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.

open letter to baby x: integrity

dear baby x,

this week your father had an unfortunate experience with some men with whom he had been professionally friendly. the men and your father parted ways, initiated by the men, but the situation was badly handled: common decency wasn't afford your dad. it's a shame, because some of these men have children, and i worry about the message being sent to them. integrity and courage are important, in big ways, yes, but also in small ways: everyday, common acts of kindness. perhaps it was time for your father to say goodbye; new plans abound, and he's already moved on.

baby x, we hope many good things for you: success and happiness, health and wisdom acquired in youth. we also hope that you'll walk tall, and know from an early age that the hard thing and right thing are sometimes the same thing, and that there's no shame in struggling to reconcile that fact. the shame comes when we recognize that the hard thing and the right thing are the same, yet choose instead a path of least resistance. in short, we should be ashamed when we act the coward.

i want you to know that, in spite of the sober tone i've taken, not every situation will be a challenge. fortunately, oftentimes, the right thing and the easy thing are the same thing. these are moments that you should recognize, that we will help you recognize, so that you may be more prepared and comfortable to make the hard choices that will inevitably be presented to you.

your father spent a good part of his childhood, and a good part of his adulthood, with his fist in the air, so to speak, raised in defiance. i want you to know that he has never been averse to a challenge, even when the odds were very, very clearly stacked against him. i also want you to learn from his example, and to know that while things are often shades of grey, they are also often black and white: if your father and i do our job right, the best thing to do and the right thing to do will always be clear to you.

love,
the baron

barney doesn't live here

early in her pregnancy the baron and the husband decided that no "children's music" would darken their doorstep: no barney, no dora the explorer, no mickey mouse... you get the picture, reader, right? their only concession to baby x's age and need for soothing sounds are a series of cds called rockabye baby, which re-imagine popular songs as lullabies. they've got the beach boys, coldplay, u2, and the beatles, all retooled enough to keep baby x sleeping, but still highly and easily recognizable as music the baron and the husband actually like.

baby x and the baron share their first nursing session of the day with the amelie soundtrack, scored by yann tiersen. (they used to start the day with simon and garfunkel, until one morning when the husband happened upon them listening to 'bridge over troubled water' and suggested it was kind of heavy for the baby). lately, before his bath time and dinner time, baby x is danced around the living room by his father to 'everyday people' by sly & the family stone. sometimes it's led zepplin, and once it was the cars... but no one wanted a repeat of ric ocasek. baby x's days are filled with a playlist the baron and the husband built for baby x, containing the likes of phoenix, the rolling stones, vampire weekend, rem, the killers, the beatles, u2, coldplay, and one song by cat stevens (you can guess which one, reader, can't you?).

their house will likely, eventually, see more conventional children's music, especially once baby x gets out and about into the world. until then, though, the baron and the husband are liking their chance to shape his musical tastes. fingers crossed that what they teach him now will stick.

the things she is grateful for

miss you, chester.

mourning glory

the baron, the husband, baby x, and the two big dogs have plans to travel to upstate new york later this week. the husband has made this trip many, many times; the baron just twice.

they'll be visiting the husband's members of nuclear and extended family, one of whom is very, very ill. this trip is will give baby x a too-brief opportunity to meet his kin, and the baron wishes the circumstances were better.

she's got no sense of humor about this; pithy is the best she can do.

summertime reading

'you have given me a country', by neela vaswani, was released earlier this month. neela is a friend of the baron's, a good writer, a good woman, just good. also, she's not afraid to speak a thoughtfully placed curse word, so.

the baron has yet to purchase 'you have given me a country', but will soon (it's on her list of things to do this weekend).

read an excerpt here, and a bit about neela here. then maybe add the buying of 'you have given me a country' to your weekend list of things to do as well.