I recently ran across this article linked somewhere, and I thought it was interesting. It's something I've tried to do for years in the classroom, and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) raising a strong critical thinker at home. The main thrust of the article is to talk to your child and ask questions, which seems pretty straightforward. Hopefully Raptor-Son will be able to wade through the BS that will be everywhere in his life.
On the home front, I'm pretty sure we're just starting the Fourth Month Sleep Regression, given that he hasn't really slept in two days. Where he was reliable hitting 6-7 hours a night for a while now, last night he fussed from 8-10 pm in his bassinet, then I took him downstairs and rocked him for an hour so Raptor-Mom could sleep. He woke up at 12am, 2am, 4am, and 6am, lying on his back with his feet in the air grunting like he used to do. I've been doing a little reading on it, and it seems pretty universally terrible to experience, but a necessary milestone for development, so I'm glad he's on track.
We also got a deep freeze for the 365 ounces of stored milk that we are keeping, an amount that only increases during the summer. This means I got the freezer back for kitchen use, so I spent most of yesterday afternoon cooking for some reason. Highlights include chocolate-covered banana chips, cookie dough fudge, and a no-bake Nutella cheesecake. On the less sugary side, for dinner I made Cauliflower Manchurian for the first time, with a quinoa pilaf. Cooking for me is a stress reliever and an activity I've enjoyed since college, and I handle it primarily at our house. My grandfather (who lent his middle name for one of Raptor-Son's) was the same way, and I like that Raptor-Son will grow up in a house with a dad who cooks. Maybe he'll use his BS Detector on society's gender roles.
Oh, and I'm super excited that Raptor-Son will grow up in an America in which everyone can get married.
The Parenting Adventures of Raptor-Dad and Raptor-Son
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Monday, June 22, 2015
Father's Day and the Fourth Trimester
There's a bit of a stretch between updates here, as I was out of town grading thousands of AP U.S. History tests, and then working a week-long day camp based on Medieval Europe. Both of those activities were (I promise) much more fun than they sound.
Yesterday was my first Father's Day, and it was a good one. Homemade waffles for breakfast, a lazy day with Raptor-Son, and a cookout at the in-law's house. My friends also sent around some congratulatory texts, since several of us are on our first or second Father's Day, and the addition of a new holiday should be celebrated. Raptor-Mom got me an awesome duffel bag for camping that I can't wait to try out later this Fall.
We've also crossed over the border from a newborn to a full infant, and not a tiny one either. Raptor-Son is tipping the (literal) scales at more than 15 pounds, meaning I'm going to have to start working out if I want to keep lifting him. Finishing the first three months puts him out of what I've heard called The Fourth Trimester, when babies are really kind of just fetuses still. They don't do a lot, don't like being awake, eat as much as possible, etc. Raptor-Son's always been surprisingly expressive, but I've definitely noticed a difference in him over the last couple of weeks.
At night, he's been sleeping between 6 and 7 hours in a row, relatively peacefully. This has been going on about week now, and the first time he did it I jumped out of bed at about 5 AM, convinced something horrible had happened. He'd been waking up at 3, eating, and going back to sleep, but now he hadn't woken us up with his grunting and leg kicks. I checked on him, and he was fine, so I went back to bed, but it was scary. Apparently there's just no good way for him to sleep; either he wakes us up and we don't get any sleep, or he doesn't wake us up and I jump up terrified when I realize it.
He's been doing great in the mornings especially. He likes to wake up and eat immediately, and will then usually cuddle right in with one of us in bed. It's awesome having the summers "off" if for no other reason than hanging out with him. He's also started vocalizing a lot, mostly "coooo's" and "awoooo's" but it's a good start. He still doesn't like to sit in his bouncer seat for very long, and he still has trouble from about 5 PM until he gets to sleep. If you catch him in a really good mood, he will coo back and forth with Raptor-Mom, which is a lot of fun to watch but I haven't been able to record it yet.
Raptor-Son's getting bigger, and starting to look like a little boy instead of an infant. The fourth trimester has been a time of great learning and fun, and while I'm trying to enjoy the moments as they happen, I can't help but get excited as he keeps growing and exploring.
Yesterday was my first Father's Day, and it was a good one. Homemade waffles for breakfast, a lazy day with Raptor-Son, and a cookout at the in-law's house. My friends also sent around some congratulatory texts, since several of us are on our first or second Father's Day, and the addition of a new holiday should be celebrated. Raptor-Mom got me an awesome duffel bag for camping that I can't wait to try out later this Fall.
