Orphan Style, Market pranks, Nem-nem’s wish, Dancing

Traveling to my mother’s house recently Mago reported a back ache and that his throat hurt. Holding him on the back porch, looking into the room as grandma opened the door, I felt something warm on my toes and looked to see that Mago had thrown up all over both of us. Not only wet but gooey, thick, slimy, orange, and starchy – you have to know this of course – all over him and on my shirt and arms. Fortunately not so much on my precious pants, stylish though that would be.

They took my shirt and his clothes and threw them in the wash, lending me a t-shirt from my brother and for Mago a cotton one-piece pajama or underclothes suit: moderately worn, grayed and tattered, inexplicably very cute on him.

I don’t know where he got this notion, but in reference to this new outfit he said “I’m a little orphan!”

He played with his birthday cousin of one year older in the basement, babbling and doing I have no idea what, but they clearly share a world, very cute together. She’d say bye-bye and close the basement door on him, he’d cry as he couldn’t open it from the lower stair and had difficulty from the upper stair, and in a while she’d open it again to happily greet him or hug him. I don’t know whether setting up this greeting again and again was the point, or an innocent exploration of the power that she could open the door and he couldn’t, or both.

While grandma was sitting holding Nem-nem and looking at her (along with several of us), Nem-nem looked up at our faces. When I came to stand and look down and smile at Nem-nem, she looked up at me and returned a clear, beaming smile, looking right into my eyes and face and keeping that smile and contact for a long while. That’s the first that’s happened for me with her. On the floor she also near half-turned over; as I’ve said she’s strong, and she moves very much.

One conversation topic was the different views people have on whether its appropriate to keep a kid happy in a store by opening up something they want before you buy it (I agree that anyone who says you shouldn’t may have never held a bored child hostage to mundane shopping). My oldest brother extended this idea (his?) to a prank; go to the store alone, bring an emptied milk gallon to the checkout, and I suppose say something like “Sorry, I needed all this before I could get to checkout.” My youngest brother suggested bringing an opened package of adult disposable underwear to checkout, adding “..you could take this in all kinds of directions”. Tia’s comment: “No, I think this is only going in one direction.”

This morning Tia said she had a dream: Nem-nem grew teeth, while still just the infant she is, and said (in a little girl voice Tia did which I wish I could describe)

“I’m tired of lying down. I want to walk.”

That’s been my impression, or that she is very eager to explore, and she isn’t happy to just lie still.

Yesterday and today Nem-nem stared with great concentration into my face and eyes, the same look of concentration that charms me in Mago, while we danced to (and I sang her) this.

[audio:Landslide.mp3]

This is? [spoiler]”Landslide”, a Fleetwood Mac tune covered here by the Dixie Chicks. I hide that latter fact because it has prejudiced people against it – a prejudice I have rhetorically railed against, wearying family/friends. If you don’t like some of the Dixie Chicks’ stuff (or attitude) it doesn’t mean it must all be distasteful :)[/spoiler]

I think this cover of the tune is much better than the original.

Our second baby, a girl

I’ve overhauled this blog as of this entry – converted it over to the WordPress blogging platform, with a new design I found and modified. Like it? Older image galleries aren’t working at the moment – they’ll be fixed.

This last June 17th, Father’s day, our second baby, a daughter, was born at 4:35 AM. Happy Father’s Day to me 🙂

The arrangements for and the delivery of this second baby were much easier than for our first – which I thought the midwife astutely referred to as the Pioneer – though still grueling and exhausting. We’ve named this baby (my decision less pathetically lethargic than for our first) but refer to her on the internet by a pseudonym. In a bit here is blather about that, her particular date of birth, and Mago’s first interactions with and comments about her, but first a photo slide show taken the day she was born, courtesy Picasa Web Albums, photos taken by an uncle, and also by Tia’s stepmom.

 

At this blog we call her by a pseudonym. First, “Nem-nem”, which is whimsical nonsense. Second “Niamh”, Irish and pronounced “Neve”, which I expect to confuse, fine for a blog. In Irish mythology (I’ve only just read this), Niamh is the princess of the land of promise (as Niamh, though my sister who served a mission in Ireland informs me there are many little girls over there with names spelled Niamh). I’d wanted “Niam”, Irish for “Bright” in addition to all this before “Nem-nem”, and further nicely confusing as it sounds just like you’d mispronounce Niamh/Niamh, but Tia doesn’t like it.

