Letters to Sg

I'm writing a summary of recent anti-(hostile)-takeover provisions for a client, and I thought I'd take a second to share a little terminology. One of the most powerful forms of shark repellent is the poison pill, which may come in the flip-in or flip-over variety, and which could also, until recently (in Delaware, at least), be a dead-hand pill or a no-hand pill. Of course, if a board fighting off a hostile takeover gets really desperate, it might offer a lock up to a white night, or turn instead to the pac man defense. And if the directors get to keep their jobs, the board might just go out and get staggered. Serious bidness, folks.

During one undergraduate philosophy class that I remember particularly well, we discussed someone's (the author was a phenomenologist, but I don't recall which) belief that all that we do is somehow motivated by our fear of death. I remember the class so well because I thought this was baloney and was surprised to find that I was the only one.

My views on this have not changed, even though, as I get older, I occasionally get a bit dizzy when confronted with evidence of the brevity of even very full lives. Death is a limitation with which I am coming to terms. And tonight, for the first time, it occurred to me that sg lives with the same limitation.

Of course, I have thought plenty about sg's mortality—before, during and after her birth I knew that not every baby comes home from the hospital. When I set up the baby monitor in the nursery, I was forced to accept that SIDS, the worst-case scenario, would be silent and sudden. But I hadn't considered before tonight that even if sg lives to be a great-grandmother, her life will be short and full of unfinished business.

One of the women in the photo above is my grandmother. Several of these women are likely dead, and it's doubtful that any of the others get out much any more. And they are all daughters, maybe all wives and mothers, too. For a moment tonight, as I was scanning in the old family photos, I saw the generations between sg and these women collapsed and it hit home that we are all the walking dead.

Which is why being motivated by a fear of death is so very silly—I mean, imagine a fish motivated by a fear of water!

Didn't want to leave the you-know-what picture at the top of the page for too long.

I've been thinking a lot lately about pop music for kids. For one thing, my iPod has been at capacity for a while, and when the next model comes out, Sophia will get mine. But what to put on it? Also, we are quickly approaching the time when I need to make sure that certain words are infrequent in, if not absent from, the tunes I play around Sophia. Finally, I've been thinking about what makes a good song for kids, and whether there's any particular reason kids and adults can't like the same stuff.

For example, almost anything by They Might Be Giants would count, but they've produced some specifically-for-kids items (mostly like the regular TMBG plus some educational qualities and minus a fascination with death). And I suspect that almost anything from the Shins' Chutes Too Narrow will be appreciated.

I have no idea about the appropriateness of the lyrics for this song, as I can't understand most of them. Or, at least, I think I can understand most the words that are in English, just not whatever is being communicated. But I do think that ""Chu chu chu chu beep beep!"" qualifies as kid friendly.

What are some examples of grownup pop that makes good kids' music?

Sg's great-grandmother (my father's mother) made her this quilt, which she seems to appreciate. A couple of other things to note about this picture: (i) sg has put on about 3 pounds since she left the hospital, and we are now getting "one last wear" out of the premie clothes; (ii) sg wears these great diapers that consist of artificial fiber covers (that don't absorb moisture) and hemp and cotton inserts (that absorb a lot), which works really well, but they're one-size-fits-all, and when she has them on under her clothes – especially at night, when she gets two inserts – she looks like a weeble.

This blog is off to a slow start – work has been taking a lot of time this week, but that's not the big time suck: I got AT and Sg sick, something viral. It turns out that the list of things that you can do for a sick seven-week-old is not a list of good things. We had to hold her over the bathtub, spray saline up her nose and suck out the snot/saline mixture with a bulb syringe, which felt a lot like committing assault and battery. We had to keep a close eye on her temperature, which felt a lot like committing forcible sodomy. And we had to make her sleep sitting up, which felt a lot like using a questionable interrogation technique. To sum up, I've been feeling like a real Lindy England lately.

We've been reading the Portable Pediatrician to keep on top of what's going on with the baby, what to expect as normal and what to get freaked out about. One thing we've read, and have found to be true, is that after about 6 weeks of age the baby begins to poop less often - more like once every couple of days as opposed to the previous multiple times per day.

This results in some pretty nasty stuff. Also, due to the infrequent nature, dad often misses out since he is at work all day. Today I knew we were due for a poop - and Sophia did her best not to disappoint. In fact, I had put her in a disposable diaper (we usually use cloth) to make disposal of the nastiness easier. However, I did not prepare for the explosion that occurred. It was so icky that I was compelled to take a picture so dad could see just what he missed. And also so I could use it as leverage later (i.e. "You're taking out the trash b/c I had to deal with the poop today").

So, don't worry, I don't usually go around taking pictures of my baby's poop - and probably won't again in the future; but just this once, it was appropriate. So, I'm putting it here to share with everyone. Enjoy!

I did try to think of non-blog ways to accomplish my goals, but they don't work.

Lately, I have felt compelled to record certain thoughts and capture certain events. It's not that my life or thoughts have become any more interesting, but that, with the birth of my daughter, I think someone else might be interested in these pieces of my life. I know that I have tried to imagine what my parents' life might have been like when I was an infant. But by the time I was old enough to care, that life – and the people who lived it – had given way to the products of passing time.

I bought a Moleskine after we learned that AT was pregnant, guessing correctly that I would want to keep some kind of record. But it isn't easy to add images to a book, and it's harder still to add audio. But the biggest drawback is that I can't bring my friends and family with me into a book in the way that's possible in a blog.

So here it is. Another blog.