robotnik2004 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
robotnik2004) wrote2006-05-10 02:22 pm
robotnik2004) wrote2006-05-10 02:22 pm
Entry tags:
32 Short Posts About Yuki
Early in the morning, full belly, clean bum
I got my cup of Cheerios in case I want some
Jacket, hat, diaper bag, carried out the door
And I know where we’re going cause we’ve been there before
First, thank you all so much for your emails and phone calls and congratulatory comments. The little one is doing great, and her mom is strong and brave and amazing, if a little tired. We still couldn't be more thrilled, and I can't wait to show Yuki off to all of you.
Blah Blah Blah Parenthood Parenthood Me Me Me
The closest analogy I can think of for what the last two weeks has felt like is falling in love. Falling deeply completely in love, 0 to 60 in five seconds. The same euphoria, the same fuzziness of head, the same inability to concentrate on anything except the object of my affections. Food tastes different. The weather's been gorgeous almost every day since she arrived, but I haven't noticed--or to the extent that I have, I've interpreted it as pathetic fallacy, merely the universe paying her tribute. I find myself flashing back to the last time I fell this hard for a girl.
I'll bet you're all thrilled I posted that. Because that's what people who don't have kids are looking for when they log on to the internet: "Boy, I'm dying to know what it's like to be a parent! Give me a treacly, narcissistic, self-satisfied post about breeding that glorifies the author and ever so subtly suggests my own life choices are lacking!" While people who already have kids are just on the edge of their seats to hear all the sage wisdom I've amassed in fourteen freaking days. I don't want to be That Dad, honest. I can't help it, though. Not yet. The "all baby all the time" phase will pass, I'm sure, but for now it remains in full effect.
Then we stop off at the corner and she pulls up next to me
A sporty crimson red MacLaren Techno XT
Me, I’m sitting pretty in my Bugaboo Frog
Swivel wheel suspension so I sleep like a log
The Space Committee is Not as Cool as it Sounds
Everybody told me my priorities would change once we had a critter. I figured they'd change gradually, the way I gradually weaned myself off 16-hour Playstation jags over the years, or the way my desire to go to Burning Man slowly cooled. But it's more like somebody's taken a sledgehammer to my priorities. A few activities (ie, things having to do with her) have taken on profound significance, while just about everything else seems utterly banal. Work is in a funny Schroedinger's Cat-state on that spectrum, because on the one hand it represents providing for her, which all my DNA and social conditioning is screaming for me to do. On the other, the connection between caring for the baby and grading these last few papers seems awfully abstract. Typing up the minutes of the departmental space committee meeting does not, somehow, provide the same endorphin rush as staring into her eyes or rubbing her tummy. I've gone in to the office a couple of times this week and last, and each time it seems like I've been gone for a hundred years. "Who are all you people?" I want to ask. "And why are we talking about anything besides my daughter?"
The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei
Jon Kabat-Zinn on parenting and mindfulness:
This was how I saw it: You could look at each baby as a little Buddha or Zen master, your own private mindfulness teacher, parachuted into your life, whose presence and actions were guaranteed to push every button and challenge every belief and limit you had, giving you continual opportunities to see where you were attached to something and to let go of it. For each child, it would be at least an eighteen-year retreat, with virtually no time off for good behavior. The retreat schedule would be relentless and demand continual acts of selflessness and loving kindness. ... Babies invite and require attending to constantly. Their needs must be met on their schedule, not yours, and every day, not just when you feel like it. Most importantly, babies and children require your full presence as a being in order to thrive and grow. They need to be held, the more the better, walked with, sung to, rocked, played with, comforted, sometimes nurtured late at night or early in the morning when you are feeling depleted, exhausted, and only want to sleep, or when you have pressing obligations and responsibilities elsewhere. The deep and constantly changing needs of children are all perfect opportunities for parents to be fully present rather than to operate in the automatic pilot mode, to relate consciously rather than mechanically, to sense the being in each child and let his or her vibrancy, vitality, and purity call forth our own. I felt that parenting was nothing short of a perfect opportunity to deepen mindfulness, if I could let the children and the family become my teachers, and remember to recognize and listen carefully to the lessons in living which would be coming fast and furiously.
I need a Nom du Internet for Yuki, a la the Starchild, the Little General, the Squirrely. I'm tempted to call her "the Buddha," based on the idea above and a certain physical resemblance, but I'm also wary. She's been awfully serene so far, but that kind of presumption might invite retribution. They tell me babies get much fussier around six weeks of age. As a teacher of mindfulness and wisdom she may prove to be less like the Buddha than Pai Mei. Time will tell.
