Nathaniel Updates

What's new in the world? Boooo!

What's new with my adorable baby? Yaaaay!

Here are some of the latest developments on the Nathaniel front (for the record, he's 7.5 months):

Sleeping: He remains an absolutely incredible sleeper. Down at 7 PM, always sleeps through the night. I give him a bottle at around midnight, but he dreamfeeds it. We've even mostly reached the point where we don't have to rock him to sleep -- just plop him in his crib and he'll handle himself. If I die in the next few months, know it's likely that a jealous parent assassinated me.

Rolling over: He did this several months ago and then kind of just, stopped. Well, he's started again in earnest, especially in his crib. This does have one unfortunate consequence though -- he doesn't always seem to realize he can roll back over (from stomach to back). The rare times he wakes up crying, it's usually because he got on his stomach and is mad about it.

Bouncing: We got one of those bounce slings for him to sit in while we are in the kitchen and it is his favorite thing in the world. Hugs from mom and dad? Eh, take it or leave it. Time in the bounce sling? Forever, please!

Quiet: I took Nathaniel out to visit some art galleries the other day, and the gallerist remarked that he was the quietest baby she'd ever met. Which checks out -- when we're out of the house, he is the mellowest guy you'll ever meet. He's alert, and interested in what's happening around him -- but he scarcely makes a peep (or a smile).

(Interest in) crawling: He's not crawling yet, but he's definitely interested. We're seeing more knee shimmies and butt waggles when he's on his stomach, especially if there's a toy in front of him he wants to reach. To be honest though, I'm of two minds of how much of a mover he's going to be. On the one hand, he loves to move (see "bouncing"). On the other hand, he's often happy to sit quietly without moving for long stretches (see "quiet"). So I can imagine him zooming around the room at the first opportunity, and I can also imagine him just hanging out because, like, why is over there any better than over here?

Making ... Friends ... Is .... Important

Jill and I made new friends recently.

This was a big deal because, if I'm being honest, I had kind of given up on making new friends.

That's a slight exaggeration. A closer truth was that I was kind of waiting until Nathaniel started going to school and/or daycare, where we'd presumably make friends with other parents. But relying on your six-month-old to make friends for you seems kind of pathetic.

Although, effectively, that's what happened anyway. We were out on a walk with Nathaniel where we serendipitously ran into some neighbors doing the same thing with their kiddo. She is a little older than Nathaniel is, but still in his basic age range, and in a rare burst of extroversion I decided I was not going to let this opportunity go to waste. We made small talk, exchanged numbers, and invited them over to our house for dinner and board games. And fortunately, we seem to have hit it off. Friendship unlocked.

I am not the first to observe that\ making friends as an adult is hard. You're playing the game on easy while in school -- surrounded by people around your age and chock full of common experiences. Out in the real world, you have to put some elbow grease into friendship. Work can be a substitute, but for someone like me whose workplace doesn't include many age peers, it's not really a parallel. What you really need to do is go out and do activities, which never was really my jam (here marrying my best friend is a disadvantage -- why would I expend time and effort into going out to do things with other people when my favorite person is already next to me on the couch?).

Nonetheless, friends are important. I am worried about social isolation and the decaying of social bonding opportunities. I don't have macro-solutions for it, so I'll just pat myself on the back for actually going out and making friends.

Number 2 Ranked Baby in a One Baby House

A few evenings ago, Jill was awakened in the middle of the night because someone spit up all over the bedsheets in their sleep.

That someone was me. I must have eaten something that didn't agree with me, and the Pepcid I took before bed proved insufficient for the task.

Nathaniel slept soundly through the night, as he does almost every night. 

But spit-up? Seriously? I'm nearly forty. And it's a bit embarrassing, as a near-forty-year-old, to not even be the lowest-maintenance "baby" in the house.

Then again, in other respects it's a lot better when it's me than him. When something's wrong with me, I can self-regulate, and I can usually understand what it is and communicate what I need. Nathaniel, of course, lacks those capacities. So on the rare occasions when he does start crying without a clear cause, Jill and I just sort of haphazardly throw comfort-ideas at him in the hopes that something sticks (pick him up, put him down, leave the room, stay in the room, stay just outside the room but in eyeshot, give him toys, try to give a nap, feed him, change him, burp him ... it goes on).

The other day, Nathaniel had probably his worst meltdown since he was born -- even worse than vaccine day. The day started normal, except that he was unusually uninterested in his bottle (normally he takes it with no trouble whatsoever). But he was cheery enough as the day progressed, so I didn't think much of it. We have our next door neighbor's kid come over once a week to watch Nathaniel (we stay home, it just lets us catch up on work or chores or sleep), and when we passed him off to her Nathaniel started crying. Even that isn't too unusual -- he'll usually cry for a minute or so on such a handoff -- but this time it didn't really stop. To her credit, the sitter tried everything she could think of (playing, bouncing, carrying, music), until eventually I suggested maybe we try to put him down for a nap.

Bzzt. Dad guessed wrong, and Nathaniel absolutely blew up. Crying turned into flat out hysterical screaming, and finally I pushed the big red abort button and got Jill. Mom managed after a lot of cuddles and soothing to calm Nathaniel down and eventually get him to sleep, and we let the sitter go home early.

