Letter #8 to Oliver: Subject: Eagles, Toys, Robots, Books, the Olympics

16. December 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

Dear Oliver

So it’s already been two weeks since you’ve been born! I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner; your mother and I have been quite busy at home with you, and it’s been an absolute blast.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that you reached two major milestones yesterday: You played with your first toy, and your umbilical stump fell off, so you now officially have a belly button!

First, let’s talk about your belly button. It’s an innie, and after realizing it was there, we immediately pressed it, but sadly, nothing happened. Kayli and I had hoped that if we pushed it perhaps something good (cake or pie maybe) would appear, but alas, that was not the case. (Our own belly buttons remain stubbornly inoperable.) This belly button setback notwithstanding, we remain convinced that someday a belly button will live up to its potential.

You also played with your first toy yesterday. It is a rabbit toy, and like all rabbits, it is slightly terrifying. I don’t know why people think rabbits are cute. They have oversized teeth, they’re smelly, and they reproduce far too quickly. In this respect, they are like certain patrons at the local Walmart.

Not only did you play with your first toy, we also read you your first book last week. As I need to dig out a bunch of my children’s books, I went out and bought you a bunch of them, including some standards, Curious George, Babar, The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, and a whole bunch of others. You now have your own bookshelf, which we plan on adding to in short order.

I purchased one book—Edward the Emu—based on the title alone. As you might expect, it is about an Emu. (He lives in a zoo.) We read it to you, but every time I said “emu,” you cried. We took this as a sign that you didn’t like the book. As a sign of solidarity, your mother and I both pledged to try to find, and eat, emu-on-a-stick at the upcoming Minnesota State Fair.

Right now, however, things are emu-free and you are more content. You are currently sleeping on a pillow next to me. You are lying on your back with your hands straight up into the air. I think you are either having a dream about being arrested or you are practicing to be a football referee.

Your mother is sitting here, too, and we’re all watching the 2012 Summer Olympics, which are being held in London. The Olympics have been a lot of fun to watch, though your mother and I think we would be better commentators than many of the folks that NBC has hired. (They all seem like pretentious jerks.)

Your mother, and I, however, would have more unorthodox comments. For instance, while discussing the dominance of the U.S. and Australia in swimming, we agreed that the U.S. is good likely because we are pretty wealthy and have access to lots of pools. I mentioned that Australia is probably good because they have the ocean to swim in; your mother looked at me, shook her head, and said, “No, Brett. It’s the sharks. Their swimmers are good because they are chased by sharks.”

Your mother and I also agree that the medals could be improved. As I understand it, the actual medals themselves aren’t actually as advertised—gold and silver medals are both mostly silver, but the bronze medals are actually bronze.

If we’re not going to go with the actual metals, let’s get a little more creative. We think it’d be great if the gold medal were an oversized version of one of those chocolates covered in gold foil. The silver medal could be a Peppermint Patty, and the bronze medal could actually be bronze, but we think it’d be great if the third-place finishers didn’t know it wasn’t candy before they bite into it. That’s what they get for placing third.

Finally, you might be wondering what your first few weeks of life were like.

The best way I can put it is: living with a newborn is like living with a tiny frat boy: they sleep all day, they’re obsessed with breasts, and they’re practically guaranteed to puke on you three to four times a week.

With that said, it’s been an absolute blast. We both wish we could simply stay home with you all the time. (I already had to go back to work. It was pretty hard.)

As a sign of our how much we like you, your mother and I have already given you a bunch of nicknames. The most popular ones right now are:

 

Ollie McGolly

Sir Wigglington

OllieBollie

Fuss-Fuss-McGus (when you are fussy)

You haven’t been awake all that much, but you are a hungry little guy. And when you want food, you want it now. You make this abundantly clear because your fingernails are like little eagle talons. And when you’re crabby, you’re even more aquiline: you make a bunch of squeaky bird-like noises and dig in your claws into whatever—or whoever—is nearby. I am covered in scratches.

