In my family we have a favorite story about my brother, then age twoish, getting caught by my friend Crystal eating her cat’s food. Actually, she didn’t catch him eating; she caught him kneeling next to the cat’s food dish spitting something out onto the floor. Which, of course, she could only deduce to be cat food.

When Crystal inquired about it, Greg scrunched up his nose in an expression of distaste and replied, “That cereal was yucky.”

Since the Burt Squirt became mobile, various family members have laughingly warned me to keep our cat’s food dish out of his reach. Usually when he’s crawling or toddling about I do, but today the Burt Squirt turned on the stealth and managed to try the yucky cereal on the sly.

Only he didn’t seem to think it was very yucky.

Of course it happened because I was distracted–ironically, with cooking the Burt Squirt’s dinner. Obviously I wasn’t serving dinner quickly enough, because when I turned around, there was the Burt Squirt, sitting in the kitchen with his legs splayed out, Dorrie’s food dish between them. One pudgy hand hand fisted as many dry chicken pellets as the stubby fingers could close around; the other waved winsomely at me.

His little mouth, still with only the four front teeth in it, was chewing.

And it would have continued to do so, judging from the way his nose was not scrunched up in an expression of distaste, had I not gone fishing for one, two, and a half pieces of cat food. There might have been more–probably there was at least another half a piece–but the Burt Squirt wriggled away before I could plumb the depths of his mouth for the rest of his quarry. Goodness only knows how much he consumed before I saw him doing it.

I’m not worried, especially since just the other day I saw a TV ad for an expensive brand of cat food that slagged off all the commercial brands for being made mainly of corn. If corn’s good enough for my cat, it’s good enough for my kid! That might be a backwards philosophy, but I’ll keep it in mind in the dog days of summer when he starts catching and eating the baby geckos that find their way into the house.

Saw this floating around the blogosphere in honor of World Book Day 2011 (not related to the encyclopedia) and thought it would make a fun, quick post for a Friday night.

The book I am reading: The White Queen by Philippa Gregory, and my feelings about it are mixed. The story is interesting, a page-turner, as her books always are, but the writing quality fluctuates, and so far the characters aren’t gripping me quite like the ones in The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance.

Technically I’m also reading Cordelia’s Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Chalion fantasy series I adored, but I’ve temporarily abandoned it because I got a bit bogged down in space politics after having only recently finished reading all the Orson Scott Card books. I really like the characters, though, so I’m sure I’ll be back to it once I’ve had enough of a fix in a different genre.

The book I am writing: Still Songs for Piano and Voice, which has received the attention of an editor whose critique confirmed most of my suspicions about bits that still need work and provided insight into potential marketing issues to work around. I’m excited to get back to work on it and whip it into shape; if only the Burt Squirt would cooperate by taking longer naps!

The book I love most: Anne of Green Gables, without question. My copy is falling apart, and every time I read it, I still laugh out loud. The warm fuzzies I come away with aren’t just from the oh-so-endearing characters, but also the nostalgia of reading it with my mom when I was eight and laid up with a broken arm, and of my friend Susan and me acting out Anne with our Barbies.

The last book I received as a gift: My brother gave me Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson for Christmas. I read a couple of chapters, but I had a hard time getting into it because so far it’s just the narrator talking about her grandfather and not giving me a good feel for who she is. I’ll probably pick it up again sometime, when I’m in a more literary frame of mind (and have had more sleep).

As is customary on the first birthday, we let the Burt Squirt wreak havoc on a cupcake, mostly so we could take pictures of him with icing all over his face. He’s normally such a photogenically accommodating child, but he disappointed us by not getting so much as a smudge anywhere but on his hands. And he didn’t even taste his cupcake, which is really odd these days as he’s only too eager to stuff his face with whatever food you put on his high chair tray.

That’s right, the Burt Squirt is feeding himself–which means all that worrying I was doing about how I’d ever get him eating a variety of textured stage three baby foods was for nothing (as all worrying tends to be).