We still aren't sure what set him off. Right now, our best guess is a mix of separation anxiety and an upset stomach (he took a mega-poop shortly after the sitter left), that sort of fed on itself until he spiraled. But we're not sure, and of course we never will know for sure. What we do know is that there's little that's more awful than seeing your kiddo uncontrollably upset and not knowing how to help him. Even when you're pretty sure it's nothing (and we did take his temperature and check for anything that might be causing pain or discomfort), it's still awful -- though I'm thankful it was nothing, since it'd be far worse if it was caused by something.

Oh, and lest anyone worry -- he was back to better after his nap. And today we discovered that he really likes beer ads (at least in fine art form). So there's that.

A Day of Milestones

Today is a pretty big day.

For starters, it's my blog's birthday! It is a whopping 25 years old today, with over 7,400 posts. That's a lot of writing!

In addition, Nathaniel turns five months old today. You wouldn't know it by looking at him, though -- he's 20 and a half pounds and over 27 inches long! We've already got him in nine-month old clothing, and he stretches some of that.

And of course, related to the above, it is my very first Father's Day as a father. I am so lucky to have the best baby in the world, co-parented by the best wife in the world.

I cannot express how lucky, grateful, and blessed I feel.

Obtuse Corneal Hydrops

Well, my corneal hydrops are back. And just in time for me to get on a nine-hour flight to London with a four-month-old baby!

I've done some of my own research, which I know are among the scariest words a non-medical professional can speak (but like being a mad, ignorant voter, it's so fun!), but really I don't think I was able to do much damage, because it doesn't seem like much is known about the condition by anyone. 

Corneal hydrops occur when a layer of your cornea called Descemet's membrane rips, letting fluid leak where it shouldn't and resulting in extreme tearing and eye swelling. It is an uncommon side-effect of my already uncommon keratoconus -- don't I feel special -- and nobody really seems to know what causes it or how to prevent it. Likewise, in terms of treatment the prevailing medical opinion seems to be summarized as "suck it up, buttercup". There are some saline drops to draw out the fluid, and you can take Tylenol for the pain, and other similar OTC medications for other secondary symptoms (e.g., Sudafed for sinus congestion) but that's about it.

There was one interesting thing I did find, though. Virtually every source on corneal hydrops appends "acute" in front of it ("acute corneal hydrops"). The "acute" means that it presents suddenly and without warning. But that doesn't describe mine -- in my case, I start noticing symptoms progressively over the course of a week or so. In fact, even that's a bit misleading, since the "symptoms" that correlate with hydrops for me -- essentially, sinus-like symptoms on the left side of my face -- are not as far as I can tell normally associated with hydrops at all. But for me, they always go hand-in-hand, and they predict a forthcoming hydrops event with alarming accuracy.

So a week ago I started noticing those symptoms start to appear and wrote my doctor asking if there was anything I could do to forestall the hydrops before my trip. He replied, in so many words, "nope -- good luck!" I was able to manage the sinus-symptoms with OTC medication, but last night my eye finally -- for lack of a better word -- exploded. Have you ever woken up feeling dehydrated because of the amount of fluid you've lost leaking out of your eyeball? Because I have!

This is the third time I've had hydrops in the past year. The first time occurred while I was on a plane from Portland to Tallahassee, and it was deeply unpleasant (as in, the flight attendants who saw me asked if I needed paramedics to meet me at the gate). I think the dry airplane air exacerbates the effects dramatically. So you can imagine how excited I am to get on a nine-hour international red-eye flight with an infant while ailing with this particular condition.

We leave on Wednesday evening. Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday ... basically, four and a half days for my condition to improve.  I'll stock up on eye drops and other palliative interventions, but still -- pray for me. (And remember, all of this could have been averted if we had a functioning health care system).

I Dream in Generative AI

I've always been a lucid dreamer. I typically know when I'm dreaming, and am able to exert some level of control over the course of the dream.

Recently, though, my dreams have become, for lack of a better word, more mundane. It'll be morning (in the real world), and I'll think "I wonder what time it is", and then I will dream that I checked my clock. Then I will start thinking in accordance with what the "clock" said, up until I remember that I didn't actually check the clock and it could be essentially any time. 

But when I "see" the "clock", why does my brain pick the time that it does? My wife said that my brain is basically acting like ChatGPT -- collating together a mesh of experience to level a prediction of the time it most expects to correspond with me checking my clock while lying in bed asleep. So, for example, this morning I dreamt it was 9:45 AM, which is around when I usually wake up -- in fact, this time I actually genuinely wasn't sure if I had actually checked the clock or had dreamt doing so, since it was quite plausible that I would wake up around 9:45 and check my clock.

Another example: sometimes I encounter text when I dream. I'll see a newspaper or come across a plaque on the wall. Of course, my brain knows a newspaper or plaque should have text on it, and I am congenitally incapable of passing by text without reading it. Yet it would ask a lot out of my brain to put together a full and cogent newspaper article on the fly while I'm dreaming. So it does what image-generative AI does in that situation -- it creates a sort of hazy swirl of jumbled together letters -- a really disorienting effect when I'm trying to read something in the dream. It's really a fascinating effect.

