July 13, 2009
Baby, Season One
65cm, 7.2Kg, catching up and even passing the 50-percentile mark. All that mother's milk has got to be doing some good after all. His face is all rounded, the cheeks almost drooping from their full extent, and his legs are like little ham hocks. Have to really get into those crevices when we wipe him down. Thankfully fat rolls and double chins are still considered attractive when you're four months old.
He's now quite the little poop machine. He'd dribble it out bit by bit for a while, then bam one big bloop out the ass and the whole diaper woud be filled with stinky goodness. More dangerously, as we'd be busy scrambling to change in the new diaper, he'd expel a second wave and get it all over his clothes, etc. That's time to turn on the faucets for an emergency butt-bath. Not to mention the occasion piss-fountain just as we unclasp the diaper. With his new car seat, we've began to take him out more, and the chances of an inconvenient-timing event are quite high. So we're slowly filling out the diaper bag with all the unforeseen necessities as we get more experience from the short trips.
He doesn't like the pacifier but he has discovered the joys of thumb-sucking. A casual finger in the mouth is fine when he's just bored. When he gets agitated, though, he starts trying to cram his whole hand in his mouth. Then there's the rare double-fisting action as he tries to stick both hands into the piehole when he gets really angry.
Note: Do not search for "double-fisting" on the web. You might not like what the search engine digs up.
He can now track people with his eyes and head, and he'll smile at people playing with him which is totally adorable and is going to earn him some big holiday-money by Chinese New Year time. Made it the perfect time for Sam, Michelle, and Dad to visit him from the States. Seeing him in the flesh is a lot more cute than just watching him via video-iChat. He's smart enough to save the biggest laughs for great-grandma who adores him and wife's aunt who does all the work driving him around to doctors, etc. So he definitely knows which side his bread is buttered. Now he's able to make more and more sounds, and you can see his mouth and tongue learning to synchronize themselves make words out of the hee-haa babbles. Everyone has fun talking to him, and it almost sounds like conversation even with only unintelligible babbling coming from the baby.
Took him with us out to a couple of big family dinners and he was a little trooper and stayed good most of the time. Having the Bug there for him to sleep helped, I think. Although minding him meant that the wife didn't get to enjoy the fine meals as much as she could have. Thankfully we had private rooms in fancy restaurants with clean bathrooms so we could do emergency diaper-changes if necessary (and boy was it necessary).
He's definitely tired of lying in bed stuck looking up at the ceiling all day. Seems to enjoy being held upright to watch TV with us, although we're trying to minimize that. We don't want him addicted to the tube quite yet. Also bought him a roll-around high-low chair to allow him to sit up high and watch us as we go around our normal business since he does get anxious if he feels there's no one around. I'll change the Bugaboo over to the seated configuration soon, too, as he's growing dangerously close to the length (and width!) limit of the bassinet. The motion of a moving vehicle is good, as he'll get settled and sleepy as long as we're rolling along, But he starts fussing and crying when we stop at a red light, so our trips turns into a mini version of Speed.
So he's growing quite nicely into a big boy now. But he still wants to be held and fed before he'll go to sleep. We're going to have a hard time of breaking him out of that habit, but for now we're happy to hold him and cuddle him as much as he wants.
July 06, 2009
East Coast Bias
The New York Times Sunday Magazine played up the matriarchal Gray Lady to the hilt this week. The cover boy was Gavin Newsom, the dyslexic wunderkind. He's the kooky-mayor of kooky-town San Francisco, symbolic of the kooky cast of characters vying to replace the Arnold-The-Governator in kooky California. A place far, far away from New York in every way. To emphasize the off-the-cliff nature of the Golden State, Jerry Brown is resurrected as a governor candidate, but now Governor Moonbeam plays the role as the voice-of-reason.
Inside the cover (or down the webpage, nowadays), we have another stereotype: the plucky Midwestern farmer. But for the post-modern twist, it's an African-American farmer promoting urban gardens and sustainable food in the inner-city. In a more commercial vein, an oh-so-British World War 2 poster urging Keep Calm is exploited by modern hipsters to form an oh-so-relevant message in line with our times. (It helps that the poster design is in the public domain.)
In a nod to Independence Day, there's a personal story of a grandmother experiencing her grandson's graduation from Marine Corps Officer School. But just to put the New York spin on it:
This is the true story of a dyed-in-the-wool pacifist Jewish woman who recently spent two days at the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, Va., and survived, almost intact.
All the stories were interesting and well-written (well, better than anything I've ever come up with, anyway), but there's just that whiff of holier-than-thou condescension that really annoys some folks. The haters can revel in the death of newspapers, but hopefully there will still be a place for thoughtful, investigative, long-form articles available somewhere where I can read them. I might even be convinced to pitch in a few bucks, maybe.