Voodoo child

When Samson likes something, he really likes it. As in wants to eat with it, take it in the bath with him, bring it into the crib.

Vicki found Samson a little guitar online, and in a case of no good deed going unpunished, he has been carting the thing around the house like some kind of tiny troubadour for the past few days, alternately "playing" and demanding songs.

Maybe this is how Jimi Hendrix got started?

In between days

I'm still trying to catch up at work, and we've just gotten all new windows installed in our house, which means almost every room has all the furniture in the middle of the floor. So it's taken me a few days to get some photos downloaded.

I took Monday off in anticipation of the window guys coming. When they canceled, I took it as a providential sign that I should still stay home from work and we should take Samson to the zoo. Definitely a good move. [And yes, I know the sun is in his eyes in that picture above; young Samson refuses to wear a hat or sunglasses. He's also never heard of B.F. Skinner...]

We had lots of fun looking at the animals and trying out Vicki's new camera. Once again, Samson tried to join the penguins. And once again, I got to test my wrist strength.

We also did some marching.

In fact, things went swimmingly (no pun intended) until we made a quick stop on the way out at the farm exhibit. There, once again, Samson came face to face with his nemesis.

And he blinked. Actually, he cried. Although to be fair, that burro does look sort of fierce.

The return of dada

I'm back from the west, and not a moment too soon. This working on weekends is a drag, particularly when it entails cross-country flights on budget airlines and seatmates who are only 5'8" but insist on sitting as if they are 6'6".

On the plus side, on Friday night I got to catch up with two guys I grew up with who now live in Los Angeles. It was good to see them, and we had some terrific sushi. Also, who knew you could get Sapporo in this size?

And for some strange reason, the nice people at the Hilton gave me an executive level room. Which meant that I spent two nights in a hotel room roughly the size of the first floor of our house.

Still, it was work. And while I like the people I work with (mostly), I don't want to see them in the gym, at breakfast, or really anywhere at all between Friday at 5 and Monday at 9. This holds especially true for sitting next to me on the plane.

So it goes; I'm on the hook for two more weekends after this, and obviously, it could be worse, but I am a jealous guarder of my personal time.

In fact, I work with a lot of overachievers --- people who can't go the weekend without checking work e-mail or coming in to the office for a few hours on a Saturday.

And here I confess that I have always found people with the capacity to work all the time to be somewhat foreign, in the most literal sense of the word. I look on them in the way that the ancient Incas must have looked on the first of Pizarro's men --- with a combination of wonder and disdain.

I understand they are committed, but I can't quite figure out where on earth they're coming from.

Or, for that matter, what the deal is with the flags and swords...

Samson's index

Work puts me on the wrong coast again this weekend, so I've been paying particularly close attention to young Samson these past few days in anticipation of what I'll miss in the next few.

Lots of little things going on at our house. He's made some great strides in drawing (usually on paper) and has settled on circles and tee-pees as his favorite things to draw. Without fail, if you ask what he'd like you to draw, you get one of those two answers (and honestly, it's almost always "circle"). Which is fine with me, because if he starts asking for trapezoids we may have to go to an all-tee-pee format.

We ate at Chipotle last night with Samson's friends Jake and O [and their moms]. If you've never eaten out with three 18-month-olds, I highly recommend it. Aside from the sheer comedy of watching them try to take each other's food, you get to play an ongoing game of pick-up with trucks, forks, sippy cups, napkins, and of course, food.

So without further ado, I hereby unveil Samson's index for the past two days. Not quite as hip (or snarky) as Harper's, but I don't have a team of eager recent grads from places like Williams and Oberlin working for me as researchers.

Ratio of Samson's quesadilla pieces eaten to those on the floor: 3 to 1
Number of people Samson said "hi" to: 8
Number who responded in kind: 5
Number of people in above category who looked like they'd just met with a parole officer: 1.5

Amount of time it took to get Samson to bed last night (in minutes): 50
Number of books read: 3
Number of trucks in those books: 417
Total stalling time [petitions for water, re-brushing teeth, songs, etc. (in minutes)]: 12
Total pre-sleep crying time (in minutes): 5

Number of cookies eaten with breakfast: 1
Number of cookies mommy knew about: 0
Number of circles drawn between last night and this morning: 17
Number of tee-pees: 5
Percentage of time spent dancing (as of breakfast): 14
Number of blueberries/raspberries "accidentally" dropped from high chair: 3
Number of fake "uh-ohs" following the drops: 3
Number of uses of "Samson James" by me in warning against such accidental drops: 1

Minutes until I can go home and play: 73

Be prepared

Pretty interesting article in today's NY Times about a family stranded for two weeks in the mountains.

And Vicki wonders why I keep an emergency blanket in our glove compartment.

Of course, I can't imagine what it would take for this to happen to us given the fact that we live miles and miles from anything like an untraveled road, but you just never know.

We do a fair amount of hiking, and we may even brave an attempt at camping with young Samson this summer.

In any event, one of the models goals I've set for our little family is to never be featured on this show...

