Category: birthday

The Lydster, Part 48: Lydia is Four

Random thoughts for the occasion.

Lots of people say things like, “Can you believe it’s been four years? The time goes by so FAST!” Yes, I believe it’s been four years. I’m never quite sure what I’m supposed to say when folks utter such folk wisdom. Usually, I nod my head and say “Hmmm.”
I’ve been grousing about the early change of the clocks, which may not even save energy. Used to be that when I need Lydia to wake up at 6:20, so we can catch the 7 a.m. bus, I could just raise the shades, and she’d get up. But it’s DARK at what was 5:20 a.m., standard time, in March. She took a couple weeks to adjust to the new time. Heck, I’M still tired in the morning.

She definitely has a pecking order when it comes her playthings. Whereas all of her dolls (most of them called Hannah) used to rule, now it’s the stuffed bears (Elizabeth and TeddyTeddy) and the stuffed lamb. The dolls? “They’re just dolls!”, but the creatures are her “sisters”; very strange.

Lydia is one of the youngest kids in her class and one of the tallest. There may be a boy who’s taller, but he’s several months her senior. She is reasonably well, though she had had a touch of whatever was going around earlier this month. She’s only gained a pound or two in recent months, but is getting harder to lift. She’s been in a real hug and cuddle mood; I hear that this passes, so I shan’t complain.

She’s pretty smart. Some books she reads to me. I don’t think she’s actually reading them as much as reciting from memory based on the pictures, but it’s fun to be read to. She can count to 29; she stubbornly rejected my suggestion for “thirty” in favor of “twenty-ten”. She also knows what the color turquoise is, which I’m pretty sure I didn’t when I was four.

I still am not using the digital camera. These pictures were all on the same disposable camera I’d use then forget about, then use, then misplace. So it’s a lovely coincidence that it covers well the past few months of her life.

Happy birthday, Lydia!

ROG

ROG

Q is 75


To an audience who may know Quincy Jones best as the father of actress Rashida Jones, formerly of the television show The Office, I wanted to write about the massive impact that Q has had on popular music. I went to the Wikipedia post, which was a good start, but the discography was sorely lacking. This Rolling Stone discography isn’t bad, but is missing vital elements. The CBS Sunday Morning story from this past weekend, which currently isn’t even online, just touches on his importance.

Personally, I own a wide range of Q’s output, from some of those Frank Sinatra sides he arranged such as “Fly Me to the Moon”, to those Lesley Gore hits such as “It’s My Party” that he produced, the Q-production for the Brothers Johnson album that contains “Strawberry Letter #23, composer for the “Sanford and Son” theme, cat-wrangler for the “We Are the World” session, the composer/arranger for soundtrack for the television event “Roots”, and possibly my favorite, the production of Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall” album. Oh, yeah, and its obscure follow-up, the album known as “Thriller”.

I also own a couple albums with Quincy listed as artist, Q’s Jook Joint (2004), and Back on the Block (1989), both star-studded extravaganzas. If not totally successful, they show the range of the the man, from rap lite with Melle Mel and Ice-T intertwined with Tevin Campbell’s Zulu chant, snatching a piece of the Ironside theme, which Q wrote; to a funky tune featuring Chaka Khan and Q’s very old friend Ray Charles; to an introduction to Birdland by rappers and jazz artists; to the most successful take, an “a cappella groove” with Ella, Sarah and Bobby McFerrin, among others. Undoubtedly, there are other jazz sides and soundtracks that I’m not even aware of.

I even own some oversized photo-bio of the man. So Happy birthday, Q, and thanks for the wide range of great music.
ROG

ROG

Double nickel

G-55. That’s G, as in Green, 55. I get to be a Bingo card call for five more years!

Every year, I take off my birthday from work. So as I wake from my Nyquil-induced fog, planning to start the day attending a daddy or grandfather/child breakfast at my daughter’s day care, I’m taking off my birthday from the blog, and will leave you with the usual thing:

In our local Hearst paper, they always run this poem in August on the anniversary of the death of some founder. I think my tradition will be that I will quote a section from one of my favorite books, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit by Henri J.M. Nouwen, a Canadian theologian who died in 1996. (Copyright 1994, published by The Crossroad Publishing Company.)

I share this passage about birthdays, not only for my sake, but, I hope, for yours as well:

Birthdays need to be celebrated. I think it is more important to celebrate a birthday than a successful exam, a promotion, or a victory. Because to celebrate a birthday means to say to someone: “Thank you for being you.” Celebrating a birthday is exalting life and being glad for it. On a birthday we do not say: “Thanks for what you did, or said, or accomplished.” No, we say: “Thank you for being born and being among us.”
…
Celebrating a birthday reminds us of the goodness of life, and in this spirit we really need to celebrate people’s birthdays every day, by showing gratitude, kindness, forgiveness, gentleness, and affection. These are ways of saying: “It’s good that you are alive; it’s good that you are walking with me on this earth. Let’s be glad and rejoice. This is the day that God has made for us to be and to be together.”

