Here is the result:

If you know me, you know I LOVE tomato soup.  Well, I just made a batch and it was so freakin’ good I had to document! (not my pic either, but that’s what it basically looked like)  Best part, only about 55 calories!  Unfortunately, I didn’t write down exact amounts, but hopefully this will help me remember…

I used a box of Pomi tomatoes.

We used these while in Slovakia and I don’t know why but they just taste so much better than regular canned tomatoes (use it in all my spag/tomato sauces now), but I’m sure canned would work too.  The box will make 3 servings of soup (2 ladle scoops per serving).

Saute 1-2 tablespoons  of chopped garlic in just a bit of the tomatoes until the garlic is soft

Add box of tomatoes (get them in the organic section)

Add (half box) water until desired consistency.

Then generously season to taste with sea salt, ground pepper, dried thyme, little nutmeg, minced dried onion, garlic powder and about 1-2 large handfuls of large, fresh, basil leaves chopped up.

I also added 6 tablespoons of milk for just a touch of creamy without the guilt

Simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Eat with guilt-free grissini bread sticks and voila, YUMMY!

These images are totally raw, no post-processing at all. I think they turned out pretty good, but it helps when the subjects are the most adorable kids evor.

I’m not very knowledgeable about f-stops and shutter speeds and ISO and all that, so I basically stuck it in auto mode and started shooting. I did however turn off the flash for most of them, and the camera took care of the rest of the settings for me.

Also, I’m kind of a fan of close-up shots, so…

I know the one of Skye’s hair is blurry, but I love the image anyway.

Without further delay…

Ian Birth Story

I was 35 weeks and 2 days pregnant when I started having irregular contractions on Sunday, April 11. They felt more like cramps than contractions since I only had back contractions with Skye. Still, they were pretty constant, painful and irritating. I went up to Dads in Park City for dinner around 4 and Benjam stayed at home to game with his friends for his birthday… Around 5-6pm at dinner it finally dawns on me that these “cramps” have been pretty steady all day and I am finding that I have to hold on to something to tolerate them. I call the on-call OB doc at the hospital for a second opinion. He tells me to come in if the spacing becomes more regular or too painful to tolerate. Once I get home, I drink a bit of water and lay down. They seem to subside, so we don’t go to the hospital. I even manage to sleep for a few hours. However, around 2-3am, I can’t sleep through the pain and once I time the contractions, I discover they are still irregular, but now closer together. I tolerate it as long as I can, but because of the previous episodes of bleeding and the fact that I’d had a previous cesarean, I decide not to mess with it any longer. We call Veda to come and watch Skye and we were off to the hospital at 5am.

On the way there, the contractions are now more painful and I am finding myself breathing through them and having to brace myself for the next one. We go and check in at the OB ER triage. I can’t tell you how time slowed down and every little thing seemed to take for-ev-or. I had about 5 contractions on the way to get my urine sample and I had to stop for breaks, even though the bathroom was literally right around the corner. It took forever for the nurses to see me, or so it felt, as each contraction became just a bit stronger. Luckily, there was only 1 other patient so I was examined fairly quickly, or so it didn’t seem. When they examine me, I am dilated to 1cm. Well, this is just great, it took 12 hours of induction meds to get this far with Skye. What is happening here!? I notice that my breathing is a bit more strained and not helpful with each contraction, now just minutes apart. Still, the doctors want to wait and see what happens since I am not technically in active labor. And hour later, an eternity to me, I have dilated another cm. I keep expecting the next nurse to say they are going to admit me any second, and give me lots of pain meds. No such luck. I have to wait another hour and dilate to 3 cm before they’ll admit me. I’m thinking, I can’t believe how painful contractions are at only 3cm dilation!! I can’t stand it any more and I keep thinking – this next contraction will be the one that does me in. Thank heavens one of the first things the nurse asks me when I get into my room, is if I want an epidural. YES!! And even more great was that the ani came in pretty quickly after that. It took a while to get it in, but the distraction of doing it helped with the contractions, even though it was very difficult to hold still during the trembling contractions. What can I say, I am a wuss with a low tolerance for pain! The epi finally kicks in, and this time around (vs with Skye), it works right the first time and I finally feel relief from the previous 3 hours of nothing less than contained hell that has no exit. Phew, I think, thank goodness the worst it over. HA!

