My Wife is Possessed

First, for the few who read this, a picture from today. It was taken after we had our first visit from the adoption social worker. The deal is that in order to finalize the adoption we have to have three visits. I suppose they are making sure we aren't putting the child to hard labor or something. He is apt as taking a good picture, though.



Back to demons possessing my wife. If there is one thing I could count on her for, throughout our courtship and marriage, it is that she does not do crafts. When my mother bragged on the homemade corn relish of my ex-sister-in-law, we scoffed and made fun. When a guest at our wedding threatened a homemade sampler as a wedding gift, we cringed. Just passing a Michael's will make my wife break out in hives. Evidently, though, young Jack has powers beyond being a budding swimsuit model. Today my wife did crafts, and Jack inspired her.

As you can imagine, we didn't get much warning about Jack's arrival. Our friend Maria took us out to Babys R Us the night before and we dropped $1,000. We don't have a crib yet, and we don't even have room for one. (Does anyone need a day bed, cheap?) We certainly didn't buy a mobile with those nice designs on it that make a budding swimsuit model into an Einstein. Today, however, my wife made a mobile.

What does it take? Well, one of those flimsy coat hanges and some scraps of wrapping paper, and also the inside of some Baby Gap bags. That Baby Gap sends the clothes home in some spiffy bags. Anyway, the homemade, dare I say crafty, contraption now hangs over the changing table. I daresay Jack will use it for target practice.

Long weekend

Dinner Saturday night was with some friends who have also been working on getting a baby for a very long time, though they have worked through some serious medial intervention while we worked the adoption route. I know how troubling and tough this has been for them, so I was worried how they'd react to having Jack be the center of attention all evening. They were fine. In fact, Debra couldn't keep her hands off Jack, and Tom repeatedly marvelled at how little the boy is.

Well, we did check earlier and it appears Jack has grown in length and in head circumference since we took him to the Doctor last week. Whew! I certainly wasn't worried, since the boy seems eager to eat and poop and cry at the top of his lungs while bossing us around. He's developing his eyesight and even lifts his head quite well for a kid not yet three weeks. Emily, howevr, was worried that Jack was in some pretty low percentile ranges for size. He's going to catch up, though.

Speaking of size, we met a woman at Babys R Us today who was feeding her seven year old from a bottle. And it appeared to be a bottle of expressed breast milk! I can imagine if we lived near a California cult or something, you know, up in the mountains around Humboldt County where the marijuana grows as tall as Redwoods and the hippie culture still thrives. We engaged the woman in conversation while I wondered just how a six year old could be so big. I was ready to place bets he didn't need a car seat anymore. Then Emily asked the question. How old is your son? Five months.

All I could think of was that her husband must have taken on an extra job or something to pay for the push present. This kid wasn't just big, but his head was bigger, sort of like the proportions in the Peanuts comic strip. The woman was a modern miracle for having survived the birth. I was thinking maybe they had a St. Jude statue on their stroller in honor of the miracle, or something. . . Wow!

So ends another thrilling day, with a bit too much whine and not enough wine.

To my Aunt Betty:

Aunt Betty was the one who wrote us humorous cards for our birthdays when we were kids. Shoot, that's around 35 to 45 years ago. Anyway, with Mom gone, I've been sharing pictures of Jack with Betty, adn she's been sharing them with her daughter Sue. Their recent response to a few pictures was to say that I had a knack for captioning. I'm not so sure of that, though I do know Jack is quite photogenic, and he saves my work lots.

Anyway, here's my response to Aunt Betty and Sue when they asked to keep the pictures coming:

I'll have to get a few pictures of his first check-up tomorrow. OK, it isn't the Dr. but a Nurse Practitioner, but everything seems fine to us, except maybe for a half-complete circumcision. I mentioned the potential circumcision problem to a friend adn he got me a link to Mohel Joel Shoulson's web site. Yes, a Mohel who has a web site. He's evidently an 8th generation Mohel. Think of the stories around that Thanksgiving dinner table.

But I digress. And I run out of energy. Long night last night. Jack was doing well waking and going about his business of getting changed, eating, burping and going back to sleep for a couple days there, but last night things fell apart a bit, and I ended up sleeping with him in a chair. Now we've been advised in one of those baby books to nurse him while wearing few clothes. Well, I wear VERY few to bed, so I'm basically sitting there naked and feeding him at 1:30 or so, and he's taking his sweet time, and about the second time I burp him and tell him to get the job done we both go to sleep. The chair is leather. I sweat. It was a little sticky getting up. Jack laughed, but he was very quiet about it.

I got back at him tonight with his pre-doctor's visit appointment with the sponge bath team. We did it while he was asleep. He still kicked and screamed, but the moment he was back in his towel he was sound asleep. Which is where he is now, smelling fresh and sweet.

More, with maybe more pictures, tomorrow.

Steve

OK, that's what passes for humor when you're a bit punchy. Now time to get an hour of sleep in before Mr. Demanding gets us up. Of course, since he's also Mr. Charming and Mr. Cute, he'll get no complaints from me.

