Posts in the Carolyn Category

Okay, a lot of you have managed to come up with puns and jokes similar to the one I first saw at Jay Allen‘s site, and Dunstan Orchard has taken the whole theme to the (il)logical conclusion.  One of the most common puns I’ve seen is:

#ericmeyer:first-child

Amusing, yes, but here’s the problem: that describes any element with an id of ericmeyer that is the first child of another element.  Now, I can be described that way; I am the oldest of my parents’ two children.  But it doesn’t describe Carolyn, unless we accept the convention that a child’s id should be given a value with his or her father’s name.  Such a convention would limit every father to one child, which might make for excellent social policy but seems unnecessarily restrictive from a structural point of view.

So, while this particular little joke validates, it doesn’t do what the author(s) intended, probably due to the widespread lack of understanding about what :first-child actually does. You’re supposed to be describing her, people, not me!  Every time you write an inappropriate selector, it makes the Baby Carolyn cry.  You wouldn’t want to make her cry, would you?

A selector that does describe her is:

#ericmeyer :first-child

…which is functionally equivalent to:

#ericmeyer *:first-child

Both will select any element that is the first child of another element and is also descended from an element with an id of ericmeyer.  This would also select the first children of any children that I have, so first grandchildren (and so on) would be members of the same set.  Thus, it might make slightly more sense to use the following:

#EricMeyer > :first-child

…which is to say, any element that’s the first child of an element whose id is EricMeyer—more precisely, any element that is the first child of another element and is also the child of an element with an id of EricMeyer.  I suppose that this particular selector could describe many children, as I expect I’m not the only ‘EricMeyer’ (and yes, the capitalization matters) in the world to have had a child.  But it should, at least within the confines of my docu—er, my family tree, select Carolyn uniquely.

Here endeth the lesson.

At another time of year, I might have struggled with what kind of music to play for Carolyn.  Big Band?  Classical?  Hard rock?  Some blues, maybe?  “Weird Al”?  Fortunately, there is no dilemma, as we’re pretty much playing holiday music front to back.  Jiminy Cricket sings “From All Of Us To All Of You” about twenty times a day.  Good thing I have a fondness for that record.  I’m still going to get Handel’s “Messiah,” Bach’sBeethoven’s “Ode To Joy,” and a few other pieces from Bombastic Dead White Guys into the mix.  Plus “Santa Baby” as sung by Eartha Kitt.  May as well start with the confusion early!

I’ve just read, much to my confusion, that Diana Krall and Elvis Costello were married in Elton John’s mansion, thus forming a Weirdness Trifecta.  I mean, hey, if they’re happy with each other, I’m all for it, but those just aren’t names I would have put into the same sentence.  Ever.

• Appropriate Selections was published on Thursday, December 11th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn and CSS categories.
• There have been no replies.

First off, our deepest thanks to everyone who’s linked, commented, e-mailed, or has otherwise expressed happiness over our happiness.  We may not respond right away, but your good wishes and blessings for Carolyn have meant the world to us, and one day will to her, as I’m keeping a copy of everything for her memory box.  So watch your language!

The first night with Carolyn went very well; she let us sleep for a few hours at a time, and only woke us when she was hungry.  It’s obviously too early to say what kind of baby she’ll be, but so far she’s pretty quiet, fairly mellow, and just as precious and cute as every parent fundamentally believes their baby to be.

Lest you wonder, this isn’t going to turn into a baby blog.  I won’t ignore her presence, of course, but I’m not planning to have her take over this journal.  Much. I have plans percolating in the back of my head to set up a page for Carolyn—what else would you expect?—where we can put up pictures, share the latest baby news, and all that kind of fun stuff.  I never had a page about pets or babies, even when I first started out on the Web, so I guess this is my chance to make up for lost time.

I haven’t quite decided if I’ll come up with a unique design for Carolyn’s page-to-be, but if I do, I guess I’ll have to use CSS like Jay Allen proposed (and which was just too darned funny; why didn’t I think of that?).

I’ll have to think carefully about what I post about her, though.  Derek Powazek pointed out to me a few weeks back that today’s kids are really unlucky, because anything they do that’s posted on the Web gets archived and preserved pretty much forever.  So if I write a post about the contents of her diapers or something similarly stupid and personally embarrassing, it could end up printed out and taped to her high school locker.  And all of her friends’ lockers.

Maybe by then kids will be so used to the lack of historical amnesia that it won’t bother them, or even occur to them to try such tactics.  Maybe my concerns will seem as dated and goofy as parental concerns about their children being persecuted over the family’s having emigrated from Germany instead of Poland in the late Thirties.  I can hope, but in the meantime, I have to act as though it will continue to be a concern for decades to come.

I’m used to taking a long-term view, but the focus of that view has certainly changed in the last twenty hours.

• A Multitude of Blessings was published on Tuesday, December 9th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn category.
• There have been no replies.

Kat and I are now parents.  Earlier this evening, we welcomed four-day-old Carolyn Maxwell Meyer into our home and our hearts.

We named her Carolyn in honor of my late mother, a plan which we conceived (so to speak) shortly after Mom was diagnosed with cancer.  We kept it to ourselves for a while, hoping to make it a surprise.  Last Christmas Eve, realizing that Mom would almost certainly not live to see our first daughter, I told her what we planned.  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.  It was a tacit admission that Mom had only a few months to live, and that she would never, despite our best efforts and a good deal of medical intervention, get to be a grandmother.

The middle name, Maxwell, is in honor of Kat’s late grandfather Max.  It was he who gave Kat her middle name, and instilled in her a deep love of jewelry.  Kat remembers him taking her for long walks through Brooklyn and talking to her like an adult, and how he would let her play with gemstones on black velvet workpads in his workshop.  Both Kat and her mother loved Max very much, and Kat had decided to honor him with a namesake long before we even met.

We’ve had Carolyn home for just a few hours, and already the cat is annoyed.  But she’ll adjust.  In the meantime, we’re still trying to grasp that this tiny little person is actually ours, and that she’ll be staying for quite a long time.

• Welcome was published on Monday, December 8th, 2003.
• It was assigned to the Carolyn category.
• There have been no replies.