Ussins

Tia reports that last night getting Nem-nem ready for bed, while Nem-nem was fussing and hungry she cried her own nickname (Nem-nem) - I guess again in self-pity as she had done when on an earlier day she cried her own first name. I thought I’d reported that last here, but it was in an email, so I’ll back-post that (link). I wish I’d heard it - I was putting Mago to bed.

Nem-nem is crawling quite a bit now. And still smiling a lot. I play a game with her and Mago where I hold her facing away, and slowly rotate her toward him, saying “Nem-nem-nem-nem-nem-nem-nem-nem..” until she fully faces him, at which point I brightly exclaim “Hallo!” - which makes them both smile and giggle.

Mago has learned from me to tickle Nem-nem’s belly by digging his forehead into it, which makes her squeal and laugh.

I’m fascinated by how Nem-nem explores objects with her hands - the other day she was weaving a ribbon through her fingers and tugging at it from either hand, and tugging at my necklace - and the whole time she does this she watches other things, such as Mago running back and forth setting the table.

We are guilty of the error of parents who more take for granted (ignore) the marvels of life and growing that they first discharged on, well, their firstborn. I’ve read about second children who grow up to resent that there are virtually no early photographs or videos of them in family albums. I’m proud that we’re at least resisting that error (I may want to say travesty) to a degree, and writing some things from her down, and so far she has some photographs of herself from birth to her current age of -

I’m sorry, she’s almost three-fourths of a year old? And Mago is 3 years old in two months? It just isn’t right. Stages of Eden should crawl longer. Except for the days when Tia feels stuck at home with nothing to do but care for wild children who rob her of sleep at night and whose day time naps very seldom synchronize (to allow her a nap).

I plan to get photos of the kids back-posted here and will send links when I do (if you’re signed up for notices, that is). There are several recent videos of them playing with each other or me or Tia (and many other videos we’ve never posted), and I’d describe them but I’m planning tommorrow morning to work at least toward getting the most recent few ready to post

And now for something completely different..

The Lord Commanded Nephi to cut off Laban’s head
Nephi didn’t want to, ‘cuz Laban would be dead
Laman and Lemuel said go ahead and try
The sword was lifted high and blood began to fly

I will go, I will do the things the Lord commands
I know the Lord provides a way: He wants me to obey
I will go, I will do the things the Lord commands
I know the Lord provides a way: He wants me to obey

My siblings wrote this verse revision or addition to the song “Nephi’s Courage” from the LDS Children’s songbook when I was a kid. I particularly appreciate its emphatic goriness and stupid glibness. Yes, Laban would be dead, indeed. And Laman and Lemeul are urging Nephi to kill Laban. That isn’t in the scripture - they were very cowardly when it came to Laban (or anything) and weren’t with him then, but it works in a stupidly funny way, so beyond that I digress.

Among the variety of music I’m constantly collecting I’ve ripped some CDs we have of the LDS Children’s songbook rendered by a small orchestral and singing children ensemble. (They also have recordings without singing and I prefer it either way depending.) Recently I came accross this one, Nephi’s Courage, while working, and as the familiar music began I fully expected to hear children start singing the above verse. I had to shake myself from it. No, that’s not a real verse. They aren’t going to sing that. It still happens any time I play the song again.

Mago will appreciate the revelation of this verse (as he does the relation from the very scripture) when he’s old enough to memorize and sing music. He’ll sometimes bellow and babble along to music - this is fun with musical theatre - and he can match a pitch.

A week or so ago Mago said, despondently:

“I’m not cute anymore, because I’m not a baby.”

I think this is jealousy of the attentions his new little sister is getting? But he’s how old, and saying this? (Two and a half years). And besides in my fatherly opinion this isn’t true, but besides all that, it doesn’t matter.. I hoped this wouldn’t happen. It’s bolstered by so many people he meets (especially old ladies) so emphatically saying in his company “He’s so cute!” There’s a place for it, I’d just hope not to excess. It can become (quite unintended - nobody wishes for this), the token of affection, status. No, you gotta love any kid just because they’re a kid. I’m pretty confident he’s confident enough of himself that having to be cute (to meet that demand) won’t need to be a focus, but.. how do you counter this? A few times since hearing this I’ve tried to tell him - a two-and-a-half year old! - that cuteness doesn’t matter, all that matters is trying to be good, and you are good (but, even though it doesn’t matter, you are cute to me).. it doesn’t seem to get across. Maybe a matter of time.

