HEY HEY HEY!!!

it's somebody's birthday-

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNT MARGE!

beatrix was up at the crack of dawn today, and at first i didn't know why. then i realized it was because she was excited to wish her aunt marge a happy birthday. bebe isn't the greatest typist, but i let her have at it, and recorded her efforts with the built in camera:

ksh[ooklo,ll;psdfged
>?"kl;k;'fdkgfffff.;;';'ljhjhgfdxghgv

(she didn't type so much as bang her chubby little fists into the keyboard. but she did it with great enthusiasm, and a little drool. nothing says 'i love you' like a little drool...)

nonetheless, she was pretty happy with the end result. she sure loves her aunt marge :)

daddy loves her too. she's the best sister-in-law ever. big hug and smooch aunt marge!

AHHHHHHHH!

big picture post from the weekend coming up soon, but before that i have to share my first, official parental anxiety nightmare, which i had sunday night/monday morning:

it starts with the wife away on a "business trip" to london. i somehow decide i'm going to go meet up with her, so i'm at the airport in london and the subway is built right in. there's also a huge shopping mall i have to walk through to get to the outside where the trains are arriving. i finally make it out to where the trains are and i'm completely disorientated (as dream locales go, nothing beats a train station for representations of confusion, being lost, not knowing the way to go, feeling disconnected... whew). i'm trying to read the schedules to find out which train i need to get on, none of the trains are marked, there are no times posted, i'm feeling pressed for time and starting to get stressed... finally the train i need pulls in to the station and i try to get on. to do this, you have to walk through the door that opens and into a turnstyle. i say 'into' rather than 'through' because it's actually these two rotating gates (picture those big washer brushes at the carwash that run down the sides of your car, squeezing you through. or, um, a meat grinder? yikes) with metal arms that kind of push you through and into the train. only once i'm in this device, it stops, pinning me in between. i realize that this is when you pay your fare, and having paid, you're released the rest of the way into the train. i panic because i never got money. just when i'm thinking i'll be stuck, it rotates a little more and i'm able to squeeze through.

now i'm on the train, but i hear this far away noise, like a baby crying through the crackle of static. then i realize everyone is looking at me because the noise is coming from the baby monitor on my belt. cue anxiety and absolute distress. 'holy f__!' i think, my baby is thousands of miles away, and she's waking up from her nap and she's crying and I'M IN LONDON AND I'VE SOMEHOW LEFT HER HOME ALONE AND THERE IS NO WAY I WILL MAKE IT BACK TO HER ANYTIME SOON! I AM HOURS AWAY AT THE VERY LEAST AND MY POOR BABY IS ALL. BY. HERSELF. words really fail to describe, but if you're a parent i think you get the gist of this. if not, revert back to that dream you had where you realize you're at school naked, or something along those lines. sheer terror.

i call my sister jamie, who has been babysitting for us, but she says she can't get there anytime soon. for some reason i tell her i'm in california and she needs to get over to our house as soon as she can. one more loud squawk from the baby monitor, and then i'm awake, all chest pains and sweat. strangely enough, i never even got to the part where lb takes me apart for leaving our baby at home asleep while hopping on a plane to cross the atlantic. maybe if it had gone on a little longer...

it's on!

sad to see the sox bow out, but IT'S BASKETBALL SEASON AGAIN!

you could say that daddy is a little bit of a fan

...and so is someone else we know!

if you read mommy's blog, you all know that bebe and i have kept close tabs on the team in the pre-season and we're pretty excited to start it up. this time last year, we took bebe to her first b-ball game (in utero) when we watched (alongside auntie ash and uncle trev) the new-look celtics take on (and crush) the washington wizards at the new garden. this year daddy is going to watch the ring ceremony (did you know? they won the championship last year.) and banner raising at auntie ashley's house on the jumbo HD tv. and you know daddy will have his face pressed right up against the screen so he will be sure not to miss any tears that may appear in lebron james' eyes. there's a rumor he may not even watch the ceremony, and that makes sense. if you can't lose like a champion, you'll never win like a champion. sorry, lechump. beebs will likely sleep through it all, but her basketball life is just beginning. by next summer she'll be able to appreciate our back to back championships a little better...

