Ars sine dolore nihil est

There's no doubt we've been having a rocky few days, as parents and as parented. Cleo, for reasons that are just as obscure as the reasons behind the popularity of 'There Was an Old Woman who Swallowed a Fly,' has suddenly begun waking up at 4:30, thus reverting to a schedule befitting a 17-week-, rather than 17-month, old. In the process, she's jettisoned her relatively civilized afternoon nap for two brief dozes that barely give this daddy a chance to check his e-mail and down a granola bar before a bottle of milk is requested, by means of loud sobs lobbed from her crib. She's also developed an enigmatic rash that has already inspired, in a mere half day, about as many crackpot theories as the Zapruder film. And, to top things off, she fell on her face while walking at the zoo yesterday, cutting her lip and then jarring me out of the soporific world of NFL halftime scores when she and L. arrived home, both crying and shaken up from the incident. In short, we've got a real one-year-old on our hands.

But what's beautiful about, well, an unbeautiful stretch like this is that there are still sublime moments of grace. Cleo, above, after eating much of a loaf of bread at Bonaparte, while watching the boats bob, and before throwing one slice, in tiny pieces, to the ducks of Patterson Park. Cleo, on a jungle gym, smiling while watching other, older children run and leap. Or Cleo finding the turning bookshelf at Barnes and Noble today, and laughing out loud, repeatedly, while managing to slowly turn it, a few inches at a time.

Jimmy Page didn't always feel his best, after visiting his various girlfriends on entirely separate floors of the band's hotel, when strumming his guitar before the adoring thousands. The online critics gave credit to American Idol aspirants in Season Four, when they sang through sickness ("The health-plagued group of Jaclyn Crum, Rashida Johnson, and Faith Gatewood," wrote The Trades, "sang well despite their problems"). And one assumes that Chopin likely played strongly through the various ailments brought on by Polish winters. Illness and obstacles are everywhere - and so, too, is beauty.