Selma Fraiberg wrote a lovely book called The Magic Years, which I re-read passages of frequently because A) she offers zero advice, and B) she has a marvelous way of making babies sound like lovely little people exploring the world in magical ways instead of the demonic, dictatorial little squirts that they are. Her beautiful description of you, and other right bastards your age, as pocket-sized scientists who are testing the world out in a long and exhaustive series of experiments, has saved you more than once from Mean Mommy and Cranky Mommy (the one who sighs a lot). Because we all know Mr Baby, that I like to see sound implementation of the scientific method.
However. While there is value in the reproducibility of an experiment, and I like that you are dotting your t's and crossing your i's, I would like to know: just how many fucking more times, Mr. Baby, are you going to drop your motherloving spoons and sippy cup on the floor before you get around to publishing the results to the rest of your brain? They fall. They all fall. They always fall.
And so this is the thing. As they say, not much is certain in this life but death (too morbid for your tender young age) and taxes (later, my child, later. And......ssssorry for moving to Canada.) But it wouldn't hurt to add, because unless you're a super-dork physicist or an astronaut, it's true: ''and gravity.'' Death and taxes and gravity, kid, that's what life is about. Gravity is a certainty that we can all count on. You drop things, they fall. If you happen to have a preposterous sense of balance and let go of things, you fall. What goes up must come down, and don't shoot guns into the air even if it's a Mexican holiday, etc. etc.. Even Fred knows it, and he is a dog. That's why he, and his ears and his tail and his penis, are nowhere to be found all day, but he materializes under your highchair with a renewed interest in all things baby. Because he understands gravity. And that snacks are on the way because of it.
You're being really rigorous in your testing of your hypothesis (spoons fall). And I admire that, I really do. But I'll just come out an say this: it's getting fucking annoying. Also, you're not on the trail of any big groundbreaking theorem here. So, my sweet little pea, gravity is there and it works like this: stuff falls. Down. Now please stop, for the love of all that is holy in this world, dropping your goddam spoons on the floor.
And P.S.: Gravity also applies to things like you, your sippy cup, your head, and...oh yeah I mentioned that already. EVERYTHING. Okay? Okay.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Let your tongue be your guide
Dear Mr. Baby:
For a while - and this is quite laughable to me now, but in a sinister way - I was a little concerned about your gross motor skills. Not because you were particularly behind the little charts on the Internet or I was particularly worried about it. It was mostly because you seemed to be...well, a lazy bastard. You learned how to roll, for example, and you did that like ten or twelve times, and then you just parked yourself on your side and rested your arm on your hips and lay around most of the day. This indicated to me that perhaps you lacked ambition, which was only concerning because...I mean, it's not our entire retirement plan, but it seems to me like you might want to be a doctor. Or a lawyer. Or a hockey player of international fame, one who loves his parents and all the sacrifices they made for him like not sleeping ever again and endlessly, endlessly washing millions of dishes, and so sends modest but monthly remittances to them in the tax-free, undisclosed tropical island where they reside. Instead of possessing the sort of drive these careers require, you seemed rather easily placated with having done something to its absolute minimum standards, and then taking a disproportionate furlough. (I think it may be of interest to you Mr. Baby, that this is clearly a genetic anomaly. No one is like that around here. No sir.)
I said this concern was laughable, and I'm getting around to why.
Yes. For a while you were pleasant and largely immobile, content to look at your crib guys and sit in the Exersaucer and hit things. People remarked that you were not inclined to move around very much, in a tone that seemed to be disapproving or passively competitive. A good friend of the family asked us, when you were about four months old, if you were keeping us on our toes. ''Not really,'' we replied nonchalantly from the couch where we were watching you and typing on our computers. Because you really weren't.
Her expression haunts me now.
Why? Oh just now you're insane. You're totally and completely insane. No one can get a fucking thing done around here, especially not sit down to write a complaint about it. One ill-fated day you grew tired of lying around and just started crawling. "Ooooooh, ahhhhhhh,"' we said. "Oh, that's so great!" I was ludicrous enough to film this apocalyptic event as though it were something I would want to remember.
Now what? Now the whole time you're awake I have to follow you around, redirecting you from picking up the tiny things that you see like a hawk and suck up like a crazed roaming vacuum cleaner. Enticing you away from things that shouldn't be in your mouth and which you shouldn't repeatedly bang your head on. Piano pedals, dog crates, bowls of water. The compost container.
Hold you? It's like holding a seizing octopus with clamps for hands. Put you in your Gated Community? You're fine with that until you hit a wall, which takes about two seconds, and then you pull out that horrible sound you learned to make some time ago and we all thought you had forgotten, sweet merciful Christ. No, you have to be on adventures, and dangerous ones. All. day. long. And it isn't as if it really helps to follow you around, micromanaging your explorations. You possess an unearthly ability to transport things into your mouth and be chewing on them with an expression of disdain and surprise without ever having actually having put them in there. I know because I have been staring at you, watching you like the little demonic animal that you are.
Thinking myself quite clever, I placed objects you can actually play with on all the shelves. I assumed that because you don't even know that the world still exists if we cover your head with say, a tea cozy, this ruse would work. But somehow you determined, with a quick swipe and the resultant clatter, that none of those things are fun, no matter how authentically I arranged them to look like danger. No, you want knives and beer bottles and pennies and electrical cords, stray threads and stinky shoes and tissues and poison and parts of the carpet where Fred recently took a shit. Fred's filthy scraggly nails. Little, tiny scraps of things that you are suddenly capable of getting directly and swiftly into your mouth, which I only find noteworthy because food of the exact same size and shape seems to utterly confound you and get smashed angrily into your highchair until Fred comes by to relieve you of it.
Oh, but you take naps now you say? You take regular naps and can't I rest then?
Mr. Baby do you have any goddamn idea how much time it takes to clean the floors and all the things on the floors at or below the level of your mouth so that you can go around licking them? We live. On a farm. And - and I'm just curious - aren't you tired of licking the floor? You've licked the whole thing about a million times. You screw your face up in an unpleasant display of unpleasantness at its very unsavory qualities every time you sample it. It's not going to turn into ice cream, good buddy. Also, Fred cannot be vacuumed - I've tried.
What am I saying? I don't know, really. I want you to be happy. I want you to explore the world. Perhaps you heard your dad saying, let your tongue be your guide. It's a Polish expression, he says it to be funny. It's also a fucking idiom. So I don't know, I really don't, how many times you need to lick the piano pedals in order to understand them. How many times you have to lick the dog and have it all end in cranky, furry spitballs of fury. But I do know that I am tired, a little bit bored, and my back hurts. So maybe, since you've licked the whole house, you can say to yourself - okay. It tastes like a house. I will now just pat it, like a good friend.
For a while - and this is quite laughable to me now, but in a sinister way - I was a little concerned about your gross motor skills. Not because you were particularly behind the little charts on the Internet or I was particularly worried about it. It was mostly because you seemed to be...well, a lazy bastard. You learned how to roll, for example, and you did that like ten or twelve times, and then you just parked yourself on your side and rested your arm on your hips and lay around most of the day. This indicated to me that perhaps you lacked ambition, which was only concerning because...I mean, it's not our entire retirement plan, but it seems to me like you might want to be a doctor. Or a lawyer. Or a hockey player of international fame, one who loves his parents and all the sacrifices they made for him like not sleeping ever again and endlessly, endlessly washing millions of dishes, and so sends modest but monthly remittances to them in the tax-free, undisclosed tropical island where they reside. Instead of possessing the sort of drive these careers require, you seemed rather easily placated with having done something to its absolute minimum standards, and then taking a disproportionate furlough. (I think it may be of interest to you Mr. Baby, that this is clearly a genetic anomaly. No one is like that around here. No sir.)
I said this concern was laughable, and I'm getting around to why.
Yes. For a while you were pleasant and largely immobile, content to look at your crib guys and sit in the Exersaucer and hit things. People remarked that you were not inclined to move around very much, in a tone that seemed to be disapproving or passively competitive. A good friend of the family asked us, when you were about four months old, if you were keeping us on our toes. ''Not really,'' we replied nonchalantly from the couch where we were watching you and typing on our computers. Because you really weren't.
Her expression haunts me now.
Why? Oh just now you're insane. You're totally and completely insane. No one can get a fucking thing done around here, especially not sit down to write a complaint about it. One ill-fated day you grew tired of lying around and just started crawling. "Ooooooh, ahhhhhhh,"' we said. "Oh, that's so great!" I was ludicrous enough to film this apocalyptic event as though it were something I would want to remember.
Now what? Now the whole time you're awake I have to follow you around, redirecting you from picking up the tiny things that you see like a hawk and suck up like a crazed roaming vacuum cleaner. Enticing you away from things that shouldn't be in your mouth and which you shouldn't repeatedly bang your head on. Piano pedals, dog crates, bowls of water. The compost container.
