On the way home from work, I passed a building called “Little Hands Preschool” – and I immediately thought, of course, of our baby’s tiny hands.
He’s able to grab things, now – and he reaches for stuff. He can hold his little bumblebee maraca & shake it, though not to any real rhythm. His thumbs still tend to fold in, but he’ll sometimes grab with his hand wide open.
I wonder what he’ll do once he learns to use his hands. Will he play the piano? Will he learn to type? How will he hold a pencil? What kinds of things will he write?
Someday, I’ll teach him to use a hammer, or how to hold a game controller. We’ll hold hands throughout the years, and his little fist that I can barely grasp a single finger will one day be as big as mine.
What a strange little fellow. I can’t wait to see what the future has in store.
Ok. So, my friend Perlick had a post where he was asking people to suggest things to write about. So I suggested that he write something about something that evoked a strong emotional reaction in him. Most of his posts are pretty analytical, and I wanted to hear him write about something that tore his guts out and made him *feel* something.
And so, I figured if I’m gonna suggest something like that, I should perhaps do the same. And so here’s a sixth-grader, singing a Lady Gaga tune.
When I heard this, I wept.
And yeah, I’m a little embarrassed to admit it. So You Think You Can Dance moves me to tears, probably half a dozen times every season. Clay Aiken singing Elton John on American Idol made me cry. And the first time I heard Radiohead’s “Exit Music… for a Film”, I couldn’t sleep for the better part of the night.
So, let’s start with the tears. There are a handful of things that are basically push-buttons that’ll get me to cry. Stories about boys & their fathers. Stories about kids and their dogs. But the thing that I’ve found recently that is a little weirder to me is that whenever I see a really good physical performance – singing, dancing, public speaking, sports… whatever – literally, it can almost have no intended emotional content, other than the sheer devotion and dedication of the performer, and you’ll find that if you ask me a question immediately afterwards, I probably won’t be able to answer without my voice cracking.
So yes, I can be moved to tears watching someone snowboard. It feels stupid to say.
But I actually don’t mind much, because I know what it is. It’s that watching someone who sticks it all out there – who’s worked intensely, who’s taken the risk of putting themselves out into the public where they can fail, where they can be ridiculed, mocked, torn down… and then giving it everything – it moves me. Am I embarrassed about that? Absolutely not.
And I think part of it is that I can’t do it. There’s some self-censorship at work that prevents me from laying it all out there, and not giving a damn what people think. There’s something that can’t overcome the fear of mockery, the fear of failure, the fear of derision & humiliation. Maybe it’s from being a dork growing up, being made fun of, whatever – maybe it’s from a sense that nothing was ever good enough for my parents & a crushing lack of self confidence. Some of that’s getting better, now, but there’s some residual governor inside me that will not let me just lay it all out there, and that’s almost certainly why seeing someone else who can do it – who can give 100%, seemingly without fear – moves me the way it does.
So. Exit Music. One night, in college, I was sitting at my desk. I’d just picked up Radiohead’s OK Computer, and was listening to it for the first time. Exit Music came on as I climbed up to my bed, and when it played… well, it’s hard to describe. I think maybe you have to hear it.
If you’ve listened, it starts out slow, very sedate, melancholy. It builds (“Breathe, keep breathing… don’t lose your nerve…”), until about halfway through, it becomes something entirely different (“…and now… we are one, in everlasting peace…”). That turn felt so naked, so exposed, that when I first heard it, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Thom Yorke’s always been an extraordinary singer, but this is one of my favorites.
And so, now we go to karaoke.
I couldn’t ever get into karaoke. Why? I’m a terrible singer with no confidence whatsoever. Which is good, because if you’re terrible, the worst thing you can do is have confidence that you’re good. But what would end up happening is that I’d *want* to sing. I’d want to sing well to a song that I loved, but it never clicked. I could never go from “trying to hit the note” to “trying to hit the emotion”, and I’d mumble quietly in more or less the right tone, get to the end of the song, and apologize for having done a terrible job.