So her pseudonym here is Nem-nem Niamh. Why the Irish pseudonyms – our firstborn as Mago Elf Liam (Gaelic: Great Elf William)? A tradition of Irish blood on one of my mother’s lines, Mago being born on St. Patrick’s day, and his cousin also born on that date, and..

Now our second baby here, Nem-nem Niamh, shares her birthday with a cousin who has a quintessentially Irish name, who was born six years ago – also on Father’s day. And on the same day of the month as Nem-nem’s older brother born on St. Patrick’s day, the 17th, and his cousin also.. there you go.

The 17th day of the month is also shared with one of Nem-nem’s uncles, and her great-grandfather, and.. I think some others I forget 😮

And on top of all this a cousin – second cousin – was born on this very same day and year that little Nem-nem was.

I was going to do this this entry, but for lack of time, some videos I’ve promised will be posted in a future entry.

Mago has been very eager to meet his sister for a long time since before she was born. He would talk to her through mommy’s tummy, and long since adopted a mistaken reference to her as “FisterBruver”, or Sister-Brother. Since her birth I’ve had an inkling he may use this as a description of their relationship, as he said a day or two after her birth that “Now I’m a FisterBruver.” But it’s clearly also a title, and I suppose especially for her. And he also fondly calls her by her real name.

The first Mago came into the hospital room where mommy was holding Nem-nem, he was very enthusiastically but gently all over her, calling her FisterBruver, softly caressing her head with his hands, and wishing to kiss her, which we couldn’t let him because he had a croup cough. We got a mask for him so he could be close to her, as you see in the slides and video. I don’t recall all he said but one of the first things he said, when I took him a bit away from Nem-nem and held him, was:

“I love that baby.”

Also, speaking to Tia:

“Did she come out of your tummy? Is she going to go back in? Can I go back into your tummy?”

This is no indication at all that he doesn’t want Nem-nem here – though Tia has noticed he’s been more ardently seeking attention as an apparently permanent change since her birth. It’s simple curiosity. A verbose 2-year old informing us of the wonderful ideas that go through his head figuring out how things work.

I had meant to amend this previous entry with a comment after my brother wisely cautioned that you can’t take a kid’s feelings too seriously – indeed that’s true. Sometimes when Mago sadly or sourly insists on something that cannot be, I throw him a loop – he’ll say “Yes!” – I say “No!” – and back and forth “Yes!” – “No!” – “Yes!” – “No!” – “Yes!” – then I suddenly exclaim “Yes!” and he willfully exclaims the opposite, “No!” – not what he wants – and realizes he’s been hoodwinked and laughs. I’m sure many parents have discovered this fun trick.

You may note in the photos that Nem-nem has a lot of dense, short, dark brown or black hair at birth.

She is strong. She lifts her head right up if you hold her on your shoulder. She’d flop right out of your arms if you didn’t hold her close and tight. Her legs are very difficult to raise up from the pinned bend she keeps them in when you change her diaper.

She has Billy Reuben (is this how you spell the affliction? – ah ha ha! I just looked it up. It’s bilirubin – but I’ll keep that), that fairly common yellowing of infant skin from.. too many red blood cells? – which count went up for several days, but which today went into a decline. Thank heaven. Mago did not enjoy being in a light box to combat it for weeks, and we didn’t enjoy inflicting that on him.

A gripe you can skip if you wish – [spoiler]all the same I’ve maintained since Mago suffered the malady – why provide a light box only when the malady becomes really bad? Why not provide it if they suffer much at all? Wouldn’t that prevent the risk of it getting worse? I’ve heard it criticized that our most widely respected medical paradigm is often not health-oriented, but crisis-oriented. I’d say “health” is a state that can ward off illness. Disease is a crisis. If you take action only when there is disease, you are focused on crisis – not prevention, health. I don’t think it’s true on all counts, but here? Yes. Let’s make things better while they’re okay, not okay when they’re worse. Mind, I’m all for all the miracles we have available for when things are worse. Also, the midwife’s comment to me about the anesthesiologist forbidding my wife to drink water after her spinal anesthetic is that this is treating the situation as if she would have a caesarian section; if the throat is well-watered when there’s general anesthetic (and there is general anesthetic in that situation, but not the one we were in) there’s greater risk of the throat collapsing and suffocating in numbness. So he’s responding to the situation as if she’s having a caesarian, while we are well past that – this was at a stage of labor where that is neither necessary nor possible. So not only can we think too much in terms of making bad things okay, we can behave as if bad things may happen when there’s barely or truly not any risk of that. Welcome to your sue-happy society. This is malpractice risk overreaction. Sigh.[/spoiler]

I think she’s a beautiful, mild baby. I’m surprised how distinct and new but inexplicably, unsurprisingly familiar she is. The unknown novelties of having a baby aren’t as impressive, but she still is. My first impressions are that her cry and voice sound a whole lot like Mago as an infant, but gentler. .. I only recall her howling so far when given a needle shot (not unexpected) and when bathed. She does not like baths. It seems to be horrific for her. I think sometimes her sounds of alarm reflect Tia when she’s surprised or uneasy.

