I've waited 9 1/2 months for this, since she wasn't going to cooperate with our summer schedule to be born. Plus it's been a packed schedule since we arrived in Mosquito Central, with all the other friends, relatives, and activities to cram into the visit. Saturday we finally made it work.
Her name is Anna and she is adorable. Yes, I know, there'd be a major problem with my perceptions if I didn't think that, but she's adorable. Her mom has to keep an eagle eye on her every waking minute, since she crawls faster than I can walk, just shy of walking independently, and all the forbidden items in the house are the ones that most fascinate her. Fortunately, Mom is young, flexible, and up to the task. I, on the other hand, can barely remember how I managed to do the same with my own kids and took a minute or 18 to wonder how on earth I ever did it. Adding the extra 20-something more kids that came and went through the house during the 8 years when I was doing home family day care can really scramble these elderly brains when I try to review the organizational challenges.
So just one kid was a real treat. Especially this one. Her disposition is mainly sunny, even with allowances for being tired or hungry. She's capable of fishing puffed fruit bits out of a cup with a special lid that allows tiny hands in and keeps tinier food bits from escaping. Those hands are perfectly capable of shoveling said food bits into her mouth (neatly) and picking up and using a water cup also designed for contents distribution only when properly demanded. Leaving it upside down on the carpet is no problem. Bigger drinks still utilize a bottle, but soon she's off exploring again.
"Da-da-da-da-da-" and "ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma" are her favorite verbalizations, though a hand patted over her mouth bring out her delight in making silly noises just because she can. She's beginning to use baby signing, but a bit more coordination is needed there as well.
She hams it up for the camera most of the time too. Just call her name and have the flash come on and there's a .75 second pose with a grin before she's on to the next thing. Unfortunately, my camera takes 1.8 seconds to decide what the subject is and where to focus, how to light it up properly, and finally take a picture, so she's gone on to that next thing before I've gotten my picture. That red-eye flash that's supposed to eliminate red eyes in photos doesn't work, not on anybody's camera, but that doesn't keep my camera from taking time trying to do it.
There have been lots of great pics and videos online from her parents. My favorites are a couple of videos. One, Daddy is taking the laser pointer and moving it around the carpet, keeping just ahead of Anna's ability to "catch" it. Think typical cat video, remove cat, insert baby. Another is a game of "I'm gonna get you!", where Mom and camera chase baby around the house, with baby stopping every 4 or 5 seconds to see if Mom's still chasing before scrambling away again.
I finally gave up on my bad still photos and went for the video app. I wanted my very own fun baby movies. Unfortunately, they take up way too much space on the SD card and my camera display is very good at letting me know how little time I have left. I only got 4 short videos, and at least one was more hope and optimism than worthwhile result. Well, unless you like a close-up of a diapered bottom heading away at top crawling speed. Not exactly my thing.
I did get one success. First, Mom took the batteries out of the TV remote so Anna would sit still long enough to thoroughly explore it, aka eat it. While that was occurring, Mom brought out a sitting teddy bear that wiggled, sang, and "danced" when you squeezed its paw. While the camera rolled, Anna repeatedly removed the remote from her mouth, waved her entire upper body along with the bear for a couple seconds without tipping over, then reinserted the remote so the process could start over. We got about 4 dances out of one paw squeeze. ( I still say the most talented part of that dance was her ability to avoid klunking herself in the head with the remote while wiggling to the music!)
I missed my chance at capturing a game of "Baby Sandwich." Anna was lying on the floor and Mom had a pillow she brought down and wiggled the baby with while repeating "Baby Sandwich". I think those were the biggest baby giggles of the day. Maybe (hint hint) she and Daddy can tape it and post it for us before it's no longer fun for Anna.
Living as far apart as we do from her, we gave her grandpa - my son - a lift down with us. He had the Saturday off. With Steve there to manage cameras for everybody, there are a selection of 4-generation pictures. There are the usual somebody-moved kind, somebody-made-a-face kind, Anna-faced-Mama-instead-of-the-camera kind. Somewhere in all those, however, I'm hoping there's a really good one. Otherwise we'll just have to go visit and do it again.
Wheeeeeeee! More hugs!
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Saturday, July 21, 2018
Missing the Loons
No, this one is not a political rant. I mean, how can you miss something that just won't go away? But this time I'm talking literally.
Steve and I received an invitation to spend some time up in northern Minnesota at a cabin that friends of ours had just purchased over the winter. They had gone up a couple times this summer to work on putting things together, making it homey and comfortable, and we were the first to receive an invitation to come visit. We felt honored.
I won't say exactly where it is, but it's some distance north of Deer River. That name, alone, is an indelible memory from my childhood. I grew up not all that far away, as Minnesota goes. My father loved to pack us all in the car, when there was time, and just go driving around, finding new roads, seeing new sights. Some of it was just his urge to explore, and entertainment that wasn't horribly expensive back then. It had a practical side too, as my parents located potential spots for hunting, finding hazelnuts, picking wild fruits like chokecherries, raspberries, blueberries, bog cranberries, and even discovering eagle nests. I can't tell you where all these wonderful places were, since the where of it all was much less interesting to the child I was in the back seat than watching in horrible fascination as all the little spiders made their way to the top of the fruits in the buckets and started to climb out. I was phobic and positive they all were going to bite me - if not on this trip, then maybe the next one as they emerged from wherever they'd hidden in the car since the last trip.
