. Then there is something we can do as parents to be more careful, to be more protective. The assumption behind all of that is that if you are a good parent, you should be protecting your child from 100 percent of anything that could possibly go wrong, and if not, you will be blamed and Larry King will shake his finger at you.

How many toddlers suffer brain damage from falling their own height? Aren't they made bendy for a reason?

Fashion question. A friend has offered to buy me a dress for graduation and my party. What do we think of this dress for me? [link]

It's a pretty dress, vw. Though I think the model needs better foundation garments.

Seconding ita on both counts. Boobies really shouldn't go in opposite directions.

Totally! I actually originally saw the dress in a flyer they sent me. When I looked it up online, I had to double-check to make sure it was the right dress! The models are different, and the one in the flyer is much more attractive!

I saw the flyer, too, and I was thinking of buying it myself! It doe look much better in the flyer. And I think you should buy it.