Anyway, this all led to me having one of my dumber thoughts, which was to describe my brain as "like a kind of biological A.I.". Maybe the machines should replace us.

A Lifetime of Pride Awaits

  

Nathaniel turned four months old last week.

And I’m already a proud papa.

Of course, he isn’t really doing that much right now. But why should I let that stop me?

Here’s a list of some of things I’m proud about my baby:

I’m proud of how big he is: Nathaniel scared us a bit at the hospital—he lost a lot of weight after he was born, and wasn’t waking up for feedings. But now he’s a veritable giant! 96th percentile for weight, and literally off the charts for height (28 inches long!). Anyone have advice for raising a jock baby?

I’m proud of what a great observer he is: Whenever we go out, Nathaniel is incredibly well-behaved. He almost never fusses in public, but he also rarely smiles in public either. Instead, he gets this thoughtful, observant look on his face and just silently soaks everything in.

Then we get home and it’s silly-town. But not in public. He’s not an animal.

I’m proud of how strong he is: Almost from the get-go, Nathaniel has been very strong. He was holding his neck up and looking around even while we were still in the hospital.

I’m proud of what a great sleeper he is: Don’t kill me, fellow parents, but Nathaniel basically started sleeping through the night immediately. I can count on one hand the number of times we’ve been woken up by him crying. He’ll take a midnight bottle, but sleep right through it—I don’t even have to rock him back down. And otherwise, he sleeps consistently from 7 to 7. Daytime naps are a little dicier, but he’s getting better, and in any event I’ll take that trade all day.

I’m proud of how patient he is: For awhile, Nathaniel had no interest in waiting even a second for a bottle once he got hungry (our running joke trying to soothe him while the bottle warmed was to agree “we’ve never fed you once in your life”). But now he’s much more understanding. It’s even more pronounced when he wakes up in the morning—no tears, no yelling, he’ll just happily entertain himself in the crib until mom is ready to get him.

I’m proud of how resilient he is: This is a big one, because it is not my forte. But when he got his shots, mom and dad were upset for longer than he was. And we’re already seeing him develop self-soothing practices to help him fall back asleep or get through a challenging time. I could learn from him.

I’m proud of how joyful he is: He may not show it in public, but Nathaniel has the best smile. He loves to giggle when being tickled, he loves to jabber while on his playmate, and he loves to dance when we sing him songs (we hold him upright as he bounces about). There’s nothing I love more than watching him take joy in the world around him.

This is just a short list. And it will only grow as he grows older. I’m not going to lie and say there’s nothing he could do that wouldn’t make me proud; but what is true is that there are an infinite number of ways he can make me proud, and I can’t wait to discover what they all will be.

Requiem for a POB

One of the great traumas of my youth, as my mother tells it anyway, was when a favorite brand of gummy bear oatmeal was discontinued. It was one of my favorite breakfast treats, and learning that it was gone -- and gone forever -- was devastating to my tiny brain. I was heartbroken; sufficiently so that this calamity is still spoken of in the Schraub household thirty-plus years later. It did eventually come back when I was teenager, but by then the magic was gone.

Fast forward to the present, and one of David's favorite contemporary treats is Dole's pineapple orange banana juice (or "POB", rhyming with "lobe"). I had this off-and-on as a kid as well, but my true love affair with it didn't begin until I was an adult. It is a beautiful mixture of the holy trinity of smoothie fruits, and having it in my fridge is tantamount to being able to get a delicious smoothie whenever I want. Since David loves smoothies, this is a major selling point.

Unfortunately, POB has become increasingly hard to find.* And today I deigned to ask someone at the grocery store if they had it, and he said it had been discontinued. I don't know if he just means only that store no longer carries it, or it's no longer produced anywhere, but given my trouble finding it at any of the myriad grocery stores near my house, I fear the latter.

Upon getting this news, I remarked to my wife that this was even worse than the gummi bear oatmeal fiasco, because I'm an adult now and "there's less time". She replied "doesn't that mean it's better?" And I just want to explicitly trace out both of our logics here:

• My idea was that less time is "worse", because there's less time for someone to reproduce the product and return it to the grocery shelves.
• Her idea was that less time is "better", because I'm closer to death and so will have to suffer for less time.

Grim.

Anyway, I am heartbroken. Bring back POB!

* I have no idea if this is anything Trump and/or tariff related -- I'm actually inclined to doubt that it is -- but I'm happy to blame him for it anyway. If other voters can crankily decide every bad thing in their life is the fault of the incumbent party, why can't I?

Mouseketeer

Last night, I saw a mouse in my house.

It was around 3 AM, and I was finishing up my overnight parenting shift (I cover bedtime to 3 AM; Jill wakes up to pump from 3 - 3:30 or so, and then she covers through the rest of the morning). I only saw the mouse for an instant as it scampered under a kitchen cabinet. I yelped in surprise, but then finished my various tasks before going to wake Jill up (though the yelp probably already accomplished that).

And then I just melted down.

