"without compass, nor cane, nor lantern light / she leads us in the changing"

[larryhammer]

One month anniversary of Gotcha Day -- which seems so long ago even while I'm all "wait, already?" Things are settling down, a bit -- TBD's sleeping has been stable for a while, at least for the night, as naptime is still under negotiation, and the daily routine is sorting itself out. We're still learning how to cook, though at least we have a stable of staples that are acceptable, and almost half the time we can tell the difference between cries of tired, boredom, teething pain, and tantrum.

In short, we're starting to get enough breathing room to go beyond pure survival mode. Which is why I'm out of the house for an hour on my own, catching up on email (or some of it). Enough breathing room that I can take a deep breath.

In this month, I've read not one drop of fiction, nor poetry aside from a literal handful of nursery rhymes -- it's all been parenting advice, Dr Google, and articles saved up in Pocket against this occasion. Last night, though, I pulled out my e-reader and recharged it. And after a few minutes, I'm going to turn it on and read something.

I think it's going to work out.

---L.

Subject quote from "Vespertine Autumn," Pamela Wyn Shannon.

Comments

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Happy Anniversary!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Congrats on surviving the first month! :-)

It may please you to know that your Kokinshu translation saved my bacon earlier this week. I'm running a Legend of the Five Rings game (the setting is basically fantasy!Japan), and needed two poems to fill a role in the story. I browsed through your translations and found two I could tweak to suit my purposes -- in one case "tweaking" it by deliberately butchering it into let's doing poetry yay, but that's what the story called for. <g> It helped a great deal to have actual pieces to work from, though, rather than trying to remember what kinds of images got used for what topics in Japanese poetry.

[larryhammer]

Yays!

(Plural because for both paragraph.)

---L.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

The journey begins! There will be islands of peace.

Nine

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Felicitations!
(...Do you read only non-fiction to TBD, besides the handful of rhymes? I count picture books, though I don't log all of them at Goodreads; sometimes they're pretty good.)

[larryhammer]

TBD is still learning the concept of being read to - and, indeed, of this new English thing people insist on speaking. She's still the level of board books with a word a page. Though the book she brings me a couple times a day is a sing-and-sign "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" - probably because a Mandarin version is in her bedtime lullaby rotation. So, fiction is a moot category at the moment.

---L.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Makes sense!

[larryhammer]

(That said, I have gotten through "The Very Busy Spider" a couple times with her.)

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Little by little.

How to phrase this--do you plan to continue linguistic access to the Chinese language she knows bits of? (Neutral question; I don't think there's a right answer. Pondering Mandarin/English and Cantonese/English bilingual story-soundtracks, is all, since similar things exist for some Korean/English and Japanese/English kids' books--but it's harder given multivalence of "Chinese.")

[larryhammer]

We plan to try. The ideal would be daily exposure, but while We have Mandarin speaking friends, including our Former Sometimes Roommate, daily isn't practical. The Chinese Cultural Centsr and some preschools offer classes, which is looking the likely route.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Ah, if it's Mandarin, it's much simpler. Relatively. (Even where I am--with more people, period--it's hard to find support for Hakka/Kejia speakers and learners, e.g., because the people who speak with confidence are not necessarily qualified/interested re: teaching.) I continue being surprised by how quickly some words are forgotten, month to month, and by how some things are retained without prompting....

know the feeling

[sfmarty.livejournal.com]

You survive by reading aloud to her. Everything. Poetry, newspapers, Instruction manuals on anything, Sci Fi, she won't care and it will help her brain to curl.

A writer here in San Francisco calls his granddaughter Alice. It isn't her real name, but it works.

Rooting for you

Re: know the feeling

[larryhammer]

If she'll sit still for it. Her reaction is usually within five seconds to grab what I'm reading because otherwise boring foreign babble.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

Glad to see you out and about. (and Janni too, yesterday) It will all settle into happy habit patterns, and you'll find the spaces in your newly configured life. Those spaces will be embraced by happiness and love.

[janni.livejournal.com]

We're slowly working out, now that we're (sometimes) beyond survival mode, that we can begin giving one another breathers.

And hey, I get to go out on a real live hang-out-writing-with-other-writers date this afternoon. :-)

[sovay]

I think it's going to work out.

Happy one-month. Mazel tov. And I am glad everyone is beginning to sleep.

[larryhammer]

Sleep is your friend.

[snakypoet]

Good luck! :)