9 months - June 2004

Fear Friends and Family,
Well, fatherhood is pretty fun these days. Noah is now 9 months old and he is a pure joy. He sleeps well at night (for about 10 hours) which makes for relatively well rested parents. While Noah is awake he is almost always happy, smiling and laughing constantly. People regularly comment on how happy he is, often saying they have never seen such a happy baby. His happiness is due in part to his love of people, he'll return almost anyone's smile; in part due to his love of everything else in the world, he is especially fond of dogs and trees - both of which are sure to make him laugh; and in part to the fact that both his parents are always smiling at him and laughing with him. It is impossible not to, he is just so damn cute and funny.
It is truelly amazing to watch him as he discovers and falls in love with the world. Nothing is unworthy of close inspection. Any object that ends up in his hands gets held up and carefully rotated so he can look at it from different angles and then bam, in his mouth it goes. Besides observing his surroundings, Noah is working hard to learn how to use his body. He hasn't figured out how to crawl yet (he's a lazy one) but can get around on the floor or in bed by rolling around. This method of travel works well enough for him to have rolled right of the bed one day, giving him his first bad experience with gravity. Baby talk has begun and is so cute to listen to. His first sentence was: "die, die, die, die, die" (I think that must be something he picked up on his trip to Germany).
Yes, he and Anke went to Germany for a month. Noah hung with his German family and met his Great-grandmother while there. He is lucky enough to have met both his Great-Grandmothers. It was good for Noah to get to know his German roots. Parsnips were his favorite. Yes, he began eating while in Europe. I guess the European cuisine is more tempting than American fare. He has expanded his diet since then to include other vegetables and fruits including carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, bananas, and burritos. Yes, like father like son, Noah has a taste for the finer foods in life. In fact, as an illustration of how fast things change with him, I was gone for just three days and when I returned he had gone from eating mush to having ate his first burrito. Beans, rice, cheese, guacamole, salsa, he ate it all.
Along with his first burrito other recent firsts include his first teeth and his first childhood illness. Both of these things have given us a reminder of what it was like in the early days of his life when he would keep us up at night and how helpless one feels when their child is suffering and there is nothing you can do to make them feel better.
Before I was a father I used to think that parenthood was something I would be happy to never have to deal with. Of course if I ever told a parent that, they would give me a disappointed look and say something to the effect of "Oh, you will never know what you are missing, being a parent is the best thing in the world!" I always thought to myself, 'Not being a parent is pretty damn cool too!'. The freedom of not having kids was so sweet to me. But now that I am a parent myself I find myself on the other side of the fence and I realize that all those parents were right. Having a child and watching them grow and discover the world is truly the best thing on Earth. It is, after all, what we have been programmed to do: billions of years of evolution have designed us for the purpose of reproducing and raising our offspring so they too, can one day reproduce.
Before we had Noah I was not a baby person. I paid little attention to babies and would never have wanted to hold one. Oh how we change. I now find myself oohing and awing over every baby I come across, each one striking a soft spot in my heart. In fact, when Anke and Noah were in Germany seeing a baby brought tears to my eyes.
Yes, being a Father is hard work and it requires giving up much of the freedom I enjoyed for so many years. But no matter how tough it seems I can never really complain because for the Father life is easy compared to the Mother. As have I developed a new appreciation for babies, I too have come to regard the job of being the Mom in a new light. When I start to feel like I don't have enough time for myself, or that I don't get to surf enough, or I don't get to see my friends, or I can't go to a concert, or whatever, I have to remind myself that I get to do these things way more than Anke. Although I rarely have the opportunity to, it is possible for me to go away by myself for a day or two, or to go surf for five hours. But for Anke the situation is completely different, she has this little helpless life that depends completely on her. If she gets away by herself it is for hours at a time, not days. I can't even complain about how much I have to work. For Anke it is more like how much I "get" to go to work. The prospect of being able to go to work for eight hours has sounded so sweet to Anke.
The amount of energy it takes, day in and day out, to be the Mama of an infant is endless. The baby literally sucks the energy right out of the Mother for she is the source of life for that child. Also endless is the amount of love a baby has for it's Mom. The Papa is a fun guy to hang around but the Mama is where its at! Part of Fatherhood is definitely getting used to being second best. It is amazing to think that every person on Earth, even the greatest and most powerful, were once helpless little babies, pure, innocent, and limitless in their potential and that as babies they were completely reliant on their Mothers for survival. Napolean, Bush, Hitler, Jesus, Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, and Cleopartra were all tiny babies looking up into their Mother's eyes. The mother is the true creator and nurturer and without her none of us could be here.
Word to the Mother!
Take care and I love you all,
danny