Potentialities

We had one of those beautiful moments a few nights ago. Mon sat back against me and we watched Noli move around and poke against Mon's belly.

We're excited about her coming into the world, but at this point, we can actually only be excited about the idea of her. That's one of the great things about babies, your imagination can run free. They have the potential to do anything, to be any kind of person. Will she be an artist, a teacher, an astronaut? Will she find a partner early in life or maybe never marry? A baby's whole life is potential.

Her father, on the other hand, at 30 years (staring at 31) is much less potential. I'm not going to be a poet, a pro basketball player, or an astronaut. In realizing some our potential, making it actuality, we have to let go of other potentialities. And as we get older, the more the balance tips toward actuality and away from potentiality.

I hope Noli realizes her best potential, her potential that will make her life happy and full. And I hope she learns that no matter what her age and no matter what her life experience, she always has the potential for hope, compassion and love.

Workmanship

Oh I've done it again, I've spent my afternoon grumping and griping to a bunch of inanimate objects that I am trying to assembling into the shape of some furniture piece for Magnolia. Following directions, or in the case where we have been given a disassembled something from friends, making up directions is really not my forte. I am not one of those spatial type of people. However, given a baby is arriving in my world, I figure doing frustrating, repetitive and patience draining tasks to be my training ground. Thus I have taken to getting out the tool kit and giving it a go. I have learned that assembly directions are like trick questions so I have to slow down and pay attention. This, I am not used to. I always underestimate the time it will take me to complete the task, the number of tools I will need to do it and the level of frustration I get when attempting the task. So this experiment in some-assembly-required is teaching me to focus on the details in hopes that I am not the mom who locks her keys in the car with the baby when I go into target. Is there a correlation? Guess we’ll find out soon enough.

I am just slightly worried that when we put our tiny infant into the crib, play pin or some other Monika-assembled item it will go crashing directly to the floor. Perhaps I should swaddle Justin and make him try everything out first.

Consolation Prize

Even though Baylor lost in the first round of the tournament, it was nice to see them there at all. It's not easy to come back from a murder on the team and a coach paying players just a few years ago.

My heart is with Duke, but just in case they don't do so well, and God forbid UNC does do well, I picked UNC in the finals in my tournament pool. Consider it insurance.

Distraction on Demand

In the last few weeks I've come to a nice equilibrium with my entertainment choices. We had already discovered podcasts of our favorite radio (mostly NPR) shows and last year added a digital video recorder (DVR) to the tv. Last month I finally sat down and learned how to use RSS feeds on the internet, a cool tool that keeps track of the websites you typically visit and let's you know when new material is posted.

This means that almost all of my media outlets are now set up for me to choose what I want, when I want. Life is good.

But I know that when Noli gets here my free time will be spent in other pursuits, namely spending time with her and Mon. And I know that I will want to spend more time with them and give up some of my time in other hobbies. Right now though, the question becomes, what to give up?

Even without kids, the danger of tivo (and podcasts, facebook, etc.) is that the backlog of options becomes a burden. You begin to feel like you have to watch/listen to/read all of this. We've done a good job of not falling into that trap with the dvr, but I've fallen to temptation with the podcasts and RSS feeds for my favorite reviews and blogs.

Would it be better to just take options off of the menus completely, become oblivious to what I'm missing, and nurture my familial relationships in peace? Or, as economic models typically assume, are more choices preferred to fewer? My backlog of podcasts and tv shows will just give me a larger selection of choices to choose from when I have "me" time, almost all of which I will surely enjoy, and I should just fight my completist tendencies as an exercise in character development?

These are the questions of the 21st century father-to-be.

Nursery Makover

Big shout out and thanks to Mel this week, who must have spent hours if not whole days shopping for fabric for us and the nursery. She's good at interior design and, lucky for us, doesn't mind putting in all the time and effort. It came down to the last hours of a sale, but we finally picked out a fabric for a crib skirt and accessory pillows (including a floor pillow--don't ask me what that is, I think just a big pillow). We decided the fabric might be a bit much for the curtains but she grabbed some of those at another sale. She also found a crib sheet that matches in color (white with green polka dots). She's even going to help us paint! Thanks Mel!

Now I will go watch sports, hammer something, chop wood or ... anything more manly.

Boy or Girl? Final Answer?

We will be having a little girl in June! As you can tell in the first photo, Magnolia Grace already has my nose and Mon's sass (she's sticking her tongue out at the camera).

Man in the Mirror

In the movie U23D, U2 perform the song "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", a song that Bono wrote to his father. One line in the chorus says "it's you when I look in the mirror, it's you when I pick up the phone." He looks like his father; he sounds like his father.

I look like my father; sometimes I sound like my father. My 30th year has been full of double-takes in the mirror and staring at pictures of myself thinking how much I'm looking like my father.

And now I'm going to be a father. Mon and I joke that it will be easy to tell who they take after: light skin or darker skin, blond or black hair, green or brown eyes, short or tall. Notice I hold most of the dominant genes.

30 years from now they might be looking in the mirror amazed at how much they look like me.