Superbaby

(I'm not sure why I'm on a bit of a Superman kick right now, but I'll try to change it up after this one!)

So the other day I was watching Cleo in her swing. Calm, content, kind of smiling. Then suddenly... MASSIVE FREAKOUT! She just starts screaming, instantly red in the face! I rush over to pick her up, convinced something is pinching her and... nothing. She whimpers a little bit, but calms down easily enough and is smiling at me a minute later. I talked to H about it a while later and she says the same thing happened to her the other day.

What's going on here?

Well, my working theory right now is based on Clark Kent, specifically Smallville. I have a hard time with the  "soap opera" aspect of Smallville, but I've always enjoyed their take on the evolution of Big Blue.

Having laser eyes is so hard! (Cue
 Paula Cole's "I don't want to wait")

When Smallville starts, Clark has two powers: super strength and super speed. Over the series he develops all of the powers we associate with Superman with flight being the last. Each one has its own Very Special Episode:  X-Ray (X-ray vision), Heat (Heat Vision), Whisper (Super Hearing), and Sneeze (Super Breath).  All of them (Whisper is a partial exception, but basically the same) follow the same pattern:

Clark suddenly develops a new power. This power causes massive chaos and inconvenience to him and really freaks him out. As the episode progresses, he learns to cope with it and usually defeats someone evil with it. It then becomes a part of his life and completely under his control by the next episode.

I think being a newborn is like this. Life is blurry and unfocused and then suddenly... CLEAR VISION POWER! Or she's just flailing around then suddenly... SUPER GRIPPING POWER! Eventually these just become part of her life and are no big deal, but that first time is a big Keanu Reeves style "Whoa".

My proposal to H is that we need to find an evil baby that Cleo can defeat with her new powers in order to give her closure, but H has frowned on this idea. In truth, it's hard to figure out which baby's are evil (though I have my suspicions) and I don't think Cleo is equipped to deal with an inner turmoil episode that usually happens when a hero beats up someone who it turns out is NOT evil. We're pretty much just into the first season and that's more of a second or third season episode anyhow when the story lines become more complex.

However, come fall of 2014, watch out evil babies!

Week 2

Last week was interesting. I like to think that I'm a fairly involved dad. Since Cleo was born, I've tried to spend time with her when I'm not working. I don't shy away from changing her and I try to step up when the screaming starts, though I often fail when I'm exhausted after work. I've looked after her when H goes to appointments for up to four hours at a time.

You have no clue, do you?

Despite this, I was not prepared for last week. Eight hours is a lot different than four. The biggest frustration is the constant question of "Is this normal?" 

She's been up for one hour and she's sleeping again! Is this normal?

She ate one hour ago and now she's hungry again! Is this normal?

She is unhappy everywhere except the swing so I had to put her back in the swing.  Again. Is that normal?

She was calm in the swing and suddenly started screeching like she's been attacked by a ferret! Is this normal?

There's also the fact that life with dad is significantly different. For example, one of the favorite things for Cleo is nap time with mom, where she breastfeeds while they are both laying down and then she just falls asleep. Kind of like an alcoholic who has broken into a pub and crashes out on the bar with his mouth on the tap.

For obvious physiological reasons, this is not something we can do. Naptime and mealtime are separate, which was met with a certain amount of confusion and skepticism last week.

Thankfully I feel we did establish some sort of rhythm last week that I'm hoping carries over into this one, although honestly I'm STILL a bit nervous about this week despite having proved that I can handle things. We'll see how things go. Today we're going on a bit of an adventure, so next week I'll update you all on our excursion to the Mommy Matinee.

1000 Words

Alright! The progress bar moved! Not... much.... but it moved! One thousand words done today!

Due to my schedule and, you know, the birth of my first child, I haven't done any writing (other than the blog) in about two months.

Once you stall out, it is hard to get started again. You have to remember where you were going at the time you stalled (which means reading the last chapter of your work, a cardinal sin when your aim is to only write and not get caught up in how crappy your first draft is) and have faith that there is a direction to things.

Not to mention the hardest part: Actually doing it. You know, sitting down and making text appear on your screen. So freaking hard when you've lost that momentum. I washed dishes, did laundry, and vacuumed the house in order to avoid having to actually write (the apartment looks pretty good at least). Eventually I had to just "zombie write". It's a term I picked up from my friend Chris who says that if you don't want to work out, you don't actually need enthusiasm. Just "zombie" your brain-dead self through it and then at least it's done.

Hopefully I can keep it up. I'm aiming for at least 1k on my days with Cleo (during nap time) and just to tread water at about 300 on other days. We'll see how that works out. Til then: WOOOO!  1K words!

Tuesdays with Cleo

2012 was a long year. Once H found out she was pregnant, I began hoarding my leave time. Most other developed countries in the world have some form of parental leave. In the US, where politicians are frothing at the mouth and pounding on tables while screaming about "Family Values", no one even gives a damn about parents having time at home with a child in one of the most crucial stages for building trust and a feeling of safety in a child.

On a positive note, the US shows little gender discrimination in giving people equal shares of nothing

People in HR are quick to say that there is the Family Medical Leave Act (depending on your state). This is pretty much crap. What it allows is for you to take up to 12 weeks off and that your employer can't fire you for doing this. This leaves two options:

1) You take it unpaid. I'm sure in 1950 this might have been an option. However, like much of modern day America, H and I need two jobs just to get by. Not to mention insurance benefits that are not reimbursed during this time. Doing without an income for 3 months is not an option for us.

2) Use your own leave time. Really? I get to use my own vacation time THAT I EARNED and spend it with my kid? So generous... (The only thing you can get is about eight weeks of disability for the mom for her to recover from the physical fallout of childbirth, but this is not parental leave, it's medical.)

