In Notes on an Unhurried Journey, John A. Taylor reminds us of the nature of childhood:
When we adults think of children, there is a simple truth
which we ignore: childhood is not preparation for life,
childhood is life. A child isn’t getting ready to live, a
child is living.
The child is constantly confronted with the nagging
question: “What are you going to be?” Courageous would be
the youngster who, looking the adult squarely in the face,
would say, “I’m not going to be anything, I already am.”
We adults would be shocked by such an insolent remark, for
we have forgotten, if indeed we ever knew, that a child is
an active, participating and contributing member of
society from the time of birth.
Childhood isn’t a time when he is moulded into a human who
will then live life; he is a human who is living life. No
child will miss the zest and joy of living unless these
are denied…by adults who have convinced themselves that
childhood is a period of preparation.
How much heartache we would save ourselves if we would
recognize the child as a partner with adults in the
process of living, rather than always viewing him an an
apprentice. How much we could teach each other: adults
with the experience and children with the freshness. How
full both our lives could be.
Little children may not lead us, but at least we ought to
discuss the trip with them; for, after all, life is their
journey, too.
Mykala just invented (or at least, I think she invented) the krump attack. In our kitchen. At 8:20 this evening. Both myself and Essie thought it was amazing. It was also hilarious.
Yesterday night, with an hour and a half still left until bed, little Ess was getting antsy in the Björn, acting like she was trying to escape. So, we took her up to the warm and cozy upstairs and just set her on our bed, with only one thing in front of her, her pacifier. Now, she has no particular affinity for sucking on any pacifier for longer than 10 seconds, employing a cute but slightly frustrating tongue thrust to pop it out of her mouth. But, she does like to hold it and understand it, with its purple flange and contrasting sides, one a soft silicone and the other a hard plastic.
We laid down on either side of Ess, spotting her as she sat, and she could not have been more content. All the antsy-ness from downstairs evaporated and she become totally engrossed in figuring out this pacifier. I expounded on a nascent theory to Mykala, a habit of mine for which she has infinite patience, which was roughly: the endless toys, lights, and music we surround our babies with are purportedly to provide stimulation. However, the world is so new, so bright, so colorful, so filled with wonderful minutiae, that babies require remarkably little newness in front of them for healthy stimulation. Rather, it is the adults that feel uncomfortable if they perceive a lack of interesting items strewn about for stimulation. In a picture, would you rather see a baby in the middle of a bed holding a pacifier, or surrounded by adorable playthings of endless variety? Adults pick the latter which, as far as I can tell, overwhelms babies.
The unstructured calm reminded me a scene from the 2010 film Babies by Thomas Balmès. While the mother goes about her daily tasks, her baby is seated on the floor next to her, with what appears to be ostensibly little “to do.” But, as the measured pace of the movie illustrates, this baby feels perfectly engaged and interested in the world around them, and is not bored or frustrated one bit. It is a remarkable scene because of the stark contrast it provides to child-rearing tenets in countries with greater material wealth. I found the very scene 30 minutes into the movie, actually. Here’s a screen shot of it:
While Mykala and I watched, there was one another big development in Essie’s world: our cat named George. He was on patrol, which he does each night, hoping to attract our attention and remind us to feed him. As you can imagine, if you are a baby sitting on a bed and a four legged hunter covered in fur walks up to you, it is pretty interesting. Ess would strrretch out her arm just as far as she could without toppling over, trying to touch kitty as he circled away and back. Then, she got an idea. This kitty would like my pacifier. So, each time George circled around, Mykala and I watched as her little tiny baby hand strrretched out, offering the cat her pacifier. She did this numerous times, and it was so touching it made us cry. Here’s our little girl, not even able to crawl yet, using all of her new energy and skills to offer to share her pacifier.
I’m hoping to make this quiet together time a habit; it is what we used to share when we went on walks during warmer weather.
It has been five years since I went flying off my bike. Five years. 60 months. I still wear the Patagonia jacket I was wearing when that accident happened; wore it today, in fact. That’s a testament to Patagonia’s quality, I guess. I still don’t like most of their color schemes for their stuff, which explains why my jacket from them is all black. But like I said, great stuff.
These thoughts aren’t about stuff, though. They’re about time, how quickly it goes. I told Mykala and she immediately said “In five years, Ess will be in kindergarten.”
So, right now I will write about what’s going on to try to slow down this time that is flying by. Ess is 6.5 months old, going in for some more immunizations next week, and has an incredible personality. Whenever we have her in the Björn and she sees something she’s interested in, she kicks her legs around extremely excitedly. So excitedly that two separate strangers commented on it to Mykala when she was with Ess at the State Dance Line competition at the Target Center today. Myself, I was at work, had been all the days this week (I’ve been lucky enough to mostly have a partial schedule, about 3.5-4 days per week depending on the season) and I was missing Ess. So, I come home, Mykala and Ess arrived shortly after that, and I picked her up out of her car seat.