Well, even though the labor was progressing very quickly at the beginning, after the epi, everything all but halted. In 9 hours, I only dilated half a cm more. Even more, because I was still in latent labor, they are entertaining the thought that I could go home and just be 3cm dilated until my due date! However, because of the bleeds, Cesarean and the fact that I am feeling some of the contractions through the epi, they will keep more a bit longer and wait and see what happens. After all, I am only 35 weeks and it would be best to let the baby stay inside a lot longer. I am torn at this point. Part of me wholeheartedly agrees that that best thing for him is to stay inside for a few weeks longer and offer him the best chances. The selfish part of me can’t help but thinking that I am already there, with epi, everything’s ready to go; it would be hard to walk away without him in my arms and of also having to go through this all over again for the real thing, and how can I possibly not take the epi with me!!

After all of my visitors leave around 7pm and I am ready to call it a night and see how things look in the morning, a nurse semi-rushes in. This is never a good thing; nursers wear their concerns on the quick or slow way that they complete a task at hand. Her increase in speed worries me a bit, but she’s not quite moving with utmost urgency, so I am not panicing yet. She tells me that his heart rate has increased quite a bit and hasn’t come down. She leaves to go a talk to the doc. I, meanwhile, just had 2 redoses of the epi and am floating happily in epi land when a doc comes back with the nurse. Uh oh, more urgency. He explains to me that his increase in heart rate, along with my rise in temperature, are signs of a uterine infection, which, is best treated to the baby by being delivered. In my epi-land, I’m not quite understanding his subtle way of telling me that they are now going to start pitocin and break my water to see if that progresses my labor. These are THE two things which I have been hearing all day they really won’t do at 35 weeks, unless really necessary. The only word that takes me down from Epi Land is Pitocin. Oh wait, what!?!?!

So the room starts to get very busy with starting me on antibiotics and pitocin, breaking my water and me trying to call Benjam and have him come back to the hospital. In addition to the epi, IV and catheter, they also install an internal monitor while he is breaking my water. This feels like me peeing my pants with really warm water, even though I had no control on releasing the water. Once every possible tube and wire known to man is in place, I wait. Still not quite sure what is happening. Dad comes back and waits with me while waiting for Benjam to return from checking on Skye. Even though they induce me, they still expect the labor to progress within 5-8 hours. There was no reason to have the whole family pacing around me as I dilated one cm at a time, so Benjam is the only one that stayed with me. A few hours later, an exam shows that I am dilated to a 7! 7! I was in disbelief as I hadn’t really felt like anything had been happening because of my return to Epi-land.

Very subtly, the contractions/pressure started making their way through the pain medication. I kept pushing the epi button as often as I could and had them do a redose a few times. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was sure that nothing was going to stop me from feeling this excruciating pain. Contractions are odd events; they come on slowly and you know where they’re going, and you just kind of have to hold on and ride out the pain wave. Each time, the pain is a little more intense and each time I think there is no way I will be able to handle another one, knowing full well that I have no other choice but to do just that. The meds also gave me the “chill shakes”, which were uncontrollable body shakes that I couldn’t stop. I carried most of the tension from these in my neck and as hard as it is to believe, my neck hurt almost worse than the contractions. Benjam was exhausted and I didn’t want to bother him any sooner than I had too; I had absolutely no concept of time or it’s passing. The nurse tried to help rub my back and neck, but honestly, there was nothing to be done, except keep riding each wave. This sense of helplessness of your own pain is torture and just knowing that you can do nothing to elleviate it. I was later told that each contraction lasted 1-2 minutes, but to me they all were 10 counts. No matter how long they were in minutes, they always stopped by the time I counted to 10 in my head – from 1 cm up to 10cm dilated. 10 counts. My body must have been more aware that I thought. It was the only thing that got me through each one, I can count to 10 and it will be over. Just get to 10.