I don't know what came over me. I didn't want the mouse in the house. But I also didn't want to hurt it, nor did I want the responsibility for getting rid of it (a responsibility which, in my eyes, ran an intolerable risk that I'd hurt it). I was terrified that I was going to injure or harm it in the course of trying to catch and remove it; or that if I didn't succeed in catching and removing it the mouse would never be out of the house. And the entire thought process just made me come entirely unglued. I was crying in the bathroom in a state of complete panic; I actually wanted to flee to a hotel. It was ridiculous.

Now I'm trying to work out what background neurosis is actually operating here. I've always been a sensitive sort -- one of my major childhood trauma stories centered on a caterpillar I accidentally ran over with a garbage can I was pulling inside. And I've always found mice to be inordinately cute (my second-grade play was "Of Mice and Mozart", though I actually did not play the role of a narrator-mouse).

But I think what's mostly going on relates, of course, to my own baby. On the one hand, it is extra important not to have a mouse running around the floor when one has a baby who's main daily activity is lying on a playmat on the floor. What if the mouse scratches the baby? But on the other hand, small, cute, and adorable are the main characteristics of my baby, so the idea of harming (or being responsible for harming) something small, cute, and adorable is one easily liable to psychological projection. I suspect that there's a deeper layer of stress about parental responsibility and keeping our baby safe and protected in an unpredictable world, but I don't think I need to dig any deeper on that.

Anyway, I researched humane traps, which helped (though the descriptions were often juxtaposed against nightmarish accounts of glue traps, which very much did not help). And Jill -- who after seeing me fall to pieces last night agreed to take point on this project -- contacted a pest control service to stop by (we need it anyway, as we've long had an ant problem). I also found the hole it came through in the kitchen and stuffed some steel wool into it, so hopefully that serves as a stopgap. 

It's going to work out. But man, that was an unexpected emotional rapids ride I went through.

(Also, Jamelle Bouie followed me on BlueSky right as I was working through all those emotions. It was a lot).

Will My Child Grow Up To Be a Human?

The other day, Jill and I were playing a common game with our baby -- telling him all the different things he could be when he grows up.

"Are you going to be ... a writer?" "Are you going to be a hockey player?" "Are you going to be an artist?" "Are you going to be a crypto bro?" (we grimaced for the last one).

Our baby is ten weeks old. He isn't much of anything yet. We don't know what he's going to be. And in the present moment, that unknown doesn't just inspire hope and anticipation. It also inspires deep anxiety and worry. We don't know if our child is going to grow up to be the type of person who is under attack by his own government.

For example, we don't know if our baby is going to have a learning disability. And that matters, given the crusade conservative politicians have launched against education programs for disabled children; one conservative commentator on Fox & Friends bluntly described the conservative position on "making sure disabled kids have access to a public education" as "we're against it."

We don't know if our baby is going to have a serious or chronic medical condition. That matters, given the  deep desire by the Trump administration to gut the American healthcare system, coupled with the bloody swath they're already cutting through critical medical research programs.

We don't know if our baby is going to be gay, or trans, or otherwise queer. That matters, given the inhumane attacks on queer personhood that have been promoted over the past few weeks, threatening to undo decades of progress towards actualizing the American promise of equal justice under law.

Of course, he might not turn out to be any of these things. We don't know, just like we don't know if he'll be a writer or a hockey player or an artist or (shudder) a crypto bro.

So we just have to wait and see, and hope that whatever our child grows into, it'll be one of the categories our country still recognizes as fully human.

Happy Birthday To Me!

It's already been a very eventful year -- and, for me at least, not even primarily for horrible death-of-democracy related reasons!

That said, I have this terrible worry that we're going to be coming up on a "day of infamy" -- a stock market crash, or a decision to bomb Canada, or a mass arrest of dissident politicians. And I just really hope it isn't today, of all days, because I don't want my birthday being a date spoken in grim and somber tones for the rest of my life (sorry 9/11 babies).

The Best Publication Ever!

 

Nathaniel Carl Schraub came into the world late last night, clocking in at 8 lbs 2 ozs and a whopping 21 3/4 inches long! He had no interest in arriving whatsoever, but he's here now and we love him to pieces.

Mom and baby (and dad) are all tired but doing well, and we can't wait to introduce him to all the amazing things in the world!

The Midpoint

I'm turning 39 next month.

That's not necessarily the halfway point of my life -- most of my grandparents lived well into their eighties, if not beyond -- but it's probably reasonably close.

I'm writing from the labor and delivery room in Sunnyside hospital, where Jill and I are very much in a "hurry up and wait" mode. The next time I return home, I'll be a parent. That also feels very much like a line that divides one's life in half -- before and after kids.

And of course, we're coming up on a major change in American history, one that also feels like it could become a historic before-and-after line -- this time for American democracy itself. The hope is obviously that this is just ("just") four years that need surviving (and I've been reminded that there are worse times to be distracted from the woes of the world by a 0 - 4 year old than 2025 - 2028). But it does not strike me as implausible that the damage that is about to be unleashed upon America is not something that will be contained to just four years. It may not be something that can be healed in my lifetime, or ever. It's very possible we have reached an epochal pivot point, in which much of which many of us have taken for granted about America will lie forever in the "before" time.

