orichalcum

I just had my first "I'm a Bad Mother" experience. We were at the doctor's for Mac's 6-month checkup, and while the doctor was out of the room, Mac was on the exam table. I looked away for a few seconds (to weigh myself - oh I am punished for my vanity) and Mac did a double roll and lunge and fell four feet off the table onto the hard linoleum floor on his back. He yelped and cried; I scooped him up, and after about twenty seconds of soothing and then a little feeding, he stopped crying at all and smiled when the doctor came in a minute later. He cried much more at the shots at the end of the appointment.

So nothing's wrong. In fact, he's very healthy and continues to be at the 75th percentile on weight and head circumference and 95th on height (which means his BMI is really low, but that's not a problem.) He's 28.5 inches tall.

But I still feel horribly guilty.

So, the largest number of babies are born in the August-October range. Medieval Europeans (and many modern Catholics) were traditionally supposed to eat a large amount of fish during Lent, a time that would coincide with key neural developmental points for such babies. The extra fish would give the fetuses needed Omega-3s. Huh. Maybe the Catholic Church was onto something. :)

Rome game update: Senators were skeptical of consul Cicero's claims that there was a dangerous conspiracy, led by the notorious wastrel Catilina, which was planning to burn down Rome and kill all the elected leaders in five days. He initially said that his informants were all secret and so he could not provide direct evidence. He proposed a revolutionary new law giving him and his fellow consul temporary power to do "whatever was necessary" to deal with the crisis; the Senate was reluctant. Eventually, they promised witness protection (totally historical!) for his informants and a woman named Fulvia, the mistress of one of the alleged conspirators, testified to her knowledge of the conspiracy. However, one of the populares Senators noted that the woman's cousin, the Vestal Virgin Fulvia, (not, as first thought, the woman herself) had been accused of sacriliegious intercourse with Catilina, and suggested that maybe the witness Fulvia had invented her testimony out of a grudge against Catilina for ruining her cousin's reputation.

After much debate, the Senate decided to put Catilina under (voluntary) house arrest, to recruit a temporary police force for Rome out of Pompeius' veterans, armed with clubs and some daggers and bronze armor, and to establish a special council of the two consuls and eight praetors to make quick decisions if necessary in the crisis.