At one point, I went to a place where I would visualize the pain instead of just riding it out. It’s almost automatic since it’s just me and the pain, alone together and intimate. My eyes were closed and I was in a black void, the pain would creep up from a corner of the void, red and orange rippling emanating from a circle. I could visualize this circular vision getting larger and larger with each hellacious, explosive pain wave. It came to a point when I finally gave up. I simply said to the nurse “I’ve had enough and I can’t do this anymore.” I started to cry because there was nothing left to do but melt down, everything coming to the surface: fear, exhaustion, defeat, pain. My meltdown – and by meltdown, I mean full on bawling and hiccup crying – prompted the nurse to get a doctor to examine me. Finally, FINALLY, 4 hours later from being a 7, I was finally to 10cm. I barely heard him make this announcement because I knew full well it was time to get this baby out of me. He left the room, again, for an eternity and it was just Benjam and I. I just kept saying the baby’s coming, he’s coming NOW. I don’t know what the doctor’s were doing or why in the hell it was taking so long, but I really thought this baby was going to come out on his own with no one in the room but Benjam. Only one doc came back in after being harassed by the nurse (Apparently, they assumed because it was my first time, it would take hours of pushing.) I thought it strange only 1 doctor came back in, but he finally said it was time to push, so I didn’t care. I only got to push through 2 cycles, when he said “Hold on”.  What?! you want me to hold on and wait and suppress this immense sense to push!!?? I was appalled. I tried to breathe through the contractions and not push, but I just let things happen on their own; I didn’t push but I also didn’t try to suppress the urge either. Finally, I knew everyone believed this was really happening now when the room quickly filled with people, magically appearing out of no where.

Earlier, when the nurse was talking and teaching me about pushing (since I never actually believed I would get to this point), she asked me what my biggest fear was about the delivery. To my own surprise, it wasn’t the pain, because surely, there was no other pain to be felt that was worse than what I was feeling in my pelvis right now. To me, my biggest worry was that I wouldn’t be able to find the strength to push and do what I finally needed to do, now that it was time. I was beyond exhausted and still having lingering effects of my meltdown. Fortunately, there wasn’t much time to dwell on this incompetent possibility. Before I knew it, everyone was yelling at me to push, push, push. There wasn’t much time to breathe between pushes as I was only being propelled forward automatically by everyone elses commands. Full-on team effort. Pushing when they said, taking a breath when they said and trying to relax between pushes when they said. Benjam was standing to my left and his voice stood out the most and gave me the sense of how quickly the delivery was taking place. Merely a reflex, I pushed and “dug deep” from where, I don’t know, each time thinking this had to be the last. I went through 3 cycles of pushing when I suddenly felt the damn break. In two sensations, he was delivered; his head and shoulders in one large expulsion and his little alien legs wiggling away from my body.

I was beyond exhausted and to be honest, a little detached by the time he came to me. Because he was so early, they would only let us touch cheek to cheek before they whisked him away. It wasn’t until 5 hours later that I would be able to hold him in my arms and never let go. They were worried about the infection and had to give us both a battery of tests and antibiotics. Luckily, we were both sent home 2 days later and I haven’t looked back since. I feel very fortunate to have been able to experience a vaginal delivery and although it was the hardest night of my life, I cherish and value it above little else.

Even now, almost a year later, I read these words not with horror of reliving the pain, but instead with the utmost pride and sanctity. I had no inclinations towards having a VBAC, rather I was quite complacent about the whole thing. I thought I would just labor until I had to have the inevitable c-section. Now, I am beyond grateful that I had this ceremonial, once in a lifetime experience.

Before:

After:

and while we were taking pictures of Ian, Skye wanted to play with the camera as well…  so we let her. Here are the first shots from the next great photographer:

PLEASE STOP READING.

This is not a hints post, and I do not ease you into a solution slowly. This is a post about how I solved the puzzle and some interesting facts about the puzzle I found out afterwards when I began to dive deeper into the solution set. As well as the programming that went with it.

If you would like some proper hand-holding, please see How to solve the 36 Cube puzzle – hints & solution for hints (and samples of the program that got me started down my path).

AGAIN, IF YOU DON’T WANT SPOILERS, PLEASE STOP READING!

