Babies Watching Babies

In which your humble narrator watches a baby watching babies and loses any sense of perspective.

Child #2 is a far more social animal than Child #1. She smiles at strangers. She's learned all the names of the other little children in her two-day-per-week daycare room. She talks to cashiers. She's simply way, way more into people than Child #1 was as an 18-month-old.

Her most recent favorite pastime involves watching Babies (2010) the Thomas Balmès film about, well, babies. Wife-a-roo found the film on the online streaming section of Netflix and it's been a regular staple for about a week. Particularly in the evening after a hard day of annoying her brother, changing clothes twelve times and spreading filth as far as the eye can see, she toddles up, says "Watcha Baby!" and demands to be placed in lap in front of the computer. She'll usually watch intently for 10-20 minutes as the four babies from far-flung reaches of the globe go through their little baby lives. She's quite approving of the amount of dirt that the African and Mongolian babies get to experience on a regular basis. Another favorite scene is when the little Mongolian chap is taking a bath in a washtub and a friendly goat drops by to drink some of the bath water.

It's clearly animated viewing on Child #2's part. She imitates the babies facial expressions and even describes their emotional states, "Baby sad," or "Baby laugh." In short she's enthralled.

I'm less enamored. I've done a lot of baby-watching in the past three years and frankly I'd rather spend my screen time watching British people being devastatingly cruel to each other or possibly exploding.

First day of the rest of the term

In which your humble narrator knows he should not be surprised and yet still...

Today is the first day of summer term. A whole semester's worth of educational psychological goodness crammed into five, fun-filled weeks. I (of course) received an email from a student who did not show up to the first day of class because she had the first day "written in her planner as Tuesday, June 15." I can only suspect that the wrong date was inadvertently written while she fiddled with her slide-rule and Trapper-Keeper.

Why must you turn my inbox into a house of lies?

Phoney Quality Time

In which your humble narrator reflects on the plugged-in parents at the playground.

The New York Times ran a story this week about parent using smart phones and ignoring their children. The descriptions of typical interactions largely mirrored the sort of thing I've observed on the playground. Harried parents bring their offspring to the park for some quality time, and spend the entire time on their phones. On a recent morning outing, we arrived at the park to find a mother and a little girl. The mother was on her phone when we arrived, and on her phone when we left 45 minutes later. The little girl was apparently only allowed to play within a 15 foot radius of the mother. One begins to wonder: what is the point? Surely she could ignore her child at home.

Regular readers might expect a full-throttle vitriolic screed at this point. But with an uncharacteristic spirit of charity I have to admit that I understand the impulse. I don't have a fancy phone, but I do stay home with the kids most days while simultaneously trying to "work." Sometimes all I want to do is to have the kids leave me alone for five minutes so I can keep my email inbox down to a manageable size. When classes are in session I make it a point to respond to student emails within 24 hours. This can obviously take up some time during regular childcare hours.

I think part of the issue is that, as parents, we're supposed to be in a state of filial bliss at all times. Certainly the child-centric culture of the past twenty years blares its expectations of personal fulfillment through "parenting."* If your precious little wunderkinds aren't making you happy, well then there must be something wrong with you.

Or not.

A day of solemn reflection

In which your humble narrator pledges undying devotion to a certain corporation.

Happy birthday, Gmail. You are five years old today.

Also, if this works for physical storage, I propose that Google provide cloud daycare. I'd just upload the children to a nice, progressive, cloud-based daycare center when I had to go to work, and then download them again at the end of the day.

If they come back with a few banner ads on their butts, well... I'm probably cool with that.

Scrapbooking for Jesus with my seven children while losing weight by climbing rocks and making sweet love to my bicycle

In which your humble narrator surveys the interwebs and finds them wanting.

The fine folks at Google, in their zeal to index everything, changed the functionality of the "Next Blog" button featured on the navigation bar of most Blogger blogs. Rather than taking you to a completely random Blogger blog (possibly in another exciting language) it now takes you to a blog that Google thinks you will find interesting based on what you've written on your blog. What follows is an unscientific survey of the blogs available to me via the Next Blog button (all within 3 clicks).

• 15,000 "family" blogs focused on frequently photographed children named Camryn, Tamryn, Payton, Braden, Jayden, Caden, Aiden, Ain't Misbehavin', Desmond, Connor, Tanner, Planner, Delilah, Rylie, Kylie and Wingnut.
• 12,000 blogs with the word "ramblings" heavily featured in the title or description.
• 9,000 blogs where people talk about Jesus... a lot.
• 6,000 blogs about scrap-booking (many overlap with the above categories.)
• 4,000 blogs about losing weight.
• 2,000 blogs describing climbing up big rocks in exhaustive detail.
• 750 blogs about people and their unnatural relationships with their bicycles.
• 500 blogs with "embracing winter," somewhere in the first few posts, because really, seasons need hugs.
• 50 blogs about making life more simple by blogging about simplicity.
• 1 blog about an international organization of philatelists.*

I understand (even if I also reject) the preponderance of sallow-skinned, dead-eyed suburban family blogs showing up. I write about children. They write about children.  I, however, am at a loss regarding the climbing of big rocks, the techno-sexual bicycle relationships, simplicity, and philately blogs.


Actually the philatelist's blog was the only interesting one.

*I have spent at least an hour trying to imagine what their parties must be like. My only conclusion: off the hook.

Finally! Somebody made a smart phone that will raise my kid!

In which your humble narrator directs your interwebular attention toward a grand spectacle of idiocy.

At last! I no longer have to go to all the trouble of trying to figure out non-verbal, enigmatic, semi-screamy Child #2's wants and needs. All I have to do is buy an iPhone and this killer app!

Now Child #2 can cry at my new iPhone and I will instantaneously know what her problem is. If this works I may not have to even look at her for another 4-6 months! It's even better than an illegal Guatemalan nanny because this way I get an iPhone!

Hooray for technology!

Fun with Google Auto-Complete

In which your humble narrator encourages "the Googles" to do ridiculous things with very little prompting.

Astute observers of the interwebs who use "the Googles" on a regular basis will be familiar with the relatively new auto-complete search feature which gives us a whole bunch of supposedly relevant options to choose after entering just a letter or two. Here are a few of my favorite auto-complete options.

"I" with a space after it reveals the option:

• "i like to tape my thumbs to my hands to see what it would be like to be a dinosaur"

"Why" offers this triumvirate of philosophical inquiry:

• Why do men have nipples?
• Why is the sky blue?
• Why is my poop green?

"be a" offers you the insanely optimistic option to:

• Be a perfect person in just three days!

"You make" obviously gives us:

• You make me touch your hands for stupid reasons.

And because I'm immature, "farts" produces the painfully underpunctuated:

• Farts you just can't trust them
  

You certainly can't.