Around and 'round we go...

A simple test for cognitive development of young children is the water test. You put water in a glass and show it to your child. Then you pour it into a different shaped glass and then ask which glass had more water in it. Around the age of three, your child will make the realization that it's the same amount of water, and not judge just by how full the glass looks. This is a major mile-marker in child development.

In the same manner, I think that the year that a child notices that the years are going by faster than before, is also a major mile-marker in cognitive development. For the first time, Ethan noticed that a year went by really fast.

Being the parent of a small child is very different than that of an older one. The former is all embrace and holding on and guiding, the later is all letting go. The whole thing can be reduced to an analogy of learning to ride a bike. The first years are all training wheels and pushing. The teenage years are all condensed into that tiny moment when as your guiding hand slowly releases the back of the seat, and you watch as your child takes their first unguided pedaling down the sidewalk.

This year went by slower than usual for me. I looked back at my list of books read this year and it seems like a thousand years ago I was taking that history class wherein I wrote that paper on Woodrow Wilson. Certainly not almost a year ago. This spring was long and grueling, finishing up my time at the technical college. The summer seemed extended, working full-time. This first semester of university, the fall seemed to stretch to the moon and back, and perhaps I was traveling at relativistic speeds because while winter is here, I feel I have not aged as much as the dirty snowbanks and icicles and leafless trees.

And I wonder what the next mile-marker is in my development. What natural bit of the world will seem transformed? What sudden shift in my perception will mark a transition from this reality to the next? Because that's the truth of growing up. There's no more or less water, the years don't change speed, but a switch is flipped and something once dark is illuminated and the world is different.

Year-End Round Up!

The usual... first sentence or two of the first post from every month of 2010.

January: Yeah, that's Mr. Holmes hanging out. This was his first Christmas with us and he loved it. He would hide under the tree and pounce on people when they walked by.

February: Jacquelyn and I are looking into Domestic Partnership. Wisconsin just passed a law allowing it and we're probably going to take them up on it.

March: For my creative (film) photography class we have to mimic a famous photograph and I chose to mimic Chuck Close's Big Self Portrait. I decided that I'm not mimicking Chuck Close per se, but rather that sort of stark, unapologetic self-portrait he achieved, so that's what I aimed for.

April: Congratulations! You have been admitted to the University of Wisconsin. We have mailed your official letter of admission and admission materials.

May: Today, I handed in the marathon that was my 15-page paper on single-payer health care. I was going to post it like I did my Woodrow Wilson one (not that anyone read it) but it was too large as a post and it's not really worth the energy to split it up and post it in parts.

June: After a week without internet due to a fiscal fubar, I have returned! It continually amazes me how much I miss the internet when it is gone, how much of my mental processing is attached to that series of tubes.

July: I dreamed that Jacquelyn and I drove a semitruck for a living and we ran an unauthorized delivery for Cabell to help her move and when we checked in, we were being investigated and the investigator was Sherlock Holmes, who looked like Ciarán Hinds, of HBO's Rome, who will be playing Dumbledore's brother Aberforth in the Deathly Hallows film.

August: I was just investigating a literary magazine but discovered that they are only for writers under 30. Uh-oh. I keep forgetting I'm a grown-up now and can't be trusted.

September: I am sitting in a little desky cubiclish thing in a public area of the Humanities building, waiting to go to my first class at UW.

October: I've written my first paper for my lit class. Except for the not-a-conclusion conclusion. Writing textual analysis is harder than I thought because unlike a research paper, where most of your info is evidence from elsewhere, everything is either from your own head or the text you're analyzing.

November: When I started this semester at the university, I heard people talk about the October/midterm slump. I'd not experienced that before. Now I get it.

December: I am sitting in my anthro lecture, waiting for the professor to arrive. Monday, he was gone and we watched a Nationl Geographic documentary about Neanderthals that he was in.

Apparently all I post about is school.  Well, this year, I'll try to change it up a bit.  I should write more about child-rearing, especially now that it's hard (Yes, it is easier to go nights without sleep changing diapers and feeding than it is to convince a teenager of something.), and about the wedding, which is, Lord help us, 240ish days away.  By the way, the wedding website is up.