I have a lot of weird friends. It comes with the turf of going to grad school for most of my adult life. Now, finally those friends are starting to have kids, and it's really fun to watch how they navigate child raising. The question that seems to underpin a lot of their decisions is how do we stay true to our bohemian ideals?

Okay, maybe it's not a conscious question, but it's there in everything from the toys and clothes they pick to the way they decide to feed their children. There are a bunch of areas that give my friends pause, but some key questions come up over and over:

1. How can we raise a child without enforcing rigid gender categories and expectations?
2. When we buy toys, what do we need to consider in terms of ethics? Where do we find green, non-toxic, socially responsible toys?
   
3. What will our child's relationship to technology be? What will we allow in terms of phones, video games, computer time, etc.?
4. How do we introduce our child to culture without simply plunking him or her down in front of a TV?
5. Will babies be breastfeed and for how long?
6. How will we approach the child's intellectual development? Should a child be an achiever or an explorer?
7. Will we co-sleep? What will be the schedule for the child's independent sleeping arrangement?
8. How do we feed the child in a way that stays true to our own food choices? (i.e. vegetarianism, veganism)
   
9. How do we stay hip while toting a little one?
10. How soon can we introduce critical thinking into the child's regimen, asap?

There are a ton more, but that's a pretty good overview. While a few of my friends and extended circle are vehemently opposed to consumerism of all stripes, many more just want to figure out ways that they can stay mindful when it comes to falling into cliches and stereotypes.

I wonder if all the bohemianism has to do with a certain tiredness when it comes to the modern world. When I think of driving into some massive, hostile parking lot surrounded by dozens of crappy box stores that all sell the same thing (screaming, spoiled kid in tow), I die a little inside. It motivates me to consider if there are any feasible and more appealing alternatives available in this exciting and vibrant time we inhabit. Without a doubt, sometimes it's just way easier and more affordable to hop down to the Wal Mart to grab whatever, but I think the push in other directions is a worthy topic of exploration.

We have been SO busy this week trying to establish routines, organize our new place, and explore all we can in our neighbourhood. I found a place where I bought several pounds of fresh fruit for under $5.00 today, which made me a little too happy probably. We also went and purchased all of those annoying move-in items like dish mats, second keys, brooms, mops, etc. The apartment is shaping up nicely if I do say so, though there's still a lot of work to be done. I both beam at and lament the fact that I've assembled such a massive book collection over the years.

I'm starting to picture this whole baby in the city thing better now that we're here. Our neighbourhood has a ton of young families and they all seem to do okay in smaller places. It seems like there are lots of ways for families to stay busy, including parks, playgrounds, libraries, and other outdoor places. I even feel like young kids would enjoy tagging along with us to the commercial area that's nearby, which features a bizarre and intriguing variety of shops, food markets, and restaurants. The variety of people alone would be enough to occupy a kid's imagination.

I'm pretty much zonked from a very busy day, so I'll sign off there for now. I promise that it won't be long before I return to longer, more regular posts. Until then, have a wonderful night and take care all!

So besides an exploding toilet this morning, all has gone well with the move into out new Vancouver place. My truly awesome brother helped me execute a beautiful and rare 4 ferry-ride move yesterday, and finally, after a year, Lis and I have been reunited with our stuff (there seems to be more of it than I remember). We'll just count the little toilet clean-up issue as practice for when the baby comes. Too much info, I know. Sorry.

One of the more interesting aspects of the move in has been trying to envision exactly how we're going to fit a crib and other baby items into the place. A lot of space is still taken up with boxes, so I'm sure it will be easier once we're organized. Things are coming along, but they still have a long way to go. It is exciting imagining all of us cozy and tucked away in our apartment come January. One of the things I'm still trying to wrap my head around is how we're going to baby-proof all of this cool adult stuff we have. So many sharp inedibles just lying around...

Phew. I'm exhausted but serene. I suppose I'll spend the afternoon just unpacking and envisioning how all of this is going to come together. Things are good right now. Today is Lis's first day at her new job, so I'm wishing her well and doing my best to make things comfortable and organized for when she comes home.

Happy Monday!

I am sitting in a coffee shop in Vancouver, a mere five days after we departed from the nation's capital. That's around forty-five hundred kilometers, or roughly four 12+ hour days of driving. We got in last night and slept on a makeshift bed of clothes and yoga mats. This evening we will be indulging in some true luxury with a brand new air mattress (don't worry, the bed's arriving Sunday).

