play
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Kiki
Ok I could not get over this. By using some string and pipecleaners to make a broom and cat (!), and re-arranging Pink Lady’s hair, Mykala made such a great Kiki for Ess.
You are viewing stuff tagged with play.
Ok I could not get over this. By using some string and pipecleaners to make a broom and cat (!), and re-arranging Pink Lady’s hair, Mykala made such a great Kiki for Ess.
Mykala and I made this rabbit “cage” out of my old shelf-parts from college. Ess is a big fan.
The treehouse innovation on the right side was Mykala, but otherwise this is all Ess.
One of Essie’s favorite games used to be “Dada Burned the Food” wherein Mama leaves the house, and Dada must prepare a meal (usually mac and cheese, a.k.a. “Bunny Noodles”). The stove always catches on fire, and the game is to figure out how to put out said fire.
Ess, you’ve been pushing everyone’s limits lately. Seeing what you can get away with, asking for things you’ve never asked for before. And tantrums — those are something else. But then we get to share a magical evening with you — one where we play at the kitchen table and build with dominoes together. One where you are smiling at us and imagining worlds and telling us you love us and giving HUGE hugs. Your mama had this Christmas instrumental channel on in the background and it kind of set the stage for thinking about the experiential and the remembering self at the same time: it was a rare gift to simultaneously enjoy the time with you while also experiencing the meta part. How important the memory of tonight will be in the future. We love you Ess. Forever and ever. Thanks for spending 2017 with us.
It’s easy to breeze through the times when Ess is happy, to let her play on her own when she’s content. There are always adult things to be done: cleaning, bill-paying, paperwork, planning, reading pieces on politics, philosophy, coding… and I have noticed I tend to conflate the important tasks with the urgent tasks. I can usually complete the urgent ones while Ess plays, but with that momentum I find I am sailing into important things and then… not very important things.
That silicone green half-sphere is a soft-boiled egg maker. Ess uses it as a bed for people. Her Playmobil Friend is in there, and she’s telling me about the mama and the dada taking care of Friend.
How many birds are in that pear tree?
Essie’s first time out with snowpants.
Few articles I read, only about one a year, get saved on my computer. These are articles describing an invaluable overarching idea, a critique of our modern world so potent that I want to reference it so I don’t forget it and can incorporate it into my own life planning. The following is one of those articles.
One must demonstrate the proper “hanging off” technique of extreme motorcycle center of gravity-altering cornering at any opportunity.
A recent book called Devices of the Soul by Steve Talbott argues how the preponderance of technology that claims to make life easier seems to, in a fundamental sense, make life harder. That, admittedly, is a rather poor exposition of the thesis… but you need know only the general idea here. Incidentally, this book is predated by a rather more famous example of a similar philosophical exploration called The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Basically, both works discuss the implications of “technology.” Don’t think of technology as simply computers, however. Here’s a helpful comment from the Amazon page selling The Technological Society (emphasis mine):
I’ve been reading more and more of The New Yorker lately, so I’ve been seeing a lot of their famous one panel comics that have been in their pages for years. These cartoons are selected quite carefully, as shown in a recent article about the cartoon editor of the New Yorker; from what I can tell, the cartoons are selected to be subtle, clever, and not laugh out-loud funny. They are therefore things you can glance at more than once and find entertainment.