Sunday afternoon it was a little cloudy and threatening rain, so we mostly hung around the house. But before we went out for dinner, Juliette and I decided to take Jason to Lake Miramar so he could look at the ducks. I took a few snaps of the lake:

Jason has never been much of a morning person. He comes by it honestly, of course—I can be a bit of a bear for the first few minutes after getting up, as well. Anyway, it was no big surprise this morning that he threw a little fit when I put him in his booster seat. Based on past experience, I might have expected a tantrum due to having served him the wrong food, or his mother leaving the room, or just being too tired. Were any of those the reason this morning? Nope. This morning he was angry because I wouldn't let him bring a book to the table.

(Here I'd just like to pause a moment and reflect on how difficult it is to write efficiently when the Olympics are on. The last paragraph took me half an hour to compose.)

Now, parenting has brought me a number of unexpected experiences. I find myself saying and doing things all the time that I never thought I would. But I honestly never thought I'd have a problem with my son reading too much. I mean, you want your kid to be a good reader, right? But lately it seems like all Jason wants to do is read constantly.

Of course, by "read" I don't really mean that he can understand the words. But he loves to sit and turn the pages and examine the pictures, shouting out the names of everything on the page. He's even started to memorize some of the ones that we've read to him. In any case, that's what he wants to be doing all the time. Well, that and watch Sesame Street.

And that's fine. I mean, it's great. I love that he loves books. The problem is that it's getting in the way of other, necessary activities. Like eating. Jason has never been the best eater, and now when he's distracted by a book it can be quite an ordeal to get him to pay attention to his meal. Not to mention that Jason's hands get absolutely filthy when he eats, and he has no aversion to smearing food on anything he can get his fingers on. The table, for example, or his hair, or, of course, books.

We've been consistent about not letting him bring his books to the table, so it's just a matter of time until he gets used to it. In the mean time, I expect this will get on my nerves. All things considered, though, this is a pretty good problem to have.

Before Jason was born, when Juliette was pregnant, I would try to imagine him at different stages of his life—as a newborn, a toddler, a teen. Actually, I still do that a lot. Anyway, when I'd think of him at the age he is now, I'd usually include some kind of security item in the picture. Maybe he'd be clutching a blanket as he followed me down the hall after a nap, or dragging a stuffed animal all around the house as we played in the afternoon. Now, I knew that different kids form attachments with different items, but in all my imagining I never stumbled upon what he actually loves to carry with him everywhere: his water cup.

Oddly, it's not a particular cup that he's attached to. We probably have eight or ten sippy cups and any of them will do. And he doesn't have to actually have it in his hands at all times—often while he's playing he'll leave it on the floor in one room while he runs around in circles in another room. But he always has to have access to one of those cups. If I pick up a half-full cup from the living room floor and put it up on the kitchen counter, as soon as he notices, Jason will stand under it, pointing at it and asking for it until he gets it. And if I don't get it to him fast enough, he'll start whining or sometimes even full-out crying. For at least a month now he's even been taking a cup to bed with him.

Actually, these days his crib is getting a little crowded. We always left a couple of small stuffed animals in there with him, even though he never showed much interest in them. And, of course, he's had blankets since he learned to flip himself over, even though he still hasn't really learned how to sleep underneath them. And there's the cup. In the past few weeks he's started taking books to bed with him as well. It started out as just one book, whichever one we read to him before bed. Now there are a few books that just stay in bed all the time. As I'm writing this (he's been asleep now for a couple of hours) he has with him 3 blankets, 4 stuffed animals, 5 books, and his water cup, the latter of which is clutched in his arms.

It's funny, I remember taking books to bed when I was younger and reading until I fell asleep, and I figured that Jason might do the same. I just thought it would start a little later. But tonight after we put him down, as we were making dinner, Juliette and I could hear him happily squealing and shouting "quack quack!" (actually more like "cuck cuck") as he flipped through the book with ducks in it.

Come to think of it, ducks are his favorite animal now. I bet if we got him a duck toy he might switch over to that. Still, it's pretty adorable to see him asleep cradling his cup or snuggling up to a book.

I keep a little list in my phone's notepad of things I'm going to write about. Every time Jason does something I find interesting or amusing, or on the rare occasions that I have a thought of my own, I jot it down in that list. Over the past six weeks, the list has been steadily growing. So, in an effort to get a little caught up, I thought I'd condense things a bit and just give you the short versions of a bunch of those list items all at once. Thus, some facts about Jason:

• Jason answers just about every question with "no." "Do you want a snack, buddy?" "No" (as he reaches for the crackers on the counter). "Did you have a good day today?" "No." "Do you like the dog?" "No." "Am I asking you a question?" "No."
  
