One year ago from today

I found out I was going to be a father. It's kind of a crazy thought as Helena already feels like a such an important part of the family. Depending on how you feel about embryo's I suppose she already was last July as well.

The morning I found out about Helena, Maya messaged me while I was in New Zealand and told me we needed to talk. I assumed I was in trouble and had done something wrong as most men would in this case (it was 8 AM NZ time). But instead I was shocked, even though physically obviously I knew it was possible, finding out she was pregnant came out of left field. It had happened so quickly and since we weren't telling people right away I couldn't (or didn't want to rather) announce anything on this blog - specifically around the time of this post.

And then I was back in New Zealand, thousands of miles away, on an adventure WWOOFing, hitchhiking, sightseeing, and meeting a young 19 year old German named Max. Although we only knew each other for less than two days, it was a very memorable time. Max had convinced me to go on a winter hike to Brewster hut (see pic.) below even though I had almost no winter gear and wasn't sure we'd survive the night. He, like many NZ visiters (especially from Europe, of which there are many), was already an experienced winter hiker and assured me we'd be fine. While we didn't end up reaching the top of the mountain, we did travel a significant distance through some serious challenge. Once we reached elevation (after a hitchhiking adventure to get to the mountain), the snow was often several feet deep and even the gators I bought didn't stop the snow from getting in and freezing my legs. We made it to the hut and spent a night discussing life stuff by candle light and witnessing one of the most beautiful full moons I had ever seen. Thankfully, the pipe with the running water, so important at the time, thawed in the morning and we made it down just fine. Back at the road we said our fairwells and went our separate hitchhiking ways (which unfortunately involved several hours of waiting alone after he got picked up quickly going in the opposite direction).

Now one year later Max writes to me to ask if I remember him and to ask if I ended up naming our child Brewster- ha! I told him we hadn't but it was amazing to look back one year ago today and put my feet back in those icy cold snow-filled NZ boots. This is especially true in the two shower summer days of Atlanta where I currently exist.

Dead of Summer

Amazingly we've already arrived at the middle of summer and a friend today asked me how I felt about going back to school so soon and I was almost mad that she asked the question, that is until I realized that she was right. What happened to the three month long summers I seem to remember from childhood? Now I basically get two months - now I know most non-teachers out there would tell me to shut my mouth and stop complaining, but once you become a teacher you think about summer differently again. It's such a crazy ride during the school year and you really do put everything off until summer. I'm not even talking about big projects like refinishing the porch or getting a new dog, but simple things like going to the dentist, calling up an old friend, visiting a park you want to check out. And I'm doing some of those things, but I guess my list is long, time is passes more quickly than it seems at this point in my life, and I have a baby. And the big trips of summer are finished and I have a longer stretch here now to keep busy and enjoy life.

Taking care of Helena has been the majority of my focus this summer and it has not been a bad thing. Just the opposite really, I've enjoyed my time at home and while some days can pass by more slowly than others, she does cute things every day and I love that she has now started chuckling. Other days it can be frustrating when I want to get something small done, like mow the lawn, or research some product, and it can be difficult with the constant need to pay attention to Helena. I'd honestly probably have a harder time if I didn't know that at some point this would end and I'd be going back to work. It's not that I don't think I could be a stay-at-home dad, I'm just not sure doing that full-time would be intellectually stimulating enough for me.

We had a really great time in Denver and I can check two things off of my Colorado bucket list - Boulder (bizarro Burlington) and Red Rocks Amphitheater where we saw a fun 4th of July fireworks show in the horizon. Traveling with Helena has actually not been so hard and it's nice to be together as a family rather than alone with Helena while Maya is at work all day. PRK eye surgery was intense and took me some time to recover from (am still recovering really). I can finally see pretty well without any corrective lenses which is pretty amazing.

After finishing a lot of boring time researching appliances and finally deciding on those purchases I can move onto some other more exciting things with the few weeks I have remaining of summer. I probably need to start thinking about school year stuff too as I've not given that two thoughts yet this summer. Yesterday I volunteered in the morning with Helena at Concrete Jungle picking apples. Despite the heat of summer here, if I give up early enough (it's been a struggle getting up before 9 despite the fact that Helena usually sleeps through the night) I can do things with Helena and would really like to go on some hikes and explore more of ATL. Today I did an Audubon walk and pretended to be a birder.

Eating out at the Dashanbe Tea house in Boulder

Uncle Brad with Helena at the pro shop

Traveling Helena!

