Dear Mr. Baby:
Well-versed as I may be in the broad strokes of language acquisition, indicating no need for intervention on my part, as your dense and terrifying, disproportionately giant brain is hard at work at the mysteries of language all on its own - I still have a few notes for you here. It would just be easier if you would accept my conclusions about them, sooner rather than later. I've been at this English block party a long time now, and you can trust me with matters of semantic import. Also, there's Mommy's Sanity to think about. There's that.
So here are just a few entries in your current lexicon that could use a little fine-tuning:
Hot: Currently being used as an adjective for all items deviating greater than +/- 1 degree (F) from room temperature. Also apparently fused in your mind with the meaning of apocalyptically lethal. Naturally, this is the spawn of the seemingly innocuous seed that was planted by the explanation of why you can't touch the oven, which is still good and true. But look, little dude: some of this crap is cold, to start with. Also, I propose, in the name of All That Is Holy and Remotely Sane, to expand the temperature range a little. Say to include things ranging from 50-85 degrees as acceptable to touch without blowing on them for twenty minutes or screaming like someone just severed your hand with a jackknife and is still sawing away at it like a salami.
Ew: Also a little too all-encompassing. What was once applied to things that were, generally speaking, gross: dog shit, cow shit, goose shit, and baby shit, you are now walking around the farm declaring everything Ew. This can be a little insulting, if you are pointing at my face or making a commentary on the cleanliness of our house. And honestly: if something is covered in yogurt and snot and mashed into a crevice somewhere, that is Ew, but it's sort of bitchy to be complaining about it when everyone knows perfectly well that the only person who would cover a napkin and some fries in yogurt, chew on them, take them out of their mouth and wipe their nose with them, and then stuff them in between the drawers from whence they cannot be removed, is you.
Ow: Meant to be said when you have an injury or physical pain. The existential crisis you have about whether or not you should have your pants checked before your nap, and whether not 'tis better to sleep for a couple of hours or to take arms and struggle, or really just any psychological discomfort brought on by someone requesting that you do something you think you might prefer not to - that is not ow. People think I'm punching you, so cut it out.
Baby: You were a little young to be introducing the idea that the new baby is in mommy's belly, and that's my bad. So, while you seem to have grasped baby in its usual meaning, you'\ve also expanded it to include everyone's tummy. This makes for some hilarity when huge beer-drinking men say, ''What's this?'' Women, however...look kid, women are just going to be a different story in general than that of burly men with beer-bellies. Dad will tell you the rest of these important facts, but typically, women don't appreciate you patting their bellies and saying baby. Especially not at the yuppy grocery store, especially not if they're wearing yoga pants and have blonde streaky hair or drive a Lexus. Plus, I think we let somebody's cat accidentally out of the bag, judging by the terse expressions and subsequent whispering that ensued the other day at the store post-baby declaration. So maybe just keep your hands off the bellies of young and quite presumably unmarried women, and please, if you can't do that, for the love of god, don't smile and say baby, baby as you're doing it.
Fall: It's important to recognize that fall is generally used for sudden downward descents of an unintentional nature. This last part is very central to the meaning of the word. So when you say, ''Fall,'' because you were running through the house and (heh, heh) tripped on your own damn Leggo block, that's a pretty accurate story. Looking down from your highchair at the pile of spaghetti and milk on Fred's head and commenting ''all fall,'' however, is a little less accurate, given that you just decided to toss it there. See the difference? Throw is the word you are looking for. Or jackass.
Finally, good buddy, I'm really proud of you being bilingual, and finally rocking some Polish vocab. The fact that it means ''gimme'' is....well, it is what it is. Battles for another day. It's just that daj!, when you yell it in a demonic voice with that overly-determined expression on your face, sounds a lot like ''DIE. DIIIEEEEEEE!'' to the Anglophones. Maybe just stop spinning your head in circles while you say it.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Yet Fresher Auditory Hell
Hello there, Mr. Baby:
It's been a while. As you are aware, we have been quite busy you and I. You, pondering the multifarious mysteries of the universe, and I cleaning up the aftermath of your robust and maladroit methodologies. I haven't, really, any time to write letters of complaint - not if we're going to keep at bay the relentless tides of excruciatingly sharp-edged Leggo blocks, scraps of potentially once-important papers, cleverly smuggled rocks (selected, with apparent care, from the heaps of dry and clean stones for their high degree of mud and shit content), fistfuls of mashed and partially digested bread products, abused and beloved recycling items, bears, blankets, and those lovely cubes that intermittently dispense in perpetuum the cheerfuckingest arrangements of segments of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik ever imagined. All of which you are employing in what seems to me to be quite a haphazard and unsystematic set of experiments centering around our good friend gravity. (Again). To be honest, I haven't minded terribly being relegated to the less-than-glamorous role of lab janitor, because there are moments - beautiful and ephemeral moments - in which you actually entertain yourself.
However, you occasionally hit a snag. An item shaped like a star, to your angry befuddlement, will not allow itself to be crammed into a hole shaped like an octagon. Your bears are fat and tall and will not, despite your best efforts, be confined to the space into which you have smashed a number of other tiny items without problems. A car, overturned and pummeled into a tractor, cannot be removed with the same ease as it was earlier when it was on wheels. Your sippy cup straw sometimes comes unplugged.
Gone are the days of screaming, of more screaming, of horrible sounds, and of the ambiguous and adamant NO. No, from the apparently fathomless well of abrasive sounds you have extracted yet another menace to our sanity, another vicious assault on poise and composure.
Literature on the subject suggests that this sound be met with calm and silence. Demonstrate, the experts say, that you are in control by not reacting to your toddler.
Okay, but:...I'd like to know this: have any of these assholes actually heard this fucking sound?