Hold you? It's like holding a seizing octopus with clamps for hands. Put you in your Gated Community? You're fine with that until you hit a wall, which takes about two seconds, and then you pull out that horrible sound you learned to make some time ago and we all thought you had forgotten, sweet merciful Christ. No, you have to be on adventures, and dangerous ones. All. day. long. And it isn't as if it really helps to follow you around, micromanaging your explorations. You possess an unearthly ability to transport things into your mouth and be chewing on them with an expression of disdain and surprise without ever having actually having put them in there. I know because I have been staring at you, watching you like the little demonic animal that you are.
Thinking myself quite clever, I placed objects you can actually play with on all the shelves. I assumed that because you don't even know that the world still exists if we cover your head with say, a tea cozy, this ruse would work. But somehow you determined, with a quick swipe and the resultant clatter, that none of those things are fun, no matter how authentically I arranged them to look like danger. No, you want knives and beer bottles and pennies and electrical cords, stray threads and stinky shoes and tissues and poison and parts of the carpet where Fred recently took a shit. Fred's filthy scraggly nails. Little, tiny scraps of things that you are suddenly capable of getting directly and swiftly into your mouth, which I only find noteworthy because food of the exact same size and shape seems to utterly confound you and get smashed angrily into your highchair until Fred comes by to relieve you of it.
Oh, but you take naps now you say? You take regular naps and can't I rest then?
Mr. Baby do you have any goddamn idea how much time it takes to clean the floors and all the things on the floors at or below the level of your mouth so that you can go around licking them? We live. On a farm. And - and I'm just curious - aren't you tired of licking the floor? You've licked the whole thing about a million times. You screw your face up in an unpleasant display of unpleasantness at its very unsavory qualities every time you sample it. It's not going to turn into ice cream, good buddy. Also, Fred cannot be vacuumed - I've tried.
What am I saying? I don't know, really. I want you to be happy. I want you to explore the world. Perhaps you heard your dad saying, let your tongue be your guide. It's a Polish expression, he says it to be funny. It's also a fucking idiom. So I don't know, I really don't, how many times you need to lick the piano pedals in order to understand them. How many times you have to lick the dog and have it all end in cranky, furry spitballs of fury. But I do know that I am tired, a little bit bored, and my back hurts. So maybe, since you've licked the whole house, you can say to yourself - okay. It tastes like a house. I will now just pat it, like a good friend.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Notes on your regime
Dear Mr. Baby:
People may be wondering where we have been, you and I, and why there have been very few tales from the kingdom over which you reign, dictating affairs with the wave of your sippy cup, slouched slightly in your Bumbo chair on the dining room table or proudly surveying your domain from your ExerSaucer - which, quite appropriately, is castle-themed. And I have been down in the ranks of middle management, making it all work. Yes, we're running things here, running them better than most governments, mostly because you are despotic but comical, and there is little paperwork of any kind, and if there is, you promptly eat it. Disorganized and demanding, myopic as regards to long-term planning and logistics, egocentric, and (pardon the pun) infantile, you're very much like a dictator in every way. All you are missing is a mustachio.
Like many modern dictators, you have chosen to surround yourself with flamboyant decor and fluttery yes-men, and there are a great many things afoot in your kingdom that you are informed about in only the most soothing of tones, lest you hand down some unintelligible edict with the pounding of your rattle. There are many things that you believe to have commanded into action but have actually bungled impossibly, and are mere illusions which have required creative and indefatigable efforts on the part of your servants in order to maintain. As is the way, I suspect, of most accidental sycophants, they are just really trying to keep you from having a fit.
However, I think it's important for all people of importance to to have an occasional voice of reason to tether them somewhat to reality, or next thing you know they're invading the neighbors or wearing funny hats and insulting Condoleezza Rice. So, just a few notes on your new clothes:
1) You cannot actually stand. Standing is a miraculous thing, a marvel that kineisiologists, if you are ever unfortunate enough to meet a chatty one, will go on and on and on about for hours. The upright posture of a human is an incredibly delicate and precarious balancing act. You (well, admittedly, we, because our complicity in this illusion cannot be denied) have given yourself the impression that you can and are standing around. Standing around at all hours of the day and night with a magnificently impressed expression on your face. You never, ever want to sit down, and God forbid you find yourself doing the only thing you can do on your own, which is lie around. But you see, Mr. Baby, that there is a wee problem and that is this: you cannot actually stand so someone has to sit around with you. Furthermore, this someone has to do next to nothing, because this someone must keep you from falling over without pulling or tugging or pushing to hard (leading you to believe that they are somehow interfering with your standing), but also without drifting off into the pages of a book or a TV show and missing the lightening quick disintegration of your half-balance and your subsequent downfall. This is quite boring Mr. Baby. Under other circumstances it is called loitering and there are laws against it.
2) You also cannot walk. See above, because it's pretty much the same set of complaints.
3) For a number of reasons, (again, in the interest of being fair, we admit our complicity in this affair) you have the following impression: when you are done with spoons, fling them behind and to the right of you. A new one will appear shortly, with more food on it. This is a delusion, the result of the machinations of your minions, rather than some magical quality of the world. Also, though you seem oblivious to the charms of a house that is not covered in three-week old zucchini and carrot mush, I'll have you know that these things do not magically remove themselves from the walls and the table and your Bumbo and the ceiling.
4) No one is actually happy to see anyone at three in the morning. That is also a big lie, and I apologize for dragging it out with my mildly hysterical pre-dawn cheer. What everyone wants to do at that time, little buddy, is sleep, and while your monologues about blengabadphst and thwastpffftapsht are fascinating, their integrity would be completely preserved if delivered after the sun rises.
5) You cannot just eat pureed green beans for the rest of your life. Food has flavor and food has lumps. There are occasionally foods which you must reject on the basis of them being distasteful, but the appropriate course of action in these cases is not to gag and roll your eyes and throw yourself around and continue gagging and generally act as though someone has placed a fried baby head in your mouth and asked you to chew. You could simply refuse, with a more dignified expression, by closing your mouth.
6) The world is not a drum, good buddy. And all the objects in it are not drumsticks. And you are no Joey Kramer.
People may be wondering where we have been, you and I, and why there have been very few tales from the kingdom over which you reign, dictating affairs with the wave of your sippy cup, slouched slightly in your Bumbo chair on the dining room table or proudly surveying your domain from your ExerSaucer - which, quite appropriately, is castle-themed. And I have been down in the ranks of middle management, making it all work. Yes, we're running things here, running them better than most governments, mostly because you are despotic but comical, and there is little paperwork of any kind, and if there is, you promptly eat it. Disorganized and demanding, myopic as regards to long-term planning and logistics, egocentric, and (pardon the pun) infantile, you're very much like a dictator in every way. All you are missing is a mustachio.
Like many modern dictators, you have chosen to surround yourself with flamboyant decor and fluttery yes-men, and there are a great many things afoot in your kingdom that you are informed about in only the most soothing of tones, lest you hand down some unintelligible edict with the pounding of your rattle. There are many things that you believe to have commanded into action but have actually bungled impossibly, and are mere illusions which have required creative and indefatigable efforts on the part of your servants in order to maintain. As is the way, I suspect, of most accidental sycophants, they are just really trying to keep you from having a fit.
However, I think it's important for all people of importance to to have an occasional voice of reason to tether them somewhat to reality, or next thing you know they're invading the neighbors or wearing funny hats and insulting Condoleezza Rice. So, just a few notes on your new clothes:
1) You cannot actually stand. Standing is a miraculous thing, a marvel that kineisiologists, if you are ever unfortunate enough to meet a chatty one, will go on and on and on about for hours. The upright posture of a human is an incredibly delicate and precarious balancing act. You (well, admittedly, we, because our complicity in this illusion cannot be denied) have given yourself the impression that you can and are standing around. Standing around at all hours of the day and night with a magnificently impressed expression on your face. You never, ever want to sit down, and God forbid you find yourself doing the only thing you can do on your own, which is lie around. But you see, Mr. Baby, that there is a wee problem and that is this: you cannot actually stand so someone has to sit around with you. Furthermore, this someone has to do next to nothing, because this someone must keep you from falling over without pulling or tugging or pushing to hard (leading you to believe that they are somehow interfering with your standing), but also without drifting off into the pages of a book or a TV show and missing the lightening quick disintegration of your half-balance and your subsequent downfall. This is quite boring Mr. Baby. Under other circumstances it is called loitering and there are laws against it.
2) You also cannot walk. See above, because it's pretty much the same set of complaints.
3) For a number of reasons, (again, in the interest of being fair, we admit our complicity in this affair) you have the following impression: when you are done with spoons, fling them behind and to the right of you. A new one will appear shortly, with more food on it. This is a delusion, the result of the machinations of your minions, rather than some magical quality of the world. Also, though you seem oblivious to the charms of a house that is not covered in three-week old zucchini and carrot mush, I'll have you know that these things do not magically remove themselves from the walls and the table and your Bumbo and the ceiling.
