Cream Cheese Bagel
Never used a selfie stick or worn a bow-tie. Two firsts in one wedding. Love you, Bun.
At the Jennifer Kling-Ryan Deisler wedding.
Ess picked out these sunglasses from her diaper bag, and decided it was time to start motoring around. My favorite 7-second video I’ve ever made.
This morning I watched big big snowflakes fall down outside my office window, then float up when they came close to the building, then fall down again. I walked the skyways to the bank and stood over South 8th Street, watching the same thing, transfixed. I wasn’t fixated on avoiding any thoughts or solving any problems. I had no breakthroughs about my life. But I thought I wouldn’t mind sharing peace like this with my daughter.
Ess likes to watch a movie called Curious George Swings into Spring, but she asks for it by saying something like “watch… maow… ping… and balloons UP and UP” or some other kind of variation on her summary of the plot. To translate: her stuffed monkey’s name is Marge, nicknamed Mow, so monkeys get called Mows; there are hot air balloons in the movie in many shapes, and sometimes we have only the barest hint of a guess which movie she’s referring to. There’s also ‘Crinkas Pooh’ (Christmas Pooh), ‘Pump pump Mow’ (Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest), and ‘Ringinal Pooh’ (The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which we sometimes call Original Pooh).
Anyway, there’s a part in Curious George Swings into Spring with a big musical number about wiener dogs and Ess LOVES to clap along. She holds up a duck or a cow to us, and then that’s our dance partner for the song. She gets so excited that she starts doing rollicking little skip-hops around the floor, kicking one leg forward as she jumps off her back leg, going back and forth like a rocking horse. Sometimes we start the movie and forget the song is coming, and Ess will rush in, clapping. If I’m really missing out, I’ll hear a little voice from the next room: “Clap peez, Dada. Clap peez, Dada.” On my way, little Ess.
“Help, help, Dada Owl! Help!”
Ess uses precisely the same tone of voice when peril is imagined or real. It is a perfect mimc of the higher-register you would use if you were reading a book to a two-year-old and conveying that someone is in trouble, but ultimately will be just fine. You know, low-budget playacting. Also:
“Help, help, Mama Meow! Help!”
These are the names Ess has for us. They’re also our Halloween costumes she has picked out for us. She is thinking of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, where Katerina Kitty Cat is a dancing cat who wears a tutu, her mom is a cat too, and X the Owl is O the Owl’s uncle.
So, imagined or real peril. If Ess is climbing the piano (no) and reaching for something out of reach (no), and can’t quite do it and might fall (nonono), you’ll hear her go “Help, help, Dada Owl! Help!” And it is crazy, because the inflection is PRECISELY the same she uses when she takes her tiny Essie-sized fork and perches it precariously on the edge of her high chair tray, and then plays from the perspective of the fork: “Help, help, Mama Fork! Help!” If you close your eyes, they sound exactly the same.
So, if I hear Ess go “Help, help, Dada Owl! Help!”, you better bet I’m running as fast as I can to get in there before someone sustains an injury, real or imaginary.
Ess-to-English translator, October, 2016 edition:
pump-pump — pumpkin
keem — diaper cream
carefiff — carrot
hot-dong — carefiff dogs made by Mykala by marinating carrots, served on a bun; (they are DELICIOUS)
frawberry — the fruit or her strawberry-flavored toothpaste
bunny noonas — Annie’s Mac & Cheese, which has noodles shaped like bunnies… pretty much any noodle covered in a yellow sauce will do (dairy or non, big noodle or small). Recently, Mykala got a box of Annie’s Mac & Cheese and one of the shapes is trees: so you have to be ready to fulfill the TREENOONA, NO MAMA COOK-UP. NO, MAMA request.
And then there’s Friend, which is the name of a little Playmobil character, about two inches tall, who wears a green cardigan.
Friend doesn’t follow Ess around the way her stuffed monkey Marge does, but it is such a generic but also intimate, charming name for a figure, that we always find ourself smiling if Friend is being tucked in, or going to visit other animals in Essie’s world.
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