In attempting to describe this, I am rendered helpless yet again by the exquisite hellishness of your sensory production. Words fail us again, Mr Baby. I suppose it's as if someone boiled together the auditory essence of: a crow being tortured in the throat of a seagull, of a cat being slowly flayed by dragging it across a chalkboard, of all the hypersensitive fire alarms in the middle of all the nights, of bagpipes played by tone-deaf amateurs, and, for good measure, even more tortured animals - all of the peacocks and cats who were ever shredded by predators or accidentally set on fire - and distilled them into one incomprehensibly potent sound, yet still I think this description does it no justice.
The Whine.
The Whine can permeate all things. I feel certain my blood is actually curdled by the deranged and impossible frequency at which it resonates. It is impossible to do anything, and impossible to not do anything, when the Whine is being broadcast. (Science backs me up here). And as you stand there, holding your truck upside down and at arms length, a Leggo block (a seemingly innocuous item but actually the harbinger of an auditory apocalypse) trapped in the driver's cabin, your face contorted into the almost comical but mostly terrifying expression required to birth this awful noise, I have but one thought in the milliseconds of silence that precede the Whine. And that is this:
There has got to be a way to weaponize this shit.
It's been a while. As you are aware, we have been quite busy you and I. You, pondering the multifarious mysteries of the universe, and I cleaning up the aftermath of your robust and maladroit methodologies. I haven't, really, any time to write letters of complaint - not if we're going to keep at bay the relentless tides of excruciatingly sharp-edged Leggo blocks, scraps of potentially once-important papers, cleverly smuggled rocks (selected, with apparent care, from the heaps of dry and clean stones for their high degree of mud and shit content), fistfuls of mashed and partially digested bread products, abused and beloved recycling items, bears, blankets, and those lovely cubes that intermittently dispense in perpetuum the cheerfuckingest arrangements of segments of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik ever imagined. All of which you are employing in what seems to me to be quite a haphazard and unsystematic set of experiments centering around our good friend gravity. (Again). To be honest, I haven't minded terribly being relegated to the less-than-glamorous role of lab janitor, because there are moments - beautiful and ephemeral moments - in which you actually entertain yourself.
However, you occasionally hit a snag. An item shaped like a star, to your angry befuddlement, will not allow itself to be crammed into a hole shaped like an octagon. Your bears are fat and tall and will not, despite your best efforts, be confined to the space into which you have smashed a number of other tiny items without problems. A car, overturned and pummeled into a tractor, cannot be removed with the same ease as it was earlier when it was on wheels. Your sippy cup straw sometimes comes unplugged.
Gone are the days of screaming, of more screaming, of horrible sounds, and of the ambiguous and adamant NO. No, from the apparently fathomless well of abrasive sounds you have extracted yet another menace to our sanity, another vicious assault on poise and composure.
Literature on the subject suggests that this sound be met with calm and silence. Demonstrate, the experts say, that you are in control by not reacting to your toddler.
Okay, but:...I'd like to know this: have any of these assholes actually heard this fucking sound?
In attempting to describe this, I am rendered helpless yet again by the exquisite hellishness of your sensory production. Words fail us again, Mr Baby. I suppose it's as if someone boiled together the auditory essence of: a crow being tortured in the throat of a seagull, of a cat being slowly flayed by dragging it across a chalkboard, of all the hypersensitive fire alarms in the middle of all the nights, of bagpipes played by tone-deaf amateurs, and, for good measure, even more tortured animals - all of the peacocks and cats who were ever shredded by predators or accidentally set on fire - and distilled them into one incomprehensibly potent sound, yet still I think this description does it no justice.
The Whine.
The Whine can permeate all things. I feel certain my blood is actually curdled by the deranged and impossible frequency at which it resonates. It is impossible to do anything, and impossible to not do anything, when the Whine is being broadcast. (Science backs me up here). And as you stand there, holding your truck upside down and at arms length, a Leggo block (a seemingly innocuous item but actually the harbinger of an auditory apocalypse) trapped in the driver's cabin, your face contorted into the almost comical but mostly terrifying expression required to birth this awful noise, I have but one thought in the milliseconds of silence that precede the Whine. And that is this:
There has got to be a way to weaponize this shit.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Mr. No
Dear Mr. Baby:
Or should I say.....Mr. No? Like all of the words and ideas that seem to spontaneously generate in your mind while you sleep, like shi-ta ta, Fred, the inexplicably Jersey-accented bear, and socks (a robust and...eccentric vocabulary that can only hint at the genius within), you awoke one morning to declare that sometime while you were sleeping, you decided to find everything objectionable. Or perhaps you always did, but only just recently found the means to express your general disdain for It All.
Once again, we must applaud Selma Fraiberg for her attempt to paint a charming picture of the delightful toddler, sweetly and excitedly taking on his new world and cognitive abilities with charm and pluck. Children at this age, she advises, may adopt the word ''no'' as their favorite word, but we can all rest assured that they are simply declaring their intent to possibly veto something, if they should possibly decide to do so.
And when you read the book, you picture this adorable little bobble-head toddling around, saying no but still doing what you ask him to, in a sunny kitchen full of smiling people. And possibly those bluebirds from Snow White.
Whatever. You, Mr. Baby, do not only intend to possibly veto it, you do definitely veto it, and refuse to do it, whatever it is, until, in a mercurial and mysterious twist, you veto your own veto and decide that you don't like not doing the thing that you professed such an objection to doing in the first place, so not only will you not not do it, you're not doing that, either. Or anything else that is proposed, or nothing that isn't, or for that matter, any additional proposals or non-proposals, thoughts of proposals, or considerations of same.
So what are we doing, Mr. Baby? Who. the. fuck. knows?