ROG

ROG

Not boring

The only thing that sucks more than being sick is being sick around my birthday. I seem to have what half of everyone I know seems to be suffering with. My wife’s been ill, too, and she took an illness-related fall on Tuesday that meant seven (count ’em, 7) hours in the ER; I went with her, and the event involved a number of brief flurries of action, followed by huge periods of waiting.

On the potential upside this week, one of my oldest friends, Karen, who I’ve known for 50 YEARS!, and whose birthday, not so incidentally, is March 9, sent me this Susan Miller astrology chart:

“It’s rare to have Uranus so close to the Sun and moon, and if you were born on March 7 or within five days of this date, [such as Gordon, whose birthday is today] this new moon will help you advance your hopes and wishes in a big way. This will not be a boring month, by anyone’s estimation!

A new moon will coincide with one’s birthday only very rarely – it could be decades until this happens again – so the coming 12 months should be VERY memorable, filled with fresh starts. If you were born on or near the new moon, March 7, you more than other Pisces will feel the full effects and benefits that are about to flow forward.

The best part of this is that the new moon will be in elegant angle to Jupiter, the Great Benefactor planet, now in your solar 1st house of your personality, identity, and all dreams and desires important to you. The 1st house is the engine that drives the whole chart!”

I suppose I should note that March 7 is MY birthday. While I’m not a big believer in astrology, I don’t dismiss it outright either. Anyway, I love that “the new moon will be in elegant angle to Jupiter”; I have no idea what that means, but it sounds purty.

ROG

ROG

The Lydster, Part 36a: Happy Birthday plus one

Friend Dan wrote:
“What! How did she get so old??”
Darned if I know.
My friend Deb wrote:

Great pictures of Lydia. Have you tried monster spray? www.monstergoaway.com(this is my question–I think it needs some research. There are lots of web sites and suggestions that a new label on air freshener will also do the trick.) I believe you can get it at CVS. We also had a doll named Baby who now lives on top of the desk in
my daughter’s room (now 22 and about to go off [out of the country again]. Providence).
My friend Shirley wrote:

[My granddaughter] is four now, as you probably recall, and a look at your
blogspot reminds me that [she and] Lydia have some things in common, like being adored little girls and first and (to date) only children, with verbal and demonstrative parents. L’s pictures suggest that she is a tremendously happy and well-balanced kid. The same is true of our granddaughter. We’re realizing that first and “only,” and therefore highly verbal kids, carry a heavier cognitive burden–lots to deal with in their little brains. I love it that you chase the monsters from L’s room. But they sure do come back. It doesn’t seem to us at all unusual for this stuff to go on longer than you’d like. Our little girl has been interacting with her nocturnal monsters for a couple of years now. Our daughter, a little tired of being wakened at 2:00 AM and trying to “do the right thing” and “explore the causes,” now has a bed in her daughter’s room and sleeps there some of every night.
That probably would get her a black mark by child-raising gurus, and we’re not recommending it, but it’s also not a permanent arrangement; she will grow out of this stage. Meanwhile it eliminates a lot of stress on all sides. My granddaughter sleeps better and so does my daughter. It also honors her concerns, which means she’ll go on telling them about whatever is on her mind and not shutting up like a clam, and it deals with the “symptom” until the super structure of reality adjusts
to–well, reality. (Part of reality could be getting big enough physically so your parents bedroom doesn’t seem like a thousand miles away.) No doubt Lydia, like our grannddaughter, knows perfectly well that it’s “all in her head,” but that it’s none the less scary.”

Well, it’s not every night, but sometimes, Lydia does end up in our bed, or she and I or Carol and I in the guest room, not so much from monsters while she’s awake, but from nightmares.
This from intrepid reporter Mark:

Here is my theory: Respond as to whether you agree or not.

The worst years for all parents come in intervals of 3:

Newbown: Yeah, cute is one word. Another is … well, that’s three words.
3: Tantrums, with vocabulary.
6: Over that whole kindergarten phase where they are proud they can follow rules.
9: Think they’re 12.
12: Think they’re 15.
15: They are 15.
18. They are off on their own, and they’re not ready.
21. They are really off on their own, and you’re not ready.

That is off the top of my head. Discuss amongst yourself.

Yes, newborn WAS tough. Someone told me recently that boys tend to be more terrible at two, while girls are more terrible at three. Anyone want to comment on that theory?
ROG

ROG
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