Video On Demand

We officially live in the future. Not that I have my evening cocktail prepared by a personal R2 unit, or fly around L.A. in one of those cool Blade Runner hovercars. But so many of the technologies that we oohed and aahed at in 1975 are commonplace today. I mean really, how different is your cell phone from Captain Kirk's communicator? Isn't Google about five minutes from the HAL 9000 computer, able to understand and answer your questions in plain English? And if laser eye surgery doesn't make you feel like the Bionic Man, then you got it done at one of those strip-mall joints.

What does all of this have to with Siena? Whereas the rest of us appreciate all this technology, she takes it all for granted. At two years old. And that ain't good. Especially when it comes to DVR. Digital Video Recording is the poor man's TiVo, and for us starving students it's all that we can afford. But it does let us maintain a current library of the latest broadcasts of such classics of the Western Canon as Dora the Explorer, The Wiggles, and The Doodlebops (which is just creepy; if your kid hasn't seen it yet, don't introduce it). And of course Siena's DVD/VHS library rivals Mommy and Daddy's--and we do get our money's worth out of them, especially the hand-me-down tapes from Aunt Lorraine.

Sounds great, doesn't it? All Siena's favorite shows, playable anytime she likes. Any time. You can even watch 'em over and over.

See where this is going?

When the Principessa wakes up or comes home, she knows that the only thing stopping us from putting on Dora or Beauty and the Beast ("Belle anna Beet") is our tolerance for screeching. And our little Gift from God pushes that envelope every day. There's no telling Siena that her shows just aren't on right now, which MiMi could certainly have done with me viz. Sesame Street, and how would I have known if she was feeding me a line? The concept of programming schedules just hasn't sunk in with Siena--and the way technology's progressing, it might never.

The only thing that's keeping Daddy's big-screen TV from becoming All-Siena All-Day is a piece of relatively old technology: a board game. I can't recommend The Letter Factory game highly enough. Siena plays it at least twice a day, and could go a whole afternoon without asking to watch TV. Of course, even that board game involves a mini-computer that tells you which card to put where and how many spaces to move your piece. And of course, you can't have the game without the separately-sold DVD.

So we're not escaping the technology totally. But I am able to prevent the Doodlebops from monopolizing my TV. Fight Tech with Tech.

The Mole

At the tip of her left clavicle, Mamma has a mole. In eight years of marriage (Seven? Who's counting?) I had never noticed this. But it took Siena no time at all to find this. Maybe, over all those months of breast-feeding, she had nothing else to look at. But that doesn't explain Siena's obsession, which has lasted long past Siena's total migration to solids.

Obsession? How does a two-year-old manifest obsession? Fortunately, she does so in a cutely blogworthy way.

Naturally, Siena likes to be held by Mommy. Fine. Typical toddler behavior. But whenever our little koala clings to Mamma, she has to reach under Mamma's collar and just place her finger on that mole. And keep her finger there. Every single time. Heck, if I get Siena out of her crib in the morning the first thing she'll say is "I wanna check Mommy's mole." And the fact that she now says it in a complete sentence only makes it creepier.

What does this do for her? Is she draining energy from Mommy through the mole? Is it the conduit for a psychic link between mother and child? Is the thing a magnet? Siena isn't saying. But she doesn't buy it when Mamma pretends to touch Siena's "mole."

I suppose I should be grateful. Siena doesn't suck her thumb, have a security blanket, or manifest any other bad habits that you might attribute to breast-feeding. And hey, it's not my mole.

Just to pad this blog a little more (guess I'm still warming up): I switched between Mamma and Mommy in this blog, and have probably done it elsewhere as well. Mamma started out wanting to be called Mamma, which I suppose was some nod to her southern roots. And I tried to go with it for a while; heck, the kid has a MiMi and PopPop, and a MawMaw and PawPaw, so how much sillier can the names get? But Siena is not a southern girl, and has adopted Mommy almost exclusively. So maybe it's time that I gave it up as well, and forced Mommy to face the facts.

Warning: No Siena Content

Maybe you don't care why Daddy hasn't blogged in over a month. Maybe no excuse will be good enough. But writing takes a certain amount of warming-up, so consider this my first lap before I really get going in the subsequent entry.

So what could keep Daddy from writing about every cute little thing that Siena has done in the past four weeks?

1. We've been on the road visiting family this whole time--nice to have a semester break again--so most of you saw Siena's cute bits as they happened:

2. Daddy's had to crank out 65 pages to finish the first draft of his latest script by New Year's--and then crank out a second draft (110 pages in all) in the next week.

3. Mamma found out the hard way that her laptop isn't waterproof--right before finals, no less. So she appropriated Daddy's computer for school, relegating Daddy to a Clinton-era laptop with no Internet capablity. And thanks to Dell's "customer service," it took them over a month to get Mamma's computer back.

That's better. Now I can actually write something worth reading.