Sebastian’s Quiver

Sorry there hasn’t been any post lately.  I was in London on business for a week and hadn’t gotten around to posting anything.

A quick update, then.  Sebastian is as cute as ever.  We started him on solid (though mushy) foods a couple of weeks ago.  So far his favorites seem to be rice cereal and fresh peaches (cooked into a peachy mushy sauce).  He still isn’t crawling (forward), but he’s going backwards as fast as ever.  He’s still a horrible sleeper, though he seems to be getting slightly better.  He’s still teething, though he still doesn’t have any teeth.  We’re still reading War and Peace and we’re up to Chapter 10.  He loves dancing; it cracks him up.

If anyone is interested, I took some photos while I was in London.  They are here.

Without further ado, here are more Sebastian photos (the full set is on the photo blog):

Just a quick update while Sebastian is sitting and flailing about on the floor.  We have made it to page 50 of War and Peace and we are on Chapter 6.  Not bad!  Only 1400+ pages to go.  I’m looking at finishing it up sometime when Sebastian is in junior high school.

It’s video time!  Not much to report here in Portland.  No fancy trips to the mountains or the coast or the Gorge.  Sebastian is growing like a weed.  He’s heavier every day and his legs keep getting chubbier and chubbier.  He’s also teething a bit.  And grabbing at anything and everything.  I started reading Sebastian some Shakespearean sonnets and some Beowulf (translated - I’ll leave the Old English version to my elder sister). He’s also starting to scootch himself backwards when you put him on the floor.  He’s not quite ready to crawl, but he’s getting pretty darn close.

No photos today, but here is a short video of Sebastian that we took with my camera.  Juliann was the camera person.

Sebastian Laughing His Ass Off

Well, I hope you liked that interlude.  If that video didn’t work for you, well, what can I say - buy a Mac.

I apologize for the lack of updates for the past week or so.  I was out in San Francisco at Apple’s WWDC on business (I’ve been working on an iPhone application, so it actually was quite relevant).  So I’m now catching up on some photos that should have been posted this past weekend.  Some are of Sebastian, and some are of flora in our backyard.  Sorry, no wild trips deep in the back country this week, unless you count wading through masses of unhygenic, unkempt nerds with little self-respect a wild trip.

So, without further ado, here are the latest photos taken of Sebastian (all of which, I might add, were taken by Juliann except for the bath shot). As usual, check out the photoblog to see all the photos of Sebastian and the nature photos.

As you can see, Sebastian enjoys reading his book while sitting on the couch.

He also likes to take baths.  See how clean we keep him!

Watch Misha try and hog the spotlight (and the focus).

Flowers in our backyard.  Notice the primary colors of the flowers.

More flowers.  This time, secondary colors.

A double rainbow (look closely) seen from our back porch.  You might have to click on the photo to get the full size version to see the second rainbow.

I haven’t given any reading updates lately, plus it’s been about a week since I posted photos of the Great Outdoors, so I figured that I would do both.

Sebastian and I have been reading the classic Goodnight Moon most nights at bedtime.  He loves looking at the drawings and the more read it, the more he pays attention to it.  We’ve also been reading Lord Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon, which we just finished this evening.  It’s quite good; I recommend it to everyone.  Several weeks ago we also started reading War and Peace.  Yes, that War and Peace.  We got through Chapter 1, but we haven’t yet started Chapter 2.

Juliann, Sebastian and I loaded the car up on Sunday and headed out to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden.  This week’s trip was quite a bit closer than the previous few - it was a 15 minute drive to the park in Southeast Portland (we live in Northeast).  I expected it to be nice, but it was even nicer than I had expected.  It was different levels (all stroller/wheelchair accessible) with very nice bridges and waterfalls and great landscaping.  I heartily recommend it to anyone willing to pay $3 to spend an hour or so walking around some really beautiful rhododendrons and azaleas and other nice flowers and trees.  Sebastian stayed awake for the entire excursion and he enjoyed the brightly colored flowers and the wildlife and the ponds and waterfalls.

This past Thursday, one of my oldest and dearest friends just happened to be in Portland on business so we got together and hung out a bit.  I’m glad he got a chance to meet Sebastian (and vice versa).  We got a chance to eat some Thai food, drink some fancy beers (some too wheaty, some too stout) and talk about fatherhood and recommendation engines and Shanie and her sheets.  A grand time was had by all.