4) No one is actually happy to see anyone at three in the morning. That is also a big lie, and I apologize for dragging it out with my mildly hysterical pre-dawn cheer. What everyone wants to do at that time, little buddy, is sleep, and while your monologues about blengabadphst and thwastpffftapsht are fascinating, their integrity would be completely preserved if delivered after the sun rises.
5) You cannot just eat pureed green beans for the rest of your life. Food has flavor and food has lumps. There are occasionally foods which you must reject on the basis of them being distasteful, but the appropriate course of action in these cases is not to gag and roll your eyes and throw yourself around and continue gagging and generally act as though someone has placed a fried baby head in your mouth and asked you to chew. You could simply refuse, with a more dignified expression, by closing your mouth.
6) The world is not a drum, good buddy. And all the objects in it are not drumsticks. And you are no Joey Kramer.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
TMASTFP
Dear Mr. Baby:
Lately you've been a generally fun guy to hang around with. Forgotten are what I now refer to as the Dark Times - the days of whistling the repetitive chords of the Mexican Hat Dance and lunging deeply, painfully, training-for-Olympian-feats-of-strength-ly so that you would sleep - attached to me like a soft, easily irritated leech - for just twenty minutes for the love of God. Gone are the bleary nights and mornings and who knows if it's day or night-ings, staring emptily at the cheese grater and considering the pros and cons of rubbing it against my unfathomably itchy eyeball. No, since you rounded the big four months, we've been relaxing, taking naps, petting the dog, removing fistfulls of his hair from your incredibly strong little baby fists, reading Goodnight Moon over and over and over again to your ever-renewed interest and surprise. Sure, you have been a bit drooly, and you still don't contribute much the household economy or clean anything up, but your soft fuzzy baldness and effervescent bum, your spontaneous, toothless grinning and genuine, charming appreciation of the well-loved children's song, Wheels on The Bus (provided that you actually go up-and-down and swish-swish-swish) more than make up for your apathy toward cleanliness and order. What a lovely baby, I have been thinking, as you gently gum my nose and make tiny, stinky farts while compiling one of your accidental pseudo-phrases, like aaaaaay nooooo or daaahg pyooo or my personal favourite, ooooooo shhhhhhhhht.
Then, one night, as we were all sleeping soundly in the placid tranquility of this peaceful dynasty, you awoke as you often do to babble incoherently but adorably into the air with soft little gurgles and round coos before drifting predictably back to sleep.
And then for for no apparent, logical, imaginable, or justifiable reason, instead of going back to sleep, you began to emit The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet.
What's so annoying about The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet? Oh, Mr. Baby, I don't know, really. It's the frequency, in part, up there in that provoking, exasperating octave reserved for smoke detectors and Mariah Carey's ego. It's the boundless, operatic lung capacity you apparently possess that allows you to sustain The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet for minutes that seem like tiny days - tiny, grating, irritating days. It's definitely something about the ridiculous, physically impossible volume you're cranked up to. It's the way you are so expressively panicked- or distressed- or angry-sounding in your articulation of this sound, sending everyone scurrying around the house searching for the source of your discomfort or excruciating pain or existential torment only to discover, again and again, that you have no problem, no problem whatsoever. There's nothing you want, there's nothing we can do, legally or ethically, to shut you up. You're just shrieking, delightedly. Just emitting this sound - this horrible, horrible sound Mr. Baby - for absolutely no fucking reason at all.
You're new on the scene and haven't, as such, had time to sort this out for yourself. But when people begin moving their lips in the shapes of the numbers one through ten, or quietly whispering things like, "My patience is a delicate white flower in a garden, and I am watering it with a can, in a quiet garden...'' with noticeable frequency around you, you have, Mr. Baby, probably stepped over the line. And so it's nice that you can make The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet, and I promise to put it to good use someday. Maybe I'll need a window broken or want to interrogate someone or just be really mean to some bats. Maybe someday I'll look back fondly at this time, and your dad and I will say to each other, hey remember when Mr. Baby started making The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet for five minutes at a time for no reason and there was nothing you could do to turn it off and we started to have migraines from it because the capillaries in our brains were actually bursting? I wish we could hear that again.
But for now, little dude, let's just turn it off.
Lately you've been a generally fun guy to hang around with. Forgotten are what I now refer to as the Dark Times - the days of whistling the repetitive chords of the Mexican Hat Dance and lunging deeply, painfully, training-for-Olympian-feats-of-strength-ly so that you would sleep - attached to me like a soft, easily irritated leech - for just twenty minutes for the love of God. Gone are the bleary nights and mornings and who knows if it's day or night-ings, staring emptily at the cheese grater and considering the pros and cons of rubbing it against my unfathomably itchy eyeball. No, since you rounded the big four months, we've been relaxing, taking naps, petting the dog, removing fistfulls of his hair from your incredibly strong little baby fists, reading Goodnight Moon over and over and over again to your ever-renewed interest and surprise. Sure, you have been a bit drooly, and you still don't contribute much the household economy or clean anything up, but your soft fuzzy baldness and effervescent bum, your spontaneous, toothless grinning and genuine, charming appreciation of the well-loved children's song, Wheels on The Bus (provided that you actually go up-and-down and swish-swish-swish) more than make up for your apathy toward cleanliness and order. What a lovely baby, I have been thinking, as you gently gum my nose and make tiny, stinky farts while compiling one of your accidental pseudo-phrases, like aaaaaay nooooo or daaahg pyooo or my personal favourite, ooooooo shhhhhhhhht.
Then, one night, as we were all sleeping soundly in the placid tranquility of this peaceful dynasty, you awoke as you often do to babble incoherently but adorably into the air with soft little gurgles and round coos before drifting predictably back to sleep.
And then for for no apparent, logical, imaginable, or justifiable reason, instead of going back to sleep, you began to emit The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet.
What's so annoying about The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet? Oh, Mr. Baby, I don't know, really. It's the frequency, in part, up there in that provoking, exasperating octave reserved for smoke detectors and Mariah Carey's ego. It's the boundless, operatic lung capacity you apparently possess that allows you to sustain The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet for minutes that seem like tiny days - tiny, grating, irritating days. It's definitely something about the ridiculous, physically impossible volume you're cranked up to. It's the way you are so expressively panicked- or distressed- or angry-sounding in your articulation of this sound, sending everyone scurrying around the house searching for the source of your discomfort or excruciating pain or existential torment only to discover, again and again, that you have no problem, no problem whatsoever. There's nothing you want, there's nothing we can do, legally or ethically, to shut you up. You're just shrieking, delightedly. Just emitting this sound - this horrible, horrible sound Mr. Baby - for absolutely no fucking reason at all.
You're new on the scene and haven't, as such, had time to sort this out for yourself. But when people begin moving their lips in the shapes of the numbers one through ten, or quietly whispering things like, "My patience is a delicate white flower in a garden, and I am watering it with a can, in a quiet garden...'' with noticeable frequency around you, you have, Mr. Baby, probably stepped over the line. And so it's nice that you can make The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet, and I promise to put it to good use someday. Maybe I'll need a window broken or want to interrogate someone or just be really mean to some bats. Maybe someday I'll look back fondly at this time, and your dad and I will say to each other, hey remember when Mr. Baby started making The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet for five minutes at a time for no reason and there was nothing you could do to turn it off and we started to have migraines from it because the capillaries in our brains were actually bursting? I wish we could hear that again.
But for now, little dude, let's just turn it off.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Causes. Effects.
Dear Mr. Baby:
All the books say you're too young for this, but I say what the hell, let's give it a shot. Because it would be really really nice, Mr. Baby, if you understood these two concepts and their relation to each other. I'm talking about our friends Cause, and his not-so-distantly related cousin, Effect. These concepts would probably illuminate, to your great surprise and delight, some currently shadowy and blurred parts of your day.
You might wonder, for example, why you are sometimes lounging about in mid-air, enjoying the lyrical tales of Mr. Microwave and Mr. Basket in the tender and soothing tones of your mother's voice, receiving raspberry kisses and giggling mirthfully, and then suddenly being jostled to the harsh cries of ''aw, fuck, kid,'' bouncing jaggedly and swerving unceremoniously through several rooms to land, not at all gently, in your cold and lonely crib without so much as a farewell. This perplexing change of demeanor and location, this sudden withdrawal of motherly affection, would be infinitely more explicable if you could connect somewhere in that head of yours the aforementioned events, and the squishy feeling of your fingers coming into contact with a retina - to wit, your mother's - at high speed.
You could, as another example, more accurately deflect the accusatory expression on your face when your throat feels painful and itchy and your eyes begin to water and you are looking around the room for sympathy or the disposal of your disdain. If you knew about Cause and Effect, you would know that it is senseless to look at me then, because the plastic spoon repeatedly impacting and scraping your tonsils is not intertwined by any physics-defying magic to me, but rather held by your own hand, and therefore it would behoove you to cast your dour expression upon a mirror. You would also know that I am not to blame for you holding this object, because you reached out with your little claw hands and snatched it from me every time. Every time.