WARNING!

the following post is not for small children. there are also no pictures of my daughter, only words and some vitriol. if this is not for you, come back later.






still here?



like lots of people, i do some of my best thinking in the shower. and also during complex neurosurgery. sometimes i just need to take my mind off of what i'm doing and focus on something else. and so there i am, washing and stuff, and i get to my bathing suit area and i'm reminded that zucchini is on sale at the supermarket and we should pick some up. just kidding, it's not on sale.

but then i'm also reminded of this story i read about during the dodgers-phillies series (which is now over and the dodgers lost. ha ha ha, suck it manny. you're a future hall of famer, one of the greatest hitters to blah blah blah and you're even an underrated fielder, but in spite of what you say you didn't try one-hundred percent every day, you didn't always give it your all, and you weren't always a happy and easy to get along with teammate. i was almost always laughing at you, not with you, and while i selfishly liked what you did for my team, i never really liked you as a player. i'm glad your season is over. love, josh. p.s. the sox didn't make it either, but not for lack of effort. we did the best we could with an average team age of fifteen. when masterson and lowrie get back to tenth grade the other kids are soooooo going to tease them) i know i'm supposed to be in the middle of a sentence here, but that was such a long parentheses that i'm just going to start over.

so there was this story about how the dodgers got commercials for kevin smith's new movie banned from the game broadcasts. for those of you who don't know, it's called "zack and miri make a porno." it's about two best friends/roomates who can't make ends meet (ahem) and decide they could make a lot of quick cash if they make a low budget porno. now, of course the movie is about their efforts to film this x-rated movie of theirs (not the actual filming of said movie), and somewhere along the way they realize that the person they've been looking for their whole lives has been beside them all the while. cue phil collins and that 'against all odds' song. i'm just making an educated guess here. you know with that title there's going to be a shift in the focus somewhere and people will see it and fall in love with the magic of storytelling and tell their friends something like "yeah, you should totally see it! it's not what you think it's going to be- i mean, they do make a porno, but it's really funny and there's a love story in there and it's sweet and... well, i don't want to ruin it for you, you should just totally go see it." then their curiosity will be piqued and they'll go and see it and the same magic will happen and they'll tell their friends all about it and word of mouth will make "zack and miri make a porno" the number one movie in america for 'x' straight weeks!

which will totally piss of the dude who complained to somebody willing to listen (there's always someone, it seems) that he didn't want to have to explain what a porno was to his little boy while watching america's favorite family past time. you know, the same family past time where, once the post season starts, the games are on so late that 'families' are asleep by the fourth inning and little boys and girls are tucked away in bed at an even earlier hour on school nights. the family past time that now a days little kids have to watch dvr'd and has an entire generation of fans who will grow up having never watched a complete world series live on television. stick that in your apple pie, america. we need to sell chevys and shaving cream and tickets to movies that may cause some actual parenting to happen. except of course in the dodgers' market area.

the gist of this, as i understand it, is that this protective father was not offended by what he and his son saw in the add itself, but rather by the fact that he was being asked to explain something he considered distasteful or challenging to his son. they're just trying to watch baseball, for crying out loud! leave them alone with your adult subject matter. any trailer or commercial I've seen (and I've now watched them all) has been one-hundred percent free of porn of any kind. even the red band trailer (this is an adults only trailer where you have to verify your age on the website, and swear that you're not lying, to be able to see it) is free of, shall we say, provocative physical episodes (for all you prudes out there). there's some swearing, and that's about as nasty as it gets. anyway, it happened like this:

during the game (no, I don't know which one. nobody watches the national league except for losers) one of the teams attempts a suicide squeeze. I'm super lazy and a terrible typist so I'm going to cut and paste from wikipedia here:

"In baseball, the squeeze play is a maneuver consisting of a sacrifice bunt with a runner on third base.[1] The batter bunts the ball, expecting to be thrown out at first base, but only after the runner on third base scores. A bunt can be attempted with two outs but it is uncommon because there is a significant chance that the batter would be thrown out at first base, ending the inning.
In a safety squeeze, the runner at third does not take off until the batter makes contact bunting, waiting for more certainty that the ball will go to a location from which it will be difficult for the fielding team to make an out at home plate.

