Walking and talking and potty...ing - oh my!

Turtle took to walking as soon as we landed from Paris.  He was experimenting with walking while we were there, but he truly got up on his own and began to trot around the playground as soon as we got back. 

Now my son has the fattest, square feet you've ever encountered.  He's a 6 Extra Wide.  How he balances on those squat things is a mystery.  But it sure is fun to watch him take these little steps.  What I was unaware of was the fact that once upright, crawling is not longer an option.  He just won't do it.  In fact, sitting is not really an option, either.  Give him something to drink, he stands, wobbly, drinking it.  No sitting for this little man.

Talking:  We've gone from the animal noises (dinosaur is the favored sound here) to words like "baby" and "nosenosenose" at which point my son puts his finger into his nose... a new discovery.  Bellybutton is one of the first words he learned and it's currently his favorite.  My niece is visiting and Turtle walked up to her as she slept and lifted her shirt to reveal her belly button... just checking to see if she had one.  "Bebon," he'd say.  Now he checks to make sure it's still there.  He checks his and he checks hers over and over.  He's always been a talker and most of the sounds coming out are just sounds, but if we can identify what he's referring to and give him the word for it, he learns it pretty quickly.  (Read Po Bronson's Nurtureshock for more on how and why this happens.)

And the potty.   We bought Turtle a potty.  The first time we sat him down on it, he used it.  He got a sticker to put up on the wall.   Now I'm not as good as his mother at noticing signs, for example, he uses the sign for "bath" when he needs to be changed.  The wife noticed that...  But he kept pointing to the bathroom the other day and I didn't know why.  About five minutes later it hit me.  Poop.  He started signing "bath" and I realized he knew what the potty was for and he wanted to use it.  I just had to see the sign and put him there.  Now I know.

Big milestones happening in a very short time. 

Touching the Source.

My father and his cousin in Schagen, Netherlands.

My grandfather... looking very cool.

I am an American.  I was born here and it is truly the only home I now.  I am a fan of countries like the Netherlands or France and one day would like to retire there.  But going to Amsterdam on this recent trip was like connecting to a source of something I never knew existed.

Last year I invited my parents to come to Europe with us.  We had long wanted take a trip to Holland with my father who had not been back since he was 13.  Fifty years later we walked the streets of Amsterdam with our child bouncing across the cobblestone streets in his stroller and my father happily snapping photos of canal houses along the Amstel.

A few months ago my father received an email from the wife of his first cousin.  A cousin he had never met, who was ten years older than he.  His mother, my father's aunt, passed when he was only nine months, almost a decade before my father was born.

So we made a short trip an hour out of Amsterdam and met a part of the family we'd never known existed.  We heard stories about my grandfather I'd never heard.  I saw photos of my great grandfather, Lucas van Dijk, saw pictures of my grandpa Gerrit as a young man.  I heard my father speak Dutch and watched as he and his cousin carried on conversations in English and Dutch respectively - each understanding the other despite the language barrier.

I sat, my son in my lap, while we reconnected with a history, plugged into a country, that my father had left fifty years before and that I had known only a few days.  And yet it was as familiar as going home.

My grandfather, Gerrit (right), and his brother

Later that evening, I sat at the window of our little apartment off the Amstel River, on the Achtergracht, reading and writing in my ever present Moleskine and realized I could just as easily make my home here in the land of bicycles, free health care and VAT taxes as I could in the land of cars and subways, crippling insurance premiums and a regressive tax system.  I could live the same life in a place known for cheese and cannibus as simply as I could in a place known for the raucous public square and our gritty determination.

In the end I realized I had touched the source.  Perhaps it's my Dutch blood that is the fount of my socialist side.  But the Dutch are also the original capitalists.  They just believe there are certain things that are not worth profiting from... like man's misery or pain.

Whatever.  In the end, I found myself feeling at home, comfortable.

Not that I'm renouncing my citizenship or anything...  I'm just saying, home is where you are.  And for me I'd like to live the best of my American sense of duty and grit and combine it with the social consciousness of my father's ancestral home.

My great grandfather, Lucas van Dijk.  The G R on his hat stands for Gemeente-Reinigng which means he cleans for the community.  According to the family, in the Netherlands, this is an honorable profession.  

Letting Go.

Sixteen years ago I got my wife a graduation present.  I was working nights at Gepeto's, a pizza place in Salt Lake City, and the owner's cat had kittens.  His daughters would bring them in all the time and I couldn't resist.  We drove up to the avenues and picked up the smallest of the cats, this runt with pure white fur, and named her Bianca.

At the time we thought it charming to name everything after Shakespeare characters... as theater nerds do.  It's a phase.  We're just fortunate we didn't have twins back then or we'd be paying for therapy for Rozencrantz and Guildenstern right now.

Our first stop with little Bianca (who fit her name perfectly) was the home of my in-laws.  We brought our tiny kitten in and introduced her to everyone.  We took her out back and thought it would be cute for her to meet Rambo, the Kearns' family cat. 

Rambo got low, right into Bianca's face and let out a deep, low growl. 

Bianca puffed up, arched, hissed and pee'd... in that order.  I remember her back leg moving and shaking as pee dripped down it. 

And suddenly, Moishe, the gigantic German Shepherd, came trotting up, stood over Bianca, her tiny body between his front legs, dropped his pointed head, and growled at Rambo, baring his teeth.  He didn't move until Rambo skulked off.  He then stepped back and sniffed Bianca, nudging her before laying down next to this shivering kitten.

