Family: It’s a magic number

The past and the present and the future.

Faith and Hope and Charity,

The heart and the brain and the body

Give you three as a magic number.

--Three is a magic number (Schoolhouse Rock)

Watching Amy talk and play with our little Beatrice, I fall in love all over again. She's such an amazing mother that I can get my head around the fact that as of a year and a half ago she wasn't. An amazing wife and friend, yes, but Mama A and Daddy K weren't part of the playbook then.

New Year's Eve morning, 2007: It was early as it always is for me. I lay there reflecting on the previous 10 years of our lives together, perfectly content and happy not wanting children, and then the more recent six-month conception roller coaster we'd been on after changing our minds.

Amy woke up and asked:

"Should I take the test?"

It was still three full days from her next cycle, but she wouldn't have asked if she didn't think maybe. I told her let's do it and she popped out of bed into the bathroom. I followed. She took to test. Positive. We were thrilled. And completely scared out of our minds. We left the pregnancy stick on the bathroom counter and went about our day.

Periodically I'd be in the bathroom, glance down at it, and call out to Amy, "It's still positive."

Just to confirm, you know, that we weren't hallucinating. That's how we began 2008 – with Baby B in Mama's belly. Four weeks later the first ultrasound of peanut-shaped B left no doubt – listening to the rapid-fire heartbeat tethered us to heaven's lamppost.

Then, from our 10-seconds of fame on GMA airing our little pregnancy video announcement on their "My Three Words" segment, to our first international trip with belly B to China, to the 20-week ultrasound with my proud parents, to celebrating college and high school graduations with family, to Mama A's heroic six-month pregnant hike in Yosemite, to the final preparations with our midwife, to the over-dramatic but true birth story (thanks for plan B, Bea), to the first three months of cherub care, to baby's first Thanksgiving with Amy's family in Nevada, and finally to baby's first Christmas with my parents in Oregon.

New Year's Eve morning, 2008: It was early as it always is for me. I lay there reflecting on the past year of our lives together, perfectly content and thankful for our blessings. I have no resolutions, though.

It's not that I don't think that resolutions can be powerful and motivating for change – there are some great daddy resolutions posted at Building Camelot – it's just that life isn't as neat and clean as a linear trek we treat it each year. You don't get to the end of the year and say, "Now I'll change for the better, dad-gummit. Next year gives me a clean slate." That will lead you to failure, because eventually it'll be the next year and you'll say, "Now I'll change for the better, dad-gummit. Next year gives me a clean slate." Every day should be treated as New Year's Day. No time like your presence and neglecting action today gets you to nowheresville tomorrow, daddy-o's.

I've stumbled and been humbled enough to know that each man makes his own way at some point; you've got to experiment, fail and try again, like folding new ingredients into life's batter until you come up with a bake sale winner (not really the most manly of metaphors, but forgive me – my SJSU Spartans fell apart this year, and don't even get me started about the Raiders, but at least they won their last game today). You've got to be a selfless doer, not a blamer. It is a wonderful life, George Bailey, and I aspire to the Bailey spirit (with a little heavenly help of course). It also helps that I live in America, mostly free from oppression with the opportunities at hand for me to be a positive influence on my own life, my family's life and others. Get off the ground, I tell you.

Now, I know I only have my first 3 ½-month-old baby girl and have a lot to learn about parenting and daddying, but years ago I stopped making New Year's resolutions because every day my mindful resolve has been and will continue to be filled with:

Responsibility. This is one of my biggest creeds. Adults and parents, fathers especially, must be personally responsible for their actions, their words, their lives, their families, their communities – if you keep playing that forward, pretty positive things can happen in the world. Mothers are genetically programmed to be personally responsible (yes, I know there are exceptions), but with a little gene therapy and persistence, fathers can do it too. Do what you say AND what you do.

No regrets. If you live responsibly, then there is no reason to live with regrets. Doesn't mean that you won't do stupid things. Most daddies do. I certainly still do. But you should never be sorry for living responsibly and passing that on to your children.

No fear. I grew up an introverted scared little boy, but my mother's love and guidance and my father's no-nonsense approach to learning and living – and a vacuum of fearful living in my twenties – all helped me to finally find the courage to eventually live right and stay grounded to it.

Transparency. It's a term being used more and more in business marketing and public relations, but it's applicable to parenting as well. If you put too much spin on your life – lie and deceive for whatever the reasons and hide behind the great Oz curtain – it will bite you in the proverbial ass at some point. It always does. I understand that there are privacy issues that parents and children alike contend with (I can't wait until Bea wants to get on Facebook and refuses to friend me – ack), but be honest and humane with your spouse and children. You will make mistakes. Own up to them and pass the lessons along.

