Unflattering Recognition

My loving wife bought me the three DVDs of the re-re-(re?)-released Star Wars trilogy, Episodes IV-VI, for Christmas. This particular money grab -ahem- release includes both the newfangled remix (Greedo shooting first and all) and the old-school, rubber-puppet, deserted Mos Eisley, no-Jabba-meeting versions. I was rewatching them recently and decided to pick up Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith 2-DVD set on a whim.

You know, it's not a horrible movie. It's actually got some really good moments... but I digress.

Daigoro has been a bit ill the last few days, runny nose, cough; generally surly. To keep him a little more amicable, we've been letting him have a little more screen time (our code for watching TV and computer videos) than usual. So yesterday it came to be that he was plunked on the sofa while I had Revenge of the Sith playing, mostly as background noise, while I cleaned the room.

A scene came on with Yoda and Mace Windu. Yoda, in the event you've been living in a cave since 1982, is a old, wizened, frog/lizard like character who dispenses sage advice in twisted-around English.

Daigoro looked at the wrinkled, sunken and grey-haired creature talking on screen and looked up at his mother.

"Great-gramma," he announced, pointing at Yoda.

My grandmother is 91 years old as of the time of this writing. She's no spring chicken. She will never read this blog, I am fairly certain of it. If my siblings or parents ever tell that poor, sweet woman that my son thinks she looks like Yoda, I will kill them. With a lightsaber.

Double Happiness, Part II

(continued from Double Happiness, Part I)

Midwives are required to stay with the woman for two hours after the birth to monitor vitals and generally ensure everything is OK. Knowing they'd be around for a while, my mother and I prepared food and tea, a small spread of crackers, cheeses, fruits and snacks and fresh baked pizza.

It's funny - everyone said they weren't hungry, but after cajoling them for a bit, they dove into the food with gusto. I split my time between our guests and my wife and new son for a short time, then, once my mother had everything in hand, I quietly shut the door to the bedroom and my wife, son and I had some more quiet time.

Newborns, as I've mentioned before, are not pretty in the conventional sense. In fact, for a few weeks after the birth they still look like wizened and somewhat plump old men ("men" specifically because they look like they're balding). I'm going to assign "Kenshin" as my second son's moniker - it was one of the Japanese names we considered for him and later rejected. Kenshin sometimes reminds me of Churchill. We gazed at Kenshin, the product of our love and nine months of Marli's body protecting and nuturing this tiny new life. Briefly, it felt unreal, like somehow the past few hours of pain and anxiety hadn't really happened, and this bundle of flesh and needs didn't belong to us.

Eventually the midwives interrupted our musings - it was time for another brief status check, and I took the opportunity to fulfill a promise. Six months before, when we had found out that Marli was pregnant, we went to a place called "Fran's" - a 1940s era diner on College west of Yonge - to celebrate. While there, Marli happened upon their famous rice pudding and suggested that when the baby was born, she would love to have a Fran's rice pudding as a special reward.

So it was, at 7:40 on a Monday night, I left the house to go get Fran's rice pudding. Since the midwives are typically supposed to leave two hours after the birth, I said my goodbyes, expecting them all (with the exception of my mother, of course) to be gone when I returned.

I walked into Fran's fifteen minutes later feeling lighter than air. I ordered two rice puddings and a cheeseburger combo (Marli having assured me that she didn’t want anything). I couldn't help telling the server about my good fortune. Two sons! She asked me a few questions - when? Which hospital? At home? Really? How is your wife?

I mentioned that Marli had specifically requested Fran's rice pudding as a treat. She seemed pleased. I tipped her exorbitantly (especially for a take out order - hey, share the happiness, right?) and left for home.

Another quarter of an hour later, I was back home. The midwives were still there - there was a small detail that they were waiting on before they could go. I delivered the pudding to Marli in bed and tucked into my meal, feeling pretty peckish myself.

Once the midwives were satisfied with the situation, they packed up. Another round of thank-yous and goodbyes. I chatted briefly with my mother afterward and then she too packed up her gear to go home. I couldn't (still can't) thank her enough.

So we were left as our own small family (again minus, for the moment, Daigoro, who would return the day following with my parents-in-law). I considered the life experiences that would be lost as the result of not having a daughter, but also all the joy that two brothers could have together.

"A boy should have a brother," Marli said.

Double happiness. A Chinese phrase usually seen at weddings, probably not appropriate for a birth, but it sounds fitting. I've recently been learning Chinese characters while picking names for Kenshin, and I looked up the character used in the "double happiness" character. It's the character for a drum, superimposed over the character for a mouth. Song and drumbeats - music. Happiness. Twice over.

Seems like the blessing of two sons to me.

Vignette: Protecting Mother

Occasionally Daigoro exhibits behaviour which is interesting but probably doesn't require a lengthy blog entry. I'll prefix these short episodes and snapshots with the title and tag "Vignette". This first vignette occurs a few months ago, in early February or late January (I believe):

Daigoro was accompanying Marli on a trip to the midwives. He was happy and inquisitive throughout the visit, as is his usual manner. However, when the midwives asked to examine Marli's abdomen and palpate the uterus, Daigoro became more and more upset as they poked and prodded his mother's swollen belly. Finally he couldn't take it any more and actually flung himself between their hands and mama's stomach, apparently in an effort to protect her.

Pretty impressive, when you think about it - an twenty month old child trying to bodily intervene to protect his mother from two other women easily twice his size and four times his weight. It brings to mind of images from mythology of young children or animals protecting their injured or fallen parents. Instinct or love? Hard to say, but touching either way.

Double Happiness, Part I

What words can possibly describe the experience of a new birth? My wife mentioned to me recently a saying (she couldn't remember the source) which went something like this: "People who don't believe in God usually haven't attended a birth." It is a miraculous experience. To try to document such an event with mundane descriptions seems almost to belittle it. But even a few years can dull the memory of the experience, so it's best to get it written down while it's fresh in my mind.

Easter Monday began quietly. Although Marli had been having sporadic contractions throughout the weekend, we felt that it was reasonable to invite my parents over to visit - both wanted to spend some time with Daigoro. We were having a relaxed visit, chatting with my parents and playing with Daigoro.

After Daigoro went down for his afternoon nap, my mother settled into some knitting while my father decided to take some time to get to know my musical tastes by listening to shuffled songs on my iPod. After 3:00 PM, my wife called me from the bedroom and quietly informed me that "it looks like we're having a baby today." Her water had broken not too long before. In fact, she had been chatting with my parents just a half an hour earlier when the stronger contractions had begun, and she intentionally concealed her discomfort in order to not get my parents overly excited just in case things didn't progress. I went out to tell my parents, who were delighted by the news. We had planned a home birth with midwives, so we had a lot to do.

