Sam’s Story: Week 29

This week was much less eventful. Sam hasn’t done anything particularly wonderful, though she is starting to sit up with little assistance. She will, however, lunge for things (the remote control, a toy, the cat) and do spectacular face plants. She’s also eating well, including plenty of mushy fruits and vegetables.

This has unfortunate side effects, though. Allow me to digress a moment and I’ll explain. Several decades ago, Jean-Paul Sartre published an influential book called “Nausea.” In it, the French existentialist philosopher tells the story of a man who one day becomes aware of how disgusting existence is. I think it may have something to do with the absurd realization that he, the narrator, is a mash of consciousness and the fact that consciousness is tethered to a pile of fleshy flesh, but the end result is that everything is gross. Once the fact of his own icky existence hits him, the narrater is awash in the miasma of everyday life. He spends pages contemplating how nasty his own hand is. Whole paragraphs go on about how lewd and vulgar everything around him has become.

I think Sartre must have started his kid on solid foods around the time he wrote this. Yeah, it’s that bad and it kind of seeps (no pun intended) into everything else. I’m sure, though, that it will pass (again, no pun intended).

And now, pictures that stand in stark contrast to all this talk of grossness:

As you can see from the pictures, there are many things that Sam likes. Here’s a list we’ve compiled so far:

• The Sealab 2021 theme song
• The boobie
• Little frozen chunks of watermelon eaten through her nifty feeder
• The word “Bump”
• The word “Boing!”
• Sucking on her own feet
• The other boobie
• Her walrus bath toy
• The Baby Einstein catepiller
• The cat
• Songs about weasels that go “POP!”
• My computer keyboard
• Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

It’s a growing list, for sure.