Videos

Recently S has notified me that I'm to stop making odd comments whilst we are video taping our little, though growing at an exceedingly rapid rate, if things continue as they are currently she'll probably be the size of a brontosaurus at some point, fingers crossed, bundle of baby. Apparently complaining about the frequency of her crying or her last incident of throwing up are not the sorts of things that stand the test of time.

And S does have a point. I often deliver little snide remarks during the filming of the videos that I don't offer up as frequently when we're actually just chilling with lil s. I am acutely aware that I'm being filmed, and it shows. However, I'd like to point out that knowledge of your future audience isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world. I mean, you have to be aware as a new parent that any number of people may be watching these videos in the future. Hell, even you might be watching these videos, and I think we all know that one of the most awful things in the world is to be bored. Do you know what isn't boring? Saying obnoxious things during videos.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm not going to listen to S. Rather, I'm going to continue saying strange things in videos on the off chance that my future self will find them amusing. Or, best case scenario, totally obnoxious because I've matured/been beaten down by the world enough to have stopped making those snide remarks. However, when you've got a three minute video of your child's first bath, which actually just involves her naked and screaming for three minutes, you really have to question the method behind the whole madness of taking any videos at all. I'm not sure that I'll ever enjoy hearing s cry on that video. The girl was born with some serious lungs. Maybe we can enjoy it on mute when she's sixteen or something.

I guess the whole argument for being out of the picture in the video is that the child is the star of the show no matter what. (one of the best things S does in the videos is give lil s's age. It's already getting hard to remember she used to be as small as she was at first. However, now that we have the ability to document every last moment I think the thing that's going to remain interesting throughout the years is whether my various puns on the word chai are going to stand the test of time.



I'm not going to upload the video where Sadie cries for three minutes straight, but I'm tempted to in order to garner further support for the ban on my extemporaneous speaking whilst videoing. (The only downside to the whole project is realizing how annoying my voice is, which I'm not really privy to in the day to day world. I realize this is a common occurrence for people, but I still don't enjoy the sound of it).



Anyhow, I'm looking forward to sitting down on lil s's prom night and watching each and every one of these videos. I'm hoping we're at something like twenty four hours by that point in time, and we can all remember how old she was and how funny I used to be.

Portions of things I used to scribble about:

In the third grade he threw a dinosaur themed birthday party. His mother had knit him a fine stegosaurus outfit, though he found himself troubled on the celebration day by his bipedal locomotion and its inaccuracy relative to the actual movement of a stegosaurus. He was the sort of boy who was inexplicably and irrevocably troubled by small things. The other children’s costume tended to be big ticket sort of predators that were bipedal, and this left the boy, that day, feeling mildly depressed as everyone ate cake, pushing the green sugary frosting to the edge of paper plates, where the body of the maimed green triceratops centerpiece quietly melted.

During the latter stages of the party, when the adults were tipsy from white wine doled out freely in the kitchen, the boy, not knowing how to extricate himself expeditiously from the costume, wet himself in the guest bathroom. He sat on the cold tile and wept. Then, not knowing what else to do, he left the bathroom and sat on the couch, acutely aware of the smell of his own urine rising to meet him, and of its slow dry against his thigh, and the accompanying chafing and general stiffness that it created on the left leg of his costume.

The whole stegosaurus urine affair, and its attendant shame and humiliation stuck with the boy for years. In short, in the way of adults blaming parents for their failings he held the whole costume affair against her, for allowing him, the child, to persuade her to make such a complex costume that made urination such a chore. The other kids at the party generally had wonderful time.