I'm basically saying what Alexandra Petri said already, only much less eloquently. But indulge me a little.

It's not often that life so neatly divides itself into such distinct eras. Normally that's a function of narrative convenience or arbitrary labeling. But right now, it really does feel like I stand on a precipice -- for myself, for my family, for my country. It's staggering, and glorious, and terrifying.

It's time for Part II.

The Last Lazy Weekend

"Do you have any plans?" "Not really, just having a lazy weekend."

I cannot count the number of times I've had this conversation. I love lazy weekends. I like sleeping in and just vegging on the couch with my wife more than 99.9% of possible "activities" I could plan out in the wider world. 

This weekend is set to be a wonderful lazy weekend. We have no major tasks to do, no major outings planned. We might grab brunch and drop something off at the post office. I'll watch football. She'll probably play Mario Kart.

On Monday, we go to hospital to begin an induction. When we return, we'll have a baby. He will bring joy, and laughter, and growth, and no doubt many sleepless nights.

But I suspect we won't be having any lazy weekends for a while.

Goodbye, lazy weekend. You will be missed.

Loving the Sinner

When someone commits a crime, or otherwise breaches the moral code, there are expanding circles of victimhood.

First and foremost, there is the actual, literal victim -- the person robbed or cheated or abused -- followed by the victim's family and loved ones.

But I think after that, the persons hurt most, and hurt in a distinctive and devastating way, are the perpetrator's family.

When someone is arrested for a serious crime, it is normal for the media to seek commit from the perp's loved ones. On occasion, you'll see someone seize upon a letter written by perpetrator's mother to the judge pleading for clemency, juxtaposing the letter's description of the perp (which is, of course, written through the lens of parental love) against the usually vicious facts of the underlying offense. How out-of-touch, how classless, how blind.

For my part though, I have no idea what we expect them to say. The position they are in seems unbearably cruel, and I hate -- hate -- the people who treat the family as an easy target. It is of course true that a serious crime doesn't become less serious because a person you love committed it. And yet, it strikes me as unreasonable to demand a parent partake in what would otherwise be the obvious, perhaps even obligatory, practice of condemnation. In concept perhaps there is a tightrope one can walk of still expressing love while in no way diminishing the underlying offense; in practice I doubt it's possible to anyone's satisfaction. A columnist who concentrates on a convicted arsonist's volunteer work and urges others to see him in the light may be guilty of himpathy; the arsonist's father is not. The acquaintance who remains friends with the serial catfisher may be judged harshly for not cutting someone who hurts others out of his life; the swindler's mother should not be. This doesn't mean we abide by the parental perspective -- we know full well it is skewed -- but they're not wrong to hold it. They are in a fundamentally unfair and cruel position; the best thing we can do is just ignore them.

And that, too, is part of the cruelty. At least the primary victims have an obvious claim to our empathy, care, and concern. The perpetrator's family has, at best, a much shakier claim to emotional support. The fact that this order of prioritization is obviously justified -- of course we care more about the immediate circle of victims than we do about the feelings of the perpetrator's family -- in some sense compounds the wound; they don't even have the salve of knowing that their social abandonment is unjust. Or worse -- we know families come in for attack by people who think they must in some way be culpable too, looking for ways to accommodate a thirst for retribution that cannot be solely slaked on the body of the actual wrongdoer. They are blamed for not anticipating the misconduct, or they are blamed for somehow facilitating it, or they are blamed for not cutting loose the bad guy once his crimes became clear. 

Of course, occasionally the family really will have been complicit in a direct way (the parents who give their obviously disturbed teenager free access to firearms, for instance). But more often than not, they are victims who are not treated as victims. And I suspect there is, lying underneath everything else, a feeling of betrayal -- surely, they had to know that doing these dreadful things would hurt us; was our relationship of love not enough of a reason to refrain? What a terrible thought, and how much more terrible to have to endure it alone.

I'm soon going to start raising a son. I hope he turns out to be kind and smart and generous and every other quality one would hope to have in a person. I hope that for all the obvious reasons (I'd hope that everyone turns out that way!), but also for the more (selfish?) reason that if he doesn't turn out that way it would be heartbreaking, and I don't know what I would do. Brining a child into the world means committing to unconditionally love someone you haven't even met yet -- that is a terrifying vulnerability, when you think about it. To be sure, the overwhelming majority of the time it goes fine -- most people, whatever foibles and missteps they might make as part of a normal human existence, don't do anything so egregious as to provoke this sort of crisis. But if it goes wrong, boy does it go wrong.

As one moves away from the most intimate circles -- parents, spouses, siblings -- the obligation to be clear-eyed about the wrong waxes, while the indulgence we might concede for one who loves the perpetrator probably fades. But in any relationship of love -- familial, romantic, platonic, even political -- it hurts when someone or something you love does something objectively cruel, shameful, or even monstrous. It hurts because it is wrong, and it hurts because nobody's empathic attention will be focused on you, and it hurts because you know at some level that this loneliness and abandonment isn't even unjust, and it hurts because all of that means that even trying to articulate this sense of loneliness and abandonment and pain is inevitably going to be viewed as trying to wrongfully redirect care and concern from those who need and deserve it more.

