fatherhood down under, 22 months

Dear Friends and Family,
G'Day from Down Under. I have been planning to write my next fatherhood letter since last December and planning to write a letter about our trip here in Australia since the first day of our trip (we have two days left before heading home) so I figured I had better knock off both letters in one go or risk procrastinating even longer. I suppose the length of time it has taken me to getting around to writing these letters gives you some clue as to how fatherhood and vacation are treating me, they are both keeping me busy. Or more correctly fatherhood is keeping me busy. For despite the fact we are on vacation, spending most of our 6 weeks here camped out on beautiful wild beaches with nothing much do other than play in the ocean, explore the beaches, collect shells, read, eat, sleep, bird watch, etc, I find that I have very little time to do much since Noah is actually the one doing all the things I just mentioned and it is allAnke and I can do to tag along and supervise, making sure he doesn't get swept away by a wave, sliced by the oy sters in the tide pools, eaten by a dingo, lost in the jungle, ran over in the skate park, fall off a cliff, tangled in a fishing line, you get the point.

Noah is extremely curious about everything and fearless due to the fact that he has no idea how dangerous things are. His innocence is refreshing but tiring. For even though we have taken a vacation from our lives back home and haven't had to "work" a day in the past month and a half, there is no vacation from our real job these days, that of being a parent.

Traveling with Noah who is 22 months old has been an adventure. I spent years traveling without ANY responsibilities so it is a very different experience for me. In the old days I actually had time to surf 7 hours a day, create art, go for long walks on the beach, not only read books but write books. NowAnke and I each get about an hour and half of surfing in in a day and occasionally we sneak in a short walk or an hour of reading. Every once in a while I would notice that Anke and I were both sitting down at the same time because Noah was engaged in some activity which didn't require close supervision and I would callAnke's attention to it "hey look, a 'relaxing moment', take a breath and enjoy it!" I'd say.

Of course that is just how it is as parents, I am not complaining about it, just making an observation. Those who are parents can relate and those who are not, be warned: enjoy your 'relaxing moments' while they are plentiful.

The flip side to this is that while we have lacked the relaxing aspects many associate with vacation we have had a ton of quality time as a family and especially as parents watching our little boy discover the world. I wouldn't trade the look on Noah's face when he saw a kangaroo, or the times he asked in sign language for 'more' when he saw the dolphins surfing, or when he laughed so loud at the skater who ate shit at the skate park that everyone else watching laughed too, I wouldn't trade any of these moments and the thousands more we have had, for any amount of 'relaxing moments'. For all the hard work and sacrifice that fatherhood requires, it is the most rewarding and amazing thing anyone could ever do.

Many people have been impressed and inspired by the fact that we are traveling with a 22 month old baby. Of course we aren't the only people to ever travel with kids but I suppose for many people who met us we were a reminder to them that there is "life after birth".

How to summarize Noah's development over the last 8 months? That is a third of his short life. And what a life it has been. For him I suppose it has been the time of "firsts". There are the standard firsts like the first step (he was 14 months old), first tooth, or his first words (mama and ball). And then there are the million other firsts; first scraped knee, first trip to the emergency room(after eating a wild mushroom), first ice cream, first chore around the house (throwing his dirty diaper into the diaper bin), the first time he laughed at his own fart, first time he surfed, etc. He has been later than the average child when it comes to many firsts like crawling, walking, and talking. He still doesn't talk but is playing with his voice and he understands everything we say in both English and German. The poor guy must be so frustrated about not being understood. His vocabulary has increased to about 6 words:heis (hot), deses (this), papa, nana (banana), and uh,oh!

It is very interesting to watch him learn. He is so observant that many times he does something and you wonder how he knows how to do it. The first time he picked up a baseball bat, for example, he knew how to hold it and was able to hit a ball thrown to him. He did this without ever being shown but he had learned it by watching us play wiffle ball when he was a little baby. I don't know who he ever saw playing basket ball but the first time he got his hands on one he gave it to us and pointed to the hoop. When he tried to shoot it he had the perfect form all the way to the point of snapping his wrist down at the end of the shot. In Australia we stayed with a friend who played the didgeridoo. Noah was so impressed that every stick he could find after wards he would put to his mouth and makedidge noises. I found a cardboard tube which we gave to him as his own didge and it only took me one time showing him to vibrate his lips instead of humming for him to learn how to do it more correctly. It is just amazing how fast kids can learn things and how observant they are.

