another cheap quote-n-link post.

I kind of suck at this daily posting thing.

(my daily conversation with myself: "Dude! I thought of the BEST THING to write about!!! (pause) ...what was it again? (pause)....well,crap."

but am trying to have reasonable goals. There are certain things in my life right now for which showing up at all is a decent discipline. Like this one.

So once again, I'll share something salient from some stranger's blog.

This is, I think, a defining aspect of my experience as a father who doesn't "work" but spends all day with his daughter. Every morning we select a mutually-agreeable destination, and I try to find something to do there that will interest her on one level and still engage me on another. It is as though all day I am of two minds, one on par with hers, aware of what she understands and enjoys and appreciates, and another ready to capitalize on every distraction, every second of silence, a second mind ready to wrestle with ideas and thoughts that may have nothing to do with my daughter but do engage my own curiosity. I usually don't like calling myself a stay-at-home dad (that connotes a sort of militancy I don't have the energy for). Instead I have become something of a professional daydreamer.

In doing this, I am never all that distant. But let's be honest: it doesn't take that much to keep a constantly-babbling 2-year old engaged. It's pretty much the same amount of engagement my law school professors expected (eye contact, head nods, and the occasional astute follow-up question). And toddlers, like law professors, are easily fooled. Sometimes you can just phone in this whole parenting thing, and man, they don't even know. I can have a full-on conversation about fairies or owls or fairies riding on owls, and at the same time I am trying to imagine what life is like for the fucked-up-looking guy we just passed walking down the street, or what that street looked like in 1926, or what an artist is trying to say with a particular work in front of me. And Juniper still believes I'm like this total expert on owls and fairies and shit. In her mind, I have a PhDs in Ornithology and Folklore Studies, specializing in Wee Folk/Owl relations.

That's a big chunk of text to lift, but I just love it. from the great sweet juniper, in a post which happens to be about taking your kid to art museums.

And also mention owls. World's Cutest Little Boy (because there's some awfully stiff competition for World's Cutest Baby, so I think mine should just step up to the next rung and leave that designation to the up-and-coming kids. It's the dignified thing to do.) As I was saying, WCLB is going through a period of owl fascination, because UnnnCKKKLLLE??? SCHANDYYYY??? brought over one of Andy Runton's Owly comics, and he loves loves loves it.