feast!

We tried and tried last night to get a shot of one of T's full-body smiles. He does this thing now where he smiles open-mouthed like an ingenue while writhing in joy, his arms shooting all about.

There's another expression he has that I've yet to really catch with a camera, where his mouth makes a tight little "o", eyes look down & open WIDE and head juts back in such a way that all 39 of his chins become visible. It looks like a face a comedian would take years to perfect. He's doing it less often now- maybe it had something to do with trying to focus on stuff.

We went to a reading by Don Miller last night at Powells, but arrived a few minutes late and couldn't see at all and only faintly hear. I did snake my way up to where he was visible (amazing what holding a baby will do for your ability to squeeze through a crowd) and he looks different than I had thought. I thought he'd look more... edgy. I don't know- it just seems that with notoriety and acclaim sometimes people attain a certain snotty air to them, but he hasn't. He looked friendly to me, and read well enough. His new book's about growing up dadless, and I had planned to skip it but now I'm intrigued. I had thought half our church would be there, and maybe they were, but there were lots of folks I'm pretty sure I've never seen. I love the scruffy comfiness of a Portland audience.

A chick walked past us last night following her toddler curly headed girl, who said Hi. Her mom apologized (?!) and said, pointing at Toby, "i miss those days". It just confirms that these are prime times for taking him with us everywhere. He's just starting to make those long yodeling sounds kids do for no reason, and for the most part he'll sit quietly on your lap if he's fed & dry.

I like the attitude that C had in her little-kid days: Look at it all as educating other people about life. If the kid cries, soothe it, but don't enter a hermitage for fear of inconveniencing.

The tough thing is that as a classical musician, you get used to this rigid silence from the listener. In our times, a concert is such a personal thing, between you and the performer. We listen in huge halls with so many others that the slightest noises are to be frowned upon to avoid cacophony. In order to maintain the (artificial?) intimate relationship between the music and the hearer, distractions are outlawed. I wonder what it would have been like to attend an actual chamber music concert in some grand home with Brahms making eyes at Clara Schubert. And Mozart- fuggetaboutit, there would have been extraneous performances of all sorts.