We started making preparations. Daigoro woke up not too long afterward, so we bundled him up so that my father could take him to my parents-in-law's house. My wife prefers more privacy when she's in labour, so there was some urgency in getting my father and my son out of the house that I didn't communicate well initially. My mother had volunteered to provide support during the birth with hosting and other duties not directly associated with birthing. After they were safely on their way, the midwives arrived shortly after 4 PM.

My wife has had medical training, so she had recognized a potential problem - there was meconium in the ammniotic fluid (I'll hold off on describing exactly what meconium is for the squeamish - if you want to know, look it up). This can cause several complications if the baby has aspirated any of it, so as part of the protocol they would need to call the paramedics so that they could intubate if necessary. The alternative was to go to the hospital. After a consult and a few more checks, the midwives and my wife decided that it would be safer for all concerned to go to the hospital.

I felt disappointed - we had planned on a home birth for many months - but safety had to come first. I grabbed the hospital bag my wife had prepared as well as a bag with my own personal items and prepared to go to the hospital while the midwives checked my wife one more time. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) her cervical dilation had increased from 5 cm to 7 cm in the short time that it had taken us to make the decision to leave (less than 10 minutes). The baby wanted to be born soon, so we shifted gears once again, dropping the bags and preparing to call the paramedics as we got closer to transition (the transition from strong contractions to the final stages of pushing - the last few centimetres of cervical dilation). At this point it was almost 5:15.

Things were progressing quickly. Marli's contractions were strong and spaced less than five minutes apart. I was told to stop timing the contractions as we got close to 5:30, and the paramedics were called. Firefighters arrived within five minutes (briefed quickly by one of the midwives on the precautionary nature of their presence) and paramedics shortly thereafter. Marli by this point was quite close and the pressure was strong and difficult for her. She prefers neither to be touched nor talked to when in pain, so I stood by, ready to assist, but mostly silent, especially during contractions. The paramedics (and the firefighters) wanted to be in the room, but they were respectful of the midwives instructions and remained outside. I was told later by my mother that two of the younger firefighters were somewhat unnerved by Marli's "vocalizations" and left to sit in the truck outside.

Marli hates to labour on her back, but unfortunately her discomfort made it difficult to get her to adopt a new position. Words of encouragement and rational explanations didn't quite seem to cut it; Marli said afterward, "it was like the cooperative part of me just shut off." The students were quiet and attentive, taking fetal heartrates at the correct times - the heartbeat was strong and steady as I heard it - rapid squishy thumps sloshing out of the Doppler like someone operating a plunger in a slushy machine.

Soon it came time to start pushing, around quarter to six, and we had to "help" Marli adopt a slightly different position on her side, with two people on the upper leg, another on the lower and two more "in the slot" (to use a somewhat appropriate military/hockey term). It was obviously uncomfortable for her, but it was pretty necessary as far as I understand.

To prospective natural childbirth coaches: the period immediately prior to transition seems to take forever; be prepared for this. To be with your wife/lover/friend/daughter (whatever your relation to the mother) in quite severe pain is difficult - there's not a whole lot you can do. People endure pain in quite different ways, of course. Marli vocalized quite loudly - not panicked screaming, but certainly sharp and urgent. She describes the worst of the pain as feeling like your pelvis is being pulled apart, which of course is pretty much what's happening. It's hard to relate to this kind of pain when you're male - the only thing I can think of is that if you can imagine the worst joint lock you've ever been in, but continuously for a long period without relief. Translate this pain to your groin and pelvis area. Now, add to this pain the worst sensation of being "blocked up" you can possibly imagine. Now amp that combined pain up a few notches and throw in whatever cramp and muscle pain that you usually get from taking any uncomfortable squatting or sitting position for more than a few minutes.

Yeah. Ouch. That's one of many reasons why I'd never begrudge a woman the decision to not have a drug-free birth experience.

I could see the pain and effort in her eyes and face, but I could also see the strength. She wasn't panicking. I love my wife.

Marli was pushing in earnest now. There was a sense of urgency in the room, but also a quiet professionalism that I had to admire. A few unpleasant details I'll leave out of this narrative, but suffice it to say that birth is a messy experience; fortunately Marli had expertly prepared the bed to prevent staining almost a week before. Just before six the head was starting to show - the midwives quickly checked the cord and cleared it from being in a dangerous position (wrapped once, loosely), a minor complication but one that I was thankful for experienced midwives to deal with it. It seemed to take somewhat longer than normal for the crowning to finish. As seconds ticked into minutes, the situation became a little more serious, if not critical. The midwives worked their magic, using a combination of manipulating the baby and mama's legs (not without protest) to get the necessary room. The head crowned just after 6 PM, but there was also a short period where we were unable to get the rest of the shoulders and body through. With some effort, our son emerged at 6:04 PM on Easter Monday into the waiting hands of his father. I held him for a moment before placing him on his mother's stomach while the midwives quickly cut the cord.

My new son was a pale grey-pink and somewhat floppy as he was whisked out of the room to the kitchen table we had set up as a potential resuscitation table. The paramedics stood ready to intubate, but as soon as they began to suction, he coughed and began to cry.

I had remained in the room with Marli. She was already apologizing to the midwives for being "uncooperative" during the birth. I quickly ducked out to find out our son's status. Seeing the midwives already towel-cleaning a crying newborn, I knew that I would be able to tell Marli our son was going to be OK.

One of the paramedics looked over at me and asked, "How's daddy?" My wife often observes that with all the focus on the mother and child, fathers are often overlooked during a birth. With all of the emotion of the minor complications (potential aspiration of meconium, awkward cord position, prolonged period to crown and deliver the shoulders) I felt that I had to maintain a calm exterior. Now that need for composure was gone, I found myself suddenly brimming up with tears of joy, "Fine," I said roughly, "I'm fine, thanks."

I returned to the room to update my wife. A minute or so later, after the midwives had a chance to clean up the baby and do a few checks, they returned our son to us. Already he was a much healthier pink, crying and looking about with dark, almond-shaped eyes.

While the midwives worked around us and in the adjacent room with the much-appreciated aid of my mother, filling out paperwork and generally cleaning up, Marli and I enjoyed a brief quiet moment with our newborn son.

(to be continued in "Double Happiness, Part II)

Standing at the Threshold

I have a personal fascination with human memory. One of the aspects of memory which I always find interesting is the capacity for human beings to forget how painful or difficult a particular episode or period was. Which is not to say all memory of the incident or time is completely forgotten, but you never recall fully how painful something is after the fact. For example, I remember that the pain of breaking my collar bone in a biking accident when I was 24 was quite intense, but when I remember the incident, no matter how hard I try, I can't evoke the sensation of pain exactly.