Tolerance. Whether you travel down the street or around the world, teach tolerance of others and foster open-mindedness in your children. They will thank you for it someday. There can be no room for prejudice, anger and fear in a happy heart.

Making the time. No matter how busy your lives become, no matter how much you have to work, make time for your family. You can always make time. I don't believe in "I just didn't have the time to read to my child." You can always make time, and should.

Participate. See Making the time. Be involved in your child's life. My biological father didn't watch Sesame Street with me (or do anything with me really). I just watched it again for the first time in years with my Bea. Loved it. Today's letter was M, for many monsters.

Fiscal soundness. 2008 was a lesson in living beyond our means – from Wall Street to Main Street. Don't do it unless it's within your means no matter how badly you want the Wii console and Rock Band drum kit (for your children, of course, not yourself).

Good health. That means physically, emotionally and spiritually. Exercise and eat right – all in moderation. Don't obsess about diets or working out. Just do it (a Nike nod). Stay active with your families. Get your butts off the couch and get outside. We love hiking and taking Bea for walks along the water. Express your feelings with your spouse and children. Keeping them cooped up makes them volatile over time not to mention really stinky. Keep the heart healthy and healed. Feed your soul and your families – Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, Pagan – build a family foundation on thousands of years of tested faith. And keep that faith positive and tolerant.

Tradition. Goes hand in hand with a foundation of faith. My parents always like to do a candle-lighting-say-something-nice-about-the-person-next-to-you-and-then-light-their-candle tradition at Christmastime. We will continue this one amongst many other holiday and non-holiday traditions new and old with Bea.

Take Note – and Pictures too. Keep journal entries about your family in the traditional baby books, blogs or other online parent/child social networking sites like TotSpot (which we use). The repeated cliché that it all goes so fast is probably true, so I don't want to miss a thing and keep the written word close by, along with pictures and video (thanks for that fever, Mom).

Being on the same page as parents. Something Amy and I have discussed a lot and will be a work in progress (as it will always be). Be consistent with your children's upbringing. Consistency is key (coming from children of inconsistency). Ensure your children that when parents/guardians disagree about something in front them, even argue at times, that you always work through, resolve, even if it involves compromise. I've been told that compromise is a four-letter word to parents of teenagers, but we've got a long way to go before hitting that fan.

Steal a car and go to Las Vegas. Oops. That's for those who read our Christmas note this year. Embracing life is all about the joy ride.

It takes work to keep up this mindful resolve, and there's always stumbling and humbling along the way. But every single day I fall in love all over again. How I keep up and sustain that level of love?

Being present and a part of each moment, one day at a time. That's how.

A man and a woman had a little baby.

Yes, they did.

They had three in the family.

That's a magic number.

Metabolic metaphors and lighted lifelines

On the way to my folks for Christmas, we finished listening to a new short story by Stephen King titled The Stationary Bike. Say what you will about Stephen King and the scary stories he tells, but this story fascinated me. (No genre-slamming-finger-wagging, please. I think he's one of the greatest storytellers living; a lit professor I had in college told me that the closet Mr. King ever got to true "literature" was The Stand, which I loved back in the day, whatever the heck that means – literature and back in the day).

The "Stationary Bike" is about an illustrator who is told by his doctor that he needs to exercise, lose weight and bring his cholesterol down. The doctor gives the main character, Richard Sefkitz, a metaphor for his aging metabolism: an older road crew of blue collar guys in chinos and t-shirts, arms inked in vivid tattoos, hard hats and orange vests. They worked overtime for little pay, ate like crap and were tired all the time. They needed better care.

So he buys a stationary bike, sets it up in the basement of his building, and paints an outdoor mural on the wall in front of the bike to "pretend" he was biking though the woods. As you can imagine in a Stephen King story, the metabolic metaphor takes on a live of its own; blood-pumping obsessions with art imitating life and exercise and the fear of impending doom – one's inevitable mortality.

The moral: don't forget the presence of the moment and give and take everything within reason while giving and taking care of yourself.

What the hell does this have to do with parenting and being a daddy? Be responsible for your metabolic metaphors. You're family will thank you for it. I'm 43 and run at least 50+ miles every month – but I cannot eat like I'm 23 anymore (although I was certainly a fatty in my mid-twenties – neurotic stress and strain and 80 pounds heavier – oh the forgotten glory days of high school football). I'm also a writer who knows what it's like to lose oneself in a fictional crowd. You've always got to keep yourself tethered to the nearest lamppost.