About two weeks ago he flat refused to eat his favorite puréed bananas, squash, and sweet potatoes and began gobbling up table food like he was afraid Mr. Burt and I were going to send our leftovers to starving kids in Africa. He’s not yet eating what we have at meals, but he has a fairly extensive menu of his own: bananas, whole grain toast, whole grain blueberry waffles, cheese, chicken, black beans, corn, peas, kidney beans, sweet potatoes, Annie’s Bunny Pasta with Yummy Cheese, whole wheat crackers, strawberries, brown rice, and whole wheat tortillas.

And talking of whole things, despite now having four teeth with which to chew, pretty much all of the Burt Squirt’s food comes out looking exactly like it did when it went in. Potty training is looking really good right now. Except that the Burt Squirt has never put up a fuss about having a dirty diaper, so that would probably be an exercise in poo-tility.

On the subject of fits, the Burt Squirt doesn’t exactly pitch temper tantrums (much), but he does know how to make himself pretty clear about what he wants. When he wants to go outside, he toddles over to the french door to the patio and pounds on it till you either take him out in the back yard or put him in his stroller to go to the park. If he wants you to read to him, he’ll go get one of his books and throw it at you. (Clearly I need to teach him that this is not the meaning of that idiom.) And if you don’t drop what you’re doing and get on the floor to read it to him immediately, he’ll follow you around with the book, flinging it at your feet, until you do. At some point this behavior will have to stop, but right now the novelty of it makes it endearing. (And as an English lit major, I can hardly discourage my child’s love of reading; after all, I carry around an e-book reader and an iPod in the belief that reading can and should take place at any given moment.)

Anyway, I’m sure speech will replace this cavemannish style of communication soon enough, as his jabbering now consists of just about every sound in the English language (plus some other interesting ones that make me wonder if he isn’t speaking Swahili). Though he has been known to sit with other babies and simply shriek back and forth at them, as was the case when his twin girlfriends Ava and Zoe were here for his birthday party.

Now that I’ve come full-circle back to the subject of the Burt Squirt’s birthday, I’ll make the obligatory remark about how hard it is to believe that my baby boy is a year old already, that it seems like not very long ago that I held him for the first time in the hospital. (Except that it seems like a very long time ago that I got a good night’s sleep!)

As I thought about this post, the lyrics to Seasons of Love from RENT kept going through my head: “How do you measure a year in the life?” With babies, it’s easy to fall into the habit of measuring growth in inches (somewhere around 10 since birth) and pounds (between 14.5 and 15 gained). Obviously those measurements aren’t the ones that matter (except to the Burt Squirt’s pediatrician), or I’d have more exact numbers. And contrary to what the baby books would lead us to believe, it’s not even the milestones that measure the first year (even though they do provide fodder for the mommy bloggers).

It’s the love–

–which, though not quantifiable, has undoubtedly grown.

It’s time to make your Oscar predictions! Who do you think will win tonight? Who do you think should win? Who is most likely to create an upset? Who do you think should have been nominated that was snubbed? Any lingering ghosts of Oscars past? Think Titanic was the biggest ship trainwreck in Oscar history? Want to debate whether Shakespeare in Love really deserved top honors over Saving Private Ryan back in ’99? (Yes, it did.) Here’s the place for any and all Oscar chatter!

Now, let’s see just how phenomenal my cosmic powers are…

Best Picture

• 127 Hours
  
• Black Swan
  
• The Fighter
  
• Inception
  
• The Kids Are All Right
  
• The King’s Speech
  
• The Social Network
  
• Toy Story 3
  
• True Grit
  
• Winter’s Bone

Will Win: The King’s Speech
Should Win: The King’s Speech
Most Likely to Upset: The Social Network

Best Actor

• Javier Bardem for Biutiful
• Jeff Bridges for True Grit
• Jesse Eisenberg for The Social Network
• Colin Firth for The King’s Speech
• James Franco for 127 Hours

Will Win: Colin Firth
Should Win: Colin Firth

Best Actress

• Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right
• Nicole Kidman for Rabbit Hole
• Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone
• Natalie Portman for Black Swan
• Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine

Will Win: Natalie Portman
Should Win: Natalie Portman
Random Besmirchiness: Did anyone besides me find Annette Bening’s character in The Kids Are All Right to be completely unlikeable even though you were supposed to feel for her?
Also: What the heck is Rabbit Hole? I know Oscar is notorious for nominating movies that never hit the mainstream, but it’s strange that a star as big as Nicole Kidman could garner a nod for a film that flew completely under the radar.

