Always Another Windmill

I signed onto weather.gov to check on the forecast for our weekend trip to New York City, and at the top of the page, I see a link to this: Sunspot is Harbinger of New Solar Cycle. Apparently solar physicists believe that a recent sunspot is the first of a new 11 year cycle of increased solar storms, with negative implications for GPS systems, cell phone networks, radio communications, and power grids.

Now that’s a forecast.  You don’t see 11 year solar weather forecasts on any of the lesser, knockoff weather sites.

Or perhaps, to borrow a line from the book in my last post on the subject, a very sleepy boy who will not sleep.  I thought I had found the sweet spot, and he certainly seems tired, right up to the point where we turn out the light.  We’ve tried moving things even earlier–Weirdbird had dinner ready tonight at 6:15, we were starting bedtime at 6:50.   No good.  I still end up lying next to hime, and then he starts singing quietly to himself. “Try to be quiet,” I say.  “Okay.”

A minute later, he’s playing a little breathing games, where he breathes in and out in rhthmic little puffs–probably singing another song to himself.  “Try to be quiet,” I say.  “Okay.”

A minute later, he’s tapping me lightly in rhythm with his toe. “Try to be still,” I say.  “Okay.”

Remix, replay, repeat.

Maybe this is just what he needs to do. I don’t really mind that.  What is driving me crazy is having to lie there next to him, for an hour to an hour and a half, while he does it. In the dark. With nothing else to do except notice every twitch, every noise, and wonder how long it will take for him to finally fall asleep this time.

Sometimes I can get away for a while, tell him I need to go check something, feed the dog, clean up in the kitchen, whatever. Tonight he’s not buying it, wants me to stay there with him.  I can’t.  I’m crawling out of my skin.  If I stay, I’m just going to end up yelling, making things worse.  I finally left, and he was upset about that for a little while, and then settled into moaning quietly to himself, and then more breathing games, and now, at last, I think he might be out.

So what I need, dear readers, is suggestions.  What could I do, in my head, in the dark, to keep myself occupied for up to an hour? Can’t take notes, can’t read, can’t listen to anything, can’t do anything that might be distracting to the falling asleep process. Tonight I worked on the first draft of this blog post.  Maybe I can keep that up.  But what else could I try? Some kind of contemplative practice? Topological transformations? Work out polyrhythms in weird time signatures?  Calculate the Fibonacci Sequence? Bonus points for suggestions with any kind of practical utility at all.

And I’ll work on not needing to be there the whole time.

Zag is all full of question these days, working hard to figure out how things work. The other night at dinner, after a thoughtful pause, he asked us:

“Do I come apart?”

From the Group News Blog, but bears repeating:

Approximate Total Voter Turnout (approximate): 356,000

Percentage of total vote:
24.5% Obama (D)
20.5% Edwards (D)
19.8% Clinton (D)
11.4% Huckabee (R)

Remember that the Democratic caucuses in Iowa are a much more of an ordeal and a bigger demand on time from caucusers.

3 posts in one night! A new record!

The whole bed time routine, start to finish, took under an hour tonight.

We went to brush teeth a little after 7.

I was out of the bedroom, with the boy sound asleep, a little before 8.

No fighting, no crying. I didn’t even have dinner ready for us until 6:50.

An hour later, he was asleep, and I was blogging. (more…)

Zag has, in the past month or so, moved from listening to songs and rhymes and stories to singing songs and retelling rhymes and stories himself–and also remixing them. It’s not always clear whether he’s doing the remixing on purpose, or if he’s just confusing two or more stories together. I’m inclined to think that at least sometimes, it’s on purpose. It hardly matters though–I love the results.

For example, he recently has been singing:

Humpty Dumpty came to town, riding on a pony
stuck a feather in hims hat and called in macarooooni!

Today at dinner he told me a much more complicated one (edited lightly for continuity):

Once upon a time there were three little bears. One day, thems mama told them to go out and build thems own houses. One little bear built hims house out of sticks, and one built hims out out of bricks, and one built hims house out of sticks and stones. One day a Bad Wolf came and knocked on the doors, and the three little bears said “Not by the hair of my chimmy chin chins!” Then the wolf said “then I huff and I puff and I blow the house down!” [blows for effect]. And he knocked down all the houses and the little bears ran away!

The End.

Now, obviously the core story here is the three little pigs, but he’s swapped out the pigs for the bears from Goldilocks, and tossed in a reference to “London Bridge is Falling Down” (in the construction materials)–something I’d love to see elaborated further in future retellings. And even the stones and bricks are powerless against this bad wolf, who is so bad that even three bears (admittedly, three little bears) run away from him.

Funnier still, they’ve been riffing on modern retellings of the three little pigs over on Making Light recently–some good stuff there to, go check it out, and we’ll update with more as Zag tells them.

Flavored wallpaper. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Zag is currently marching/dancing around the living room, beating on a tiny little drum I picked up for him in Uganda a couple years ago, and singing/shouting “laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping!” over and over. Every now and then, he stops and points at our creche and tells me how he is singing a song about Mamma Mary and Baby Geezus.

I always hated the song “The little drummer boy”–it just seems to exhude a certain victorian sentimentality, and a relatively poor sense of percussion. I tend to think that a lot of Christmas Carols are greatly improved by adding some light percussion, but generally speaking, “The little drummer boy” is best improved by not singing it at all.^* But watching Zag drum for the Holy Family is fun. Especially when he’s doing it to “What Child is this.”

“Carol” comes from a French or Latin word meaning a circle dance. Somewhere we lost that. But most of the ancient carols still have some dance left in them, and if you can dance to it, you can add some percussion to it. Maybe someday we’ll be at a church again where I can do that–and maybe Zag will help.

I also note that being in charge of Zag all day is a much much richer source of blogable material than being at work all day.

^*I have so far found two versions of the song–both purely instrumental–that are acceptable. One is the classic rendition by the Vince Guaraldi trio as done for the Charlie Brown Christmas special (Zag spent part of a day last week repeating “Bum, badadadum badadadum badadadum dum” quietly to himself). The other is the one done by North Carolina blues guitarist Cool John Ferguson.

So, after much anticipation, it’s finally here: the Graduate Ordination Exams (GOEs) began today, which means a certain amount of role reversal in our house over the next four days. Over the weekend, I cleared off my desk and set up an account on my computer for Weirdbird; she’s spending today through Saturday holed up in my office from 9-5, working on the exams, while I take care of Zag, try and get a little work in when I can, and cover various household upkeep–dishes, laundry, grocery shopping, etc.

Today started some time before 6 am. Zag has been waking up early for several days running. 7 am is our imagined ideal; 6:30 was unpleasant, but tolerable; 6 am, ok, we could reconcile, but now that it’s creeping still earlier, something will have to be done.

This morning, apparently, it was my fault.

(more…)