What a terrible cruelty to endure.

Two-Thirds Excited, One-Third Terrified

I've alluded to it a couple of times before, but I don't think I've come out expressly and said: we're having a baby!

(It's a boy, due in January)

When people ask me how I'm doing, I have a stock answer: "Two-thirds excited, one-third terrified." It's always good for a laugh. But it's more or less accurate.

There's so much I'm excited about. I'm excited to share my favorite books. I'm excited to get him into Calvin & Hobbes. I'm excited to take him to hockey games. I'm excited to tell him stories. I'm excited to see him sit up, crawl, and walk for the first time. I'm excited to learn his passions. I'm excited to find out who he's going to be. I'm excited to be a dad, and I'm excited to watch my wife become a mom. This is, of course, only a very partial list.

But I'm also, admittedly, a bit terrified. And I know that's normal -- everyone says the moment the hospital discharges you and just ... sends you home with a baby generates a feeling of incredulous disbelief ("Who, me? I'm in charge now? You're just letting this happen?"). But I want to talk about the fear side in a bit more in depth.

One overall salutary development we've seen in society recently is that we've moved towards allowing women -- including women who very much want to have children -- to have a more complicated relationship with pregnancy and childrearing beyond "it's the greatest thing ever and if you have any misgivings you're a failure as a woman." There is at least some more space to acknowledge that pregnancy is uncomfortable, and labor painful, and parenting is exhausting. It doesn't mean you're a bad mother. It's an acknowledgment of reality, and it makes for stronger, not weaker, parents.

Meanwhile, for men, there's been a cultural push in the other direction, because the gendered social dynamics began in a different place. For men acculturated into thinking of children as either "seen not heard", or a sort of doomsday event ("baby trap"), the emphasis has been on accentuating both the positives of fatherhood but also the responsibilities of being a good partner. Parenting is equal parts our job. It's not okay to just leave it all to the missus. In fact, the missus almost certainly has it a lot harder than you (you're not the one gestating and then expelling a whole human being inside your body).

This, too, is a salutary development. But it has I think left a bit of a gap in men being able to talk earnestly about their legitimate fears -- in part precisely because those fears in some ways need to be subordinated to the more pressing needs of one's partner.

For example: one thing I'm really scared about is the process of labor. Leaving aside catastrophizing about medical complications, it's a terrible thing to see my person, whom I love more than anyone in the world, in pain. Under normal circumstances, that fear and fright solicits resources of care and concern -- probably from my wife, who is my main source of care and concern when I'm feeling fear or fright. But of course, in the context of labor, that resource is unavailable, and more broadly my need for care resources is obviously of lower priority than my wife's -- what kind of self-absorbed jerk would I be if I made the pain of childbirth about supporting me? My job in the delivery room is to support my wife however I can, not to horde care resources for myself. I don't want to reenact this scene from Brooklyn Nine Nine.

I've spoken about this before as an "empathy drought": circumstances where our care resources are overtaxed and so need to be triaged. And so again, I want to emphasize that the prioritization here is absolutely, 100% proper. There is no injustice here. And the lack of injustice is, in its way, the injustice -- or at least the loneliness: what is one supposed to do when one's genuine needs (because I don't think, in the abstract, that the pain of seeing a loved one in pain is not the sort of thing where one might need emotional support) are rightfully subordinated? It's hard, and it generates a lacuna.

Childbirth represents an especially clear case. But there is some carry over to fatherhood as well -- it's hard to talk about one's genuine fears and concerns without sounding like one wants to reach back into the not-so-misty past of overgrown man-babying where mom-wife just took care of everything. And again, it's a good thing that we're rearticulating manhood and fatherhood. But that doesn't change the fact that, just as a more complex relationship to childrearing for women that speaks to both the joys and the fears doesn't make one out as a bad mother, so too for fathers as well.

Because while I'm two-thirds excited, there is plenty that sits in that third of terror. I'm scared of not getting enough sleep. I'm scared of freezing up when my kid throws a tantrum. I'm scared of not knowing how to balance between transmitting my values and letting him be his own person. I'm scared of my two-person life suddenly adding a third. I'm scared of not having time for my own hobbies. I'm scared of raising a Jewish child in today's world. Hell, I'm scared of bringing any child in today's world. Again, only a partial list, and not one I claim is unique to men. But it's a real list, and I don't think it's one that is unreasonable in soliciting support. 

I'm not a parent yet, so I don't have some deep words of wisdom to offer on this. But I do believe, and I've always believed, that letting oneself be vulnerable and honest encourages others to be as well. Talking about these things openly lets others do so too. We don't have to work through these fears alone. We should not and need not present these fears as the number one priority of parenthood. But the more people who come out and speak, the more this burden can be shared, and the more room we all have to also turn our attention to the essential task of being great fathers and great partners. So this is me doing my part: being open, and being vulnerable, and trying to make everyone a little less alone -- because there's so much to be excited about.

The Fruit Stand: A Mediocre Artistic Journey (And That's Okay!)

