Learned Something New

Turns out "snot-nosed kid" is almost literal.

There will be no pictures with this post.

Walking

On the evening of September 12, 2009 in room 209 at the Fairfield Inn in Binghamton, NY. And a bit from the next day.

Who Is This Baby?

The Itsy Bitsy Janey went up the Janey spout
Down came the Jane and washed the Janey out
Out came the Jane and dried up all the Jane, then
The Itsy Bitsy Janey went up the Jane again.

At what point do you start to wonder about your child's personality? Should it bother me that she likes songs better when her name is in them? (Her favorite song is Janey Had a Little Lamb.)

I cheered when she escaped from the swaddle blankets in which we wrapped her as an infant. Fight the power! Throw off your shackles! My proudest moment as a dad came when she wriggled her arms out of the escape-proof Miracle Blanket, "the Alcatraz of swaddling blankets!”

Shortly after Jane switched to people food, she started feeding the dog, as all babies do. But sometimes she’d hold food out in her fist and let the dog try to get it away from her. Then she’d pull it back and eat it. Psyche!

We thought that was funny.

She also liked to play “feed daddy” where she’d hold out her food for me to take just like she did for the dog. Ok, a little gross, but cute and I usually played along. But every now and then I’d lean forward and open my mouth and she’d pull the food back eat it herself. Psyche!

Is that funny? Where do kids get these ideas? Obviously, nobody did that to her. On some level, I was as proud of her sadistic little game as I was her escapism of a year ago.

Jane has other games—she likes to flip the light switch to turn the lights on and off. She gets pleasure in manipulating her world, participating, making things happen. Except she doesn’t just flip the switch. She reaches out her fingers to it, then looks at me and waits until I shake my head, “no, Jane, no! don’t do it!” Then she laughs and flips the switch.

The uneasiness grows.

I often hold her in my left arm while I pour milk from a container in my left hand into her bottle, which I hold with my right. I've noticed for a while that she'd pat me on the shoulder while I did it. It made it harder to control the flow of milk and sometimes I spilled it, but I enjoyed the little "atta boy!" appreciation she was giving me. Recently I was holding her facing front while I poured and she couldn't reach my back to give me what until that moment I had interpreted as appreciation.

So she gave the milk carton a kick.

What does a baby know?

What does a baby know? That's a big question we can't answer. Clearly she's learning by leaps and bounds. She started with nothing, nothing at all, and is constructing her universe solely through experience.

As an infant, she didn't know that that uncomfortable restless achy feeling is tiredness and the cure is to relax and close her eyes, she didn't know that that pain in her eyes is the sun and the cure is close them or turn her head away. She knew was if something was in her mouth, she should suck on it. That was the sum total of her understanding of the world.

Today she knows which button makes the toy light up or get loud, she knows about light switches and drawers and doors, she knows where water comes from and how otot work the stopper in the drain. She loves birds, she likes to touch bees and has so far gotten away with it. She's learning how to feed herself. Banana good, peas good, brocolli bad. Millet bad, but millet cereal good. She knows plenty.

She still has odd weaknesses in the growing storehouse of stuff she knows and can do. She has no depth perception, none, and can't tell if those birds she loves so much are right in front of her or a hundred feet away. She'll strain to grab them either way. She thinks helicopters are birds. She'll try and grab those too. She'll try to open doors she's nowhere near and step on things she can't reach. I feel guilty laughing as I watch her stretch and strain to reach what she wants, with no real concern for her center of balance or even the location of her limbs. Such great, but often futile, effort.

Cthulhu Resurfaces

Jane has always been a very advanced child. She was born a week early and now at eleven months, she’s already hit her terrible twos. It was like flicking a switch.

One day she’s a good natured kid, she cooperated, helped out, appreciated effort. When she cried with some need and I tried to fill it, she’d stop crying for a bit, even if I guessed wrong, like she was giving me a chance, giving me the benefit of the doubt and wouldn’t start crying again until it was clear I’d guessed wrong and her needs remained unmet. She’d pick up her butt when I picked her up so I could get a hand under her and also on the changing table so it’s easier to change her diaper.