• Jason seldom walks. If he needs to get somewhere, he runs. In that respect, he's a bit like a young Forrest Gump. In pretty much only that respect. In any case, it's very cute.
• Jason is a mammal.
• Jason cheats when he plays with his jack-in-the-box. Rather than waiting for it to pop on its own, he just pulls the clasp open with his finger. He used to give the crank a token turn or two, but these days he doesn't even bother with that.
• Jason always has a runny nose.
• On the other hand, Jason hasn't had an ear infection in a couple of months. (Here Juliette will want me to knock on wood. I did.)
• In the past month or so Jason has started "reading" on his own. Rather than sitting on our laps while we read to him, he likes to flip through a book on his own and shout out what's on each page. He even has a favorite place to read: in the living room on top of the wicker toy box we bought him last month. He does skip pages here and there, but on the other hand he's also figured out how to hold books the right way up.
• Jason still needs more practice eating with utensils, but he's getting better.
• Lately Jason has started crying when I drop him off at daycare. As soon as it looks like I'm going to leave, he starts jumping up and down and grabbing my legs. It's difficult for me. Still, his teachers report him having a good day most of the time, and besides that he also gets upset when it's time to go home.
• Jason will offer you hugs, but will sometimes use the opportunity to bite you on the shoulder.
• Jason loves to blow bubbles in his bath water, but he still hasn't quite figured out how to time his breathing so bath time inevitably involves some coughing and spluttering.

It's funny how quickly things change with kids, and how fast these little moments pile up. I keep wondering what he's going to do next. Fortunately, I get to find out.

I think that my introduction to the Sharpe novels came from Wikipedia, of all places. I was reading the Horatio Hornblower article, which noted near the bottom that it had inspired Bernard Cornwell's series. Being a pretty big fan of the Hornblower series, I put the Sharpe series on my list as something to check out. The series comprises 24 books, and it was a little difficult to figure out which one to start with. The first written was Sharpe's Eagle, and the first in the main character's chronology is Sharpe's Tiger. This one, Sharpe's Rifles, is the first in what I gather is considered the "main" series—at least, the copy I picked up has a big "1" on the spine. In any event, supposedly each novel stands more or less on its own, so the particular starting point may not matter much.

Having finished this first volume, I can see the comparison to the Hornblower novels. Both Richard Sharpe and Horatio Hornblower are British military officers during the Napoleonic Wars. Both suffer from a lack of the wealth and influence common to officers of their day—consequently, both are relatively socially awkward. Both turn out to be brilliant commanders. They're even relatively close in age. Both series feature historical scenery and a lot of action, and the novels in each are fun and easy to read.

On the other hand, there's also a fair amount to distinguish Sharpe from Hornblower, the most obvious point being that Sharpe is in the Army rather than the Navy. Clearly, that means a difference in milieu—battles on land instead of at sea—but there's a difference in culture as well. One thing that Forester commented on often in his series was the relative indiscipline of sailors in the Royal Navy as opposed to the strict rank and file of the Army. Despite an attempted mutiny at the outset of Sharpe's Rifles, that discipline is quite apparent. And it makes sense—when your life and the success of your mission depends on your entire group being able to maneuver in exact formation, to line up across from your enemy and keep standing there, shoulder to shoulder, while being shot at, well-trained and tightly disciplined soldiers are necessary. It gives the characters in Sharpe's Rifles a harder edge than the ones in the Hornblower novels. Too, a battle at sea doesn't leave much visible evidence—ships sink and debris soon scatters. When the smoke clears after an infantry battle, the bodies of fallen soldiers and scars on the land and buildings stay around, and it's exactly that sort of scene that this novel opens with. All of this combines to give Sharpe's Rifles a gritter, more hard-scrabble feel than anything in the Hornblower series.

As I mentioned, I found this book to be quite enjoyable, and a pretty quick read. I'll definitely be continuing the series, and I look forward to discovering more about the life and adventures of Richard Sharpe.

Started: 2010-01-16 | Finished: 2010-01-22

Purchase from Amazon

A while back I solicited recommendations for some new reading material. I'd just finished reading Thomas Pynchon's V, which was difficult and, I thought, pretentious, and ultimately unsatisfying, so I asked for something fun and easy to read, preferably science fiction, since I hadn't read anything in that genre in a while. Several people recommended Bujold's Vorkosigan saga, with this book as a good starting point. I looked into it a bit, finding that the series is well-regarded—indeed, various stories in its collection have won four Hugos and two Nebulas—as well as quite extended. I then more or less forgot about it for the next year and a half.