And then there is.... The Tone. You are as dismissive as any high-powered Wall Street executive. No, you tell me, before my sentence is even finished, ending your declaration with pursed and resolute lips. You don't have time for this, you are saying. It's completely out of the question. It's almost a half-no, like you can't even dignify the suggestion with a reply. You can't afford the time to pronounce the entire vowel, the idea is so absurd and draining of your time.
It's a bit flippant, Mr. Baby.
And so here we are, a typical day:
Uh-oh, you dropped your milk on the floor.
No.
Do you want me to pick it up?
No.
Okay fine.
No.
So you want it?
No.
Do you want to get down?
No.
Do you want some more snacks?
No.
What do you want?
No.
Nothing?
No.
Okay then.
No.
I've had more realistic conversations with a chatbot, A.
No.
(Silence)
(Stare)
(Silence)
No.
Want to play-
No.
You're shoving a book in my hand-
No.
You want me to read it?
No.
(Silence)
(Shoving book in hand) No.
Okay fine. "Five little ducks-''
(Taking book and throwing it on the floor) No.
Okay, no book.
No.
Are you agreeing with me?
No. (Shoving book in hand).
Read -
No.
(Opening book)
(Taking book and shaking head)No.
So no-
No.
So I-
No.
(Silence)
No.
Sigh.
(Throwing book at head)No.
And don't think, Mr. Baby, that any of this is more charming just because you call your bathtub Babycakes.
Or should I say.....Mr. No? Like all of the words and ideas that seem to spontaneously generate in your mind while you sleep, like shi-ta ta, Fred, the inexplicably Jersey-accented bear, and socks (a robust and...eccentric vocabulary that can only hint at the genius within), you awoke one morning to declare that sometime while you were sleeping, you decided to find everything objectionable. Or perhaps you always did, but only just recently found the means to express your general disdain for It All.
Once again, we must applaud Selma Fraiberg for her attempt to paint a charming picture of the delightful toddler, sweetly and excitedly taking on his new world and cognitive abilities with charm and pluck. Children at this age, she advises, may adopt the word ''no'' as their favorite word, but we can all rest assured that they are simply declaring their intent to possibly veto something, if they should possibly decide to do so.
And when you read the book, you picture this adorable little bobble-head toddling around, saying no but still doing what you ask him to, in a sunny kitchen full of smiling people. And possibly those bluebirds from Snow White.
Whatever. You, Mr. Baby, do not only intend to possibly veto it, you do definitely veto it, and refuse to do it, whatever it is, until, in a mercurial and mysterious twist, you veto your own veto and decide that you don't like not doing the thing that you professed such an objection to doing in the first place, so not only will you not not do it, you're not doing that, either. Or anything else that is proposed, or nothing that isn't, or for that matter, any additional proposals or non-proposals, thoughts of proposals, or considerations of same.
So what are we doing, Mr. Baby? Who. the. fuck. knows?
And then there is.... The Tone. You are as dismissive as any high-powered Wall Street executive. No, you tell me, before my sentence is even finished, ending your declaration with pursed and resolute lips. You don't have time for this, you are saying. It's completely out of the question. It's almost a half-no, like you can't even dignify the suggestion with a reply. You can't afford the time to pronounce the entire vowel, the idea is so absurd and draining of your time.
It's a bit flippant, Mr. Baby.
And so here we are, a typical day:
Uh-oh, you dropped your milk on the floor.
No.
Do you want me to pick it up?
No.
Okay fine.
No.
So you want it?
No.
Do you want to get down?
No.
Do you want some more snacks?
No.
What do you want?
No.
Nothing?
No.
Okay then.
No.
I've had more realistic conversations with a chatbot, A.
No.
(Silence)
(Stare)
(Silence)
No.
Want to play-
No.
You're shoving a book in my hand-
No.
You want me to read it?
No.
(Silence)
(Shoving book in hand) No.
Okay fine. "Five little ducks-''
(Taking book and throwing it on the floor) No.
Okay, no book.
No.
Are you agreeing with me?
No. (Shoving book in hand).
Read -
No.
(Opening book)
(Taking book and shaking head)No.
So no-
No.
So I-
No.
(Silence)
No.
Sigh.
(Throwing book at head)No.
And don't think, Mr. Baby, that any of this is more charming just because you call your bathtub Babycakes.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Milestones
According to some apparently somewhat reliable chart on the Internet, here are some ''milestones'' you should be hitting. According to the chart, we supposedly should be very proud parents. Let's have a look:
Uses two words skillfully
I find your acquisition of the words ''this'' and ''that'' to be both astoundingly lazy and endearingly clever. Whether or not you use these words skillfully is contingent upon one's perspective (saying this until you realize no one is getting it for you, and then yelling that until someone does, while not reflecting a particularly accurate meaning of these words, does get the job done). This seems to be, however, the extent of your linguistic efforts, and because it accomplishes anything and everything you may want to do, I can see you eventually falling behind. And I don't mind telling you, Mr. Baby, you come across as a li-ttle bit bossy.
Throws objects overhand
...directly at people's faces and into the toilet.
Discovers the joy of climbing
Ahead of schedule! How fantastic. Let's talk about gravity again. You seem to have determined, in a set of truly exhaustive and exhausting experiments, that spoons and sippy cups, if dropped, fall to the ground. (Now you're just doing it over and over again to fuck with with us). Unfortunately you have not been able to make what I think is a relatively simplistic leap and extend the application of that rule to all objects. Climbing, such joy. Turning around and walking straight off the stairs, straight off the chairs, straight off the tables! And should someone turn around for two seconds and fail to uphold your delusions of gravitational freedom? Rather than drawing some kind of logical conclusion from the experience, you give accusatory looks. You are a really, really mean, bad mommy, they say.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again - I'm telling you, Mr. Baby, just to save everyone some time and aggravation - gravity applies to everything on the fucking planet. Didn't you like my song? (Gra-vity, da da, you make everything FALL, even babies who climb up the WALL...da da da doom)?
