Charmed Squeaker

The squeaker lives a charmed life.

He woke up Sunday morning and told his papa and me that he wanted a some Pinnochio toys -- the puppet, Geppetto, the dogfish that swallows them both. That got us talking about boats. Despite possible hungry dogfish, the squeaker said he really wanted to go out in a boat.

And lo! Before the sun had set that very day, he experienced his first canoe ride, pinned in one place by a watchful pop-pop (pop-pop thinks my boy is high energy, and he was wary of possible attempts to explore the canoe at squeaker-speed). We didn't plan it or try to make it happen. But one thing led to another, and the squeaker got his wish.

Squeaker Tales

A few random squeaker stories:

The squeaker and I sat down together to eat fudgesicles. While eating his, the squeaker sighed and said, “This is so glorious….”

Yesterday, he and I went to the grocery store, where we found long lines, screaming children, and much chaos. The squeaker sat quietly in his cart, eating teddy bear grahams, while I was just feeling grateful that it wasn’t MY kid screaming – today, anyway. While we were checking out, the checker asked how old the squeaker was, and commented that he’d never encountered such a polite little kid. The squeaker, who had been distracted by his teddy bears but then realized that he was the subject of discussion, asked me, “What did the gentleman say?” The checker got quite a chuckle out of that.

And finally, the squeaker commented that in his Blackboard bear book, when Anthony says that the toys in Gloria’s toy box are just “junk,” he’s holding up a toy dinosaur from the box that is either a spinosaurus or a dimetrodon, according to the squeaker. Clearly, he was struggling with the idea that any toy dinosaur could be termed “junk.” But I was amused that he studied the picture closely enough to narrow identification of the dinosaur down to one of two kinds.

TV Tears

We don’t watch television in our house. I don’t mean that we watch only a little bit, or that we watch only the news, or that we watch only PBS. I mean that we don’t watch any television. Period. The squeaker doesn’t even know that the big box with a screen is good for anything other than playing DVDs (of which we do have a great many).

I don’t usually think much about it, because I’m not really an anti-TV crusader. Maybe I am very disorganized or something, but I just don’t have time in my life for TV shows. We never watched TV as a family when I was growing up (though my siblings and I did watch Saturday morning cartoons and some shows on PBS), so I never developed a habit of watching TV. I’ve also never lived alone, so I haven’t relied on the TV as a companion. I read news on the internet, get the local newspaper, and listen to NPR, so I don’t feel disconnected from the world. I can pick and choose what I read, and I see only still pictures. (I didn’t see TV footage of the Twin Towers collapsing until almost a week after September 11, 2001.)

So when people start complaining about excessive news coverage of events such as the Virginia Tech shooting, I wonder why they don’t just turn off their televisions. It seems that there is almost a compulsion to watch, as if turning off the TV is somehow turning one’s back on the grief and pain of the victims’ families and the VT community. Maybe it just doesn’t feel right to turn off the TV and go on with the ordinary activities of life when so many are grieving. But I suspect those in the VT community are much less concerned about the attention of the watchers than the watchers themselves are. Indeed, they may be relieved to shed their tears in relative privacy.

It must be bizarre to grieve in such a public way, and to have a traumatic experience perpetually replayed for you, with documentary-type footage and the sound of gunshots, everywhere you turn. And it must be hard to know that while the ripples of the tragedy extend in a very wide circle and thus give rise to lofty phrases like “America’s tragedy” and a “grieving nation,” a relative few are at the true center, having suffered the actual loss of a friend, child, lover, or professor, rather than experiencing the tragedy merely as a media event.

I don’t mean to minimize the feelings of the many, many observers, most of whom feel a genuine pull on their heartstrings as they imagine what it must have been like for the victims and their panicked families on that day. But sometimes it seems that the media is trying to offer an opportunity for observers to somehow participate in their grief, to make someone else’s tragedy their own, and it is an opportunity that many observers accept with a strange kind of obsessiveness. I wonder sometimes if the observers forget that for the people actually involved, there is real and lifelong heartbreak, and that while fictional TV entertainment invites its audience into the emotional experiences of the characters, in real life, rather than trying to participate in someone’s else’s grief, it might be better to let them shed their tears outside the spotlight.

Grumpy

Lots of fun in the news today. 20+ killed in a school shooting at VA Tech. And locally, a two-year-old boy suffered 3rd degree burns because some jerk poured corrosive fluid all over the equipment at a playground. The little boy tried to slide down his favorite slide and ended up screaming, his clothing and skin peeling. He'll need skin grafts now.

Moving across state lines make taxes a major PITA.

