Listening to Stevie Wonder, if you know what I mean

I mentioned that Pete had started to like the Stevie Wonder song "Supersitition." For a while, we could convince him to go along with a diaper change by conflating the changing table experience with listening to Superstition, which was cued up on the stereo in the nursery. Noting the need for a new diaper, we would say, "Hey, Pete! Do you want to go listen to Stevie Wonder?"

Perhaps you see where this is going. "Listening to Stevie Wonder" is now an established euphemism for the process that leads babies to diaper changes, as in, "I just have to listen to Stevie Wonder, and then I'll be ready to go."

Sadly, due to the diaper rash caused by a stomach bug, listening to Stevie Wonder is now horribly painful for Pete. It's hard to watch, like the kidney stone episode of Deadwood.

With emphasis

Notes from two alums, Erin and Elena, suggested that they always think of Pete's name with an exclamation point at the end: Pete! This made me realize that we do indeed, almost always, address Pete as Pete! As in,

Hello, Pete!
Good job, Pete!
Pete! Do you see the tractor?
PETE! WE DO NOT HIT THE CATS!
That's right, Pete! Gentle! Gentle with the cats!

And so forth until

Good night, Pete!

Incompetence

Dialogue from today:

Erik: Pete, can you say "octopus"?
Pete: op-ti!
Erik: Yes, octopus!
Carolyn: Pete, you say "octopus" like a pro.
Erik [aside to Carolyn]: Not really. More like a summer leaguer. He actually says it worse than almost anyone I know.
Carolyn [aside to Erik]: To be fair, we haven't heard a lot of the people we know say "octopus." Some of them might have a problem with it.
Erik [aside to Carolyn]: They'd have to say it really badly.

Shaking with excitement

From Carolyn:

Saturday morning, I bought Pete a very cute book about a young cat who has to go to the doctor because he has hurt his tail. He's apprehensive about the doctor, but everything goes well, and at the end of the appointment, the doctor says to him, "Shake," and he responds "Shake." The illustration shows them shaking hands. Pete seemed to be following the story more than he does with most books, and tonight, when I read that page, Pete stuck his right hand out in the air and shook it up and down. People have shook his hands before, but he's never really seemed to get it. And now suddenly, he gets it. He got up from my lap, turned towards me, and held out his right hand to shake hands several times.

So we ran up and showed Papa, and came back down and read the page several more times, and then throughout the evening he or one of us would hold out our hands and instigate shaking. Finally, as I was putting him in his crib, he and I were switching between shaking hands and giving kisses and giving hugs. Then he looked down at his hands, paused for a moment, and then gently shook his own hand.

Oh, my God, he is so adorable.

Jumbo things, such as dogs and trons

We've been busy. We had a busy but lovely trip to Milwaukee to see my brother's family and have our annual reunion with some of my college friends. We saw a bit of Summerfest and a thriller of a Reds-Brewers game on July 3rd, during which Pete pounded down most of a stadium dog and made the Jumbotron during the seventh-inning stretch. It's a busy work time for Carolyn and me, in different ways, but the weather is helping us have a little fun with summer as it all goes along.

We don't like admitting we frequent this place, but ...

From Carolyn:

After a trip to the zoo in Des Moines, we took Pete to Jordan Creek Mall, which has completely won me over by having the best baby/family care bathroom facilities I have ever seen. They also have a play area for kids--a slightly-depressed circle in the middle of the mall with a spongy floor and lots of structures kids can climb on and over. Pete loved being here. I was trying to work on my dissertation in the food court, but Erik reported that Pete got more and more tired there until he was repeatedly falling down with clumsy exhaustion. Finally he gave up and just lay on the ground, giggling.

Superstitious Pete

Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" was already one of my favorite pop songs, but this version, performed on Sesame Street, is even better than the standard. It lets you hear and sometimes see the way the band is building up the riffs behind Stevie (some planned, some not), and just when you think it's over, there's an astounding, vamping sort of shout chorus*. Incredible, in the same way as are the best extended versions on James Brown's live albums.

Spring and Easter photos

Here are the Petey pix from the Spring, including Easter in Davenport with both sides of his family.

Pete Art #7

Pete art mommy.jpg
Originally uploaded by Childe_Erik.

Greeting Card
2006
Peter Simpson, 2005- [and studio]
Mixed media

This piece echoes the use of pre-fabricated children's heart stickers in Valentine. Here the stickers attach a found object to the work: a four-line, jingling poem seemingly narrated by a small child to its "Mommy." The hue of the handprint varies, its lighter shades suggesting the simple pink of the child's card hinted at in the poem, its darker shades approaching the color of blood. The babyish innocence of the handprint is belied by the grotesque dislocation of the thumb and by the eight-foot height of the hand in the displayed piece, a signal that the "hands [that] were once so tiny" have expanded colossally and unexpectedly out of control.

Under the Table

From Carolyn--

Pete's new favorite place in the house is under the dining room table. He likes to go there to be chased and caught and tickled and kissed. You can tell he's heading under the table because he gets over-excited: breathing audibly and crowing with anticipation. He puts up a pretense of hurrying to get away, but he so clearly can't wait for me to catch up to him. The time I will spend under the dining room table in 2006 will far surpass the time I have spent there in previous years.