If you knew about Cause and Effect, Mr. Baby, you could perhaps link the sensations of angst and bitterness, and your desire to throw things at your mommy and yell hoarsely and unhappily for what must be very long amounts of time, percentage-wise speaking, of your life, with the idea of sleeping, which causes those feelings to subside if you just do it. It's a bit of a stretch, but you might also be able to associate Mean Mommy (you know who that is) with the nights you ''have a party'' in your crib. And then maybe you could come full circle in a web of enlightenment, and conjecture that most problems in your world are caused by a dearth of sleep, and maybe - I know these are vain and absurd vagaries, Mr. Baby - but maybe you could even accommodate the cognizance of your own, singular culpability in this intifada of insomnia and take it upon yourself to bring peace by just closing your eyes, and your mouth. Perhaps you could conjoin these closings with the pacific breeze that floats through the house, and the return of Nice Mommy.
When you begin to feel a slight headache, you begin to feel as though the world is a maraca and you are trapped inside of it, the close and claustrophobic swishing sounds begin to suffocate you and your temple becomes increasingly tender - you could look to your left, and see the repetitive motion of your limbs, and realize that it will all be quiet, if only you stop hitting yourself in the head with a rattle.
Oh, the places we could go Mr. Baby! In the morning, rather than waiting for the slow, wet stench of realization to ooze from your pants to your mind, you could instead think to yourself, ''oh hey, I'm about to take a crap again,'' and let someone know before it's all smashed into your bum. Probably you've wondered why it takes so long, in the cold, cold morning, to become warm again... if you just understood that it is almost impossible to put clothing on a simultaneously frantic and limp human being who is also pinching you like a crab and laughing like an evil doll, if you knew that the clothes are the thing, the thing that makes you warm, but only if you are wearing them. If you could understand that food must travel through your mouth and into your stomach to diminish your gnawing hunger and gnawing, annoying little protests about it...that smearing it on the dog and your face do not cause this journey to your stomach to happen....oh, the things we could economize, the filth and gunk and disgusting mire we could avoid, the body fluids we could quarantine, Mr. Baby. The racket we could attenuate....the pandemonium we could diminish...
Chimera, fantasy, delusion...indeed. Still. Give it some thought, Mr. Baby. It would really shed some light on things.
All the books say you're too young for this, but I say what the hell, let's give it a shot. Because it would be really really nice, Mr. Baby, if you understood these two concepts and their relation to each other. I'm talking about our friends Cause, and his not-so-distantly related cousin, Effect. These concepts would probably illuminate, to your great surprise and delight, some currently shadowy and blurred parts of your day.
You might wonder, for example, why you are sometimes lounging about in mid-air, enjoying the lyrical tales of Mr. Microwave and Mr. Basket in the tender and soothing tones of your mother's voice, receiving raspberry kisses and giggling mirthfully, and then suddenly being jostled to the harsh cries of ''aw, fuck, kid,'' bouncing jaggedly and swerving unceremoniously through several rooms to land, not at all gently, in your cold and lonely crib without so much as a farewell. This perplexing change of demeanor and location, this sudden withdrawal of motherly affection, would be infinitely more explicable if you could connect somewhere in that head of yours the aforementioned events, and the squishy feeling of your fingers coming into contact with a retina - to wit, your mother's - at high speed.
You could, as another example, more accurately deflect the accusatory expression on your face when your throat feels painful and itchy and your eyes begin to water and you are looking around the room for sympathy or the disposal of your disdain. If you knew about Cause and Effect, you would know that it is senseless to look at me then, because the plastic spoon repeatedly impacting and scraping your tonsils is not intertwined by any physics-defying magic to me, but rather held by your own hand, and therefore it would behoove you to cast your dour expression upon a mirror. You would also know that I am not to blame for you holding this object, because you reached out with your little claw hands and snatched it from me every time. Every time.
If you knew about Cause and Effect, Mr. Baby, you could perhaps link the sensations of angst and bitterness, and your desire to throw things at your mommy and yell hoarsely and unhappily for what must be very long amounts of time, percentage-wise speaking, of your life, with the idea of sleeping, which causes those feelings to subside if you just do it. It's a bit of a stretch, but you might also be able to associate Mean Mommy (you know who that is) with the nights you ''have a party'' in your crib. And then maybe you could come full circle in a web of enlightenment, and conjecture that most problems in your world are caused by a dearth of sleep, and maybe - I know these are vain and absurd vagaries, Mr. Baby - but maybe you could even accommodate the cognizance of your own, singular culpability in this intifada of insomnia and take it upon yourself to bring peace by just closing your eyes, and your mouth. Perhaps you could conjoin these closings with the pacific breeze that floats through the house, and the return of Nice Mommy.
When you begin to feel a slight headache, you begin to feel as though the world is a maraca and you are trapped inside of it, the close and claustrophobic swishing sounds begin to suffocate you and your temple becomes increasingly tender - you could look to your left, and see the repetitive motion of your limbs, and realize that it will all be quiet, if only you stop hitting yourself in the head with a rattle.
Oh, the places we could go Mr. Baby! In the morning, rather than waiting for the slow, wet stench of realization to ooze from your pants to your mind, you could instead think to yourself, ''oh hey, I'm about to take a crap again,'' and let someone know before it's all smashed into your bum. Probably you've wondered why it takes so long, in the cold, cold morning, to become warm again... if you just understood that it is almost impossible to put clothing on a simultaneously frantic and limp human being who is also pinching you like a crab and laughing like an evil doll, if you knew that the clothes are the thing, the thing that makes you warm, but only if you are wearing them. If you could understand that food must travel through your mouth and into your stomach to diminish your gnawing hunger and gnawing, annoying little protests about it...that smearing it on the dog and your face do not cause this journey to your stomach to happen....oh, the things we could economize, the filth and gunk and disgusting mire we could avoid, the body fluids we could quarantine, Mr. Baby. The racket we could attenuate....the pandemonium we could diminish...
Chimera, fantasy, delusion...indeed. Still. Give it some thought, Mr. Baby. It would really shed some light on things.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Are you tripping?
I'm working on a Theory of Infants, which I have patched together from: 1) some information I retained from a biopsychology class taken way back in the nineties, 2) my distracted observations of other infants and drug users, 3) various pop culture references, and 4) the incredibly weird shit you do on a daily basis.
Biopsychology:
I recall learning a lot more in that class than I could manage to recall at this date, but a lot has happened between here and there, which I shall bore you with, Mr. Baby, at another time. The point? I forgot everything except for these three interesting/important facts, delivered at some point during the semester by a translucent professor who chain-smoked and seemed much more viscerally cognizant of the effects of most of the drugs he described than mere textbooks or labwork generally confer upon a person.
1) Aspirin enhances the effects of alcohol, which stands out not because the fact was particularly fascinating or even unexpected, but because the professor walked out on the last half of the lecture mumbling something like ''every time, every goddam time,'' and ''profanely idiotic'' after someone raised his hand to ask if Ibuprofen would also work. It's a scene that takes on greater poignancy with every passing day of my life.
2) Nutmeg, in absurdly large quantities, mimics the effects of LSD, which I remember because nutmeg seems so innocuous and related to Christmas, albeit via eggnog, and LSD seems, well - so distant from and nontangential to cookies and Santa Claus and overly cheerful trees.
3) Slightly related to the previous point, and in fact the only factoid relevant to the current argument, all mind-altering drugs work because there is a similar drug already manufactured in the human body.
Observations of Infants:
I didn't pay a lot of attention to infants prior to having you, except for that year I ran a hybrid mafia-communist babysitting business (mafia for the bellicosity with which I 'edged' out my competition, communist for the jovially non-profiteering nature of my prices). Anyway, I don't know why anyone let me watch those kids, but I observed this: they all seemed to be freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all.
Observations of Drug Users:
We've all been to a concert or two (where we've seen other people engaging in this sort of very bad, very prohibited behavior). And I observed this: everyone on drugs seems to be freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all.
Pop-culture References:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Observations of You:
I've observed this: you seem to spend a lot of time freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all. Like today, when your crib guy, "Spider,'' with whom you were having an amicable conversation for several minutes, replete with hand waving and enormous toothless grinning, just freaked you right the hell out. But I mean, like, right the hell, I-just-saw -apocalyptic-locusts-eating-my-mother's-face-off-in-a-room-full-of-clowns-and-jewelery-box -music-and-Teletubbies, out. Two minutes later you guys were back to laughing again. A similar incident happened with your friend "Wall,'' who you seem to be in love with, and I think the fact that you even have intimate confidants like ''Ceiling'' and ''Floor'' is strong evidence in favor of what I shall shortly propose. However, the inordinately large amount of time you spend, unable to sleep, with your mouth and eyes open in a fascinated stupor, attempting to pick the tiny designs off of your clothes and sheets, essentially closes the case on this armchair neuropsychology manifesto.
