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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

William to English dictionary

A little change of pace this week, as the school workload has my drawing time down to a minimum. This week I'm going to do a simple William to English dictionary. As a one and a half year old he is learning words, and in many situations these singular words mean whole sentences or ideas. As he learns more words I will keep updating until his english is understandable to those who don't see him as often.

Mama- Mother! or Someone who I deem worthy to serve me! I request something that I do not have the words to articulate yet!

Dada- Scott is here! Joyous day!

Baba- I require liquid sustenance from my plastic drink container.

Ball- A spherical throwing object

Where's ball?- What is the location of my spherical throwing object? or I know exactly where my spherical throwing object is, but I wish for you to get it for me.

Uhahuh- I have no idea.

nonononononono- negative

uh- Positive

nyum nyum- I hunger

*hands up*- I would like to be carried.

*arm outstretched*- What I am saying is a query that I would like answered.

Rawr!- I see a certain species of animal with a large mouth and or large feet

Dawgie- I see a canine.

Keetie- I see a feline.

Choo Choo- A locomotive or another type of vehicle is visible to me.

edit: My girlfriend just reminded me of some more Williamisms

Doo- The pieces of cloth and leather that are placed upon my feet to protect me from harm, and have small orbs that illuminate on them.

Uh oh- Something has just occurred that I am probably to blame, and realizing this I shall place blame upon myself so you do not have too.

Hi- Greetings and salutations

Bahbah- Farewell

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Larry, Moe and William

I mentioned before the Juggernaut qualities of William. His chubby body and persistance giving him and unstoppable air. Tables, chairs, falls, trips, fences, a leash, nothing will stop him from trying to get what he wants, except for himself.
William is a master at hurting himself, and not only hurting himself, but hurting himself in such a way that his mom and I cannot help but laugh. This may sound mean, but I hope my audience will understand just how comical it usually is by the end of this post. He is like a member of the three stooges, except he doesn't need two other people to make it funny.

This weekend in particular holds a good amount of what I will call self inflicted comedy. It started on Friday when we all went to Mason for a craft night and ice cream social. My girlfriend and I were sitting down waiting for it to start as William spun chairs around, walked in circles, and then proceeded to get on all fours and stare at his mother and I. For what seemed like minutes now he stared at us, until he saw it fit to ram his head as hard as he could into the ground. He stared up and cried, his mom and I rushing to console him and make sure he was ok as we held in our laughter.

Then came Saturday. My girlfriend and I were watching t.v. when we suddenly hear William fussing. We look down to see him stuck in a drum barrel. He has a small drum with a removable lid for easy storage of musical toys, and he had somehow gotten his butt stuck pretty neatly into the barrel. His legs and arms flapped uselessly as he tried to right himself like an upturned turtle.

And then came Sunday night. We were all driving home when William begins to fuss. My girlfriend and I attributed this to him being tired, as it is what he normally does. But his fussing continued long after his usual time and we began to wonder. It was not until we got home and pulled him from his seat that I noticed something amiss. William had pulled his right arm from the strap and it lay awkwardly on top of the seatbelt.
There are many more instances of these situations, but these are the most recent and prominent, and not the last I am sure.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

William and Spirit

As the air gets cooler, the leaves become orange and everyone goes back to school my girlfriend and I get ready for our favorite candy themed holiday, Halloween. Neither one of us knows why we love Halloween, but we both know William will love it for the candy. In our quest to find couple themed costumes (We are thinking Batman and Robin at the moment) we have been to quite a few Halloween themed stores, the biggest of which being Spirit, the Halloween store that replaces ToyZam in the fall months.

As the blog is primarily about William I'll switch the focus to him now. He is now much better at holding hands, and when he doesn't we hook him up to his Elmo leash and let him enjoy the freedom a 4 foot radius circle allows. We walked into the store and the first thing that caught our eyes was the display of 6 or 7 moving Halloween decorations. As we approached the first one began to move, a monster in a cloak that made William jump. He pressed up against my legs, turned around and reached upwards, needing a safe embrace from the monster. This is when I started to question fear, a topic I will continue later in the blog.

As we went around William pressed closer and closer into my chest. His head turned from the rising vampires, the moving scarecrows, the haunted guides, the knife killer. His fear did not diminish until we reached the children's costume section, his need for independence returning now that the only objects staring at him were cardboard replicas of Lightning McQueen instead of psycho killers. Beckoning I place him down he ran for the replica, only to find it had no seats or steering wheels. Dismayed he made his way to his mom and asked up, then proceeded to ask to be let down as he saw the children's costume isles. Running through them he saw nothing that caught his eye, except for the empty shelf space. Colorful costumes array around him and he stops for the black, cold metal of the shelf they are on. I have since concluded he wants to be a shelf for Halloween, but his mom probably won't let me do that. 

On the way back through the store we found an animatronic Frankenstein (Yes I know Frankenstein's Monster) and he groaned and moved his arms and shook his head. William didn't seem phased. It may have been that we had shown him how they work by pressing the buttons, but he was not phased. He touched Frankenstein and then went to touch the button to make him move again. I won't get into my thesis on fear yet, but this is where I begin to see where childhood fear ends and adult fear begins. 

