Risks 

I read a news article today that talked about a couple from Australia raffleing off their Micronesian resort. They must have sold more than 50,000 tickets for 49 aus. dollars.  I think to myself “that is awesome.  I’d love to buy a profitable business for $49. How cool is that!” In reality if I had seen the raffle before it ended I would likely not have bought a ticket because there was too much risk of getting nothing out of it. I wonder: am I not risky enough?

Mapping Katja’s mental concepts

I know I won’t touch all the mental concepts that Katja has right now. But here are some (more noun like concepts) that I can easily remember:

  • Beard
  • Bird 
  • Bath 
  • Blueberry 
  • Ball 
  • Bottle
  • Bye(-bye)
  • Dad
  • Mom
  • Water
  • <æ> for Andrew 

She has some verb like categories or actions that I think are salient as well. Some of these things are tactile motor movement skills which require some sort of mental conceptualization, while others are directional in nature:

  • up (which is not just vertical, but might include “hold me”, or switch people holding me)
  • down
  • open (pull)
  • closed (push)
  • More (food)
  • Turn around to get off the couch or go down a step
  • Point
  • Wave bye-bye
  • Soft hands (as in gentle hands — when she is pulling my beard)
  • Dance
  • She also crawls and assisted walks
  • Feeds herself (we can assume that she can feel hunger)
  • Takes things off: She doesn’t like anything on her head, can take her pants off
  • She likes to reach out with her index finger and thumb and experience the feeling of hair
  • Reads a book while cooing to herself
  • Plays the drums
  • She is music aware
  • She is speech sound aware (she knows she hears a sound she is not making and that it is different than what she is making) for instance the difference between <ah> and <u> but can not yet pronounce <u>. 

She has a sense of emotion that clearly includes:

  • Happy laughter
  • Empathy when others are crying