This is a very "good and sensible" thing, if you think about it - people would be collapsing in pain every time they thought of a previous injury. Similarly, women might really think twice about having children a second time around. Perhaps you have injured yourself a second time after receiving a painful injury previously and thought to yourself "oh yeah, that's how that felt." Now imagine that with the pain of childbirth. Nostalgia is a useful (and sometimes dangerous) thing.

Quite aside from physical pain, there is the difficulty of mental or physical stress; which brings me to the main thrust of this post - we're expecting our second child any day now. We're about to go through the whole rigamarole of sleep deprivation, which I touched on in a previous post, all over again. This time, we'll have the added challenge of a toddler.

One co-worker has commented to me that marriage is a change in your life, but relative to having your first child, it is quite minor. He then went on to compare the jump from one child to two as being a seismic shift similar in magnitude.

So here I stand on the threshold of another portal, looking back at the path that has lead me here, and peeking through to the paths beyond. I feel both elated at the ground we have covered so far, and daunted by the unknown terrain ahead.

Daigoro is steadily improving his vocabulary. Every day he seems to be able to apply the correct new word to an object or action. Marli and I find ourselves increasingly unsure if his new discovery is as a result of one of us specifically teaching him or Daigoro just picking the word up on his own. He is growing emotionally as well. This morning I watched with fondness as he lay down beside our cat and stroked it gently. He seemed pleased to be able to interact and be gentle with the cat, to which the cat responded with a few licks and purring. When the cat became a little impatient with Daigoro's attentions, he gave Daigoro a gentle bite, which cat owners will recognize as being playful as well as cautionary in different situations. Instead of reacting fearfully, Daigoro withdrew his hand and said, "kitty, no biting," not angrily, but as a loving parent might chide a wayward child.

Similarly, Daigoro has in weeks past displayed touching moments of empathy; pulling a blanket over a stuffed bear for warmth, wanting to help put a diaper on a baby doll. He almost always reacts positively to images of babies, smiling and pointing with delight. While I'm sure that his reactions will change as a new baby begins to live with us 24/7, I'm also satisfied that he's emotionally well-adjusted enough at the moment that he should be able to adapt well.

We're heading into Easter weekend, a celebration of a great transformation - an unimaginable leap from one state of being to another. A very appropriate time for a second child to be born.

Bouncing Off Walls

The other day, Daigoro was running about in his grandparents' TV room.

This isn't unusual behaviour for him - he likes to be active. What was unusual for him is that he was literally bouncing off walls.

"Literally" is a sadly misused word these days. I often wince when news reporters say something like "they literally tore into the other team," or "it literally blew their minds," when, of course (unless they were actually talking about wolf pack attacks on sports players, or very carefully timed and placed explosives) they are figuratively doing something. Many people seem to just use it as a magnifying word. Somewhere in the ironic punishments division of Hell, I imagine these word-sinners suffering literally the exact things they should have described in a figurative sense - "hey, news anchorperson, how do you like literally being knocked off your feet? Hmmm? Or literally being cut to pieces? Hmmm? Sorta different than being figuratively cut to pieces, eh?"

No... in this case, Daigoro was literally (really literally, not figuratively) bouncing off walls. He'd run across the room, use his hands to slow his impact somewhat, then go bouncing off in another direction. He'd hit another wall, then go bouncing off in another run, careening about like a toddler-sized pinball in a 5m x 3m enclosure.

The near-boundless energy of toddlers. Inspirational at times - downright exhausting at others.

In happier news, Daigoro has gotten over his clenching-his-legs-together phase of diaper resistance, at least for the moment.

Cycles and Phases

Daigoro goes through cycles, much like other children. His cycles can be somewhat strange, however. For example, when he was very young (0-6 months or so), he enjoyed getting his diaper changed so much that we actually changed him to calm him down even if he didn't need changing (on occasion, when we had reached a mental breaking point). Later, he began to dislike getting changed (6-18 months), mostly on account of wanting to be able to squirm about. Then, for a brief period, he seemed to be fairly lukewarm to the idea (18-22 months). For the last two months or so, however, he's become resistant again, to the point of clamping shut his legs every other day or so and protesting "no, no, stop!". For any other parents who may have not had this experience, it's surprisingly difficult to change a baby who is actively resisting you by tucking his knees and legs together and drawing them in against his body. Then when you go to wipe his bottom, he puts down his legs, then you go to wipe his groin and he tucks them up again. Smart cookie, Daigoro. Sometimes it's related to diaper rash (which, thankfully, he doesn't get very often at all), but sometimes it just seems to be his mood to put up resistance.

For a while there, he seemed to want nothing but YouTube clips of trucks. Now he wants "games" - computer games like Dora the Explorer, Diego and other delightful diversions at www.nickjr.com. We're limiting his play time, of course, but it's interesting (and somewhat disturbing) to hear a child want something (aside from a cookie) as the very first thing when he wakes up in the morning, and that something to be a computer game. (Well, to be honest, the very first thing he asks for is "Mom" or "Dad", so we've got that portion of his affections locked down).

We've recently begun reading him bedtime stories more often. When he was younger, he seemed somewhat uninterested - usually losing attention about three pages in, but now he's pretty keen. Last night, for the first time, he wanted to take his book to bed with him and read it (well, flip through the pages and stare at the pictures). He's taken the book to bed with him before, as a sort of security blanket; he's also taken dolls, trucks and various other toys with him to clutch while falling asleep. Last night, though, he sat in bed reading after we put him down. Marli commented, "We may as well have been robots, for all he needed us to be there." It was kind of cute to look at him, lying on his back reading, completely oblivious to his adoring parents.

Cycles and phases. Some things he returns to; some he never will.

The Origins of Humour

Honest, unforced laughter from a child is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world to my ears.

Daigoro likes to laugh. As mentioned frequently before, he's generally a happy kid. He'll laugh if we mug funny faces for him, if we blow raspberries ("zerberts") on his belly, if we do funny dances or somersaults for him. The thing that sets him off, though - the type of humour that sends him into gales of laughter - is pratfalls. He loves it when things fall down, slip or run headlong into other things. If you show him one of those dumb "Funniest Home Video" clips of cats and dogs having various "incidents", he'll giggle and laugh until his eyes tear up and he struggles to catch his breath.

