The Boy with Nana and Papa
the boy
Ready for Bed
If only the Boy were as easily prepared for sleep as his bed is: a matter of laying out an oddity that’s essentially a sleeved sleeping bag.
To get the Boy to this point, there’s been at least half an hour of eating and another half an hour spent keeping him vertical to avoid spillage from burps and reflux.
And that’s on a lucky day.
Tummy Time
As parents, we sometimes deliberately subject our children to discomfort, frustration, and anger. For the Boy, that occurs several times daily, and the Girl has named this torture “Tummy Time.”
“You have to exercise those neck muscles,” she explains as we did so often before. For the Girl, though, it’s more than simple entertainment: it’s a brief glimpse into her own infancy.
Perhaps that’s why she’s so keen to watch each and every time. She comes running from wherever she might be when she hears, “Okay, little man, it’s Tummy Time.”
Photo Walk
After the Boy's six o'clock feeding, nothing soothes his nerves (and K's) like a walk. Without K. Or the Girl. So the three of us head out alone, I with the Boy, the Girl with our little point and shoot camera.
It's a fairly standard route we take. Usually, the only question is direction, and in the late afternoon, the sun dictates counter-clockwise. And so we begin with the mysterious flowers that have been blooming for a week now and the daily request: "Daddy, can I pick a flower?" The bush hangs over an embankment, with thorns and danger swirling around it.
"How about a picture?" I suggest.
"Okay," she chirps, then explains that today, she's going to focus on pictures of nature.
Yet when we get home, we see that there was another motif that crept its way steadily into the eighty-some pictures she snapped along the half-hour walk: the road.
Endless pictures of the road. The road and the grass beside; the road and our feet; the road and her foot; the road with crumbling asphalt; the road with new asphalt; the road without lines; the road with lines.
"Why so many pictures of the road?" I want to ask, but I know the answer. "I don't know."
I remember taking pictures that way: not really sure why I was taking that particular picture, but somehow certain that the photo would reveal something not immediately observable in reality.
After all, isn't that the motivation behind most modern art? If Marcel Duchamp can display a signed urinal as modern art, isn't a food processor on the side of the road at least as deserving of artistic attention?
Surely, at the very least, a dog's urinal is art.
Afternoon with Big Sister
I put the Boy on a small sleeping bag the Girl has spread out in front of her doll house. As often happens, things turn photogenic.
Waking Up
“Let’s go wake up Big Sister,” I say to the Boy as he fusses this morning.
Soon, everyone is smiling.
Papa’s Heaven
Some Father's Day gifts are quite simple.
Nap
“Can you hold the boy?”
Sure — for as long as necessary.
Wonder that Is Not
Infants are deceiving: they sometimes look as if they’re entranced with something, gazing into the distance and lost in thought.
The pediatrician assures us that the Boy can’t even really focus at this point. His muscles have little minds of their own, and things blur and crystallize without his conscious thought or control.
Sometimes its better to read into it what we will, though.
Fascination
It’s a good sign: the Girl is utterly fascinated with the Boy. “I want to hold him!” is a common refrain. “That’s so cute!” is a frequent chorus.
The question is, how long will it last?