We've also crossed over the border from a newborn to a full infant, and not a tiny one either. Raptor-Son is tipping the (literal) scales at more than 15 pounds, meaning I'm going to have to start working out if I want to keep lifting him. Finishing the first three months puts him out of what I've heard called The Fourth Trimester, when babies are really kind of just fetuses still. They don't do a lot, don't like being awake, eat as much as possible, etc. Raptor-Son's always been surprisingly expressive, but I've definitely noticed a difference in him over the last couple of weeks.
At night, he's been sleeping between 6 and 7 hours in a row, relatively peacefully. This has been going on about week now, and the first time he did it I jumped out of bed at about 5 AM, convinced something horrible had happened. He'd been waking up at 3, eating, and going back to sleep, but now he hadn't woken us up with his grunting and leg kicks. I checked on him, and he was fine, so I went back to bed, but it was scary. Apparently there's just no good way for him to sleep; either he wakes us up and we don't get any sleep, or he doesn't wake us up and I jump up terrified when I realize it.
He's been doing great in the mornings especially. He likes to wake up and eat immediately, and will then usually cuddle right in with one of us in bed. It's awesome having the summers "off" if for no other reason than hanging out with him. He's also started vocalizing a lot, mostly "coooo's" and "awoooo's" but it's a good start. He still doesn't like to sit in his bouncer seat for very long, and he still has trouble from about 5 PM until he gets to sleep. If you catch him in a really good mood, he will coo back and forth with Raptor-Mom, which is a lot of fun to watch but I haven't been able to record it yet.
Raptor-Son's getting bigger, and starting to look like a little boy instead of an infant. The fourth trimester has been a time of great learning and fun, and while I'm trying to enjoy the moments as they happen, I can't help but get excited as he keeps growing and exploring.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Raptor-Dad Thoughts: Jurassic World
The other night, like seemingly everyone else in the universe, I got to see Jurassic World. In brief, I thought it was excellent. I haven't watched Colin Trevorrow's other movie, Safety Not Guaranteed, but it's clear that he has a deep affection for the original. Many of the sequences mirrored the original Jurassic Park, including several CG shots that seemed to just recreate the first movie. The movie is fun throughout, even if it felt a little disjointed, as if there were two different ideas for scripts that got jammed into one movie. More on this later.
HERE BE SPOILERS
One of the biggest issues I've seen discussed is the nature of the film's product placement. On the one hand, a movie this large will definitely have corporate sponsors who demand their merchandise get shown in a positive light. Product placement may just be a fact of life in 21st-century film making. While Age of Ultron had Dr. Bruce Banner listening to Beats by Dre in a close-up shot, Jurassic World's most egregious use of placement had Bryce Dallas Howard's character parking her Mercedes lovingly at an angle that Don Draper could have designed. The Mercedes featured in the film never break down, and despite driving around a tropical nature preserve are remarkably mud-free. On the other hand, the film goes out of its way to lampshade this very feature, with one character sarcastically suggesting a "Tostinosaurus" as the next attraction. While this joke might have worked in a film that didn't prominently feature Mercedes, Starbucks, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville restaurant (and Jimmy Buffett himself!) Pandora, etc., here I thought it rang flat. It's a great bit, but it's hypocritical to make fun of product placement while happily cashing checks from Ben and Jerry's. It doesn't count as satire if you point out how terrible the thing you are doing is, then do it anyway.
Speaking of problems, it was pretty clear this was a movie that was in production for a long time. A fourth Jurassic Park movie was being discussed as early as 2004, and I'm betting elements from that script wound up in Jurassic World in 2015. While again pointing out that I thought the movie totally worked and had a great time throughout, the script suffers from the same key problem that X-Men 3 had: it's got two interesting ideas for a movie and can't decide. In one plot, a clearly villainous Vincent D'Onofrio (slimmed down from his stellar portrayal of Kingpin in Netflix's Daredevil earlier this year) has hatched a quiet plot to sell raptors to the military. The other plot is the creation of the Indominus Rex genetic hybrid, and it's expanding list of dinosaur superpowers. Each of these could have warranted its own film, but here they are mushed together into a complicated knot.
This plot knot is ultimately undone in a way that again reminded me of Age of Ultron. Ultron is defeated by a better version of himself, and here the I. Rex is defeated by a dinosaur-Avengers team-up of Blue the last surviving velociraptor, the original tyrannosaur from Jurassic Park, and a surprise finisher from the aquatic Mosasaurus. In other words, the thing that defeated the ultimate Hubris of Man was just throwing better Hubris at it. It's like Dr. Frankenstein creating an even stronger, faster Monster to defeat the original. It's an interesting idea, but it's hard to get behind thematically.
