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by Hugh Cook |
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small dead fish mobility |
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Section 113 Entry 0001. Date: 2004 May 29 Saturday.
(diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) Apparently while I was at work yesterday my baby daughter Cornucopia had a slightly disturbing encounter with an anomalous object entirely new to her. The anomalous object was a book, a fabric book (touchable, tuggable and presumably suckable) designed (and well-designed) for babies. "She seemed to find it a bit disturbing." Today, curious to see this reaction, I showed Cornucopia the book, but she accepted it as part of the normative universe. How quickly the shock of the new wears off! My own disturbing moment came at mid-morning. The baby's futon had been moved to a table upstairs so the downstairs rooms could be vacuumed. I laid my daughter down on the futon on the table top, and, as I did so, I had an anomalous memory-flash. I was reminded, of all things, of the notorious alien autopsy video, which I saw one evening on Japanese TV. I thought: "Autopsy video?! Gee, where did that thought come from!?" (The autopsy video, by the way, was apparently made - some decades ago, now - by filming a real-life human autopsy then splicing the authentic human autopsy footage with some make-believe alien stuff. The actual autopsy detail looked convincingly real because, in fact, it was real.) The whole baby experience has made me realize that there's a baby-sized gap in my cultural exposure. Nature abhors a vacuum, so science-fictional references (at times wildly inappropriate) come rushing in to fill the gaps in my own associational encyclopedia. Today was very much a baby day. I did the 01:45 nappy change and the 02:00 bottle feed, did the bathing part of the 09:00 bath, did the vacuuming and a mid-morning nappy change (the "autopsy table" nappy change mentioned above), then did the morning grocery shopping, then took a couple of trains to Kawasaki, where I spent a substantial chunk of the afternoon shopping at the big baby store called Akachan Honpo. (Akachan Honpo: JR Kawasaki station, go down the main stairs and turn right, walk across the plaza where all the illegally parked bicycles are parked, crosss the road, walk a little more and it's in the same building as OIOI ["Marui Marui"] on the eighth floor. I think registration is needed: you need to register and get one of their customer cards before they will sell to you.) And now it's late afternoon on a day which is as hot as summer, although we're still not yet finished with May, and I'm sitting at home (home alone this afternoon) watching the baby. Despite the stress and turmoil created by a very young baby, the creativity machine continues to function, and I've just lately come up with a song, sung to the tune of Freres Jacques: |
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We are drinking, We are drinking, Drinking milk, Drinking milk. Drinking in the morning! Drinking in the evening! Drinking milk! Drinking milk! |
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The behavioral patterns of young babies encourage the song-singing instinct - Music hath powers to calm the savage beast and all that.
Up until I came to Japan, I'd had very little to do with children. Pretty close to nothing, in fact. However, over the last few years I've done a certain amount of teaching at junior high shool (young teens), elementary school (ages six through to twelve), and even a little kindergarten teaching. This certainly means, at the very least, that I have a whole bunch of songs just ready to go, everything from Baa Baa Black Sheep to I'm a Little Tea Pot. Cornucopia is continuing to develop well. Verbally, she's now putting two or three sounds together in a conversational string, though none of these sounds seem to mean anything yet. On the muscular level, she's getting more control over her head, which she can now move from side to side. Put her over your shoulder to burp her and she, getting restive (the position is necessary, but she seems to find it uncomfortable) is now capable of suddenly jerking her head to one side, SLAM!!, with disconcerting force. Every day, baby Cornucopia reveals an amazing new and previously unsuspected capability! Sidebar: writing the above while home alone with baby involved, amongst other things, one bottle feed of one hundred milliliters, one nappy change for a soggy nappy, one additional bottle feed of sixty milliliters, one nappy change for an other-than-merely-soggy nappy, and one loving slam to the side of the head from baby (of the type described above). The basic fact about the new baby experience is that it is EXTREMELY time-consuming! But it is possible, at a pinch, to type away with