According to ObesityInAmerica.org:

1. Approximately 62 percent of female Americans are considered overweight.

2. Approximately 67 percent of male Americans are considered overweight.

3. An estimated 400,000 deaths per year may be attributable to poor diet and low physical activity.

Holy crap. Really? And 15 percent of children and adolescents are overweight and 30.5 percent are obese. No way that's gonna happen with me and my little honey Bea.

But, that leads me to the holiday cheer I'm wearing like a soaked braided belt from the 70s and the sugar plum dream of getting my annual daddy jogging stroller run off the ground. It'll be all about healthy living and loving, that's for sure, wherever the moneys raised go.

And what better role models for daddies to be than through healthy living and loving.

Now, to get it off the ground with lighted lifelines…Pooh thinked harder than he had ever thunked before.

Happy New Year!

Baby B and the first family winter solstice sick

Nothing says family love like catching a simultaneous cold on the winter solstice and then sharing it throughout the Christmas holiday. We're finally feeling better today!

And it was baby's first cold. Should I have saved some of the snot? Is that what new parents do? Have it encased in a clear plastic cube? We sucked enough of it out of her nose with one of those bulbous suction squeeze scoobies, that's for sure.

Oh, but it was so hard to watch the baby wail because she's got aches and a snotty nose. We gave her a smidge of baby Tylenol, but otherwise had to ride it out this week. Not much you can give a newborn other than love and comfort.

I'll tell you, it's a much different cry than the hungry cry, or the tired cry, or the gassy cry – the Dunstan method was interesting, but we didn't really need to spend the $35. We figured them all out on our own. I have to believe that most mindful parents do.

As adults without children, we knew that good hygiene is key to preventing little bugger bugs. I never even imagined what was in store for us handing Bea around the room to show off like a fine piece of alien crystal – that soaks up everything it comes in contact with.

Including bugger bugs. And she's years away from starting school and sharing arm-nose wipes with other kids. According to a page I found on SchoolFamily.com:

"Kids bear the brunt of seasonal illnesses, typically picking up six to 10 colds a year compared with the two to four colds adults get, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Centers for Disease Control chalks up 22 million school absences each year to colds alone. The good news is that kids can greatly reduce their risk of getting or spreading a cold with healthy habits and good hygiene."

Six to 10 colds per year? Crap. That's going to be a lot of shared family sick.

It's all about the love, so get plenty of sleep, exercise, eat right (forget it this week), drink lots of water, and wash those hands with soap and water for 15 to 20 seconds, or long enough to sing "Happy Birthday" twice.

Great tip. I barely get the first "Ha" out during my hand washings.

Baby B and burp rags – so out it rolls

One of staff at work bought us the sweetest burp rag that reads:

I coo.

I poo.

That's all I do.

Used to think that's all I did until I met my little Baby B. What an amazing creature she is. I've already worked through the whole sugar-and-spice myth, but now there is drool everywhere. I mean everywhere.

There's an old SNL skit with Michael Palin hosting that tells "the horrible, disgusting, tragic story of poor Miles Cowperthwaite who had the nerve-wracking job of emptying drool buckets from an epileptic."

One of those comedy bits that stays with you. Of course, baby drool doesn't really fill up drool buckets, just soaks a burp rag or three. According to Drool 101 at Parenting.com, "Some babies just don't know what to do with their spit, so out it rolls."

Wow. Words from an M.D. So out it rolls.

I kept asking Mama A if maybe Bea's teething early, but that usually doesn't happen until six months and beyond.

Christmas drool for everyone! I'll have mine with a little brandy, please.

Daddy K keeps the music alive – pa rum pum pum pum

"And the three men I admire most,

The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost,

They caught the last train for the coast,

The day the music died."

--Don McLean, American Pie

My brain is made up of jingles, ditties, drumming rudiments, witty aphorisms and simple nutty sayings; if I didn't keep the upbeat musicality of the bouncing red ball, I'd have a whole lot of nothing. Much of that comes from my lovably crazy dad, and I do hope to pass that along to Beatrice (much to her future chagrin).

There have been more than a handful of times when the music died, however, filling the silent void with cynicism, anger and resentment. I've seen too many good folk, me included, decide that life just isn't giving them a break, that God isn't listening, particularly during the holidays and during a rough year for many folks in the heartland and around the world.

