Following my previous claim of lowering the censor sensors on my posts I will now initiate another stream of consciousness core dump. Prepare for a ride on my rusty train of thought, including unscheduled stops and derailments. Non-sequiters and inside jokes & references are par for the course.
All Aboard…
I’m home as Mr. Mom today while Emily is off with friends from the school she use to teach at doing scrapbooking session. Owen got up from his nap about 45 minutes ago, which was about 1/2 hour earlier than i expected him to. He’s been pretty mellow since getting up, seeming quite content to play with a small flashlight I gave him. Note to any other new parents out there… Great gift for a one year old = a small light flashlight that wont hurt when they drop it on their face but is bright enough to put a spot on nearby walls and objects. You can literally see the gears turn in his head as he realizes that the dot on the wall is moving in synchronicity with the object in his hand.
One funny note just now, if you go to the url I linked above for Emily’s school it’s one of those sites where someone “brilliantly” put a sound file that auto plays when you go to the site. I don’t know my bird calls but I think it’s a loon call or something. So I hit that URL to cut & paste it in here and of course the loon call plays at full volume. Owen, nearby, makes a gurgling shrieking noise right after it’s done that is eerily similar to the bird call. Is it mimicing or is it coincedence? Not really sure, but I like to believe he felt so moved by the loon call as to respond. I just reloaded it and he did make a response noise again but this time it was more his normal ‘Ahh OOO WEE!” battle cry, ala the Tick’s ‘SPOON!‘. Note to self, get recordings of Owen’s babble speech before he starts saying real words.
So he just shifted from content curious & quiet baby to fussy needy drooly babe. It’s 3 PM so I guessed this was because it was because he was hungry so we’re on the couch chowing Veggie Stix now. This also means i am typing with one hand so this entry just got alot shorter.
Musical goal – After tootling on harmonicas for …hmm.. 17 years (wow!) I finally found a song I really want to play in ‘cross harp’. While driving to work listening to WERU last wednesday morning they played a really fun bluesy version on “Oh when the saints go marching in” on the harmonica. Afterwords I grabbed my harmonica (yes i usually have one handy, shh) and tried to play that song in the same style. Damned if I didn’t have to bend a note to play it right.. crap. I can bend notes fine, but knowing when to bend one to do a blues scale has always eluded me, and I’ve never really tried to do a song I ‘know’ in a blues style, usually it’s just blues solos which I can fake tolerably. I can also play this song and just about anything I can whistle in ‘straight harp’. So now I need to work on bending the note for the 2nd “IN” (as in ‘marching in). Have been looking for ‘cross harp tab’ on the web but no luck yet, but it doesn’t really matter since I know what I need to do here, it’s just a matter of learning to do it consistently.
Exciting reading so far? I finally cut Owen off the Veggie Stix, we’d had enough. Of course stopping eating something while it’s still there isn’t really in his thought process these days (ahh.. that’s ma boy!) so I had to hide the bag and give him a water bottle with a straw to distract him. 0f course now he’s soaked.. keeping water in the mouth is also a skill on the ‘to do list’
So i’m gonna go dry the babe and keep him entertained. More later..