Congratulations to...

Matt Lauer, the Today Show co-anchor, and his wife, Annette Roque, on the birth of their third child, a boy they have named Thijs in honor of Roque's Dutch heritage. Lauer is 48. Try as I might, I cannot find out how old his wife is.

Quick-hit lit

I used to read a lot of fiction in my free time, but since the birth of my daughter, the only reading I seem to be able to get to has been Dr. Seuss. (And I was shocked to figure out last night that I'm the same age as the Grinch. "Why, for 43 years I've put up with it now...")

So I've recently gotten hooked on a site that serializes new works of fiction, www.fivechapters.com
You get one new section a day for five days, most of which can be read in those few rare moments of down time I manage to accumulate. I've enjoyed what I've read so far.

A warning though - it's not literature designed to be shared with the family. Some of the stories, including this week's, are for mature audiences only.

Okay, has anyone tried Red Bull or Vault?

I'm looking for something to give me more energy. I have to admit it, I just don't feel as rested this time around.

My daughter is not yet sleeping through the night, and for whatever reason it's been much harder than when my son was an infant. I freely admit that my wife, Desiree, is up more with the baby than I am. But I'm feeling more sleep-deprived than ever. Maybe it's because the sleep is interrupted every few hours on any given night. Or maybe it is the the fact that I'm six years older this time.

Tips for the weary gladly accepted...

A political scientist looks at male reproduction

A reader on an earlier post has brought to my attention this new book by Rutgers political scientist Cynthia Daniels, titled "Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction."

I have sent an e-mail to Dr. Daniels to request an interview, but if you want to hear some of her comments on the book, click here to hear the audio or read a transcript of an interview she did on NPR's Living on Earth program.

Or you can read about the book here at the website of the book's publisher, Oxford University Press.

Touching column about an older dad's new book

I hope y'all had a chance to see Kim Underwood's column from the weekend, about Dennis Paul. Paul was 49 when his daughter was born, and has been thinking about his own mortality as she has grown up. In case you missed it, you can read it here.

Some numbers worth talking about

I got this interesting post on a subject I posted in September about the risks of advanced paternal age. I thought it was important enough that I would go ahead and create a new thread so people won't have to go to the archives to see it:

[from Anonymous]:

I would point out that 26.6 % of schizophrenia has been attributed to advanced paternal age in families where there is no prior known incidence of this condition. If you search advanced paternal age and schizophrenia you can find this throughout the world. I also would read James F. Crow's articel on Spontaneous Mutations, Is it a health risk?

A 10% risk of a genetic problem is big in my opinion.

My thoughts on this are in the next comment

Thoughts on a warm autumn day's stroll

I took advantage of a warm fall day yesterday to take my daughter for a stroll in the neighborhoods around her daycare during my lunch break. What a beautiful time it was, hearing the leaves crunch underneath the wheels and looking at all the beautiful colors in the trees.

At sixth months, she's really starting to babble, and I know her first words will come soon. I remember how excited I was when my son was about the same age and started calling me "Dada." It made me right proud at first, until I realized that he also called his mother, his bottle and most of his toys "Dada."

I had lunch with my mother earlier in the week. She was 42 when I was born and had lived through the depression as a child and young motherhood during World War II, long before I came along. And here I was with her little granddaughter, just getting some of her first glimpses of falling leaves. My mother was born 85 years before my daughter. That's just an amazing thing to me.