Today is definitely a "Poppa" day. I'm totally in the zone. Some days it hits you harder than others. Its been coming on now for the past few days and when I woke up this morning it was just "I'm a Dad!". Its a great feeling, there's no other way to put it. Its this combination of eagerness, excitement, wonder, a floating sense of unpreparedness, anxiousness, and even more wonder. Now when I see infants walking down the street with their parents I don't just see a kid...I see MY kid. That's me in two months. That's me in a year, two years, five years, ten year, twenty years. No one ever told me about the whole time dialation thing that occurs right before you have a child. Its pretty freaky. This period of time right before children is sort of like one of those "altered states"...but extended to about nine months. I use to think that people who had three, four, five + kids were insane. Why and how could people do that? But after having seen Karen go through this and looking back on how much fun we've had doing it...I think I understand a little better why people would be willing to try it again. But I'm smart enough to know that its never as easy or as much fun as the first one.
August 22, 2003
Its amazing how everything these days, even the most obscure things, seem to come back to "parent preparation". For instance, I recently just finished taking a two-part (8hr) bike repair class. About a month ago I joined a community bike shop, where for a yearly fee you can go in and use their stands and all their tools (including solvent tank!) and work on your bike. They've got manuals you can refer to and will help you with the occassional question (they haven't said no to me yet). A few times a year they offer these bike repair classes. They're really wonderful and cover pretty much everything you'd want to know about when it comes to working on bikes. I think the only thing we didn't work on in class was the bottom bracket and the headset. Everything else though...we got down to the nut! So of course I took this class because I'm a bike commuter and use my bike for most of my everyday transportation. It helps to understand what you depend on so seriously. Also, and here is where it comes back to parenting, these are exactly the type of skills that I feel should be passed on to my kid. It goes without saying that the kid will be riding a bike as soon as possible. If I could manage it before they could walk, I would. So in a round about way, I took these classes for the Bean. Infact, I can't imagine anything more I'd like to teach my kid than how to work on his/her bike. The whole affair has actually made me look at learning a little differently. Whereas before if I was taught something or wanted to learning something...I could take it as seriously or as flipantly as I wanted or felt like. But now, that's all changed. Now I'm learning for two. Now I'm learning things so I can show them to our kid. And that makes everything so much more fun.
August 14, 2003
Just so everyone knows...time flies. I'm totally expecting to wake up tomorrow morning with a baby in the bed with us. Honestly, can someone just take things down a notch? Maybe slow down time? That flaming mass of fate that I've been talking about, well...its starting to give me something of a heat rash.
On the other hand, the coming addition to our family is going to be well documented. Karen and I are better connected now than we ever have been. We have cellphones, a new digital camera (way fun!) and soon enough DSL. When the kid is born you'll be able to call us anywhere (please be merciful), see photos on the web that we took two seconds before, watch little videos of the kid puking on itself, and probably even see him/her in realtime via a webcam. Isn't it strange how as a society we seem on an almost runaway course towards sprawl, yet strive to find new and clever ways to bring ourselves closer together.
In a way its really quite amazing how things will just be "different" with our kid. They will live in a world where they've never known what its like not to be able to reach out and contact someone whenever or wherever they want to. They will grow up immersed in a world of cell phones, digital cameras, digital cellphone cameras, an even bigger and deeper world wide web, blogs, moblogs, and virtual everything. Can any of us even realize how different this will be for them? I can't. Atleast I won't have to sit on the steps outside waiting for my kid, not having any idea where he/she is at 12 o'clock at night like my poor mother did. But don't worry Mom, God or whoever will find other, more excruciating ways to get me back.