I consider myself a very creative person. But I don't have a lot of traditional creative outlets. I've always had very high expectations of myself, and as a corollary I didn't enjoy things I wasn't "good at". This would be so even if, under any reasonable adjustment for context/age/time/whatever, I was in fact "good at" the thing. I've talked a bit before about my math journey, for instance, and how I quickly self-identified as "bad at math" because it didn't come as easily to me as some other subjects, even though under any objective metric I was actually very good at math.

In the creative realm, this was if anything even worse. We'd get assignments to write a short story in English class, and my parents would always be so proud and want to read mine aloud. I hated that, not because I necessarily disliked the attention, but because I thought all my stories were terrible. I was ten years old, but I was absolutely assessing myself against both the actual books I was reading and the vivid adventure I was playing out in mind. As against either metric, my stories were sorely lacking -- which, of course they were, it'd be absurd if they didn't, but it still was something I found frustrating to point of feeling actual, physical pain.

The same would be true in art class. I liked the idea of art and creation, but there was a huge mismatch between the vivid ideas I had in my imagination and what I was physically capable of transmitting onto a page. I didn't (don't) have great fine motor skills, and every time I'd draw something or make something it would never come anywhere near the mental image I had in mind, and that constant failure was deeply unpleasant.

Of course, some people take that feeling of frustration as fuel to practice, improve, get better. Alas, I'm made of flimsier stuff, and so my takeaway was to instead concentrate on things that I had more of a natural knack for. And while I'm very lucky that I've found things that I both love and which come easy to me, I don't think the overall mentality of just hating doing things I'm not already good at is a healthy one. It's stilted my growth as a person, it has blocked off avenues I'd like to explore, and of course it is a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of never actually improving or developing new skills I would very much like to possess.

So, in keeping with the art kick I've recently been on, I decided to try my hand at making some art. I set several mental ground rules for myself. The first was simple: it is allowed to be bad. In fact, it almost certainly will be. What I create will not match the image in front of me or in my head. And that's okay. What I'm doing is diagnostic -- a test. What would happen if I tried to make something? What can I do and not do? Is there potential here? Is this enjoyable?

That last point led to the other ground rule: I didn't have to enjoy it. That doesn't mean I was committed to slogging through while hating myself. But I was going to make a good faith effort to complete the projects I started, even if I wasn't getting the immediate "I'm great at this, hurray for me" dopamine hit. It was okay to struggle and not especially enjoy that feeling of struggling, but -- within reason -- I was going to persevere.

I started with this: 

The original model

Just so we're clear: I did not make this. This is a tchotchke my parents got years ago when traveling -- a small model of a fruit stand. Rather, I decided that I would just put this in front of me and try to draw it with a colored pencil set as best I could. I liked the bright colors, it was three-dimensional without being too complex, and it had some "flat" details that I thought I'd be better capable of replicating. The result was this:

"The Fruit Stand"

I will be honest: this is far, far better than I expected, given that I hadn't tried to draw anything more complex than a doodle in twenty years. My approach was very much in the "start with a slab of rock and then remove everything that isn't an elephant" vein: just draw what you see, and nothing you don't. It worked okay: I liked the overall color choice, the yellow and red lettering looks nice, the roof is fine, and I think the ombre effect on the bottom left of the building is decent enough. On the other hand, the small details of the three-dimensional fruit were completely beyond me -- in fact, pretty much all the three-dimensional components other than perhaps the building itself are pretty weak-sauce. I also didn't really like how obvious the pencil strokes were -- they felt so clearly drawn, even in the areas that were not especially detailed at the top of the building (again, my mental metric was basically a photorealistic depiction. Did I expect to come anywhere close to that? No. Did I view anything that fell short of that goal as something to be improved upon? Yes. I told you -- high standards).

There is one part of this drawing, though, that I genuinely like liked: the chalkboard. Ironically, that was the place where I was most intentional in departing from "try to draw exactly what you see", since I didn't have a tool that could "draw" in white over the black chalkboard. Instead, I got the desired effect by under-shading small splotches of the "board" with my black colored pencil, and then vigorously erasing those portions. I had discovered that erasers don't really erase colored pencil marks, but they did create a nice smearing that I think actually evokes a chalk board pretty well.

With one creation in the bag, I took stock as to where to go next. Well, I still have bad fine motor skills and I can't do anything with three-dimensions or tiny details. How about try a version as an abstract? Every detail that was too difficult for me to render, I could just turn into a block! Instead of using colored pencils, this time I'd use magic markers, which I thought would allow for more saturated color that wouldn't look as obviously "drawn" -- an even rectangle of blue, rather than a rectangle with blue strokes scribbled in. That got me this:

"The Fruit Stand" (abstract, in marker)

Despite committing to the concept of an abstract, I had a lot of trouble sticking to it -- I kept on being like "well how do I add this detail", and having to remind myself that the point of the abstract was that I wasn't going to incorporate every detail.

The markers didn't quite yield the even tone I was hoping for. I forgot how much markers bleed (that I was drawing on regular printer paper didn't help). I ended up using the unevenness of the marker to decent effect on the "roof", though I still can't decide whether that was in keeping with or pulling against the "abstract" theme. The red marks on the yellow (to evoke the lettering) was not as successful as I had hoped, and I wasn't able to replicate the chalkboard effect at all. That said, I think the "fruit" was much better, if only because it was at least a choice to render it as geometric shapes rather than (failed) literal depictions.