And then in Cupertino, we ended up at a place that had “Exit Music…” I thought, what the hell – if I’m going to butcher something, I might as well butcher something that’s mumbly and morose right up until the middle. But as I sang it, it felt right – I could hit the note, it was kind of in my range, and I knew the song like the back of my hand. As it built up, I followed along, and at the turn, I belted it out.
Did I hit the notes? I don’t really know. Was it any good? Probably not. But for a few seconds, I *felt* it. Singing, in that moment, wasn’t just the act of making a noise with my voice that approximated music – it was the feeling that resonated in my fingertips, through my core, and out into the world. It was as though the vibrations in the note carried through to something more – that it resonated not just with the music, but with some primal need to communicate in a way that wasn’t bound simply by words, or formal convention, but by a desire to have someone *feel* what you feel.
And then it was over.
So I got it. I understood why people *loved* singing, in a way that I’d never understood before. And no, I can’t evoke that feeling on command – the barrier’s still there – the only thing I know is that sometimes, I can let it go. I can try to do something and not care if it’ll go wrong, just that I gave it everything that I could.
And when I see someone else able to do that, however they’re able to do it, it resonates in me in a way that’s simply uncontrollable.
Jin’s started daycare, for one. We’re doing a transition week, where he ramps up slowly to “full time” – for us, it’s going to be 9-4, four days a week. Should be interesting. It’s the same place that S&H’s kid goes, and they gave it a really extraordinary recommendation, so of the options we investigated, in the end, it seemed like the best one to go with. Stressful, juggling work and kid, but he’s doing well, he’s happy, and all is good.
Speaking of the little tyrant, he got his first two teeth! The bottom two center teeth have come in, already! Early. Just when he crossed the four-month mark. So he’s sleeping a little erratically due to the pain of teething, but he chomps away on his fingers and his toys, and it seems to give him some relief.
The funniest thing, so far, is that he LOVES bathtime. Loves it. He gets really excited when the bathtub’s filling up, he loves spending time in the tub, and he’s sad when it’s all over. Hilarious. I can’t wait for him to get into the pool. Should be fun. We’ll have to wait ’till spring, though.
The other thing is that I’ve been doing P90X – it’s basically a daily 60-90 minute workout routine. You might have seen infomercials for it. 😛 A couple friends swear by it, and I was definitely getting a bit blobby, so I figured I’d get it, so that if I had the time to do it, there’d be one less hurdle in the way. Of course, once it arrived, I just wanted to jump in.
Since Jin’s going to sleep at between 9-10, I figured I could carve out 90 minutes every day after that. So, most days, I’ve been working out, washing up and going to sleep. While sometimes that means I’m a little wired at bedtime, the benefit is that I sleep like the dead, and it’s a little easier to wake up in the morning.
I’m now a week and two days in, which means I’m 10% done. Feeling better, and starting to see the barest hint of results, but definitely feeling it, so it’s great motivation to stick with it. If all goes well, Ei-Nyung’s gonna join me for Yoga on Tuesday, which should be fun. I’ll post before & 30-day pics at the 30 day mark.
Jin’s so funny. He’s just a great kid. He’s one of the happiest, most easygoing kids I’ve ever seen, and his smile is just infectious. 🙂 What a little weirdo.
…things are going great! The kid’s… hilarious. I love hearing him laugh, and he laughs about a lot of things. Ei-Nyung brought him in to work today, and he met all of our co-workers, which was pretty cool.
We got stuck in traffic on the way back, to the tune of a two hour commute. Poor guy got really, really upset. But once we got home, all was well. Hung out with a friend who was in from out of town, and got some Indian food. Ate, chatted, and then the little chum went to sleep.
Some nights, he goes to sleep with the Sleep Sheep, to the sound of white noise. Some nights, he goes to sleep with a medley of classical music – stuff I clearly must have been put to sleep with as a kid, because listening to it for five minutes knocks me out.
Lots of fun stuff going on at work. Wish I could talk about it, but it’s going to be astonishing. 🙂
So, I took the P90X fit test today, with the plan to start doing the workouts by Saturday, at the latest, depending on the kid’s schedule. It seems like we’re consistently able to carve out a couple hours in the evening after the kiddo goes to sleep, so even though I’m definitely not used to working out at 10pm, if that’s what I’ve got, it’s what I’ve got.
