Jon Cogburn's Blog

fun with animals

I wish I'd felt well enough to go to this petting zoo pumpkin sale thingy in Hammond Louisiana with Emily and Thomas yesterday.

Nobody make any jokes about Of Mice and Men or the old cartoon that copied it. This being said, you really do have to teach two year olds not to just grab at animals. Thomas is learning pretty well.

When I was a kid some of our friends in the country had a turkey that was really foul tempered and who liked to chase kids up into the back of a pick-up truck. I don't know if this turkey will have such a lucky fate. According to Emily, he found Thomas as interesting as Thomas found him.

This is why I'm really bummed I could not go. There's really nothing happier then when your kid is excited, full of innocent joy, and interested in the world.

Emily said his second favorite thing was watching piglets eat. It made him jump up and down and laugh uproariously.

To quote Emily's facebook (where I got these photos from) caption for this picture, "But his absolute favorite was the cow. He banged on it, laid down on it, and petted it. The cow didn't seem to notice."

He got a pumpkin at the end which is just big enough for him to lug around and place on different chairs. He's so hyped about the pumpkin that he brought it to bed last night, but he didnt' try to bring to church this morning.

devil in my pocket youtube playlist

I just figured out how to make a playlist for the weird videos I've been making using public domain content and music from me and Emily's rock band. The playlist is HERE (the one's that work best video-wise are probably Santa Sangre, Zombies, and the Zoo). The general webpage for the band with lots more MP3s of songs  is HERE. I"m decent at playing guitar and writing melodies, barely adequate at singing, bad as a lyricist, and even worse at getting a decent mix and timbre when recording these things on my computer.

When playing live I can keep an audience's attention if I am wearing a wrestling mask. Once it comes off they start drunkenly talking to one another and ignoring me. There's probably some Levinasian reason for this.

Music has mostly been on a hiatus with very young children. During the sabbatical year I could be a decent father to a baby, play music, and write philosophy. When we came back to Baton Rouge and I had to teach again while trying to be a decent father to a toddler it took me a year just to figure out how to write philosophy again (as much as possible do it two hours every morning very, very early- then the rest of the day is grading, teaching, prepping lectures, administrative stuff, helping students, and being a dad). I think it's going to be another year at least before I can work realiably rocking out back into the mix. Other musician friends of mine with full time jobs tell me that when your youngest hits three things open up in a way that gives you one or two hours a day rocking out time without being a bad father.

Another picture from Minnesota

Everybody is back in Baton Rouge now, but we just got this picture from Emily's friend that she visited in Minnesota, Holly.

If this was a frame from a horrible film, Thomas would be walking in slow motion with the camera slowly panning upward from his feet. Some kind of dramatic song like Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle Again" would be playing. The day blogging technology catches up to that will be the day that the internet officially has begun to suck.

Here's another great one of Emily and Thomas from the same trip.

The two most beautiful people in the world!

pictures of Thomas in Minnesota

Thomas is celebrating the impending loss of his only child status by going up to Minnesota with Emily this week and hanging out with her family. Emily said that when he saw the sheep and cows at the state fair that he got so excited that he danced around. He also thought that getting up on the tractor was just about one of the most boss things anybody could ever do.

I miss them both really bad, but am happy that they're getting to visit everybody before the new baby comes along around the turn of the year.

a girl

Today I found out our next child is going to be a girl (due some time between Christmas and New Year's Day). I'm pretty excited about it.

The office where they do ultrasound at Women's Hospital in Baton Rouge has a really small reception area. And they play Fox News really loudly. Of all the dumb bits of media the Women's Hospital could force on the huddled expectant parents, Fox News has the singular virtue of not only loudly and sensationally reporting on everything vile in existence, but also of instancing those very things.

I guess it functions to remind us of all of the evil insanity in this world to which we are bringing new life. I wish they played Sesame Street or something or (better) just let us turn the television off.

To the Lions with Those Cups!!!

Wow we had to experiment with a lot of different sippy cups before we found that did not make Thomas sad. The sports bottle type configuration finally worked O.K.

I don't know what his facial expression is here. Kingsley Amis would have a name for it. Maybe Emperor-Nero-displeased-by-a-poem?

A Bit too Free Jazz for My Taste

This is in the choir practice room at our church. Every time I tried to play something, Thomas pushed my hands away and said "No." That's O.K. I really am a terrible piano player.

Thomas rocked out though.

We're going to get some kind of piano by the time he's four, and he and I will take lessons. I want to play the kind of music Wooster does in the BBC production of Jeeves and Wooster.

Thomas can stay with the jazz if that's what he really wants to do, though I have already explained to him several times that AC/DC is the height of musical sophistication.