The next day it’s “I want this” and that want was immediate, important, and life and death! Whether she wanted to be picked up, put down, go outside, hold the knife or grab some stranger’s sunglasses, it has to be RIGHT NOW!!!

The changing table is open warfare. Her new job is to press every fiber of her being into the effort of rolling over and standing up, immediately grabbing the left rail with her right hand, a lockdown grip twisting her body with surprising strength. I’d plead with her to cooperate and she’d laugh at me. She knows what she was supposed to do, but, somehow, “supposed to do” has taken on a new meaning. It means “absolutely not!” and she laughs throughout the struggle, never noticing that she’s the only one laughing.

She’s lucky she’s cute.

Banana!

Baby's First Word!

We think.

It sounded like banana and it made sense in context, so we're taking it.

Banana it is!

Obscure Cargo Cult Reference

Welcome Daily Kos readers! Welcome! Don't be shy, take a look around, kick your feet up, stay a while. Wow, I'm honored.

Fingers

Baby fingers. Cute little digits, so bendy, so tiny, so fragile. Like you could break one off without even trying. Surely that’s why we have ten—it’s nature’s way of compensating for the fact that they will break off from time to time. Disposable, almost. Sometimes, looking at Jane’s, I find it inconceivable that anybody could keep them all into adulthood. And yet most of us do. Darndest thing.

Saturday, in the Park, Where Every Day's the Fourth of July

Back in January, H, Jane and I took a trip to a state park at the far edge of Queens. This was one of the first out of the neighborhood ventures with the little tyke so we didn't really know what we were doing. And the camera was new so I was a bit fumbly with it, and I didn't figure out how to do the editing until a couple weeks ago. But this was Jane's first trip into the wilds so off we went and tried to capture something of it as best we could.

We didn't get too far before H got turned back because we also brought the Maggie-dog. Dogs are not allowed, which we knew, and there are roving park rangers enforcing the rules, which we didn't know. So for much of the time, Jane and I are alone while H brought Maggie back to the car and waited.

As for the clip, this is my first edited video and it isn't bad...considering. Unfortunately, it's only not bad if you consider...

I think I did a surprisingly good job with one exception. I inserted a scene in the wrong place and didn't catch it until the software finalized the video and merged the scenes (which I didn't know it would do and so didn't save an unfinalized version, and so it goes...).

Now the only way to fix it is to start over again, which I won't be doing unless someone who knows what they're talking about takes me aside and says, "hey Tim, I really like that piece you did where you and Jane walk down a path. If you just fixed that one thing, I think I could enter it into the Tribeca Film Festival." Then maybe I'd fix it, but short of that, this will have to do.

So, without further ado, I give you Jane's first trip to the state park, as seen through her eyes (sort of).

Obscure Cargo Cult Reference

Welcome Instapundit readers! Don't be shy, take a look around, kick your feet up, stay a while. Wow. My very own Instalanche!

The Ballad of Nap Time

No No No
We won't go to sleep!
No No No
And you can't make us!

No No No
We won't go to sleep!
No No No
And you can't make us!


WHAT DO WE NOT WANT?

SLEEP!

WHEN DO WE NOT WANT IT?

NOW!

WHAT DO WE NOT WANT?

SLEEP!

WHEN DO WE NOT WANT IT?

NOW!


GIVE ME AN "S"!

NO!

GIVE ME AN "L"

NO!

GIVE ME AN "E"!

NO!

GIVE ME AN "E"!

NO!

GIVE ME A "P"!

NO!

WHAT'S THAT SPELL?

WE HATE YOU!

Baby's Museum Trip

It’s quite remarkable the way a baby can sharpen the mind and improve conversation skills. I first noticed this a few months ago when I found I could talk for 20 minutes about how Little Janey sat up this morning and not once be bored or at a loss for what to say next. I never tire of talking about her.