God is listening – listening for us to make the choices that make us sparks of divinity and universal intervention; listening for us to make the differences in our world.

I was raised a Christian and no matter the iteration of my faith today, I embrace all that is Christmas – the hope, the love and the rebirth of choice. (And my favorite Jesus is the little baby Christmas Jesus.) One of my favorite childhood Christmas shows was The Little Drummer Boy, the story of a poor boy who had no gift to give baby Jesus except for his drum playing. The greatest gifts are those of passion and conviction that come from the healthy heart – inhale, a metaphor for the love and acceptance I never got from my biological father, and exhale, the strength of unconditional forgiveness I have yet to fully give.

I played my drum for him, pa rum pum pum pum

I played my best for him, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum…

I've become more of a deist of late, one who believes that God gave us the instruments to keep the music alive, to beat the healing heartmeld drums of ourselves and others.

My cousin Dori wrote a wonderful post about being active and present in the world in order to make it a better place, to focus more on loving and less on spending. As new parents (and even before the little honey Bea) we are active and present and focus on loving to keep the music alive. If each family that has enough gives a little to families that don't, this world would be such an amazing place and we could truly celebrate the miracle of Christmas every day. I believe it already is and the bad news media doesn't convince me otherwise.

Christmas is a choice. Choices are miracles that fill cold winter skies with well-lit hope. Celebrate the miracle of yours and rock the house.

Then he smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum

Me and my drum.

Baby B, the bottle and the bouncing red ball

I'm a bumbling buffoon when it comes to feeding Bea from the bottle. Either I startle her too much before I can even get the nipple to her lips and she screams as though I've just given her a vaccination (did that on the 2-month mark and man did she wail), or I just don't have enough of the mommy caress finesse to get her latched (which I don't).

Mama started pumping earlier than our midwife wanted her to, but it takes time to get baby on the bottle no matter when you start. My daddy pals at DadLabs gave me some good recommendations about finding the right bottle/nipple combo, and all of Amy's baby reading and friend and family advice.

I have had some success, however, and we'll keep working hard on it since we're close to Mama going back to work. And thankfully we think we found the right nanny with lots of baby raising experience, including bottle feeding, which will make the initial transition a little easier.

I hope. Keep your fingers crossed.

We're also coming up on the big 3-month milestone and Bea is an active little bugaboo. She's hitting all her milestones so far and that makes us very happy parents! As a busy new working daddy I try to be mindful and stay in the moment with my baby, but man I get freaked out sometimes that I'm missing something, anything – real big.

Keeping up with the red bouncing ball that hits our lifetime keywords like a xylophone on speed isn't easy.

And those keywords are crucial when baby is learning language. Mama and my Caveman's Guide to Baby's First Year continue to educate this buffoon:

1. Talk to the little bugaboo about anything and everything (no cursing).

2. Tell the baby stores; read to her (that's an easy one for us).

3. Lots of music and singing (Daddy K, meet Baby Einstein).

4. Exposing her to other people and places (that's also an easy one for Mr. and Mrs. Social Butterfly).

5. Play with toys that help baby understand shapes and space (doing that more and more).

Check. Now when can I start her on drum lessons (so I can start too)?

What’s the difference between finding a gopher in your yard and finding childcare for your 3-month old?

You can't drown the nanny-manny-fee-fi-fo-fanny if you don't like her/him. (That's going to get some complaints.)

Argh – first of all after two years of living in our house and making the back yard our own with blood, sweat and tears, we have a gopher. And although I know there are many different options available when it comes to taking care of the little varmints, I really can't resort to shaping C-4 explosives into friendly little park animals. I did try to run the hose into the hole and let loose the water, but that didn't do anything except create a swimming pool.

At least the little bugger is keeping the trench right along the edge of the grass and the patio. Rodentia Symmetrica. Nice.

But that's the least of our worries right now. Right now we're looking for childcare before my wife goes back to work in January. We thought we had a franny lined up (friend-like nanny), but that's falling apart now faster than the global economy.

So, we're looking at in-house infant care, nannies, local infant daycare, robot care, virtual reality daycare and even a potential family option.

But what to do? There are political ramifications with the family option, but there are so many other unknowns with the other options using services like Care.com, SantaCruzKids.com or calling listings off of Craigslist, or checking with our friends local networks/churches. We've got so many calls to make and interviews to schedule and waiting lists to wait on and gopher mounds to sit on. (Schizoids and freaks, we do check references.)

What to do? We're scrambling now; the hose is on full blast.

Queue the music…

"I'm all right, don't nobody worry about me…"