My Theory of Infants, in case you have not pieced it together, is that infants are just tripping out on the naturally-produced version of LSD afloat in their tiny, incomplete little brains. You're not insane, Mr. Baby. You're just really, really high.
Biopsychology:
I recall learning a lot more in that class than I could manage to recall at this date, but a lot has happened between here and there, which I shall bore you with, Mr. Baby, at another time. The point? I forgot everything except for these three interesting/important facts, delivered at some point during the semester by a translucent professor who chain-smoked and seemed much more viscerally cognizant of the effects of most of the drugs he described than mere textbooks or labwork generally confer upon a person.
1) Aspirin enhances the effects of alcohol, which stands out not because the fact was particularly fascinating or even unexpected, but because the professor walked out on the last half of the lecture mumbling something like ''every time, every goddam time,'' and ''profanely idiotic'' after someone raised his hand to ask if Ibuprofen would also work. It's a scene that takes on greater poignancy with every passing day of my life.
2) Nutmeg, in absurdly large quantities, mimics the effects of LSD, which I remember because nutmeg seems so innocuous and related to Christmas, albeit via eggnog, and LSD seems, well - so distant from and nontangential to cookies and Santa Claus and overly cheerful trees.
3) Slightly related to the previous point, and in fact the only factoid relevant to the current argument, all mind-altering drugs work because there is a similar drug already manufactured in the human body.
Observations of Infants:
I didn't pay a lot of attention to infants prior to having you, except for that year I ran a hybrid mafia-communist babysitting business (mafia for the bellicosity with which I 'edged' out my competition, communist for the jovially non-profiteering nature of my prices). Anyway, I don't know why anyone let me watch those kids, but I observed this: they all seemed to be freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all.
Observations of Drug Users:
We've all been to a concert or two (where we've seen other people engaging in this sort of very bad, very prohibited behavior). And I observed this: everyone on drugs seems to be freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all.
Pop-culture References:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Observations of You:
I've observed this: you seem to spend a lot of time freakishly staring and drooling and intermittently laughing and then crying at nothing at all. Like today, when your crib guy, "Spider,'' with whom you were having an amicable conversation for several minutes, replete with hand waving and enormous toothless grinning, just freaked you right the hell out. But I mean, like, right the hell, I-just-saw -apocalyptic-locusts-eating-my-mother's-face-off-in-a-room-full-of-clowns-and-jewelery-box -music-and-Teletubbies, out. Two minutes later you guys were back to laughing again. A similar incident happened with your friend "Wall,'' who you seem to be in love with, and I think the fact that you even have intimate confidants like ''Ceiling'' and ''Floor'' is strong evidence in favor of what I shall shortly propose. However, the inordinately large amount of time you spend, unable to sleep, with your mouth and eyes open in a fascinated stupor, attempting to pick the tiny designs off of your clothes and sheets, essentially closes the case on this armchair neuropsychology manifesto.
My Theory of Infants, in case you have not pieced it together, is that infants are just tripping out on the naturally-produced version of LSD afloat in their tiny, incomplete little brains. You're not insane, Mr. Baby. You're just really, really high.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Safe and Dangerous
Hello Mr. Baby!
We seem to have a little discrepancy again, and it's regarding things that are safe and dangerous, and our respective definitions of these things. Typically, in a dispute of this type, the concerned parties discuss What They Meant By X and arrive at some sort of civil and plastic compromise. However, your judgment seems to be really, really off the mark here, really severely impaired, not even stemming from the same realm of physics governing this universe. As such, I'm just going to go ahead and assert my authoritarianism for the first of what I am sure will be many, many times and tell you that there is certain shit, Mr. Baby, that you just have to cut the hell out. Why? I am so delighted that you asked. Because I said so, which you perhaps can tell from the anticipatory tapping of my fingertips beneath my delightedly sinister expression, is something I've just been waiting around to say. And because, Mr. Baby - and this is just indisputable in light of your recent actions - those branching, flowering neurons you are purportedly growing in there have clearly not gotten around to colonizing the part of your brain responsible for common, life-preserving sense.
Lo! I've made a list of dangerous things for you, but I've also been so kind as to include a safe alternative for your convenience. The last thing we want, Mr. Baby, is to cause you any sort of inconvenience or discomfort.
Dangerous: Eying with gentle intensity, and then placing, with alarming celerity, everything you see in your mouth, with a bit of a predilection for both the shiny and the crusty.
Safe Alternative: Placing items, screened by your caregivers, largely for the specific qualities of not having gamboled about on the floor or toured the mouth of the dog, and not being designated for slicing food, in your mouth. I'll just go ahead and save you a little bit of suspense and haplessness in life; crusty is rarely a desirable quality, for your mouth, or underwear, or socks.
Dangerous: Swallowing earplugs and plastic bags.
Safe Suggestion: Swallowing the meticulously researched and thoughtfully spiced, nutritionally calibrated and lovingly prepared baby food that you are fed on a very safe, rubber-tipped spoon. In fact, you could simply reverse the way you are doing things now, and spit out earplugs or plastic bags with the same powerful, projectile vehemence that you reserve for rice mush and beans (this has the concurring benefit of being not annoying, which is another list I intend to make for you).
Dangerous: Sucking the well water that even the dog disapproves of (a formidable condemnation indeed, from a beast who blithely and unperturbed, devours piles of shit and antifreeze) out of your washcloth at bath time.
Safe (and I really thought this might have been obvious...) sucking the distilled water out of the washcloth that someone soaked for you in distilled water and gave to you as a substitute in a rare moment of prescience. One caveat, however - this must be done before, not after, dunking it into the bathwater, which, sigh Mr. Baby, sigh, is just one of the myriad of techniques you have developed for dismantling the best-made plans.
Dangerous: Feigning a complete and total lack of recall of the ability to roll, and then suddenly and with a sense of humor befit devious lemmings, having somehow determined that the person supervising you has begun to trust your spurious lateral immobility, zealously demonstrating those skills while atop a high surface.
Safe: Rolling in your crib, or on cue while people are watching and requesting that you do so in a safe and supervised setting.
Dangerous: Licking the dog.
Safe (somewhat): Licking yourself.
Dangerous: The new game you have devised for bath time, which involves looking somewhat tired and waiting, with shifty eyes no less, for someone to glance away for a nanosecond, then grinning merrily while scrunching yourself into a little baby ball with your nostrils skimming the water's surface and laughing heartily at the ensuing chaos while still partially underwater.
Safe: Remaining calm, unscrunched, and upright in the bathtub, with your face well above the water line.
Dangerous: Waiting, watching, with a perversity and savage sense of timing, for the moment that the person next to you is finally drifting in the sun-bleached, sweetly blurry foyer of sleep, and then rolling over, placing your mouth very close to that person's ear, and for no discernable reason, yelling AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH in a nagging, frantic little voice.
Safe: Sleeping through the night. In your crib. Quietly. (Also to be included in a future list entitled Irritating, and Not).
Mr. Baby, that's it for now, but I will just leave this open-ended, as I have no doubt of your ability to conjure more and more dangerous ideas, swelling in their foolish monstrosity as a function of your mobility. I caution you that the oft-repeated threat involving a giant hamster ball is not entirely hyperbolic, and I'm just the sort of person to do such a thing. I am.
We seem to have a little discrepancy again, and it's regarding things that are safe and dangerous, and our respective definitions of these things. Typically, in a dispute of this type, the concerned parties discuss What They Meant By X and arrive at some sort of civil and plastic compromise. However, your judgment seems to be really, really off the mark here, really severely impaired, not even stemming from the same realm of physics governing this universe. As such, I'm just going to go ahead and assert my authoritarianism for the first of what I am sure will be many, many times and tell you that there is certain shit, Mr. Baby, that you just have to cut the hell out. Why? I am so delighted that you asked. Because I said so, which you perhaps can tell from the anticipatory tapping of my fingertips beneath my delightedly sinister expression, is something I've just been waiting around to say. And because, Mr. Baby - and this is just indisputable in light of your recent actions - those branching, flowering neurons you are purportedly growing in there have clearly not gotten around to colonizing the part of your brain responsible for common, life-preserving sense.
Lo! I've made a list of dangerous things for you, but I've also been so kind as to include a safe alternative for your convenience. The last thing we want, Mr. Baby, is to cause you any sort of inconvenience or discomfort.
Dangerous: Eying with gentle intensity, and then placing, with alarming celerity, everything you see in your mouth, with a bit of a predilection for both the shiny and the crusty.
Safe Alternative: Placing items, screened by your caregivers, largely for the specific qualities of not having gamboled about on the floor or toured the mouth of the dog, and not being designated for slicing food, in your mouth. I'll just go ahead and save you a little bit of suspense and haplessness in life; crusty is rarely a desirable quality, for your mouth, or underwear, or socks.
Dangerous: Swallowing earplugs and plastic bags.