In a suicide squeeze, the runner takes off as soon as the pitcher begins to throw the pitch, before releasing the ball. If properly executed, a play at homeplate is extremely unlikely. However, if the batter fails to make contact with the pitch, the runner is likely to be put out at homeplate (hence, "suicide"). Therefore, the suicide squeeze usually requires a skilled bunter who can make contact consistently, even on poor pitches."

got it? good. so the boy and his dad are sitting there and the suicide squeeze attempt takes place. the boy turns to his dad as they go to commercial and says "what's a suicide squeeze?" the dad explains the play as the first commercial ends, but oh, lurking there in the shadows of teevee land is the pervy commercial for zack and miri. the kid watches the commercial and turns to his dad and says, "what's a porno?"

now, I can't be sure what happened next, but I think it's safe to assume that the dad got all red in the face and knocked the bowl of popcorn or whatever off of the table. then he yelled at the kid like it was his fault and while the kid cleaned up the mess mr. uncomfortable called his congressperson to lodge a complaint of the most formal kind. eventually some members of the dodgers organization got offended and involved as well, and that led to this petition to get the commercials removed, which I think they were. and so, are you kidding me? I mean, that should never have happened in the first place. do you know how close that guy came to having to do some actual parenting? you know, the awkward, uncomfortable, often difficult education of one's offspring? thank god this kid can still go to school and find out what a porno is from someone else, or else he may never find out! and what if his next question had been "what's suicide?" thank god for the internet, that's all i'm gonna say.

even before i was a parent, and even before i was willing to be a parent, one of my greatest pet peeves was any parent's lack of parenting towards their children. i understand that you're busy. that you work. that you're a person too. you have needs of your own. sweet. if those needs greatly out weigh the level of attention you feel comfortable giving to your children, then don't have them in the first place. problem solved, swing on, swinger. otherwise, you are a parent. it is your job to keep your kids from falling out of windows. or from drowning in the bathtub, or anyplace else for that matter. it is your job and responsibility to teach them everything, or to at least fill in the gaps. this applies to all manner of things, easy or difficult, common or uncomfortable. there are no days off. they should not run around a restaurant screaming their little heads off until they fall down into something and you sue the place for having the nerve to set up tables for people to sit and eat at. they should know the difference between their inside voice and their outside voice. what kind of a world do we live in when eminem of all people tells us "apparently, some of you ain't parents."

smith was even forced to change the movie poster from a photo to two stick figures who (eerily and accurately) depict the stars of the film- seth rogen and (pittsfield's own!) elizabeth banks. and people are still upset. and by 'people' I mean simple minded assholes. they want billboards removed from the sides of highways because they're afraid that while their kids climb all over the place unseatbelted in the family car that they'll pause long enough from throwing flaming debris out the windows to look up and read the word "porno" on a billboard. next thing you know, they're asking questions. welllll, we can't have that.


How hard is it to explain what a porno is? Try this: A movie where Two or more people engage in the act of love used to create children, minus the love, the children, and plus some lube and groovy music (let the kids find out about solo action and gay porn on their own. There's no need to ruin all of life's surprises. that said, if the movie we were discussing had been called ron and larry make a porno, i would suggest altering the description slightly. i'd say 'lots of lube' instead). And if you don't feel like saying any of that, you've still got the option of appearing human and saying you don't know either, and what a funny world we live in where people, even parents and grown ups, don't know everything. wacky. no dad, I'm sure, wants to come off as soft to his kids, but pleading ignorance is a whole lot better than breaking something, blaming the kid, and punishing him or her to take the focus away from an awkward conversation.


it's sad and ironic that the one thing that human beings come by the easiest is also the one thing that requires the most work to do successfully.