He wandered into the computer room while I was watching Robot Chicken, a great little 10 minute filler show from [adult swim]. One episode has a segment with nothing but toy Cylon Centurions (from the old Battlestar Galactica sci-fi series) slipping, falling, crashing into each other (or unlucky Daggetts) and otherwise doing one long pratfall sequence. Daigoro thought it was hilarious and sat there laughing his head off. I just had to play it for him again. (If you're familiar with Robot Chicken: no, I didn't let him watch much more than that sequence. It does get pretty graphic at times)

I've read that the human grin (and laughter) is an outgrowth of the primate grimace; a facial expression primarily intended to communicate fear and discomfort. Showing teeth in most other mammals is a threat, which has probably been the downfall of many an unwary human who smiled broadly at a angry dog. I guess the difference with primates is that, living in troops and small bands, "smiling" communicates this fear and allows the rest of the band to understand what you're going through. I'm not too up on anthropology, but I have to assume that over time, this shared experience of fear turned into a communal release valve - a way of saying "I'm frightened of this (or this potentially happening to me) but we're still alive and laughing about it."

I don't know the exact quote - "all humour grows out of pain" or something to that effect. A corollary seems to be "comedy equals tragedy plus time".

Where does Daigoro learn to laugh at things? Marli and I don't typically watch pratfall based humour shows (funny though it can be) and we certainly don't laugh at Daigoro when he falls down. Yet he finds people (or animals) falling or tripping or getting bonked on the head the very pinnacle of humour at the moment. Is it because toddlers can relate to falling down or getting hurt - that the subconscious fear of falling and the relief of seeing it happen to someone else somehow translates into comedic gold?

Physical comedy is looking at the physical pain that one could be experiencing and someone internalizing it - turning it into something to be mocked, not feared. All our more elabourate comedy forms (satire, farce, parody) seems to stem from understanding the underlying pain or ridiculousness of a situation and simply laughing at it. Social pain - embarassment, awkwardness, humiliation - is still pain, especially to social animals like humans.

Not that Daigoro thinks about this sort of thing. He just laughs and laughs and laughs… because it's funny. That's all that's important, really.

Circle Game

I've recently invested some time in transferring parts of my moderate-sized CD collection into MP3 format for use on my iPod 30GB. Yes, I'm officially about five or six years behind the curve in terms of this technology, but I've never been a big "music guy". I enjoy music, but it doesn't seem to define my life in the same sense that it does for many people.

In any case, I was bopping along on shuffle mode when Joni Mitchell's song "Circle Game" came up. My pace slowed a bit as I paused to listen to the lyrics. Here they are reproduced in part:

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when youre older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

I almost stopped in my tracks. I was really getting choked up listening to the lyrics. I don't know if most parents do - I suspect so. Same thing probably happens to men who listen to "Cat's in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin. It's horrendously cliché, I know, but it's hard not to be affected by the enormity of the passage of time and the cyclical nature of parenthood/fatherhood.

So I'm trudging along thinking about how I could possibly be getting more out of the experience of fatherhood, "savouring" more, as it were, as well as putting more into it for Daigoro's sake. As it goes, I think I'm doing pretty well - but we'll see.

Not really anything to do with Daigoro, to be honest, but certainly made me take a moment mentally and think about exactly what this whole business of being a father means. It reminds me of what I debt I owe to both my parents for giving me a loving and nurturing childhood. Not entirely without strife or darkness, of course (that would be pretty damaging in itself) but by and large, a excellent foundation for my own turn as a parent. When Daigoro smiles and hugs us, it feels like warm sunshine embodied in a little squirmy package. There are definitely perks to being a father.

I'm nostalgic by nature - I tend to really become attached to places and memories, probably more so than is good for me. The song makes me think ahead to moments when Daigoro won't look at me with the same shining love in his eyes, to times where he'll hate me or fear me in turn. The passage of time for a parent is both stunningly quick (when considering it in retrospect) and occasionally agonizingly slow (when trying to endure another fifteen minutes of a cranky toddler).

Daigoro is starting to use more words to express more of his opinion.

"Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!!!" (general emphatic disagreement with what we're asking him to do)

"No, thank you." (in response to bathtime or the need to get ready for church)

I'm starting to ramble a little now... perhaps I'll edit this entry later. I just wanted to capture my feeling on hearing this song and thinking about Daigoro and the upcoming addition to our family.

Out of the Mouth of Parents

There are some combinations of words and concepts in the English language that one simply does not expect to use in one's lifetime.

For example:

"Please stop stabbing me with that slice of bread."

Yet, in the wonderful world of proto-toddlerhood, such fantastical amalgams are not only likely, they are downright practical.

I suppose it may come as no surprise to people experienced with children that, having no societal norms to draw upon, a toddler will do things which are somewhat unexpected - such as poking one's parent repeatedly with a otherwise innocuous slice of whole grain goodness. Hence the phrase, "Please stop stabbing me with that slice of bread."

Nonetheless, hearing such lines actually spoken often takes me somewhat aback.

Other off-the-cuff statements inspired by Daigoro's antics:

"The kitty's poop is not for playing with."

"Why is your airplane kissing the baby doll?"

"Please don't use daddy's groin as a springboard."

Toddler motivation often has its own internal logic. Poking someone with bread is funny, it was at hand, and didn't get the same sort of negative response as he would if were poking mommy with something harder or more sharp. The kitty litter box is dark, mysterious and resembles to some degree a playground sandbox. If inanimate baby dolls can be hugged and kissed, why not inanimate model airplanes? Why shouldn't they express affection for each other? As for jumping on daddy's groin, well, he tends to jump all over other parts of my body, the groin just is more sensitive, right?

"Apple juice does not improve the flavour of your peas."

Vignette: Seeing the Light

Yesterday, as Daigoro was playing with a set of Mega-Blocks (over-sized Lego for toddlers) he stopped and looked very puzzled. He was pushing it around on top of a glass coffee table we have in the front room. A moment or two went by and he continued staring off, apparently into space. I followed his gaze and noticed a multicoloured pattern on the far wall.

Mid-morning sunlight was streaming in through the south facing windows of our living room and shining off the blocks, then reflecting on the table and thence onto the wall. Daigoro was fascinated. He turned the blocks and watched as the pattern shifted and danced over the wall, then the bookcase. He turned it again, following it with his eyes around the room.

The look of concentration but also of wonder was in his eyes. It's one of the expressions I hold most dear in my heart when I look at him. I'm certain that I had a similar look as I gazed at him.

Good Morning, Sunshine!

When you get to the ripe age of thirtysomething, mornings seldom seem to have quite the same sparkle as they did in the salad days of youth. Not that you'd want to eat salad for days, or actually have sparkle-y mornings, but you get the idea.

Daigoro is stunningly good-natured in the morning. He's normally quite happy, but in the morning, when you've been woken up by your spouse having the usual late-pregnancy sleep troubles at 2 AM, the cat being annoying at 5 AM and the fruit of your loins calling "Dada?!" at 6:45, his good mood ascends well into the range of "too much, too soon."

