an open letter to baby x, or embrace immobility

dear baby x,

it's hard to believe you're six months old now! i want you to know that your father and i are excited and happy about your progress. it's thrilling to watch you take in your surroundings, to begin to recognize people and places.

ahem.

i want to talk to you about something, though, something that's been bothering your father and me. lately, at night, when we check on you in your crib, we find you, um, not exactly as we left you. sometimes you're moved just a little to the left or right. sometimes, you're rotated 180 degrees and have flipped from your back to your belly.

now you're exhibiting this disturbing desire to move all the time during the day as well. today, for example, i put you down for a nap in your crib. i swaddled you, as insurance that you'd stay wrapped up tight on your back. when i checked on you 20 minutes later, this is what i found:


baby x, that's you there, with your swaddling cloth wrapped all around your legs. and also, you appear to be trying to break through the bars of the crib. you appear to be smiling.

your father and i are very happy about your progress, did i mention? but, let's consider taking things down a notch, huh? i'm beginning to miss the days when you stayed put, when your arms and legs hardly flailed at all, when you were super content to lay on your back watching the ceiling fan spin.

just something to think about.

love,
the baron

like sea turtles hatching on a beach...

when the baron was a senior in high school, she participated in academic decathlon. the details are extremely fuzzy to her now; she remembers that there were 10 areas of competition (um. duh. decathlon.), but of those 10 she remembers only the music (listen to and identify this piece of music!) and speech sections.

of the music section, she remembers nothing save this: one of the pieces was by Aram Khachaturian and she could only recognize that by the fact that it was, that year, being used for a pork commercial as well (pork! the other white meat!).

the speech, she was much better at. she crafted 5 minutes about moving on from high school to college, and the metaphor she used was sea turtles. she chose them because she liked sea turtles. they seemed sublime and content, floating out there. her speech began with baby sea turtles hatching on a beach, then moving unprotected into the ocean... like children moving on, unprotected, to college. clever, eh? (it's worth noting, maybe, that the baron lived at home all through college - college that her parents paid for; not altogether too treacherous.) when it came time to apply to college, she turned her baby sea turtle speech into, you guessed it, her application essay. she got a lot of mileage out of those sea turtles.

she still likes sea turtles. she's not the only one, and thank god for that.