Today (or Saturday as I started writing this :p – hey, it’s her one week anniversary three hours after I click “publish”) I enjoyed my first moments with her where she didn’t seem hungry or otherwise distracted, just holding her as she was awake, and she seemed to be really taking in my face and just watching me talk to her.

As for us, we’re lacking sleep but happy.

Conversation #5

[Yes, this is the fifth conversation we have ever had in our marriage. The rest is an amazing combination of ASL and ESP. No, I just don’t know how else to label these entries.]

Tia is fixing a drawer in our Christmas-time obtained entertainment center which was a pain to get right in the first place (and my brother in law did it) and which I’ve been loth to repair. She says the hole that takes a screw suspending the drawer is stripped. She asks me to look up online how to fix it. The exchange:

“Stripped screw mount. You want me to Google that? You can Google that. I’m staying away from that one.”

“Huh?”

Stripped screw mount.

(Then she got it)

There would be far less need to be careful what you search for if this legislative proposal passed.

I know.. but you probably didn’t

Yeah, I had a Christmas color scheme at our home page all the way into the next-to-last day of March. I guess that I’ve stopped having time to log into an obscure web site management URL and an obscure page management link and figure out which CSS styling tags and tag labels and image I should use to make it non-Christmasy again may be a sign that I’m becoming responsible and have more than just this life pouring text into a vacuum only read by some fifty-odd people whom I could just more easily email. Never mind that in my very pained retrospective too many of these pages are in the “You Should be Confiding In Somone Besides The Entire Internet Department.” Although if my theory of fifty readers holds, that’s not so much a worry. Until I become MADLY FAMOUS. Excuse me.

By the way, although this is long since old news, that beard thing didn’t work out. Long after I shaved it, I ran into one of my favorite people (at a health food store!) who commented “You’re growing a beard there”. I was sheepish to confess: “No, this is just laziness.”

Tia’s been telling me some cute things our son has been doing while I have the misfortune of missing out on that at work (while I pursue other fortunes!). I’ll write them next entry.

Audio recording – Playing with Mago

Here’s an audio recording of me playing with Mago (1 minute).

[audio:http://home.ussins.org/audio/Mago_sounds/Daddy_playing_with_Mago_2007_Feb_6.mp3]

(download mp3, 629k)

His more intense laughter is from me tickling him by digging my forehead into his belly. He’s 23 months old in a few days. 23 months! 2 years in a month! Also note his monster growling just as in this previous recording when he was 9 months old (2 minutes, download mp3, 573K – it’s at a Hz that plays too fast in that little flash player)

Also, I just now backposted here an older recording of him at 16 months old.

CATCH

We went to a park in the evening. Mago loved swinging (on this same swing Tia photographed him on). Laughed his head off every time I pushed him. While he and Tia were going down the spiral slide I wandered off on the grass and found an unbranded Little “Official League” foul-ball in the middle of the park.

When we left Mago was very unhappy to leave, and I said “I found this ball for you!” and handed it to him. He was instantly content. At home I started for work from home in the evening (I can do overtime work from home). When I explained to him I was working and went downstairs to do this, he cried “I want my daddy!” and I said “I’m sorry baby, I’m working.” A few minutes after I started work he came downstairs, held the baseball up with both hands, simply, a bit happily, and smacked it down on the computer keyboard in front of me, holding it there, not a word, only looking up at me. These thoughts crossed my mind: How American can you get? Yeah, I think a father should play ball with his son. You win, kid. I can stay up late to work (it’s not like I don’t stay up anyway, even though I shouldn’t).

Triptych of Mago (Gallery 10), Update, Maintenance Pants

Here’s a Triptych I did of him. I’ll update this post soon with links to the source images [yeah, right -2007-07-04]. Photos by Tia, selection, arrangement and titling by me. Click this image for a larger image.

Thumbnail of Mago Triptych

Here are the originals from which were combined to make this.

[1] [2] [3]

.. are the things that I must do..

He’s walking all over the place all the time now. He loves the guitar and the one song I sorta play which I wrote (a toungue-in-cheek bit entitled NEW HOTEL – that’s a link to a crummy sketch recording). He wanders over to the guitar case and tries to get the guitar out, saying “Da! Da!” which I guess means guitar.