Safe Suggestion: Swallowing the meticulously researched and thoughtfully spiced, nutritionally calibrated and lovingly prepared baby food that you are fed on a very safe, rubber-tipped spoon. In fact, you could simply reverse the way you are doing things now, and spit out earplugs or plastic bags with the same powerful, projectile vehemence that you reserve for rice mush and beans (this has the concurring benefit of being not annoying, which is another list I intend to make for you).
Dangerous: Sucking the well water that even the dog disapproves of (a formidable condemnation indeed, from a beast who blithely and unperturbed, devours piles of shit and antifreeze) out of your washcloth at bath time.
Safe (and I really thought this might have been obvious...) sucking the distilled water out of the washcloth that someone soaked for you in distilled water and gave to you as a substitute in a rare moment of prescience. One caveat, however - this must be done before, not after, dunking it into the bathwater, which, sigh Mr. Baby, sigh, is just one of the myriad of techniques you have developed for dismantling the best-made plans.
Dangerous: Feigning a complete and total lack of recall of the ability to roll, and then suddenly and with a sense of humor befit devious lemmings, having somehow determined that the person supervising you has begun to trust your spurious lateral immobility, zealously demonstrating those skills while atop a high surface.
Safe: Rolling in your crib, or on cue while people are watching and requesting that you do so in a safe and supervised setting.
Dangerous: Licking the dog.
Safe (somewhat): Licking yourself.
Dangerous: The new game you have devised for bath time, which involves looking somewhat tired and waiting, with shifty eyes no less, for someone to glance away for a nanosecond, then grinning merrily while scrunching yourself into a little baby ball with your nostrils skimming the water's surface and laughing heartily at the ensuing chaos while still partially underwater.
Safe: Remaining calm, unscrunched, and upright in the bathtub, with your face well above the water line.
Dangerous: Waiting, watching, with a perversity and savage sense of timing, for the moment that the person next to you is finally drifting in the sun-bleached, sweetly blurry foyer of sleep, and then rolling over, placing your mouth very close to that person's ear, and for no discernable reason, yelling AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH AHH in a nagging, frantic little voice.
Safe: Sleeping through the night. In your crib. Quietly. (Also to be included in a future list entitled Irritating, and Not).
Mr. Baby, that's it for now, but I will just leave this open-ended, as I have no doubt of your ability to conjure more and more dangerous ideas, swelling in their foolish monstrosity as a function of your mobility. I caution you that the oft-repeated threat involving a giant hamster ball is not entirely hyperbolic, and I'm just the sort of person to do such a thing. I am.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Remains of the Day
Dear Mr. Baby:
I have thrown some parties, memorable mostly in their occult and cryptic aftermath, that I call vaguely to mind today. There was the Halloween party of 2005, where, inspired by recently watching Breakfast at Tiffany's, I sauntered around my university apartment encouraging everyone who came to smoke cigarettes in holders and wave their arms around quasi-elegantly like stage actors on a movie set, and woke up to thousands of explicable but still improbable yellowish holes burned into the sides of candles, a shoe I did not own, and the plastic frame of an Ansel Adams photograph that had been in the closet. In 1996, I could not find my coffee maker to ward off the ill effects of a social engagement involving the first and last keg of beer I will ever buy, only to find it (the coffee maker) several days later, dripping Coors Light onto a bed from the ceiling fan where it had been placed with intricate and almost engineered care. The night I refer to as The Saki Night, the remnants of which trapped newspapers and trash in a sickly sweet death grip for weeks to come, all over the house, I assume because I declared at rather imbibed and uninhibited point in the evening that all saki must be drunk hot! but did not have the equipment, experience, nor sobriety to properly execute such a plan. Interestingly, most of the saki seems to have been spilled in the bathroom.
March 2011, one of many days indistinguishable from others: there is a trail of wheat-free snacks on the counter dribbling away into large, tongue shaped splotches on the floor. The dog is wobbly and disoriented. Everything the kitchen is half-done; drawers, in various states of aperture, ooze things like dishcloths and cleaning products and duct tape, partially unrolled. My keys are in the refrigerator, dangling into an open jar of pickles. There is a destroyed stick in the middle of the living room. I lost my phone (but found it, in a fortunate turn of events, prior to restarting the dryer.) A variety of blankets and shirts are everywhere covered in splotches of vomit. A plant has fallen over, from a perch where nobody can even reach to water it. There is underwear all over the place, just all. over. the. place. It looks as though a carnival of socially irresponsible people, with a penchant for brightly colored junk and an obsession with the words Oink! and Chirp! came through here.
It's just like old times, Mr. Baby, except nobody is drunk (except maybe the dog) and nobody really had quite that much fun. Furthermore, and I find this to be the most illusive aspect of the condition of my house - nobody who has properly functioning appendages, aside from me, was even here, which, by default, makes me irrefutably responsible for the mess. It's 8 o'clock, and I have no idea what happened with this day. Or why, given that the kitchen looks like the midnight snack preparations of a drunk, I didn't eat lunch or dinner.
I'd ask you what happened, but you just say phleble and aaaaag over and over and over. To be frank, you're as useful for intelligence gathering as a concussed parrot.
Here are some things I do know happened:
I let you play with a plastic bag, because I distinctly remember thinking about that. I remember feeling rather seasoned at that point, like one of those soldiers on their third tour somewhere, who just walk around in a nonchalant dispassion, ostentatiously not ducking even though there are grenades exploding everywhere. I just thought, rather lethargically: Oh hey look at that. You're so definitively, quintessentially, being a Bad Mother right now. (For the record, you just really showed a lot of interest in it. It's yellow and crinkly, which are two of your favorite qualities in people and stuff. Also, I eventually took it away).
I made a list of all the things I would buy if people would just give me two actual cents instead of universally useless hypotheses as to why you scream a lot. On it, a lifetime supply of earplugs.
There were blithe times too, kicking your crib critters and singing great songs of my own ingenious composition, like Who's awake and chewing on his blanket? and What's wrong with the baby now? That may have been yesterday. Today may have been more of a Tough Times for Tiny Guys day. Either way, there was probably a lot of all that and I'm sure it was the height of tedious fun. It's best if you do it in a variety of styles and somewhat accurate accents. Tone-deaf Australian Raised In Germany Rap, Operatic Indian Who Learned English In Jamaica, Proto-European Country and Western.
Beyond that, who the hell knows what happened here for twelve hours. I can only see the aftermath, and ponder the wonder of it all.
I have thrown some parties, memorable mostly in their occult and cryptic aftermath, that I call vaguely to mind today. There was the Halloween party of 2005, where, inspired by recently watching Breakfast at Tiffany's, I sauntered around my university apartment encouraging everyone who came to smoke cigarettes in holders and wave their arms around quasi-elegantly like stage actors on a movie set, and woke up to thousands of explicable but still improbable yellowish holes burned into the sides of candles, a shoe I did not own, and the plastic frame of an Ansel Adams photograph that had been in the closet. In 1996, I could not find my coffee maker to ward off the ill effects of a social engagement involving the first and last keg of beer I will ever buy, only to find it (the coffee maker) several days later, dripping Coors Light onto a bed from the ceiling fan where it had been placed with intricate and almost engineered care. The night I refer to as The Saki Night, the remnants of which trapped newspapers and trash in a sickly sweet death grip for weeks to come, all over the house, I assume because I declared at rather imbibed and uninhibited point in the evening that all saki must be drunk hot! but did not have the equipment, experience, nor sobriety to properly execute such a plan. Interestingly, most of the saki seems to have been spilled in the bathroom.
March 2011, one of many days indistinguishable from others: there is a trail of wheat-free snacks on the counter dribbling away into large, tongue shaped splotches on the floor. The dog is wobbly and disoriented. Everything the kitchen is half-done; drawers, in various states of aperture, ooze things like dishcloths and cleaning products and duct tape, partially unrolled. My keys are in the refrigerator, dangling into an open jar of pickles. There is a destroyed stick in the middle of the living room. I lost my phone (but found it, in a fortunate turn of events, prior to restarting the dryer.) A variety of blankets and shirts are everywhere covered in splotches of vomit. A plant has fallen over, from a perch where nobody can even reach to water it. There is underwear all over the place, just all. over. the. place. It looks as though a carnival of socially irresponsible people, with a penchant for brightly colored junk and an obsession with the words Oink! and Chirp! came through here.
It's just like old times, Mr. Baby, except nobody is drunk (except maybe the dog) and nobody really had quite that much fun. Furthermore, and I find this to be the most illusive aspect of the condition of my house - nobody who has properly functioning appendages, aside from me, was even here, which, by default, makes me irrefutably responsible for the mess. It's 8 o'clock, and I have no idea what happened with this day. Or why, given that the kitchen looks like the midnight snack preparations of a drunk, I didn't eat lunch or dinner.
I'd ask you what happened, but you just say phleble and aaaaag over and over and over. To be frank, you're as useful for intelligence gathering as a concussed parrot.