Phew! So here we are. I think it's going to take a fair bit of time to realize that we actually live in this city. Vancouver's always been a travel destination for me, rather than a place where one actually lives. I think people here must be picking up on the euphoria I'm feeling, because nearly everyone I've talked to today has been extremely open and friendly. Funny that.

Okay, so, baby news! Lis is getting huge and feeling every bit of it. Movement is becoming more and more complicated, and the aches and pains seem to multiply by the hour. To help her out, I keep looking at her and saying, "Holy! You're pregnant!" There's just no denying it at this point, although I've heard you're not supposed to ask about pregnancy until after the baby is born. Then you say, "Holy! You were pregnant!?" Unfortunately, we're way beyond all that. Unless those ultrasounds were fakes...

We've been referring to the baby increasingly as "our son" and by his name. It's amazing how much more bonded we're feeling because of this. He's already a member of our family at this point, and it's hard to imagine anything else. We are going to try to soak in as much of this city as we can before he's born. From what I've heard it takes some minor adjustments to lifestyle when you're actually parenting a child. I'm sure people are just exaggerating, though, right?

Anyway, there's a ton to take in right now, so as I process all of these crazy changes, I'll keep you posted. Take care for now and have a dizzyingly dazzlingly magically delicious weekend!

Yesterday we bee-lined from Ottawa to Wawa. Today it was Wawa to the 'peg. Zipped by 1200kms of Ontario. Crossed the longitudinal center of Canada (it's just east of Winnipeg). Tomorrow is a whole lotta prairie. Lis is feeling the baby kick as I write. I'm giddy with excitement about getting out to Vancouver. We saw a moose, a lynx, and a bunch of deer today.  Our cat is a huge trooper, and is exploring the hotel room at the moment. I'd imagine hotel rooms have a fascinating blend of odours for a kitteh.

I think the biggest thing on my mind today is just how weird and awesome it's going to be to see all of our planning on the West Coast start to materialize. By this time Saturday, we will be in the house we'll live in when the baby's born. We can start looking for our crib, stroller, change table, etc. We can decorate and start to make a home. Everything has been abstract until this point, but the wheels are now irreversibly set in motion.

We had a funny conversation today about backtracking. We were looking for lunch in one of the innumerable villages in northern Ontario (Upsala, I think) and we had just driven by some possible options when suddenly the town ended. We were both pretty hungry by that point, and considered the possibility of turning around to grab a bite at one of the places we'd just seen. But it's hard to explain just how wrong it felt for both of us. Lis summed it up nicely when she said, "I'd rather drive 200 kilometers to the next town than to go back one minute." We were going forward, and to take even one step in the other direction felt impossible.

That's what this whole West Coast move feels like, at least for me. It has everything to do with the realization of a dream. It is so crazy to me that we will be raising our son in a city I've adored for my whole life, and now that it's starting to happen, I feel that anything else just couldn't make sense. It is extremely hard for both of us to leave friends and family in Ontario, and we are going to do everything humanly possible to stay close with people there, but for us, this is what had to be. It is the adventure of a lifetime, and it has just the kind of otherworldly blessedness to it that I want to bring our baby boy into.

Anyway, there's probably a hint of delirium in that description, but the 'peg will do funny things to the mind. Tomorrow when you are wherever you are, I invite you imagine your way along with us as we fly by fields of wheat and corn in pursuit of the continent's western edge. Those Rockies will loom on the horizon (or possibly all round us) by the time the sun goes down.

Well here we are at the end of another week! It's week 20 for the pregnancy, or five months, which is both intense and pretty awesome. It's a crazy time for our little family. Next Monday we hit the road and drive across the country to our new Vancouver home. I'll try to do a "dispatches form the road" style thing, which will probably mean evening posts and possibly the occasional daytime tweet. I'm really excited! I can't wait to see this glorious country again. It could very well be our last long road trip before we have kids. What an adventure!

I was thinking this morning about an idea I came across in Bringing up Bébé -- the idea of a baby as a little adult. I love the idea of having friends over and treating our kid like he's a smart, capable young lad, rather than a glorified stuffed doll. I like the idea of surrounding the little one with other people who are treated as equally important and worthy of respect. Of course babies and toddlers are ridiculously cute and can't help but to be the center of attention, but I think it's also empowering and beneficial to give them credit as forming human beings, and as something other than God's gift to the world. As with anyone, it can be exhausting and counterproductive to be the center of attention all the time. Just look at Tom Cruise.

