Evan at 16 Months

It's been 6 months since I've reported here on my fathering experience and much has happened. We moved to a nice little house in Monrovia, a small town which feels unpretentious and friendly towards kids; they're building a giant new library on the town square. There is a Friday evening Family Festival and Farmers Market that gives the week some rhythm. Evan had his 1st birthday, including a party a few days before which was attended by many great friends who hung out in the yard and ate yogurt and cake. We took Evan to Lake Tahoe for his Mom's family's annual retreat there in August and also made it to Santa Cruz to celebrate Pamela's Mom's birthday in October. The summer was long and hot, beginning the week we moved, with 100 degree temperatures in May. It's still hot in November.

Evan has been making remarkable strides in development the past few months. He's been on the verge of walking for that long, taking his time and we're not going to rush him. His vocabularly is developing almost exactly in parallel. He has always had astute vision, noticing planes in the sky and remote lights at night. He now has his own word labels for many things, some are close to our language and others are his own. Cars and trucks are "gukocks" and I think that guttoral term applies appropriately to those noisy things. The downside of our "All American" town is the large number of car and truck obsessed people who drive loudly by our house, often while he is napping.

Evan continues to love covering his face with a sheet on the bed and then going into an athletic routine of kicking and laughing or panting excitedly. He kicks with his legs AND arms and the smaller kicks build into larger full body kicks, where his legs lift way off the bed. I sometimes narrate the action to him as he goes: "Little kicky, little kicky, little kicky... Big kicky!"
He no longer has his tongue out between his lips much, but does have a series of funny faces, including one where he scrunches his nose and mouth up and breathes heavily through the nose, something my sister's girl Emily did, and then another kind of parrot like smile that I think is involved with him using his tongue to try to lessen teething pain. He has been teething for many months and has had only the front 2 teeth on top and bottom break through, several months ago now.

Evan recently started taking a pharmaceutical iron supplement because his pediatrician became concerned when his weight dipped into the lower 10%. We don't feed him red meat products, being largely vegetarian ourselves. Very important issues as he is in his great brain growth and development stage up til about 2 years old.

Evan auditioned for a Huggies commercial today. We went to a mothers group Thanksgiving pumpkin pie party at Pamela's friend Janene's house yesterday which I think was a blast for Evan, just being around other kids instead of penned up at home with his darn parents. He also attended 5 or 6 music and movement classes this fall at the town community center, met a bunch of other kids. It has been a wonder watching him grow. We get more sleep now, as he usually sleeps through from 10PM until about 5 or 6 and then might sleep for another 2 hours in our bed before rolling around to say "Get me up, I want a day!"

Phases of the Son

Evan is now 8 and a half months old and I have had little time to write about the experience of fatherhood. I take what little downtime I find to pursue other interests which have been crowded out by this little visitor from inner space.

I have wanted to document certain activities or actions, what i am calling phases, that he exhibits which strike me unusual or remarkable. They may just be the usual steps of growth ina baby, but strike me as unique, which every parent sees in their baby's first actions I'm sure. The first one, I may have mentioned, is the great use of his tongue as a kind of weathervane. He has had his tongue out since the beginning and seems to use it to feel the air. His smile with tongue has encouraged me to smile with a bit of tongue also. I am learning from his habits probably more than he learns from me. The second phase or odd habit of Evan is what I used to call Pre-kaboo, because it is similar to peekaboo but came ahead of the call-and-response actions of peekaboo. When lying down, Evan will grab a towel or "burp cloth" and throw it over his face, covering his eyes. He then begins kicking and flailing a little, seeming to be in a kind of euphoric state brought on by the absence of defining vision. Pretty fascinating. This started at about 3 months and continues. The third phase is less pleasant for Evan because it is his response to teething, with which he has had some pain since he was 4 or 5 months old. (Drooling is another indicator of teething pain.) His response I've called Pile Driving, as he takes one hand or an object held close to his mouth and then uses the other hand to beat the first hand or thing into his face. Seems to lessen the focus of the pain for him. Weird but real stories from the the trenches of BabyLand.

Pre-kaboo

Our boy Evan is now 6 months old. And he is already showing signs of seeking altered states or, I hope, higher consciousness. When left with his burp cloth or small blanket alone for a while, he will drag the cloth over his face. Now I realize this may be the first stages of basic peekaboo games, a kind of hide-and-seek the baby plays with others once the face is recognized as the source of communications. But Evan seems to do this rather as a game with himself, to blot out his own visible field and enter a kind of eyes-open unknown. He begins to giggle or murmur softly and that builds until he is not quite hysterical in his disorientation. He seems to enjoy it, as he does it repeatedly. It's quite bizarre but also kind of amazing, whether an expression of the tendency towards addiction, a drug-like experience, or his looking for experience and testing himself in a kind of low-tech isolation tank. When I pull back the cloth from his face he has a wild eyed look with a soft smile. It will be interesting to see how this develops; of course, as much as we want an extraordinary baby, we hope it is in a way "entirely normal".