Brad and Rachel Wedding up in the beautiful CO mountains 

8 mile Beltline walk with Sherlock 

Red Rocks 

Golf with Brad after the wedding

Flatirons near Boudler

Keystone, CO

Stay at Home Dad

It's been an amazing last few weeks with the Helena family and friends traveling road show. We hit Boston, the Cape, NYC, and Vermont in our whirlwind tour, much of this captured on Helena's blog. We are now back in Atlanta and it's my first day of summer alone with Helena. Before she wakes up and my duties begin I want to lay out the game plan and reflect back on the last few months.

Overall early baby parenthood has been more fun than I thought it would be but it is still very hard work. I've also experienced a new phase of marriage where disagreements of parenting styles can sometimes lead to tension. I think this is fairly common and the difference of our gender is definitely in play too with this. One example, I know I should be more worried about safety of our baby but in general this is not something that doesn't keep me up at night.

It's been nice getting special treatment at airports, restaurants, and public places where people coo and caw at the baby. We can now greet other parents in the street, with children of any age, and not be creepy - so that's pretty cool too. And realistically, even with just a few months of experience under my belt, I have lot more understanding at this point of parenthood already.

So my biggest challenging coming up is focusing all of my attention on the baby and not trying to multi-task as I am want to do. I am interested in child development, particularly that of my own child, but I also have a hard time figuring out what I can do with her. Unlike children speak and communicate their needs, the direct feedback I get is based on facial reactions and gut instinct. The long-term effects of tummy time, nonsense conversations, playing Mozart or other classical music, or explaining & narrating my life for Helena are impossible to analyze in the moment. But I guess I should close the computer, turn off Netflix, and stop washing dishes or folding laundry at least some of the time and trust the science. It's funny but when you break it down with how much sleeping Helena does these days there's really very little "alert" time with her in a given day.

So a few ideas for the next 6 weeks with her and for myself, acknowledging that I may or may not accomplish even half of these things and I'll probably come back and edit this sometime in the next day or so:
Everyday stuff:
1. Learn (practice) Russian - goal -15-30 minutes/day
2. READ - 1 hour a day -> Atlantic magazine catch up from the year and Childhood development books and if I can get around to it since it's been ages, an actual book. I'd also like to find, buy, and read some French children's storybooks.
3. House Exercise w/baby - goal 15 min./day. Time to trim some of that stomach fat
4. Silicon Valley - 1 episode/day. Heard it's a great series. Looking forward to it.
5. Helena play time - tummy time, walks with Sherlock (not sure if I can count this here), conversations, swim lessons, and to be determined with the help of #2 reading and lots of Youtube videos.
Less frequently:
6. House projects - Need to research new appliance machines, fix fence, move/make new garden, outdoor shower (probably too ambitious with this last one).
7. School projects - French newsletter, Quebec and France exchanges, prep. for next year stuff, tennis tourney research
8. New tennis rackets/Keyboard research and purchase
9. Hike - Once a week
10. Ongoing house maintenance - dog walking, shopping, cooking, dishes, Helena blog, being a good husband and helping Maya, cleaning, laundry, etc.

Winter 2017, only time ice appeared that I can remember 

Landscaping with my dad's help after April 2017 visit

Sherlock in front of our actually "peaching" (can I use that as a verb?) peach tree after three weeks on vacation, June '17

Trillers to remember

Teacher vaca. weekend 2016 in North GA at Lake Hiawassee and then cabin nearby over the border in NC

https://youtu.be/yokgoy1zTEo boat rental

https://youtu.be/itfVzp45mDM dancing at the cabin

Triller Life testing in Palm Springs, Xmas 2016
https://youtu.be/vckosh99hcw

Time

So we are about one month into young Helena's life and things are going pretty well. It has been an adjustment and it's not easy maintaining a proper work/life balance even with Maya being off. It seems like I never have time to get anything done that isn't purely survival based. The I-85 bridge collapse has been awful. I think I may have, or should have, 20 minutes before work starts but then I get there just as work is starting or even late (for my first time ever to Dunwoody) because of the crazy traffic jams -as if Atlanta wasn't bad enough.

Lately, with tennis end of the year banquet, the French visiting, and lots of stuff going on at school, I'm often getting home after 8 with little to not time to hang with Helena. Sometimes, I'm just trying to get her to go to bed so I can do a little work, or so I can go to bed early but frustratingly none of those things happen. There's no predicting the babies reactions at this point and sometimes you can spend hours just trying to calm her down. It's tiring work and I am nervous for this summer when Maya and I switch roles.