The Obama Train Hits Philly

That's the train carrying Barack Obama and Joe Biden out of Philly today. Yeah, we were a long way away. We decided even in this cold it was a wise move to take 11 day old Jack out in the cold to see Obama, even if from an extreme distance, and even though he slept through the whole thing.

What was amazing is that there were lots of people around who didn't care that our vantage point was so lousy. We were up on the stairs that lead from Walnut Street down to the bike pathe on the East side of the Schuylkill River, and there were people up there for the same reason we were, to see at a very long distance the new President, Barack Obama, leave the birthplace of this nation, Philadelphia, for his inauguration. A bit inspiring, really, that so many people would come out in the cold.

Jack is a long way from figuring this out and understanding what it all means. He's asleep on the floor beside me right now, dead to the world and with a full tummy. But someday we'll let him know. Someday.

Personal and Political: Please Meet Jack

Below you will see a picture of my new son Jack. That photo was taken yesterday when he was ten days old. He came into our lives on Thursday, and while it will be a couple months until this adoption is finalized, we are proceeding with confidence, mostly because my wife and I have fallen in love with the little nipper. Hey, I've been writing for this blog for nearly five years, and one of my first reactions upon bringing Jack home was about how I was going to write about him. Our love for Jack is vitally personal, as one can imagine, and it frankly isn't anyone's business. But we are white and Jack is African American, and this year race is the elephant in the room who is getting noticed a whole bunch. So here goes.

Let's just begin with a little background. We brought Jack home on Thursday at about 2:00 in the afternoon. He was nine days old. I will not discuss his birth mother except to say she produced a very healthy boy and she was unable to raise him. We are profoundly thankful for her decision, but beyond that, our feelings and thoughts for her are and will remain private.

Jack does not do tricks as yet, unless you consider squirming while having a diaper change, eating, burping and sleeping "tricks." We participate in and watch each of these tricks with avid interest. Jack is our reality show. What's become fascinating to me is that almost everything is filtering through the prism that is Jack now.

This morning while reading the paper I pointed my wife to photo of Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald and said, with a wink towards Jack, "now that's a handsome black man." Not "handsome man," but "handsome black man." My wife, ever the lawyer, countered immediately with a picture of Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. The point is not that we were on the alert to show our boy Jack examples of high-achieving black men, but we were distinguishing "black man" from "man," and very consciously. Our views about race our changing, and it is not that our views were "wrong" before and are making a move towards "right," but that those views are in control of a little guy named Jack. He has changed us, in less than 48 hours, in some very profound and political ways. My writing here will therefore change.

Of course, our lives will revolve around the boy. I am not teaching this semester because of a drop in enrollment, and I will be staying home with Jack for the next several months. I suppose this might mean that blog writing will not suffer in that time, but all indications so far are that Jack is the guy who guides every decision. For instance, we are very conscious that Jack came to us just a few days before one of the most historically significant moments for African Americans in our history, the inauguration of Barack Obama. There's an opportunity for us to see Barack Obama, or at least the train he is riding on the way to Washington. You see, we live about a half block from a great view of the tracks Barack Obama's train will be travelling. This morning's household debate is whether we take Jack to view this historic moment from the distance of a few hundred yards and in some very bitter cold. Oh, if we didn't have Jack we might or might not have made the trek down the street to take part in history in such a small way, but he's ruling our lives now. Nobody is complaining about that, not a little bit.

A note on naming. I understand Barack Obama represents an historic first, not just that he is the first African American to be elected President, but that his name is so not typically American. Lots of families are going to be naming kids "Barack," "Malia," and "Sasha" in these months of political euphoria. We have chosen instead to honor our own relatives. Jack is named after my Dad, who is deceased. He carries both my family name and my wife's. Oh, sure, being the Eagles fans we are, my wife and I considered a second middle name of "Dawkins" after our favorite player, but Jack probably won't get that name added to his birth certificate unless the Philadelphia Eagles win the Super Bowl. The boy may be racially African American, but with my wife and I raising him, he's going to be largely culturally "white," whatever that is, and I don't think we can help change that a whole heck of a lot in the long run, no matter how we try.

Heck, Jack already has shown his political tendencies. On his first diaper changing he made the usual "comment" newborn boys do. He missed my wife, who had the honor of changing him that time, aiming decidedly to the left. I was pleased our little leftist will fit into the family so well. While we will likely turn him into a book-reading nerd who enjoys reading the paper in bed on Saturday and Sunday mornings, we promise to instill in him a sense of African American culture, certainly. Still, with world travel and the Philadelphia Eagles and current events and politics and the role all of those have in our family structure, this boy is going to be an odd mix. Not apologizing, just sayin'.

To close, at least for now, I will likely be missing several sessions of Drinking Liberally here in Philly over the next months, but I'll bring Jack down to show him off on a nice evening, and soon.

This is a Daddy Blog

We brought Jack home from the adoption agency yesterday, and I'm going to start writing on this blog as a regular course of events, often typing with one hand while Jack sits in my lap. After a couple years I'm sure we'll have a more complete picture of what happens when two white people from the middle of the city adopt an African American baby.