Parklife

Back in the early 90's, a girl introduced me to Britpop and namely to Blur. Wanting to seem cool and knowledgeable, I bought the CD's, listened to them, and even enjoyed some of them like "Boys and Girls". Some I really didn't understand. Take Parklife.

The meat of it is Blur singing about some guy hanging out at the park. Now, these days you can look it up on the internet and find information on how Blur was satirizing some sort of class situation in London, but to a teenager in the pre-internet mid nineties growing up in a small eastern Washington town, I really had no frame of reference. I had a friend who lived in an RV Park and I honestly thought that's what parklife was.

Which brings us to why I was singing this song to Cleo as we drove to visit my mom recently.

As you may or may not remember, my mom and stepdad bought an RV recently. Since my mom is a teacher, this has given her the opportunity to hang out close to us for a month this summer. My mom gets to see Cleo, Cleo gets to see her grandma, and I get to enjoy air conditioning. It's really a win, win, win situation.

About the only losers are my mom's dogs who are, at heart, country dogs that are used to having an acre to run around on. An RV park cramps their style and taking them to a dog park is overwhelming for them. Well, one of them adapts well, but the other is prone to anxiety. There is normally nothing more he likes than a good game of catch, but with cars racing around and a billion other scents at the dog park, he kind of implodes a bit like Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" and stares blankly  into space when you throw the ball.

Still, it's overall a great experience. If the weather holds, Cleo and I might even brave the pool next week!

Signs

First off, sorry about the lack of an update last week! I took on some more shifts at work, my mom had just got into town for a four week stay, and I had to have my Tuesday adventure with Cleo in the morning and then go straight to work once we got back from it!

Every day, Cleo seems more like a little girl and less like a baby. I suppose that, technically, that IS what is happening, but it's more like it's becoming more obvious. She claps her hands, she reacts to facial expressions and little games, and is able to make connections between things. The other day, she started crying when I put on my bicycle helmet since she has figured out that helmet = dad leaving for work.

So with her forming these complex connections, I decided to sign us up for a Baby Sign class. Of course, I'm cheap, so I located  a free one out at the Beaverton Library and... well you get what you pay for. The class was really disjointed and chaotic and the teacher of it, while enthusiastic, was more interested in singing songs and being quirky rather than actually making sure parents were learning the signs to the songs.

It did increase my enthusiasm for trying baby sign, though. I've been doing some for a while, but I'm trying to be more consistent about it. And you know what? I think she understands some of  the signs. She grins like a maniac when I do the sign for milk or food. She just doesn't get the concept of a back and forth signing exchange yet. The subtext of our mealtime conversation goes something like this:

Gimme!

Me: Milk?
Cleo: Sure!
Me: Cleo want milk?
C: Uh... yeah. I smiled at you. That means yes. Duuuhh.
Me: Cleo hungry?
C: Look mister, are you gonna give me the milk or not?
Me: Cleo want eat?
C: *sigh* I'm gonna go back to playing with my feet. Don't interrupt me unless you're actually serious about giving me food.
Me: Cleo not hungry?
C: *Ignores dad*

I'm thinking we'll probably skip the other classes for now and just focus on mastering what we've got so far since, as you can tell, I already feel that the kiddo has mastered nonverbal expression of indifference.

Art Time

I'm really pleased to say I finally got this one crossed off of our list! Portland Art Museum has, once per month, Baby Hour where you get to go around the museum with a docent who explains things and no one can complain about your fussy little one. However, compared to a lot of the stuff  we do (free) it ain't cheap ($15) so I wanted to have a reason to go there.

Enter Cyclopedia. It's an exhibit featuring all sorts of crazy bike designs. My favorite: A bicycle from Finland with a studded back tire and a skate in place of the front tire. It never caught on due to numerous injury lawsuits, but who hasn't dreamed up something like that? I'm pretty sure I've seen something like that in a Dr. Seuss book, but there it is in metal and rubber reality hanging right in front of you when you go!

However, while our ticket would allow us to go to Cyclopedia, we had to first experience the more traditional art of Gaston Lachaise. Let me just say that Portland really let me down on this one after dissing on Beaverton last week! About 30 adults went on the tour, all female. In my group of about 15 adults and 15 babies, the only Y chromosomes there were me and one baby boy. What's disappointing is there actually was one other dad there at the beginning when we all were at the entrance, but he buggered off somewhere before the tour even started leaving the kid with the grandmother!