My Bugaboo is heavy, so we’re taking off slow
But when we get her going, she’s got get up and go
The MacLaren’s got a lead, but I can see the slicks spin
My wheels are big and knobby, I can feel them digging in
The Street of Little Girls
There's a phrase I've had stuck in my head for years: "the Street of Little Girls." I got it from The Invisibles. I thought it was from Borges but apparently it's the Situationist Ivan Chtcheglov. (GILT-lovers: Check out Chtcheglov's "Forumulary for a New Urbanism": the Bizarre Quarter, the Sinister Quarter, the Astrolaire... Tell me that's not a game setting or at least a lexicon entry waiting to happen.) Anyway, apparently I live there. The return of warm weather has revealed that our street is hopping with babies and toddlers, and the vast majority of them are little girls. (Something in the water? Runoff from the big Labatt's brewery across the river?)
We've discovered the key to the neighborhood, too. L & I have met more of our neighbours in the past two weeks than in almost a year of living here. Just one walk down the street with the Buddha in arms or sling or stroller transformed us irrevocably from "those Americans with the crappy lawn" to "Yuki's parents." We're learning everybody's names, getting presents left on our doorstep, going to meetings to save the local elementary school. L is next door at some kind of baby meet-and-greet right now.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Constant Validation
I've been looking for good writing on Daddyhood. It's my academic training. I can't possibly have a genuine experience without reading eleven books about it. Not advice books--we're up to our ears in those--but good reflective writing on what fatherhood feels like and what it means. Hopefully not too sappy (so this post, for instance, would not apply). There are, as you might expect, a flotilla of Daddy blogs, and a mighty armada of Mommy blogs. I'm amused that the Globe and Mail has a regular column called "Mommy Blogger," like that's somehow a rare bird. "A mother who uses the interweb? How deliciously unique!" Why not just call it "Lady With An Opinion"? (The column itself is fine.)
Most of the Dadblogs I've found so far are a little on the whiny side: society doesn't value fathers enough, or society doesn't value mothers enough, or society values fathers but in the wrong way, and so on. It's an issue, I guess, but it's not one I'm too agitated about. Did you know there were Mommy Wars going on? ("It is a dark time for the Rebellion...") I had no idea, but the Mommy blogs, the best-seller lists, and the Living / Outlook / Vista / View sections of the weekend papers are here to set me straight. OK, the personal is political, but don't you ever wish it wasn't? Criminy--now I'm whining. Razza frazza kids these days with their big pants and their small bikes and what smells like mustard?
Two Daddy-related websites I do like are the personal blog of McSweeney's crony Neal Pollack and the periodic Squirrelly updates on Matt Baldwin's Defective Yeti. If anyone knows of any more, or better yet, any good books on the subject, let me know. Pollack does have a book coming out soon called Alternadad (here's an excerpt), a calculated title that cries out, as it was clearly engineered to do, to all my hangups and anxieties about parenthood and middle-age, even as I curse myself for being so damn predictable. (Insert link to that annoying yet not inaccurate "Grups" article here.) I comfort myself, at least, that dropping twenty bucks on Pollack's book is a less reprehensible way of finessing such anxieties than, say, mounting a mini-van on a monster truck chassis with a 450 horsepower engine and telling myself it's a fun but practical family SUV.
Downtown, stroller town
Gonna shut your stroller down...
I got my cup of Cheerios in case I want some
Jacket, hat, diaper bag, carried out the door
And I know where we’re going cause we’ve been there before
First, thank you all so much for your emails and phone calls and congratulatory comments. The little one is doing great, and her mom is strong and brave and amazing, if a little tired. We still couldn't be more thrilled, and I can't wait to show Yuki off to all of you.
Blah Blah Blah Parenthood Parenthood Me Me Me
The closest analogy I can think of for what the last two weeks has felt like is falling in love. Falling deeply completely in love, 0 to 60 in five seconds. The same euphoria, the same fuzziness of head, the same inability to concentrate on anything except the object of my affections. Food tastes different. The weather's been gorgeous almost every day since she arrived, but I haven't noticed--or to the extent that I have, I've interpreted it as pathetic fallacy, merely the universe paying her tribute. I find myself flashing back to the last time I fell this hard for a girl.
I'll bet you're all thrilled I posted that. Because that's what people who don't have kids are looking for when they log on to the internet: "Boy, I'm dying to know what it's like to be a parent! Give me a treacly, narcissistic, self-satisfied post about breeding that glorifies the author and ever so subtly suggests my own life choices are lacking!" While people who already have kids are just on the edge of their seats to hear all the sage wisdom I've amassed in fourteen freaking days. I don't want to be That Dad, honest. I can't help it, though. Not yet. The "all baby all the time" phase will pass, I'm sure, but for now it remains in full effect.
