three videos of Eléa — late August, 2010

(1) smiling: part 1
(2) smiling: part 2
(3) a visit from Alison and Ben

On the proliferation of tropical mammals in temperate regions

If one were to examine the stuffed-animal collection of the average, say, Canadian or Danish child, and then take a trip to some local forest, what would quickly become apparent is the faunistic disparity between the referents of the child's toys and the actual non-human inhabitants of the land in question.  So my question is this: Why do babies in industrialized countries in temperate regions all play with tropical animals?  Would it not make since for a child in Seattle to play with, say, cloth representations of stray dogs, feral cats, bears, elk, rats, and urban skunks?

At first glance, of course, one suspects some sort of subtle continuation of a colonialist mentality.  Perhaps Canadians are—knowingly or not—teaching their children to squeeze, manipulate, and chew on the heads of those living south of the tropic of Cancer.  Maybe Danish children are learning to associate tropical inhabitants with juvenile stages of development.

Whatever the reason, the fact that little boys in New York and Paris play with elephants and giraffes—not caribou and muskoxen—is never questioned.  Perhaps urban skunks don't sell well.  Or maybe elephants are just more fun.

Little Eléa also participates in this strange practice, which you can observe in this video.

Visit from Darcie and Reese (aka: Chubby Chubs)

Darcie and Reese came from Chicago and spent two nights with us; we fed, changed diapers, and went on walks.  It was amazing to meet Reese, five months old now, and get a glimpse into what our future own holds (lots and lots of smiles)! Eléa's new BFF was curious about her new friend, but as Eléa did not serve as a good teething object, Reese's interest quickly moved on to anything she could actually chew on.  We are looking forward to a reunion in December!

This Speaks for Itself

No need to really expand as the photos say it all, though we should note that Luke actually placed Eléa in the corner for this photo forgetting that she cannot yet sit up on her own (hence her facial expression—she is in the process of falling over).

Post Bath Fashion

In an effort to keep Eléa warm following her baths.......

Eléa's First Dress

Eléa's favorite aunty (who is incidentally in charge of our daughter's fashion decisions) gave her beautiful niece (while still in utero) this fantastic dress.  We (mainly Cindy) couldn't wait for Eléa to grow into this dress, as the picture clearly demonstrates, but Eléa let her protest be heard as she spit up within thirty seconds of being dressed and then needed to be changed.

Some Naked Play Time

Eléa still doesn't appreciate the many bells and whistles of her play mat (tropical animals included), but that doesn't seem to stop us from trying!  This naked time period (and the others that have followed) tend to last but a few minutes, until Eléa decides it would be more fun to pee/poop on the play mat than to interact with the many furry creatures at her disposal.

portraits and random photographs, August 16th, 2010

el quarto de Eléa

Eléa has a room.  It used to be Luke's study, but a few weeks before she was born, Eléa kicked him out of it.  Luke never quite understood how that happened, but he has resigned himself to a cramped existence in his new "study" (which is one corner of the living room).  Eléa has yet to actually sleep in her room and for the time being it is simply a 100 square foot plot of Manhattan real estate with a changing table.  Eléa has two lovely mobiles: a dragon from Aunt Rachel (which might have something to do with Wales) and some rice paper figures from Ariel and Lorri.  She also has a royal crib and some paintings by abuela.  In addition, she is the owner of a topponcino and quilt, which will the subjects of a future blog.

from Ariel and Lorri

from Aunt Rachel

Eléa's royal crib—a gift from the Cohen families

painted by abuela for Eléa's room

two more by abuela

Couch stirrings

Video of Eléa on a couch.  Taken by Kaanchan.  Click here.

Eléa's first bath

Cindy, Kaanchan, and Alison gave Eléa her first real bath on August 2nd.  We are fortunate that she doesn't seem to have an aversion to the water.

after her first bath

Perhaps if she doesn't become a supreme court justice, and she decides against the Superwoman career track, she can be an Olympic swimmer.  To witness this historic event, click here.