He’s invented a sign which he uses, holding a wrist with the other hand. We don’t know what it means.

In reference to my recent [sadly dull and desperate] post about pants, I’ve had an idea for new designer pants. Whereas current pant design trends send a message of being used by a sweatshop/company, I’m going to wear pants that bear a message of my son claiming support or maintenance from me. The other night I was feeding him a bottle at bed time, and out of nowhere he erupted a great load of milky vomit all over – himself, the chair, my shirt, and some smallish splatters and streaks of it got on my new pants, and the floor. I haven’t yet washed the pants because of business. But I’m thinking, maybe I’ll just leave it. Maybe I’ll work up the motif further with notable splatters of milky-white glue, small dried chunks and smears of seeming food trapped therein. That is my idea. What do you think? Think that will be “all the rage”?

PANTS!

My obtaining new pants is an event because under my non-self care regiment I haven’t for years. I’ve gotten a few new T-shirts and recently Tia found funny ones at SAVERS [one of which I copied to this design long after this entry]. And I’m going to buy this one (in red).

Hard to find any pants I loved (take that out of context); finally I liked a pair of NAUTICA brand [which have since shredded and I can no longer find the brand anywhere].

My ruminations in the searching, as reported to my helpless family April 12th:

Very few are simply light or dark basic blue, and everything “upscale” is manufacturer-ripped and worn. Why buy something “used” but not?

The real sell of manufacturer “used” pants is that wearing it says “I could buy something worn at the thrift store, but that’s low class used. These guys paid some sweat shop workers dirt money to shred these. Man, I wish I could be as awfully exotic and used as that. So I bought into the high-class users of the used. And I gotta admit, I let them use me too, ’cause I could buy the same thing at a thrift store for way less. I’m high-class and guilty. .. You wanna use me, too?

I also first falsely reported that I bought the pants at LANE BRYANT’S, an exclusively women’s store, and PLUS SIZES store. Very nice. You know, in case I get pregnant.

I got them at MEIER AND FRANK at the University Mall, Orem.

PANTS!

Undated Dates (The First Vision, Halfway to Christmas)

(This is blatantly and particularly churchy. Anyone disinterested may skip it without offending me.)

Yesterday I was thinking a lot about Joseph Smith’s “First Vision”, as it has come to be called, when God the Father and God the Son appeared to him. Actually, I was thinking that there may be many earthlings who have seen visions of God the Father – Lehi in THE BOOK OF MORMON apparently saw a vision of God:

.. he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels.. – THE BOOK OF MORMON, 1st Nephi 1:8

In the late evening Tia related a comment she heard in Relief Society – which of course I didn’t hear, not going to the women’s meetings in my church 😉 and it’s a comment I hadn’t heard before anyway – it is that people have looked back through records of the weather in the year Joseph Smith had his vision, and correlated these reports with Joseph’s comment on the weather the day of his vision, to guess that his vision was probably on March 26th. Joseph’s weather comment is in this verse of his witness:

So, in accordance with this, my determination to ask of God, I retired to the woods to make the attempt. It was on the morning of a beautiful, clear day, early in the spring of eighteen hundred and twenty.. – JOSEPH SMITH—HISTORY, verse 14

Apparently the only clear day in early spring of that year was March 26th.

Blatantly, I see it as more than coincidence that I was thinking heavily on the First Vision on the apparent anniversary date of it, unaware. If it’s not the anniversary, the synchronicity of thought is striking. None of this is proof to me; only signs (I see a distinction between the two), if this hearsay is verifiable. Whatever the case, my faith rests on more certain things.

.. Another significant coincidence: about mid-two-years ago I woke up thinking I should get in the Christmas Spirit (as it were, and I never really did, and I often am abysmally not in that spirit), and that it was probably halfway to Christmas. I didn’t know it literally was until I looked at my calendar and calculated. I forget the date now 😉 as I don’t consciously track dates. I unconsciously track them. .. I could doubtless benefit from consciously tracking them, except that now I’m curious what other signs I’ll find unconscious, drunken and not with wine..

