Roly Poly

It’s National Poetry Day (at least in England) –
share some of your favourite verse.

From: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by: Wallace Stevens

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Life is a sieve, time flows through like water leaving the detritus of moments;
some small memories, a flash of joy; mostly just
debris, passing unsifted, glimpses of days come one after another.

It’s been six months since last I posted.

Six months in a thirty-one year life isn’t much compared to six months in a nine month life; I mean, that’s life times three right there. I won’t play catch-up here, not all at once, but try and post more regularly going forward. Zephyr is, as one might guess, much grown, though as much a joy as ever. I love to watch him grow as much as I feel pangs of loss for each stage of his life as it passes by, never to come again.

He smiles a lot, and he cries some, and he eats crackers and is a certified explorer of all things floor; he’s his own rhythm section, and a singer, and he coos and chortles and burbles and burps, hums and thumps and sniggers and sighs, yawns and stretches, quivers his eyebrows, squinches his nose, sticks out his tongue, and yells to raise the dickens.

In short, he’s awesome. All the time awesome. Awesomely awesome.

Hopefully he can keep that up for the next seventeen plus years.

It’s hard to believe that Zephyr is over 3 months old already. In a way, he’s growing up fast, and I’d like him to slow down a little bit. Every time he smiles it breaks my heart a little, and he’s learning to laugh – right now his laugh comes out something between a chuckle and a guffaw, but it’s pretty cute all the same. He’s been an amazing little baby, in general, and the last month or so a real pleasure to be around, in particular. When people ask me how the baby is, I tell them that if I could I would just stay home and hang out with  him all the time. Which is saying something because there are very few people, of any age, who wouldn’t get on my nerves if I hung out with them ALL the time. That’s how cool my baby is.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind if he grew up a little bit faster, in some ways. His lack of mobility, while a blessing, means he has limited means to entertain himself. And to be honest, he isn’t very interested in entertaining himself. He would MUCH rather have someone else entertain him thank-you-very-much. He gets a little tummy time every day, which is an interesting change of pace for about 5 minutes, and then he’d much rather be doing something else. We’re supposed to shoot for 30 minutes a day of tummy time, but that just ain’t gonna happen, unless it’s 10 minutes of oh-this-is-kind-of-fun followed by 20 minutes of okay-I’m-done-now piss-offed-ness. Hey, I said he was a pleasure to be around; I never said he was perfect.

I also wouldn’t mind if he could sit up on his own, hold things with a little more adroitness, and hold up his end of the conversation. Which isn’t totally fair, because he’s actually an excellent conversationalist, and eager to chat, just so long as it’s on his terms and in his own, infant patois.

Even so, I really like Zephyr at 3 months old and I’m sure that, when he is 5 months old, I’ll miss the good old days, just as much as I’ll look forward to the days to come.