They whispered melodies so loudly
I just explained my high school radio telescope to the friend of my niece's who came over after their half-day to run around screaming in the snow of my parents' side yard. She wanted to know what the dish was for. I had to correct my own assumption that all seven-year-olds know the shape of our galaxy, but otherwise it went all right. She seemed interested in the idea of being able to map something that couldn't be seen with the eye. It finally struck me as hilarious that for more than twenty years I have been explaining the distribution of neutral hydrogen throughout the rotating spiral of the Milky Way with the simile of cream in stirred coffee when I never drank the latter in my life.
In other news, I am at my parents' house, tied up in the pleasant work of niece-care. Yesterday after school was spent almost entirely in playing cats, which was a lot like calisthenics with more purring. She has learned about headbutts and delivers them enthusiastically. She hunted a leftover dreidel all through the house, singing to it exactly as Hestia does with our socks. "String is really tricky," I have found myself saying solemnly. "String is really cunning prey." I convinced her to eat enough protein at dinner by ventriloquizing said protein in the act of traversing a plate blithely fearless in the knowledge that no cat was going to come along and NO WE WERE WRONG ABORT ABORT CHAOS HELL NIGHT DEATH AND THE DEVIL ALL IS LOST and the little cat licks her chops and giggles and waits for the next foolhardy bite. This routine worked until we ran out of protein and then it worked on the starch. I know children enjoy repetition, but I'm still entertained. She loved the dragon stickers sent her by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
minoanmiss and the book of mythological stickers that arrived today from my godchild. She likes it, by which I mean she is insistent that I not stop even when it's her bedtime, when I read to her.
My physical state is just not acceptable, but my niece is a delight.
In other news, I am at my parents' house, tied up in the pleasant work of niece-care. Yesterday after school was spent almost entirely in playing cats, which was a lot like calisthenics with more purring. She has learned about headbutts and delivers them enthusiastically. She hunted a leftover dreidel all through the house, singing to it exactly as Hestia does with our socks. "String is really tricky," I have found myself saying solemnly. "String is really cunning prey." I convinced her to eat enough protein at dinner by ventriloquizing said protein in the act of traversing a plate blithely fearless in the knowledge that no cat was going to come along and NO WE WERE WRONG ABORT ABORT CHAOS HELL NIGHT DEATH AND THE DEVIL ALL IS LOST and the little cat licks her chops and giggles and waits for the next foolhardy bite. This routine worked until we ran out of protein and then it worked on the starch. I know children enjoy repetition, but I'm still entertained. She loved the dragon stickers sent her by
minoanmiss and the book of mythological stickers that arrived today from my godchild. She likes it, by which I mean she is insistent that I not stop even when it's her bedtime, when I read to her.My physical state is just not acceptable, but my niece is a delight.
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I believed myself for years to be the sort of person for whom children had no affinity for and this is apparently one hundred percent wrong. I'm pretty happy about it.
I hope your physical state improves soonest.
Thank you.
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Help, help, help, my beautiful incomparable adorable eyes rolled to the back of my head. Our sour, serious, fretful child had you on lock at their first birthday. And before that! I think you were down in October that previous year!
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I was! I met your child for the first time properly in October 2010 when I came to D.C. for the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I was reading Bruce Duffy's The World as I Found It (1987) at the time, as opposed to Margery Allingham's Traitor's Purse (1941), which I was reading at the baby shower when technically I made first contact with my godchild in the form of feeling them kicking from inside your spouse, which doesn't quite count. And then I was back three months later for their birthday, which was normal in those days.
I take your point that that was more than ten years ago, but I'm still adjusting.
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You took some of Spouse's postpartum *handwavey* full on in October and you still came back for their birthday. Adjust at your own speed! They're younger than we are.
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My mother has pointed out that long before any of the three children currently in my life were born, she could watch the small children of family friends or other relatives glom on to me and I have never been awkward with babies. So this is an adjustment problem of long standing! She is not remotely surprised that Charlotte literally bounces in place at the thought of spending time with me. I am doing my best to come up to speed.