There should be a grand-sounding name for the day when a baby boy notices that he is a boy. It’s kind of like his Bar Mitzvah, except there are fewer people there to celebrate because it takes place spontaneously in the bath one morning. Not many people fit in the bathroom, and we aren’t really Jewish, but it was a serious occasion nonetheless. I tried but failed to find a website that would give me the Hebrew phrasing for Today you have a weiner.

Scary doll.

Be sure and click on “Next”… guaranteed to shock and educate.

There’s a thunderstorm right outside. I can’t sleep because of the stupid thing, even though there are no warnings out and I looked up the radar online and it doesn’t look too horrible.

We have this stuffed toy that Nicolaus loves. It’s some kind of vegetable… a stalk of celery or no… asparagus. Definitely asparagus. When you squeeze it a little kid’s voice says “I’m not scared!” in this adorable, mildly defensive tone of voice. Then his eyes light up and he sings a little tune. His voice is really shaky though. I think he is scared out of his effing little asparagus mind.

Whatever intellecutual leap Nicolaus has made that makes him want to grab things has also made him very indignant about things being taken away. He always cried whenever we took his bottle away to burp him but now it’s this heart-wrenching sob. It sounds as though we have truly and completely hurt his feelings.

And you used to be able to take toys away from him without him much noticing… to him I guess the world was just a funny old place that changed a lot, so it didn’t bother him if one second he had something (a plastic bag, or mommy’s old disposable razor) and the next moment it was gone. But now he cries until you distract him with a substitute toy. Does that indicate some kind of logical leap? Is he questioning the permanence of things, pondering in a Jacque Derrida vein, whether indeed objects that we cannot perceive do not exist? Or perhaps he now believes that language is what shapes reality, and he has suddenly recognized the shallowness of his own grasp of the language – and is therefore fearful that all objects exist only tenatively until he learns the names for them.

Kevin says he’s just being a fussy pain in the butt.

Last night I dreamed about an art project. I was making stuff out of paper that normally isn’t made of paper. I made a bed, complete with mattress and box springs. It was just these huge sheets of paper, kind of like newsprint I guess, layered… hundreds of them built up into a thick mattress. We cut out holes to put springs in so it would actually be comfortable, then the top 300 layers or so didn’t have holes.

Then I made a quilt for the bed out of beautiful handmade paper. I cut out 4″ squares in all different patterns, using some old watercolor paintings I’d done and wrapping paper and rice paper and so on. I glued the edges together just like you would sew squares together for a regular quilt. The backing was large sheets of heavy handmade tissue paper in deep, rich purple with an orange border. For the inside batting I used shredded newspaper.

Now I totally want to make a paper quilt.