Earlier this month, as so often happens around this time of year, I found myself with some Borders gift cards that I'd received for Christmas and a reading list that had inexplicably grown over the past year. (I read 14 books in 2009, and probably heard about 20 or so that caught my interest.) Consequently, my nightstand got more cluttered and my lunchbreaks got more interesting. Also a little longer. Anyway, one of the books I picked up this year was, as you might guess, this one. Cordelia's Honor comprises the first book in the Vorkosigan series, Shards of Honor, and its sequel, Barrayar, which were, somewhat interestingly, not written consecutively—Barrayar was, from what I can tell, actually the eighth book written in the series. It's actually a little surprising to me that the two novels were written so far apart, because there's such a strong continuity between the two, and the style seems identical. Reading them together it feels almost more like one continuous novel than two separate works.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, though. What did I actually think of these books? Well, they were easy to read and fun, so on that level they were successful. But I can't quite decide whether or not I thought they were good. I found myself a little... annoyed isn't quite the right word, but perhaps a little disbelieving at some of the characters' motivations and behaviors—people kept having personal interludes at what seemed like really inappropriate times, and often the characters just didn't feel very natural to me. And there was a lot of what felt like social commentary from the author, but presented in a way that felt kind of clumsy to me. On the other hand, I found the story compelling enough that I finished it in just over a week and a half, and am finding myself very much interested in continuing the series. And although it struck me as a bit silly at times, the setting and characters seem to resonate with me in ways similar to the way that David Eddings' Belgariad did when I was a kid or the way the Horatio Hornblower books did more recently.

In a lot of ways, reading this series was like slipping into a well-worn pair of jeans or some nicely broken-in sneakers. It was comfortable and maybe kind of comforting. So I guess I'll be picking up the next omnibus, Young Miles, at some point. I have to chip away a bit at that stack on my nightstand first, though.

Started: 2010-01-04 | Finished: 2010-01-15

Purchase from Amazon

At first glance, you'd expect this to be just the sort of movie I'd hate. The plot revolves around a divorced couple who end up having an affair, which generally means that it will be full of the sort of humiliating scenes I have so much trouble watching in sitcoms. And it stars Meryl Streep, who is one of my least favorite actresses of all time. So when the movie was over and I didn't hate it, I have to admit to being a little surprised.

It turned out that there were far fewer uncomfortable scenes than I initially expected. And it seems that in light romantic comedies, Meryl Streep is capable of reigning in her self-indulgent "I AM STREEP" performance tendencies. (Come to think of it, she was pretty decent in Defending Your Life as well.) What's more, when it was getting it right, the film managed to portray some (dare I say it) complicated relationships quite deftly, not to mention some truly funny moments.

The problem, though, was that the script just had too much in it. As much as I enjoyed John Krasinki in his role as Meryl Streep's soon-to-be son-in-law, having the movie focus on him to the extent that it did took the focus away from what really mattered in the movie. In fact, having his character in the film at all was pretty unnecessary, as well at least one of the central couple's children. Talking about it with Juliette afterwards, we both ended up comparing it to Something's Gotta Give, which was a very similar movie but with a much tighter script. Which makes it all the more odd, considering that the same woman wrote and directed both movies.

I also found Alec Baldwin's performance to be a little too smirky—sort of Bill Murray-esque but in an inappropriate context and with less charm.  And both Juliette and I agreed that all three of the kids' performances were pretty poor. Still, despite all that, I expect that there are a lot of people out there who will love this movie.

Viewed: 2010-01-01 | Released: 2009-12-24 | Score: C+

IMDb Page

I'm finding that one of the coolest parts of being a parent is getting to watch my son figure things out for the first time. Everybody always talks about "the wonder of a child" and seeing that "aha" moment, but it's easy to lose the significance when you repeat phrases like that over and over again. The thing is, everything really is new to a young child, and when you stop and thing about it, it's kind of a marvel that anyone ever figures out anything.

Earlier this evening I was watching Jason play with a piece of string. He had the string doubled over and was holding it in one hand so that it formed a little loop. Now, Jason has seen loops of string before and what he usually likes to do is stick a finger or arm through it. But what confounded him this time was that as soon as he got his arm through the loop and let go with the other hand, the loop was gone and he was just left with a piece of string draped over his wrist. He did this probably three or four times, each time surprised that the loop changed and a little confused and frustrated about what happened to it.