Inches from my face, hers lights up when she recognizes me, and she immediately reaches for my nose. She can’t say it, but I interpret the look as “Dad!!” Which I love. Love love love. These are the things I want to remember. Upstairs for a diaper change, Ess just outgrew her tiny prefold cotton infant diapers and is now into a larger size. She loves diaper change time and looks everywhere she can above her head, enjoying the freedom and looking for something to hold and babble at. So far we’ve just been changing breastmilk diapers, which I’m told is easy compared to solid food diapers. At this point, Ess has tried sweet potatoes (lots of shudders), oatmeal, and avocado. The night she ate the most oatmeal was also the night she puked up everything inside her for almost an hour straight. The two events, I think, are unrelated, but it makes you pause before you try to feed her that much oatmeal again.
After her diaper was changed, downstairs again to have to food from mom. Ess can point with her pointer finger, and she chooses to do this at every opportunity she gets. Point at this, point at that, point at some keys on the piano while dad plays. Her favorite toy right now is strips of paper Mykala cut out and put into an empty Kleenex box. Ess just smiles and kicks her legs and reaches for that box whenever she sees it, she is totally psyched to pull out each and every scrap of paper.
Ess is also a huge fan of a little banana-shaped curved rainbow colored bolster we’ve named Tubey. She also loves Jill Duck (named by Mykala), and as always, Squirt the turtle from Finding Nemo.
Essie has two teeth, #O & P (mandibular central incisors), and she seems to have taken a holiday from cutting more for a little bit. This is a relief for everyone, because it affected her sleeping. Poor little one is having a hard enough time sleeping right now; she’s only been able to do a few hours at a time before getting upset. We are constantly talking and brainstorming ways to communicate to her that she is fine and she can go back to sleep since we can’t use words to explain this to her. In the meantime, we’re all tired. Mykala hasn’t slept through the night since July 22, 2014.
And so I file away this little time capsule, sliding it on top of the pile of writing that has become this space. Someday in the future, on a chance browsing, I’ll run across it again and remember this time. At the tail end of my 20s, a new parent, learning some things in dentistry, taking walks with my lovely wife. Future self, this is your past self saying “hi, I’m OK!” You are lucky to be a dad, and even luckier to be the dad of such a spitfire spirit as your daughter. She’s amazing.
Mykala and I participate in what we call “awards season” during the dark days of late mid-winter where on Sunday nights there are Hollywood and entertainment industry awards shows. It would be more aptly called “have some fun toaster-oven food and watch parts of a live event while reading.” The latter description has been accurate for a few years. This year, however, was quite a bit different. The Grammy Awards were on, Ess was in her Björn, and we had finished up “Grammy Pancakes” (see, gold records look like pancakes!). Poor little girl had just blown out a diaper and gotten a bath, and was looking adorable in her fresh, clean jammies. Mykala tuned into what can only be called a “momstinct” or a premonition, and was cuddling Ess particularly closely when our little baby girl started making sounds we hadn’t heard her make before.
In an event that I have since called Vomitorium 2015, our daughter emptied out her stomach into our sink in a heart-breaking cyclical succession of cuteness, throwing-up, and confusion. It was impossible to tell her what was going on, and all we could do was take turns holding her. In a smart investment in all of our futures, we gave up and went to bed, Ess in her carseat so things would start going the correct direction, which they eventually did. My Google searches for the evening began with things like “brio play table” and “taggies hippo” and ended with “breastfeeding after vomit.”
As you can imagine, we saw vanishingly little of the awards, I saw some of AC/DC perform, which was, well, that happened I guess.
As Mykala and I experience these events of parenthood for the first time, things like spitting up, vomiting, getting sick for the first time, getting cut, falling, one starts to understand that you’ll always worry about your child. For a brief instance this morning, when I was at work and Ess and Mykala were catching up on some much-needed sleep, I didn’t hear back from them immediately after I sent a message, and I found myself spiraling into panic. What if Essie has not simply a flu bug but a vaccine-preventable disease? What if she and Mykala are at the hospital? What if it is pneumonia? Wait, no, she was vaccinated against that. What if they need me right now? That kind of worry, that spiraling, is the kind that you don’t really expect until it happens, and then you start to understand the emotional depths and heights of parenting.
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
As I type this, things of yours are strewn about the floor: Isabella bunny, Sophie the giraffe, Skinny Dog your Christmas present. There’s a kitchen tongs on the living room floor and a geodesic ball perched on your circle desk. There’s Pat the bunny sitting by the piano and a few blankets about there as well. The point is, it looks like a baby-shaped tornado just tore through our first floor. And let me tell you, your dad abhors a mess. I can’t stand disorder and your mom and I just spent a ton of time straightening up your nursery. But get this: I’d feel less happy, less full and fulfilled if you weren’t upstairs napping right now, if your toys weren’t scattered underfoot. This mess, I like. You see, these things are in disarray, but what they signify is far more important: they remind me of you. They remind me of your smiling, six-month-old face. They remind me of the reverence with which you hold things in front of your face, and the way that reverence quickly turns to frenetic, kinetic energy. You just fascinate your mom and dad, little one. And even though you aren’t sleeping well at all at night, and even though your mom is spending 25 hours a day looking after you, even though it’s overwhelming, you are absolutely amazing. We’ll never forget this time.
