#small children

So is cuteness aggression. But babies don't have impulse control. So it's really common for babies to be aggressive with other babies, and it isn't meanness like most people assume.

Coconut Paul Hostovsky

Bear with me I want to tell you something about happiness it's hard to get at but the thing is I wasn't looking I was looking somewhere else when my son found it in the fruit section and came running holding it out in his small hands asking me what it was and could we keep it it only cost 99 cents hairy and brown hard as a rock and something swishing around inside and what on earth and where on earth and this was happiness this little ball of interest beating inside his chest this interestedness beaming out from his face pleading happiness and because I wasn't happy I said to put it back because I didn't want it because we didn't need it and because he was happy he started to cry right there in aisle five so when we got it home we put it in the middle of the kitchen table and sat on either side of it and began to consider how to get inside of it

----

Also: + Egg, C.G. Hanzlicek + Bearhug, Michael Ondaatje + This Morning in a Morning Voice, Todd Boss + Will You?, Carrie Fountain

Crack open the past:

Still Life with Invisible Canoe Idra Novey

Levinas asked if we have the right To be        the way I ask my sons If they’d like to be trees       

The way the word tree Makes them a little animal Dancing up and down Like bears in movies                   Bears I have to say Pretend we are children     

At a river one of them says So we sip it    pivot in the hallway    Call it a canoe

It is noon in the living room We are rowing through a blue That is a feeling mostly 

The way drifting greenly Under real trees  Is a feeling near holy

----

Also by Idra Novey: Meanwhile the Watermelon Seed

Many more parenthood poems.

Suck the marrow out of life with poetry from:

Mostly a story of my oldest grandniece (she now has a baby sister, who is adorable and exhausting - we watch them three nights a week while mom works night shift, and baby believes 3:30-5:30 am is the best playtime). Anyway

Great-grandpa got a 3-D printer for Christmas. She adores the magic machine. It's amazing; if she goes upstairs and watches hard and gives Gumpa wide, hopeful eyes, toys appear right before those very eyes.

So far, she has two sizes each of axolotls, llamas, butterflies, and an entire family of mice. Gumpa keeps wasting time making things like bookends and a laptop stand, but if she helps him see sense, boom, a new mouse. It's even better than going shopping with Aunt and Uncle, who are equally susceptible to wide eyes and whose spare room (which was supposed to be my craft room, and now is the child room) looks like a toy store threw up. I know, we asked her a few days ago if she wanted to go to the store, and she did not.

Gumpa also takes her to violin lessons now; she wants to be Lindsay Sterling when she grows up. Gumpa got a puppy for Christmas, and it's the best thing ever, maybe even better than the magic machine.

Aunt says unreasonable thing like 'you can't eat only mac and cheese, you have to have other things sometimes' and 'you have to take a bath, yes I do have to wash your hair' and 'you need to put away some toys before you get more out' and 'it's bedtime'. Grandma can be fun, but she's also making her practice writing and put away toys and eat vegetables. (To be fair, uncle and gumpa do tell her that also. They are just easier to redirect with wide, teary blue eyes and a sniffle.)