May throw temper tantrums.
I don't get it either, kid, but it's on the charts. I'll be frank, Mr. Baby, I don't remember when you took your first step exactly, and I should have written down the day your started crawling or jamming a spoon in your eye in an attempt to eat. But December 10, 2011 at 4:21 pm in the checkout line of Wal-Mart (By the way, Wal-Mart? Such a cliché, kid) is singed with a sort of Pavlovian permanence - that's right, the twitchy kind - into my memory. I had suspected other events of being temper tantrums, but I know things now that I didn't know then. Like unless it can truly and legitimately be mistaken by a health care professional as an epileptic seizure, unless Catholic priests begin offering their services as exorcists, unless a strange and eerie silence precedes it while all of the air is sucked out of the room, unless the sound that is made exceeds - both in decibels and pitch - anything ever heard before on this planet (including The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet), it is not a temper tantrum. I know this now, Mr. Baby. Now I know.
Initiates games
You initiate one game. I'm calling it: Put A Blanket Over My Head And I Will Run Until I Smack Into An Object And Fall Over Backwards Laughing And Hitting My Head, but I think something shorter might be more catchy.
May get finicky about food.
Judging by your dual-performance capacity as both vacuum cleaner and garbage disposal,*
I doubt this will happen. Pickled herring? Unremarkable. Slice of lemon, including skin? Hardly noticeable. Bits of apple stashed somewhere in the living room that you occasionally pull out, in various states of decay, and munch on? Dental floss, tufts of dog fur (real and synthetic), dishwashing soap tablet? (FYI, concerned parents - it's totally cool for a 25-pound baby to eat up to three Finish Powerball dishwashing tablets, according to Baby's First Call Of Many To Poison Control). Mushrooms, blue cheese, banana peel, entire contents of the overturned compost container, pine cones, tissue, toothpaste, baby soap, conditioner? You don't discriminate. I honestly wouldn't mind a little bit of pickiness. You could, for example, start by creating two categories (say, organic and non-organic matter), and work down from there.
May switch from 2 naps to 1
Don't you dare, Mr. Baby. Don't. You. Dare.
*Canadians, for reasons they cannot, much like their legal system, explain, use the word garburator for this item. This word is silly to the point of being obscene, for many reasons, the most important of which being that Canadians are not particularly silly people, thus generating an overall effect that is rather creepy. Like Teletubbies. I'm going to request as such that you speak American around the house.
Uses two words skillfully
I find your acquisition of the words ''this'' and ''that'' to be both astoundingly lazy and endearingly clever. Whether or not you use these words skillfully is contingent upon one's perspective (saying this until you realize no one is getting it for you, and then yelling that until someone does, while not reflecting a particularly accurate meaning of these words, does get the job done). This seems to be, however, the extent of your linguistic efforts, and because it accomplishes anything and everything you may want to do, I can see you eventually falling behind. And I don't mind telling you, Mr. Baby, you come across as a li-ttle bit bossy.
Throws objects overhand
...directly at people's faces and into the toilet.
Discovers the joy of climbing
Ahead of schedule! How fantastic. Let's talk about gravity again. You seem to have determined, in a set of truly exhaustive and exhausting experiments, that spoons and sippy cups, if dropped, fall to the ground. (Now you're just doing it over and over again to fuck with with us). Unfortunately you have not been able to make what I think is a relatively simplistic leap and extend the application of that rule to all objects. Climbing, such joy. Turning around and walking straight off the stairs, straight off the chairs, straight off the tables! And should someone turn around for two seconds and fail to uphold your delusions of gravitational freedom? Rather than drawing some kind of logical conclusion from the experience, you give accusatory looks. You are a really, really mean, bad mommy, they say.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again - I'm telling you, Mr. Baby, just to save everyone some time and aggravation - gravity applies to everything on the fucking planet. Didn't you like my song? (Gra-vity, da da, you make everything FALL, even babies who climb up the WALL...da da da doom)?
May throw temper tantrums.
I don't get it either, kid, but it's on the charts. I'll be frank, Mr. Baby, I don't remember when you took your first step exactly, and I should have written down the day your started crawling or jamming a spoon in your eye in an attempt to eat. But December 10, 2011 at 4:21 pm in the checkout line of Wal-Mart (By the way, Wal-Mart? Such a cliché, kid) is singed with a sort of Pavlovian permanence - that's right, the twitchy kind - into my memory. I had suspected other events of being temper tantrums, but I know things now that I didn't know then. Like unless it can truly and legitimately be mistaken by a health care professional as an epileptic seizure, unless Catholic priests begin offering their services as exorcists, unless a strange and eerie silence precedes it while all of the air is sucked out of the room, unless the sound that is made exceeds - both in decibels and pitch - anything ever heard before on this planet (including The Most Annoying Sound on The Fucking Planet), it is not a temper tantrum. I know this now, Mr. Baby. Now I know.
Initiates games
You initiate one game. I'm calling it: Put A Blanket Over My Head And I Will Run Until I Smack Into An Object And Fall Over Backwards Laughing And Hitting My Head, but I think something shorter might be more catchy.
May get finicky about food.
Judging by your dual-performance capacity as both vacuum cleaner and garbage disposal,*
I doubt this will happen. Pickled herring? Unremarkable. Slice of lemon, including skin? Hardly noticeable. Bits of apple stashed somewhere in the living room that you occasionally pull out, in various states of decay, and munch on? Dental floss, tufts of dog fur (real and synthetic), dishwashing soap tablet? (FYI, concerned parents - it's totally cool for a 25-pound baby to eat up to three Finish Powerball dishwashing tablets, according to Baby's First Call Of Many To Poison Control). Mushrooms, blue cheese, banana peel, entire contents of the overturned compost container, pine cones, tissue, toothpaste, baby soap, conditioner? You don't discriminate. I honestly wouldn't mind a little bit of pickiness. You could, for example, start by creating two categories (say, organic and non-organic matter), and work down from there.
