Thursday, August 10, 2006

I'm the one on the left.












It's only a little scary, how much of a family resemblance there is - I was really hoping that she'd get her mother's good looks, but alas... Very much daddy's girl.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Biiissssht!

So many new words these days - from the very first -"light" - to the latest: Qua,qua,qua!
(what's a duck say?) Dear Alex is on a learning rampage, and it's astonishing the things she picks up - Her favorite stuffed animal (at the moment) 'pink puppy' - so named because it's, well, pink, and kind of puppy-like, got called for a few days ago, just like this - "pink puppy pinkpuppy puppy pink puppy" (three reliable adult witnesses heard it,too) She knows. Outside the window "say hello to the city" there are buses "bus,buuuus" and cabs: "gehca, cas". She's putting it together right before my eyes. Wild. The one that has my attention right now is her latest, most mysterious vocalizing - things familiar and new get a gesture - hand upraised or pointing and "biiiisht! biissssht! bissht!" What means biiiisht? Is it a question, a command? A word that says "What's this?" That's sort of the conclusion that Beautiful Wife and I have come to - "biiiisht!,bissht,bissht!" is a question, and we get to make up the answers -

You will obey.















Look deeply into her eyes... you have no will of your own...

Smiling Baby Syndrome















I got into a conversation with Beautiful Wife a day or so ago about pictures of Dear Alex - we have literally thousands of them to embarrass her with when she's old enough. Not that we'd ever do that mind you, but... We got to trying to pick photos for this or that, and it occurred to me that there's a certain need for people to see pictures of Baby smiling, grinning, laughing, etc. Dear Alex certainly does that, but there's also quite a range of other expressions in some of the pictures of her that point to other things - that quality of curiosity, of consideration, deep thought even - sometimes bordering on brooding. (A trait from dad to be sure) Some of my favorite pictures of lil' screamie are like that - darker, more thoughtful. I have this notion (I'm sure I'm not alone in this) that there's a reason that we don't remember baby-hood. It hurts. From everything that I've seen with our remarkably calm and well-adjusted baby (knock on wood) there are a lot of things that she would not want to remember. So, I'm all for Smiling Baby, but Serious Baby has a story to tell.

Much better, thank you.















After a week of worst dad ever, Dear Alex is feeling much better - It's funny, we got into the routine of waking her up to do the thing with the mask of evil in the middle of the night and first thing in the morning for a few days there, and it seems to have miraculously cured some of the going-to-bed issues that Dear Alex was having.
I got very attached to that time in the dark with her - It reminded me a bit of the way back in time (almost a year already?) when she was little - you know, a baby. It's funny, over the last week or so she's made a very subtle transition from baby to toddler - and if I hadn't been looking so closely at her I would have missed it. I swear that every day now she's a different - but the same - lil' screamie.