Simple pleasures

The weekend was good but very busy. We drove up Saturday morning and came back home Sunday night. Samson got to spend time with his grandparents and his aunts and uncles and just generally run around playing. I think it's safe to say he had a blast. I think it's also safe to say we need to pay closer attention to him when he's carrying crayons; he "colored" the cushions on my mom's rocking chair.

Despite the quick visit, we did manage to get to the beach to try out our new kite. If it hadn't been Siberia cold, I might still be there. The wind was so strong that it took me almost ten minutes just to get the thing back down. Clearly my kite-flying skills are not the kind that could stand as allegory for a life's journey or the fate of a war-torn country, but we had lots of fun.

I wish I had an audio clip of Samson saying "wow!" as the kite took off. As my mother-in-law would say, it was "awesome."

And yes, those are grown-up mittens on young Samson. He has his own but for some reason prefers the giant, cumbersome hand-covering option. I think they actually acted as a counterweight and helped him keep his balance on the sand.

He's going to be amazed this summer to discover that going to the beach doesn't always entail biting wind and near hypothermic conditions.

Elvis Costello was right

Accidents will happen. Particularly when naked time comes right after dinner time and just before bath time. To his credit, Samson managed to pee only into the bed of his dumptruck. Which is a pretty neat trick but makes for a very delicate disposal process. And of course, we then had to boil his truck.

A classic returns

We head up to NY on Saturday to attend a dinner honoring my Dad as "Hibernian of the year," but I wanted to wish you all a Happy St. Patrick's Day with a photo from last year.

Here's Samson James at six months proudly showing off his heritage [and hopefully not attracting the attention of the Dept. of Child Protective Services].

Speaking in tongues

Samson has new words all the time, but we can almost always figure out what they are. Here's a sample of his lexicon:

Hojew: literally, "hold you," which he says while putting his arms upward, asking to be held. We figure he derived it from our saying, "Do you want me to hold you?"

Bakkahn: pronounced with almost a Cajun inflection, this is what Samson says when he wants to put his shoes "back on." We typically hear this in the car immediately after the tell-tale velcro sound of him removing his shoes.

Pokock: inexplicably, this is the word for garbage truck.

Wukkum: "welcome," which Samson usually says in response to our coaching of "can you say thank you?" Sort of a right church, wrong pew kind of thing.

But a new word surfaced while I was away, and as yet, we still have no idea what it means.

We can't even figure out what part of speech it represents. We do know he finds the word hilarious because he laughs when he says it. Which, of course, makes us laugh.

The word, and I don't pretend to know how to spell it, is pronounced Buk-uh-nay-nay.

It hews to no particular time of day or specific situation and seems to be an all-purpose word. I think I may start using it myself. I've got a three o'clock meeting; maybe I'll see if I can throw a little buckinaynay in there.

18

Our buddy is 18 months old today, which means he gets to celebrate by going for his quarterly check up with the doctor. For some reason, he is deathly afraid of the stethoscope. I don't think I can state this strongly enough. It verges on mortal terror.

He does all right with shots, all things considered. And he manages to keep it together with the whole weigh-in and measuring routine. But the doctor who tries to listen to Samson's chest may as well be at the head of an evil clown parade and brandishing a rattle snake.

PS: I have no idea why the picture loaded vertically. It's clearly a horizontal shot, and I tried to load it several times before deciding to try and pass it off as an artistic choice. So there you have it. Think of it as a commentary on how we view children and the norms we ascribe to imagery; or you might see it as an attempt to challenge the accepted forms of representation---a kind of mimetic liberation of the object from the viewer (the whole gaze/gazer dichotomy).

Or you could just know that my computer skills topped out with Speak & Spell.

PPS: Said picture was taken during the recently instituted (and very recently weather-appropriate) daily five minutes of naked time. He could be in the foulest mood and ready to completely fall apart, but once he's sans culottes, everything (to quote Bob Marley) is gonna be all right...

Long-distance dada

I'm in San Francisco until Sunday for work and am using the hotel's business office right now to post [never let it be said that I'm not dedicated].

For some reason, our office routed me to San Francisco through Oakland via Kansas City. I think it would have been faster if I had connected in Reykjavik. The first leg was nice and quiet, but when we got to KC, the plane filled up and I got to sit behind the only person in the world who was unaware that she couldn't have her cellphone on during the flight.

I am not some kind of world-weary traveling sophisticate. In fact, I think this is the first time I've flown in more than a year. But even my parents know you can't have a cellphone on during a flight, and their VCR clock is only right for half of each year.

To make matters worse, cell-phone lady had a small child, a very large child, and an even larger husband, who, for reasons I can't begin to comprehend, refused to allow the small child [I'm guessing he was 5] to have the window seat. He himself sat across from the mother and two kids, taking up the aisle seat opposite them. You only need to know this because he spent at least a third of the flight alternately leaning across the aisle to threaten the two kids or actually getting out of his seat to take a swipe at one of them. Good times over the Rocky Mountain west.

I'm sure the nice folks at the Oakland Chamber of Commerce won't use this in their promotional materials, but there's something endearingly shabby about what little of the city I saw. The airport itself reminded me of the one in San Salvador; again, probably not the kind of appraisal you'll be seeing anytime soon on the Oakland Visitor's Bureau website.