Now, I imagine that this little scene may seem a little banal—after all, it doesn't seem such a big feat to grown-up eyes to figure out that if you let go of the ends of an untied loop of string, you don't have a loop anymore. But if you stop and think about it, it's kind of amazing that that sort of thing is such second nature to us. And seeing someone come to that realization for the first time is just fascinating.

Actually, tonight turned out to be a bumper night in terms of figuring things out, because Jason also figured out how to get out of his crib tonight. Juliette and I were just starting to eat our dinner, having put Jason down about 15 minutes earlier, when we heard him start to fuss. These days that's a little unusual, so Juliette went to check on him, expecting to find that he'd thrown his blankets and stuffed animals over the side of his crib. In fact, she did find that, but she also found him standing on the little pile next to the crib. Fortunately, the crib can still be lowered one more notch, which I'll do tomorrow. For tonight, we set up the portable playpen in his room and put him in there—so far, he hasn't been able to get out of that.

It definitely keeps you on your toes, this parenting thing.

Jason started figuring out how to dance a while ago. Until recently he really only had one move: bouncing up and down. That's probably because that's mainly what Juliette and I do when we're showing him how to do it—bounce at the knees in time to the rhythm, sometimes adding in shoulders or arms. It's very cute when he bops along, especially since he invents his own highly syncopated beat.

In the last couple of weeks he's shown us that his repertoire is expanding:

(Just in case anyone is curious, that thing on his belly is a band-aid that he had been playing with.)

Dear Ms. Alkon,

I had the pleasure of reading your op-ed piece "Screaming kids and airplanes: Mayday! Mayday!" last week and I just wanted to write and let you know how refreshing it was to finally hear from a kindred spirit. This country has been overtaken by rude and selfish people and seeing someone tell it like it is was a welcome breath of fresh air.

Like you, I have never been loud in a public place. Just as you described for yourself, my parents instilled in me a strong sense of propriety, which is why the occasion of my birth was an calm, orderly affair, without any of that obnoxious crying and mewling that you so often hear about. I have no idea why newborns these days are so self-centered and ignorant of our vital social conventions but it is simply unacceptable. Parents, take note: just because your child doesn't have the ability to speak or understand language or control their limbs or bodily functions is no excuse for them not to know and follow the rules of polite society. And don't bother trying to tell me about cognitive development or any of that nonsense—we both know it's just a ruse to try to distract from the obvious fact that you're a failure as a parent. Am I right, Amy? (May I call you Amy? I don't want to presume.)

I also applaud your exhortation of people to take responsibility for their own life choices. If you are thinking about having a child then you need to consider the possibility that your little Johnny might inconvenience other people for a few hours. And if there's even the slightest possibility that that could happen, you had damn well better keep little Johnny away from them, even if that means that he doesn't get to meet Granny until he's 17. I don't care if Granny can't get the time off work to come to you, or if you don't have the money to fly your whole family across the country for the holidays, you should have thought of that beforehand.

I am a bit concerned, though, Amy, that you might be bowing to pressure from the unwashed masses in limiting the scope of your article. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you're willing to put Mr. Cell Phone and Ms. Unruly Child in their places, but there is so much that you've left out. I mean, I can hardly go into a Starbucks or Panera Bread or even the grocery store without having to hear people talking. And I don't mean on the phone—thankfully, you already covered that. No, I'm talking about those oblivious, obnoxious jerks who have the audacity to have face-to-face conversations in public places. Don't they know that every time they open their mouths, I have to hear them? If their parents had done their jobs, maybe, but that must not have happened because it's getting to where I can't go anywhere without having my ears raped by their noise-pollutive talking. (People have told me before that I shouldn't used the term "rape" that way because it's hyperbolic and downplays the seriousness of the crime, but fortunately I know you haven't been infected by that ridiculous PC nonsense. I bet you even had people complaining about your having used phrases like "social thuggery" and "stealing" and "victims" in your piece. The nerve of those people...)

Along those lines, why do people think it's OK to wear ugly clothing in public? For that matter, why do they think it's OK to be ugly? I shouldn't have to pay the cost just because someone chooses not to have plastic surgery. Ugly people should stop being so selfish and keep themselves in the basement where they belong. And I don't want to hear "Oh, but plastic surgery is so expensive." Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to be poor.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know as a like-minded individual how much I much I value your writing. People are always telling me that what we really need is patience and tolerance, and that if these are the worst of my problems that I'm pretty well off. You and I know, of course, that all that is a bunch of nonsense. Because, after all, it really does come down to this: I should never have to experience anything that I dislike in the slightest, and anyone who makes me do so is nothing better than a terrorist.