with this in mind, i would like to suggest the creation and implementation of PAT, or, the Parental Aptitude Test, a set of carefully designed questions which would rule out those people who are not ready or capable to be parents, or who want a baby for the wrong reasons: folks who just want a little something of their own to love, but lose interest once it shows the ability to not love them back, people having a baby to save a marriage, people who want a baby, not an eventual grown human being... as well as the more obvious reasons, like organ harvesting, black market profiteering, and tax breaks. i mean, people are not having kids for the right reasons (though that tax break will be nice this year).

an even simpler system that already exists would be if you're not the type of people who would be granted adoption, then you shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. if you can't demonstrate some sanity, stability, sincerity, or at least a shit load of cash (in madonna's case) then maybe having a baby is not for you. no matter how much you just want one. if you don't pass the test to demonstrate a natural or learned ability to parent with some measure of competence, you're out of luck. and since some people don't test well, you can take prep courses and test until you pass. the wife and i always said how lucky we were to have the experience with small children/babies that we do. if some people knew what you had to give up or how hard it could be, there'd be a lot fewer people in the world. but there might be fewer screwed up and abandoned ones, too. maybe you'd be required to do an in-home observation of a family unit. the point, after all, is to get you to learn what you need to know, not keep you from reproducing. On second thought…

well

i guess since somebody's gotta pick up the pace while mommy's computer is being fixed, it will be me. i'm not promising daily updates so don't get crazy. i'll try my best to post with regularity until mommy's blog is back up and running. it seems like such a rite of passage as a blogger when you have to post that 'my computer/network/website/whatever is broken- be back soon' message. it's like she's all growd up. which is good, because she's somebody's mommy, for crying out loud. bebe's. bebe's mommy. oh, and here she is! these are some pics bebe and i took on our walk last weekend, trying out the furry sleeping bag type contraption. if you think sweaty baby feet are cute, this may be the thing for you. if you're uncle bayun, you'd say it's hella warm up in there.

she finds new ways to get cuter all the time. how about the mysterious look...

and a just a hint of little mouse tucked way down in there. dutch oven, anyone?

this last picture is hi-larious. for those not in the b-town know, our fair mayor, mumbles menino, has an anti graffiti task force that runs around busting people for spraying paint, when they should be busting people for spraying bullets. graff hasn't killed anyone (that i know of) except for that dude in the movie beat street, the tagger who has the baby on the way and chases the other evil tagger into the subway and then gets electrocuted. and really, that was electricity that killed him, not graffiti. so as far as i know, the score looks something like this:

deaths

bullets: billions

graffiti: none

so this is just the mayor's face, spray stenciled on to the side of a mailbox. it's awesome.

that's it for now, but there's more on the way. and if you've been interested in the photo blog, there's a bunch of new color polaroid stuff going up daily...

addendum: lb got her computer back so it looks like i'm off the hook- timely updates, my heiny! woo hoo...

mmm... metal.

me and the beebs spent saturday morning listening to the new metallica, called 'death magnetic.'

upon first listen, we weren't that impressed. we hadn't really been following the band over the course of its last couple releases. they kind of lost us in their whole band-in-rehab/therapy-movie soundtrack-anger metal-whatever phase.

before we got started, beebs expressed an interest in their prior records, to better evaluate this latest release. she listened carefully as i played her some tracks from the earlier, better albums. selections from 'kill 'em all' didn't do much for her, but when i played "for whom the bell tolls" and "creeping death" from 'ride the lightning' her little face lit up. that's my girl. she almost started air drumming! she could appreciate the somber tones of "fade to black" but its theme of desperation, depression, and suicide was lost on her. she doesn't have much angst, she's only three months old.