Anyhow, Gaston Lachaise. Like many artists, he was a very weird man who died before he experienced any real success.  He graduated art school, became obsessed with a slightly dumpy shaped American woman who was 10 years older than him that he labelled his muse, married her, and almost exclusively sculpted just her. This by itself was pretty cool because she was an authentic female form rather than a female "model". Sure, he made her more powerful in the sculptures, but he didn't slim her down in order to achieve this.

From a psychological point of view, though, he is fascinating. A lot of his sculptures of he and his wife together have poorly defined lines between them (eg: when they kiss, their faces become one), when he was apart from her he sculpted her constantly, and towards the end of his life he got really weird and only sculpted body parts of her (seriously, there's some weird ones featuring just her breasts and vagina only). From my point of view it screams of a man who has lost his own sense of self, defined himself through her, and struggled with this as he got older and realized that other people cannot be the container for your sense of self without losing your sense of them.

After the tour, we hung out in the discovery room and let the babies play. It's always interesting to see the developmental variance! One kid only a few weeks older than Cleo was crawling around while a kid months older was smaller and struggling to sit. These things will all smooth out over the next few years but it's so interesting seeing how each kid has a peak and a valley in terms of development. And yet, some things remain consistent as my little girl continued to be the observer of things. As every child made a mad grab for the toys, she was initially content to watch and figure things out for some time before entering the fray herself.

Afterwards, dad finally got to see the bicycles for a bit before the overstimulated baby was taken home. I'm still not sure what Cleo actually thought of the whole experience, but if nothing else, we both earned our nap that day!

Juggler

(Life has settled down a bit so it's refreshing to just be doing a regular Tuesdays with Cleo post!)

I'm really, really loving seven months. I think this has been my favorite age so far. She's more interactive and more aware of the world now and playing with her is actually an involved experience! Before this, playing was more or less "Dad does something and I stare blankly or maybe smile a bit". Now it's actually something where I feel like there's give and take in the activities. 

So as I've mentioned before, Cleo likes it when I juggle, which has prompted me to juggle more. My control is very rusty to say the least, but so far my skill is good enough still to have prevented any injuries to my little girl. One day an errant club will bounce off of a couch cushion and be pulled by mystical forces straight at her head and on that day we will see if she can maintain this love of juggling. Til then, we're both enjoying things.

Based on this juggling love, I thought it would be nice to take Cleo to a show. There was a juggler named Curtis Carlyle performing at the Beaverton Library and I thought this would be perfect! I'm glad we did because I learned a lot of things from this experience.

1) The suburbs are a much, much different place! The place was completely freaking crowded. I hate crowds so much and almost turned around. Additionally, I joke about other dads being a rare commodity at events, but in Portland proper, I'm usually not completely alone. There is often another dad or two around, even if they are out with their family and not solo. Not here. You're on your own in soccer mom territory. I'm surprised I wasn't boxed in by minivans and SUV's gangland Chicago style when I tried to leave and told not to come back.

2) No one in Beaverton takes their babies to this stuff. The crowd had a lot of kids from toddlers on up to what looked like 3rd or 4th graders. There were babies there, but they were in carry-on baggage mode so that mom could pry her older kids from their video games and enjoy something real. This is a shame, because I plan on taking Cleo to more stuff out in Beaverton and I don't like feeling the odd man out. True, Cleo was often more preoccupied with the crowd than with the actual performer, but it's nice to get her out and experiencing stuff.

3) I had met the juggler before! I actually did not realize this until I got home and looked up the guy and saw some sans mustache pictures of him. Ten years ago when I got bored with my limited three ball juggling knowledge and decided to try leveling up my juggling skills, I started going to the juggling club at Reed College. At Reed, juggling is a PE credit, but they open things up to the public all year and during the summer they all juggle on the lawn. It's nice, although if you are not a part of the community it can all be a bit daunting.

Anyhow, my first time there I didn't have a clue what to do, and Curtis lent me some of his clubs to use. I hadn't ever juggled clubs  before this and I dropped them so many times that I damaged one of them (the foam on the top of it broke off). I was mortified and apologized profusely, but he pulled out another club and as he gave it to me he said, "It happens. Just keep throwing!" Such a wonderful gesture that quite possibly kept me from running away from juggling completely. I'm glad I finally got to see him perform!