Learning to Use a Spoon Pt 4

All right, I'm tired of chopping up these videos and commenting on them.  If you want to watch me play with Elliot for another 3 minutes, go crazy.  

Happy New Year!

Learning to Use a Spoon Pt 3

A short summary of Christmas in Ann Arbor

It was the five of us again this year.  Five and a half if you include Elliot.  Last year each of us (me, Hannah, Anna, Kate, and Ed) made the point of a star out of plasticine (remember that stuff?)  The plan was to bake them into a singe five-point star.  Lovely idea right?  A year later the five triangles are still on our kitchen counter.  They look nice there.

On Christmas Eve we read A Child's Christmas in Wales out loud together. It's a family tradition of Anna's, a really beautiful one I must say.  "A boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye."

Woke up Christmas morning and came downstairs.  Elliot cried us awake at the normal time, he didn't seem to have any Christmas anxiety.  He had to eat, and then we did, and then a few stockings, and then a break, so full-blown present-opening didn't start til lunchtime, nearly.

I got a sweet guitar from Hannah's parents, which I am very excited about.  I haven't had a chance to noodle on the guitar for a long time.  Will have to dig out my old journals, where I wrote down the chords to all the songs I taught myself busking in Munich.

I got a great pocket-video camera (Flip, for those in the market) from Hannah, as well as a find-your-keys device that will be desperately useful at desperate moments.  The West family is good at gift-giving.  Hopefully it's a skill I will pick up.

Christmas afternoon we walked in the freezing cold to the playground, and put Elliot in the swing.

He did much better than the last time we went to the playground.  Which was, now that I think of it, on Thanksgiving Day.

The next day we mostly hung out.  Had a casual brunch with Deb and Marionetta.  The Ferguson family persimmon pudding was featured, and was very well received.  I made lemon sauce for it.  Worked on a puzzle of Hopper's Nighthawks.

That night we made pizza, one of which was loaded with bacon.  I mean loaded. I put so much bacon on it it was ridiculous.  Like 6 strips.  By the end, I had to search for places to drop a bacon bit where it wouldn't touch another bacon bit.

On the 27th it snowed!  Big puffy flakes.  I took Elliot out in it, a walk to the playground again, but he didn't come out of the carrier this time.

We had a really nice dinner with friends of Kate and Ed.  Nick Delbanco used to run the writing program at UMich, and his wife Elena is in the public policy program.  Also Lou and Margaret, a sculptor/painter couple with a ten year-old daughter Sadie.  (We did not mention that we used to have a dog named Sadie)

One highlight of the evening was the story of how Nick became a writer.  When he was a teenager he had the privilege of meeting a famous writer couple who pulled up in a chauffeur-driven limo.  Their first book, Raffi the Giraffe, went nowhere, and then they wrote Pretzel the Dog, which went a few more places, and then Curious George, which went a lot of places.  And Nick decided that if you could write books and ride in a limo, that was the profession for him.

I left too early.  Now I'm puttering around New York, missing Hannah and Elliot.  They're back tomorrow!

Learning to Use a Spoon, Pt. 2

It's a slow process.  Not always interesting to watch.

Learning to Use a Spoon

This is from before Xmas.  In case it's not clear, I just left the camera on the table and went into the kitchen to make breakfast with Hannah.  Judge me. 

Sleep

He lies on his side and makes circles on the mattress with his hand.  Have I written about this already?  When he is trying to fall asleep, he makes circles.  On the mattress. This is hard to describe well.

He lies on his side, and begins with his free arm down by his waist.  Then, keeping the arm perfectly straight, he rotates it up toward his head, tracing a circle.   I think this is comforting to him.  Then he draws his hand down along his body until it is by his waist again, and the cycle repeats.

Stories about adventures in sleep could suck up the entire output of this blog.  But one particularly enraging  story occurred while we were visiting Aaron and Daria over Thanksgiving.

We brought a Pack'n'Play, which is like a fold-up crib, and the night before Thanksgiving he went to sleep in it without a problem.  But at 2am he woke up, scared at his unfamiliar surroundings, and started to cry.

I got up, changed his diaper, and fed him a bottle.  He slowly closed his eyes.  At that time of night minutes seem like hours--- about a day later he was sleeping peacefully in my arms.

I stood and moved him to the Pack'n'Play. He barely stirred.  I laid him down on the mattress (typically the most dangerous moment for reawakening) and he lay still.  Success was mine, it seemed.

And then, in his sleep, he kicked his little leg and his plastic PJ sole scraped against the nylon mesh of the Pack'n'Play wall.  It made a loud rrrrrr-rrrrrrr-rrrrrrrr noise, and I saw his head twitch.

But he was still pretty much asleep.  If I could prevent another incident he would drift back into slumber.  I kept my hand protectively between the crib wall and his foot.

RRRRR-RRRRR-RRRRRR!

I looked and saw that he'd kicked his other foot.  This was a tiny crib and both were in striking distance of the damned nylon mesh.

And now he was definitely awake.  He lifted his head, wondering what he'd heard.

I'll spare you the details of the next twenty minutes.  The short version is I failed to get him back to sleep and fumed for hours about how close I'd been.