"when i'm upset, someone puts a boob in my mouth. how bad can life be?"

i thought about going in chronological order, but changed my mind at the last minute. 'master of puppets' comes before '...and justice for all,' but 'master' is probably the best album, and i wanted to save the best for last. how would the new album fare against their best material? i had also read how rick rubin, the producer for this record, had told the band when they started writing to imagine that 'master' had been their last album, and to write this new one as if it was a thematic sequel of sorts, and as if none of the other albums in between had existed. so we dove into '...and justice for all' and she couldn't believe the double bass drum action on some of the songs. she liked the opening song called "blackened," and "one" really got her attention.

by the time "the frayed ends of sanity" and "dyers eve" closed out the album, she was pretty impressed. speedy, loud, dramatic... what would she think of the 'black' album?

the 'black' album gets a tepid response.

compared to the complex arrangements and rapid delivery of 'justice,' she just wasn't that impressed with the more simplified delivery of the black album. it's definitely the most commercial of their albums. their producer for this record, bob rock (his real name) had asked them to tone things down and write material that was a little more straightforward than the last album. when you play ten-minute long songs at one-thousand miles per hour, how do you follow that up? in bob's opinion, the band had to get back to basics. true, there are some good, heavy, driving songs, but compared to the earlier records, this one doesn't seem to fit as well. still, it does sound really nice through the headphones. the mix is great and balanced and there's equal parts crunch and whine, but nothing to make the older folks squeal in terror. it was a premonition of the material to come for the next few years and i took a break from the band during those years, but maybe beatrix can introduce me to the stuff she likes if she ever decides to give it a listen.

so now it was time to give 'master of puppets' a listen. it's funny to think that bebe will never know the a side/b side way of listening to music. a lot of bands designed the order of their songs around this idea, and it definitely changes the way you 'hear' an album. when you play live music, you generally order your set as a kind of wave- you want something catchy, fun, and loud in front to get people's attention. two or three of those in a row and you may want to slide back into something a little softer or slower, and then from the middle of your set build that momentum back up with increasingly faster/louder/funner stuff, until the last song, a.k.a. your big finale.

in the early days of cassette tapes and vinyl, a band had to design its record as if it was two performances. two of the most successful ways to go about this are what i would call the 'set list' way, and the 'day/night' way. there's a third way which is to ignore the concept all together and place the material as if there would be no pause in the middle. early beatles records have this kind of feel, and because the songs were close enough in tempo and length, the method works fine for those records.

but if you have more varied material, say, eight up-tempo songs and two ballads, you'd want to place those ballads strategically in the line-up. you don't want them back to back because it will kill the momentum of the record. nor would you want to put one at the end of side a, and then at the start of side b. while technically separated by the side switch, they may as well be back to back- it's the same result. but using the set list method, you could open strong with four of the up-tempo songs, finishing the side with a ballad, as long as you started the second side with something up-tempo again. then you could throw that other ballad in second to last, and still finish the record with your big finale.

day/night works well if you have groups of songs that are thematically linked, or your material is split pretty evenly between fast/loud and slow/quiet. you don't want your album to yo-yo up and down alternating from fast to slow. it's hard to get into it that way and sounds like crap. i'm a believer in opening strong, so i'd place the up-tempo stuff on the first side, and make the second side the moodier, slower, side. day and night. a great example of this would be 'ritual de lo habitual' by the band jane's addiction. the first side is loud, fun, and fast, while the second side is almost cinematic in its structure, provided the film is foreign, the cinematography is saturated, and the story is bleak but with a happy or bittersweet ending. from an artistic standpoint i like thinking about albums in this way, especially in contrast to pop radio's idea of a 'single' or album of 'singles,' where the hooks follow each other in a line but otherwise remain isolated from one another. fortunately, when albums are designed as set lists or day/night, they transfer pretty well to the cd or mp3 playlist. they are, after all, two sides of the same album. they should still flow and relate, regardless of whether or not they're split down the middle.

this brings up an interesting side note: due to the technical limitations of vinyl and tape, the length of songs could also determine their placement in the mix. because each side has to occupy roughly the same amount of physical space as the other (you can't have one side of an lp be larger in area than the other, for instance), songs would have to be split up so that they would all fit on the same record or tape. i'm sure artists thought about this as they recorded their albums, and i wonder how many albums we all know and love would change in landscape if the artists were allowed to go back and re-order the songs in the way they originally thought of them...

