Neighborhood-Kids All Local. All for Kids. All the Time.

While I was listening to - BOOOOOM - John McCanes consolation speech, a sound reverberated through my neighborhood.  A leftover M80 was lit to celebrate an Obama victory.  I am so relieved.  The sound waves shook my rafters like the overwelming feelings of thankfulness shook our nations foundations. 

BOOOOOM!  

Congratulations America.

Running in, running out, running back in, and running back out of the coop again.  Our 9 backyard chickens love to be watched by Eliot. I don't think their behavior is choreographed, but their constant motion and pleasant cooing are mesmerizing to Eliot.

We built our coop and chicken run from old pallets and scrap material hiding in the recesses of our old garage.  The siding was leftover from my in-laws cabin.  The chickens don't really care about their confines, I think they are happy.  They eat our yard and kitchen waste, rest in the dusty shade in the afternoon, and pile together on the roosts in the coop at night.  I think chickens are easier to care for than fish and cats.  Plus you get eggs, beautiful and fresh, once they become mature.  Our hens are a welcome addtion to our family. 

Reading is a nap ritual.  This morning we read Baby Beluga, a book illustrated by Ashley Wolff set to the lyrics of Raffi's famous song.  While flipping back-and-forth between pages reading the lyrics in non-linear fashion we saw pictures of fur seals, narwahls, tuna, walrus, gull, puffin, dolphin, arctic fox, polar bear, and of course, beluga whale swimming and loving their arctic habitat.

I got really sad.  When I was a child, seeing pictures of these animals, I didn't know if they were real or not but I liked to think they were out there living peacefully in the wilderness of their home.  But I know now this is not true.  Many have died.  Last week, the polar bears were finally listed on the endangered species list.  I know if they are listed, much to the chagrin of many corporate interests, then they must really be in trouble.  Will there still be polar bears in 30 years, when Eliot is an adult?

As the story goes, Baby Beluga and all the other animals of the arcitc celebrate the fact that they are connected by the ties of a common habitat.  But that habitat has changed due to the effects of human behaviors.  We humans must realize today that we actually can have a vast impact upon places near our home as well as places as seemingly distant and wild as the arctic.

If you are reading this, please take a moment to think about how your behaviors effect the environment (both near and distant).  Then tell your friends, family, and peers about your thoughts.  There is much that we can control - there are many choices we can make - I only hope that when we choose,  we choose wisely.

Thanks for reading. 

Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  If you have not heard of Michael Pollan, please take the time to listen to this interview on KUOW's Weekday.

 I enjoy eating good food and Michael Pollan has brilliantly defined what eating food in today's marketplace actually means.  If you find yourself analyzing your diet often, MP's 7 word statement clears away a lot of the hype about food and lets you just simply enjoy food and the act of eating it.  

Just wondering if being a parent has changed my carbon footprint.  Am I burning more fossil fuels to transport myself, get my food, heat my house, and all the other ways we depend on oil?

At my house, there is now more of us living under the same roof.  However I know we keep the thermostat up a little higher than when there were no babies to keep warm.  I can tolerate the cool indoors of winter, but I feel guilty about keeping it cool (literally) when there is a baby sleeping in the other room.

I rarely travel more than to Seattle or Vancouver.  No travel on planes or taking long road trips. We keep it pretty close to the 'HAM.

I would say the greatest change is that I have been walking a lot more.  In fact, I would say I almost walk everywhere I go in town.  The car is used to go visit family.  But the stroller is used to go to Fairhaven, the Chuckanuts, Whatcom Falls, Little Squalicum Beach, the Grocery Store, or to visit friends.  Who needs a minivan when you have got perfectally functional feet and a good set of Stroller Wheels for the kid!?

We all seek alternative states of consciousness.  For some it is drug-free and for others it is drug induced.  Whether it be concentrating on crescendos in your favorite symphony or zipping through the trees on an epic day at Mount Baker - the sounds, sights, and sensations of interacting with the world in a unique way is sometimes frightening, sometimes exhilerating, but always striking in a way that drives us to seek more.  

For Eli, everything is new.  Is there an alternative state when everything is so shiny and so unique that all you can think to do is to put it all in your mouth?  Nevertheless, he has  found a new way of looking at the universe and that is upside down.

When I hold him in my arms he turns his head as far as he can, twisting his body to make whatever he is looking at look different.  Arching his back and giving a series of wiggles, I find the only way to hold him comfortably is with his head hanging straight down.  Cooing and other signals of contentment abound.  I worry that if I hold him that way too long all the blood will rush to his little head and the whole thing will pop off.  Horrible.  So I flip him back upright and he gets upset, but I don't think it is because he has lost his head (or was about to) but was just that he came to realize that everything is back to normal.

