{"id":2189,"date":"2015-01-21T17:05:46","date_gmt":"2015-01-21T22:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2017-01-12T12:18:29","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:18:29","slug":"happy-second-birthday-lily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=2189","title":{"rendered":"Happy Second Birthday Lily"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cat2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Two years ago, I blogged when Lily was born<\/a>. \u00a0Today I can\u00a0blog that she runs, climbs, swims (sort of),\u00a0constructs 3-word sentences, demands chocolate cake, counts to 10 in both English and Hebrew, and knows\u00a0colors,\u00a0letters, shapes, animals, friends,\u00a0relatives, the sun, and the moon. \u00a0To all external appearances she’s now conscious as you and I are (and considerably\u00a0more so than the cat in the photo).<\/p>\n

But the most impressive thing Lily does—the thing that puts her far\u00a0beyond where her parents were at the same age, in a few\u00a0areas—is her use of the iPad. \u00a0There she does phonics exercises, plays puzzle games that aren’t\u00a0always trivial for me<\/em> to win, and watches educational\u00a0videos on YouTube (skipping past the ads, and complaining if the Internet connection goes down). \u00a0She chooses the\u00a0apps and videos\u00a0herself, easily switching between them when she gets bored. \u00a0It’s a sight to behold, and definitely<\/em>\u00a0something to try with your own toddler if you have one. \u00a0(There’s a movement these days that encourages parents to ban kids from using touch-screen devices, fearful\u00a0that too much screen time will distract them from the real world. \u00a0To which I reply: for better or worse, this\u00a0is<\/em> the real world that our kids\u00a0will grow up into.)<\/p>\n

People often ask whether Dana and I will\u00a0steer Lily into becoming a theoretical computer scientist like us. \u00a0My answer is\u00a0“hell no”: I’ll support\u00a0Lily in whatever<\/em> she wants to do, whether that means logic, combinatorics, algebraic geometry, or even something further afield like\u00a0theoretical neuroscience\u00a0or physics.<\/p>\n

As recent events illustrated, the world is not always the kindest\u00a0place for nerds (male or<\/em> female), with our normal ways of thinking, talking, and interacting\u00a0sometimes misunderstood by others\u00a0in the cruelest ways imaginable. \u00a0Yet despite everything, nerds do<\/em> sometimes manage to meet, get married, and even produce offspring with nerd potential of their own. \u00a0We’re here, we’re sometimes\u00a0inappropriately\u00a0clear, and we’re not going anywhere.<\/p>\n

So to life! \u00a0And happy birthday Lily!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two years ago, I blogged when Lily was born. \u00a0Today I can\u00a0blog that she runs, climbs, swims (sort of),\u00a0constructs 3-word sentences, demands chocolate cake, counts to 10 in both English and Hebrew, and knows\u00a0colors,\u00a0letters, shapes, animals, friends,\u00a0relatives, the sun, and the moon. \u00a0To all external appearances she’s now conscious as you and I are (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-in-meatspace","category-nerd-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2189"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}