The theme of the franchise is honed to a sharp edge here, if that theme is the corruption of money. Throughout the four films, any character mostly interested in money has bad things happen to him or her. Gennaro the lawyer from Jurassic Park mentions making a fortune on the animals; he's later eaten on a toilet. In The Lost World, the entire team that wants to move the dinosaurs to San Diego is eaten or killed. In Jurassic Park III, Dr. Grant and his grad student are enticed by money to visit Isla Sorna, nearly costing both of them their lives. All the mercenaries are killed in that movie. Here, the quest for money leads to the creation of the I. Rex, indirectly killing the new CEO of InGen and directly killing a number of others. Hoskins, the military man planning to sell raptors to the Army is predictably dispatched by a raptor. Pursuit of money is punished violently in the world of Jurassic Park.
It's that theme that stood out the most profoundly as representative of current movie trends. The film itself is easily read as a metaphor for the post-Avengers Hollywood in which everything is bigger, bolder, flashier, more expensive, and more explosive. My favorite image of the movie was something Colin Trevorrow said he had in mind as an anchor for the entire film. It's the older teenager texting on his phone, with his back to the glass while a Tyrannosaurus Rex walks by behind him. As someone who works with teenagers, it's so perfect, and the movie in general seems to simultaneously criticize the desire for novelty while feeding into it by giving us a dinosaurs capable of crashing helicopters and eating Great White Sharks. In consuming the literal Jaws, Jurassic World asserts its dominance while simultaneously critiquing us for pushing it to this point. I'm not sure if it counts as satire for the same reason as the product placement issue, but it makes for an interesting meta-commentary.
After five paragraphs of pseudo-complaining (again, I loved the movie!) I should say something nice about it. I think my favorite thing was that the film was almost entirely self-contained. It builds on the legacy of the first three movies (especially the first) but it also stands by itself. Save for one short scene with Dr. Wu that sets up a sequel movie, there's no link to a larger universe. There's no Jurassic Park Cinematic Universe in the works to cross over with King Kong or the monsters from Pacific Rim. Nothing in this movie was inexplicable if you haven't seen twelve other movies, and that was refreshing. I'm a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it was nice to not think halfway through the movie "Oh, I bet that will really pay off in 2017." Here, everything you need to have fun is present in two hours.
Would I Take Raptor-Son to See It:
The violence is simultaneously sanitized and graphic, in that most awful things happen off-screen. There are a few scenes of flirting between main characters, but in general I think the movie is geared for younger kids to have a fun time with dinosaurs. It'll be a while before he's old enough to watch it, but I'm looking forward to it.
HERE BE SPOILERS
One of the biggest issues I've seen discussed is the nature of the film's product placement. On the one hand, a movie this large will definitely have corporate sponsors who demand their merchandise get shown in a positive light. Product placement may just be a fact of life in 21st-century film making. While Age of Ultron had Dr. Bruce Banner listening to Beats by Dre in a close-up shot, Jurassic World's most egregious use of placement had Bryce Dallas Howard's character parking her Mercedes lovingly at an angle that Don Draper could have designed. The Mercedes featured in the film never break down, and despite driving around a tropical nature preserve are remarkably mud-free. On the other hand, the film goes out of its way to lampshade this very feature, with one character sarcastically suggesting a "Tostinosaurus" as the next attraction. While this joke might have worked in a film that didn't prominently feature Mercedes, Starbucks, Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville restaurant (and Jimmy Buffett himself!) Pandora, etc., here I thought it rang flat. It's a great bit, but it's hypocritical to make fun of product placement while happily cashing checks from Ben and Jerry's. It doesn't count as satire if you point out how terrible the thing you are doing is, then do it anyway.
Speaking of problems, it was pretty clear this was a movie that was in production for a long time. A fourth Jurassic Park movie was being discussed as early as 2004, and I'm betting elements from that script wound up in Jurassic World in 2015. While again pointing out that I thought the movie totally worked and had a great time throughout, the script suffers from the same key problem that X-Men 3 had: it's got two interesting ideas for a movie and can't decide. In one plot, a clearly villainous Vincent D'Onofrio (slimmed down from his stellar portrayal of Kingpin in Netflix's Daredevil earlier this year) has hatched a quiet plot to sell raptors to the military. The other plot is the creation of the Indominus Rex genetic hybrid, and it's expanding list of dinosaur superpowers. Each of these could have warranted its own film, but here they are mushed together into a complicated knot.
This plot knot is ultimately undone in a way that again reminded me of Age of Ultron. Ultron is defeated by a better version of himself, and here the I. Rex is defeated by a dinosaur-Avengers team-up of Blue the last surviving velociraptor, the original tyrannosaur from Jurassic Park, and a surprise finisher from the aquatic Mosasaurus. In other words, the thing that defeated the ultimate Hubris of Man was just throwing better Hubris at it. It's like Dr. Frankenstein creating an even stronger, faster Monster to defeat the original. It's an interesting idea, but it's hard to get behind thematically.