The affection of old ladies must be a lot more persuasive.

Tonight I went in to say goodnight to him after Tia put him to bed (and I had been watching Nem-nem), and when I walked in he said in tones speaking of a smile I couldn’t see in the dark:

“I need a hug and a hug.”

Okay. I’ll comply. As I did, he looked up in the very dim light to a picture of Jesus on the wall: (this one - link - incidentally, that one affected me more as a kid than any other painting of Jesus)

Mago: And Jesus loves them, and he’s treating them kindly. And he’s here.. and he’s showing them.. a dinosaur museum.

Me: Yes, that sounds like something Jesus would do, doesn’t it? [reader: please don’t think I don’t mean this. I do. Okay, maybe not necessarily like that link..]

Mago: And.. he’s showing them a museum and it has T-Rexes.

Tia just told me they sang “Jesus said love everyone, treat them kindly too..” for bed time.

Traveling to my mother’s house recently Mago reported a back ache and that his throat hurt. Holding him on the back porch, looking into the room as grandma opened the door, I felt something warm on my toes and looked to see that Mago had thrown up all over both of us. Not only wet but gooey, thick, slimy, orange, and starchy - you have to know this of course - all over him and on my shirt and arms. Fortunately not so much on my precious pants, stylish though that would be.

They took my shirt and his clothes and threw them in the wash, lending me a t-shirt from my brother and for Mago a cotton one-piece pajama or underclothes suit: moderately worn, grayed and tattered, inexplicably very cute on him.

I don’t know where he got this notion, but in reference to this new outfit he said “I’m a little orphan!”

He played with his birthday cousin of one year older in the basement, babbling and doing I have no idea what, but they clearly share a world, very cute together. She’d say bye-bye and close the basement door on him, he’d cry as he couldn’t open it from the lower stair and had difficulty from the upper stair, and in a while she’d open it again to happily greet him or hug him. I don’t know whether setting up this greeting again and again was the point, or an innocent exploration of the power that she could open the door and he couldn’t, or both.

While grandma was sitting holding Nem-nem and looking at her (along with several of us), Nem-nem looked up at our faces. When I came to stand and look down and smile at Nem-nem, she looked up at me and returned a clear, beaming smile, looking right into my eyes and face and keeping that smile and contact for a long while. That’s the first that’s happened for me with her. On the floor she also near half-turned over; as I’ve said she’s strong, and she moves very much.

One conversation topic was the different views people have on whether its appropriate to keep a kid happy in a store by opening up something they want before you buy it (I agree that anyone who says you shouldn’t may have never held a bored child hostage to mundane shopping). My oldest brother extended this idea (his?) to a prank; go to the store alone, bring an emptied milk gallon to the checkout, and I suppose say something like “Sorry, I needed all this before I could get to checkout.” My youngest brother suggested bringing an opened package of adult disposable underwear to checkout, adding “..you could take this in all kinds of directions”. Tia’s comment: “No, I think this is only going in one direction.”

This morning Tia said she had a dream: Nem-nem grew teeth, while still just the infant she is, and said (in a little girl voice Tia did which I wish I could describe)

“I’m tired of lying down. I want to walk.”

That’s been my impression, or that she is very eager to explore, and she isn’t happy to just lie still.

Yesterday and today Nem-nem stared with great concentration into my face and eyes, the same look of concentration that charms me in Mago, while we danced to (and I sang her) this.

This is? show

I think this cover of the tune is much better than the original.