Here are some things I do know happened:
I let you play with a plastic bag, because I distinctly remember thinking about that. I remember feeling rather seasoned at that point, like one of those soldiers on their third tour somewhere, who just walk around in a nonchalant dispassion, ostentatiously not ducking even though there are grenades exploding everywhere. I just thought, rather lethargically: Oh hey look at that. You're so definitively, quintessentially, being a Bad Mother right now. (For the record, you just really showed a lot of interest in it. It's yellow and crinkly, which are two of your favorite qualities in people and stuff. Also, I eventually took it away).
I made a list of all the things I would buy if people would just give me two actual cents instead of universally useless hypotheses as to why you scream a lot. On it, a lifetime supply of earplugs.
There were blithe times too, kicking your crib critters and singing great songs of my own ingenious composition, like Who's awake and chewing on his blanket? and What's wrong with the baby now? That may have been yesterday. Today may have been more of a Tough Times for Tiny Guys day. Either way, there was probably a lot of all that and I'm sure it was the height of tedious fun. It's best if you do it in a variety of styles and somewhat accurate accents. Tone-deaf Australian Raised In Germany Rap, Operatic Indian Who Learned English In Jamaica, Proto-European Country and Western.
Beyond that, who the hell knows what happened here for twelve hours. I can only see the aftermath, and ponder the wonder of it all.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Advice-22
Dear Mr. Baby:
According to the advice we're getting, we're very much on track, not at all.
It's best, after four months, to let you cry in your crib until you exhaust yourself in order to facilitate getting you on a schedule. We must not have a limit for crying at bedtime or you will be taught nothing more than to be a big crybaby. You cannot, because of your level of neurological development, establish bad habits yet, so it is very important to never let you cry for more than an hour, and you should be carried everywhere to keep you from crying. When you give up crying, it's because you have stopped trying to communicate with me, to the detriment of your communicative development, the speed of which is indicative of nothing, and is also a barometer of your general well-being. In fact, it's actually bad parenting masquerading as tender affection to rock, sway, or console you to sleep, because it impedes your learning to fall asleep unassisted and will sow the seeds of terrible sleeping habits, and you will be a sullen teenager who dresses in black and fights the establishment. Furthermore, you will ruin your vocal chords if you cry hysterically, which is simply a sign of being overtired, and I must make sure to allow you to go to sleep at that point by not interfering because there is no case of a baby anywhere who injured himself merely by crying. Naturally, this is neglect.
You can't be spoiled right now, it's a myth. So, if I console you, I will be teaching you terrible habits about manipulation, and you will live at home until you are thirty. At this time, you should be sleeping in another room, to avoid developing problems with separation anxiety, which will set in soon. Additionally, you should be in the family bed until you are ten to build your self-esteem and reduce anxiety. Family beds will increase your chances of SIDS and asphyxiation, so you should never sleep in our bed. You need to hear my heartbeat and you need stationary sleep, so I should carry you and place you on a flat surface to sleep. Sleeping in a stroller, car seat, or wrap is unhealthy for reasons not fully disclosed, but very scientific and containing many cryptic acronyms. Acronyms are indicative of truth. On that note, you should always be carried around, because it reduces crying as evidenced by studies of African mothers. In short, you should go to bed by six, and whenever you appear tired, and you should develop your own sleep schedule.
Confused? It's because you're only four months old and your favorite word is phbleble. Stay with me.
I should never leave a bottle in your crib for you or you could choke, and you should be left with a bottle of water, much like a gerbil, so that you know something is there but cease to awaken for night feedings. In fact, you should never be given a bottle. It's a good idea to start you on bottles now because your father should help you with feedings, and eventually you will need them for day care, which you should never go to because it is full of germs and bad people, and it would be doing you a disservice to avoid because you must socialize. I should never ever give you any water or anything but breast milk for six months, and because you have colic you should have some tea. All of these things could potentially lead to death. Additionally, the doctor said we could start you on solid foods. No babies in the developing world are weaned until they are three, four, and seven, and breastfeeding past the age of one is psychologically unsound, especially in France, where they rub wine on babies' lips to quiet them, which will cause North American women to be morally vacuous and generally rotten people.
You should sleep through the night and wake up twice to feed. You should eat before you go to bed to get you through the night but you should never eat before sleeping because of your incoming teeth, which will dissolve. Baby teeth do not come in immediately precisely because babies nurse to sleep. You should eat every three hours. Regarding feedings, I should feed you whenever you want to avoid dehydration and failure to thrive. I should make sure you get on a schedule, which is evil and Western and something that no one ever had before clocks were invented and should never be done if it can be avoided, because Western things are no good for you until you are about twenty. Plastic, for example, even if carefully concocted to react with absolutely nothing in the known universe, is terrible, and we should try to get a pacifier so you don't suck on your thumb (for the sake of your teeth), and nursing for comfort is a highly effective soothing method. But you should never nurse to go to sleep (again, for the sake of your teeth). The main thing that will save us is swaddling, which will give you a sense of security and destroy your posture, as evidenced by Russians, who are terrible ballerinas.
This is just the eating and sleeping. Don't even get me started on your pre-pre-pre-pre-educational needs, which we are dangerously behind on.
So I think, or at least what I get from all this, is that you should be wrapped up in a hemp sack-cloth and hung by a window with organic sunscreen on, and we should drop some rice mush in there once in a while and speak Mandarin to you so that you have perfect pitch.
According to the advice we're getting, we're very much on track, not at all.
It's best, after four months, to let you cry in your crib until you exhaust yourself in order to facilitate getting you on a schedule. We must not have a limit for crying at bedtime or you will be taught nothing more than to be a big crybaby. You cannot, because of your level of neurological development, establish bad habits yet, so it is very important to never let you cry for more than an hour, and you should be carried everywhere to keep you from crying. When you give up crying, it's because you have stopped trying to communicate with me, to the detriment of your communicative development, the speed of which is indicative of nothing, and is also a barometer of your general well-being. In fact, it's actually bad parenting masquerading as tender affection to rock, sway, or console you to sleep, because it impedes your learning to fall asleep unassisted and will sow the seeds of terrible sleeping habits, and you will be a sullen teenager who dresses in black and fights the establishment. Furthermore, you will ruin your vocal chords if you cry hysterically, which is simply a sign of being overtired, and I must make sure to allow you to go to sleep at that point by not interfering because there is no case of a baby anywhere who injured himself merely by crying. Naturally, this is neglect.
You can't be spoiled right now, it's a myth. So, if I console you, I will be teaching you terrible habits about manipulation, and you will live at home until you are thirty. At this time, you should be sleeping in another room, to avoid developing problems with separation anxiety, which will set in soon. Additionally, you should be in the family bed until you are ten to build your self-esteem and reduce anxiety. Family beds will increase your chances of SIDS and asphyxiation, so you should never sleep in our bed. You need to hear my heartbeat and you need stationary sleep, so I should carry you and place you on a flat surface to sleep. Sleeping in a stroller, car seat, or wrap is unhealthy for reasons not fully disclosed, but very scientific and containing many cryptic acronyms. Acronyms are indicative of truth. On that note, you should always be carried around, because it reduces crying as evidenced by studies of African mothers. In short, you should go to bed by six, and whenever you appear tired, and you should develop your own sleep schedule.
Confused? It's because you're only four months old and your favorite word is phbleble. Stay with me.
I should never leave a bottle in your crib for you or you could choke, and you should be left with a bottle of water, much like a gerbil, so that you know something is there but cease to awaken for night feedings. In fact, you should never be given a bottle. It's a good idea to start you on bottles now because your father should help you with feedings, and eventually you will need them for day care, which you should never go to because it is full of germs and bad people, and it would be doing you a disservice to avoid because you must socialize. I should never ever give you any water or anything but breast milk for six months, and because you have colic you should have some tea. All of these things could potentially lead to death. Additionally, the doctor said we could start you on solid foods. No babies in the developing world are weaned until they are three, four, and seven, and breastfeeding past the age of one is psychologically unsound, especially in France, where they rub wine on babies' lips to quiet them, which will cause North American women to be morally vacuous and generally rotten people.
You should sleep through the night and wake up twice to feed. You should eat before you go to bed to get you through the night but you should never eat before sleeping because of your incoming teeth, which will dissolve. Baby teeth do not come in immediately precisely because babies nurse to sleep. You should eat every three hours. Regarding feedings, I should feed you whenever you want to avoid dehydration and failure to thrive. I should make sure you get on a schedule, which is evil and Western and something that no one ever had before clocks were invented and should never be done if it can be avoided, because Western things are no good for you until you are about twenty. Plastic, for example, even if carefully concocted to react with absolutely nothing in the known universe, is terrible, and we should try to get a pacifier so you don't suck on your thumb (for the sake of your teeth), and nursing for comfort is a highly effective soothing method. But you should never nurse to go to sleep (again, for the sake of your teeth). The main thing that will save us is swaddling, which will give you a sense of security and destroy your posture, as evidenced by Russians, who are terrible ballerinas.