Something I Didn’t Know about Me

I learn from an uncle that when I was very little, maybe 3 or 4, at a baptism I was roaming around while a speaker preached about the Holy Ghost. At the mention of the term, I exclaimed in a high pitched, emphatically expressed astoundment: “The Holy GHOST!?” and continued wandering around. The speaker continued and soon repeated the same term, at which I exclaimed in the same manner but more intensely: “The Holy GHOST!? *AGAIN!?*”

The Love of God

Yesterday morning his mother needed to leave for an hour for a school errand and I was left to listen to him howling in his crib for his morning nap as if Hell itself had descended on him. It struck me with guilt for my negligence of him in previous days. Of course the guilt made me wonder if his howling was in any way related to my negligence. When the crying went beyond the rationally tolerable (maybe past half an hour) and it was apparent he was not going to sleep on his own, I entered his room, told him I was sorry, picked him up, he calmed down, and I wiped his tears and proceeded shushing and rocking him. He looked out the bedroom door for his mother, but as I sang to him his lullaby (also too oft neglected beyond his first few months of life, though I use others), he relaxed more.

The guilt and holding him and wanting to comfort him moved me to pray just enough for him to hear [should I be confessing this to The Internet? – too late!], which relaxed him further, and soon and too my surprise he fell asleep on my shoulder, the first this had happened also for far too long (four months? six?) – or at least, I miss it, because our practice is to put him in his crib and let him cry himself to sleep, which is a practice my heart disagrees with.

I went to silent praying, and after standing for a long while rocking him in his sleep I moved him to my arms at my chest, and he stayed asleep. I sat in the rocking chair and rocked him and looked at him as I prayed. I found myself praying for more charity for this kid, and at the very moment I started this prayer, he laughed in his sleep and smiled for a short while, and then returned to ordinary sleep. My prayer was in his dream. It reminded me of Nephi’s dream, or vision:

And I looked and beheld the virgin again, bearing a child in her arms. And the angel said unto me: Behold the Lamb of God, yea, even the Son of the Eternal Father! Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw? And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things. And he spake unto me, saying: Yea, and the most joyous to the soul. –1 Nephi 11:20-23

It also reminds me of this:

Dream, dream, dream, of the joyous day to come
While guardian angels without number
Watch you as you sweetly slumber.. – Verse from a translation of the Austrian Christmas carol Still, Still, Still

As I went for my scriptures to find the verses above, though I knew generally where to look for this (Nephi’s books), the first page I opened to was the very verses. A bit of Mormon cultural mythology is that if you just open your scriptures to something it will be exactly the right verse for you..

Mago and Me

Yesterday I played with him saying: “A-bug-a-bug-a-bug-a-bug-a-bug-a-BOO!” – each time the BOO! being a higher pitch, and he would laugh.

Last night I came to him sleeping and whispered “You’re a good boy.” He awakened, looked me in the eyes, smiled, and went back to sleep.

My birthday

For my birthday some family hiked up Rock Canyon (Provo UT). Beautiful. We chattered about various things including rock climbing/hiking/mountaineering: I need these things in my life – they are absent, and what a void for them.

We saw a bow in the cloud: I was moved at the sight because of recent discoveries in my religion’s scripture indicating that the bow in the cloud is also a sign that when the sons of Noah are righteous, they will look up, Zion (the translated city of Enoch) will look down, the heavens will shake, and Zion will descend. Halleluhah! I’m speechless at the thought.

I also thought the cliffs of the canyon being steeply negatively inclined, so that they strangely face straight at you, might look like something I imagine the parted Red Sea looking like to the Israelites: impossibly suspended. I love this idea in combination with the Provo Temple at the mouth of the canyon, designed to look like a cloud and pillar.

Then at home we had guacomole with bacon in wheat tortilla wraps (at my inordinately long preparation) and crossoinwhiches with cheese and turkey. Mmm.

I forgot to pull out the ice cream.

My cell phone cut out in the canyon so I couldn’t tell a friend arriving at our house we’d be late: they waited a long time I imagine and anyway they had to leave before we were back. 🙁

Then my sister-in-law and her kids came and we explored up to a house that had been run through by a six-foot boulder. This sight was indescribable. Moreover it was very strange: I had passed this house on a hike once and mused that it was at the very corner of civilization here. And nature struck right at the corner of this house at the corner of civilization.

We tracked the boulder’s track marks up the steep foothil towards the mountain base. I tracked it’s path up past a half-buried boulder it demolished just before bouncing into the house, up to a cut it made in a buried boulder, up a long steep hill, through a demolished scrub oak grove (at least 4 trees severed at the base), and stopped there. It came between two lower orange rock outcroppings on it’s way down, and up much much higher, into the mountain, there was grey rock, and this boulder was gray. I think it came down from very high in the mountain. This thing practically flew, looking at the gouges it made on the way down.

I got great exercise. I’d love to track the boulder path higher another day.