May switch from 2 naps to 1
Don't you dare, Mr. Baby. Don't. You. Dare.
*Canadians, for reasons they cannot, much like their legal system, explain, use the word garburator for this item. This word is silly to the point of being obscene, for many reasons, the most important of which being that Canadians are not particularly silly people, thus generating an overall effect that is rather creepy. Like Teletubbies. I'm going to request as such that you speak American around the house.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Full Steam
Dear Mr. Baby:
Hey bud. Haven't actually seen you in a while. I know you're out there, though, just like those shadowy, creepy ghost children in Japanese horror films. It's okay. You just learned how to move at the speed of light, and it has you pretty entertained. We've thrown up a few barricades in crucial locations (discovered the ''hard way,'') bubble-wrapped everything else and removed all the knives...so go nuts. By setting out tempting tableaux (rubber duck on the edge of toilet; unattended, open diaper full of squishy poop beneath a white wall; unsupervised containers of toxic materials next to sippy cups; shiny and apparently heavy objects on the edges of counters) and then hanging out, waiting for the sonic boom and snatching at the blurry air, I have been able to trap you with modest success when I need you to decelerate for a pit stop. There will likely be no pictures of you - the LHC people are using that technology to solve the mysteries of the universe right now - from age 12 months to whenever you decide to sit down in front of the TV with a bad haircut and fashionable clothing and complain that we are too bourgeois to understand you, but I'm okay with all of this. Like I said, go nuts. A thing I've discovered about motherhood is that many, many seemingly banal things are sublime merely because they occupy Certainsomeoneelse's frantic attention for three fracking minutes fortheloveofJesus. A few things, however, would be a lot easier if you took it down to Mach 1 for six seconds. Like:
1)Pants change. I know you think you've tried to change your own pants, but what you were doing doesn't really count, inasmuch as it was only 34% of the process. So you may not realize this, but it's hard, my good friend, to remove a substance that you do not want, for olfactpry and hygenic reasons, smeared all over your face, from an object shaped like an octopus and spinning like a North American cake mixer plugged into a European outlet. On crack.
2) Eating. Some things you still don't know how to get into your own mouth, so it's my job to put them in there. It's a lot like that Groundhog-smashy game, but on a smaller scale and forty times as fast and covered in Cream of Wheat. Now, some things you put into your own mouth, but at this speed I don't know what they are, or if you chewed them...so I can't really say how I feel about them. Also, you seem to have a lot more faith in my (as yet uncertified and minimally tested) infant Heimliching abilities than is warranted.
3) The Whole Doctor's Visit. The only thing I can say, and this isn't witty at all, it's just pathetically true in the truest sense of the truth: that was one exasperating experience. Now what? Your chart reads Height: 21-46 inches. Weight: 15-27 pounds. No one has seen inside your ears even once. Maybe you have three teeth, maybe you have five. FYI, it is not actually part of the vaccination process to stab you with a needle five times, and they have these things called band-aids that we can stick on your arm afterward so that you aren't bouncing around the office splattering blood on everything.
4) Everything, just everything related to clothing. Especially, but not limited to, socks and shoes. I've lowered my standards, and if you want to have your legs hanging out and no hat and no mittens, I'm sure you'll sustain less injury than the attempt to put these things on you at this velocity. But this is Canada, and you have to wear shoes. It's due to all the fucking ice, buddy. And some clothes. Just enough to keep Child Services off our back. Remember the time you were wearing your pants on your head and a shoe in your diaper? Do you hear how mommy's voice is cracking, oscillating between vacant, trying-hard-to-be-nice mommy and middle-aged crazy woman who is about to lock herself in a room and not come out for a week?
It's clear that you have inherited a metabolism, from some distant strata of the family tree, that will keep you thin and dangerously mobile and annoy the hell out of your future teachers, and I have resigned myself to the consequences of this genetic doom. I am flowing with the river, because I am Zen. I am rehearsing my responses to principals who will want you to take Ritalin and neighbors whom I will be reimbursing and other people's parents who will be making Helpful Suggestions about how to calm you down because I am Not Zen. I am also building a giant box and I am going to lock them in there with you. I call it BabyDome.
But can you please just stop the squirming, the twisting, the flailing, the arching, the tossing, the turning, the kicking, the convulsions, the seizures, the wiggling, the theatrics, for one. motherlovingminute. during the times listed above in point form? Thank you very much Mr. Baby.
Hey bud. Haven't actually seen you in a while. I know you're out there, though, just like those shadowy, creepy ghost children in Japanese horror films. It's okay. You just learned how to move at the speed of light, and it has you pretty entertained. We've thrown up a few barricades in crucial locations (discovered the ''hard way,'') bubble-wrapped everything else and removed all the knives...so go nuts. By setting out tempting tableaux (rubber duck on the edge of toilet; unattended, open diaper full of squishy poop beneath a white wall; unsupervised containers of toxic materials next to sippy cups; shiny and apparently heavy objects on the edges of counters) and then hanging out, waiting for the sonic boom and snatching at the blurry air, I have been able to trap you with modest success when I need you to decelerate for a pit stop. There will likely be no pictures of you - the LHC people are using that technology to solve the mysteries of the universe right now - from age 12 months to whenever you decide to sit down in front of the TV with a bad haircut and fashionable clothing and complain that we are too bourgeois to understand you, but I'm okay with all of this. Like I said, go nuts. A thing I've discovered about motherhood is that many, many seemingly banal things are sublime merely because they occupy Certainsomeoneelse's frantic attention for three fracking minutes fortheloveofJesus. A few things, however, would be a lot easier if you took it down to Mach 1 for six seconds. Like:
1)Pants change. I know you think you've tried to change your own pants, but what you were doing doesn't really count, inasmuch as it was only 34% of the process. So you may not realize this, but it's hard, my good friend, to remove a substance that you do not want, for olfactpry and hygenic reasons, smeared all over your face, from an object shaped like an octopus and spinning like a North American cake mixer plugged into a European outlet. On crack.
