Mille e tre

Generally, the past couple of weeks have been a relatively smooth sea, as far as parenting is concerned (and a downright miracle, as far as a certain baseball team is concerned). Cleo now approaches school with something like neutral acceptance, she's willing to try out new foods (most recently, cashews and figs), and she goes to bed quite punctually, between 7:15 and 7:30. She's pleasant most of the time, she actually says please on her own relatively often, and her recent abiding interest in Tibor Gergely's Busy Day, Busy People approaches the attitude of a Talmudic scholar. Really, the only major hiccup involves the start of the day, because lately she's taken to rising between 5 and 5:30, and happily announcing that she's ready to watch the latest installment of Ruby and Max, her cartoon peers.

So, feeling exhausted, we had to draw a line. Yesterday I explained to her, several times, that there would be no morning screening today. And when, sure enough, she rose and began padding about the house at 5:03 a.m., I quietly reviewed the plan with her, and told her I was going back to bed. Given her affection for Ruby, I'd say that she handled that news well, and she actually played quietly by herself for 30 minutes. But by 5:40, she wanted her oatmeal, and I was up, again, with the girl and a few fishermen, to our south.

I'm a morning person by nature, and I know that the pre-dawn black has its beauty. But, still, the idea of blowing balloons and studying Gergely's interpretation of a restaurant before six in the morning can strike even an early riser as ridiculous. And, today, for whatever reason, that sentiment took the form of some of the few lines of opera that I know. "Notte e giorno faticar," I mumbled to myself as I made my coffee. "E non voglio piu servir."

But they also serve, as Milton taught us, who stand and wait, and there I was, waiting on Cleo's warming milk, and then working her into the day's first new diaper. Happily, though, Mozart came through again. There's a point, early in Don Giovanni, where the titular Lothario's servant is commenting on his master's sexual prowess by enumerating his conquests. "In Italia," sings Leporello, "seicento e quaranta; 'n Alemagna duecento e trentuna; cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna; ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre."

Mille e tre. And, still dazed from the early wake-up call, I imagined a father's version of the same boast - involving changed diapers, rather than loved beauties. Can you sing with me? In North Carolina at least twenty-five; in New York a handful or two; a hundred in Cape Town, in West Virginia several score; but in Baltimore, already a thousand and three.

A thousand and three. And soon to become 1,004.