One of the main ways kids learn is through imitation. Noah is the king of this, generally copying everything he sees. If I walk all goofy, Noah will walk the same way. After seeing us surf he began running around the beach paddling with his arms and when he saw me duck dive he would duck himself down, copying the motion. After watching the guys at the skate park he gets on a skate board and tries to do tricks. We stayed with a four year old named Jasper on our vacation. Jasper was in a spider man phase and the day we got to his house he would run up to the kitchen sink and jump like spider man grabbing on to the sink with his feet on the cupboard below. Of course it only took Noah a few second before he was running and throwing himself against the cabinets and hanging from the sink. For the rest of the trip after that Noah would hang like spider man from anything he could find. The first time Noah saw a kangaroo on our trip he started to hop around. One day he picked up a leash of a dog (with the dog attached), slipped his handth rough the loop, and started walking the dog. The owner of the dog assumed he had a dog of his own because he knew how to hold the leash but actually he had just learned by watching. The tendency to imitate can be amusing. One day while Noah was eating yogurt he saw me putting lotion on my face. He immediately took a handful of yogurt and began rubbing it all over his face.

Once you see what sponges little kids are and how much they copy what they see others doing it makes you think about what you do and how you act in front of them. Imagine parents who fight in front of their kids, or smoke, or whatever, those kids will naturally want to act like them. And anyone who thinks violent video games and television shows don't effect how kids (and eventually adults) act I recon is just dead wrong. Kids copy what they see and with the level of violence they see these days in games and entertainment, well it is a challenging issue facing all of us who are parents in this culture today. One of many.

It is interesting how you look at the world a little differently as a parent. All my life I thought, "well if I was a parent I would do things this way.." But now that it is a reality and not hypothetical it is a different story. Until you have a little kid of your own running around you can't comprehend how you much you will worry or imagine what you would do in a particular situation. Of course most of the tough situations we will have to deal with are in the future, but I am beginning to think more about how I will do things.
Discipline is one of those things that as a parent you must do (or not if you want a tyrant). It has been hard so far because Noah doesn't even talk. I am good with discipline when you can reason with a kid and explain to him how his actions will bring about consequences but with Noah that isn't so easy. When we first started to use the word "no" we came upon the fact that kids are programmed to test and push the limits of what they can get away with. I come from a strict school of discipline (that of my Mother's). The basic premise of this is that once a parent says something there is nothing the child can do to change their mind. No amount of crying, screaming, or temper tantrums can allow the child to get what they want. It seems like simple logic, as soon as you give in once they know they can do it again and you are just encouraging the behavior which forced you to give in. Simple in principle but when your kid is screaming and being persuasive it is possible to see why parents do give in.

But Anke and are a both on the same page and we will get through the tantrums to have a well behaved kid (we hope). The funniest failure so far in the area of discipline has been the use of the stern "NO!" when Noah does something wrong. Any time we tell Noah "NO" with a really deep angry voice he thinks it is the funniest thing and starts laughing hysterically. The madder we try to sound the funnier it is to him. Of course as soon as he laughs it is all we can do to keep from laughing as well.

Although Noah isn't talking yet he is very good at communicating what he wants with a variety of sign language (much of which he invented), gestures and noises. With his tugs on the pants, pointing, and pushing around he can even direct a total stranger into a variety of activities. Inevitably the stranger will come to us to ask what a certain sign means that he keeps doing over and over again and we always explain to them that he is doing the sign for "more".

He does have one question that he can ask verbally and that is "Mama?, Mama?" On the trip he asked this question constantly to which I would respond with one of three answers: "Mama is sleeping.", "Mama is surfing.", or "Mama is making kaka".

