Literally

A number of years ago, in the fish line at a market on the Upper East Side, I overheard a customer giving detailed instructions to the man behind the counter, telling him in effect to just give her the fish-flesh, no bones or fat. He seemed unwilling to go this route, of course, and the manager soon came by to support him against the customer's unreasonable demands. The fish would be sold the way it was, without further trimming of fat. "That's the nature of the beast," said the manager.

On Tuesday we went to the pediatrician. The assistant weighed Duncan and laughed: "He's off the charts." Literally. The chart only showed weights up to the 95th percentile for every age. Later the doctor called up a more in-depth chart that showed Little D (or, um, big D) at the 98th percentile. Then his computer crashed.

Late Night

I lost the coin toss and am staying up with Alistair. Men are so well equipped for putting babies to sleep. Bony chest, deep, scary voice, plastic nipple, forumla.

Alistair heard his name while sleeping earlier today and smiled for an instant with just half his face, one of the cutest things I have ever seen.

I am meeting more and more Oliver's--you know your son's name is trendy when David Brooks says it is--but we are in even worse shape than I thought. Alistar a girl lives around the corner. My wife met a woman whose baby girl was born a week before our guy and said that her boy name was also Alistair.

Mr. Hendrix's Neighborhood

Little Einsteins is a good show to put on if you've got a toddler and an infant, the toddler clapping along to give the Einsteins' rocket power, the infant listening to the classical music while facing away from the screen.

I watched so much TV as a kid that I began studying cartoons and educational programming for hidden messages, or stories in which the good guy/girl did not win every time. Here is what I found.

The bottom circle in the traffic light in Mr. Rogers's house was definitely blue, not green, and I discovered Jimi Hendrix at a very early age because he sang, "The traffic lights they turn blue tomorrow."

The Really Rottens, the evil team in the Laugh Olympics, actually came in first one week. I am not imagining this.

And lately, I've noticed that old episodes of Sesame Street are labeled "May Not Be Appropriate For Children."

Raisin Cain?

A three-year-old loves getting a pack of raisins for Christmas...but that window is quite brief!

Sense and Seussibility

The writer Ben Marcus told me once that the only books he could really follow as a child were Seuss because they did not make sense. Like zinks in your sink? Zlocks in your clocks and wosets in your closets? Then you will love Marcus's first novel The Age Of Wire And String, in which food is worn, weather rages underground, and "The Ben Marcus" is defined as a "false map scroll, caul or parchment."

Lord Vader in Philadelphia

Lord Vader and about thirty stormtroopers showed up for the opening of the Franklin Institute's Star Wars exhibit this weekend, brandishing pistols and sniper rifles in downtown Philadelphia. Interestingly, Princess Padme and the few rebel pilots in attendance weren't armed, as if only those people who side with the Empire like brandishing fake guns in front of my children.

On a related note, does the Institute really need to denigrate the incredibly successful Mars Rover by pretending to sell it like a used car, claiming it was used for "only" 93 days?

Super Tuesday In Dadistan

Are babies Republicans? Let's examine some of their positions: against choice and birth control, and yet they also favor the Family Medical Leave Act, incentives for telecommuting, and the right to breast-feed in public, so maybe they are really anti-choice Democrats.

Two years ago, I ran for office in Maryland and missed Oliver's bedtime for about ninety nights in a row. Trying to come home during the day, I was not forgiven, O. closing the door on me and saying, "No Dada." He continues to be suspicious of politics and blogs, threatening to take our computers away in the same way that we sometimes threaten him with the loss of his cars.

Live in a Super Tuesday state? Tell us who you're voting for and why.

For the future

Duncan: If I become president...and then you become president...please read this book before taking office.

In the course of this volume Mr. Weisberg argues that George W. Bush’s Oedipal relationship with his father and sibling rivalry with his brother Jeb (who, for many years, was regarded as the family’s rising political star) fueled his transformation from hard-drinking black sheep in the family to dynastic heir. George W. Bush, he writes, had a contradictory attitude toward his father: a “drive to correct Poppy’s mistakes” and a “demand for his admiration.” —Michiko Kakutani, on Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy, NYT