Along these lines, my wife and I were chatting the other day about the importance of validating kids' feelings while they're growing up. A lot of the time parents seem to think that just because they've been through something, it's a cliché or ridiculously simple. I think this happens with teenagers a lot, but it also occurs with young children.  The fact is that when you're navigating anything for the first time it can be difficult and frustrating, even if it looks cute to others. Think of trying to learn a new language or skill. The occasional tantrum does not seem completely out of line. Just because kids have little arms doesn't mean thy can't have big emotions.

Anyway, I think that's my last random thought for the week. Have a great weekend, and I'll see you from the road on Monday!  West Coast: here we come!

One of the weirdest and most unexpected things about the pregnancy so far has been the waxing and waning of the feeling that it's actually real and happening. My wife and I were chatting about this yesterday. Last week when we found out the baby's sex, we didn't know what hit us. Suddenly this little blobby image we kept seeing felt like it was going to be a flesh-and-blood person in our lives. It felt so real, and we knew that every kick and movement for a few days after that was coming directly our little son.

Oddly, though, as we were driving back from a road trip to Kingston yesterday, we were both amazed at how the pregnancy had somehow switched back to feeling unreal again. What I mean is that we know that in theory we're going to have a baby, but nothing in the day to day suggests it's anything more than a kind of vague notion.

I don't know why the mind does this, but I have a feeling it has something to do with how long we can sustain our imaginations for. When we get a new, vital piece of information, it's easy to hang every impression on it, and organize our thoughts around the key detail, but it's hard to keep the memory fresh. It's a bit like listening to your new favourite song over and over until it stops having an impact. I wonder what other details in the pregnancy will stick like this. I wonder if it'll get harder to ignore once Lis gets to be truly huge. Will it still feel like the day-to-day, or is it going to take over everything?

For now, it's kind of nice to both remember and forget we're having a baby. I'd imagine there will be plenty of time in the coming months for us to wish that we could forget about having him, so this is a dreamily enjoyable phase. It's healthy to think about other things. I think it's overly romantic to believe that you will spend every minute of every day in awe of the miracle of birth. Those moments come in their time, and it's better, I believe, when they come as a surprise. The alternative seems to be some kind of persistent sentimentality, which doesn't really benefit anyone,

When I was visiting with my little nephew this past weekend, I suddenly had a sense of how frustrating life must be when you're four months old. I could sense that he was trying to get at his environment and manipulate the world around him, but he hadn't even necessarily connected the neurons that told him that if you want to see something you have to look at it. It would be infuriating, honestly, knowing that there was some cool object somewhere else, but not knowing that you have to turn your head to see it. He got to the point of exasperation frequently. He had no way of communicating short of crying, which is imprecise to put it mildly. Crying is the bodily equivalent of saying "Something's wrong somewhere in the world."

I was really trying to understand my little nephew's reactions, and observe how he was acquiring his information, because I wanted to be the one with the magic touch -- the baby whisperer. Unfortunately, I failed with the rest of them. I realize that a lot of the cries come from sheer discomfort, but there was no clear way to differentiate these from the more complex desires that are unfolding in relation to the world at hand. A newborn seems to want to just feed and have a change once in awhile, but people learn fast. In a mere four months, Théo has become increasingly intrigued with the world around him, but that also means he's quickly realized his current powerlessness in relation to that world. It seems horrible, but I guess it's a good motivator to learn. It's a funny route to mastery, but nature's astounding in its adaptations.

I also realized that I've had a vaguely similar experience in the not-so-distant past. When I would have meetings with my spectacularly brilliant doctoral supervisors, I'd occasionally be left with this aching head and sense of numbness. I'd be pretty much wiped intellectually for the rest of the day. Being a baby must be like having that feeling all the time. Every second of every day, without a break except for when you pass out from sheer exhaustion. Brain hurt is the feeling of having to make all of your connections from scratch, without a single concept to hang them on. Everything is invention, and that is a ton of work. Being a baby must be infinitely harder than getting a PhD, and yet pretty much everyone seems to manage it. It's kind of amazing how well it actually works.

Anyway, kudos to my in-laws for toughing it out through what must be a very difficult phase for everyone. They're doing a great job, and I can only dream of showing the patience and dedication they do when my time comes. Indeed, kudos to anyone who's currently making it though this phase!

I pride myself on being a relatively self-controlled and competent individual. When I was teaching university English classes, I showed up and gave a passable lecture no matter what was going on in my personal life. I never let the two ooze together, and that was the result of years of training. When I was off-the-cuff, it was usually strategic, and a part of my more general bumbling professor schtick. Not to say that I was calculating, but I knew what I was doing.