At one moment we find everything exciting and new, then we reach the end of the last movement or glide into the massive line at the bottom of the slope or wake up in the morning with a throbbing headache and realize that everything is as it seems, it all just depends on how you look at it.

There exists a temporal barrier dividing our day into two parts.  There are clues that dot the way everyday that lead toward the 6 o'clock ceiling of rational baby behavior.  Yawning, eye-rubbing, nodding head back and forth, and a distinctive cry that says, "I (nwah)...AM (NWaah) READY (NWAAAAHH)!"
Colleen and I can sense the approach of this regular baby phenomenon and we could probably set our watches to it if either of us actually wore watches.  It generally comes when the pots and pans clang out of the cabinets in readiness for dinner preperation, the blinds go down on our front window, the bottle cap pops off my beer, and the jazz comes onto the stereo.
Like the chicken and the egg, I am wondering which is the cause and which is the effect:

Is Eli's nightly ritual caused by our nightly ritual or vice versa?  Or is this simply a correlation without any causal relationship?  Whatever it may be I am very happy with the results.

Oops, I just used the word very.  I will try not to do that again because I can't tell the difference between "happy" and "very happy".

May festive exuberance warm your heart this winter solstice (aka..."happy" holidays).

"Don't worry John, it'll get easier."  At about 6 weeks, I received this affirmation of hope from a friend with parental experience.  I knew that it had to get easier or else people would never have more than one child.  Eli was a wiggling ball that cried and pooped and slept 0.5-1.0 hour chunks through the night.  We were not getting enough sleep.  I felt like a Zombie when I was "awake", stumbling through my responsibilities of the day and fantasizing about a large chunk of unbroken sleep.

Jump ahead 5 months to today.

"He is so cute!  So interactive!"  The older woman with her elderly parents stopped to say to us as they were leaving their table at Avenue Breads on Railroad.  He really is.  I often catch myself just watching him concentrate as he plays with one of his favorite toys (the flower-printed cloth napkin).  He smiles, he giggles, he shouts multisyllabic words, he plays with his parents.  Favorite games like Earthquake, Napkin, Mountain Climber, or Food never get old and continue to make both child and parent giggle.  Last night he slept for 11 hours straight!  I think it was the first time in a long time that I actually had a strongly visual dream.  I woke up woozy, yet totally fresh. 

"So this is what it feels like to get a long deep slumber.  Oh Yeah (rememberingly)."  It does get easier.  But then I start to wonder is it that Eli is getting easier to parent or is it that I am just becoming accustomed to parenting? 

Cool is only a descriptive term regarding how I am feeling on this chilly morning.  I am cool in a literal sense and perhaps I periodically pull off the appearance of being cool.  Am I cool like Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool? Or like Snoopy’s alter ego Joe Cool?  Can this kind of cool still be achieved while pushing a stroller and wearing a milk stain on my shoulder?  I say, yes, but with mild trepidation.  I need to redefine what cool means, at least when it comes to being a cool daddy.

Being a cool daddy means to be a father who does more than just the bring-home-the-bacon, Stogy smokin’, sports page reading stereotype ala the patriarchal figure of Ward Cleaver.  A cool daddy gets into the trenches of raising a baby (diaper washing, bottle feeding, barfed up breast milk swabbing) and gets out into the real world of the streets (of Bellingham in my case) and it’s surrounding outdoor grandeur.  No sitting in the protection of your humble homestead!  Say yes, oh fathers, to getting onto the stage of soothing a disturbed baby in public. Watch the single men wince at your struggle and watch the women flash their eyelashes and give you that “what an adorable baby” look.  I get checked out, smiled at, and eyeballed so much more and interact with so many more people than the total anonymity I feel when I am by myself.  I feel so much more alive and aware of the moment.  I know it is simply because I am out and about with my adorable baby boy named Eli.  Being a Cool Daddy rips the sterotype of being a father from the detached, 1950’s era, bread-winner-only paradigm and replaces it with a father figure who is actually involved in the day-to-day saga of raising a child. 

Those interactions with people and the daytime adventures I have with Eli are what I will be documenting here.  I will teach you the ways and means of being a Cool Daddy.  Read on, my brother, and when questions arise in your mind and you are ready to seek advise then seek it from me.  Ask me your questions by commenting below.

• Cool Daddyhood is where you will find my philosophies and ponderings on defining modern fatherhood.
• Adventures of a Boy and his Dad tells the stories of Eli and I navigating the urban and rural, the yummy and yucky, the joy and pain of our time together. 
  
• Warm Fuzzies are endearing, cute, and cuddly anecdotes from a manly point of view.
  

I am a father in “the Ham” and proud of it.