A few nights ago, I was upstairs taking care of a few chores when I heard Mykala laughing in our room. Then, I heard our Essie giggling right along with her! It’s pretty uncommon for Ess to laugh in the first place, much less for both her and her mom to be sharing a joke. It turns out that while lying on her side and eating her milk dinner, Ess managed to take off her sock, and then proceeded to wave it for the entirety of her meal. Then, when she was done eating, the sock went right into her mouth. This got her mom laughing, and Ess responded in kind. That’s some kind of joy, walking into a room where your wife and child are both laughing uproariously. I am so very lucky.
Historically, watches have had very little information to offer, and essentially zero interaction. It used to be, after a watch was set to the correct time, there was no button pressing, scrolling, or reading to do*, only glances to see the time, each lasting a fraction of a second. With the introduction of Apple Watch this year, there will be a vast increase in the pressing, scrolling, and reading done on watches. To accomodate, people may chose to wear this device differently than their old watches: on the inside of their wrist. Let’s work through the anatomical reasons for this.
Back in November, Richard Burtonstrapped an iPhone to his wrist with a prototype of the Apple Watch’s face displayed on-screen. Doing so made it possible to examine the feel of interactions with the watch ahead of its release. When I say feel, I’m thinking specifically about the way the muscles and joints of our forearms feel as they work in concert to shift a watch face towards our gaze. After testing, Burton noted something interesting about wrist position:
As a result of the twisting strain, I wonder if this might lead to more
people wearing [Apple Watch] on the inside of their wrist.
Let’s look at the bones, muscles, and tendons, the anatomy of this twisting strain.
First, some basics. You can wear a watch on two distinct positions on your wrist: the widespread top-of-wrist position and the far less common inside-of-wrist position. Let’s call top-of-wrist conventional and inside-of-wrist gauche†. When you check the time on a watch worn in the conventional (top-of-wrist) position, you elevate your elbow slightly and then pronate your hand, placing the watch face in a plane normal to your gaze. Conversely, when you wear a watch in the gauche (inside-of-wrist) position, you supinate your hand to bring the watch face into view.
Those links on pronation and supination are not particularly helpful for understanding my point. So, let’s do an exercise: place your entire forearm onto a flat surface (like a table) in front of you, palm down, with your fingers pointing straight ahead. Now, rotate your hand so your knuckles are touching the table and you can see your palm. The anatomical term for what you did when you rotated your hand is supination. You’ll feel some resistance to the rotation, just a little bit of strain in your forearm. If you repeat this palms-up/supination motion with your elbow closer to your side, you’ll notice your biceps (on the front of your upper arm) pulling to supinate your hand. Remember that point about your biceps.
Now, return your hand back to palm-down position. If you go past that postion, rotating your pinky skyward, like you were checking a watch in the conventional (top-of-wrist) position, you’ll notice a little more strain than before. So, if a device is positioned in the conventional or gauche position on your wrist, you’ll need to engage muscles, producing some strain in your forearm, in order to interact with it.
Why are you feeling strain? Explaining that requires an examination of your arm bones: the main bones of the forearm are the radius and ulna, and they slide around one another, not unlike the strands in a rope:
When you supinate your hand (left half of that image), the radius rolls across the ulna and the two become (essentially) parallel. Recall the effort this takes, your arm bones want to return to their original orientation‡. You can imagine this like you are untwisting the strands of the rope—it takes a certain amount of torsional energy to hold a rope in an untwisted position. When you return your palm to the table, the radius and ulna (rope strands) return to their overlapped, unstrained state. It also takes energy to twist rope strands together more tightly — analagous to pronation of the hand.
So if it takes effort to both supinate and pronate your hand, why would one be preferable? Answering this requires seeing some muscles on those bones. First, look at the pronator teres and pronator quadratus muscles below (highlighted in blue), the ones you use when when you pronate to view a watch in the conventional position. Next, look at the supinator (highlighted in green) and biceps bracii (top of second image) muscles, the ones you use when you supinate to view a watch in the gauche position.
Did you notice a difference between the muscles groups used for these opposing actions? The muscles that supinate are far more powerful compared to those that pronate (recall the strain in your biceps when you supinated your hand). This difference in size is mostly due to biceps bracii, which forms most of the front of your upper arm! Big muscles fatigue far more slowly than small ones, all else being equal. So, when you wear a watch in the gauche position, in defiance of convention and at risk of fashion faux pas, you recruit far larger, less fatigue-prone muscles during each interaction. This was of little importance when we used to quickly glance at our wrists, but in preparation for the pressing, scrolling, and reading we’ll be doing, we might consider flipping that watch display to the inside of our wrist.
* If you wound it, you did so when the watch was off your wrist. And yeah, yeah calculator watches.
† We get the word “gauche” from the French, where it means, literally, ‘left’ but the connotation when used in English is something unsophisticated or socially awkward. Something you can do, but in defiance of convention.
‡ Say “thanks” to your interosseous membrane.