With all that going on, you might find it odd that I'd remember what was then a nowhere place like Deer River. But that's exactly why I remember it. It consisted of three buildings along the road and one of those standard signs giving the name and population: two! Not only was this an unheard-of population for something calling itself a town, in my limited experience, but my brain puzzled for years over how two people could occupy three buildings!
Since this trip would take us through Deer River, I was curious how much it had changed. It now qualifies for something I recognize as a town, with a population over 900, and homes and commerce all over the place. I had to keep a sharp eye out for the road we were to turn on to for the next leg of our trip.
The cabin instantly felt like home. Nicer, even. Water on most of three sides, familiar trees and smaller plants, a dock cutting through both white and yellow water lilies, rushes, duckweed tangled in algae, and patches of wild rice jutting out from shore just a couple hundred feet away in either direction. This was the country I'd grown up in. Needless to say, the camera got a workout. Our hostess loves to sketch and paint, and would take her sketchbook and kayak out early in the mornings for solitude and "soulitude".
But oh, the loons! I have been lucky enough to hear them a handful of times since we moved away from northern Minnesota while I was still a teenager. Here, they called in the evenings, in the mornings, and occasionally during the day. By sound alone, I estimated three to four families in the neighborhood. If you know me, you have some idea how high praise it is for me to describe the concert as better than Beethoven!
Now, don't get me wrong. It wasn't just the loons. The cabin was cozy, comfortable, and charming, the couple we stayed with are in the process of growing from good to great friends, the food was wonderful, the fresh air was a treat I hadn't realized I missed. If it wasn't fresh, it was filled with just the right amount of wood smoke from some hidden neighbor's fire to bring back all kinds of wonderful memories all by itself. Steve got to go fishing, exploring the local interconnected waterways, managing the hill and stairs between cabin and boat and proud of himself for doing so.
But oh, the loons!
Steve and I received an invitation to spend some time up in northern Minnesota at a cabin that friends of ours had just purchased over the winter. They had gone up a couple times this summer to work on putting things together, making it homey and comfortable, and we were the first to receive an invitation to come visit. We felt honored.
I won't say exactly where it is, but it's some distance north of Deer River. That name, alone, is an indelible memory from my childhood. I grew up not all that far away, as Minnesota goes. My father loved to pack us all in the car, when there was time, and just go driving around, finding new roads, seeing new sights. Some of it was just his urge to explore, and entertainment that wasn't horribly expensive back then. It had a practical side too, as my parents located potential spots for hunting, finding hazelnuts, picking wild fruits like chokecherries, raspberries, blueberries, bog cranberries, and even discovering eagle nests. I can't tell you where all these wonderful places were, since the where of it all was much less interesting to the child I was in the back seat than watching in horrible fascination as all the little spiders made their way to the top of the fruits in the buckets and started to climb out. I was phobic and positive they all were going to bite me - if not on this trip, then maybe the next one as they emerged from wherever they'd hidden in the car since the last trip.
With all that going on, you might find it odd that I'd remember what was then a nowhere place like Deer River. But that's exactly why I remember it. It consisted of three buildings along the road and one of those standard signs giving the name and population: two! Not only was this an unheard-of population for something calling itself a town, in my limited experience, but my brain puzzled for years over how two people could occupy three buildings!
Since this trip would take us through Deer River, I was curious how much it had changed. It now qualifies for something I recognize as a town, with a population over 900, and homes and commerce all over the place. I had to keep a sharp eye out for the road we were to turn on to for the next leg of our trip.
The cabin instantly felt like home. Nicer, even. Water on most of three sides, familiar trees and smaller plants, a dock cutting through both white and yellow water lilies, rushes, duckweed tangled in algae, and patches of wild rice jutting out from shore just a couple hundred feet away in either direction. This was the country I'd grown up in. Needless to say, the camera got a workout. Our hostess loves to sketch and paint, and would take her sketchbook and kayak out early in the mornings for solitude and "soulitude".
But oh, the loons! I have been lucky enough to hear them a handful of times since we moved away from northern Minnesota while I was still a teenager. Here, they called in the evenings, in the mornings, and occasionally during the day. By sound alone, I estimated three to four families in the neighborhood. If you know me, you have some idea how high praise it is for me to describe the concert as better than Beethoven!
Now, don't get me wrong. It wasn't just the loons. The cabin was cozy, comfortable, and charming, the couple we stayed with are in the process of growing from good to great friends, the food was wonderful, the fresh air was a treat I hadn't realized I missed. If it wasn't fresh, it was filled with just the right amount of wood smoke from some hidden neighbor's fire to bring back all kinds of wonderful memories all by itself. Steve got to go fishing, exploring the local interconnected waterways, managing the hill and stairs between cabin and boat and proud of himself for doing so.
