Flirty baby

I swear that Benji is going to have girls falling all over him as he grows up. He already has flirting down to a science. He even had the whole cosmetics counter at the mall "ooh-ing" over him several weeks ago when he gave the patented Benji flirty smile. He smiles, turns his head, and looks coyly at the object of his flirting. I've never fully captured the flirt on film, but these pictures give you some idea.

Composing update.

Back in January, I made the public goal of composing or arranging 24 pieces by the end of this year -- two pieces a month, in other words. Now that we're at the one-third point in the year, I have made the decision to look back at my records and see how well I'm doing at this endeavor. As I write this, I haven't yet checked; my best guess is that I'm pretty close to the eight I should have hit by now, but let's go take a look-see...

Well, not too bad. With the contest piece I'm sending off today, I will have composed/arranged seven pieces thus far this year -- two of those (“Fantasie on 'Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart'” and “My Faith Looks Up to Thee”) which, surprisingly, have already be accepted for publication. And if we're counting fractional pieces as well, I'm more like 8.4, since my third contest piece of this year is 90 percent done, and a medley of Christmas hymns I'm working on is about halfway completed. So. Yay me.

Gotta love those feet

Several months ago I wrote about Benji's love of his fingers, especially of shoving them in his mouth (the more in there at the same time, the better). Today I return with a companion piece about his feet.

Sometime last month Benjamin discovered his feet. In fact you've all seen him grabbing them in his five-month pictures several posts ago. He used to grab one foot with one or both hands and then try to get the foot free (similar to what he used to do with his hands). I think he now understands that his feet belong to him since he doesn't "steal" his feet as much anymore. His feet are also quite ticklish. I can get the best little belly laughs by tickling or "eating" his toes. Of course he also loves eating his own toes. When I undress him on the changing table he inevitably grabs his feet and frequently shoves all his toes in his mouth at once. How many of you can do that?

Benji's balloon

A few weeks ago Matthew participated in a local 10K and of course we had to go and cheer him on, especially since Benji was Matthew's training partner. So, while Daddy was out on the course Mommy and Benji walked around and enjoyed the festivities. One of the things Mommy did was get Benji his first balloon. He seemed quite enthralled with it, as he is with most new objects. He also loved the ribbon attached to it and kept running the ribbon through his fingers. Amazingly he didn't try to eat the balloon or the ribbon at all. And of course Mommy took pictures.

The end of Olerud Watch.

The greatest baseball player in the history of baseball players has, sniff, retired. (Okay, apparently he retired in December, but I have no reason to google baseball players in winter.)

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The funniest bit in the history of funny.

It is, of course, this. More in the same genre here, if they're not all quite so deadpan hilarious. (The Rainn ones vacillate between being too out there and too plausible.) The second-funniest one, hooray, will be on NBC tomorrow.

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The funniest comic in the history of funny.

When I get bored with the music stations on my XM, I'll occasionally listen to the "clean" comedy station, which covers mostly comedy oldies (The Smothers Brothers, Bob Newhart); comedy uber-oldies (Bob and Ray); and currentish people everyone has heard of (Cosby, Seinfeld, et al.). It's served to mostly reinforce my views on particular comics -- Seinfeld is vastly overrated; The Smothers Brothers, despite some respect in the business, still underappreciated -- but there's been two major revelations: (Mike) Nichols & (Elaine) May, and Steven Wright. Mike Nichols has moved on (and when I say "has," I mean they broke up in 1961) to become the dude who directed The Graduate and The Birdcage and other movies everyone likes but I dislike, but his and May's brand of comic realism -- often changing just one element of what would otherwise be a dead-serious dramatic situation -- implicitly delves into what makes comedy comedy. That sort of bipolar drama/comedy tension is what's made everyone one of their routines I've heard fascinating.

But it's actually Steven Wright who's the subject of my subject line. I'd never heard him before XM, although apparently he's well-enough known in comedy circles. His routine is just...um...uh...it's just a little hard to explain. So just watch.

Storytime

I'm a very task- or activity-oriented parent with Benjamin (as I am with many things in life). I enjoy watching him splash with joy in the bathtub or making him giggle during diaper changes, but I have a harder time figuring out what to do with free play. So I frequently turn to reading. It was much easier when he was younger (in the photos below) and didn't grab everything. I used to really enjoy reading "Harold and the Purple Crayon" to him, and he seemed to really enjoy studying the simple line drawings. Unfortunately "Harold" is now on hiatus since Benji has entered his paper-eating and paper-crumpling phase and I've switched to all board books. So for the foreseeable future I'll be reading Benji lots of "Goodnight Moon" and his new Easter board books while Matthew reads Entertainment Weekly (good pages to crumple). But continue to read we shall.

I'm ready for my close-up

Every month we've been taking Benji for professional portaits. OK, I admit that I'm the one who loves the pictures and Matthew is kind enough to indulge me and take Benji every month. My cube is completely covered in baby pictures!

His five-month pictures were especially adorable. I know I'm biased, but I think my readers share that same bias. See for yourself.