Posts tagged with "kids"

Bobby's number two

I’ve been itch­ing to play around with some new footage late­ly cause I love edit­ing and it’s been a while since I had a good sto­ry to tell, so when Tiana invit­ed me to Bobby’s sec­ond birth­day par­ty, I could­n’t resist. I also recent­ly pur­chased some new gear in prepa­ra­tion of a wed­ding I’ve been hired to film in the Fall (with a sec­ond one poten­tial­ly lined up), and I’ve been look­ing for an oppor­tu­ni­ty to field-test a new bag, shoul­der strap, and mono­pod.

I tend to get real­ly shy at Tiana’s par­ties cause I feel like I’m the only one who does­n’t know any­one else there, but she does a good job of mak­ing sure I’m nev­er left alone for too long and includ­ed in most con­ver­sa­tions. She’s also the only oth­er per­son I know to actu­al­ly design cus­tom invi­ta­tions. This time, how­ev­er, she was sport­ing a perky new hair­cut, and no longer a veg­e­tar­i­an (for now). Such is the pow­er of St. Hubert.

Continue read­ing “Bobby’s num­ber two”…

Baby talk

One sum­mer in my teenage years, I vol­un­teered at a kinder camp1, and that filled a gap in my knowl­edge about any­one under 10. Unfortunately, that gap only spanned chil­dren between 3 and 5, and aside from that range, I knew noth­ing about kids.

So inter­act­ing with chil­dren who’ve yet learned to speak I found espe­cial­ly awk­ward. I nev­er under­stood how to talk to some­one who did­n’t seem to under­stand what I was say­ing. It was like talk­ing to a stuffed ani­mal, which I’m pret­ty sure can’t be done by any sane per­son with­out feel­ing creepy.

Rosella in the car

 

Not to men­tion how pho­ny it sounds. Why do peo­ple raise their voic­es, as if a child trusts them more if they sound like them2? They don’t nor­mal­ly talk like that.

Then I real­ized that I do kit­ty talk, with the boospy, and the schmoop­sy, and the pokey of the bel­ly. I talk to my cat all the time, a habit I’ve prob­a­bly picked up from liv­ing by myself for the last three years, com­bined with the fact that I’m an extreme intro­vert and stay in my house for the major­i­ty of my time.

Which is strange because Dolly does­n’t under­stand any­thing I’m say­ing (though I’m sure cats are intel­li­gent enough to evolve to talk if they believed any­thing a human had to say could be impor­tant). And this is after I wrote an entry sev­en years ago, specif­i­cal­ly about how awk­ward I found it to talk­ing to cats.

Maybe I’m com­fort­able enough with cats now to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with one. Or maybe I’m going crazy.

Rosella with tongue out

 

I’m get­ting more com­fort­able with kids too. Not just talk­ing to them, but the idea of hav­ing them myself, maybe because my friends are get­ting mar­ried and giv­ing birth and I’m spend­ing more time with a few adorable boys and girls. I can talk to them even though they only respond in mono­syl­la­bles.

Jodie Foster once described hav­ing chil­dren as the most cre­ative thing she’s ever done, and I com­plete­ly under­stand that now. I can’t think of any­thing more cre­ative than nur­tur­ing growth, curios­i­ty, imag­i­na­tion, and ideas in anoth­er human being. One day, I’d like to expe­ri­ence it for myself.

  1. Cause I had noth­ing bet­ter to do. Seriously. [↩]
  2. Though it worked for Owen Meany. [↩]

Baby Gensey

Baby tongue

Introducing Ryan Kevin Gensey, Aaron’s new baby boy, deliv­ered right on the pro­ject­ed date. I bought him the tur­tle you see in the cor­ner of his bas­ket there.

Baby birth card

I had the chance to hold him before he was a day old in the hos­pi­tal. At first, I approached this idea with some trep­i­da­tion, see­ing as how I car­ry the pre­con­ceived notion of how frag­ile baby’s necks are, but I could­n’t resist. He’s a lot lighter than Dolly, but some­how just as warm.

Baby foot

Aaron has always want­ed a boy first and a girl sec­ond — so the old­er broth­er can take care of the younger sis­ter — and it looks like every­thing is falling into the plan.

I’m now offi­cial­ly an uncle.