The theme of the franchise is honed to a sharp edge here, if that theme is the corruption of money. Throughout the four films, any character mostly interested in money has bad things happen to him or her. Gennaro the lawyer from Jurassic Park mentions making a fortune on the animals; he's later eaten on a toilet. In The Lost World, the entire team that wants to move the dinosaurs to San Diego is eaten or killed. In Jurassic Park III, Dr. Grant and his grad student are enticed by money to visit Isla Sorna, nearly costing both of them their lives. All the mercenaries are killed in that movie. Here, the quest for money leads to the creation of the I. Rex, indirectly killing the new CEO of InGen and directly killing a number of others. Hoskins, the military man planning to sell raptors to the Army is predictably dispatched by a raptor. Pursuit of money is punished violently in the world of Jurassic Park.
It's that theme that stood out the most profoundly as representative of current movie trends. The film itself is easily read as a metaphor for the post-Avengers Hollywood in which everything is bigger, bolder, flashier, more expensive, and more explosive. My favorite image of the movie was something Colin Trevorrow said he had in mind as an anchor for the entire film. It's the older teenager texting on his phone, with his back to the glass while a Tyrannosaurus Rex walks by behind him. As someone who works with teenagers, it's so perfect, and the movie in general seems to simultaneously criticize the desire for novelty while feeding into it by giving us a dinosaurs capable of crashing helicopters and eating Great White Sharks. In consuming the literal Jaws, Jurassic World asserts its dominance while simultaneously critiquing us for pushing it to this point. I'm not sure if it counts as satire for the same reason as the product placement issue, but it makes for an interesting meta-commentary.
After five paragraphs of pseudo-complaining (again, I loved the movie!) I should say something nice about it. I think my favorite thing was that the film was almost entirely self-contained. It builds on the legacy of the first three movies (especially the first) but it also stands by itself. Save for one short scene with Dr. Wu that sets up a sequel movie, there's no link to a larger universe. There's no Jurassic Park Cinematic Universe in the works to cross over with King Kong or the monsters from Pacific Rim. Nothing in this movie was inexplicable if you haven't seen twelve other movies, and that was refreshing. I'm a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it was nice to not think halfway through the movie "Oh, I bet that will really pay off in 2017." Here, everything you need to have fun is present in two hours.
Would I Take Raptor-Son to See It:
The violence is simultaneously sanitized and graphic, in that most awful things happen off-screen. There are a few scenes of flirting between main characters, but in general I think the movie is geared for younger kids to have a fun time with dinosaurs. It'll be a while before he's old enough to watch it, but I'm looking forward to it.
Monday, June 1, 2015
On Children
The other day, I ran across a poem by Lebanese-American author Kahlil Gibran on Reddit (ugh.) It was shortly after the whole business with Josh Duggar occurred, and while I don't want to get into that situation (it's gross) here, the poem itself stuck with me as a great reflection of what I'd like my attitudes on being a father to be. I'll quote it here in full.
I like the poem a great deal for its insistence that our children are not clones to be designed, but people to be nurtured. As a teacher, that's a philosophical concept I think about often, and I work hard to avoid creating smaller versions of myself. As a teacher of politics, it's especially important I think to avoid simply passing on your thoughts, because as Gibran notes, they have their own thoughts already.
I didn't want to reproduce to create another version of myself. While I hope that Raptor-Son will carry on the values I want to display for him like compassion, generosity, acceptance, and love, if I force him to believe in those things it immediately invalidates them.
The line "You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you" also speaks to me, as I would be happiest to find one day that Raptor-Son is a person worthy of emulation, and that he has grown up to be someone that others (and myself) can look to as an example of virtue.
Anyway, it's a good poem, you should check it out.
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
I like the poem a great deal for its insistence that our children are not clones to be designed, but people to be nurtured. As a teacher, that's a philosophical concept I think about often, and I work hard to avoid creating smaller versions of myself. As a teacher of politics, it's especially important I think to avoid simply passing on your thoughts, because as Gibran notes, they have their own thoughts already.
I didn't want to reproduce to create another version of myself. While I hope that Raptor-Son will carry on the values I want to display for him like compassion, generosity, acceptance, and love, if I force him to believe in those things it immediately invalidates them.
The line "You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you" also speaks to me, as I would be happiest to find one day that Raptor-Son is a person worthy of emulation, and that he has grown up to be someone that others (and myself) can look to as an example of virtue.
Anyway, it's a good poem, you should check it out.
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