Happy Caleb Day!

In honor of the fourth anniversary of our youngest baby's birth and in order to compensate for my severe writer's block (roughly nine months have passed since my last post of any great length) I have decided to re-publish some of the things that I have written about our little monkey on previous birthdays followed by an update for this year. Happy Caleb Day!

From Caleb's second birthday post:

It's hard to believe that it's been two years already.

Our baby, Caleb Robert Baker, turns two today. What is equally hard to believe is that this child, Bam-Bam, he who wields the weapons of mass destruction that our president will never find on a daily basis at his siblings and our pets; he who's life's goal is to become a Jedi Knight (although I'm almost certain that he will turn to the dark side and become a Sith like his sister before him); he of Viking Warrior attire, physique, disposition, and fighting style; he to whom the only way to properly carry a cat is upside down; he to whom the only real sport is a contact sport, even golf (I see football and ice hockey in his future); he to whom even video games are full contact and no holds barred; he of countless emergency room trips for various feats of daring-do; he who lost his first tooth (again, I see ice hockey in this boy's future) at an age (four months) younger than when most children have received their first tooth, due to his rambunctious nature and aggressive sleeping style; "Mr. Boo-Boo Head" himself; how could he ever have ever been appropriately referred to as a "baby"?

Well, he is officially a "baby" no longer (even per his mother's and grandmother's standards regarding such matters). We have a two-year-old on our hands now. A "Big Kid". One who can walk and talk and who knows sixty-seven ways to kill you with a toy lightsaber. If the first two years of his life are any indication, the next few should be pretty exciting.

God help us all.

From Caleb's third birthday:

Well, Caleb is now three. No longer a "terrible two", yet somehow still terrifying. He has traded his lightsaber fetish for a sword fetish, which is still as deadly if not quite as geeky.

He actually may be a little bit geekier. He has declared that he is a "Jousting Guy", also know as "The Green Knight". He believes that this is a viable career path. He will even site Medieval Times as proof.

He still loves contact sports, although his emphasis has changed towards boxing, which he calls "the punching one". Caleb has a somewhat disturbing love for violence that seems to be contagious, but so is his smile.

Caleb is passionate, and it seems is growing more so every day. He, for as in-your-face as he can be with his rough housing, is just as in your face with his love. He thinks pulling hair is snuggling, but he does it so affectionately that the recipient can't help but like it. He has been known to randomly go up to people and say "I like you", and mean it. When he is angry, he is angry at everybody. But when he is happy, he is happy with everybody. No one's day would be complete without Caleb telling you why he loves you. My favorite is when he says: "Daddy I love you, you don't shout at me any more." I have no idea why he would say that, really (Well... maybe a little bit of an idea -- as his Grandmother says: It's a good thing Caleb's cute! He has been verbally corrected more than a few times, sometimes at a fairly high decibel level.)

While I may not like it, and he may not like it (he has thrown fits all week about not being able to be a two-year-old any more) Caleb is growing up.

So happy birthday to my knight in shining armor. Now try not to kill your sister this year!

So has anything changed about this little powder keg? If anything, he's become even more energetic, which is great for my physique! He's gotten really interested in wrestling and exercising, which as best I can tell to him are pretty much the same thing. He grabs a hold of whoever he plans to wrestle or exercise with (usually me -- like I said it's been great for my physique!) and will not let go for any reason. He will wrap around my legs, my arms, my waist, my whatever, and hold on for dear life as I drag him, kick him, strangle him, abuse him, and otherwise try to coerce him to release me. We're getting into great shape!

He's still a violent toothless wonder and an I'm-so-cute-and-I-know-it ladies man. All the girls at his pre-school adore him. He's also developing a real love for music and singing. Yesterday his school had their Christmas music program, and Caleb hammed it up on stage along with all the others. I will close this post with some pictures of Caleb from the show (I had to end with pics, that's my thing!)

"This song has no title."

On Thursday I decided to borrow the minivan from Shannon ostensibly because I needed to take Josh to baseball and Maggie and Caleb to gymnastics. For some reason those three don't really like to ride together in the back of the Mustang. I was just trying to cater to their wishes and make them as comfortable as possible. Well, that and the CD player in the Mustang is broken and the one in the minivan works just fine. But I was mostly just thinking of the children.

Anyway, with the possibility of enjoying some music for the evening commute available I decided to break out a CD I bought a while ago but don't really get to listen to often, Vernon Reid's Known Unknown. It's a fantastic disc, but as it's a Vernon Reid CD there are a lot of guitar pyrotechnics that don't always go over well at home with their requisite ear-bleeding volume.