Then we stop off at the corner and she pulls up next to me
A sporty crimson red MacLaren Techno XT
Me, I’m sitting pretty in my Bugaboo Frog
Swivel wheel suspension so I sleep like a log
The Space Committee is Not as Cool as it Sounds
Everybody told me my priorities would change once we had a critter. I figured they'd change gradually, the way I gradually weaned myself off 16-hour Playstation jags over the years, or the way my desire to go to Burning Man slowly cooled. But it's more like somebody's taken a sledgehammer to my priorities. A few activities (ie, things having to do with her) have taken on profound significance, while just about everything else seems utterly banal. Work is in a funny Schroedinger's Cat-state on that spectrum, because on the one hand it represents providing for her, which all my DNA and social conditioning is screaming for me to do. On the other, the connection between caring for the baby and grading these last few papers seems awfully abstract. Typing up the minutes of the departmental space committee meeting does not, somehow, provide the same endorphin rush as staring into her eyes or rubbing her tummy. I've gone in to the office a couple of times this week and last, and each time it seems like I've been gone for a hundred years. "Who are all you people?" I want to ask. "And why are we talking about anything besides my daughter?"
The Cruel Tutelage of Pai Mei
Jon Kabat-Zinn on parenting and mindfulness:
This was how I saw it: You could look at each baby as a little Buddha or Zen master, your own private mindfulness teacher, parachuted into your life, whose presence and actions were guaranteed to push every button and challenge every belief and limit you had, giving you continual opportunities to see where you were attached to something and to let go of it. For each child, it would be at least an eighteen-year retreat, with virtually no time off for good behavior. The retreat schedule would be relentless and demand continual acts of selflessness and loving kindness. ... Babies invite and require attending to constantly. Their needs must be met on their schedule, not yours, and every day, not just when you feel like it. Most importantly, babies and children require your full presence as a being in order to thrive and grow. They need to be held, the more the better, walked with, sung to, rocked, played with, comforted, sometimes nurtured late at night or early in the morning when you are feeling depleted, exhausted, and only want to sleep, or when you have pressing obligations and responsibilities elsewhere. The deep and constantly changing needs of children are all perfect opportunities for parents to be fully present rather than to operate in the automatic pilot mode, to relate consciously rather than mechanically, to sense the being in each child and let his or her vibrancy, vitality, and purity call forth our own. I felt that parenting was nothing short of a perfect opportunity to deepen mindfulness, if I could let the children and the family become my teachers, and remember to recognize and listen carefully to the lessons in living which would be coming fast and furiously.
I need a Nom du Internet for Yuki, a la the Starchild, the Little General, the Squirrely. I'm tempted to call her "the Buddha," based on the idea above and a certain physical resemblance, but I'm also wary. She's been awfully serene so far, but that kind of presumption might invite retribution. They tell me babies get much fussier around six weeks of age. As a teacher of mindfulness and wisdom she may prove to be less like the Buddha than Pai Mei. Time will tell.
My Bugaboo is heavy, so we’re taking off slow
But when we get her going, she’s got get up and go
The MacLaren’s got a lead, but I can see the slicks spin
My wheels are big and knobby, I can feel them digging in
The Street of Little Girls
There's a phrase I've had stuck in my head for years: "the Street of Little Girls." I got it from The Invisibles. I thought it was from Borges but apparently it's the Situationist Ivan Chtcheglov. (GILT-lovers: Check out Chtcheglov's "Forumulary for a New Urbanism": the Bizarre Quarter, the Sinister Quarter, the Astrolaire... Tell me that's not a game setting or at least a lexicon entry waiting to happen.) Anyway, apparently I live there. The return of warm weather has revealed that our street is hopping with babies and toddlers, and the vast majority of them are little girls. (Something in the water? Runoff from the big Labatt's brewery across the river?)
We've discovered the key to the neighborhood, too. L & I have met more of our neighbours in the past two weeks than in almost a year of living here. Just one walk down the street with the Buddha in arms or sling or stroller transformed us irrevocably from "those Americans with the crappy lawn" to "Yuki's parents." We're learning everybody's names, getting presents left on our doorstep, going to meetings to save the local elementary school. L is next door at some kind of baby meet-and-greet right now.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Constant Validation
I've been looking for good writing on Daddyhood. It's my academic training. I can't possibly have a genuine experience without reading eleven books about it. Not advice books--we're up to our ears in those--but good reflective writing on what fatherhood feels like and what it means. Hopefully not too sappy (so this post, for instance, would not apply). There are, as you might expect, a flotilla of Daddy blogs, and a mighty armada of Mommy blogs. I'm amused that the Globe and Mail has a regular column called "Mommy Blogger," like that's somehow a rare bird. "A mother who uses the interweb? How deliciously unique!" Why not just call it "Lady With An Opinion"? (The column itself is fine.)
