More haiku

One Deep Breath has really inspired me to think about haiku. I hadn’t thought about writing a haiku since high school english class, but now I’m composing them in my head as I go throughout my day. Expect to see more of them in this space! The second one is not a “traditional” haiku as I understand it, although maybe someone with more knowledge than I can comment on this. It is a Fibonacci sequence haiku (1,1,2,3,5 syllables)

The sky at midnight

Silver sparks against velvet

Soft and infinite

 

Fall

slips

into

the sky with

her tiny mouse feet

leaves red footprints across the blue

 

Peas

My son is currently five months, two weeks and three days old, and so we are in the process of introducing him to solid food. And by solid food I mean the appetizing confections found in jars and which are various shades of pea-green and a brownish-orange that reminds me of the Harvest Gold color found in bathrooms last decorated in the 70s. We’re currently working on peas, which at first he liked, to a surprising degree. The first two nights he eagerly opened his mouth for each spoonful, and swallowed most of what went in.

But the last two nights he has decided that the peas are no longer delicious and are in fact deserving of high pitched screams and much arm-flailing. His mouth is small of course and the spoons are also small, and with his head bobbing around as he searched desperately to find an escape route from the high chair, it became harder and harder to hit my target. The end result was a baby liberally smeared with a thick green paste that looks like something from a horror movie. (Coming soon! The Exorcist starring Pumpkin Doodle!) Getting the peas off his face wasn’t that hard. It was getting the peas out of his nose that was the challenge.

My son has a strong aversion to having his nose touched, much less wiped and certainly extracting mashed and strained peas from his nostril is right out. I tried to get as much out as I could but he was putting up such a fuss I decided to give him (and myself) a little time to calm down. That was a mistake, because when this particular brand of peas dries it takes on a consistency something like concrete. So there is my beautiful son, chubby cheeks and blue eyes, with a large pellet of dried peas in his nose that looks exactly like the world’s most enormous booger. I made a few more vain attempts with a warm washcloth throughout the evening but was unsuccessful in removing it completely. I eventually decided to let it work its way out on its own. It was still there in the morning but somewhat smaller, and when he came home from the baby-sitter that afternoon it was gone entirely. Our baby-sitter has a thing about runny noses so maybe she was more persistent than I was in removing the pea/booger/concrete. I was just happy his face was clean. Until the next meal, that is.