That's all for now; lots to do tomorrow, and I catch the redeye back Sunday morning. I miss you, Samson. Get a good night's sleep, and be good for mama.

Siesta

Gratuitous sleeping Samson pic...

And if you're thinking his crib looks a little cluttered, you should see it before the ritual jettison of all the things he "needs" with/near him to go to sleep.

That bus is made of tougher stuff than I thought --- although we have to keep rotating Carloses through on worker's comp.

Milk

By now Samson's narration skills are well established. He points out hats and cars and just about everything else he recognizes. At times, there are things he's seeing and announcing that we don't even see [this happens a lot with the moon; it's like he has some kind of weird lunar radar].

But a new wrinkle has been added; he's now letting us in on his interior monologue. Sometimes this takes the form of free association, like when we mention going to the park, he'll almost immediately say "Jacob, Oliver" and lately, "pope."

Or when we're out running errands and he automatically (and usually correctly) assumes and announces "coffee?"

Last night when he burped at the table, he followed up not with "excuse me" --- which we're still working on --- but "milk." I'm assuming it was kind of a vurp [figure it out], and he was keeping us apprised on the taste in his mouth.

For some reason I find this more hilarious than gross, but I'm sure I should be correcting it.

Walking

There is no cool or funny story behind these photos. I just liked them.

I'm sure Thoreau's got a dozen or so profound quotes on walking, and I'd bet Bruce Chatwin has a couple as well.

But I really just liked the symmetry of the two of us: right feet forward, shadows overlapping, going nowhere in particular and in no great hurry.

Wind power

What could be better on a blustery March day than getting the chance to fly a kite? I say "chance" because it was pretty iffy that I'd even get the thing strung, much less airborne. You'll notice me in the background working away. For his part, Samson was content just to run around the park.


We did get the kite aloft, briefly, but it was hardly the kind of performance you'd write a novel about. On the plus side, I'm not sure Samson knows exactly how high a kite is supposed to go. So for now, he may very well think that I'm some kind of kite-flying superninja.

We upgraded after the paper kite tore, but by then the wind had died down. And it was getting kind of cold. But next time, look out...

Tub punks

Let's see what happens when we switch the boys' regularly scheduled Raffi cd and put on the Clash.


London Calling indeed.

Swimming with the Holy Father

For reasons I can't begin to imagine, the school at our church, where we had Sunday night's spaghetti dinner, has a life-sized statue of Pope John Paul II in the lobby.

I wish I was kidding, but there he is in all his posthumous pontifical splendor, right down to the red papal slippers [which I have to believe are not the shoes of the fisherman].

In any event, Samson was intrigued by this figure, so I explained it was a statue of the Pope.

Well, that word is only one syllable and has a nice pair of plosive Ps in it, so it took about half a second for Samson to start repeating "pope, pope, pope." Which seemed perfectly appropriate given the venue (not to mention the decor).

However, somewhere between then and now, the pope has been incorporated into Samson's playgroup. Samson has swimming on Wednesdays, and as he and Vicki were driving home, she asked him who he saw at swimming. They went through the litany of friends: "Jacob, Oliver, Christopher" when Samson added "Pope."

Sure enough, when I asked him tonight at dinner who was at swimming, the Pope made an appearance. He was also at playgroup and even merited a shout-out from Samson while I was on the phone with my sister.

Perhaps this is some kind of toddler sixth sense thing [although, if anybody should know they're dead, you'd think the Pope would; I imagine they get to skip all the Dante-inspired stuff and head right to the big room]. Or maybe Samson is just really affected by statues. Either way, we'll probably steer clear of Madame Tussaud's.

And I'm sorry, but I have to think that even Martin Luther would have found the thought of the Pope swimming with a class of toddlers funny.

He might have ended up with 96 theses, but I bet he would have laughed first.

Sean Penn, the early years?

Samson sends a message to the papa, er, mama-razzi...

I am Samson

Samson has started saying his name. It actually sounds more like Sassoon (as in Siegfried) or Sasson (as in Ooh La La), but it's pretty cool to know that he knows what his name is.

The latter pronunciation would make even more sense given that he's suddenly become fascinated with the mirror. There's a mirror on the wall next to his changing table, and now when I hold him in front of it, he smiles and raises his arms behind his head in some kind of strike-a-pose maneuver. It's really sweet, and a little weird. But mostly sweet.

In other news, after months of "no," we finally got him to say "yes." He only said it once, and he seemed immediately aware of the fact that he'd given away some kind of secret. As if saying no was protecting him from eating foods he didn't want, but now that yes was out of the bag, the game was up.

It reminded me of a story I once heard about the orangutan. I don't remember if the myth came from Indonesia or Malaysia, but legend has it that the "man of the forest" can actually speak. He chooses to stay silent, however, for fear that if people know he can talk and understand them, he'll be put to work. Makes sense to me.

Sorry, Samson, but mama and I heard that "yes." Take heart, little man, it was a good run while it lasted...