By self

Hey, the ol' Blogger template now allows for paragraph breaks again! So let's celebrate, with a pale ale, and a blog entry that thinks

in big, isolated blocks

about what a certain one-year-old is up to.

And that'd be pretty much anything, folks, by self. Which summarizes Cleo's recent more-or-less constant goal. Cleo climb by self; Cleo shoes by self. And if you don't let Cleo pants by self, well, you're asking for a temporary world of hurt.

But it's all good, because at 1202 Sabina we're totally into letting people putting their own shoes on. And if you want to try to feed yourself, instead of having peas delivered to your mouth by our hand, well, that's cool. So Cleo and L. and I get along, all of us putting our pants on by self.

Still, though, the phrase is a funny one. For one thing, it's sometimes uttered even as Cleo struggles with a task that in fact she can't do by herself - resulting in an amusing inverse of Wallace Shawn, in The Princess Bride, muttering Inconceivable! even as the inconceivable takes place before his eyes. By self, yelps Cleo, as she tries to magically ascend an unclimbable wall. Furthermore, for some reason, it reminds me, rhythmically, of a small fragment of a Metallica lyric - down by law - from a song called The Shortest Straw. Shirt by self; down by law: the power chords drone in my mind as I try to encourage Cleo to get dressed.

Maybe the main reason to enjoy Cleo's bluntly willful phrasing, though, is that in time, it too will surely give way to something else, leaving us, again, with nothing but a memory. Did you know, for instance, that for a while Sinatra closed his shows with My Way? And then, after months of that, he reportedly said (according to the 2003 book Sessions with Sinatra), "I'm sick and tired of singing the song. I've been trying to find something to replace it for years, and we've finally gotten it."

Gotten what? New York, New York. Or, perhaps, less amazed by the novelty of putting on one's own shoes.