The before pics are scary, to me. It’s weird how different I think I look in photos versus how I look in the mirror. I think when you see yourself every day in a mirror, it’s easy to convince yourself you look better than you do – and I already thought I was out of shape.
I remember a few years ago, back when Klay & I were doing the weightloss challenge, that I thought 213 was great – and for then, it was. I was down from 233. With changes in diet, I was able to drop the weight quickly, but because I didn’t develop good *habits*, I slowly put it back on again – where Klay had more discipline, and kept it off (and even hit a better goal). It’s been what, three years? Four years? Clearly, though I won the contest, I lost the challenge.
So this time, I’m taking a different approach. Yeah, P90X is an infomercial product. But I’ve got at least three people who swear by it, and since they’re people I trust, I figured I’d give it a shot. I miss doing some sort of exercise, but without a structured regimen, I’m useless. I’m also useless if I have to go out of the house to get said exercise, so honestly, P90X seems like the perfect fit. But I need to be more committed to it than I was to stuff like EA Sports Active (which I never felt was challenging *enough* to really feel like a solid workout).
Just as an aside, the biggest problem with EA Sports Active and Wii Fit is that the hardware isn’t up to the task. While the Wii Balance Board is an entertaining input device, it requires too much time-intensive calibration, and it can’t stand up to a solid beating, which is what a piece of workout gear needs to be able to do. It forces you to slow down the workout and be gentle about everything, and frankly, that’s not what I want.
Everyone I know who’s done P90X has the same thing to say – that the results are the primary motivator. You keep doing it because you feel better, and because you look better.
Lessee… What’ve we been up to? Jin had his 100th day celebration. There was much food and many friends, and everything was awesome.
Work’s going well – busy, but good. Productive. Some weird twists and turns on the new game that we’re making – mostly conceptual – but I think it’s going to be really strong. If we can pull it off, it’ll be epic.
Jin’s well. Healthy, happy – 95th percentile for height, 75th for weight. So he’s a skinny little bugger (despite his chipmunk cheeks), but well within normal parameters.
We’re now putting him to sleep in a crib that sits next to the bed. I was apparently waking him up a lot in my sleep. We’ve also gone back to swaddling him, since one of the reasons he wakes up the most is he keeps punching himself in his sleep.
He slept a pretty long uninterrupted stretch last night, and so tonight, hopefully he’ll do the same, and we’ll be able to get some solid sleep.
Been playing a game called Chime, which has actually dragged me away from Mass Effect 2 – it’s a music puzzler – a mix of Tetris & Lumines – that’s surprisingly addictive. The interaction with the music’s excellent, the puzzle mechanics are great, and it’s only $5. Better still, $3 of your purchase goes to charity.
And while I’m directing you to buy stuff, you should also pick up the This American Life iPhone app. For $3, you get streams of every show ever, and a whole bunch of extras and ways to search the content. It goes to support the show, so if you’ve ever listened to it, just get the damned thing already. Also – Ira Glass is apparently Phillip Glass’s cousin. Which provides the thematic connection, as Phillip Glass’s music is in Chime.
What’s up? Not much, really. Work chugs along. Bebeh chugs along. Trying to get him on more of a schedule, but he’s all over the place. Most nights asleep by 10:30. I keep wanting a little “me” time, which keeps me up ’till midnight, which means 12-7’s all the sleep I get (he wakes up at 7 regardless of when he goes to sleep, it seems).
I’ve gotta train myself out of it, and just go to sleep when he does. Will come with time.
Been trying to eat breakfast every day. Alton Brown had a thing where he was making smoothies in the morning, and it sounded good, so I’ve been doing that, and it is good. Definitely getting something in the stomach first thing in the morning is good, but like going to sleep, something that’s taking some practice. So far, mango/peach/blueberry/pomegranate = the best combo. Tried blackberries, but too many seeds.
We’ve had raid of biblical proportions, and the downstairs is, thankfully, holding up a-ok. There’s one leak in the garage, but something that the contractor’s going to fix up. The crack in the upstairs window is also a problem, but a fixable, known, minor one.