Best Supporting Actor

• Christian Bale for The Fighter
• John Hawkes for Winter’s Bone
• Jeremy Renner for The Town
• Mark Ruffalo for The Kids Are All Right
• Geoffrey Rush for The King’s Speech
  

Will Win: Christian Bale
Should Win: Christian Bale
Most Likely to Upset: Geoffrey Rush
Biggest Snub: Matt Damon‘s Skeezy Mustache for True Grit

Best Supporting Actress

• Amy Adams for The Fighter
• Helena Bonham Carter for The King’s Speech
• Melissa Leo for The Fighter
• Hailee Steinfeld for True Grit
• Jacki Weaver for Animal Kingdom

Will Win: Melissa Leo, because she won the Golden Globe and the SAG.
Should Win: Hailee Steinfeld, because she had such a long script to memorize due to there not being any contractions in it. (Also, she made me care far more about her character than I did about any of the others.
Most Likely Upset: Helena Bonham Carter, because she won the BAFTA.

Best Director

• Darren Aronofsky for Black Swan
• Ethan Coen, Joel Coen for True Grit
• David Fincher for The Social Network
• Tom Hooper for The King’s Speech
• David O. Russell for The Fighter

Will Win: David Fincher, as a consolation prize for The Social Network.
Should Win: Christopher Nolan for Inception. Biggest snub of this year.
Most Likely Upset: Tom Hooper, because this year’s Oscars are pretty much a deathmatch between The King’s Speech and The Social Network.

Best Original Screenplay

• Another Year: Mike Leigh
• The Fighter: Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Keith Dorrington
• Inception: Christopher Nolan
• The Kids Are All Right: Lisa Cholodenko, Stuart Blumberg
• The King’s Speech: David Seidler

Will Win: David Seidler for The King’s Speech, because Best Picture usually wins screenplay or director, if not both, and The Social Network will take director.
Should Win: Christopher Nolan, because the most difficult script to write is the one that must build an entire world. He is the architect.
Most Likely Upset: Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg, because the Academy wants to give something to The Kids Are All Right.

Best Adapted Screenplay

• 127 Hours: Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy
• The Social Network: Aaron Sorkin
• Toy Story 3: Michael Arndt, John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich
• True Grit: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
• Winter’s Bone: Debra Granik, Anne Rosellini

Will Win: Aaron Sorkin
Should Win: The Coen Brothers
Most Likely Upset: Toy Story 3, because the Academy wants to honor the entire Toy Story trilogy with one of the major awards.
Random Snark: When did they stop calling this award by the more concise title “Best Adapted Screenplay”? How do they fit the new title– “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published”–on the statuette?

Best Animated Film

• How to Train Your Dragon
• The Illusionist
• Toy Story 3

Will Win: Toy Story 3
Should Win: How to Train Your Dragon

Best Cinematography

• Black Swan: Matthew Libatique
• Inception: Wally Pfister
• The King’s Speech: Danny Cohen
• The Social Network: Jeff Cronenweth
• True Grit: Roger Deakins

Will Win: Inception
Should Win: Inception

Best Score

• 127 Hours: A.R. Rahman
• How to Train Your Dragon: John Powell
• Inception: Hans Zimmer
• The King’s Speech: Alexandre Desplat
• The Social Network: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

Will Win: I don’t know–Oscar often flummoxes me here.
Should Win: How to Train Your Dragon

Here end my predictions; I’ve omitted most of the technical categories because I really don’t know enough about them (as if I’m an expert on the categories on which I have opined!) or care enough to judge.

Until 2010, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences only nominated five films for Best Picture. Bizarrely, I never managed to see all the nominees when there were only five, but last year I made it to six and this year I’ve watched all ten.

Fun as it is to see more great films recognized, I like to speculate about which ones would make the cut if the Oscars were as they used to be and only five could score a nomination. Just for kicks, here is my ranking of this year’s Best Picture-nominated films:

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