Pausing for a brief note . . .

I'M CONVINCED everyone should blog. And also learn to use the tools provided to make their blogs fun to read and also fun to look at. So I'm tweaking the formatting of these blog entries to accomplish that. Yes, you have to learn a little HTML to do it, but it’s not that hard.

The soul emerges . . .

I MADE A COMMENT Sunday to a fellow church member that a great reason to be a parent is the privilege of “watching a soul emerge into the world”.

The phenomenon manifests itself in a child’s face from day to day. In the same manner that language is slowly refined, facial getsures become more and more refined, suggesting that behind that face the wheels are turning, and either consciously or unconsciously, a child learns to ‘act’ with their face.

Here’s a really simple case in point, and you can try this out yourself if you’re a new parent and keep some kind of diary: Take note of the times your child moves their eyes, or some other part of their face without moving their head.

I’ve realized that newborns and infants don’t have that much fine motor control inside their heads and faces, but over time, this too is learned and practiced. And I would submit that the thinking and reasoning process itself is similarly developed. What isn’t too clear to me is how one teaches their child to think.

Perhaps we teach them how to feel first.

Getting traction within fifty days

SO EASTER HAS come and gone, and as you might expect, church was packed yesterday. I can't help thinking to say, “You know, if you folks came every week we probably could have this sort of quality every week, not just at Easter.”

The time between Easter and Pentecost represents the time when force is being applied to the rails, but the train hasn't begun moving. Fifty days of no apparent result. I suppose Pentecost itself is the lurch that sometimes happens as the wheels begin to roll.

A full church on Easter is like all the wheels making good contact with the rails. Then as the weeks go by, stiction starts to become inconsistent. I think we did better than last year, since our regular population has increased. I suppose this super-early Easter is to a church’s advantage. Pentecost is also Mother’s Day, and how often does that happen? Great day for a child to say “I love you Mommy” for the first time.

We’ll see . . .

Is That a Cat On Your Subwoofer?

WE JUST TRACKED DOWN and published a lone response to my year-old entry here. The slightly dusty but well-crafted comment suggests that if happiness is a gift from above, how then to explain unhappiness? Depression?

I'm reminded of an observation made by Capt. Spock concerning Khan Noonien Singh:

“He is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.”

It is hard to be sure from where all human emotion originates.

I want to assert my belief that if God is not a person, then happiness is not an object to be given and then occasionally taken back, or revoked. There is no switch operated by an unseen hand. St. Augustine suggests that true happiness can only be attained by an awareness of the presence of a higher power. That prompts me to believe that happiness is always at hand. It is a matter of remembering one’s unceasing connection to and being part of all things visible and invisible, near and far, and past present, and future.

And by the way, at 22 months, Eleanor seems to understand the meaning of “happy”.

Under supervision . . .

. . . Eleanor is a regular viewer of PBS Kids (including Caillou), and we’ve got a Big Blue House video or two. I mention TV here only because, regardless of the medium’s shortcomings, it’s a way of maintaining what I might term “creative interaction” while Mommy’s away. The other thing about good TV seems to be the spectrum (or perhaps rainbow) of personality types depicted. This strikes me as “meta-educational” since it’s not primarily about this, but the natural tendency of a creation like “Sesame Street” is to present realistic personalities (even though the laws of nature are suspended when it comes to Muppets). Grover, Prairie Dawn, Cookie M., and, of course our daughter’s favorite, all lie on a realistic continuum of personality types that reflect her real-life experience.

You'll also be encouraged to know that she doesn't stare glassy-eyed at the screen, but absorbs the action, and regularly pauses to otherwise occupy herself, which I understand is good advice.


ttfn

Fast Forward to Month 23

ELEANOR Grace is now almost two. What a vocabulary! shoe, book, teetee (TV), maoo (cat), wash, hann (hand), noch (snow), mommy, daddy, no, yesh, mann (c'mon), joots (juice), baoo (bottle), and as marketers say, much much more (including "please" (very new) and "thank you" (fairly instinctive)). No one ever advised me that the process works this way:

1. Daughter develops own vocabulary / syntax / word order, and develops her own way of pronunciation. (A friend describes it as "Dutch"). She understands herself perfectly, but may be dimly aware that Mommy and Daddy aren't "from the same country".
   
2. When individual words/phrases are spoken, parent may or may not know what they refer to.
3. After a time, through context, parent learns to "translate", and provides linguistic/contextual feedback. Daughter confirms understanding with very cute smile and repetition of the formerly incomprehensible utterance. This completes the loop for that expression, and over time pronunciation can improve as the loop is reinforced.

This process became apparent to me with Eleanor’s utterance "mann", which I understood to mean "c'mon". I hadn't realized how often I used this contraction with her. However, "mann" can also mean "mine". So even for 22-month-old US English, context matters.


By the way, who knows what a mondegreen is?

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