Been watching Friday Night Lights. Great show. I’m not much for football, but it does remind me that there were a lot of moments in swimming/water polo where I really enjoyed competing with a team. Not a lot of time for that with bebeh around, but I wonder if I’d be able to get something like that at some point in the future…
Hrm. Anything else up? Been playing Army of Two: The 40th Day, which is a huge improvement over the first game. Looking forward to Mass Effect 2, but the chances that I’ll have time to play it any time soon? Zero.
So, one of the things I’ve been thinking about recently, particularly with the new kid, is the difference in a relationship between how I perceive my own behaviour, and how someone else perceives the exact same things.
The thing that really comes to mind are moments in my own development when someone I had either thought highly of, or was in a certain position of either power or respect, said something, what kinds of things I’d latch onto.
It was often strange little things. An opinion about a band from someone who I thought was cool could get me to listen to a band I’d never otherwise have even considered. A small compliment at the right time by someone I respected, and I’d do *anything* for them. It’s not the big things, I don’t think – it’s not when someone sits you down and tells you what or how you should think – but it’s that certain people, in certain positions of my own social hierarchy, could tell me to do something and I’d do it.
And now, I wonder how much of that they were even aware of? I mean, it’s strange to me – I still think of myself as a schmoe, and I think that for the most part, people who interact with me for a while realize that, and take what I say with that certain schmoe-ness. But at the same time, if you just met me, I could conceivably sound pretty authoritative about certain subjects, and I know that I express certain opinions pretty strongly – in the kind of way that I think I responded to when I was younger. So I wonder how the kid will respond to me? What weird little offhand comments will have genuine weight, and shape his thinking, and what “meaningful” discussions slide right off.
So, of course, things have been busy. The kid eats up a lot of time, and while I’d hoped to do a couple things this weekend, it was all a combination of kid & kid-related stuff.
We’d gotten a changing table from Ikea, but it became really clear that what we really needed were some things to store his clothes in. We’ve got a TON of clothes for the little guy, almost entirely gifts from friends and hand-me-downs, but given that we’re terrible at organizing our OWN clothes, trying to organize a bunch of baby clothes without a structured storage solution wasn’t working out so much.
So, picked up two dresser things from Ikea, assembled them, and organized a bunch of crap today. I think it’s a big improvement.
We’re also trying to use G Diapers during the day – the disposable inserts are biodegradable, and there are cloth inserts that you can also use (we have 12, which is not enough – probably need ~24 to be useful…).
The house is undergoing a pretty radical change. Our previous contractor’s incompetence has required us to basically completely tear off the front of the house and rebuild it, replacing all the rotten wood and reconstructing everything from the shear on up. Not a good time. Not good on the pocket book. That said, when it’s all said and done, the house is going to look AWESOME from the front.
Things at work are going well. We’ve got what I think is a really exciting new concept we’re working on, and Word Ace & Card Ace are getting some really important new features.
We printed up physical decks of Word Ace cards, which have almost completely sold out in less than two weeks. Fantastic, but a LOT of work getting them all shipped out.
Tonight was one of the first times the burrito’s cried for a long time with no apparent reason. I burped him, fed him, changed him, bounced him over and over while he screamed bloody murder. It wasn’t even that long, but the biggest thing was the uncertainty – the “WTF IS GOING ON!?” feeling, since prior to this with very few exceptions, he cries for a very limited set of reasons, all of which are relatively easily addressed.
Then moments after the frustration peaked, he fell asleep. Guess he just doesn’t know how to go to sleep, but gets upset that he’s sleepy. What an idiot. 🙂
On the plus side, he had his first trips to places other than the pediatrician. Had brunch at Merritt with the usual crew, then demolished K in Street Fighter 4. 😀 After that, we headed over to A&T&a’s to meet the “a”, and then off to Bebeh’s R Us to check out a “glider” after Ei-Nyung really liked the one that A&T&a had.
Through all that, J handled it pretty well, so all told, there’s nothing to complain about if he’s frustrated for a couple hours in the evening. I know we’ve got it pretty good so far.
Tomorrow, the front of the house comes off, and we’ll probably find out how much damage these water leaks have caused. Good times.