Two of the most precious things about hanging out with such a young person is that he gets excited by the littlest things that we older people often overlook and that he lacks the prejudices that are taught to us by society. An ant crawling along the ground can get Noah sooo excited. If he sees one he will point and yell and jump, barely able to control his excitement. In fact all animals get him excited, it doesn't matter if it is a pigeon or an eagle, a cockroach or a butterfly, they are all fantastic, exciting creatures in his mind. The other morning we were hanging out in our bus when a fly began buzzing around. Noah got all excited and was pointing to his hand saying he wanted the fly to come land on him. He was pointing and laughing and so full of excitement. The fly finally did land on his hand and he squealed with joy and then began signing for more. While he was entertained by the fly I considered really making his day and rubbing him with some raw meat and putting him out where he would be covered with flies. Of course I wouldn't have done it, no one wants their kids covered with flies, unless they are butterflies of course, or some other socially accepted insect.

Traveling in a foreign country is a good way for adults to regain some of that childhood amazement about the world. People in Australia could tell we were the tourists because we were the ones pulled over at the side of the road to watch the kangaroos. So many things were new and different to us and being in the travel mode we were paying more attention to everything so we did notice the little details often overlooked. It would be difficult to recount to you all the incredible things we saw.

We camped on countless spactacular white sand beaches with rocky headlands, sand dunes, river mouths, forests, crystal clear water, surfing dolphins, jumping whales, bouncing kangaroos, giant bats, and a TON of noisy birds of every shape, size, and color imaginable. We saw many quiet little beach towns, a few busy cites, met lots of super nice people and made some really good friends. The locals were very nice, which isn't always the case where surfers are concerned. In fact we talked about keeping track of some of the quotes we got from locals while surfing, such as "Oh, your new here? Well let me tell you how this spot works." or "You can have all the set waves." And unfortunatley the thing we heard the most of "You should have been here yesterday!"

If I had to pick a favorite moment from the trip to share I would say it would have to be surfing with the dolphins at Angourie. A famous surf spot surrounded by an incredible national park, Angourie was featured in my all time favorite surf movie; the 70's classic: Morning Of The Earth. We camped (illegally) in the park overlooking the spot and woke up in the morning to a surprise swell. Surfing midday, there were less than 10 of us out in the overhead waves that were peeling perfectly down the rocky shore. At one point a large set came and in the approaching swell were 4 dolphins coming right at us. I wanted to ride that wave with them but failed to catch the wave. Two more waves came, both with dolphins, both I missed.

The last wave of the set approached, this one was mine, but could I be so lucky that there were still more dolphins... Yes. they were there. I turned and caught what was one of the best waves of the day. Thinking about the wave and the dolphins, the fact that I was taking off right next to the rocks didn't enter my mind. At one point in my ride as I carved on the bowling face of the wave a dolphin jumped out of the wave in front of me. The two of us were in the flow of the wave and he continued to jump out of the wall in front of me as I surfed along the face. I noticed a huge smile on one guy who was paddling back out and watching the whole thing happen. Finally he did one last jump as I came flying out onto the shoulder where I did a big carve bringing me right in line with the three or four dolphins surfing just a foot below me. I continued my cutback, passing over them and watching them under me, all of us in the same flow, the same rhythm, all of us enjoying the energy of the ocean and the joy of riding a wave. Paddling back out I looked up on the grassy headland and saw an osprey perched on a branch next to his nest. Needless to say I was feeling alive.

The trip was awsome, of course we had challenges, and at times were frustrated that things didn't go our way, but no adventure can be perfect. If it was it wouldn't be an adventure. A few of the more difficult moments on the trip (the first two weeks of non-stop rain, or a broken down bus with-in 2 hours of owning it) gave me some better understanding of the attractiveness of going on a tour or to a resort where everything is done for you, where, if something goes wrong someone will fix the problem for you. But luckily we preffer adventure. So we weathered the storms, met the challenges, and had an incredible trip as a family. We are now looking forward to our future adventures when Noah will be older and able to get even more out of the experience of traveling.