2) Eating. Some things you still don't know how to get into your own mouth, so it's my job to put them in there. It's a lot like that Groundhog-smashy game, but on a smaller scale and forty times as fast and covered in Cream of Wheat. Now, some things you put into your own mouth, but at this speed I don't know what they are, or if you chewed them...so I can't really say how I feel about them. Also, you seem to have a lot more faith in my (as yet uncertified and minimally tested) infant Heimliching abilities than is warranted.
3) The Whole Doctor's Visit. The only thing I can say, and this isn't witty at all, it's just pathetically true in the truest sense of the truth: that was one exasperating experience. Now what? Your chart reads Height: 21-46 inches. Weight: 15-27 pounds. No one has seen inside your ears even once. Maybe you have three teeth, maybe you have five. FYI, it is not actually part of the vaccination process to stab you with a needle five times, and they have these things called band-aids that we can stick on your arm afterward so that you aren't bouncing around the office splattering blood on everything.
4) Everything, just everything related to clothing. Especially, but not limited to, socks and shoes. I've lowered my standards, and if you want to have your legs hanging out and no hat and no mittens, I'm sure you'll sustain less injury than the attempt to put these things on you at this velocity. But this is Canada, and you have to wear shoes. It's due to all the fucking ice, buddy. And some clothes. Just enough to keep Child Services off our back. Remember the time you were wearing your pants on your head and a shoe in your diaper? Do you hear how mommy's voice is cracking, oscillating between vacant, trying-hard-to-be-nice mommy and middle-aged crazy woman who is about to lock herself in a room and not come out for a week?
It's clear that you have inherited a metabolism, from some distant strata of the family tree, that will keep you thin and dangerously mobile and annoy the hell out of your future teachers, and I have resigned myself to the consequences of this genetic doom. I am flowing with the river, because I am Zen. I am rehearsing my responses to principals who will want you to take Ritalin and neighbors whom I will be reimbursing and other people's parents who will be making Helpful Suggestions about how to calm you down because I am Not Zen. I am also building a giant box and I am going to lock them in there with you. I call it BabyDome.
But can you please just stop the squirming, the twisting, the flailing, the arching, the tossing, the turning, the kicking, the convulsions, the seizures, the wiggling, the theatrics, for one. motherlovingminute. during the times listed above in point form? Thank you very much Mr. Baby.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Screaming, Redux
Dear Mr. Baby:
I know it must be extremely difficult to be unable to say what you want. If I had to guess which side of the gene pool your recalcitrance and Olympic-sized opinions come from, it would be.....your dad's. But I'm hoping we can have some sort of cease-fire. One like maybe where, until you can say something (I don't care how loudly right now, I really don't, I just want the perpetuity to end), you just accept that some stuff will not be what you want. And stop yelling. In return I shall continue to be a Perfect Mother, and try my best not to kill you. I shall now outline my argument for you:
So a month ago, when you started to scream about having your pants changed, it was anybody's guess what the hell was bothering you about it, and, well, Mr. Baby, it still is anybody's guess what you find so goddam irritating about somebody removing a big gooey shit from your pants. (I'm happy to tell you what I find annoying about it, if you ever feel like listening to something).
Also a month ago you started screaming in your high chair, and even though I walk around making stupid faces and shrugging Chaplinesquely and bellowing ''What could the baby want?'' in some weird cartoon voice, I'll just be honest and tell you: I know what you want. You want a delicious meal to just shoot right out of somebody's ass, steaming hot and ready to go. We all want that, Mr. Baby. But since the psychology books all say you're so incredibly observant, I thought maybe you would key in on a few things while you sat there screaming and watching me. Like it takes time to mash bananas, and put things in bowls, and turn frozen food into thawed food. Not much time, but some time. I thought you would think, "'Oh. My screaming doesn't remove time from the equations governing the laws of physics, so I could just maybe shut up because people are running around and doing it as fast as they fucking can. Look at them running frantically, like little elves. Hey, I'm being a huge dick!''
Also about a month ago, you got really pissed off about clothing, socks more than pants, and pants more than shirts. Simultaneously you began bitching because your feet are cold, and also began making these ostentatious shivering sounds with your four new little teeth. It's really over the top. The best part about this is that I get additional shit from everyone who sees you in bare feet at the grocery store. Bad mother, they are saying with their eyes. Look at the poor little frozen angel.
And then it seems like things aren't really going your way. The potty won't open, the pages of your book stick together, the whole floor is not magically elevated to the height of your blocks container and so you fall down, people keep telling you you can't stick your fingers in outlets or smash clay birds repeatedly into the windowpane, Fred is a terribly unreliable source of support as you're trying to walk, etc., etc. There's also a bunch of crap I don't understand, like why you are yelling at the curtains or insist on giving a lecture to the bicycle pedals like they're half-deaf.
The point is, you've been screaming about all of this for about a month now, and I just want to point out, for the sake of reason and logic - those most endangered of human faculties in these parts - that your screaming hasn't changed a goddam thing. Down is still down, glass is still not for babies, poop has to be wiped down and I'm still going to tie those booties on your feet if I have to sit on you, god damn it. And I know you aren't getting any votes for Most Logical around here, what with your whole frontal lobe basically missing for another ten years, but....I don't know, Mr. Baby? Does that suggest anything to you?