We made our way to the back of the store, where a sewer system had been set up. Inside this sewer system of misting pipes and oozing water were more decorations, all of these with a zombie theme. William was slightly scared at first of the groaning, munching, screaming, writhing decorations, and I had to hold him until we left. It was not until we went to the hat section, where William found a fireman's hat, that he would overcome his fear of the zombies. Donning the red helmet he raced to the back of the store, as if knowing that the fireman could save the people from the horrible zombies. I was so proud of him, rushing in to help people. I like to think this is the case, either that or he was going to show off his new hat to his Zombie friends.


The last thing we saw as we left the store was a fog bubble machine. It would blow a bubble full of fog about 10 feet up and then it would fall to the ground and burst into little smoke bubbles. William was fascinated by these, for about 10 minutes he stood there trying to catch them as they exploded on his hands and head. 

And now to my theory of fear. At first I could not figure out why William was afraid. He could not be afraid for the reason you or I would be afraid. You or I, thinking that the beings were real, would sense fear because of what we know they are. The undead, things that shouldn't exist, that they were creatures intent on our demise. But this cannot be what William is afraid of. He does not have the knowledge that these creatures are dead. He does not know they are out to get him. He is just afraid, a primal urge that things that look that way and sound that way should be feared. It is not startled, as I have seen him startled, he was afraid of these things. They were different. My theory is that there are two types of fear involved with Halloween and the undead. One is primal fear, the fear of the unknown, of things that are not like we are. Primal fear is the most base fight or flight response to something we do not understand but see it as out to hurt us. Knowledgable fear is the other kind. I am not afraid of a zombie because I do not know what it is. I fear the zombie because I know what it signifies. It signifies the end, of change, of something inherently wrong. And yet so very awesome. <3 Zombies.



Wednesday, September 7, 2011

William the super hero

I didn't get to see much of William this week. I had school and he went to his biological father's over the weekend. It was great having time alone with my girlfriend, and a much needed break, but it sadly means that any antics he may have gotten in are lost to me. Do not be discouraged though, for the blog will go on! I will use this as an excuse to draw William as comic book characters, and as such the blog post will be rather short, but with plenty of pictures.

Being a parent is much harder than I thought. Discipline, rewards, morals, ethics, intelligence, thirst for knowledge, etc, each of these are things I have to do, or wish to pass on, to William. The trouble is I've seen what our modern world is. I've seen the alabaster hero turned into many shades of gray. This has amazingly close ties with modern thinking as well as where America is in it's consciousness. When you research the changes in popular culture, as far as heroes go, you will find a trend of making pure heroes tainted, villains who are actually heroes, and anti heroes who steal the stage. I do not complain about this. I love the shades of gray. Hellboy is my favorite "superhero" because he lives his life in gray, his destiny is black, but in the end I love him because his heart is white. I use these terms as descriptives, much like light and dark side, it is the easiest way of discussing complex moral sides briefly.

So what is my problem? I do not think myself a hypocrite for liking the very thing I said I had trouble with, and that is because of my upbringing and my age. I grew up with the purists, when spiderman would never make a deal with the devil, when superman would never kill, when Dead Pool was a bad guy, when super heroes were paragons, symbols of humanities greatest strengths and of the American way. I will raise William with the purists. The paragons. The heroes. When he reaches a certain age where his critical thinking is high enough to understand moral dilemmas I will push him towards Hellboy and Wolverine, but until he reaches the stage where he can read between the lines I want him to learn about the light side. I want each superhero to teach him the lessons they taught me, so that one day he can learn to be a superhero in how he acts, how he talks, and how he lives.

I want him to read Spiderman so he can learn that with great power comes great responsibility.

I want him to read Batman so he can learn that you don't need superpowers to be a hero.

I want him to read Green Lantern to learn that imagination can take you anywhere.

I want him to read Superman to learn that you should always stand by your morals.

I want him to read Captain America so he can learn that freedom and justice are important.

I want him to read X-Men to learn that being different doesn't mean you can't help people.

I want him to read about these so that he can learn that you don't need to kill to win. I want him to read these so he can learn what a good guy is. What the light side is, so he can find it in everything he does.

When he is older I will introduce him to my other favorites, my new heroes, who make me think, who make me question what the light side is, and that sometimes the hardest choice is the right one, and that making that choice still makes these anti heroes good guys.

I want him to read Hellboy to learn that what other people tell you who you are is not important, and what is important is how you define yourself. I want him to learn that fate cannot hold the strong willed.

I want him to read Wolverine to learn that no matter what we do in the past, we can still be redeemed as a hero. (Yes I know Wolverine is an x-man, but the wolverine comics are quite different than the x-men comics.)

I want him to read Dead Pool to learn that humor is in all things, and that sometimes we need a little push to be a hero.

I want him to read comics because they are the human condition. They are who we should strive to emulate when times get tough. They are our morals and trials played out in epic scale.