The Smoker Caterpillar: July 2016

Dear daughter of mine, Fauna.

You are already two months and two weeks out of the womb and you seem to adapt to the outside world pretty good. Your father and I are amazed by your presence, which it's so new in our lives but feels like it was always here.

We believe you are a really cute baby, since everybody agree on that. Specially insistent are those who said that they have never liked babies before but you are an exception. Cute or not, the truth is that you are really friendly with everybody. Whenever someone takes you in their arms you accept it and enjoy it. I guess this can change with time, when you grow older. You are growing and getting heavier but, in general, you are little tiny baby. Your eyes are dark deep blue. Your hair is clear brown and blond, under certain sunlight it shines in red.

In the beginning, like for any other baby, your digestive system activity was extremely traumatic and you cried intensely when something was going on. However, now you fart and defecate quite peacefully. You make caca everyday, sometimes two or three times. You often do it in the morning.

I am slowly learning your sleeping rhythm. If we keep you awake and entertained in the late afternoon you would sleep from 9-10 in the evening to 7-8 in the morning in one piece. I feed you in between these hours maybe once or twice .We sleep together so we do it laying on the bed. We are actually both really sleepy, dancing between the borders of wakefulness and dreamland. In the early morning, when you wake up, you are in a very good mood. Two hours later you are tired again and take a short nap. Then you wake up again but really quickly want to sleep again and this second nap is usually longer and deeper. You sleep again in the early afternoon, inside your baby carriage, while I make long walks around the neighborhood. You enjoy the extremely uneven streets of Berlin. It shakes you in the perfect rhythm.

I feed you on demand, which means every hour or two during daylight. If you are peacefully sleeping maybe three hours can pass away. You are not a greedy baby. Sometimes I let you suck from the nipple despite I know that you are not hungry but looking for comfort. You hate the dummy and won't accept it (you prefer to suck anything else: a shoulder, an arm, your hand...). I don't care to misseducate you a bit on that.

You recognize my face and sometimes you follow my figure moving through the room with you eyes. You recognize papa too, but I have the feeling that it is more about his voice than his face. You started to smile and to babble short before you became two months old. You enjoy babbling and you answer to us with a soft "ghrooooo" when we say to you "voooooogel".

You don't cry much. When you cry it's easy to find out what's your discomfort. You stop in the moment your discomfort is solve. You always start softly and get slowly louder if we ignore your request. When you cry the most is when we are already out on the streets for many hours and you are tired, but papa and me still stretch your patience. On the other hand, you can fall sleep after some crying if there is no loud sounds around. Anyhow, when you cry because you want attention and love you really know how to sound miserable. Your crying has a different character depending on your need.

You have good days and bad days, of course, but if we keep a routine you are in a great mood most of the time. Each day you have wonderful periods of time when you are by yourself completely entertain. Often you seem in some kind of trance. You definitely like quiet atmospheres and are really sensible to sound. This city is loud in general, and usually the park next to our home is a endless party. When we spend too much time in the park you get pissed off.

Papa and I have learned that you truly don't like having a bath. Instead, you love to take showers with us. In that you are like me: we enjoy the water falling on the skin.

Dear Fauna, we are completely in love with you and we cannot wait to discover your personality and your insights. But, in the meantime, I am enjoying as hell to have your tiny little body sleeping next to me.

Thank you for being so... you.

Last weekend The Small Art Festival took place in Wiesbaden. Scholz&Volkmer prepared a nice space in the middle of the street for the citizens to come along and discussed about the public space of Wiesbaden and its issues. Urban envisioning, ecology, art and social analysis met each other that Sunday to create a dialogue.

Fauna and I went there with Manfred because he had to present the device that he have been working on for the last months (we don't like to leave him alone). The machine measures the quality of the air thanks to different sensors. The most relevant measurement is the particles of dust. The values resulted from the sensors are shown to the public translated into a color range.

Manfred and Tom (who build up the physical interface) presented his device and measured the air that day. Fauna slept in her baby-car. I made photos to document the event.