Toddler’s brains are like tape recorders hooked up to a Markov chain process to produce realistic-sounding sentences. Eli will say phrases that he must have picked up somewhere and stored in his immense toddler brain, waiting for the right moment to unleash them on his unsuspecting parents.

This weekend we visited my grandmother. At one point, my aunt and her two high-school-age kids were visiting. A good time was had by all. Eli especially loved one of my cousins, to whom fell the duty of Eli wrangling. “Gordon! You come play hide and seek with Eli!” “Gordon! Where Gordon go?” “GOOOOOOORDOOOOOOON!”

That night, right after they left, Eli looked up from his toys. “Those are fine people,” he said.

Liz Phair: Why Can’t I (2003)

Fine, fine, the quality of Liz Phair’s work has declined since Exile In Guyville. Sure, Liz Phair is the goateed mirror opposite of Exile In Guyville, all slick production value and shallow pop writing. But this video’s concept is great: the song is playing on a jukebox, with the band appearing on various record covers that feature as their titles the lyrics. On a side note, it appears this song was a big hit with the anime crowd, as I had trouble finding the video amongst all of the anime music videos set to the song.

Fatboy Slim: Weapon of Choice (2001)

Dance Dance Christopher Walken! Walken’s background as a dancer helps him in this Spike Jonze video, but what really sells it are his facial expressions. I am guilty of watching this video over and over and over.

MayandPop!MayandPop!
MayandPop!
MayandPop!
MayandPop!
MayandPop!
MAYANDPOP are here!

Tonight I finished three projects that I’ve been working on steadily since Friday (between one and four hours every day). It was a great deal of handwork that was a lot of fun to do that amazingly enough isn’t cross-stitch. They are all three gifts that I’m giving this weekend so I can’t wait to see what people have to say about them. I’ll show photos after the surprise is over.

On a not-so-fun side note, the work caused a lot of numbness in my left hand (carpal tunnel). So I have an emergency chiropractor appointment tomorrow in hopes that he can take care of it before the weekend. Wish me luck!

Over the weekend, a bunch of friends came over for dinner, to hang out, and to keep Eli and me company while Stephen was in Atlanta.

While at the dinner table Eli turned to me and said, “Where’s Rick?”

We had been watching Sesame Street earlier in the day so I responded with, “He’s hiding behind something green.” (Eli had on a green t-shirt and had his back to Rick.)

Eli asked again, “Where’s Rick? Rick, where are yooooouuu?”

“Check behind you.” I said.

He turned to face Rick and immediately asked of Rick, “Rick, where’d Mom go?”

Breast milk is said to have many benefits. Chalk up another for breast milk: breastfeeding can potentially reduce a baby’s pain during simple medical procedures. A group of researchers from Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, led by Dr. Prakeshkumar Shah, did a literature review of eleven studies that compared babies’ pain when they were breastfeeding or drinking supplemental breast milk versus other measures such as swaddling, being given a pacifier, and being given a placebo. In a weird twist, it did not beat out giving babies a glucose solution. The literature review found no studies testing this for repeated medical procedures, so there goes my plans for giving out “free drinks of breast milk with every needle jab” coupons. The study was published in Issue 3 of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

Eli is at the point in his life where he may change his mind about what he wants on a minute-by-minute basis, but he absolutely positively knows what he wants right now. It’s like continually running into a wall that moves at random. He’s also very specific about what he wants, even as he has trouble articulating his desires all at once. “You — you move — you move your … your glass and I put my octopus water onna coaster.”

We get exhortations: “Stop that, daddy, stop that!” We get stage directions: “No, mom, you — you go and daddy, you stay here and sit on my rug and we play cars.” We get changable instructions: “I want crackers. No, I want hummus. No, I want ham and cheese and hummus. And milk. I want water.”

This is all part of that independence thing that, were we smarter parents, we’d crush under our foot like a spider. But we’re not. We try to make him more independent. We try to direct Eli as much as possible, guiding him towards choices that we can live with. Most of the time. Then there are the times where I revert to being two as well, leading to conversations like the following:

Eli: Dad, we play cars. We play cars with these two cars. You get this car.
Me (pointing to an unused car): I want that truck.
Eli: No, you get this car.
Me: No, I want that truck.
Eli: No, you get this car.
Me: No, I want that truck.
Eli: No, you get this car.
Me: No, I want that truck.
Eli: No, you get this car.
Me: No, I want that truck.
Eli: No, you — you get this car.
Me: No, I want that truck.
Eli: No, you get this car.
Me: No, I want that truck.
Eli: Okay.
(Eli turns to the bucket full of cars.)
Eli: You get this grasshopper car.

True, I did eventually play with the grasshopper car, but I still count this as a moral victory.

As some of you know, one of my hobbies is interactive fiction, which is another way of saying “text adventure.” Every year there’s a competition for the best introductory segment to a game: IntroComp. I’ve entered this year, with my first game in some six years. It’s called Child’s Play and is pretty short. If you’d like to see what it’s like, download the IntroComp games and snag an interpreter to play the game. (That link I posted is for a Windows interpreter, but there is one for Macs as well.)

The Cars: You Might Think (1984)

Another week, another video full of then-cutting-edge special effects. This video was spliced and diced and colorized to within an inch of its life. It’s full of disturbing near-stalkerish behavior, culminating in the arrival of the scary Ric Ocasek fly.

Fountains of Wayne: Stacy’s Mom (2001)

Fountains of Wayne clearly love The Cars, from the song’s “Just What I Needed”-like intro to, well, the entire music video. It also is notable for echoing a scene from Fast Times at Ridgemont High and for having an overflowing soda pop bottle stand in for more masturbatory activities.

Perhaps I’m overstating it a bit, but it apparently is true that moms think their kid’s poop smells better than that of other kids. Are the moms used to their own child’s particular formulation of poop, or are they somehow smelling something that, deep in their brain, says, “I am related to the child who created this poop”? The authors aren’t sure. The full article, “My baby doesn’t smell as bad as yours: The plasticity of disgust,” is coming out in the Journal of Evolution and Human Behavior.

Perhaps the researchers would be interested in my theories of how cuteness evolved. Trevor? Betty? I’m waiting for a call.