nightmares

OK, so everyone has been so helpful in compiling a cd for Simon I thought I would put out a call for other helpful tips.

Simon has been having nightmares. It has been upsetting for him and has been difficult to think of solutions for it. Simon has told me in no uncertain terms that the way I have been trying to help has not been very effective in his case.

It has been a vey long time since I had nigtmares myself. It seems that my own nightmares stopped about the time that my own dreams became more lucid. One you knew you were dreaming, you could fly. If you could fly, there was nothing to be worried about. Monsters chasing you? Fly away. Plus, it is only a short hop from flying to any other abillity which would help you more easily deal with those scary things threatening you. My plans with Simon have been centered around trying to get him to fly in his dreams. He tells me it does not work. Yet, I hope.

KWW reads lots of books, and in the past has read even more. She has said to me that seeing as now he is so consciously concerned with becoming powerful (please refer to "oedipus ox") that he subconsciusly balances it out and becomes un-powerful and scared of monsters. Makes a certain sense to me, but I'm not real happy with just waiting it out.

Do you remember any good nightmare solutions? I'm sure Simon will be happy to give any of them a shot.

cookie

So, on Sunday, we were cooking out, as we are wont to do. Afterwards, we are hanging out on the couch enjoying some fine--may I say very fine, even--chocolate chip cookies that Simon made. Well, picture this: the baby girl is making a bee-line for her lovin Poppa. Cruising along the floor, she gets to my knees reaches for my own sweet dessert and demands "Cookie".

Yep, she said cookie. It was independently verified by others in the room, although none in the immediate family (evidence which makes the story seem all the more verifiably true to everyone but KWW). I believe her other pronounced words to date are "mama" "thbbthbbthb" and I think, "buh buh" once. She may have said "poppa" after much prodding, but not nearly as clear as "cookie"

Those of you familiar with family lore are aware of SImon's versitile use of "turtle", his forst two-syllable word, when he was 18-20 months. I'm telling you, "cookie" is some kind of amazing testament to KWW's incessant reading while pregnant and the undeniable lure of sugar.

famousity

Hey, check it out--I can now be found in about 5 bookstores around Chicagoland.


http://www.roosevelt.edu/oyezreview/current.html


I know, I am lame and haven't figured out how to paste this as a live link yet...but someday, I will. I promise.

Omaha Cool

Boy, let me tell you, Omaha is oh so very hip. A cultural moment is going on here, yep, that's what it is, a cultural moment.

I went to the Southern Graphics print conference in Kansas City this past weekend. I laid my portfolio of prints out on the table and when anyone asked where I was from, they always responded in hushed tones full of awe "Omaha....what's that like?"

The, I realized they must get the NY Times before me.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/travel/tmagazine/03talk.omaha.t.html?ref=tmagazine

After reding this article and the one about how LA doesn't get any respect at all, I realized that, yes, we are all that and a bag of chips--"cool Ranch" I imagine. And I had heard of one of he bands that is mentioned, which means I'm not yet "Omaha Cool"

the big dig

Paleontologists.

Has there ever been a profession more well suited for child-level pop tunes?

Simon will be 5 on the 30th. Apparently, I now must make a cd for every party for the goodie bags. Birthday number 5 is a "paleontologist party". I'm thikning dinosaur songs and poems. That brings me up to 2 and the poem, Shel Silverstein's "if I had a brontosaurus" is only 10 seconds long.

"If I has a brontosaurs, I would name him boris or morris. If one day he had a lot of little brontosauri, I would change his name to Lori".

Seriously, if I have to listen to a disk of cloying kids tunes about Barney every day in the car, I will go insane.

Please help.

Chomper

Eloise has her first tooth. It was discovered this morning by yours truly, because I am always sticking my fingers in her mouth.

For those of you wagering, first tooth--hereafter known as "Chomper," because, as in the discovery of new bugs, I have naming rights--was spottted at 10 months, 3 days at 7:55 am.

From here on out it will be all steak all the time for the little girl. Possibly some lamb chops thrown in for variety.

oedipus ox

So Simon wants KWW to be his girlfriend.

Graciously, he will allow her to be my Momma. But his Girlfrend.

Thankfully, he has yet to mention anything about killing me to finalize the deal. Nor has he shown any bouts of eye-gouging guilt, even when he inadvertently broke the mother's day pot he made for her at his old school.

To this point of fatherhood, I have been reuctant to accept what the past hundred years' worth of experts say will inevitably happen. I want to belive in the individual, that perhaps I can concede that if you have a wide enough view things do track that way, but individually, it is not so. Not my kid. My boy won't be shooting up the house soon. The girl isn't going to be decked out in the frilliest pink, before bringing some guy home who looks a little too much like me to be comfortable with. They will have individual interest, molded completely by the controlled environment in which I keep them hermetically sealed, until they are old enough to go and get me more beer.

I was listening to Radio Lab online, as I do. They told the story about Sir francis Galton, 19th century elitist founder of Eugenics (the theory of broad racial superiority, used to great effect by your average Nazi or Charles Murray). Anyway, he went ot a county fair where they were selling tickets to have ordinary peasants guess the weight of a giant prize steer. Of course there was not a single steer-weighing savant in the crowd and everyone was wildly off. Then Galton asked if he could have all the lottery tickets, ostensibly to see if there was a pattern to these foolish chumps, who probably shouldn't be allowed to have kids anyway. It turned out that the AVERAGE guess was within one pound of the exact weight of a steer that was in excess of 1300 lbs. it is like the mob knew what no one part knew.

So, in listening to the freudian mob of child development, I will try to to say anything to Simon in the near future that could, potentially, drive him to patricidal rage.

I should even get the book to see how this all turns out in the end.