It’s getting harder for me to torture the cat. The floor, from which I scoop her, seems to be getting further away as you grow bigger.
My grunting must concern her a bit, because she was just terribly patient with me as I held her like a reluctant little ball on my shoulder. Maybe she is intelligent enough to be a little afraid of the fact that she will very soon lose her status as the cutest thing in the loft.
I can almost guarantee you that she will not display much patience when you are old enough to figure out how to torture her in your own special baby way! I’m sure that we’ll have many laughs at her expense when that time arrives. We like to have laughs at the neurotic cat’s expense in this house. It’s much better fun than watching television!
Poor Soap-Face! We will be sure to feed her lots of wet food between your bashings. She’s a sensitive beast, but the key to her love is hidden in a very simple place. You’ll get some good early life lessons through watching her, I’ll bet.
Love,
Mom
I think your father felt your knee inside my belly last night. You moved quickly away and are ever elusive with your positioning. Sometimes, I feel high high kicks that are close to my ribs. On those days, I can also feel what might be your 10 little fingers tickling so far down low in my belly that I feel you might stick an arm out from me and wave. I can be pretty sure on these days that you are already in the position that will be most conducive to our comfort when I go into labor in 3 months. BUT, there are other days when you stretch to other positions. Laying across my belly. Swimming around in circles. Are you a fish? Are you a yogi like your mom? A runner like your dad? Something all together completely new, unexpected, or different? I am trying hard not to project our personalities on you; I can feel every day that you are of your own mind… but it’s hard for me to not think of you as sharing at least a few similar interests with your parents. I hope you won’t get too annoyed with me later in life when you strike out on your own and I tell you that you’re a part of us. I’ll try to keep an open mind, ok?
For now, since I am able to communicate with these words, I would like to state for the record how I feel your kicking, rolling, and finger tickling will translate to your personality. Bear with me a bit and we can have a laugh later over how very wrong or very right I may be.
For now, you seem to like it when I pat you through my belly. Maybe it calms you down. Maybe it reminds you that there are two of us in here. When I stop before you are ready for me to be done, you kick and roll to let me know that we haven’t yet finished bonding. I feel like this is an indication of what’s to come when you’re here, on the outside of me, and we get to spend hours during your beginning – communicating through my pats and your kicks, coos and shouts. I’m appreciating the early training we have now while certainly looking forward to all the the fun we’ll get to have later. I think you might be a little like me, needing to know that someone is always there to love you and pet you.
The quality, consistency, and timing of your motion tells me that you’ve got a persistent character, but that you’re not too forceful. You don’t move suddenly. You build up and roll down. You tickle rather than jerk. You are a fluid little fish inside me. Sometimes I poke you and you poke me back, playfully. Sweetly. I never feel as if you’re uncomfortable or unhappy. I venture to hope that you have the Benson family positivity streak… goodness knows that’ll be useful to you in this house.
This is all I know about who you are, for now. And I realize that it’s all speculation. I reserve the right to change my opinion of you at any time. You can reserve the right to tell me that I’m wrong anytime, too. Just please, be as gentle as you are now. I already love you too much to fight.
Love,
your Mum
Dear Baby B,
I’ve been laying about during my down time during the last few weeks thinking about how lucky we are to be having you, right now, during this year, in this city, with these friends, and (most of all) with each other.
Your father and I knew shortly after we were married that we wanted our family to grow. We immediately started making the emotional and intellectual preparations so that you could be our reality. We are so ready to have you be a part of our little family. We don’t have all the things you need yet. In fact, we’ve barely started collecting stuff. Luckily, you will be very small when you get here, so you won’t be needing very much. The thing you need most is something we already have in abundance, anyhow.
We have a whole lot of love in this family already. Sometimes I wonder how I will be able to love a person more than I love your father already, and then you kick to let me know that you’re here already, and I feel a sense of protective love for you that trumps the greatest feelings I believed I could have. We are each so fortunate to have this bond. Not every family feels this way, and we work every day to ensure that we don’t take it for granted.
I look forward to the day when you can read this for yourself, understand how much we want each other, and how much we want you to be a part of every moment we’ll share as a family in the future.
Love,
Your Mom
Dear Baby Benson,
Now I can really write to you. I know your gender, and I’ve seen you move! You look like a real baby–to the point that we could count your fingers and toes. It was a little weird that we could also see right into you and count the vertebrae in your spine, and see the chambers of your heart pumping blood this way and that. Ultrasounds are mystical technology that way. I hope that’s the last time I ever see your spine and heart and the contents of your brain in such detail… better to keep that stuff on the down low once you’re in the outside world.
Everyone wants to know if you’re a boy or a girl. We will be telling people after Christmas, I think, since Esther wants to make your gender a Christmas gift of sorts, which is cute. Personally, I can’t wait to tell people. I think people will like what you are.
I’ve been thinking a lot about expectations. What kind of person I expect you to be. What kind of father I expect myself to be. What kind of parents Esther and I will make as a team. Of course, everyone tells us that our expectations are bound to be way off, given all of the random wild card factors that come about when you actually arrive and start expressing your magical combination of genes and environment. But expectations are unavoidable, necessary even. We can also expect to have some of our expectations changed in the process.
More than anything, I expect that we’ll be a happy family. That’s the primary thing. A family that gets along with each other. A family that spends time together. A family that helps each other when difficulty presents itself, and a family that knows how to appreciate when times are good. I have this expectation, and I will not let it go, ever.