baby Cornucopia happily nestled on my knees and with the laptop sitting on the sofa cushions off to one side. At a pinch. New Zealand English follows British English in calling a baby's sanitary wrapper a "nappy." In conversation, I tried the American word, "diaper," and was informed by a couple of North Americans of my acquaintance (one of them actually from the United States) that I was mispronouncing it. I was using the "dia" of "diagram," but I was informed that the "dia" of "diaper" has only one vowel sound (the "i" ["ie"] of the "die" of "death" to make "DIE-per".) However, I've just checked with The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, and it seems that "diaper" actually has two possible pronunciations, one being with "dia" as in "diagram," and the other being with "dia" said like the "die" of "death." Section 113 Entry 0002. Date: 2004 June 5 Saturday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) Monday, I finally found time to cut my toenails, which had been growing longer and longer, relentlessly, with no time in my schedule to do anything about it. There were other things to do, such as trimming back baby Cornucopia's talons, which she had been using to gouge million-microbe trenches in her face. Itchy, it seems. Earlier, when Cornucopia got restive and started jerking her head around when put in the burping position (the baby slung over an adult's shoulder) I thought this was because the position was intrinsically uncomfortable. But my wife's interpretation was that Cornucopia was taking the chance to scratch her face against the shoulder's clothing. The problem is we just don't know what is happening on planet Cornucopia, though efforts to develop communication are continuing, with the help of the fabric book, Mister Frog, New Friend (who is rather like one big wobbly head with a bell inside) and a three-composer mobile. Cornucopia is still at the one-syllable stage, and it's not clear what any of the syllables refer to. (In fact, I think it's just one and the same syllable, being recycled at odd intervals through the day.) In terms of locomotion, her kicking power has developed to the point that, one night, she locomoted herself right off her baby futon, so her head fell onto the tatami matting. She has also learnt how to stamp with frustrated rage with her right foot, though precisely what she has to be frustrated about is unclear. Itching, perhaps. Possibly prickly heat - here in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, we have recently endured some staggeringly hot midsummer-type weather. Anyway. Having a very young baby makes for a very busy life. However, Monday, as noted above, I found time to cut my toenails. Then, on Wednesday, I noticed that the fingernails of my right hand had also grown rather long. Yesterday, Friday, I finally found time to do something about that. Section 113 Entry 0003. Date: 2004 June 06 Sunday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) Today's culturally interesting experience is eating small dead dried flying fish. We routinely have in the house very little dead dried fish, which are a rich source of calcium - these can be bought from the supermarket. However, the small dead flying fish have been bought from some special outfit which delivers stuff to your house. They are individually packaged, each in its own sealed plastic bag, and they are pungent (smelly, in other words) and chewy. Section 113 Entry 0004. Date: 2004 June 11 Friday. (diary) (previous) (top) (bottom) (next) (topics) (contents) My baby daughter Cornucopia, less than two months of age, has definitely invented mobility. Her means of locomotion is not described in any of the textbooks I have to hand. It's an improvisational method of getting from A to B, and involves lying flat on your back and kicking with your feet until, by kick strength alone, you propel yourself right off your baby futon. Having done that, of course, you end up awkwardly sprawled, like something untidily abandoned by a baby snatcher caught in the act. The parents' two means of coping with this seem to be, logically, first, to lay Cornucopia down to sleep in the middle of the baby futon rather than up near the top end, to prolong the time it takes for her to kick her way off the end of the world. Second, to install a rampart of soft toys in the hope that these will block her progress. On the one hand, having a formidably athletic baby is undoubtedly preferable to the reverse. However, it does feel just a tiny bit unfair to have the child liberated into the arena of freedom (i.e. into the area of increased parental authority) which I had been explicitly assured, by someone with experience enough to know, that a young baby is not going anywhere, no way, because it's a helpless prisoner of gravity. |
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