where were we? oh, master of puppets:

master feels like a set list set-up. starts fast and heavy with "battery," moves into the title track with less speed, but no less intensity. starts to slow it down a little with "the thing that should not be," illustrating perfectly the slow and heavy method and begs the question- is it better to be push, push, pushed out of control towards the end of the song, flailing wildly and grasping for anything to slow you down, or is it better to be dragged, one heavy beat at a time, over all manner of obstacle, before being dropped into the dust? i know, they both sound great to me. in the old days, this side of the album would end with "welcome home (sanitarium)," a song that starts out with almost a metal-ballad feel, before slowly ramping up to full speed and ending the side with a crash. it's one of their best songs. after it ends we'd be left with a little tape hiss or vinyl scritchyness, but in the day of the mp3 there's nary a break before we're plunged into the mid-tempo intro to "disposable heroes," the first track of the second set, or side. i paused after 'sanitarium' just to let it all sink into bebe's little brain. she seemd frozen with anticipation, no idea what could possibly follow that. ah, but we were only half way through!

"i think i just pee'd my pants." me too, beebs!

she gets into the lyrics of "the thing that should not be." her favorite is the HP Lovecraft quote:

"not dead which eternal lie

stranger eons, death may die."

i love this kid.

"i think i just un-pee'd my pants."
that's the power of metal, bebe. that's the power of metal.

the whole second "side" builds towards a wicked finish. "disposable heroes" starts with a simple mid-tempo chord progression that switches to light speed without warning. this song is a great example of what helped metallica stand out from its contemporaries. they've got everyone playing at different tempos but gelling seamlessly. the drums play medium tempo while the guitar chords play slowly, each strum rings out, sustaining endlessly, and the second guitar strums staccato over that while the vocals work an alternate cadence that acts as a suture tying everything together. whew. from there we move into "leper messiah," an even tempo song along the same lines as "the thing that should not be," only more consistent and even all the way through. after that we hear "orion," an instrumental track. they've got one on every album, and this one is easily the best of them all: it's fast, it's slow, it's heavy, it's light. less filling and great tasting. the last track is the blistering "damage incorporated" (i so totally don't get to talk like a metal head, ever. blistering. i love it) and it ends the album with speed, bile, and pure wickedness. it leaves you stunned, not sure of what just happened or where you left your car keys. it's awesome. i was happy to see that bebe agreed, and she even spit up a little when it was all over. you can't buy an endorsement like that.

when it was all done, she was speechless. also, she needed a diaper change after all.

i don't suppose it's actually fair to judge the new album after so closely experiencing the masterpiece of puppets (heh), and we probably should have waited a week or so since it was bebe's first time hearing any of it, but that's not what we came here to do, dammit. so we plunged forward into death magnetic, and the reviews are mixed. we actually listened twice since first impressions are tricky. i like to listen once, give it a day, then listen again. it's always a good sign if halfway between the first listen and the second listen you find yourself humming parts of songs you've only just heard. sure enough, saturday night as i passed by the gymini, i heard beatrix humming parts of 'the day that never comes' while she swatted the giraffe and pulled on the parrot's wings. we agreed, upon second listen, that the first half of the album is better than the second half. if it were me, i'd prefer that the middle suck. that way people will listen through it to get to the strong finish. as 'death magnetic' goes, we'll probably be turning it off halfway through, except every once in a while.

you can tell she's really giving it a good listen...

trying to be objective- there are some high points

...and some low points.

as far as other albums out there right now, we'd give it a b+. compared to other metallica albums it's more like a b- or c+ at best. good work beebs. what should we listen to next weekend?

saturday's trip to pumpkin fest '08

saturday morning mommy surprised me and suggested we go downtown for the annual pumpkin fest at city hall plaza. i said yes immediately- mommy never suggests we leave the house, for anything. actually, i shouldn't say that. she does make suggestions, but her follow-through is a little on the lean side. so mostly i say yes because in all probability it will never happen anyway and this makes me appear to be enthusiastic and agreeable without actually having to do whatever it is we're talking about. but this actually sounded like a fun idea and i don't get to hang around the city as much as i used to thanks to this loser kid we have now:

she just screams 'enthusiasm!'