The older two (Josh and Maggie) are really getting into music and its meaning. They will ask what songs are about or try to figure them out based on the lyrics. Sometimes the results are surprisingly insightful, and sometimes they're just surprising. Known Unknown is an instrumental album, so their decoding skills were over matched.

As we're driving along and jamming out to a song with a particularly cool groove, Maggie asks what the song is about. I try to explain to her that it's an instrumental song and that sometimes instrumentals have a kind of deeper meaning or emotive message to them, and sometimes they don't really have an obvious one. Also, I explain, you can tell a lot about whether there is an intended message in the instrumental by the title, as that's the only part that has any words. So Maggie, who is really enjoying this song, asks what the title is. I look down at the CD case to see. The track we are listening to is called "Voodoo Pimp Stroll". I think about it for a little while, saying nothing as I try to evaluate the situation to provide the best possible and most age appropriate response. Maggie asks again, insistently.

I'm stuck. Maggie's not the type of child that will just let things go. I've tried this before, with McDonald's and Wal-Mart, when she's asked me why I won't go to either one. I never wanted to have that conversation with her as a five-year-old. She's just not ready to understand the moral arguments. For a while just saying that it's something I don't do worked, but she's so darned inquisitive. So finally I broke down and explained point by point in great detail all of the things that I loathe about those two institutions, blowing her mind a little more than I had wanted to. All because she just won't let things go. I am not about to try to explain what a song called "Voodoo Pimp Stroll" could be about. I don't want to get into a conversation with a five-year-old that uses the word "pimp" in any way, shape, or form. I'm out of options, so I lie.

"This song has no title," is my reply. Conversation over. We pull into the gym's parking lot, park the car, and go inside, where she has much more important things to do.

They Might Be Monkeys!

I have been having something of an existential crisis lately. While I have suffered for years with some relatively minor depression and anxiety issues, every once in a while some kind of a stressor kicks those minor issues up a notch. It gets so bad that all I can really do is morbidly observe the passage of time (which seems to get faster every year) and know that each day is one day closer to the end. I am left wondering what it is that I will leave behind.

I have some great childhood memories. As a musician, I find that I am most connected to the soundtrack of my youth. I still vividly remember my father introducing me to Led Zeppelin because he was dismayed that I was starting to like Whitesnake in elementary school. I may never be able to thank him enough, although he has since made up for it by teaching my sons to like Three Dog Night. (If I ever hear "One is the Loneliest Number" Again...) As I reached my teenage years I got into Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and the like. When I feel most vulnerable I return to the music that got me through my vulnerable teenage years. It is almost like a fountain of youth, returning me to those days. I have in these moments...

It just occurred to me that this may be the absolute worst piece of drivel I have ever written, and that I had better get to the point of this inane, rambling, self-absorbed, pretentious, self-important, overly introspective piece of horse-shit attempt at not having to pay for actual therapy excuse of a blog post before the only two people who actually read this blog get scared away and all I'm left with is a proverbial session of talking to myself in the bathroom in the dark (not that I do that, mind you -- especially not while laying down in the tub).

I did mention that I'm in kind of a bad place right now, didn't I? Anyway, on with the blog! You may have noticed that the title of this post is "They Might be Monkeys!" This title comes from the combination of the term I use for my little miscreants... I mean angels, and the name of the band I turned to when my grunge filled fountain of youth faltered. That's right, it's They Might Be Giants. I used to love that band. I had a copy of their album Flood on cassette that I literally wore out with my Walkman. I knew all of the words to all nineteen (yes nineteen!) songs on that tape.

On a lark I happened to purchase a copy of Flood on CD the other day. Two things floored me about this album almost immediately. The first was that according to the date on the back it was released seventeen (SEVENTEEN!) years ago. I mean, I still remember when it came out! It was not that long ago. The second thing that floored me was that I could sing along to every song on the album, even though I probably hadn't heard them in the last thirteen years or so (since I replaced my Walkman with a Discman and started listening to grunge). It's weird how simultaneously young and old that made me feel.

Anyway, They Might Be Giants has been residing in our minivan since its purchase, and like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Who (from my father's youth) as well as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, The Spin Doctors, REM, The Choir, The 77s, and Counting Crows (from mine) They Might Be Giants has become a staple of muti-generational Baker musical consumption. All three of my children now know every word to "Istanbul". I couldn't be more proud.