Ultimately, though, I thought the markers didn't work out as well as I hoped. So I tried the abstract again, but this time switched back to colored pencils:

"The Fruit Stand" (abstract, colored pencils)

I think this was a net improvement, though it still had the same benefits and drawbacks of the colored pencil medium vis-a-vis the markers. Once again, I loved the effect I was able to get on the chalkboard. Once again, I didn't find the red hash marks on the yellow to work as well as they did in my head. And once again, I didn't really love the lack of saturation in the colors. It worked okay in the dirt and wood chalkboard stand, because those felt like they should be more textured anyway, but even there that felt like I was again straying away from the idea of the abstract. For the most part, the colored pencils made it too obvious that this was a drawing.

I returned once more to the core question: how I could improve on the problem areas constrained by limited resources and skillset? At this point, I felt like I had tapped out the potential for the colored pencils. Instead, for my final iteration, I skipped out of drawing entirely. Instead, I decided to do a collage.

"The Fruit Stand" (abstract, collage)

This version, I think, was the most successful. It is the only one where I think the red marks on the yellow come close to what I hoped to see. The colors are even and fully saturated. The "fruits" all look nice, especially the grapes (on top of the pink bag). I don't like the chalkboard as much as I did with the colored pencils, but it still probably is objectively my favorite part.

Is any of this reaching the full depths of my imagination? No. Is any of it even good? I'll be generous and say that is in the eye of the beholder. Am I proud of what I did? Kind of -- I do like them (all of them), and I'm proud that I saw the project through. I also think the progression from the original model through the "literal" drawing and into different iterations of abstract is pretty neat. But the broader point of this exercise is that not everything has to meet sky-high expectations. Not everything has to be a home run off the first pitch. I'm okay with what I made, and that's okay. And being okay with okay is step for me that I am absolutely very proud of.

Super Birthday

It's a big day today -- it's my birthday! We're having a bunch of friends over to our house to celebrate my birthday and for no other reason (there may some light entertainment on in the background).

I saw a comic describe herself as in her "early-mid-to-late-thirties", and boy is that a mood.

Hope you all have a wonderful day, however you spend it. And may 2024 be a peaceful, productive, just, and thriving year for all.

The Ice Weasels Cometh

As some of you may know, Portland has been hit by a brutal ice storm this weekend that's knocked out power throughout the city. Over 200,000 customers lost power initially, and though that's now down below 80,000, my house is alas in that unfortunate cadre, with no reports about when the electricity will be restored.

Since we've only been in Portland a few years, we don't have a full read on how "normal" this is (though the zeitgeist I've seen seems to indicate "not normal"). It is my growing impression that Portland weather is generally quite mild for 359 days of the year, but twice a year -- once in the summer, once in the winter -- we get absolutely blitzed with an extreme event (109 degree temperatures and chaotic evil ice storm, respectively).

We've been sheltering in a hotel since Saturday afternoon, but tomorrow we're heading home in hopes that power (and with it, heat) will be restored soon-ish. If not, we'll try to find another hotel (the one we're in now has no more vacancies, alas). While the snow stopped today, it's not supposed to get above freezing until Tuesday, and (in true Portland fashion) Tuesday also is slated to see a resumption of sleet. So on top of everything else, the roads are probably going to be hell for awhile. Classes are still scheduled to resume on Tuesday, but I may have to cancel mine depending on how things go.

Hope everyone here is staying warm and safe, and wish us luck as we begin our sojourn home.

Vulnerable Situations

I was driving home from work the other night, and on my dimly lit suburban street I passed not one but two people walking their dogs while wearing all black, rendering them nearly impossible to see in the darkness (one had put a glow ring around his dog, clearly demonstrating his priorities regarding whose survival he cared about most).

I was furious as I passed them. How could they be so irresponsible? How could they put me in that situation? 

And then once I reached home, I reflected on that emotion, because it struck me as a bit weird and in need of unpacking.

Obviously, I was worried that I wouldn't see the pedestrian and would strike them with my car. Of course, if that happened, it'd be the pedestrian who'd actually be injured. I'm encased inside a one-ton steel tank. I'd be fine. But it'd be very traumatizing, and I'd feel terrible, and then there are the potential legal consequences -- those are all pretty scary, and it's that imagined prospect that really motivates my anger at the pedestrian.

So to sum up: I'm mad at the pedestrian for putting me in a position where I might be emotionally traumatized and/or face legal liability for seriously hurting them.

The thing is, when you put it that way, I sound like a sociopath. "Did you ever consider how you getting physically maimed on the hood of my car might effect me?" Who thinks like that?

Apparently I do, at least instinctively. So ... is that a sociopathic emotion? Certainly, we might say the pedestrian should behave differently (say, wear brighter colors) out of a healthy sense of self-preservation. But is there some sort of implied duty to the driver as well? Is there a sense in which someone who is vulnerable has, at least in circumstances where it is feasible/relatively costless, an obligation to mitigate their own vulnerability? Or is that nuts?

No broad moral here. Just a thought I was wrestling through.