Apparently you either don’t care, or have already solved the puzzle…

So when I first got this puzzle, it seemed moderately easy, contrary to the warning on the box. My brother was actually the one to take the first whack at it, and he did pretty well, getting 34 of the 36 pieces on the puzzle, but those last two were giving him issues and he was unable to solve the puzzle before he had to leave. Later that night, I took my first stab at it, and also got 34 of the 36, and after an hour or so of fiddling, and trying to brute force my way into a solution, I looked it up online. Not for a solution, but for more information on the puzzle and what kind of math was involved in solving it, so I could give it a more educated attempt. After reading the wiki page on Graeco-Latin squares, I noticed that Euler had conjectured that there was actually no solution to the order 6 square (of which this puzzle is).

This blew my mind. I could not understand how there could be a puzzle with a solution to which there was (now) mathematical proof that there was no solution. I thought either the proof was wrong (highly unlikely), the inventor had found a solution to the age old problem (also not likely), or the wiki page was wrong (more likely, but still not very).  I then found other wiki pages relating to the puzzle where the inventor said about the order 6 problem, “It struck me as the basis for a potentially great 3-D puzzle, and what eventually became 36 Cube.”  And this is when I became suspicious of the puzzle.

I remembered that when I was initially inspecting the puzzle, I had noted that some of the bases were not the same, even when the base was for the same height piece. I thought this was odd, but thought nothing more of it, chalking it up to manufacturing issues. After become suspicious, I went back to the puzzle and inspected it further. It occurred to me that there might be some chicanery going on, so I placed a few of the smaller, more innocuous-looking pieces on the board (to have a height measuring stick of sorts) and proceeded to try the height 6 pieces on all of the larger piece bases, including the height 5 bases. And lo and behold, when I placed a particular piece of height 6 on a particular base of height 5, it fit. I also tried the height 5 pieces on all of the height 6 bases, and one of them fit as well. This is the trick to the puzzle. Instead of solving the impossible, the inventor modified the puzzle to allow it to “cheat” it’s way to a solution. Once I had the first few trick pieces in place, it was simply a matter of logic to solve the rest, and I had the solution within the hour.

But I couldn’t stop there. I wanted to know how many actual solutions there were to the puzzle, so I sat down with a few example programs and began to pound out my own program to solve the puzzle.

My Program (some functions ported from script written by Daniel Hepper, who wrote the hints post above)
(Full unedited script)

It’s not the most elegant program around, nor does it use the most elegant algorithm, but it works, and it works fairly well. I started out by trying to solve a single color for each row [function solve_color( )], but I soon figured out that this would be difficult to make work for finding all solutions, so I abandoned it. I then wrote a function to iteratively solve each piece size in succession, finding all possible locations for that size, and then iterating further along each solution path until all the pieces were placed, or it failed for whatever reason [function solve_color_by_pieces( )].  If it succeeded in finding a solution, I tacked the solution array on the end, and continued down the next path. If it failed, I deleted the current solution path and continued on with the next one.

When I first ran the function, solving for yellow (which has one of the “trick” pieces), it gave me two solutions. Both of which I had manually proven earlier, which is a good sign for the program. I then added orange into the solution (the other “trick” piece), and it gave me one orange solution for each of the yellow solutions. The odd thing is, both of the yellow-orange solution sets have the same footprint. What this means is, I only have to continue solving for one of the two yellow-orange solutions, and they will both work. I just multiply the total number of solutions I end up with by two, and I have my grand total of solutions.

As I continued, I first tried solving for the whole puzzle, just to see what came out. What came out was an “out of memory” error (I told you it wasn’t the most elegant).  Apparently my program could do with some optimizing. I increased the allowed memory to 2GB(!), and ran it again. I again got the “out of memory” error.

Wow.