So, we came up with a plan last March. I would store up my leave hours like a chipmunk for winter so I could take an extra day off with Cleo every week for as long as we can float it. That meant NO vacations in 2012, no extra days off... nothing. I've been able to swing three day weekends on occasion due to having a very malleable schedule, but they come at the price of having to work something like 8 days in a row, one day off, then 5 days in a row to balance them.

This week, the plan comes together. H is going to work 32 hours a week, Tuesday through Friday, (a rough transition for her, but that's a post for another day) and I will schedule my "weekends" to be Wednesday and Thursday, with me working swing shifts on Friday to accommodate childcare.

And Tuesday is the bonus day I get with my little girl, paid for in hoarded leave time. 

It's been a hard road to get to this point, but at least it's finally here. To honor it, I'm making a regular section called "Tuesdays with Cleo" so I'll make at least one blog update a week about my time with her.

Closure

The year is 1990. The Berlin Wall came crashing down. Hair metal bands drowsily raise their hungover heads from their zebra striped beds and groupies as they hear their death knell played on a rickety guitar by a man from Aberdeen. The US plays in their first World Cup in over 50 years.

My original copy

And, on a much lighter note, in a small town in Washington, a bored young man was starting high school in the fall. In the summer before that fall, he wandered into a Waldenbooks (a chain that no longer even exists) and picked up a copy of "The Eye of the World", the first book in a trilogy that was to be written by Robert Jordan. It was an amazing fantasy book that really captured my imagination. I waited eagerly every year for the next book in the series to come out.

The trilogy turned into a five book series... and then it kept meandering on. It was the early 2000's that I lost interest in the series at around book 8 or 9. Jordan was lost in his own world, more obsessed with the details of his fantasy than with the plot or the heroes themselves. It was obvious that Jordan had no interest in ever ENDING the story, and why should he?  This was a cash cow for him that he could continue to milk. I stopped reading due to a brutal acknowledgement that I really just needed to cut my losses and abandon the series before I became too frustrated.

Eleven books into his series, Jordan died. I thought that was it for the series. Sadly, that's actually kind of how I expected it to end. I had no faith that Jordan even had the ability to tie the massive amount of plot threads he had constructed into any sort of coherent ending.

Then in 2007, Brandon Sanderson was announced as the man, blessed by Jordan's widow with Jordan's notes, to finish the series. It would, however, take him three books to do this. The first book of the end came out in 2009. I've written before how Sanderson was ruthless in the task of paring down the list of minor characters and plotlines that Jordan had become too attached to, which gave me a lot of hope.

Today, nearly a quarter of a century after starting this journey, I hold in my hands the last Wheel of Time book.

I'm hopeful that it will be good. In a weird kind of way, though, I don't think it matters. There simply is no ending that CAN live up to 23 years of buildup. What's important is that it will be done. If there is one thing my years have taught me, it's that often it's better for something to simply be done than to be perfect. It will be sad but sweet to bid farewell to Rand, Egwene, Mat, Perrin, and even Nynave, but we do need to part, to leave them to enter the aether and live on with the likes of Frodo, Merlin, Harry Potter, Reepicheep, and Puff the Magic Dragon in a land that even stories and imagination can't capture as we move on in our own lives. That we must all part is a fact of life, but we are so much richer for the journey together. In Jordan's own words from the first book (which appear in part at the beginning of every Wheel of Time book):

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

The Weight of being Superman

I watched the latest Man of Steel trailer recently and found myself thinking one thing: Superman has gotten heavy. I mean this both literally and metaphorically. Watch in the trailer as he takes off to fly. The ground cracks from his takeoff.
I find this really fascinating. As Quentin Tarantino put it in Kill Bill, the Superman comic is not great, but the mythology and philosophy of it is amazing and fun to contemplate.

Take the classic superman. Originally, he didn't fly. He bounded over buildings. He was a man with super enhancements, but he was still really just a man. It took a while for the creators to take him to the next level of Superman = demigod.

In the silver age, Superman was feather light. When he flew, he would just flit into the air without effort. Likewise, the problems he solved were simpler. Punch the bad guys, rescue the girl. The problems were light, and so was Superman.

Now the 80's were interesting. Superman was still light, but the problems he faced were increasingly heavy. Should he police the world? Why is he more concerned about first world problems over third world? Should he really be in love? However, Superman himself remained light in his flight; an unconscious allegory for how he as a character is poorly equipped to actually deal with these problems in a realistic way. Subsequently, there is an increasing shift for problems to be on a galactic level, where Superman's duty is to protect Earth from other forces in the universe rather than to protect us from ourselves.

The nineties were primarily occupied with the "Death of Superman" as it were (a topic for another day). This did create a level of depth to Superman and his flying has over the years become increasingly less, well, flighty, especially outside of the comics. In the Smallville TV show, he creates a small concussive blast around him when he takes off. In the "Return of Superman", for his confrontation with Lex, he lands like an anvil, shaking the ground. And now we have a Superman that literally cracks the surface of the Earth when he leaves it. A postmodern Superman who can't rise above the problems of the world without changing the world.

Granted, in a long running comic book series, you can't tackle this. He CAN'T really solve the "heavy" problems or else the world would cease to be identifiable for the readers (see the TV trope: Reed Richards is useless.) As we've seen with Nolan's Batman, though, a character arc can be explored over a handful of movies before the impact of the character begins to overly warp the world into a place that we, the audience, no longer recognize. With a Superman now looks to be more divorced from the comics than ever, I'm hopeful that we will see a more genuine look at what a super man would have to deal with in this world.