DADWAGON

The Times’s Motherlode blog just ran an item about a woman in Florida who tweeted about the death of her 2-year-old boy.

Here’s a recount of the events to give an idea of the scale of this thing:

Two-year-old Bryson Ross drowned on Monday in the swimming pool of the home his family had just moved into in Merritt Island, Fla.

Shellie Ross, Bryson’s mother, is a popular blogger, who chronicles her life as a mother of four, and the wife of an Air Force sergeant, and whose Twitter account, @Military_Mom, has more than 5,400 followers.

She tweeted those followers at 5:22 p.m. Monday, with a breezy update about the fog rolling in and spooking the chickens as she worked in her chicken coop. Sixteen minutes later, a 911 call was placed from her home saying that Bryson was lying at the bottom of the pool. At 6:12 p.m. she tweeted again: “Please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool.” And five hours later, she wrote that she was “remembering my million dollar baby,” posting photos of the little boy.

Whoa. Granted, this is a woman who’s just lost her baby (her “million dollar baby,” in fact) and grief does some funny things to people. But still, I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around it.

Just think of the logistics. First, your son has fallen in the pool. Presumably, EMTs are already there, as you wouldn’t leave the boy unattended at that point. Your first move is to tweet? Then later, your child has been dead for five hours. He drowned. How is it that you are in a position to tweet? Where do you get the lucidity to write something? Why aren’t you with the boy’s father or your family? Don’t you have to face the details, like arranging a funeral or, I don’t know, weeping uncontrollably?

Let me be clear, I’m not angered or scandalized by what she did. I just can’t understand it. She must have been in a dissociative trance, her fingers working the keys like an automaton. Right? It must be that. I won’t make the standard “the Internet is ruling/ruining our lives” move. I refuse.

But whoa.

Check out this article from the Superficial (which I, of course, read religiously), which is actually nothing more than a few photos of Jon Gosselin shooting a gun.

Unfair? Yes. Piling on? Certainly. Cheap shot? You betcha.

Happy Friday.

Ever since we began discussing music for kids the other week, I’ve been listening to Sasha’s music with a closer ear. And by “Sasha’s music,” I mean, primarily, Dan Zanes—the ex-Del Fuegos lead singer who in the last decade has become a Brooklyn kiddie-tune fixture. By and large, his music is fantastic, a mix of old-timey American tunes mixed with contemporary songs and genres, plus clever guest spots (Suzanne Vega, “Father Goose”).

But one of the songs on “Rocket Ship Beach” (which I take to be his first big success, though I could be wrong) is increasingly troubling to me. It’s called “All My Friends Live in the Woods,” and I’ve transcribed the lyrics below—from memory:

I once knew a badger who lived in the woods
He was black and brown and gray, and was ever so good
Whenever he came out, he would shuffle and snuffle about
Turning over leaves with his shiny wet snout
Then there was Horace the Hedgehog, who lived beneath a tree
He crawled about all wobbly, cuz he could hardly see
And now and then he’d squeak, cuz that’s the way they speak
Then he rolls himself up into a ball and goes to sleep for a week
Chorus:
My friends—live in the woods
All my friends—are ever so good
Won’t you come on over and meet my friends
Oh, I wish you would
Cuz all my friends—live in the woods
Then there was Robbie the Rabbit, who lived in a hole in the hill
He was always shivering and quivering, he could never sit still
He was always dashing here, and always flashing there
But Oswald the Owl told me that he never got anywhere
But my favorite animal is a little mole called Tim
He’s got shiny, tiny eyes and a blue-black glossy skin
I haven’t seen him in a long, long time—I wonder what’s happened to him?
He’s a little mole and he lives in a hole, my holey-moley Tim!
[Chorus]

What’s so wrong with this stuff? Let’s go through it line by line:
I once knew a badger who lived in the woods

Seems fine, sure, but that “once knew” bugs me. Doesn’t he know the badger anymore? Why are you telling us about ex-friends?

Then there’s Horace the Hedgehog:
He crawled about all wobbly, cuz he could hardly see
And now and then he’d squeak, cuz that’s the way they speak
Then he rolls himself up into a ball and goes to sleep for a week

I’m a little annoyed at the mixing of tenses and the issue of subject-verb agreement. But more than that, I’m starting to wonder about Mr. Zanes’s conception of friendship. Shouldn’t he be helping his legally blind friend navigate the wilds of the woods?

As regards Robbie the Rabbit (“always shivering and quivering, he could never sit still”), I detect a weird sense of superiority, especially since, according to Oswald the Owl, Robbie “never got anywhere.” Which actually makes me wonder: Does Oswald perhaps want to eat poor directionless Robbie? Has Mr. Zanes ever considered the ulterior motives of his sylvan pals?

Which brings us to Tim the mole, Mr. Zanes’s so-called “favorite animal.” Favorite animal?!? Please. Mr. Zanes “hasn’t seen him in a long, long time” and doesn’t have any idea “what’s happened to him.” I’ll tell you what’s happened to him: While you were busy cruising around Brooklyn with your wild hair, inviting toddlers out to the woods to meet your “friends,” your predator pal Oswald has been chowing down on them.

In other words, Mr. Zanes, I think you need to be a little more discriminating about who you choose as a friend—and about what it means to be a friend yourself. I appreciate your invitation to Sasha, and I’m sure she’d jump at the chance to head off into the woods with you, but  I’m worried that you might leave her alone with an animal pal—Richie the Rattlesnake, maybe, or Gerald the Grizzly Bear—who’s maybe not as trustworthy as you’d like to think.

But look, go find out what’s become of your holey-moley Tim, and if he’s okay, I’ll reconsider your invitation.

About nine months ago, when Sasha was just three months old and I was all of a sudden home with her all day, I e-mailed our friends at DaddyTypes.com with the following problem:

“As a brand-new stay-at-home dad, I’m a little mystified about what to DO all day with the baby. I mean, apart from feeding, changing, playing and putting her down for all-too-short naps, there’s a lot of time when she’s awake. Our playtime options are limited (she’s only 3 months old, after all), and I have no idea what to do. Am I missing something?”

DT’s kind readers gave me plenty of good suggestions—read to her, talk to her, and generally just bring her around on whatever I do during a normal day—and those things have worked out pretty well. (Hiring a nanny to take care of the kid also helped.)

But now Sasha’s a year old. She’s walking (a bit) and talking (a bit), and exhibiting a surprising amount of independence. Which makes playing with her a bit of a challenge. That is, she’s awfully good at playing by herself. Just last night, she spent several minutes with her new Fisher-Price airplane (a great gift from our neighbors—thanks, John and Alicia!), inserting its passengers through the hatch door, closing the hatch, removing the passengers from the open top, and doing it all over again. She reads books to herself (in her own language). She crawls up onto the couch, walks along it, descends, and does it all over again.

In other words, there’s not necessarily much for me to do besides oversee all this and make sure Sasha doesn’t pull lamps, boxes and other debris down onto herself. (Of course, when this does happen, I’m there to comfort her.) But apart from endless games of peekaboo—which she initiates by climbing into the windowsill and pulling the curtain in front of her face—I don’t have much of an active role in her playtime. I feel this urge to be more active, but I find myself reading while she amuses herself.

So: Is this how it should be? Am I missing something again?

(Note: Yes, I’m sure the answers to this are on the Internet or in books, but I prefer to poll you loyal Dadwagon readers.)