tomychildren
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Ultrasound
Your dad thinks technology is amazing, baby. You keep on growing in there, and we’ll see you in a bit.
You are viewing stuff tagged with tomychildren.
A seven foot white pine Christmas tree, grown at the Kroeger’s family tree farm from which you pick it up, freshly cut for you, baled, and drilled plumb for a tree stand is $59, which I believe is an excellent deal. We went to get ours yesterday and marveled at the difference a year makes with Essie. Last year, Ess was in the Björn, reacting a tiny bit to things, and generally kind of just along for the ride. This year she is 16 months old and far more interactive: riding on my back in the Kelty, reaching out at trees she likes, drinking sips of apple juice in the warming house, beaming at people she sees. The long-needled trees like our white pine feel soft to the hand, and, as with anything she feels that is thick and soft, Ess says “maoww”, meaning that it feels just like her cat at home.
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”
—Rachel Carson
Hi Ess,
As I type this, things of yours are strewn about the floor: Isabella bunny, Sophie the giraffe, Skinny Dog your Christmas present. There’s a kitchen tongs on the living room floor and a geodesic ball perched on your circle desk. There’s Pat the bunny sitting by the piano and a few blankets about there as well. The point is, it looks like a baby-shaped tornado just tore through our first floor. And let me tell you, your dad abhors a mess. I can’t stand disorder and your mom and I just spent a ton of time straightening up your nursery. But get this: I’d feel less happy, less full and fulfilled if you weren’t upstairs napping right now, if your toys weren’t scattered underfoot. This mess, I like. You see, these things are in disarray, but what they signify is far more important: they remind me of you. They remind me of your smiling, six-month-old face. They remind me of the reverence with which you hold things in front of your face, and the way that reverence quickly turns to frenetic, kinetic energy. You just fascinate your mom and dad, little one. And even though you aren’t sleeping well at all at night, and even though your mom is spending 25 hours a day looking after you, even though it’s overwhelming, you are absolutely amazing. We’ll never forget this time.
Hey Ess,
It was your first snow today. You aren’t really at that point where you can go outside and romp in it, but your mom told you all about it. I think you sense the way the light bounces around outside is different these days, and I think it means something to your growing consciousness.
Dear baby,
You’re the size of a small watermelon now. Where did the time go? It feels like we were just finding out about you, or moving, or painting your room, or assembling your crib, buying your mattress, picking out your diapers, installing your car seat. Get this: pretty soon I’ll be addressing these to you by your name instead of the generic “baby”. You used to be the size of a grain of basmati rice and now you’re huge!
Dear baby,
Hidden Valley Lane is a great name for a street. Just saying it aloud makes me think the way it rolls off the tongue is rivaled only by the bucolic imagery it evokes. It’s the name of the street on which my family (you know, your dad, grandparents, and auntie Katy) lived for a few years in the late 1980s. In the backyard grew a raspberry patch and on the hot days late in the summer when it was time to pick, my mom gave us little margarine containers to carry the berries. They had little blue “Byerly’s” on the side of them, and the bushes in their raised beds were taller than me.
Dear bébé,
Yesterday, we realized that we have a little over 80 days until we meet you, yet there was no crib in your room. So, we drove on I-494 opposite rush-hour traffic to Ikea, where we picked up a lovely crib for you. I hope you find it meets your standards; it was selected with an eye first towards safety and then esthetics. Did you know there are about a million rules for cribs? Slat spacing, mattress thickness, weight support, wood finish (this crib has none, quite safe!), firmness, hardware, age limits, height guidelines, what can be tied, what must be left out. All to keep you safe. Not that your crib is unsightly, (far from it, in fact I think the charm of its simple lines make it timeless) but I suspect you’ll agree your sleep safety during your formative years is more important than having faddish espresso-colored wood supporting your mattress while you dream. And we simply aren’t sleigh-crib style parents.
Your dad thinks technology is amazing, baby. You keep on growing in there, and we’ll see you in a bit.
3 December, 2013
Dear baby,
Today we found out that you are our baby. We love you already. Your mama went to the doctor’s office and they took your first picture. You are very small right now, just the length of a grain of rice — a “basmati grain of rice,” your mom said. I hope that someday you might read what I am writing and it might give you some insight into that mysterious time when your parents were young and not even five years into their marriage. We love one another so so much, and we want you to be in our family.
My father grew up in Rochester, Minnesota when it was considered the best place in the United States to grow up. Anchored by IBM, his neighborhood thrived during post-war prosperity; neighbors got together to make a pool — he recalls them pulling their lawn hoses out to it to fill it at the beginning of the season. Summer afternoons gave way to late nights of playing and inventing every game. Similarly, my mom grew up running about a safe and happy neighborhood, caring for the wild cats who befriended her and her siblings, driving Honda dirt bikes fixed up by her father in the field across the road from where they lived. Come to think of it, I don’t know as many stories as I’d like from my parent’s childhood.
Hi kids,
You probably won’t like your first job very much. My first job was at 3M and its only saving grace was that I met a truly great guy named Chris Rupert. Lacking a car, I was taking extremely long bus trips to work and he was nice enough to give me a ride—he’s one of those people who help out, expecting no overblown credit or glory in return. Just a super nice, stand-up guy. I’m lucky to know him. That’s sort of it from that job, though. I’ll be honest, I did a fair amount of sleeping—3M is where I first learned to sleep sitting up. I’d wear my glasses in the morning, and arrive in the empty, recently sold-off Pharm portion of the 3M building. In a nearly-empty farm of cubicles I’d turn on my computer and then… sleep for about an hour. After that I’d go to the bathroom, put in my contacts, and start my day. During the long afternoons, I taught myself object-oriented programming and wrote large chunks of the software behind this website. None of this, not the sleeping, not the programming, was in any way related to my job. But, I learned the ins and outs of corporate email (send a lot of it, be unnecessarily verbose, CC liberally) and the pure, unabashed joy with which folks greeted “free cake in the breakroom.”
It is with a sense of numb relief that I mark the completion of dental school in this space. My final check-out meeting was this morning, graduation is this Friday. I started four years ago, on a hot August day. I lived elsewhere then. Mykala and I weren’t married. I had no idea what I was in for. It’s no understatement to say I was a different person.