Most of the Dadblogs I've found so far are a little on the whiny side: society doesn't value fathers enough, or society doesn't value mothers enough, or society values fathers but in the wrong way, and so on. It's an issue, I guess, but it's not one I'm too agitated about. Did you know there were Mommy Wars going on? ("It is a dark time for the Rebellion...") I had no idea, but the Mommy blogs, the best-seller lists, and the Living / Outlook / Vista / View sections of the weekend papers are here to set me straight. OK, the personal is political, but don't you ever wish it wasn't? Criminy--now I'm whining. Razza frazza kids these days with their big pants and their small bikes and what smells like mustard?
Two Daddy-related websites I do like are the personal blog of McSweeney's crony Neal Pollack and the periodic Squirrelly updates on Matt Baldwin's Defective Yeti. If anyone knows of any more, or better yet, any good books on the subject, let me know. Pollack does have a book coming out soon called Alternadad (here's an excerpt), a calculated title that cries out, as it was clearly engineered to do, to all my hangups and anxieties about parenthood and middle-age, even as I curse myself for being so damn predictable. (Insert link to that annoying yet not inaccurate "Grups" article here.) I comfort myself, at least, that dropping twenty bucks on Pollack's book is a less reprehensible way of finessing such anxieties than, say, mounting a mini-van on a monster truck chassis with a 450 horsepower engine and telling myself it's a fun but practical family SUV.
Downtown, stroller town
Gonna shut your stroller down...
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Anyway, she is adorable. She looks so much like
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It was really nice to read about how you and Lisa met; I didn't know the story. =)
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I haven't even lived my own life yet, thanks to mental illness and all the other crap I've done (more accurately, haven't done) through my 20s. I've got 10 years to reclaim!
And by the way...
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Second, there is a growing body of work on fatherhood in the emergent field of masculinity studies (yes, everything is about gender for me -- deal with it).
Frinstance:
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/marsig/book_info_situated_description.html
http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/marsig/book_info_smb.htm
Marsiglio, William and Pleck, Joseph H. (2005). Fatherhood and masculinities. In Michael Kimmel, J. Hearn, and R. W. Connell (Eds.), The handbook of studies on men and masculinities. (pp. 249-269). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
(Kimmel and Connell are the Big Cheeses of masculinity studies -- Connell's works Masculinities and The Men and the Boys are also worth reading)
http://www.xyonline.net/ -- see Michael Flood's work and http://www.xyonline.net/articles.shtml#father
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Also: you are falling in love, so it's probably no coincidence you feel that way.
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Funny, that excerpt is what scared me most of all. It certainly did not sound romanticized!
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Your quote about the zenfulness of babies makes me think that the mom was probably doing all the work, though.
Well, no, because... I mean... yes, but... well... hamana hamana...
Yeah, that's probably a fair cop against Mr. Mindfulness. And for our house, I'm doing everything I can, but there's no doubt who's done more of the heavy lifting so far. Look who has time to write big gushy LJ entries about parenthood, too.
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I realize I really like you!
kyle
P.S. I still owe you and Papersource some form of "baby gift". In my family, the custom is to wait until after the little one is actually born. That's why you got nuthin' from me at the baby shower. I'm not just a cheap ass bastard. :-)
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Is that so you know whether to get a Barbie for the little girl or a truck for the little boy? ;)
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2. Yeah, I'm actually not so horrible once you get to know me! :) No, I know what you're saying, really. Babies are unbelievable icebreakers and so are gushy posts like this.
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We'll bring provisions!
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Sunday, for lunch? We'll bring that too!
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He kept telling me over and over, "You can't understand," which, in a way, I did. I was there when he met his future wife (in fact, I stepped out so they could bond, after a few none-too-subtle eye signals from him), I was at his wedding, I was the first person he called when he found out she was pregnant...and yet there was suddenly this huge abyss of understanding between his priorities and mine.
His son is gorgeous; his life is absolutely different, and even when he wants nothing more than beer and a hockey game and to pretend that he's single and childless for a night, that's not really what he wants. I'm soo happy for him; I'm so happy for the three of you. Congratulations!
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The 1999 post was part of a series I made just before leaving Boston reminiscing about my 10 years there. I'd wondered if you'd read them, since you do make cameos in the first couple, and I hoped you didn't mind being mentioned in that way.
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But having taken the full exposure, all I can say is:
AAAAAAWW CUTE!!!
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I don't know if he's written them down anywhere, but Garrison Keilor's done some talking about parenthood, particularly father-of-daughter-hood. Then there's Khalil Gibran....
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Thanks, too for the pointer to Old is the New New at your LJ. I've been wanting to write something about Net Neutrality and the relevant lessons from a century ago, but, well, see above re: parenting.
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Squirrelly Squirrelly Squirrelly