Ok, looks like I need to do this with some manual intervention. So I ran it with just the red color. And it quickly spit out 8 solutions. I added those constraints to the initialization one by one, and ran it again for each, this time solving for green (the colors are arbitrary).  It came up with 3 solutions for each of the 8 red solutions for a total of 24 solutions so far. As I was looking at the solutions, I noticed that a lot of them were the same, so I threw them in a lump and sorted them. As I was going through the sorted list, I noticed that there were 3 duplicates of each green solution, which brings my unique green solutions down to 8. I also noticed that there were similarities between the 8 red solutions and the 8 green solutions, so I threw them all in lump again, and sorted that group, and guess what… they were all the same. Each red solution was repeated in the unique green solutions. This struck me as odd when I saw it, but now that I think about it, it makes sense. They are the same solutions, they just move around each other.

This pattern continued with the remaining two colors (blue and purple), blue had 2 solutions for each of the 8 unique red-green solutions, but only 8 of them were unique, and they were the same 8 as the previous red and green. And purple only had one solution for each of the 8 red-green-blue solutions (which makes sense, since it’s the final color and really only has one place to go), and again, they were the same 8 patterns. But when I looked at the final 8 solutions, I noticed that they had similarities within them, so I labeled each of the 8 solutions, and put them together, and it basically ended up being 2 unique solutions, with various permutations and color switching for the others.

So with my final 2 solutions, multiplied by my initial 2 yellow-orange solutions, that’s a grand total of 4 solutions.

I don’t know why, but I assumed that a puzzle of this size would have more than just 4 unique solutions. But I guess that’s part of the game, false assumptions and trickery.

UPDATE: After feeling like my program was incomplete due to it’s inelegance and inability to calculate a complete solution, I went back to it, and tweaked it a bit to get it to properly calculate all the valid solutions.

I finally got it to output all the solutions after initializing it with one of the yellow-orange solutions. It cranked for a couple of minutes, and spit out 48 solutions. I knew that these 48 solutions were just the various color switching permutations of the unique 2 solutions, but I really wanted the program to crank out those unique 4 solutions, and nothing more. So I added the bare minimum of initial parameters (the two “trick” pieces) and set it up so that after the program found each solution, I converted it to an unambiguous state and compared it with any previous solution, and if that solution had already been found, it disposed of that solution and continued on. What I got at the end after the program cranked for a couple of minutes were 4 unique solutions. This not only made me pleased with my program, but pleased with my previous manual calculations.

And just to clean things up, I removed all of the debugging output from the program, and guess what… the program cranked out all 4 solutions in less than a second.

Wow. My program went from taking over 5 minutes to throw an “out of memory” error, to calculating all 4 unique solutions in under a second. I was actually pretty shocked about that, and pleased at the same time.

So I give you the 4 unique solutions:

1. B O G Y P R
   R G Y P O B
   G R P O B Y
   P B O R Y G
   O Y R B G P
   Y P B G R O

2. B Y G O P R
   R G Y P O B
   G R P Y B O
   P B O R Y G
   Y O R B G P
   O P B G R Y

3. B O P Y G R
   P B Y R O G
   G R B O P Y
   R G O P Y B
   O Y G B R P
   Y P R G B O

4. B Y P O G R
   P B Y R O G
   G R B Y P O
   R G O P Y B
   Y O G B R P
   O P R G B Y

Here is my updated and optimized program:
http://36cube.pastebin.com/KiJMjzTa

That is all, I’m happy with this program and the solutions it calculated and (probably) won’t be messing with it anymore.

“My older daughter has a band aid obsession, and she put a bunch on his head. And I have yet to figure out a way to get them off without ripping out his hair. I removed 2 so far and he cried to no end. I felt bad for him. :(  ”

So there is some baby out there with a bunch of band aids on his head for no particular reason, but his older sister, and Mom can’t find a humane way to get them out, so he just continues to be Band Aid Head.  Love it!

That said, I can’t believe we are entering the “school years” and have kids of that age. I know Skye is still very young as far as schooling goes, but knowing that from here on out for the next 20 years, it will be nonstop. I feel like part of me should be sad about this, and I guess a small part is, but on the other hand, I can’t wait for her to start having new challenges and experiences that we simply can’t provide for her at home. I’ve always imagined the hustle and bustle of the school age as part of my fantasies when we going through all of the infertility stuff; that it somehow paints that Rockefeller portrait of the family.  

Anyways, she starts on August 21st. What will she wear!?!!