Story time

Merry Christmas! We are in Ann Arbor having an awesome time. Peace and love to all

Gravity

Elliot has a beautiful set of brightly colored blocks, given to him on his birthday by Emily and Gerald.  We were playing with these recently, and he picked up a small cardboard box that had previously held a pair of earrings.  Together we discovered that one of the colored blocks fit perfectly inside the small cardboard box.  The fit was so tight that it was impossible to pull the block out with your fingers. 

So I showed Elliot how to tip over the box and slide the block out.  He was fascinated.  I repeated the motion: put the block inside the box, rotatate your wrist until it’s upside down and the block comes out.  Then I gave it to him.  He did just as I had, turning it upside down to dump the block out. 

Yay!  I thought.  He understands gravity.   

I reset the device: took the box from him, put the block in it, and gave it back.  He tipped it again, but not quite far enough to let the block slide out.  He waited there, watching the opening of the box intently.  Then he tipped the box upright and stared at the opening, mystified.  Again he turned the box to the side, again not far enough to slide the block out.  Then he got bored and crawled over to play his mini-piano. 

I realized I had misinterpreted his actions.  I thought when he flipped the box upside down, he understood the principles at work.  But to Elliot, there was no larger principle, just a simple rule:  flip box and block will emerge.  As far as he knew, the rule applied only to this box and this block.  A larger theory of gravity was not implicated here. 

Which got me thinking about this notion of gravity.  It seems so fundamental, so deeply woven into our understanding of the universe, that there could never have been a time when we didn’t understand it.  Like saying that there was a time we didn’t know how to breathe, or poop. 

But watch a baby in a high chair, throwing objects over the edge and then peering down after them.  What are they doing but experimenting with gravity?  They're saying, Does it work every time I throw it?  Does it work with every object?  Does anything ever go up?

I tried to do some research into when babies understand gravity.  The academic literature is in flux:  conventional understanding is around a year.  But some researchers argue that humans are born with an understanding of physics, and they have some studies suggesting we understand gravity at 4 months. 

To me, there seems to be a fairly obvious way to tell.  A baby understands gravity when he stops chucking spoons off his highchair and watching them fall.  

Update

I've been severely reprimanded by a close family member for not posting an update:  Elliot is walking.

In my own defense, I did post something last month saying that he took his first steps.  But he was still mostly crawling then.

Actually, he's still mostly crawling now.  It's his preferred mode of transport.  But rather than the two little stutter-steps that we counted as his "first steps," Elliot can now walk across the living room.  And instead of walking only when we prop him up and cajole him, now he's doing it without anyone looking.

I really should be more aggressive at getting some of this on film.  I've posted a billion videos of Elliot sitting doing nothing, but haven't taken the time to capture him walking.  I will try to do better.

Elliot's hot new girlfriend

 Actually, they haven't seen each other for a while now, so the romance may have cooled. 

June and Elliot are uniquely connected: she is the daughter of the man who put the final seal of approval on Elliot's name.  Susan and Elliot were co-classmates in our childbirth education class--- we had already been considering the name, and when we met adult-Elliot we figured his combination of coolness and likability was a sign.  And the rest is history....

More Cat Manipulation

As I mention in this video, this may be the moment Elliot realized he liked being in control. 

Hot Kid in the City

You know, hanging out in front of the Brooklyn Museum, like the cool one year-olds do.  Checking out the scene. 

That last photo reminds me so much of Aaron I can barely stand it.

Elliot and the cat

I think I mentioned earlier that we cat-sat for our friend Irina over the Thanksgiving holiday.  It was awesome, Ding Dong (yes, her name is Ding Dong, don't make me write it again) is the snuggliest cat you ever met.  She does wake you up in the middle of the night with her love and affection...but I've been known to do that myself. 

One of my favorite Elliot moments of all time happens in the first five seconds of this video.  Watch closely, don't blink. 

Not to ruin the adorableness of that last video, but Ding Dong killed a mouse for us, while we watched.  I sh!t you not.  I had to leave for work before the grisly finale, but Hannah tells me that by the end the mouse was just walking up to Ding Dong and resting its head against her mouth.  Cats are sickos. 

Eating seaweed by the dishwasher

There is really nothing to see in this video.  I just think Elliot is adorable even when he's doing nothing.

Be child-like.  I used to hear that phrase and it kind of glanced off me.  Yeah right, be child-like.

But now I get it.  It's so easy.  And so hard. 

Forgiveness, for example.  Elliot is great at forgiveness.  He will scream at us for hours in the middle of the night, but have no problem cuddling and laughing with us in the morning. 

The facile response is, "he just forgot about that."  But infants have great memories.  Elliot will go a week or more without seeing our camera, but when he does see it he'll lunge for it.

The truth is that he can be lonely and desperate in his crib at night, scream for us and hate us for abandoning him.  And in the morning he can forgive us.

We dismiss this as, um,  infantile.  We think it immature not to hold grudges, not to stew and mutter about slights against us, not to steep oneself in the bitter juices of resentment at every opportunity. 

Think of how the world would be if we all had the capacity for forgiveness of a one year-old.  

mylar is baby catnip

Correction:  A previous version of this video was labeled as occurring one month in the future.  The video was not filmed in the future.  It was filmed in the past.  The same applies to all videos posted on this blog.  The management apologizes for any confusion.  

He likes to read

Or at least he enjoys flipping pages...

Trip to the botanical garden

We go there about once a week, but usually forget to bring the camera.  So the one time we did remember, we got a little photo-crazy....

Emily and Jesse

Visits with these two always produce quirky photos...