Today Boone is eight weeks and three days old. Eight weeks isn't a terribly long time, depending on how you're spending it. Eight weeks can slip by without one barely noticing, or eight weeks (in jail) can seem like an entire life time. I used to work at a summer camp each summer for like five years. Some years I was there three weeks, some years I was there close to seven. I have so many memories packed into those summers that it sometimes seems like years worth of adolescence. When it comes to being a father, eight weeks seems very, very, short. It's honestly hard to even remember how things were before Boone was born. I mean, I can remember it in an intellectual sense, of course, but I can't remember what it
felt like. I think, "Wow, eight weeks ago I woke up in the morning and didn't feel responsible for a little life? I had massive amounts of free time that I didn't realize I had? I'd never felt these feelings that I feel when I hold my son and stare at his wild little facial expressions?"
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| Boone meets his PawPaw Walker |
At the ripe old age of eight weeks, Boone is much bigger than he was when born (of course). It's hard to notice since I see him every day, but suddenly we'll realize some outfit that used to be too big for him no longer fits, or that he doesn't need the extra infant support cocoon thing in his car seat or Super Vibrating Chair 3000. Mag was holding him this morning (as he stared her in the eyes and smiled, something he refuses to do at me) and we were examining his arms and face and saying, "Look how fat he is!" "Look at all these rolls of fat on his arm!" with amounts of glee that we only reserve for the infantile obese. He is awake a lot, and loves to make tons of weird faces as he looks around at us (or just over my shoulder, as he has this game he likes to play called, "Never Ever Look At My Father Under Any Circumstances" which includes great fun such as turning his head, closing his eyes, and actually putting his hands over his face to avoid me) and constantly make silly noises. By constantly, I mean, "Every second that he's awake." He can't even really goo or gaa yet, but he makes little cooing noises, rattles his breath around in every which way possible, and likes to sigh a lot as well. His favorite noise, however, is grunting. He has 33 different grunts (one for every occasion!). There's his, "I'm hungry" grunt, his, "I'm staring at nothing" grunt, his, "I'm going to Houdini myself out of this swaddling" grunt, his, "Let's go out for chicken and waffles" grunt, and a variety of other grunts that I have not yet learned to translate.
I realized the other day that in the eight weeks since Boone was born we've only been out to a restaurant twice, and both times it was for a quick dinner at a Mexican restaurant (a food I don't even like very much) while Boone slept on an upside down high chair (side note: This is a popular way to hold baby seats. Flip over a high chair and put the car seat on the legs and set it next to the table. Not only is this disgusting [the bottom of the high chair that's been on the floor of the restaurant for years is not a foot away from your food] it is highly dangerous as the top of high chairs are uneven and therefore, once upside down, prone to flip over at the slightest jostling. Nevertheless, we do it). I don't know how often we ate out before, maybe twice a week, but the number isn't the point - the point is that WE NEVER THOUGHT TO COUNT. Why would we, when we could eat out any time we wanted to? In the past eight weeks we've done practically nothing without him. Margaret went to see a movie once while I watched him, and I went to the shooting range once while she watched him (well she watches him all the time, but normally I'm busy at work, not leisure). This is all common sense - babies are completely dependent on others so therefore they're going to take a lot of time, no real shocker there. The revelation is that
I don't care. I haven't missed going out to eat, or going to the movies, or going to do anything alone. Hanging out at the house and walking around holding a screaming baby is incredibly fulfilling to me.
Boone can be
quite the screaming baby. He rarely ever cries, just occasionally whimpers, but when it comes time to cry he screams with the intensity of a dozen banshees. He'll be dead asleep and then suddenly just open up with a full-throated scream and repeat ad nauseum. He usually only cries every few hours when he's ready to eat OR under another very particular set of circumstances: every single time Margaret walks out the door. It happens with far too much regularity to be a coincidence, he has some sort of sixth sense (I tend to think that what we call a "sixth sense" is our subconscious use of the untapped potential of our other five senses. The reason you have a, "premonition" that someone is about to come into the room is that your brain heard faint footsteps and jumped to that conclusion without you ever processing the sound of the footsteps through your conscious mind) that knows when she leaves the house. He'll be fast asleep and she'll step out to go to the grocery store. No sooner has she left the drive way than he wakes up and starts crying inconsolably varying pitches and tones to find new ways in which to inform me how inadequate I am in comforting him. I've learned a variety of tricks to distract him, however. He usually calms down if I lay down on my back and lay him on my chest.
This is my favorite position for he and I. I'll lay on the couch and prop up my feet. He'll lay face down on top of me so we're chest to chest. He'll pop up his little turtle head and gawk at me (as it wobbles around on his neck, he's still getting used to it) and make a dozen different noises. He'll kick his legs and windmill his arms (and try to swim). Eventually he'll fall asleep, and grow heavier and heavier as his body goes completely limp. A few times I've fallen asleep as well and it's a great way to wake up - the first thing I see is my son sleeping on my chest and the first thing I think is, "Is this real?" He's asleep in his bed in his room right now, all swaddled up like a caterpillar with a fat baby head wrapped tightly in a cocoon. I went in there and looked at him and I get this weird feeling of overwhelming excitement. It's like my mind is being blown as I stand there and I have to jump up and down because I can't quite contain it. I look at him and I can imagine how he'll look when he's three, and I can see myself talking to him when he's 12 and telling him, "I remember when you were just a tiny baby and you'd sleep in your bed in our old house and I would stand in your room and look at you." I realize that once, many moons ago, I was that little baby and my parents and my sister were looking at me, that Margaret was that baby and her parents and siblings were looking at her. I see his past and future all contained in this marvelously innocent chubby sleeping face and, as if that weren't enough to melt my mind, I suddenly remember that this thing grew in Margaret's belly! That he is part me and part her and was actually
created from body parts and our own cells that divided and grew and divided and grew. I know birth is the most commonplace thing on earth, since it's happened to every single person ever, but it's still ridiculous when you actually stop and think about it.
I feel that I was going through some sort of quarter-life crisis over the course of this pregnancy. I'm really having to force myself from adolescence into adulthood
. I know a lot of dumb little kids have babies and their lives don't change all that much, but having a kid really reoriented me. I've been hesitant to take a lot of large steps toward adulthood in my life because I've always been afraid I was going to lose some vital part of my personality, or how I define myself, or who I really was. I've moved on past that fear in recent years and realized that we are who we are - I'm not going to undergo some huge personality change and be a completely different person at age 40 than I was at age 20. I'm sure I'll have different views, and I'm sure (I hope!) that I'll have matured in many ways, but Andrew will still be Andrew. Being a father makes me
want to grow up. In the past my steps toward maturity have been strained - I would realize, "Okay, it's really time to take this step forward" and then force myself to do so even though every part of me was still singing, "I want to rock and roll all night, and party every day!" on a constant loop in my head. I know when I'm ready for something though, and I'm ready for this. I find myself thinking about investments and mortgages and those sorts of things and being genuinely interested and excited about them. I've sadly let a lot of life happen to me instead of, as Thoreau said, living, "deliberately." However, I know when something snaps into place inside of me and a chapter officially ends and a new one officially begins. Much of the maturing in my life has happened in sudden clear moments, not in a slow ripening process - I didn't slowly fall in love with Mag, I realized in a split second (and I still know exactly where I was and when it was) that I was madly in love with her and then purposed that I would woo her and date her (and then not date her and then date her and then not date her and then marry her and then etc etc). Boone's birth has had something of that effect on me. Suddenly I'm ready to step into a new age, and it isn't with reservation our out of duty, but because I genuinely want to do so. Fatherhood, here I come.
