The water’s fine (and Friday links)

Can’t stop looking at this gorgeous painting by  the Spanish painter Josep Moncada Juaneda. Doesn’t it just make you want to dangle your toes in the water?

Or, rather, dive right in?

What’s caught your eye lately? Here’s a few things I’ve held onto this week…

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A First Bike (the Balance Bike)

When Hudson turned two, we decided that our gift to him would be his first bike—something called a “balance bike.” They’re pretty common these days, so you’ve likely seen one: sitting low to the ground, it’s a tiny bicycle with no pedals. Basically, as this Slate article discusses, there are two obstacles to learning to ride a bike: First, pedaling. And second, balancing. Training wheels helps you learn to do the first—which is actually the easier of the two to overcome. Taking away the pedals helps you learn to do the second—which will make learning to ride an actual bike much easier than training wheels would. (We’re still on the balance bike phase, so stay tuned, but I have a feeling the skill will come quickly.)

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Infancy. Again. “Alienation in the first year”

by Rachael Ringenberg

Recently I’ve started feeling that I only need to get Joan to age two and then I will hand her off to Joe for her further education and edification. Joe says he’s in the “newborn disenfranchization” period with Joan. A period that we blessedly now know is short and temporary. He says that, before Lux, no one told him as a new dad that he would feel helpless and alienated from his child for a good while, that the first time he held her it wouldn’t necessarily be like a light-switch of bottomless love was flipped.

There’s a few things dads can do with young babies—get them to sleep occasionally, offer a bottle here and there—but overall for the dad who really wants to be involved, it can feel like he’s not wanted. Sometimes I exhaustedly hand Joan off to him and she just cries harder for the five minutes he’s holding her. That brief respite for me is life-saving in the moment, but there’s no moment of engagement in return for him. He’s merely an extra set of hands helping his wife.

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