And it gets better. Jane has hit a number of milestones in the last couple weeks. She’s learning how to crawl, she’s finally able to sit up on her own and can practice walking. Not on her own, of course. You have to stand behind her, bent over a bit holding her hands. Then she will tentatively put one foot in front of the other, shakily put the other foot in front, indicate which direction she wants to go by leaning, occasionally stopping to look up at you as if waiting for a signal on what to do next. It’s slow, it’s sloppy, her legs wobble a bit too much, she sometimes steps on her foot and, in taking the next step, pulls her own sock off. It’s hell on my back, but it is walking of a sort and for an 8-month-old baby, it ain’t bad.

So last Sunday H and I took Little Janey to PS1, a somewhat avant-garde museum in Long Island City in Queens. This was our baby debut, the first time we took her on an adult outing, a place that wasn’t just friends or other parents and their babies, and all the while I’m thinking, “man, this is the cutest little baby anybody’s ever seen. She is just gonna brighten their day.” I looked forward to it, not just because I enjoy this museum, but because I was sharing with the world, for the first time, the cutest little baby any of these people had ever seen. (Did I already mention that? Oh well, it’s worth saying again.) Just seeing her would brighten their day. My gift to the PS1-going public.

At 8 months, she’s a little young for art, but I saw right away she was getting something out of it. (Clever child!) I could tell by the way she started vocalizing with her little pre words “wa wa wa wa ayyyeeeah!” I could only imagine what the people around us were thinking at the sound of her chatter. (“How adorable!” probably.)

There are parents who think this way about their babies even though they’re wrong. Their baby might be special to them, but to the rest of us? Not so much. You know it, I know it, I wonder if they know it. Thank god I’m not one of them! Janey’s the cutest. Everyone who sees her says so. She is one amazing baby. Can you tell I’m a proud father?

Anyway, the theme at the museum turned out to be video art, with loud obnoxious audio. I thought it might hurt Jane’s ears and so I skipped many of the exhibits, annoyed that they didn’t take delicate ears into account. “Why does it have to be so loud?!?”

Jane was getting a little antsy in her carrier and so was I so I found a little out of the way spot to take her out and practice walking. I wanted some space, some privacy, but I was also thinking what a nice treat it would be for people to happen upon us, a father and daughter sharing a milestone, that magic moment when a baby learns to walk. This will be my gift to those lucky souls who walk in the right room at the right moment, an agent of serendipity. What I had in mind was art, my own art, performance art right here in the museum.

I took her out of her carrier and we walked for several minutes but nobody did walk in and accidentally find to their delight. It’s too bad really. In fact, it wasn’t until we were leaving when a young woman in a group of teenagers walked by, she lit up at the sight of Jane and said audibly to nobody, I think, “ohh what a cute baby!” You betcha!

I worry about her growing up, getting precocious, getting a mind of her own and my own responsibility to raise her right. She will be too cute to discipline, I couldn’t bear it. Not that that adorable little girl will ever need or deserve it so this is academic, but still…

Cthulhu, Unfashionably Early

Around 6:20 on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday morning, July 9, 2008, a slit opened up in the exact center of the universe, which unsurprisingly turned out to be in New York City, though perhaps a little surprisingly in mid-town east, and through it burst Jane Astrid Wednesday Singer Maguire, also sometimes known under the various names, Jane, Jaws Maguire, Darth Pooper, The Gaping Maw, Little Miss Center of My Universe, and occasionally, when trying to curry favor, the Janers (as in “please Janers, just give me 20 seconds, that’s all I ask, 20 seconds, then I’ll pick you up”).

There was much confusion among the natives (as a wise man once said, “if in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout”). Any hope for the survival the pre-Jane status of the parent-bots was crushed by the all-needing Gaping Maw as they both, one included a milk-giving feature but the other was strangely defective in this vitally important performance area, endured the months that time forgot to please their new god.

She looks peaceful, doesn’t she? Don’t let appearances fool you; her personality, much too large for delivery simultaneous with its earthly physical vessel, arrived about two weeks later, after the villagers let their guard down, lulled into a false sense of security by her teasingly temporary need for almost constant sleep.

Now, eight months later, in what can only be called a variation on the Stockholm Syndrome, the natives have grown fond of their new deity. Apparently she gives off a chemical designed to blind them to reality and make them love serving her and only her.

She seems to be getting bigger.