August 11, 2003
Well, we've just caltapulted ourselves into the 21st Century. In a matter of just two weeks we have gone from being aspiring Luddites to full on digital animals. We are now the happy, yes happy, owners of two new cellphones (see contacts for our separate numbers), a swanky, new digital camera, and very soon the estatically happy owners of DSL service. How, you ask, did all this happen? Well, the easy answer is that we never were actually Luddites, we were just poor and had other priorities. The slightly longer answer is we're having a baby. By this we mean that our family is about to be increased by one. This also means that our current family is overcome with excitement about our upcoming addition to the family tree. That all adds up to more contact, more content, and more "compatibility". Basically, the 'rents want to see pics of the new kid and we want to be able to call the 'rents when we're freaking out because we don't know why the little tyke won't stop crying. Needless to say, a cellphone, a camera, and a reasonable internet connection will go a long way towards making all this happen. So say hello to your new digital friends (Karen and Fred) and please give them a break when they spontaneously break out with some geeky obsession over their new toys. I fear our kids won't have to grow-up too much to catch up with us.
August 8, 2003
When I was a kid I really wanted to meet the Silver Surfer. He was by far my favorite comic book character. There was just something impressive about a guy covered in liquid silver who flew around the universe on a surfboard, riding supernova shockwaves and slipping past galatic riptides.
And then when I got into highschool I really wanted to meet Bob Mould and Thurston Moore. Both Husker Du and Sonic Youth having huge musical and cultural impacts on my teenage years.
Later when I got into college and started studying religion I started imagining being able to meet significant religious and spirtual leaders like the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, St. Paul, and Johnny Cash. They constituted the ultimate dinner party in my mind.
And I'd have to say that I still really would like to meet all of these people. But over the past couple of days it has all been overcome with a new desire to meet someone...my kid. It has just now hit me that I really want to meet our kid...not just see or hold, but to MEET our unborn child. It sort of hit me the other day when I was standing on the Muni platform waiting for the N-Judy and a man and his wife (?) walked past me with their incredibly new baby. One month tops. And as I always do these days, I stared. I kept looking at the kid's face and his little hands and it hit me how much I wanted to meet our kid. What is he/she going to look like? Their cheeks, their eyes, their nose? It was that moment where you realize that you're about to give birth not just to a new baby, but to your son or your daughter...who is their own person altogether. Yeah, it was a pretty heavy twenty minutes on the platform.
But at the same time I want "this" time to keep on lasting. Being pregnant with Karen is, honestly, alot of fun. She said to me one day a while back that this time right now has been like falling in love with each other all over again. She's right.
August 4, 2003
Well, its finally up! The website that we may or may not have been telling you about. We alway figured we'd endup with some sort of website to chronicle this amazing and often surreal journey...we just didn't think it'd take this long. Hopefully our friends and family who frequent this site will find it helpful and even enjoyable. You comments and feedback are not only requested...they're expected!!!
So here we are, right at the beginning of our third trimester. It feels incredibly strange and ever so frightening to realize that in just three months (depending on how the bean feels) our lives will forever be altered. Change is bearing down on us like a fiery mass of fate...but in a good way! Like I've told so many friends already, finding out that you are going to be a parent, the sole protector and provider of a new born child, is not altogether unlike being told that you have just been given two tickets to Mars. Its the opportunity of a lifetime and everything I hear about it says its beautiful, but I have no f@#&*%! clue what to expect. So here we are, on the verge of take-off...and we're in SERIOUS pre-launch mode.
But you know what? Its better than I could have ever thought possible. Really. And that is all due to Karen. I've never seen anyone undertake something so enormous with such grace and gleeful curiosity. She's taken it all in stride and wonder, even that one week of morning sickness, Which mercifully was ONLY one week. She was a bit upset to have been mislead all this time by the term "morning sickness"...as if all if was, was a simple "eww, i ate eggs..blech!" No, it was more like full on food poisoning. No one ever told her about the retching dry heaves. Again, luckily it was only a week. My whole point in telling you this little story though is just to sort of highlight what a trooper Karen has been. Even with her considerable engorgement, she still moves around gracefully. She'll argue with you about that...but don't believe her. You can see if for yourself!
But this is it for my journal entry today. I'm actually feeling a bit sick and think I'll head out early. Maybe tomorrow's entry will sound more coherent.