Will Eléa remember the Alamo? : concerning the reconstruction of Texan identity in a foreign land

Eléa during an evening stroll in the precincts of the Alamo

If you head due south from Austin, curve to the right in the vicinity of Lockhart or Maxwell, and are sure to cross the Guadalupe River somewhere between Canyon Lake and Seguin, you will eventually come to a place called San Antonio.  Situated in the heart of this now sprawling city is the most popular tourist attraction in Texas: the Alamo.  Now, for those of you who hail from the Lone Star State, "Remember the Alamo" is a phrase familiar to your ears, even if you generally had other things on your mind during 7th and 11th grade Texas History class.  But let's be honest: how many of us actually remember the Alamo, or even know the most basic facts about the mission-turned-battle-ground?

That the Alamo was not foremost in my own mind during my formative years is not surprising: the three-day siege and 90 minute battle that occurred there between about 1,500 Mexican troops and roughly 180 Texan soldiers in 1836 seemed to have no bearing on life in Austin during the 1980s and 90s.  Initially the battle cry "Remember the Alamo" was of course precisely that: a cry to battle.  As such, it was a call to remember the motivation for fighting.  And as with all entreaties to remember, once the function of a memory passes away, so too does the memory.

Besides this very practical facet, it seems that one of the primary cultural functions of memory, or at least uses to which it is put, is the construction and, more importantly, maintenance of group identity.  And this function often becomes particularly important when an individual or group is severed from his/her/its geographical homeland.  Growing up in Texas, and with no apparent threat to my home state on the horizon, there was no need to solidify my Texan identity or idealize and fetishize the Lone Star; I was situated smack dab in the middle of the state and had to drive about 8 hours just to get out of the darn thing.  Texarkana was located somewhere just off the backside of Pluto as far as my central Texan perspective was concerned.

But now we have the case of Eléa: a Texan who has been born into the culturally alien world of Manhattan, where bagels and subways rule supreme, and bluebonnets and cypress-shaded canoe jaunts are no more real than the referents of the caricatural stuffed tropical animals in which she will soon take interest.

A real Texan among us

This is, to my mind, the perfect opportunity to re-member the Alamo.  Perhaps our generation lost its way in the rush of Reganomics and the divine right of capitalistic pursuit.  But Eléa will reclaim the past.  The Alamo will mean something to her and she will thereby become a true Texan, that is, a self-consciously Texan Texan.  Only beyond the mental (and in this case physical) borders of the former Republic does one actually have a chance to make "Texas" monolithic, to carve an essence out of arbitrariness.  (After all, can you name an attribute that is both common and unique to all Texans, thus allowing us to speak of Texas as an unit characterized by internal uniformity?)

With this in mind, we shall—taking liberties with the standard usage of certain verbs—re-member the Alamo to Eléa, or remember Eléa the Alamo.  It shall be the underpinning of her cultural identity as she wanders the boulevards and allies of this hostile land where good barbecue exists only in the world of her ancestors.  She is in Egypt, Paterson and Bloomburg are the pharaohs, and she yearns for the Levant lying beyond the far shore of the Hudson.

Not that she'll have to know anything about the Alamo that we might call factual or historical.  After all, what did the early nineteenth-century Scottish intelligentsia really know of life in the Highlands?  But that doesn't matter, for the Alamo will be alive to her in a way that it was not to her culturally disoriented parents who failed to sink any imagined roots into the cracks and crevices of the Alamo's limestone walls.  And when we do bring Eléa back to visit her imagined homeland, I will have the pleasure of introducing my friends to a truly self-made Texan.