It starts the moment he wakes up. I don't know how other toddlers wake up. I imagine it's likely a relatively gradual process. In Daigoro's case, he's seemingly fast asleep one moment, then standing upright a split second later. It's startlingly quick - sort of the reverse of a puppet having its strings cut. Somehow he just leaps into an upright stance without the intermediate "roll over, rub eyes, sit up, stretch, stand slowly" steps that most adults take in between.

Usually the first words out of his mouth are truck-related. I can only hope this does not reflect on his eventual life priorities, because on his current path his guidance counsellor isn't going to have check off more than one or two boxes on the old career path sheet.

"Truck! Firetruck! Car! ... Dada?"

"Yes, Daigoro?"

"Truck! TRUUUUCK!"

We alternate the task of fetching him from his crib. He usually snuggles into our chests as we transfer him, at which point we usually try to extend his momentary docile mood to getting another 15-20 minutes of sleep. At the moment this seems to work about 20% of the time, and Daigoro peacefully naps for another little while. The other 80% of the time, Daigoro wants to play.

If you have brothers and sisters, as I do, you may be familiar with a smaller human being wanting desperately to gain your attention at 7 in the morning. Even if you have, however, you're likely not to have experienced it as an adult, unless you are a parent or babysit sleep-over children. Unless there was a long gap between you and your siblings, you're also likely not to have experienced the delicate aroma of six hour-old baby diaper as a toddler plants his bum solidly on your nose, or the pleasant sensations of a child trodding blithely on your genitalia and sensitive portions of your midsection.

One very nice aspect of this, all kidding aside, is to have a very cuddly and happy little boy sharing the covers with you. He usually has a beaming smile plastered to his face. As grumpy or jaded anyone can be ( I'm not exactly a bear in the morning, really) it's really hard to not feel like smiling yourself.

After rolling over us for a few minutes, or playing peek-a-boo, he usually slides off the bed, tromps to the door and waves a beckoning hand.

" 'mon," he says, which is his current abbreviation for 'come on'. The parental response is usually to groan inwardly (or literally, when it's been a restless night) and try desperately to pretend we didn't hear him.

"Cee-al," he continues insistently, using his toddler's argot for 'cereal'. Cereal is his favourite food at the moment. He'd probably eat nothing but cereal, given the opportunity. As nice as that would be for Nabisco, we do try to vary his diet a little.

After one or two 'mons!, we usually marshal the strength to set him up in his booster seat in the dining room. One of his favourite cereals is the President's Choice 'raisin and bran' cereal, which he can't seem to get enough of. Nature's candy, I suppose. Feeding him that cereal in the morning and changing him in the evening can be an object lesson in the healthy purgative nature of dietary fibre.

After cereal, he'll often ask for "jam". He's cleverly determined that he can lick the jam right off toast if we let him, so toast and jam is usually a supervised affair while the other parent takes a shower or puts on make-up. He waits fairly patiently while we wipe the mess of cereal and jam from his face and hands, then he's down again, usually asking for vehicles of some kind.

A typical hand-off of care takes place while the other parent completes her or his morning ablutions and then it's time to pile him into his clothes for the day and his snowsuit.

Having finished dressing him and ourselves, we head out to the car to take him to his home care provider. He loves to dawdle, inspecting small grains of road salt or huge chunks of ice, crunching on ice-crusted snow or running through the steam billowing out of the clothes dryer vent in the side driveway. At this point, it's usually us coaxing him, but every once in a while I realize what a blessing it is to look forward with such wonder and excitement at the prospect of a new day as he does. To raise a hand and beckon to others, "Come on!"

Twinkletoes

Sometimes I have brief moments when I mentally hear Bill Cosby imitating his father:

"What's wrong with that boy?"

... or, to use a more recent pop culture reference, Hank Hill from "King of the Hill":

"That boy ain't right."

My son likes to mince about. I'm not exaggeratering. He walks about on his tip-toes, taking little half or quarter steps. Sometimes he'll even hold his little hands out to the sides like a ballet dancer. It's almost a textbook definition of mincing. You know Fred Flintstone's bowling technique? Yeah, that.

I'm not a homophobe. I'll love my son without regard to his eventual sexual orientation. It reflects somewhat on North American society, I think, when even a relatively socially liberal and progressive thinking male like I imagine myself to be even thinks about worrying about how his 21-month old son is comporting himself, body-language wise, and how this might relate to future dating habits. I even laugh inwardly when I consider writing about it now, but there you have it; heterosexual men are weird that way (partially for reasons which are explained later in this post).

Daigoro has probably picked up the habit from a rule in his daycare provider's household that the children (there are five) aren't supposed to run indoors. I imagine this is how they skirt around the "not running rule" while still expressing excitement and the appearance of running quickly. (Daigoro obeys the letter of the law, if not the spirit, in this case - as usual) The bouncing, rapid step of his mincing can seem just like running, except abbreviated. I can only guess that it's developed in daycare, since he never seemed to do it beforehand; one can never be sure.

When he's not "mincing", he walks normally of course, but he also has an exaggerated bow-legged walk from time to time, splaying his feet out to double or triple their normal spacing, so that he looks like he's trying to straddle a horse, or at least a Shetland pony. Do I worry about him growing up to be a cowboy? Eating pudding? On Brokeback Mountain?

To be completely honest, his mincing little runs are pretty darn cute. He's almost always excited when he does so, often accompanying his walk with little squeaks and squeals of enthusiasm about whatever it is he's interested in the moment (the cat, a doll, trucks, trains, bathtime, a bowl of cereal, what have you).

When I was in grade school and high school 15-20 years ago, aside from the usual cut-ups and curse words, a very common (altogether too common, I'm afraid) insult was to call someone a "fag" or a "faggot". It was often used jokingly, of course, but to call someone a "fag" and really mean it was meant as a pretty harsh insult. I didn't use the term myself - my parents were very strict about cursing and insults based in intolerance of any sort, and I adopted a similar policy when very young. Unfortunately, listening to teenagers today, it seems not to have diminished in usage. If anything, it seems to be more common.

It's sad, really, to observe a toddler's way of walking about that is purely an expression of joy and excitement and to layer baggage-laden ideas about sexual identity and masculinity onto it. Daigoro is having fun and walk/running in a way that he finds enjoyable. It's ridiculous to apply any sort of value judgement to that behaviour. Is homophobia so ingrained in our society that even social liberals have little pangs at the sight of their son playing with dolls or mincing about?

Short answer is: yes. Now what do I, as a parent, do about it?

I'm doing everything that I can think of to avoid imposing gender roles on Daigoro - I encourage him to be gentle with dolls, I don't flip out when I see him imitating mom while she's putting on make-up, I let him mince to his heart's content.

Yet, entirely without conscious encouragement from me or Marli, he seems to love hockey, trucks, trains, cars, explosions and running into things and knocking them over - classic "guy" things if ever there were some.