I’ve been very taken with a tune I found (and what it necessarily has to do with Christmas re the album I have no idea, and I’ve otherwise been nonplussed with this artist’s work). I’d kept thinking it captures my feelings about Nem-nem’s arrival, and that I’d like to use it in my video here depicting my idea of that. I’d kept meaning to look up the song origin and finally did. I at first mistook it for one of many old Scottish folk tunes but it was apparently written by two Germans in 1982 for a bagpipe festival in Scotland. It’s called Highland Cathedral. Two prominent sets of words (at least) have been written for it; I very much like this set:

There is a land far from this distant shore
Where heather grows and Highland Eagles soar
There is a land that will live ever more
Deep in my heart, my Bonnie Scotland

Though I serve so far away
I still see your streams, cities and dreams
I can’t wait until the day
When I’ll come home once more

So Lord keep me from the harm of war
Through all the dangers and the battles roar
Keep me safe until I’m home once more
Home to my own in Bonnie Scotland

On first reading these lyrics, I was overhwelmed by the coincidence that the tune both expresses my feelings about Nem-nem’s birth and that these lyrics are so similar in several ideas to words I wrote for Mago’s Lullaby:

So together we’ll hie
Through the sky love, and fly
To the sunny bright places we’ll see
With the Irish we’d die
For our mothers would cry
For the days to be sunny and green

Both are songs of a fair distant land of my ancestry, both speak of soaring/flying, both refer to battle (that’s what I mean by “With the Irish we’d die”).

So Highland Cathedral is Nem-nem’s lullaby.

I’ve got Scottish blood, so I suppose it isn’t necessarily fair to give the Irish all the attention (as I do with my children’s nicknames). But I don’t have any children for England, or for Wales (yet), or..

I’m also struck by allegory in the words; Nem-nem arrives from a distant land she left (her place with God) to serve in a battle (the war for souls on this earth) and will long for her eternal home. So I sing it in homage to both God and my ancestors. Further, I hadn’t even realized when I wrote Mago’s lullaby that it maybe could work allegorically in the same way.

Here is the song with this video for Nem-nem; only it isn’t so “lullaby” here, though it can be sung that way and has been child-tested and found to work. It’s versatile. Click the image.

The stills in this are deep space photography which I color-alter, distort, zoom, pan, cross-fade, and change lighting of to give a sense of travel, merging into the opening sequence from CONTACT reversed and sped up. CONTACT had it wrong. In that film, pious scientists/priests repeatedly declare that the remainder of space without any life apart from Earth would be a “waste”. On the contrary I feel it isn’t about how far we can look or travel out there and whether it means anything to anyone else, human or alien, but how amazing, beautiful and meaningful it all makes our existence here. Not that life elsewhere isn’t compelling.

Incidentally, I hope my video, while philosophically in great sympathy with this amusingly distasteful schlock I found at YouTube, may be better. Even a little better would fill me with hope.

These were Tia’s comments on my video: “It’s good”. Later I sought clarification on this:

“So you like it?”

“I don’t like that music with it. This Scottish tune to that.. it doesn’t fit.”

“You’d appreciate it more if you appreciated Star Trek.”

(Derisive sarcasm) “Well, yeah.”

“You don’t remember [Star Trek II Spoiler!] show

“Did I ever see show

“Well, there you go. It’s really good, I recommend it.”

Here are three recordings strung together of him saying “Happy” over and over, and also laughing when I make a pop sound zurbeting his feet.

Mago in July 2006 - at 16 months old

You are Mago Elf Liam
And you are your father’s son
You are Liam Elf Mago
And you have your father’s toe

(This is sung to an epic-y Gaelic-y sounding and very nice melody that was featured in the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It would be good to add more to it..)

He crawled a short distance the day before yesterday (as different from the “army crawl” or scoot) and is starting to sometimes do it briefly. He is still a mild, happy, often beaming baby who also blathers fun nonsense, growls, and coos at pretty things like lights. Recently he was having a great fun time wrestling and rolling around with a large stuffed bear animal, and he still often beams when he sees large creatures that are or could be alive.

I think it was the day before that he woke in the morning crying and calling “Ma-ma! Ma-ma!”

He laughs when I “zurbet” his naked belly, toss him up and catch him, or make silly sounds.

Recently I was chanting something to his amusement between zurbets:

Baby Mago
Baby Mago
Where you gonna go when you go, go, go?
(Poop!)

It occured to me that this works perfectly with the Winnie the Pooh song, and is also an innapropriate (and therefore desirable) pun on the bear’s name.

He was also singing (or ernestly attempting it) recently with me - I recorded both these things and I’ll post them in a bit.