And just....finally, I just want to say this on a somewhat related note: Mr. Baby, I am not responsible for gravity. There's no one I can talk to about it, no little switch I can flip, no little trick I can do. OK? So quit yelling and giving me dirty looks about it.
I know it must be extremely difficult to be unable to say what you want. If I had to guess which side of the gene pool your recalcitrance and Olympic-sized opinions come from, it would be.....your dad's. But I'm hoping we can have some sort of cease-fire. One like maybe where, until you can say something (I don't care how loudly right now, I really don't, I just want the perpetuity to end), you just accept that some stuff will not be what you want. And stop yelling. In return I shall continue to be a Perfect Mother, and try my best not to kill you. I shall now outline my argument for you:
So a month ago, when you started to scream about having your pants changed, it was anybody's guess what the hell was bothering you about it, and, well, Mr. Baby, it still is anybody's guess what you find so goddam irritating about somebody removing a big gooey shit from your pants. (I'm happy to tell you what I find annoying about it, if you ever feel like listening to something).
Also a month ago you started screaming in your high chair, and even though I walk around making stupid faces and shrugging Chaplinesquely and bellowing ''What could the baby want?'' in some weird cartoon voice, I'll just be honest and tell you: I know what you want. You want a delicious meal to just shoot right out of somebody's ass, steaming hot and ready to go. We all want that, Mr. Baby. But since the psychology books all say you're so incredibly observant, I thought maybe you would key in on a few things while you sat there screaming and watching me. Like it takes time to mash bananas, and put things in bowls, and turn frozen food into thawed food. Not much time, but some time. I thought you would think, "'Oh. My screaming doesn't remove time from the equations governing the laws of physics, so I could just maybe shut up because people are running around and doing it as fast as they fucking can. Look at them running frantically, like little elves. Hey, I'm being a huge dick!''
Also about a month ago, you got really pissed off about clothing, socks more than pants, and pants more than shirts. Simultaneously you began bitching because your feet are cold, and also began making these ostentatious shivering sounds with your four new little teeth. It's really over the top. The best part about this is that I get additional shit from everyone who sees you in bare feet at the grocery store. Bad mother, they are saying with their eyes. Look at the poor little frozen angel.
And then it seems like things aren't really going your way. The potty won't open, the pages of your book stick together, the whole floor is not magically elevated to the height of your blocks container and so you fall down, people keep telling you you can't stick your fingers in outlets or smash clay birds repeatedly into the windowpane, Fred is a terribly unreliable source of support as you're trying to walk, etc., etc. There's also a bunch of crap I don't understand, like why you are yelling at the curtains or insist on giving a lecture to the bicycle pedals like they're half-deaf.
The point is, you've been screaming about all of this for about a month now, and I just want to point out, for the sake of reason and logic - those most endangered of human faculties in these parts - that your screaming hasn't changed a goddam thing. Down is still down, glass is still not for babies, poop has to be wiped down and I'm still going to tie those booties on your feet if I have to sit on you, god damn it. And I know you aren't getting any votes for Most Logical around here, what with your whole frontal lobe basically missing for another ten years, but....I don't know, Mr. Baby? Does that suggest anything to you?
And just....finally, I just want to say this on a somewhat related note: Mr. Baby, I am not responsible for gravity. There's no one I can talk to about it, no little switch I can flip, no little trick I can do. OK? So quit yelling and giving me dirty looks about it.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Communication. -Ish.
So before you were born, I did something I now regret, which was to shit-talk baby signing to no end. Part of this was just that baby signing, like baby wearing and Baby Einstein, fashionable breast pump totes, elaborate arguments about the virtues of diapering this way or that, words that end in -agaboo or -amboree, toys for infants labeled as educational, Ethan Allen crib sets, vicious trash-blogging about co-sleeping or organic baby food and $5,000 strollers are all lumped together in my world as a Hipster-Yuppy Marketing Scheme, which like most hipster-yuppy marketing schemes (PBR being an exception, because I drank that well before it rocketed from the circles of white trashdom to the grubby black-fingernailed paws of exquisitely mulleted men in strange vests discussing Herman Hesse on their righteously decaying porches) just prompts me to declare that it is Asinine, whether it is or it isn't. My semi-logical, if inexperienced, contribution to my own argument was that it seemed stupid to invest time teaching some little kid how to sign when he would learn how to talk a few months afterward anyway. What's a few months? I demanded. I channeled Shit My Dad Says. The baby'll talk when the baby talks! He's not going to sign us a ladder to the moon.
What is a few months? What's a few months of you screaming until the cows, off in a distant field, think that coyotes are attacking them and almost trample the house, while I juggle you here and turn you upside down there and wave things in the air, smiling and asking if this (finally, for the love of GOD) is it, in a falsetto of maniacal cheer? Gurgling and cooing until, by process of acrobatic elimination, it is concluded that you want to hold a toothbrush while you get your pants changed, or that the two clay birds on the shelf need to be kicked out of the house for crimes we will never comprehend, or that you were hoping to hold onto Fred's ears while chewing on your vegetable book and banging on the piano and nothing, nothing else will suffice? Yes, the baby will talk when the baby learns to talk, but in the meantime, Mr. Baby, I have to say, this is bullshit.
You're trying, and I'll give you that. But I think you could make a little more effort to be clear. To explain my point, I've compiled a temporary dictionary for us, and I think you'll agree, after perusing it, that it's somewhat inadequate for our needs:
Guh: I once believed this to be the final syllable of ''dog'' and therefore to be rooted in modern English, hooray! This belief was driven by the fact that ''guh'' is used incessantly in the presence of Fred, and was shouted loudly and enthusiastically while jumping up and down for several minutes when you saw a very large dog on vacation. The fact that you were using dog for all animals lent credence to this theory, because babies are supposedly always doing screwy stuff like that. Further observation, however, indicates that ''guh'' is a just an (unhelpful) mega-lemma used for anything that you like, from dogs to the wind to farting at the dinner table.