Back in Baton Rouge

Here's Thomas pondering the nature of self-reflection in Florida. Today he's getting reacquainted with all of his toys in Baton Rouge.

I brought a bunch of work with me (some of it actually on self-reflection) but just ended up reading Brian Ruckley's two fantasy/adventure novels and hanging out with family instead. It was nice.

I'm too exhausted to come up with a caption for this

nice weekend

My parents were in town this weekend, and everybody had an absolute blast.

Here Thomas is staring sagely into the future.

After playing with the chalk a bit he spent thirty minutes meticulously walking across the yard, removing one leaf from a bush, walking back across the yard, handing my dad the leaf, and then repeating the process.

Church was nice. During the part at the beginning where everybody shares joys and griefs Dad stood up and told everybody that Emily was pregnant. One of the great things about grandparents is how excited they are about their grand-kids.

We're nervous about being able to get someone to come over and stay with Thomas while Emily gives birth in late December or early January (in the past this would not have been an issue, because the Dad would just stay with the other kids; now you're a "partner" and are there for the birth; it's just part of your job). One of the really good things about a church is that even in a highly mobile society where you may live apart from other family members, you have a community to draw on to help you deal with issues like that.

Another Great Ensemble

The suspenders are 100% yob/glam rock typified by Slade in their glory days, and the whole effect is balanced perfectly by the vintage "Jean Genie" inspiring era Iggy Pop shoes. Genius! Give the kid a guitar and a contract already (he fits the suit)¹.

[1."He fits the suit"- reference to sad but ultimately morally uplifiting episode of The Brady Bunch.]

Yesterday's Big Drama of the Slide (With Both a Pleasing Outcome and Moral Upliftment)

From Zufußenheit to Vorfußenheit and Beyond

Weird thing about internalizing norms

One of the weirdest things is how Thomas now will tell himself, "No, No, No," when he's doing something we discourage. He'll be coloring in a coloring book and one of us will go in the kitchen for a minute and hear him in the other room saying, "no, no, no." I looked in on him doing  this, and he'd started to eat one of the crayons, then took the crayon out while remonstrating with himself.

It seems to be of a piece with Julian Jayne's hypothesis that primordially there is no distinction between the interior voice and the exterior voice. Jayne thought that the ability to make the distinction is pretty late evolutionarily, so this would be a case of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.
.

weird prototypicality effects in toddler cagetorization

When Thomas sees pictures of the Hulk he says, "woof, woof."

His concept of "woof, woof" prototypically involves dogs, but extends out to other animals, including a very riled up David Banner. The Hulk is the only humanoid who gets the appellation though.

Thomas lines trucks up in a row and then propels them off couch

What did cavemen children play with?

Small rocks? Little bits of disintegrating wood?

One thing's for sure, whatever they played with, they moved them back and forth and said "Vroom. Vroom."

fun with books

This is the most recent photo. I was unsuccessfully teaching Charlie not to bum-rush Thomas for the tennis ball. Thomas really likes to throw things and have Charlie go get them.

I really should put up a picture of him with a book though.

He's seventeen months old now, and I'm really hyped to see the way in which he can access the representational content of pictures. He looks through his picture books, magazines, and cookbooks and points to pictures of cats and says "beeow" (the same thing he says to actual cats), to pictures of dogs and says "wuff, wufff," to pictures of cars and trucks and says "vroom," and to pictures of food and says "yum, yum." If it's a person he'll first point to his own nose, hair, ear, eyes, mouth, or foot and then to the same part on the person. He's really studious and intent while doing this, and will flip through a magazine for ten minutes or so.

Today he was looking at a book of cat pictures and he found one (I think the cat was ineffectually hiding under a box) to be absolutely hilarious. He kept turning back to that page and then cracking up.

It was pretty cool.

strawman

"Lucy" has a new blog post about the infantry here.

more manly pic of Thomas

In the last picture- Thomas' angelic countenance, long curly hair, and frilly baptismal outfit all sort of work together to suggest "girly." So I thought I'd post a picture of him in overalls to right the karmic/gender balance.

Before berating me for regressive attitudes, please note that if some day he wants to have long hair and wear frilly outfits, that's just fine with his parents.

I just pray that my parenting helps him be compassionate, curious, creative, hardworking, humorous, and joyful.

thomas in baptism duds made by my Mom and Aunt Suzy

It was a crazy couple of days for him with so much visiting grandparent attention and then related baptism hoopla. He did a great job during the service, mostly eating little goldfish crackers. After becoming officially Presbyterian, he walked up and down the aisle with our pastor and Emily. He seems pretty satisfied with the whole thing.