as i've mentioned, we live in a particularly wooded part of the city. as we walked to the train we could see some of the fall foliage just beginning to turn colors. i explained to bebe that soon they would not be pretty anymore, but would become brown and wrinkled and old, and then fall to the ground dead, just like human beings do.

when it comes to riding the subway, beebs is a champ. she just kicks back and sleeps he whole way.

pumpkin fest was full, but not as full as i had thought it would be. it was a little on the chilly side, really the first fall-feeling day we've had so far. when the sun was out it was nice, but the clouds kept us shivering. still, there were a lot of carved pumpkins on display.

if i was a bird i could have totally pooped on mommy in this picture. just sayin'.

the pyramid o'pumpkins.

once the pyramid was full, they started lining the jack o'lanterns along the steps.

it was pretty cool to see how many different ways they had all been carved.

mommy takes in the sea of orange. there's never been quite the smell of pumpkin guts in the air as there was on that day.

oh, you're up! wanna' get out of there and check these out?

even missing their insides, some of these guys probably weighed more than beatrix.

okay, i'll check it out...

i'm not what you would call a big 'family activity' advocate. my idea of family time involves staying inside and keeping strange people the hell away from my house. still, it's nice that there are things like this going on in the city that allow for people with little kids to go out and stab giant vegetables with sharp objects. the fact that you fill them with fire at the end of the ritual is also not lost on me. halloween is probably one of my favorite holidays. it's too bad that to really enjoy it you have to be inspired to pick/create a costume and then interact with like-minded humans in some festive, party-like atmosphere. call me old-fashioned, but i prefer human sacrifices under the cover of darkness with some goat's blood thrown in for good measure. but now that i have beatrix, i feel like i could be motivated enough to put together some great ensembles. my c3po to her r2d2, with mommy as darth maul (her choice), or maybe my luke skywalker to her yoda a la the empire strikes back training scenes on dagobah. she'd look pretty cute in some pointy green ears, and by the time she's big enough to wear the costume she'll be talking like yoda anyway...

strapping on the baby-

locked and loaded. it's like being a cuteness suicide bomber. and she's got a short fuse, let me tell you.

no sooner does one strap her on, when you're level of approachability increases ten-fold. that is, until people realize that just by being in close proximity of the cuteness blast radius, they too are made cute to a level most are simply not comfortable with.

notice the wide berth she's being given? people can't stand to get too close, because eventually they'll leave the comfortable influence of her glow and go back to being their ugly old selves.

you want the cute? you can't handle the cute!

sorry for that.

one thing bebe was not crazy about was the sun in her eyes. our little vampire prefers the shadows, bless her little heart.

when it was time to head home, we walked back through the public garden, where we tested the puratanical ethics of this fine state we live in by engaging in that most wicked of social taboos- breast feeding in public! seriously, public drunkenness is tolerated, but a mother can't provide necessary life giving nourishment to her child without being scolded and looked down upon?

we did okay i think. nobody really noticed or seemed to care.

that is until this crowd started to gather around us.

and then this pervy old lady showed up. just kidding, she schlepped on past, minding her old lady business.

mmmm, mid burp!

for all you profile lovers out there, i give you the greatest nose ever to sit firmly upon a human face, and right in the middle, no less. and because i'm feeling generous, two-thirds of ear perfection. the cheek just happened to be there at the time. you're welcome.

we walked up boylston to back bay...

where we hoped bebe would take a little nap on the way home.

yes!

'i can hear you guys, you know....' damn.

but in the end, we won out and she snoozed for just a little bit.

to punish her for her lack of quality nap time, we rolled out the bumbo. you will sit, my pretty. you will sit... and, uh... sit. mwaahahahahahahahahaha!

this contraption still feels obscene to me. it's just weird and she doesn't quite get it yet. and i know it sort of looks like she's falling forward in an uncontrolled way, but this is not the case, i assure you. she apparently felt she could really get to licking her kneecaps in this thing. go figure.

she had no problems whatsover straightening up when she wanted to. she just didn't want to all that often.

like her auntie ashley, she loves to rub her little hands together, no doubt plotting her revenge...

someday, bumbo. someday you will pay for all of this sitting...