Wookie

From Carolyn--

Pete was tired after daycare today, and he kept making a sound like a small, high-pitched, grumpy wookie.

Parental expectations

I think, on the whole, I do a pretty good job of limiting my vicarious ambitions for my son. I'll let him do what he wants to do. But I have to say, it would be awfully cool if he could learn to do this. Or this. But the choice between the two is his alone.

Anthropological linguistics

It's been interesting to see ways in which Pete's language acquisition takes unexpected turns. Last week, he was bending his head sideways whenever we read a book's page that said, "A train runs across this track." It took us a while to figure out that he was hearing "track" and "neck" (of another book's "bend my neck") as the same word. He separates them now. And sometimes his metonymies are strikingly clear: he saw the big wooden cross at church and immediately made his sign for "fan," and as soon as he learned a sign for "train," he explored how well it worked for other big wheeled things such as trucks. And he started calling me "baba" (for "papa") a while ago. When he figured out that he could use "baba" to mean himself ("baby"), that meaning took over. Forget papa! But now, there's a fascinating confusion between the meanings. For instance, if he's downstairs with Carolyn and hears me upstairs, he'll listen, point to himself, and say, "baba?" I've heard that other male babies use the same name for themselves and their fathers, too, even when the same isn't so similar to "baby." Hmm.

Kisses

From Carolyn--

Pete kisses! Best Baby Ever.

He's been making kissing sounds in the appropriate places in a song he likes that involves a baby being kissed, but this evening he started making kissing noises out of the blue, and when I made one back, he leaned in and kissed me! (Well, smashed his lips against my mouth sort of awkwardly, but intentionally and very fondly.) It's the greatest thing. And when I put him into his crib right now, he was back at it. Kiss, kiss, kiss. I may never go to work again.

Train sounds

Did you know that your brain makes repetitive sounds appear quieter if you don't attach emotional significance to them, louder if you do? When we moved to Grinnell almost five years ago, I couldn't believe how loud the train horns were. I didn't care about them one way or the other, though, so they started to sound softer and softer until I almost never noticed them at all. Now, Pete is obsessed with trains, and I think that's great, so if I hear one approaching, I'll try to scoop him up and go see it. And quite suddenly, the horns have gotten dramatically louder. The brain just fries my chicken.

Pete Art #6

Pete art wax.jpg
Originally uploaded by Childe_Erik.

Wax
2006
Peter Simpson, 2005-
Wax on wood fiber

This piece, unfortunately, does not translate to digital media as well as some of the others because it is primarily an exploration of texture, of the different strokes produced by varying applications of colored wax on pressed wood fibers. Seen in person, this piece is one of my most topographical works.

Pete Art #5

Pete art blue green.jpg
Originally uploaded by Childe_Erik.

Blue in Green
2006
Peter Simpson, 2005-
Watercolor on wood fiber

The title of this piece is, of course, an homage to the legendary Miles Davis album, and I had in mind particularly Bill Evans's piano solo on the title track. The chromatics of the piece evoke grass and water, and the form hints at the figure of an animal. The style attempts to echo Evans's spare elegance, and the wrinkled canvas in the top right quadrant of the piece suggests one of the tone clusters Evans deploys so artfully.

Silly circles

Over the weekend, Pete learned from his month-older cousin Blake 1) the sign for "bird" (thumb and forefinger in repeated pinching motion)--there was a great moment when two birds flew close by and the two babies looked up and did the bird sign together, 2) the ritual of "silly circles," or spinning around in one's living room, and 3) the sound a monkey makes. Blake learned "uh-oh" from Pete. Both kids start with what they know, so Pete's monkey sounds a lot like his uh-oh so far, and Blake has a chimp-like uh-oh.

Now that he can walk, Pete is bonkers about going outside. He picks up a coat or keys or his sunhat, walks to the door, and says, "bye-bye." He didn't like the hat until he figured out that he only wears it on walks. Now he puts it on himself to push us to take him exploring.

Crash, Bang, Boom

From Carolyn--

Pete's favorite book at the moment is one that is just a lot of different noises. It's one I loved when I was little, called Crash, Bang, Boom. My mother hated it, so she thinks I'm getting my commupance having to read it over and over. Pete is also fond of Noisy Barn which involves lots of animal noises. And he now sticks out his tongue when we open a book consisting of baby photos to a page with a baby sticking his tongue out. He then looks to make sure I'm sticking out my tongue, too.

Little man on campus

From Carolyn--

Pete and I have been taking advantage of the amazing weather and taking walks on campus in the early evenings. Erik and I started doing this over break (when it was finally warm enough), but campus was pretty desolate. Pete is loving seeing people and exploring. He's oddly obsessed with the Harris Center (including the disco balls hanging from the ceiling of the concert hall) and game for any flight of stairs that he can find. If you're out playing wiffle ball or catch and hear a little voice saying "ba[ll]?? ba[ll]?? ba[ll]??" over and over, it's probably Pete.