This is just the eating and sleeping. Don't even get me started on your pre-pre-pre-pre-educational needs, which we are dangerously behind on.
So I think, or at least what I get from all this, is that you should be wrapped up in a hemp sack-cloth and hung by a window with organic sunscreen on, and we should drop some rice mush in there once in a while and speak Mandarin to you so that you have perfect pitch.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
No words
Dear Mr. Baby:
There is a scene in Contact, the film adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel of the same name, in which Jodie Foster stares into the fathomless corners of the universe and, awestruck by the enormity and the exquisite beauty of it all, gazes, stricken, saying "no......words.......no.....words...." and opening and closing her mouth in teary, dramatic silent gapes.
I refer to this particular cinematic snippet because I think it best sketches an image of my inner self (with only a few modifications - I weep in disbelief, like Jodie Foster, and in awe and amazement, but of a more negative, a more grotesque, a more olfactory kind; I sense that which awes me not with my eyes but with my nose and with the amygdala or wherever the memory of all tortured smells goes to rot and brand itself to the mind) whenever I open your diapers to a poop these days. There are simply no....words....(tears)....no.....words.....(open mouth)....to describe it.
Perhaps to start we should discuss the general dismay I feel that so much of my life is now dedicated to discussions, albeit short, of fecal matter. Whether it has come or gone, its consistency and color, its size and shape. I have a Master's degree in not one but two platitude-generating fields - I used to be a favorite dinner guest, charming and witty and fairly current on political affairs. Now, I just spend a lot of time fretting about your excrement, Mr. Baby, and I'm trying to cut back. But this, the latest, un-freshest hell, I think we must discuss.
Before, you pooped a lot, and that was a (fairly legitimate, I think) cause for complaint because, well...there was a lot of poop. We spent what I consider to be a disproportionate amount of time in the laundry room, singing a cloying song I call "Pants Check'' whose lyrics really only embody two or three more words beyond that. This song can also easily be arranged to be "Pants Change'' if the need arises. A lot of feet (yours) and hands (mine) and noses (dog's, and occasionally someone else's) got sticky-pooed, and there was a lot of hand-washing and trash and yellowish stuff everywhere, with certain people trying to act cheerful but sounding more like they just walked out of The Feminine Mystique and couldn't find any Valium. Fred barked a lot. I don't know why.
Yes, when you were a wee little lad, you pooped fifteen times a day, and that is not an exaggeration of any kind. I had to write it all down for the doctor, and I always report the numbers honestly. Now, I don't know if doctors do the same thing to a baby's poop reports as they do to alcohol and cigarette reports, which, since you're new to the scene, is this: multiply by three in case someone ''forgot'' something. But she seemed duly impressed. You, Mr. Baby, were in the upper percentiles of pooping, frequency-wise. Stratospheric, vertigo-inducing rankings.
When you gradually reduced your output, and after I got over being nervous and perplexed and checked the Internet to make sure it was a-okay if you didn't poop for two days and then also called TeleHealth and my mother, I was of course quite pleased. It seemed to me at the time that less frequent pooping meant fewer, shall we say, mishaps. Fewer adventures, fewer emergency clothing changes. Fewer tornadoes of baby wipes and profanity, fewer games of Twister in attempts to keep things unadulterated, fewer contortions of the face remeniscent of The Scream. Less false, shrill giggling and me saying, good poop! vacuously, obviously not meaning it, not meaning it all.
Oh, but I wasn't thinking, and some of our readers more seasoned, more sage, those who have had children are already shaking their heads affectionately, for they know. Perhaps they are thinking of that time when they too were jejune fools, new to baby poop and unwise to the ways of the world. Still brimming with optimism and hope, clinging to that silly, fluttering dream that life will return to something normal. Someday. If only the poop will stop.
It turns out - and of course this is all quite logical in retrospect, and hindsmell is 20/10 Mr. Baby - it turns out that you don't actually want the poop to go on hiatus in anyone's bum. It turns out that human feces, left fermenting for several days, actually just takes on a horrifically fetid odor. One could say that it actually evolves in there. When, after several days of squirming and grunting and turning red and wringing your little hands while I act as your doula, you finally birth this little monster, Mr. Baby, there are no. words. to describe it, there is nothing to compare it to, there is simply not a hyperbole hyperbolic enough to capture the essence of this stench. It's additionally, although not at all unexpectedly, ironic that you began this nasty fermentation process right after we switched to cloth diapers. Thanks for that.
So to summarize my thoughts on this Mr. Baby, if you feel like going back to more frequent evacuations, that would be met with no small amount of joy and fanfare. Please. It's really, really gross. Really.
There is a scene in Contact, the film adaptation of the Carl Sagan novel of the same name, in which Jodie Foster stares into the fathomless corners of the universe and, awestruck by the enormity and the exquisite beauty of it all, gazes, stricken, saying "no......words.......no.....words...." and opening and closing her mouth in teary, dramatic silent gapes.
I refer to this particular cinematic snippet because I think it best sketches an image of my inner self (with only a few modifications - I weep in disbelief, like Jodie Foster, and in awe and amazement, but of a more negative, a more grotesque, a more olfactory kind; I sense that which awes me not with my eyes but with my nose and with the amygdala or wherever the memory of all tortured smells goes to rot and brand itself to the mind) whenever I open your diapers to a poop these days. There are simply no....words....(tears)....no.....words.....(open mouth)....to describe it.
Perhaps to start we should discuss the general dismay I feel that so much of my life is now dedicated to discussions, albeit short, of fecal matter. Whether it has come or gone, its consistency and color, its size and shape. I have a Master's degree in not one but two platitude-generating fields - I used to be a favorite dinner guest, charming and witty and fairly current on political affairs. Now, I just spend a lot of time fretting about your excrement, Mr. Baby, and I'm trying to cut back. But this, the latest, un-freshest hell, I think we must discuss.
Before, you pooped a lot, and that was a (fairly legitimate, I think) cause for complaint because, well...there was a lot of poop. We spent what I consider to be a disproportionate amount of time in the laundry room, singing a cloying song I call "Pants Check'' whose lyrics really only embody two or three more words beyond that. This song can also easily be arranged to be "Pants Change'' if the need arises. A lot of feet (yours) and hands (mine) and noses (dog's, and occasionally someone else's) got sticky-pooed, and there was a lot of hand-washing and trash and yellowish stuff everywhere, with certain people trying to act cheerful but sounding more like they just walked out of The Feminine Mystique and couldn't find any Valium. Fred barked a lot. I don't know why.
Yes, when you were a wee little lad, you pooped fifteen times a day, and that is not an exaggeration of any kind. I had to write it all down for the doctor, and I always report the numbers honestly. Now, I don't know if doctors do the same thing to a baby's poop reports as they do to alcohol and cigarette reports, which, since you're new to the scene, is this: multiply by three in case someone ''forgot'' something. But she seemed duly impressed. You, Mr. Baby, were in the upper percentiles of pooping, frequency-wise. Stratospheric, vertigo-inducing rankings.
When you gradually reduced your output, and after I got over being nervous and perplexed and checked the Internet to make sure it was a-okay if you didn't poop for two days and then also called TeleHealth and my mother, I was of course quite pleased. It seemed to me at the time that less frequent pooping meant fewer, shall we say, mishaps. Fewer adventures, fewer emergency clothing changes. Fewer tornadoes of baby wipes and profanity, fewer games of Twister in attempts to keep things unadulterated, fewer contortions of the face remeniscent of The Scream. Less false, shrill giggling and me saying, good poop! vacuously, obviously not meaning it, not meaning it all.
Oh, but I wasn't thinking, and some of our readers more seasoned, more sage, those who have had children are already shaking their heads affectionately, for they know. Perhaps they are thinking of that time when they too were jejune fools, new to baby poop and unwise to the ways of the world. Still brimming with optimism and hope, clinging to that silly, fluttering dream that life will return to something normal. Someday. If only the poop will stop.
It turns out - and of course this is all quite logical in retrospect, and hindsmell is 20/10 Mr. Baby - it turns out that you don't actually want the poop to go on hiatus in anyone's bum. It turns out that human feces, left fermenting for several days, actually just takes on a horrifically fetid odor. One could say that it actually evolves in there. When, after several days of squirming and grunting and turning red and wringing your little hands while I act as your doula, you finally birth this little monster, Mr. Baby, there are no. words. to describe it, there is nothing to compare it to, there is simply not a hyperbole hyperbolic enough to capture the essence of this stench. It's additionally, although not at all unexpectedly, ironic that you began this nasty fermentation process right after we switched to cloth diapers. Thanks for that.
So to summarize my thoughts on this Mr. Baby, if you feel like going back to more frequent evacuations, that would be met with no small amount of joy and fanfare. Please. It's really, really gross. Really.
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