So there I was the other morning, sitting down for breakfast with my in-laws, gabbing away about life and all of our baby excitement. I was watching Vince, my brother-in-law, strolling around and patting baby Théo on the back to calm him down. My mind started wandering. I was pre-coffee, so I was probably a little on the dopey side. Lis and her sister and mom were talking about babies and the joys of different holidays and get-togethers. I was envisioning all of it as if I was there, how lovely it would be to see little Théo and our baby playing away on Christmas morning.

In fact, I was so into my little daydream, that I said our baby's name out loud.

As soon as I said it I tried to stuff it back in my mouth by covering it with both hands. My eyes went huge. But alas, no, I had let the secret slip. At first I was the only one who realized what was going on, but then my sister-in-law clued in and started laughing. Everyone was happy and they liked the name, but God I felt like an dumb dumb. That's just not my styles, though I joined in the yuks afterward. What else was I going to do?

I don't know if others have had a similar experience, but we were (and still are) pretty guarded about the name for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, we didn't want to get scooped. It would suck if every second kid in our little one's class had the same name. We did meticulous Google research to make sure that our name was not the most popular one of the year (I pity all the mini Ryan Goslings, for example; I myself was one of 14 Ryan O'Neals in my high school). We also liked the idea of keeping the name our own little secret, just to let it soak in over the next couple of months. My wife was totally cool with my goof-up, as she tends to be about these things, but I still felt like a dimwit. By contrast, I had her engagement ring beside my bed for a month and she still never saw it coming. I must be gettin' old in my old age.

On a slightly grander note, it's funny how having a baby involves this process of unveilings. First you get your initial ultrasound. For us the baby was about the size of a kidney bean and the only distinguishable feature was a heartbeat. Then we got our second ultrasound, where we got to see actual features: a head, hands, feet. After that, we found out the sex, which was, if you read my post, just an amazingly mind-blowing experience. In the future we'll reveal the name and of course the baby himself to the world. Each one of these unveilings seems more astounding than the previous one, and it's cool because the impact of each comes as a complete surprise. I can't wait to see what happens next.

So I went to visit my nephew Théo over the weekend, and I have to say, he’s pretty much the cutest baby I’ve ever seen in person. Of course I'm a little biased because of the close family connection, but seriously, this baby is objectively adorable. Not that it's a competition or anything, but he would totally win against everyone (except Zoe, Georgia, Henry, Lola, and all the other friend / family babies, who would obviously tie perfectly evenly).

Think that's an ad beside this paragraph? It's not. That's my nephew. Théodore.

There is one thing, though. He seems to be a little, uh, on the cranky side. We're constantly getting emails with pictures like the one featured here, and so I naturally assume he is the most relaxed, smiley, chilling little baby you've ever seen. In person, he's a little more... exhausting. I love him to pieces and so do his parents, but I'm learning that a baby, beautiful or not, looks like a ton of work. Like, more than you can handle no matter how hard you try. Like... a lot.

Somehow, stupidly, I thought my wife and I would be able to buck the trend. I secretly thought we'd be the parents who would find tons of time to do our art, pursue our whimsical interests, and trot across the globe like it wasn't nobody's business. But Théo's parents are smart. Way smarter than me. And they're tired. I'm honestly feeling a little freaked out right now. When they say that every second of every day is taken up with your baby, they're not just overstating it for effect. It's the cold, hard facts.

So where did I get this image of the jet-setting, urbane, style-god, time-laden parents from? I'm going to cry marketers on this one. If you're trying to sell a product to exhausted parents, naturally you don't want it to look like it's going to make your baby miserable.  So you chose the happiest, healthiest little one you can find, and you put him or her in front of the product, and it sells itself. Ad magic. The thing is, like a lot of ads, this strategy might make you think you're doing something wrong when you compare it to the reality of your own life. You're not. The reality is that while there's a ton of love and care involved with raising a little one, there's also a ton of crankiness and exhaustion on all sides. There's a deep love, but on the surface it can sound like "GAAAAH! Why did I make you?"

Théo's picture looks like an ad for "have babies", but buyers beware. Babies come with a lot of strings attached. You're supposed to always follow that line up with "it's worth it", but I'm not going to say that. The fact is that life is much more complicated than a simple catch-phrase or two can handle. Saying something's "worth it" reduces complexity to an economic exchange, and having a baby is so much more than simple economics. I think "life prevails" might be a more accurate way of describing what I saw this weekend. We'll go with that for now. Our little one's life is in the process of unfolding and prevailing, and while I now know I can kiss my time goodbye for the next few years, I can always remind myself that my own life has prevailed its own unique and interesting way, and I wouldn't exchange it for anything.