One of these centuries, humankind will wake up collectively and realize that all of these barriers we put up, these identities we forge and then so tenaciously defend, are important in one sense - our self-image - but also arbitrary - that men should be able to dance with their hands above their heads if they want to without having to wear pink triangles, and women should be able to wear a crew cut without hearing jokes about comfortable shoes.

Until then, little twinkletoes is mincing about the house. It's probably good for his calves, which will definitely come in handy in rugby.

Who Needs Sleep?

“Who needs sleep?
well you're never gonna get it
Who needs sleep?
tell me what's that for
Who needs sleep?
be happy with what you're getting
There's a guy who's been awake
since the Second World War”

Who Needs Sleep, Barenaked Ladies, from the album “Stunt”

Yesterday, we slept in. Well, we slept longer than we would normally when waking up with Daigoro, whose usual waking time is 6:30 to 6:45 at the moment. I ended up getting up at 7:45. Sleeping in is a luxury that I think childless people don’t generally appreciate. I know I didn’t. Other luxuries you might not appreciate as a toddler-free adult: being able to concentrate on a task on the computer or on your desk without a small 13 kg human plunking him or herself in your lap; being able to leave scissors, markers, medicine and cleaning products anywhere you like; being able to just go out and do something outside the house without a) finding someone to take care of said toddler or b) going through the 10-15 minute ritual of preparing to go outside the house.

We owed the luxury of a morning of extra sleep (my internal clock currently has a unfortunate habit of waking me up at 6:30 even if I want to sleep in, so I currently wake up, go back to sleep, and wake up again a few hours later on these occasions) to the generous offer of my parents to take Daigoro for an evening and the following morning.

Prospective parents, if there is no other reason that you can think of to keep up good relations with your own parents and/or in-laws, this is one you should keep in mind: you will need a break from your child from time to time.

So, thanks to my parents, we had a toddler-free evening and morning. Yay, parents!

Everyone needs different amounts of sleep. I can get by fairly well on about six hours, but I prefer eight. Quality of sleep is important too; I’d rather have six hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep rather than eight hours with one or two episodes of wakefulness. My wife, who has decided to adopt the pseudonym “Marli” for now (it’s a literary reference – more on that later), prefers to have more.

So it came as a bit of a blow to both of us in the weeks and months following Daigoro’s birth that we’d be waking up two or three times in a night. Not that we didn’t expect it, mind you, but expecting and experiencing are two different things. This made for a very unpleasant time for both of us, more so for Marli than for me, since Daigoro was exclusively breast-fed. When he was quite young, Daigoro slept in a basinet in the same room with us. Every so often we’d co-sleep (for the non-parents “have the baby sleep in the bed with the parents”) which was easier in terms of getting the baby to the breast, but harder in terms of space in the bed. Even in a queen-sized bed, a baby can be tricky to accommodate.

I valiantly offered to sleep in the room for as long as I could as a show of solidarity, but Marli quickly pointed out that it was pointless for both parents to be poorly rested just for the purposes of moral support (I was working), so she suggested I sleep on the sofa. I took up the offer guiltily, but not without some relief. If there are some aspects of “hellishness” to parenting, certainly months of sleepless nights range into that territory. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Eraserhead” by David Lynch, the nightmarish wailing of the grotesque “child” in that film comes deliriously close to reality after waking up three or four times in the night for the seventh consecutive night.

Ray Bradbury, one of my favourite science-fiction/fantasy writers, once lyrically described 3 AM as the “midnight of the soul”. Surely I have felt more desperate at 3 AM than at almost any other hour of the day, but never more so in the first five months of Daigoro’s infancy.

After Daigoro had settled his sleep patterns enough that he was only getting up twice a night, we moved him into a crib in the spare bedroom. The deal was that I would get up, get him from the crib and bring him to the bed, where Marli would feed him. If you are keen on zombie films, you will have a good mental picture of my usual gait on those bleak evenings in the spring and summer of 2005. On the plus side, I did develop an excellent ability to walk around in the dark without turning on lights, which I’m sure will come in handy in any potential future careers as cat burglar or celebrity stalker.

Daigoro was feeding every three hours or so, which meant that Marli would give him a feeding just before he went to sleep at 8 PM, another at 11 PM, then again at 2 AM and 5 AM. This became fairly routine as time went on. Eventually, we were able to cut out the 2 AM feeding, and at six months (or was it eight? I can’t honestly remember at the moment), we applied the Ferber method fairly rigorously to allow him to go to sleep on his own and also sleep through the night. It was four days of fairly difficult periods of crying and thrashing (and that was just the parents), but in the end, it was well worth it. Daigoro fell asleep on his own, and largely stayed asleep through the night and has been able to do so ever since.

Looking back, it seems a little wimpy to be complaining today about having to get up at 6:30 in the morning when, for a long period, we were sleeping an average of 4-6 hours a night with at least two interruptions, and often more. The human mind has an amazing capacity to forget adversity. It’s a good thing; we’d probably have a lot fewer parents in the world.

We’re about to do the whole thing over again with Baby #2. I should start banking sleep now.

I need sleep.

Mushmouth

Say what you will about his recent (alleged) indiscretions or how his work has gone downhill over the years, in his heyday, Bill Cosby was a comedic genius. My father had a lot of vinyl records of various comedy sets that Cosby did (his tamer, family-friendly ones, at least) and I spent a lot of time just listening to them with headphones on, laughing away to myself at the antics of the Fat Albert Gang playing "buck buck" or the Chicken Heart which ate New York City (if you haven't heard that one, pick up a copy of "Wonderfulness" sometime).

A little less entertaining was Cosby's "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" show, a pleasant enough animated series featuring some of the characters from the old Fat Albert Gang plus a few new ones. One of the many eccentric characters in that series was "Mushmouth", a gangly speech-challenged kid who spoke in a strange gibberish language apparently called Ubbi Dubbi.

Daigoro is currently going through a "Mushmouth" phase. It's not exactly "Ubbi Dubbi" of course, but it's reminiscent of the same sort of gibberish. For example:

Me: "Daigoro, how are you today?"

Daigoro: "Train eshawna bayja wassa dursha train?"

Me: "Is that so? You want a train?"

Daigoro: "Ashla sho shasha truck unpalla shaw juice? Okay, mahi sholla nishaa kitty?"

Me: "Oh, something about the truck and juice and kitty?"

Daigoro (emphatic): "Yes." (nods head) "Sholla dursha ma shasha truck insh shasha truck rana shisha truck."

Now, this may sound like gibberish, but it's apparent (or at least it's a good fake) that Daigoro thinks he knows what he's saying. I haven't read or learned about child development enough to know what this is called, but I'm sure it's normal (it's pretty cute to boot). It's also apparent that Daigoro has a bit of a truck fixation, but that's another story.

