Learning to use a spoon

Learning to use a spoon is hard work.

Not everything makes it into your mouth.
But don't worry, you can just pick the food off your clothes . . .
. . . and eat that too.
And it tastes SO good!

It's a . . .

BOY!! We're so excited. Bryce called it. Everyone else thought it was a girl.

Bryce woke up the other morning and said he had a dream that we were having a boy and that his name was Stanford James. I told him if he wanted to name him Stanford that he should read a book about Leland Stanford who founded the Leland Stanford Jr. University. I have already done some research. Mr. Stanford was a governor of California although originally from out east. He originally went to California with the gold rush and set up a store for miners. He was also the president of the Union Pacific Express Company which merged with Wells Fargo and Company and presided at the Golden Spike ceremony in Promontory, Utah in 1869 when the transcontinental railroad was completed.

He and his wife founded Stanford University in 1885 and named it after their only son who died as a teenager of typhoid in Florence, Italy the previous year. The Grant of Endowment makes some specific stipulations about the powers of the trustees:

• To establish and maintain at such University an educational system, which will, if followed, fit the graduate for some useful pursuit, and to this end to cause the pupils, as easily as may be, to declare the particular calling, which, in life, they may desire to pursue . . .
• To prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught in the University the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man.
• To have taught in the University the right and advantages of association and co-operation.
• To afford equal facilities and give equal advantages in the University to both sexes.
• To maintain on the Palo Alto estate a farm for instruction in agriculture in all its branches."

Not bad, eh? I guess it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have a son named Stanford.