I have also begun to think beyond the generic expectations and to go into specifics. To think about which expectations come about simply as a byproduct of what kind of people we are as parents. Do we expect that you’ll be hyper or mellow? Do we expect that you’ll be an extrovert or an introvert? Do we expect you to excel at your studies? Do we expect that you’ll like sports? Video games? Vegetables? Reading? Dancing? Surprises? Heights? Music? Will you be logical or emotional? How empathetic do we expect you to be? I guess I expect you to be a little bit like us, plus or minus. Then again, you’ll be your own self and are welcome to surprise us on any of those characteristics.
The fact that you’re growing up now, in this world, is new. Esther and I grew up in a world that was 30ish years ago, with a lot of different things going on. The world is changing fast, and we’re aware of that. We want to change with the world, to keep up with it primarily as a means of keeping up with you. We’re excited about the future, and we’re excited that you are going to be a part of it.
It’s definitely weird to think about you as a person all unto yourself. As a person that we have the privilege of introducing into this world. Guiding you in your growing understanding of how it all works together. A process that both Esther and I are still on ourselves, and really have no expectation of completing in our lifetime. While we aren’t experts at this world, we do feel like we have a lot that we can show you. A lot of cool stuff.
In the meantime, I’m working on reviewing a lot of ideas about life, childhood, etc. I feel like I’m a teacher and I have a very important class to prepare for. There’s a lot of material, and I’m not formally trained as a teacher, so I also need to practice that part too. We’re reading some books, we’re having lots of conversations, and we’re trying to narrow down a few basic strategies for how to work as a team on the amazing task of caring for you. It’s gonna be awesome, I promise.
Love,
Your dad
Esther texted me today, “Our baby is awake. :))))))”
I texted back, “Yaaaaaaaay! What’s he/she doing???”
She texted back, “Swimming! Spending secret time with mom…”
“I’m jealous.”
It’s true, I don’t get the same secret time with you as Esther does. I still haven’t felt your swimming frog legs kicking flips in her belly. I have a feeling I’m going to want to overcompensate by speaking to you in deep sea voices once I do make first contact with your other-worldly self.
I’ve started learning some songs on my guitar to play for you once you arrive. I’m trying to find baby-appropriate songs that are somewhat soothing and also have either ambiguous or happy lyrics. I’ve learned about 66% of From An Aeroplane Over The Sea, by Neutral Milk Hotel, and am working also on learning Flume by Bon Iver, When U Love Somebody by the Fruit Bats, and a couple Decemberists and Fleet Foxes songs sit on the backburner waiting for my fingers to callus up a little. Once I get my guitar-playing fingers working a bit better, and my play-and-sing coordination down a bit more, I will try to write a song or two for you. Or at least change a few of the lyrics to songs I already know. We’ll see. Underpromise overdeliver, right?
Since I haven’t played guitar in a while, I’ve noticed that the songs I’m playing are a lot different from the ones I used to play. The music of the last few years that I’ve been listening to is actually a lot simpler and easier to play than the music of my highschool and college days (lots of classic rock back then, to be sure). In particular, the songs are easier to play, but there are a lot more lyrics to memorize. And the melodies are a bit more difficult to sing over the chords. Just my observation. You won’t know the difference, really. But, I hope you like our music… cause you’re gonna be listening to a lot of it as you grow up. We’re gonna try our best to avoid baby music… I don’t really get why baby music has to suck. But who knows, maybe it’s because babies have bad taste in music. I’ll leave all options open. Another good policy, I guess.
Back to some guitar now. Talk to ya later, baby.
Yours,
Milton
Dear baby,
I guess you’re a fetus still, and you’ll become a baby when you graduate from the womb. Still, fetus is pretty cool. I was a fetus once. I don’t remember much about it, probably because my neurons weren’t connected yet and whatever memories were sitting in my blobby little head got rolled over by the crazy mob of neurons that developed every corner of my cranium in the first couple years of being a baby.
You’ll get there.
Right now you’re developing teeth, I hear, and your eyes are closing (now that they have lids) and won’t open again until you see that crazy light-at-the-beginning-of-the-tunnel in the room of your first graduation. I’m learning about eyes all over again in my book. Rods, cones, the fact that your subconscious starts seeing things before your frontal-lobe does, the fact that the way to determine “where” the things you’re seeing grows separately from the part that determines “what” you’re seeing. Reading these books is fun, it passes the time. But mostly I just want to know what you’re doing right now.
I have this weird desire to write you songs on my guitar. It might be my first “Dad-impulse”. No, that’s not true, I did also try to talk to you once, through Esther’s belly. But then I remembered you can’t really hear yet, but you can feel sounds, so I said really low mumbly words. Hope you felt it.
We are also tossing around a lot of baby names. You know, it’s difficult because we don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl. So I tend to like the unisex names right now, cause they just work. I thought of one today that I haven’t told Esther yet. We’ll see. Names don’t last very long here. We might have to change your name every year. Maybe we’ll give you 18 names, one that you peel off every year, and then you can choose your own. Would you sue us if we did that?
I should simplify these letters to you. It’s not like I’m writing to your 10-year old self yet. It’s maybe a little rude to use words that you won’t understand for a while. But I am not a big fan of baby talk. In fact, I plan on talking to you like a regular person from the get-go. That’s my plan. Who knows if there’s some weird drug they give you at the hospital that makes you revert to a baby-talking parent whenever you’re around babies. I mean, words are words, right? And you’re not going to understand anything anyway, so why give it a high-pitched tone with lots of fluffy vowels?
Anyway, Esther’s home, I’m gonna sign off for now. Keep cookin’ in there!
Milton