It was our first moment with her.  From that point on we treated her like a dog.  We taught her to play fetch.  I chased her.  We fought.

Those of you who have met her now understand how our cat became skittish and had a penchant for swatting ankles.  She was extremely territorial.  She thought of herself as a dog.  She was brave until someone bigger came by and she'd run away,  My mother was deathly afraid of her for a while and my father in-law would carry a bag whenever he walked by her, just to protect his ankles from a random swat.

But to us, to Angie and I, she was an angel.  She was our baby.  She always knew the exact moment to jump up and curl on your lap.  She'd meow incessantly for water in her special bowl, even when the one near her food was full.  She would twirl between your legs when you came home.  She always appeared out of nowhere as Angie was coming down the hall from work.  She knew our sounds, our footsteps. 

While I was gone working out of town for a long stretch, Bianca was Angie's best friend.  She took my place in our bed.

I had to work hard to reclaim my place when I got back. 

The picture I always had with me was one I took late one night, a typical night when Angie would fall asleep on the couch and Bianca would inevitably jump up and nestle in, head and front paws resting on A's hip, body tucked in the crook of her knees.  I can't show that photo because my wife would kill me... and it's just mine.  My own personal perfection.  My ideal life until we had Turtle.

When Turtle was born, we were nervous about how Bianca would handle it.    From the beginning she was fine.

What we realized was this child, this person, had the smell of both Angie and I on him and was so new and so small, the cat would quickly acclimate and the two would simply grow together. 

A few months ago, Bianca fell over.  She couldn't walk, dragging her kicking hind leg as if her back had been broken, but her legs were still trying to gain purchase.  It was a frightening night as she meowed in confusion and we stayed up with her all night.  In the morning we took her in.  A new vet this time, not the huckster who drained our Machu Picchu account with surgeries and teeth cleanings every couple months.  We took her to Astoria Veterinary Group... Those of you in Astoria know how great they are.   The determination was that she had probably had a stroke and for an old cat, there is very little one can do.  Every morning I would put a long needle under her skin for a drip and Angie would hold her as I gave her shots. We nursed her back as best we could.  And then the seizures started.  She couldn't jump off the couch or bed with out doing backflips and landing with a thud.  She'd lift her head and it would drop back down to the floor.  We had a sense the end was close.

The other night we knew.  She was telling us it was time. 

Today, I watched as Turtle sat next to her and ran his fingers through her fur.  Bianca didn't move.  She just let him pet her to his heart's content.  She didn't swat, she didn't growl.  She watched him, closely as his tiny hands gently pet her and then would pat her body, giggling and "talking" to her the entire time.

A few hours later we took her in and let her go. 

It may be the hardest thing I've ever had to do. 

Sixteen years. 

People have tried to define love and I realized today that truly loving someone, or something,  means being able to conjure up every moment you shared with them in an instant.

I saw them all.  As she lay there in a final quiet moment with the three of us, I saw them all. 

And I looked at my son and I saw all the moments to come, moments our little Bianca would miss as part of our family.   And it hurt.

And then we let go.

Safety Tatts

I'm not one for putting tattoos on children, but this one is amazing.

http://www.safetytat.com/

They're waterproof tattoos for children with an emergency contact on them.  Heaven forbid you will ever have to use them, but they are certainly worth getting.

He's standing?

Oy...  Turtle stood for the first time.  He does have to support himself, but he does stand.  He just started crawling and this whole standing thing is a little soon for me.  I just to the ground level childproofed.  Now I have to move up the schedule.  Pretty soon he'll be jumping to touch the door jamb. 

I noticed, as he held on to me and stood at his music class that Turtle is a very large infant.  He's the youngest at 10 months.  A baby who is 15 months and walking was a good few inches shorter and about probably 5 pounds lighter. 

What the what?

My child's a giant.

And he's rising to his feet.

today's moment

My wife and I are firm believers in co-sleeping.  Turtle slept in our bed much of his first three months and by month five he was happily sleeping in his own crib with the occasional night with us.  We made sure he knew that his crib was not only a safe place to sleep, but also a happy place to play, explore, stare at his mobile and squawk.  This weekend, he woke with a start in the middle of the night and we knew, as usual, we could walk with him for half an hour and get him back down or we could slip him between us and we'd all be asleep in minutes.

We chose the sleep.

Then something interesting happened.

Our ever so territorial cat, who has shown signs of displacement - especially in our bed - climbed up between us and decided to rest her front paws and head on Turtle's lap.  I realized that he was actually awake.  It was about three a.m. and he was just laying there, staring at the light through the blinds and as the cat settled in, he just gently began to pet her head and play with her ear.

Our cat simply lay there, purring.  If you have ever met her, you know this is highly out of character.  There is a small metal sign on our front door that reads, "Attention:  Chat Feroce."  That should sum it up for you.

And yet, here was my 9 month old, quietly soothing the savage beast in the middle of the night.  One exploring, the other ever so patient.

My wife has inspired me

My wife is doing a year of grace.  I have decided it's a great idea and may help me write more often... and I tend to be on a constant rage against the injustices of the world and I hold my personal moments of grace close to my chest and dear.  That needs to change.

In the last month my son has learned to crawl, communicates with me better than I could possibly imagine, has taken to jumping for joy when his mother comes home, sleeps, and makes my life a joy... My wife and I have rediscovered each other - something indescribably important for a couple with their first child. 

So, I will share my moments of grace with you.  That may help me actually put more here as well.