Ben reflects

Moss has been in our lives for two and a half months, and to be perfectly frank, I'm still having trouble believing he's real.  There are so many times when you have to ask for permission in life to do minor things, the fact that you can just choose to bring a child into the world is both utterly mind-blowing and intensely reifying.  Between witnessing his birth and interacting with him every day since, I'm quite certain this is, despite the occasional feelings of disbelief, the realest thing I've ever done.

That first month felt like a lot of work, but making adjustments to my day to day so that I'd have time to change diapers and onesies was made much easier by Ann's and my mom's presence.  It didn't hurt that I felt bonded to the little guy the moment I saw him flop out onto the table.  At the end of it, though, he was still this helpless blob who was demonstrating some nice qualities but didn't really feel like a person yet.

 

 Moss looking vacant at 7 days old

Moss continuing to look vacant at 28 days old  

The second month was considerably more difficult for me.  After four weeks off duty (I know, poor little me), heading back to work was stressful.  Rather than getting a bunch of quality time with Moss, I was suddenly only seeing him for a few hours a day.  This was also about the same time he'd managed to find his voice. The first few days in particular I was met with a squalling Moss the moment I hit the door.  Dread would bubble and fill me up during the last few hours of the workday, and by the time I was heading home, I'd be in the throes of a terrible headache.  I didn't much want to look at him for about a week, his screaming generating a green note that made me nauseated instantaneously.
 
And then he learned to smile.

We were traveling (ill-advisedly, but the event was scheduled before Moss was) to Kansas for Adam and Chelsea's nuptials.  Between the humidity and ambient temperature, they felt like 100+ *F days.  Moss was feeling the worst of it, so much so that we had to take shelter in a car with A/C for most of the actual ceremony.  He weathered his first plane rides and the heat, and then powered through a raucous reception.  I don't think anyone would have thought twice if he'd completely decompensated by the end of the weekend, but instead, he worked out how to curl one side of his mouth...

 

...and then the other...

...widening his lips into a toothless, slightly cursive capital D of pure, unadulterated joy.

 

So things are different than they were those first few days, but so is Moss and I hope so am I.  Had I not been there for the whole process, I'd think he was a completely different baby (even though he's mostly held onto the quiet sweetness with which he greeted us).  We aren't spending as much time together now as we did when I was counting the days he'd been with me and Cal, but I think that the time we do interact is increasing in quality.

Since I don't get to be part of his daytime routine, I'm focusing on making his nights fun and memorable (I realize this is a long-term plan since he doesn't have object permanence yet, let alone the ability to explicitly recall past events).  I think it's safe to say that bath time is becoming one of his favorite activities.  We started out using a small tub shaped like a whale, but maneuvering around it and him was kind of awkward and ended up getting me wet anyway, so we hung up the whale for now and have taken to the big boy tub.  He reclines between my legs, arms on my thighs, propped up on my calf, and enjoys soaking and having his head scrubbed.  We haven't figured out a way to clean his gross neck crevice (the one that smells like "the bottom of the dairy case at the Dillon's at 13th and Woodlawn" as Calla decided) without a little bit of discomfort, but he bounces back once the duty has been done.  Last night, we tried our first bubble bath.  He didn't seem to get the whole bubble wig thing, but I'm sure he'll come around one of these days.

  
My personal favorite is reading time.  Moss is already demonstrating some serious range and discernment in his reading preferences, but there are also obvious limitations in his taste and comprehension of plot, structure, and characterization.  We started out reading Wikipedia articles on algorithm design and passive electrical components since I'm taking a class at work and figured story time could do some double duty.  This worked alright for him and gave me some good practice adding a storyteller's lilt to the driest of subjects, but I thought we could do better.  Next we tried David Copperfield, which I'd been reading myself.  Feel free to tell me that it would be a difficult thing for anyone to come into the book at page 175, but he refused to give it the attention it deserved.  He seems to be taking after his mother's hatred of Dickens' prolix style and page-long sentences in this regard.  It's also surprisingly difficult to do the grammatical structure and prosody justice when read aloud without extensive practice and training.  So we've settled on Dune.  

We're already about 100 pages in, and Moss' favorite character is Thufir Hawat, the Mentat Master of Assassins to the Duke Leto Atreides.  He seems to like Thufir's computer-like ability to process information and his purple lips.  I can't help imagining Moss in a suspensor suit like Baron Vladimir Harkonnen's, but that's probably just because they're both kind of fat and neither can walk.

The last couple of months have had their ups and downs, and for now I'm just trying to focus on being the best dad that I can.  Looking at him makes me want to cry for joy sometimes.  Other times I stare at him trying to predict how he's going to crystallize the liquid potential he's swimming in into a life that I hope he enjoys and understands and wants and loves.  We have so much to look forward to, but for now I'm just happy trading diaper changes for smiles.