Originally written August 26, 2002
Well, here goes. I’m not sure if my new life will involve writing more, but I’d like to hope so. I think about writing a lot, I just don’t actually DO it. Now with a little extra personal motivation, I begin, and write about the source of that motivation.What does “my new life” mean? My life is new every day, or at least that’s how I choose to think about it. But most recently, my new life revolves around my new daughter, Audrey Marie Garoutte, age 14 weeks. I have been catching myself thinking, “I love my new life. Thank you, God, for giving us a wonderful daughter,” while sitting quietly at home, driving to work… whenever I have a spare moment.
There is a story here. I just don’t know where to start.
Susan and I always knew we wanted to have children. I don’t think she knew how important it was for me. I think that men—some consciously, some not—see in their chosen mates their possible offspring from day one. I always wanted Susan to have our baby. I wanted her genes in that little package, and if some of mine had to be dragged along, then so be it. And I always talked about having a “little Susan.” Yes, I hoped we would have a girl. It’s not politically correct to say that, and I didn’t say it to anyone before she was born, but I guess it’s OK to say so now. And we are led to believe that most men want to have a son. There’s a topic for another time. Of course, now that we have Audrey, we know that she is not a “little Susan” any more than she is a “little Michael.” She is her own person, and we started getting to know her months before she was born. But I digress…
Here’s an example of my new life. What was my day like today? Susan and I woke up about 6:30 or 6:45. No alarm clocks, we just woke up. Now there’s a change from a few months ago. And no, the baby wasn’t up yet. We took advantage of the freedom to have a little time to ourselves. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, Audrey was up and we started the day for real. I showered while Susan nursed her. Susan showered while I fed her some formula. Susan took her to daycare as I went to the office.
I had a good day at work. I’ve been in a good mood since school started, actually.
I had to leave a meeting at 5:30 that could have been over, but wasn’t, to get to the daycare by 6:00. Audrey hadn’t slept since 2:20, I discovered, so she fell asleep in the car. At home, I transferred her to the crib and she slept for half an hour.
Here’s the good part. She woke up at 6:30, and as usual, cried some. I went in to get her, and, again as usual, she stopped crying and smiled at me. I could stop right there. I don’t need any other reasons for having children than that. That smile could carry me for weeks.
So I picked her up, took her into the living room, and put her in the new “seat on a spring” that a patient of Susan’s gave us a couple of days ago. (An aside—having kids is a great way to see the generous side of humanity. Everyone loves a baby, and they all give you stuff.) What this is is a chair held up by three straps. These straps are connected to a spring, which is connected to another strap, which connects to something like crawdad pincers which hooks over the molding at the top of a doorway. Cool, huh? Well, Audrey can’t even sit up on her own yet, but she can hold up her head, and she has strength in her legs.
So I put her in this seat, and just watched. The entertainment value is amazing. Forget TV; babies are it. Especially your own.
For about 15 minutes she sat in this chair. Right away she figured out that moving her feet was causing her to spin around. But I was waiting for her to start bouncing up and down. I didn’t expect her to get it right away, and she didn’t, but she loves bouncing on my knee, and I was sure she would like this seat too. Well, pretty soon she figured out, sort of, that lifting up her legs made her bounce a little. She squealed with delight. Wow! This was so neat to watch that I had to call Susan at work and tell her, and let her hear the squeals. Audrey couldn’t repeat the bouncing at will, but she did it a few times before she got frustrated that her legs weren’t doing quite what she wanted them too and started getting fussy (about the time I got Susan on the phone).
Then it was bath time, dinnertime, and bedtime for her. Susan got home about halfway through dinnertime.
So now, after our dinner (thank God for leftovers and a wife who knows how to plan ahead) and after reading through the issue of PC magazine that arrived in today’s mail, I have time to write this. Its now 9:43, and Susan told me she was getting ready for bed 45 minutes ago. I’ll follow her shortly.
So my new life includes most of the same things as before, and they are all just as important to me as they were before. I just have a new priority added at the top of the list. And I wouldn’t change that for anything.
If you have kids, then you probably understand exactly what I am talking about. Even if you don’t, imagine the joy at watching a new little person discover everything about the world from scratch. That those things in front of her face are actually her hands, and that she can hold them in that place for as long as she wants to study their form and function. That she can make herself bounce in a chair by picking up her legs. Her whole world is confined to the room she is in, and we get to watch as it, and she, grows and grows. And maybe we can make her world better than ours is.
