Ang kang Tatay

Magnet #1153 - Van Gogh's First Steps After Millet

So apparently, Van Gogh used to recreate Jean-Francois Millet's artwork in his own voice - something like 21 paintings, during his asylum time at Saint-Rémy. This painting, First Steps, After Millet is hanging in the Met - and here's Millet's original crayon on paper for comparison.

I do love this painting, because it's a supercute image of a child's first steps - especially if you see that the child is headed straight for the father's arms across the way.

Ya'll have heard it before - despite the fact that I don't want one, I'm a baby whisperer. For the most part, babies love me. I maintain it's because they see themselves in my chubby face.

It's been a fun year and a half, because two of my good friends had little girls, born 10 months apart. It's actually one of the advantages to being down here in NC this year, because I get to see both girls more often, and get to see them grow up, close up. Or, almost, anyway.

Last week, my BFF asked me to come sit for a bit with her daughter, who was supposedly just gonna sleep the whole time. It's possible that my BFF needs to read my blog more often, because I could swear I've done a blogpost about not allowing me near babies trying to sleep.

Here's why:

I learned that night that my threshold for leaving crying babies in their cribs is just about 10 minutes. What's worse? That baby totally knew I was putty in her hands, which is why she spent the next hour in my arms.

Couldn't help it. And she didn't sleep, either. She didn't cry at all, even as I spent most of that hour humming and singing the same Filipino lullaby over and over again.

It was like a magic lullaby, which totally kept her quiet the whole time! It's below, the lullaby that Tatay, quite possibly the original baby whisperer, always used to sing to us when we were little:

Ang kang Tatay
nga mga saging
nan gatumba kay gihangin

Ug wala pa unta hagagina
ang kang Tatay nga mga saging
dili matumba.*

Who knew? Filipino lullabies work on white babies!



*Translation:
My dad's bananas
have fallen because of the wind.

If it weren't for the wind,
my dad's bananas wouldn't have fallen.

(Yeah, I laughed at that, too.)