Surprisingly (by definition also) Maya threw me a surprise birthday last weekend. It was really fun and nice to see so many people, friends I often don't get a chance to see anymore. It's especially impressive given how much attention Helena needs and for her to be preparing this party. It was a nice turn out with a crazy assortment of people in my life including Haig from Cameroun, Marc, the visiting teacher from France, old frisbee and soccer friends, teacher friends, neighbors, and others that we know.

This time of year is always hard, but just one month to push through until the end of the year. Thank God for weekends

Surprise! 

Parents

We are approaching two weeks of parenthood and it's been an interesting and challenging journey so far. It certainly is life changing, amazing, and a sleep-depriving experience as I had heard going into this. Simultaneously, it has revealed an incredible kindness that I would only have guessed could exist within my neighborhood and wider community of support. Neighbor's we've talked to a handful of times and wave hello at normally have brought food, wine, baby toys, and started a meal train for us. When our friend Jon walked Sherlock while we were in the hospital a group of moms cheered as they saw him and knew the baby must be on the way. Beyond that, friends and colleagues have sent us cards, stuffed animals, and other gifts and we are reminded everyday how joyous the life of a new human being is.

But all of this also reminds us about the privileged life we lead and how our new little girl, who we named Helena after my grandmother Hellen, also has quite the head start in life. Helena has two parents, in-laws and other family to help, a duala, and if she needed it lactation consultants. This is all of course in addition to the meal trains from friends, baby registries, and safe nice houses with educated parents who can take time off from work and research best practices and where and how to get help. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of stuff to learn (see this video for a good example) and by no means are we doing this "right" as first time parents relying heavily on the advice of YouTube and other parents who each have different babies. But we are making an effort certainly and we try not to let her (or ourselves) cry too much without giving her attention.

Speaking of crying and it's invariable lack of sleep, it is exhausting and probably the hardest parts of this. I'm doing ok. I don't mind changing diapers or putting her clothing on; obviously Maya has the much harder part with the feeding. Getting out for a few pick-up games of soccer and tennis after the first week or so locked inside was liberating. But the idea of putting my life truly aside for another human being is a new idea that will take some time getting used to. I am ok with giving up some things in my life and I can't think of anything more meaningful than this but I think as she grows up I will have much tougher choices to face between what I do for her and what I do for me.

Papa Kessel

My life has taken a big turn here with the birth of a child, still to be named (a source of anxiety). We don't want to make the same mistake my parents made with me by naming me something (I guess) they weren't sure about and then having to change the name shortly after. My brother joked that we should name her Natalie after my original namesake Nathan. We also thought seeing the baby would help but it hasn't really except in helping us eliminating a few names since she doesn't look, for example, like a Sapphira (too bad as Phire would be a bad ass nickname).

The birthing process was a unique, interesting, and challenging event. It was hard to see Maya in such pain. It took about 18 hours and of course when we left for the hospital neither of us were really ready but they say you never are. It was a scary time but having the Doula Colleen was certainly helpful and I don't know if we could do it again whether we'd do anything differently. Maya went back and forth with the need of the epidural and during the most intense contractions kept saying she couldn't do it anymore but she pushed pretty far into it naturally.

For most of the birth I was mostly just speechless, not sure what to say, wanting to help, but really doing very little as obviously Maya does/did all the work. I did little things like offer encouragement, give her ice chips, massage her shoulders a bit, grab a wet cloth to put on her forehead, and ask questions to make sure we felt good about everything. The hectic-ness of birth this was a challenge, especially with the decelerating heart beat episodes. She came in with everything moving quickly but overnight it really slowed down.

When the baby finally came everybody was exhausted. The quick and easy birth that we had hoped for did not happen, but at least we didn't have to any major interventions and/or need to do a c-section. I was impressed with the help at the hospital and by the end we assembled a pretty big team (maybe 6-8 people). It was both a relief and a surprise to see the baby finally come out. She came out at 6 lbs. 10 oz. and 19 inches and pretty with lots of hair.  I was shocked by how normal she seemed and not at all alien-like as a I expected being all wrinkly and smushed face. I also for some reason thought it would be a boy and that he or she would look like one of us. But so far she is cute and so little and I am proud to be a father and it is still all hitting me.

Now, it's time to start learning how to do this. I really don't know anything about girls...