So here are some photos of various things.  As usual, please visit the photoblog to catch up on all the photos, the below which are just a sampling.

“Months and days are the wayfarers of a hundred generations, the years too, going and coming, are wanderers.”

So begins Oku no hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) by Matsuo Bashō. This is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, piece of prose poetry of all times (your opinion might vary). It is also what I finished reading to Sebastian this evening. I’ve been reading bits and pieces of it to him for the past month, usually one page at a time or so, but tonight he had an extra long active alert phase and I was able to get the rest of it in. Many of Bashō’s famous haikus came from this work. One of my favorites is:

stillness –
penetrating the rocks,
cicada’s cry

I know I talk about reading to Sebastian a lot; I’m not sure why. Maybe because there really isn’t that much other interesting interactions from day to day. Change his diaper? Check! Rock him to sleep? Check! I’m not sure how often you want to hear about the daily repetitive stuff. But with reading, there is some sort of connection. And there is the hope that somehow, something that I read him while he’s this young will make some sort of impact. Maybe a neuron somewhere will click on that will, some time in the far future, help him appreciate Bashō or Byron or Tennyson or Eliot just a little bit easier that he would otherwise. They say that it doesn’t matter what you read just as long as you read. The newspaper, the grocery list, the TV Guide. I refuse to believe that I read him the TV Guide it would have the same affect on him as if I read him Tennyson poetry.

We’ve been reading a lot of Shel Silverstein lately, but I’ve been hankering for something more than Ickle me, Pickle me, Tickle me, too.  I grabbed my book of Byron poetry, but decided against it.  I found Poe, so I read The Raven (sound familiar?), but that really isn’t the easiest poem to read aloud, believe it or not. I eventually stumbled upon my Collected Works of T.S. Eliot.  Success!  The first poem in the book?  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.  Perfect! Sebastian seemed to enjoy because as I came to the final line in the poem (”Till human voices wake us, and we drown”) he started to get antsy and cry.  I’ll chalk that up as a success.

Oh, and speaking of poetry…the February 2008 issue of National Geographic has an article on Matsuo Basho, my favorite poet (17th century haiku master).  Check it out on their website, or better yet, subscribe to the magazine.  Everyone should own a subscription to National Geographic.

Is the roof on fire? Nah, it’s just Sebastian getting ready to go to the pediatrician for the first time.

He passed the doctor’s visit with flying colors. She was quite impressed with the fact that he’s almost back up to his birth weight. He’s up to 9 lb 1 oz, so he’s ahead of schedule. (For those of you who don’t know, newborns typically lose up to 10% of their initial body weight within the first day or so of being born.)

You can’t see it in the photo, but he’s wearing his mathematical equation filled t-shirt. We’re trying to get him started early on all subjects, not just literature. Speaking of literature, he would NOT sit still this morning for the second half of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I don’t know what he was thinking - we were just getting to the good part last night when we had to cut it short for some reason.

One of the things that I looked forward to the most about being a dad was reading to my child. I imagined me reading all kinds of books to him, especially my childhood favorites like Dr Seuss and Richard Scarry. I also love shopping for books to read to him. Recently, I found these two children’s books:

Charlie Parker Plays Be Bop

Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum

Jazz *AND* reading!  Reading *ABOUT* jazz!  To children! Could anything be better?

Well, yes. After reading my son Hop on Pop last night while he was laying on my lap, I asked Juli to find my cool, antique book of Tennyson’s Collected Works. This book was published the year he died (1892) and is one of my very small collection of old books (most of them bought at the old Oxford Books). So she found it and I proceeded to read three poems: Lilian, Anabel, and Ulysses. It’s been a long time since I read poetry, and I think I know why: I wasn’t reading it out loud. There is something about poetry that just works better when reading it out loud. I am definitely going to be making this a part of my regular routine with the little guy. I read Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott this afternoon and he really liked it (it has a very nice cadence to it). I think I’m going to expand Sebastian’s range of authors. Maybe Lord Byron or Poe’s The Raven. Of course, I’ll also break out my huge collection of Basho poetry, but I think I’ll have to stick to his journals mostly since haiku really a bit short for this purpose.

jazz, reading