Yeah: This is a false cognate. While yeah might mistakenly be interpreted as a sign of agreement, it's meaning is much more nuanced (this is evidenced by the fact that you simply never simply agree). I've narrowed it down to the following: ''I'm having fun waving this sock around,'' ''I want more,'' and ''I think everyone should keep singing.''
Mom: "'I have shat myself"' or ''I hit my head on that fucking piano again.''
Dadadadada: Dad is soooooo great. Dad this and dad that. Love dad. Where's the funny man with the big hair?
A ta ta ta ta ta TA TA: Either, ''I'm really getting bored'' or ''I'm planning on emptying the wastebasket for the next two hours, please put things back in it.''
te te te te te te "'There is a small thing I am going to pretend to play with and then stick in my mouth,'' or "I really like this book.''
Phhhhbbbbt: ''I am nine months old and making a joke. My humour is too sophisticated for you.'' But - somewhat confusingly - also, "'I hate it.''
So, good buddy, I don't know...maybe you can see how things go wrong:
"'Mom,'' you say. "Phhhbbbbbt guh.''
Is this, Mom, you're so charming and I like you? Or, I have a problem. I pooped, but now that I think about it, it's nice and squishy, so never you mind? Also plausible: I hit my head on the fucking piano again, which I hate, but actually, is a great thing because now I'm hallucinating dogs.
"'Guh,'' you say, ''yeah, yeah.''
This chicken is delicious, I'll wave it in the air. But also, I like Fred's tongue. Please cover me in beets. Not impossible: I like that donkey. Wave a sock at him so he sings.
On and on. It wouldn't be a problem except that you have a tendency (genetic origin unclaimed) to get really ticked off when people aren't doing what you supposedly want. So maybe if you could add just a few more words, a few more sensible gestures? Or - and this would really be ideal - stop getting these ridiculous fucking ideas into your head. Your spoons don't need to be down my shirt, Fred doesn't want to wear a hat, and for reasons I just haven't the time to explain, Mr. Baby, toothbrushes and shit never, ever, belong in the same activity together.
What is a few months? What's a few months of you screaming until the cows, off in a distant field, think that coyotes are attacking them and almost trample the house, while I juggle you here and turn you upside down there and wave things in the air, smiling and asking if this (finally, for the love of GOD) is it, in a falsetto of maniacal cheer? Gurgling and cooing until, by process of acrobatic elimination, it is concluded that you want to hold a toothbrush while you get your pants changed, or that the two clay birds on the shelf need to be kicked out of the house for crimes we will never comprehend, or that you were hoping to hold onto Fred's ears while chewing on your vegetable book and banging on the piano and nothing, nothing else will suffice? Yes, the baby will talk when the baby learns to talk, but in the meantime, Mr. Baby, I have to say, this is bullshit.
You're trying, and I'll give you that. But I think you could make a little more effort to be clear. To explain my point, I've compiled a temporary dictionary for us, and I think you'll agree, after perusing it, that it's somewhat inadequate for our needs:
Guh: I once believed this to be the final syllable of ''dog'' and therefore to be rooted in modern English, hooray! This belief was driven by the fact that ''guh'' is used incessantly in the presence of Fred, and was shouted loudly and enthusiastically while jumping up and down for several minutes when you saw a very large dog on vacation. The fact that you were using dog for all animals lent credence to this theory, because babies are supposedly always doing screwy stuff like that. Further observation, however, indicates that ''guh'' is a just an (unhelpful) mega-lemma used for anything that you like, from dogs to the wind to farting at the dinner table.
Yeah: This is a false cognate. While yeah might mistakenly be interpreted as a sign of agreement, it's meaning is much more nuanced (this is evidenced by the fact that you simply never simply agree). I've narrowed it down to the following: ''I'm having fun waving this sock around,'' ''I want more,'' and ''I think everyone should keep singing.''
Mom: "'I have shat myself"' or ''I hit my head on that fucking piano again.''
Dadadadada: Dad is soooooo great. Dad this and dad that. Love dad. Where's the funny man with the big hair?
A ta ta ta ta ta TA TA: Either, ''I'm really getting bored'' or ''I'm planning on emptying the wastebasket for the next two hours, please put things back in it.''
te te te te te te "'There is a small thing I am going to pretend to play with and then stick in my mouth,'' or "I really like this book.''
Phhhhbbbbt: ''I am nine months old and making a joke. My humour is too sophisticated for you.'' But - somewhat confusingly - also, "'I hate it.''
So, good buddy, I don't know...maybe you can see how things go wrong:
"'Mom,'' you say. "Phhhbbbbbt guh.''
Is this, Mom, you're so charming and I like you? Or, I have a problem. I pooped, but now that I think about it, it's nice and squishy, so never you mind? Also plausible: I hit my head on the fucking piano again, which I hate, but actually, is a great thing because now I'm hallucinating dogs.
"'Guh,'' you say, ''yeah, yeah.''
This chicken is delicious, I'll wave it in the air. But also, I like Fred's tongue. Please cover me in beets. Not impossible: I like that donkey. Wave a sock at him so he sings.
On and on. It wouldn't be a problem except that you have a tendency (genetic origin unclaimed) to get really ticked off when people aren't doing what you supposedly want. So maybe if you could add just a few more words, a few more sensible gestures? Or - and this would really be ideal - stop getting these ridiculous fucking ideas into your head. Your spoons don't need to be down my shirt, Fred doesn't want to wear a hat, and for reasons I just haven't the time to explain, Mr. Baby, toothbrushes and shit never, ever, belong in the same activity together.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Gravity
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.
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.
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.
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