Waterloo Sunset

The lyrics are soooo English - "Everyday I look at the world from my window" - and it's a perfect pop song.

A very mature Ray Davies (The Kinks) with Blur's Damon Albarn . . .

Fantasy life

The fantasy life of a six year old is a complicated affair, at least as far as I can tell. Right now the door way to the kitchen is a complicated affair of tape, string, paper, and BATTERIES. That's not the play drawer I want to yell, but the utility drawer. The thing in the door way is a trap of some kind, which I hope is not intended to be lethal.

BB also wanted to call a friend tonight, someone he recently had a play date with. He had a secret planhe wanted to discuss with said friend. It involved some kind of trap, money, and the schadenfreude of telling the teacher of elicit contraband. We're like, "why would you want to tell on a friend." He says, but I have "enemy-friends." These are different from "friends." "Enemy-friends." Christ, let's go back to the batteries.

I'd like to tell BB about copper wire and refer him to the "Electromagnetism and Electricity" book he loves so much, but all I know about batteries is that they have polarity.

BB has already been talking about what will happen for the summer. I wish they had electrical engineer camp for first graders.

"Development of naturally interactive soft-bodied humanoid robot"

aka Friday Robot Blogging


Credit: jeap.org

Take out

Once a week I have the boys on my own during the evening. We usually do evening stuff and bath together, but the boys do love to cling to their momma before bedtime. So, when I have them on my own, I get the full effect of being a parent. LB has gotten more and more used to having only me in the evening. Usually, he gets to nurse two or three times between 7 and 9, so it feels like a sacrifice not to have his mom. Tonight he didn't fuss once, which is real accomplishment. It's partly because he is so interested in his brother now, but it's also because he's learning to talk. Looking at books and learning words (duck was a big one tonight) takes up more of his awake time now. In the end, it was relaxing to hang out with my huggy guys on the couch--LB grabbing books ("more, more"); BB talking nonstop, as he usually does (about his odd hand-drawn diagrams, maps, and patterns, mostly).

Now if I could just get rid of the taste of cheap take out food in my mouth, all would be well for the night.

Jingle smells

Another of BB's irreverent christmas songs. It's like Beavis and Butthead come back in my own kid.

Oh, jingle smells, jingle smells,
Jingle all the way.
Oh what fun it is to smell
that skunk along the way

Jingle smells, jingle smells
Jingle all the way.
Oh, what fun it is to smell
the garbage in the sleigh

It's three a.m.

I'm up for various reasons in the night, in the frame of mind for a sort of free jazz. Here is a small sample of Tortoise, who I got to know when AO lived in Chicago. I think Tortoise is still based there.

Christmas carol, BB style

Hilarity from BB, who makes us laugh every time he sings "Christmas is coming," six year-old style:

Cwistmas is cwoming. The woose is wetting wat. 

Pwease wut a wenny in the old wan's wat. 

If you waven't wot a wenny, 

a ha' wenny will do.  

If you waven't got a ha' wenny, then wod wless you.

Still on strike

I'm not sure why the WGA strike bothers me so much. Perhaps it's because I imagine myself to be something of a writer and pro-union. How could the bean counters do this to us? In any case, week five.

Diagram of a Warm Child

This handout came home with BB last week, from Kindergarten. At first, I found it both hilarious and unsettling. Who wouldn't keep their child warm? But did we have BB fully prepared? Then, I realized what a concerted effort it is every winter to make sure that BB has a good coat, snow boots, and the like for the cold winters here. We've already zipped BB's down liner into his Lands End coat. If it's your first winter, like it is for many of the grad student parents who send their kids to BB's school, it can take longer than you'd expect to adjust. I remember a newly cold winter in my childhood, in the seventies, when my own parents didn't figure things out until about January. Work boots and a spring-like jacket doesn't work in the far north. What is weird is how hard it's been to find LB a warm jacket, as though one year olds aren't supposed to be going outside.

Sugarman 3

Raise your lighters (or cell phones) high. The back up band takes center stage.