When you think about it, it's pretty amazing that children can pick up speech at all. Of course nearly everyone does it naturally (some developmentally challenged children and other mental and physical impairments being obvious exceptions) - we're evolutionarily hard-wired for it. Take a moment to think about it, though. How many thousands of words do you know now? How many did you know, even as a young child? Think about how complex a concept even simple-to-say words like "love" or "afraid" can represent.

Right now, Daigoro strings together words like beads on a string of (apparently) meaningless syllables. What do those syllables mean to him, if anything? Or are they just practice, to give his tongue and his brain's speech centre the workout they need to wrap themselves around doozies like "she sells sea shells", "The sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick" or (many years from now, hopefully) "pheasant plucker".

I had a slight speech impediment when I was young - it was hard for me to get through certain words. Even today, I have to concentrate a little to say the word "synthesize". Speech is an amazing gift - not available to everyone. Fortunately, communication, in some form or another, usually is. Even as I smile a little inwardly at Daigoro's humorous "mushmouth" phrases, I have to marvel a little at the astounding complexity of human communication.

War and Peace

"Daigoro, no more trains," I say firmly, turning off the computer, where I have been showing Daigoro short amateur videos of model train sets.

"No. Please?" he says pleadingly.

"No more, Daigoro. All gone," I assert, trying to sound as benignly authoritative as I can.

His face crumples and his lip quivers.

"Trains? Dada? Dada? Trains?" his tone is more demanding now, with an edge of desperation.

I stand up. He's been sitting on my lap watching YouTube videos of cars, trains, firetrucks and other fossil-fuel guzzling metal behemoths for about 10 minutes. We're trying to limit his combined television and computer intake to less than an hour or two a day; less if possible. I cradle him in the crook of my arm as I step away from the computer.

The waterworks begin.

"No no no nononono," he cries. He cracks an eye open briefly to see if I'm paying attention. I set my mouth in the now-standard "I'm sticking to my guns" expression.

"You've had enough trains. Time to go brush teeth," I say hopefully. This never ends well.

"No! Nooooo," he wails, then he starts up with the open-palmed smacks on the sides of my face. I'm secretly glad he hasn't learned to ball up his little mitts into fists. On the other hand, those little baby fingernails are surprisingly sharp. It's a good thing he doesn't know how to scratch yet either, but occasionally he gets an accidental swipe.

As an aside, both my wife and I are believers in the "firm but fair" model of parental authority. State what you're going to do, then follow through. If you make a rule or a schedule, you stick to it. No buckling, no appeal to the other parent. We intend to put up a solid front of parental authority.

That's the plan, anyway.

I grasp his hands firmly. To his credit, he's gotten a lot better with the hitting - I raised my voice on one occasion enough to make him think twice about smacking me since.

"No hitting," I say simply.

He promptly tries to head-butt me. I'll hand it to him, he's both a master of improvisation and knows how to take advantage of legal loopholes. Fortunately, he's tried this trick before and I know to dodge the first attempt. The first few times... well, I've seen stars.

I transfer my right hand from his hands to stop his head from impacting forcefully into my left eye.

"No headbutting either," I warn. "Headbutting" as a word-concept is probably aiming a little high, but no harm in naming names.

Thwarted, he sobs a few times, tries arcing his back somewhat half-heartedly, then resigns himself to being carried into the bathroom. I've won this battle. The war goes on.

It's strange to deal with the immediacy of toddler violence. With adults, you don't just wind up and smack someone when you can't get what you want. Well, not without landing in any number of psychiatric institutions or prisons, anyway. It's primal, direct and, in a way, quite understandable. How else do you communicate your extreme displeasure to a giant twice to three times your size and seven or eight times your weight who also happens to be ignoring your limited efforts at communication?

Bringing up children can sometimes seem like a series of skirmishes or running battles. Especially when it involves actual physical tantrums like this one. Fortunately for babies and toddlers (and the humanity of parents in general), we don't retaliate with force ourselves.

It's hard to reconcile a 13-kilogram ball of angry toddler with the very image of peace and tranquility that Daigoro radiated in his first few days with us. A little swaddled reddish-pink creature, weighing 3.85 kilograms and looking like a cross between a wizened chimpanzee and a giant mutant pink slug (yes, newborn babies are beautiful, but it's a different kind of beautiful), he nonetheless was quiet... and largely immobile. Among the many things I am looking forward to with our second child is the lovely prospect of having a newborn baby remain in the same place after you put it somewhere; toddlers having an uncanny ability to remain anywhere but where you last saw them.

I've heard many parents comment that in the first day or two, a newborn is very quiet (or at least, by comparison to a week or so later) - a few squawks and coos, but mostly very peaceful. My wife reliably informs me that this is largely due to the fact that the baby is more or less exhausted from the ordeal of being born (and let's face it, if you were squeezed through an opening not much larger than your head, you'd take a few days to recuperate too). Tired or not, it also makes for a very convenient survival trait. If the already grumpy and tired parents had a preview of what kind of noise that little "bundle of joy" would make in the months and years to come, they might just reconsider their sacred role.

The peace of the newborn - enjoy it while you can, new parents... it's the calm before the storm.

Enter Daigoro

(Note: If you're reading this blog for the first time, be sure to read the inaugural post, "The (Little) Middle Way" first)

What (or more accurately, who) is Daigoro?

Daigoro was the name of the fictional character Kozure Okami's son, who accompanied him in his epic adventures across Feudal Japan. I've chosen to use Daigoro as a pseudonym for my son - it's an obvious choice given my choice of nickname.

This Daigoro, my Daigoro, entered into this world in the early hours of the first week of April, 2005. My wife (who as yet lacks a pseudonym and will thus go nameless for the time being) had convinced me of the benefits of a home birth, and we had planned together for the event. Being a first time father, I was nervous, of course, but I was also well prepared by the patient and well-informed coaching of my wife, who has quite a bit of knowledge in childbirth from her medical-related education.

While she had been experiencing symptoms of early labour since that morning, she was convinced that she had some time yet to wait even as I arrived home from work around 6:30 that evening. We had taken a short course in so-called "self-hypnosis", a method of inducing a trance-like state which assisted in reducing both the perception of pain and making time seem to go by more quickly when feeling discomfort. It's actually a none-too-complex method, but it requires practice and preparation.

I suggested that she should being the early steps of going into a light state of self-hypnosis so that once labour began in earnest, she'd be prepared, but she declined, thinking she had plenty of time yet. She even went so far as to start doing laundry. By 9:30, though, she realized that perhaps this was proceeding a little faster than she expected and we paged the midwives. I believe they arrived sometime around 10:30, but my recollection of events is somewhat skewed.