Nocturnal patterns

inebriated on the white stuff after a long night of drinking

Eléa's sleep patterns, while perhaps not the hot topic in the editorial pages of major US newspapers, are certainly taken seriously and analyzed in great depth at the Eigler-Thompson residence.  Eléa seems to have settled into a three-period sleep pattern: she sleeps for 4-5 hours starting sometime between 20:00 and 22:00 hours (the use of military time reflects Cindy and Luke's approach to the circumstances at hand), wakes up to feed for an hour, sleeps for another two hours, feeds, and then goes down for her final 2-3 hour sleep, though this third period of sleep often requires a human bed (see photos).  The trick is to get her to sleep right when she's enjoying her post-feed milk coma.  Therefore, when it looks as though her feeding is nearing the end, Luke has to prepare for a fast and furious session of capitalizing on Eléa's dazed state of mind.  If she is given even a few minutes to think, she'll realize that keeping daddy up for the next three hours will certainly prove to be more amusing than falling asleep like an obedient 4-week old.  If this was the good ole 50s, we'd just give Eléa a bit of brandy when things were looking rough, but alas, such tactics are frowned upon these days.

early signs of her penchant for break dancing

los abuelitos de Eléa

Eléa is very fortunate.  Instead of simply having two sets of grandparents, she has one set of grandparents and one set of abuelitos.  Her abuelo and abuela were here in New York for her birth and helped us out tremendously during our first two weeks.  Her abuelitos live in Houston, though Eléa doesn't yet quite understand this.  If it's not semi-spherical and doesn't produce milk, then she's not particularly interested, and I don't think that Houston fits either of these criteria.  We're counting on her abuelitos to teach her proper Venezuelan Spanish and introduce her to cachapas and arepas.  (Click here to see a video of Eléa and abuela from two days after Eléa's birth.)

Super(wo)man

Aunt Ariane helping Eléa realize her career goals

Well........we were hoping Supreme Court justice.  Or chair of the Anthropology Department at Harvard.  Even good ol' doctor or lawyer would have been fine.  But no, our little girl has expressed her aspirations early, and in no uncertain terms: she wants to be Superwoman when she grows up!

Now, some might say, "That's great.  She's challenging received gender roles."  But is she?  She might just be shoring up the notion that to deserve the prefix "super" one must develop hypertonic pectoral muscles, run around chasing victims of systemic discrimination, eschew any sort of teamwork (thereby lending weight to Margret Thatcher's position on the "issue" of society), and wear a bunch of funny-colored spandex.  I tried to corner her about the matter this afternoon, to see what her real intentions are: are you going to transform our conceptions of "super" and "man," thereby propelling humanity into that trans-cultural realm beyond the known?  Or are you simply going to insert a "wo" between "super" and "man"?  She looked at me, turning the matter over in her mind, then promptly spat up all over me.  If I knew anything about the art of divination I might have inspected her drool more carefully.  Maybe I'll suggest law school to her when she's in a better mood.

Kaanchan's visit

This past week our friend Kaanchan spent three nights with us.  He was visiting us after training yoga teachers in Cleveland and visiting his sister in Vermont.  He certainly earned his keep: he cooked, cleaned, went grocery shopping, and even took charge of multiple get-Eléa-back-to-sleep shifts (an undertaking that requires anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours).

While he was here he baked us some wonderful chocolate chip cookies.  As the cookies cooled and the hours passed, the number of extant cookies decreased with conspicuous rapidity.  I tried to think of how I might make it look as though Eléa was eating them all: attaching large crumbs to the corners of her mouth, smearing a bit of chocolate on her cheek, planting oily smudges on the lid of the cookie bin as though a small hand had been fumbling about in search of sucrose and the coveted Theobroma bean.  Unfortunately Eléa seemed to have no intention to be part of my scheme, though as it turned out I wasn't the only one to make a nocturnal trip to the cookie tin.

In any case, if you are a lady and have any interest in establishing a family with Kaanchan, Cindy, Luke, and Eléa can all vouch for his ability with newborns, not to mention his domestic skills more generally.  He changes diapers like a king and, as far as I can tell, shows no penchant for gambling or drinking (though I would recommend an extra padlock on the cookie tin).

sleeping on the job