The only good thing about today is that I feel oddly better. Not in an alarming way, but in a good way. I started throwing up 8 weeks ago today. I've thrown up nearly every day since then. But today is not so bad. At more than 16 weeks, it's about time that I feel better!

Elephants and Metaphors

We’ve been reading Babar stories every night. We have a book with 6 or 7 stories; I guess they are the original Babar stories from the 1930s. The squeaker makes me skip the part where the “cannibals” tie up Celeste, and then Babar rescues her in a violent rage. That’s fine with me.

He was also puzzled by part of the one story that most amused me. In one of the stories, Celeste tells Babar that she is going to have a baby. As king of the elephants, he tells his subjects that when the cannon is fired, they should not be alarmed, as it merely means that he and Celeste have welcomed their new baby. Babar is then such a nervous wreck while waiting for the arrival of the baby that Celeste sends him off for a bike ride. Of course, while he’s out and about, he hears the cannon fire not once, but three times. Confused, he hurries home to find that Celeste has given birth to triplets, two boys and a girl.

Maybe a few weeks after they are born, the babies are weighed by the doctor elephant, who declares that they are not getting enough to eat. The suggestion is that Celeste has been nursing them, but the doctor tells her that now she needs to supplement with cow’s milk, and the babies have to adjust to bottles.

The squeaker is fascinated by this. African elephants, milking cows to feed their babies? He wants to know where the elephants get cow’s milk, and why they have to use bottles. He wants to know if they still get to nurse. He seems to recognize that the whole idea of feeding baby elephants cow’s milk is actually pretty comical. Though the book’s attitude towards breastfeeding does pain me a little, I figure that it is of its time. But it is interesting to think about the subtle ways that our opinions and attitudes can be shaped from very early childhood – from Peter Pan to Babar. I cannot cleanse every great story or movie of the bits I don’t like, and I’m not sure I would want to do so. It seems to me that exposure to those bits forms the core of critical thinking and analysis. I hope so, anyway.

On another note, I was surprised to hear the squeaker use a metaphor over the weekend. He described something as “warm as sunshine.” I told him this was a metaphor, but he thought “metaphor” was a kind of dinosaur he hadn’t yet heard of.

Zooing

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? That’s because every time I sit down to write for my blog, all I can think about is how I feel like I’m going to die, and that dying doesn’t even sound so bad. I think about my churning stomach and about how much food really makes me sick. And you know how it is when you try NOT to think about something – suddenly you can’t think about anything else. All my efforts to focus on something cute or funny or profound (ha ha) were overwhelmed by thoughts that only made my stomach churn more.

Ah, the joys of morning sickness. Yes, I’m excited and happy – maybe the squeaker really WILL get a sibling this time. But in the meantime, is there a rock somewhere I can hide under for a couple more weeks? For me, morning sickness is about 9 weeks of intense nausea, daily vomiting, and weight loss. I’ve gotten though 6 weeks of it. Three more to go. It sounds like an eternity.

But anyway, my plan is NOT to write anything else about it, because who wants to read that? Plus, I finally have some squeaker stories.

We took the squeaker to the zoo this weekend. It takes us about an hour to get there. The squeaker is settled happily in his seat with some dry cereal and water, and he’s looking out the window saying things like, “It sure is a beautiful day, said Celeste.” (He’s been spending a lot of time imagining himself as Queen Celeste from the books about Babar the elephant. And yes, for some reason, he makes these observations in the third person.)

Then he gets very quiet. We’re driving along, and then this little voice comes from the back seat: “Badger Badger Badger Mushroom Mushroom…Badger Badger Badger Mushroom Mushroom…”

We have warped our kid forever.

Then we get to the zoo, and it’s a little chillier than we’d hoped. We wait in a line to get in, and the squeaker is bouncing up and down, telling us that he’s cold. Once inside, the first thing we pass is the building where souvenirs are sold. The squeaker, who is very savvy about these things, says cheerfully, “Let’s go in there to warm up!” Sounds innocent enough, but then he says, “There are toys and stuffed animals in there, too.” Indeed. We skip it.

We spend a few hours looking at animals and running around before we climb back in the car to head home. The napless squeaker is tired and cranky. We’ve given him lots of water, but once in the car, he asks for a sip of his papa’s soda. His papa, who has a bad cold, says no, and explains that he sharing would mean that the squeaker might get some sick cooties from his papa.

“Where are the cooties?” asks the squeaker.

“On the soda,” replies his papa.

“Where? I can’t see them from here.”

“They are much too tiny. You can’t see them at all.”

“Let me try! Let me try to see the cooties!!!” The squeaker is wailing and thrashing in his car seat, and he manages to scream about wanting to see the cooties for a good 20 minutes. Note to self: next time, avoid mentioning something as intriguing as COOTIES apparently are. Ugh.