Vignettes
Eighteen years of serving this website over insecure HTTP are over: I installed a certificate for HTTPS, though I suppose the purpose is more not wanting to be left behind than any true need. I’ve read it could make the site go faster, and I’ve read it might make it go slower, too. I suppose both could be true.
Some vignettes. I’m going back through random text files, where I’ve littered little phrases to jog my memory:
- There’s this one: you come into Essie’s bedroom in the morning, and you see that she has extricated herself from her sheets, carefully arranged and folded them, and is sitting very carefully in the small bit of mattress that remains uncovered. She may have her father’s penchant for orderliness.
- “Mama, where a pizza go?”
“We ate it, Ess.”
“Get it outta my tummy. I need to eat it back up.” - Essie has woken up. Singing a song by herself in her room. She’s singing Baby Beluga. She doesn’t have those ‘s’ sounds yet, so we hear “Baby beluga in the deep blue shhee.”
- “What did you dream about, Ess?”
“Mama!” - I put Ess on my shoulders, which is a great way to carry her. I’m sure I’ll look back and regret the times I asked her to stop pulling my hair and flopping over my head because though it does hurt, there’s a lot more joy to carrying her than pain. Anyway, she was sitting up there and suddenly got really agitated. “Dada! Put me down, put me down!” I was initially unconvinced that anything was actually wrong, but she carried on, and so I set her down. “My leg feels funny!” Then I realized it had fallen asleep. The first time she’d ever felt that — and we were there for it. She walked it off in the aisles of Whole Foods. She’s reluctant to sit on my shoulders, now.
- In the summer, Mykala told Ess we were going to see the Okee Dokee Brothers, a lovely, folksy, local group of kid’s musicians. Ess thought that would be fine, but she had one question: “are they humans… or animals?” Of course, when Ess says it, it is more like “amimals” which, coincidentally, is quite close to Wanda Gág’s made-up word (“aminals”) for a story about a dragon called “The Funny Thing.” Ess hadn’t heard that story yet, though. Maybe “amimal” is more of a universal word, the way “mama” is pretty universal because stopping the air with your lips is one of the first things we learn to do, so “mama” is one of the first things we are coordinated enough to say.
- Years ago (like, 2004, the time we first met), Mykala gave me Genevieve the Owl. I never would’ve imagined that our daughter would be playing with that little owl, 13 years later, calling her “my favorite toy in the whole world.”
- Or how about this, watching your daughter… gently… flap… her imaginary butterfly wings while watching a scene in The Secret World of Arrietty.
- Or this: let’s say Ess is driving you crazy, refusing dinner yet demanding food later, running about knocking things over, literally making eye contact with you while she does precisely what you are asking her not to do. Or, as Mykala would describe it, “Tuesday.” But imagine all that, and then you peek around the corner, and now she’s singing an original song to the Christmas tree about how beautiful it is. She asks that you leave the room, because it is a private tree-only performance.