But oh, the loons!
Friday, July 20, 2018
Time To Apologize To Germans
I'm part of the first wave of baby boomers. As such, I was raised on a heavy dose of information on how WWII started and continued, how the horrible German people cooperated with Hitler to support everything from invasions to the Holocaust. As we were the winning side of that war, and proud of it, underlying all this was the message that all that was then, not now, and it was the horrible Germans, not anybody else. Somehow those people were less human than all the rest of us.
Particularly US. We, Americans, would never ever fall for the lies, participate in the horrors, attack and try to eliminate any race, any other religion, do any of those awful deeds. By some miracle, we were holier than thou, innately better humans than those terrible Germans. Perhaps it was genetics, though that wasn't a common term back then. Perhaps it was our invincible constitution. Somehow God favored us above all others. We were assured of our own moral superiority even as we were taught how economics, power, fear, and state-encouraged hate had brought the whole disaster about. But still....
Black and white. Them, not us. Never us. The lesson had been learned and everything was forever OK.
A familiar pattern has been resurfacing. There is a "them" we are taught to fear and hate. More than one, actually. Pretty much everybody who's not really white. One might even say Aryan. Folks who arrive any time after the rest of us got here, threatening to take away "our" jobs. Folks who worship the "wrong way". Economics are skewing away from the ordinary people and towards the few, the powerful. One could call it fascism. Those on the bottom end on the economic spectrum are also on the neglected end of the educational spectrum, less encouraged to look for real answers, more easily led. Can't pull yourselves up by your bootstraps when you've never had boots. That rising tide only lifts the boats without holes in their hulls. But if you weren't born with all the right benefits, it's your own moral failing. Bad information is being pounded into our heads, state-sponsored media is taking over one side of a story, their side.
Remember that old term called the "big lie"? It's being used but not named, and this time aided by the technological advantages of the internet, and the increasingly mindless offerings of movies and TV, the endless repetition of the term "fake news" to discredit any real disquiet. Bad as things are getting, we are refusing to believe the real causes and are increasingly diverted by - here's another real oldie - bread and circuses. And we are still being fed assurances of our moral superiority among a ceaseless pounding of patriotism, along with asserting we follow only the right kind of religion.
I think it's time to acknowledge that good and evil are shadings of human. Nobody holds a monopoly. Nobody is immune. The "them" of former decades and centuries are all too easily slipping into the "us" of now. If we stay lazy and comfortable, take the power we still have at the ballot box so much for granted that we don't bother to even show up, we're going to head down the same path. We can't claim the Germans are so much more terrible than we are: just earlier. It can happen here because it's already starting.
We just have to decide whether we're going to sit back on our asses and let it.
Oh yeah, and acknowledge that the Germans at the moment are way more progressive and humane than we are.
Particularly US. We, Americans, would never ever fall for the lies, participate in the horrors, attack and try to eliminate any race, any other religion, do any of those awful deeds. By some miracle, we were holier than thou, innately better humans than those terrible Germans. Perhaps it was genetics, though that wasn't a common term back then. Perhaps it was our invincible constitution. Somehow God favored us above all others. We were assured of our own moral superiority even as we were taught how economics, power, fear, and state-encouraged hate had brought the whole disaster about. But still....
Black and white. Them, not us. Never us. The lesson had been learned and everything was forever OK.
A familiar pattern has been resurfacing. There is a "them" we are taught to fear and hate. More than one, actually. Pretty much everybody who's not really white. One might even say Aryan. Folks who arrive any time after the rest of us got here, threatening to take away "our" jobs. Folks who worship the "wrong way". Economics are skewing away from the ordinary people and towards the few, the powerful. One could call it fascism. Those on the bottom end on the economic spectrum are also on the neglected end of the educational spectrum, less encouraged to look for real answers, more easily led. Can't pull yourselves up by your bootstraps when you've never had boots. That rising tide only lifts the boats without holes in their hulls. But if you weren't born with all the right benefits, it's your own moral failing. Bad information is being pounded into our heads, state-sponsored media is taking over one side of a story, their side.
Remember that old term called the "big lie"? It's being used but not named, and this time aided by the technological advantages of the internet, and the increasingly mindless offerings of movies and TV, the endless repetition of the term "fake news" to discredit any real disquiet. Bad as things are getting, we are refusing to believe the real causes and are increasingly diverted by - here's another real oldie - bread and circuses. And we are still being fed assurances of our moral superiority among a ceaseless pounding of patriotism, along with asserting we follow only the right kind of religion.
I think it's time to acknowledge that good and evil are shadings of human. Nobody holds a monopoly. Nobody is immune. The "them" of former decades and centuries are all too easily slipping into the "us" of now. If we stay lazy and comfortable, take the power we still have at the ballot box so much for granted that we don't bother to even show up, we're going to head down the same path. We can't claim the Germans are so much more terrible than we are: just earlier. It can happen here because it's already starting.
We just have to decide whether we're going to sit back on our asses and let it.
Oh yeah, and acknowledge that the Germans at the moment are way more progressive and humane than we are.
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