Things proceeded quickly after that. The midwives were wonderful and my wife was brave (albeit understandably unreasonable at times) and my son was delivered without drugs (the term "natural childbirth" always seems a little snobbish to me) shortly before 3 AM. I am proud to say that I had enough of my wits about me to be in a position to "catch" the baby - as he emerged, he was cradled in my hands first.

Perhaps in some future post, I'll try to better capture the details of the birth, but it was first and foremost a whirlwind experience. I can barely remember details - helping my wife, comforting her, trying to play host to our midwives - it all seemed to happen so fast. One thing I will always remember, however, is the moment of pure joy as I held my son for the first time and wrapped him in blankets to give to his mother.

As it happened, we had been expecting a girl. During a routine ultrasound, my wife overheard the technician describing "girl parts" in medical lingo that my wife could understand. So, as the baby emerged and I saw that it was a boy, I was both happy for the health of a new child, but also surprised that it would be a son and not a daughter.

I suppose it is somewhat of a throwback in today's society to want a son as your first born, but I would be dishonest to say I wasn't hoping for one. Patrilinear primogeniture is a sexist concept, but it dies hard in the male mind.

Despite it being a relatively fast labour, it understandably left my wife quite drained. We bustled about for a little while, made a few phone calls and after thanking the midwives, we tumbled into bed. Thus ended Daigoro's first night on earth.

Since I'm starting this blog belatedly about 21.5 months into Daigoro's development, I'll have to bounce back and forth between current accounts of him and what happened in the past. I hope you will forgive me any temporal confusion this may create.

Daigoro today is a healthy and vigorous young toddler, with a wry, scrunched up smile and a ready laugh. His eyes, sometimes describes as "snapping black" are indeed so dark brown as to be nearly black. He has a mop of wavy light brown hair when it hasn't been cut short (as his mother prefers) and is pretty average-sized for a child his age. He is long-bodied and short limbed, like both his parents, and though not quite stocky, he is certainly solidly built. His current speed settings seem to be "running" and "running faster" but if he interested in something, he will sit down to contemplate it quite thoroughly.

While generally quite happy and pleasant, he also has a meditative and contemplative nature at times, looking very serious when he beetles his lightly toned eyebrows and simply gazes about curiously.

His passions are currently trucks, cars and trains, a trait which I imagine he shares with 80% or more of North American boys. His first word was "shoe", learned because he so enjoys going outside; putting on his shoes meant going there. His current vocabulary is thus (rendered here in no particular order other than the ones that spring first to mind, and by no means comprehensive):

shoe, car, mommy, mom, momma, dada, daddy, kitty, bib, cookie, no, down, up (sometimes up and down get reversed), outside, door, open, hockey, stick, broken, doggie, gi-chan (Japanese familiar term for "grandfather"), truck, plane, train, come, please, thank-you, welcome, juice, water, key, pooh, bama (banana), cracker, cookie, yes (also "yup" and "yeah"), ow, bath, wet, ball, go, one-two-three (said mostly by rote when "counting" something, not always actually related to the number being counted and often restarted), pizza (well, "pida", but close enough), bread, toast, jam, cereal, apple (applies to all round, reddish or red-orange fruits), orange, sock, fish(y), cow, horse, pig, chicken, bird, play, dance, snow, cold, hot, baby, treat(s), tree, wheee, okay, tee (TV), pooh (as in the bear, not the body function), light, diaper, corn, book, jacket, pants, shirt, mitten(s), bike + various names of family members and fellow homecare children.

There are a number of other words he seems to understand without necessarily being able to repeat them to us - our instruction to be "gentle" for example. Taking a moment to write down these words, it's interesting to note what he's learned and what he hasn't learned by this point.

In some cases ("thank you", "please"), I'm quite happy he's learned the words. In others ("pooh", "tee"), I'm not quite as proud.

No one said this path would be easy.

The (Little) Middle Way

"...These two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

"Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata...? It is the Noble Eightfold path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (The Discourses of Buddha)

Ah, the inaugural post. Without presuming to sound too pompous or self-aware, it's probably best to jump right into things and avoid the usual blather about why one is starting a blog and what one went through to do it, or what one hopes to accomplish with it. In some sense, this is inevitably belly-gazing, but perhaps it can transcend that state and become something more.

What point is there is starting a blog with a quote from Buddha? I'm not a Buddhist - I'm not even well-versed in Buddhism, aside from various concepts picked up here and there from University courses in eastern religion and reading about bushido. The quote above reflects a few things about the name of this blog "Between Heaven and Hell" and its Japanese-inspired internet address: kozure-tengoku-to-jigoku.blogspot.com

Tengoku is the Japanese word for "heaven". Jingoku is the Japanese word for Hell. As far as I can make out, my chosen internet alias of Kozure translates roughly as "with child" or "accompanying a child". It's a fragment of the name "Kozure Okami", itself a pseudonym of Itto Ogami, a character in a Japanese graphic novel series (more on that later). Kozure Okami is known more commonly in the west as "Lone Wolf and Cub" and is one of my favourite works of graphic literature.

As it happens, Tengoku to Jigoku is also the title of a Kurosawa film whose title is usually translated as "High and Low" in English, though I had no awareness of the film until I started trying to think of names relating to Heaven and Hell.

This blog is about the trials and rewards of bringing up children. In my case, specifically a young boy of (currently) 21 months, who will go by the alias "Daigoro", and another child who is due to be born (God-willing) in early April. When thinking about this concept, I considered how many people throughout the history of the world have encountered this utterly mundane and unremarkable, yet sometimes also transcendent and unique experience. How many billions have had exactly this experience? What right do I have to write about it?

Well, the simple answer is that I have as much right as any other. The trick is lending a unique, or if not unique, at least interesting perspective. This blog will be about the highs and lows of parenthood - the Heaven and Hell aforementioned, while acknowledging the commonality of the experience - what is between Heaven and Hell? Everything that we can experience and value as human beings.

The title also reflects a little bit of exaggeration on my part. Certainly I haven't experienced anything so trying as to term it "hellish" thus far in 21 months of raising my son. Fortunately, I have been lucky enough to have moments of pure delight - as close to heaven as one can reasonably expect. So, the name of the blog reflects a bit of my sense of humour about the whole affair - translating something ordinary and low-key into something exceptional and epic.

Mostly this blog comes about as a result of me noticing how quickly tiny landmarks of child development pass - winking in and out in the space of a few days - and aside from pure memory and the occasional photograph, no record of these precious moments exists.

This blog, written somewhere between Heaven and Hell, records these sometimes challenging, frequently wonderful, but always fleeting moments. I thank you for joining me on this journey.