When you cry, you waive your arms around like the Robot from the TV show Lost in Space. You probably don’t have the slightest clue what I mean. Let me explain: It featured a robot that waived his arms around a lot whenever he sensed danger and said “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

I suppose he doesn’t seem like a very impressive robot to you. You live in the future, and you probably have robot friends. For all I know, we may even have a robot President.

In any event, I’ll try to keep up with the letters, so you can have an idea of what your early days were like.

With love,

 

Dad (and Mom)

 

 

 

 

Letter to My Future Son #6 | Subject: Baby Boot Camp, Chemical Weapons, Umpires, Construction Sites

19. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dear Oliver,

I’m sorry for the delay in writing; your mother and I have been pretty busy lately. We’ve been organizing the house for your eventual arrival, and we’re getting ready for a whole bunch of baby showers in your honor.

We also signed up for a couple of parenting classes. One of them is a day-long class, and I’m assuming that it will be like a parenting version of basic training. But instead of drill sergeants ordering us to do this many pushups or peel so many potatoes, the drill sergeants will be actual infants and they will not be quiet until they get a good burping and you give them their nooky-nook.

I also expect that instead of running and push-ups for physical training, there will be fathers practicing wind-sprints to get ice cream for their screaming wives, and we’ll practice pulling up Pull-Ups and diapers on mannequins of small children. Like in basic training, there will also probably be exposure to chemical weapons, but instead of being exposed to actual chemical weapons, they will probably make us change a really, really smelly baby raised entirely on breast milk from a mother who eats only cabbage-filled bean tacos and washes it down with pickle juice. (OK, that actually wouldn’t cause gas in the baby—just the mom, but still, you get my point.) And of course, there will no doubt be lots of practice marching around, but instead of the “You will love your rifle! You will care for your rifle!” you might hear in the U.S. Army, we will march our sample-babies to the crib, to the floor for tummy time, and so on.

If it’s like any of the marching I’ve seen on TV, we’ll no doubt be marching and singing. In fact, I’m already preparing for this—and for your arrival—I’m already trying out songs to sing to you when you get here. One of my current favorites is “Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, get your adverbs here.”

About the singing: You can blame your Grandpa Ortler for this. He is always walking around singing songs he makes up on the spot. (And he wonders why I ended up liking writing and poetry.)  For instance, just the other day, he and I were talking about one of the rovers that has been cruising around on Mars, and I mentioned that it has survived for years and driven over 15 miles. He said, “That’s a long way to go without talking to anyone. I bet it’s humming as it’s driving along.” Now every time I think of it, I think of a Mars rover driving along and doing a little dance, probably holding some sort of umbrella drink.

Anyway, you should know that your mother looks absolutely adorable. Because her center of gravity has shifted, she carries her weight differently. When you combine that with her now-noticeable belly, she looks something like an adorable umpire. And when she’s on the couch and attempts to get up, there’s a moment in her ascent where she’s essentially in a half-crouch, as if she’s standing behind a catcher. And sometimes, her attempts to get up aren’t entirely successful, so she’ll hover in that position for a second, and it’ll look like she’s calling a game and can’t decide on what her call should be (continue getting up, or return to the couch). Usually, this results in a return to the couch and a request that I go get whatever she needed.

Of course, I don’t have much of a problem fetching her whatever she needs, especially since I’ve been reading about the biological processes at work. It’s like a construction site in there. Her hips are moving, her organs are shifting around, and all the while, you’re whirring about, like some sort of adorable dynamo. Most of the time at the ultrasounds, I expect to see orange cones all over the place and all of her organs in reflective vests and wearing hard-hats. (I wouldn’t quite know what to make of a “Men at Work” sign, though.)

While my organs haven’t moved much, a lot has changed for me too. I mean, everyone says how much a child changes your life, but they never tell you how. I never realized how often I lived in the present tense. I’d decide to go to a movie or I’d go camping on a whim. If anything, I planned things out one weekend in advance, or a few weeks at most.

When you have a kid, that kind of planning will no longer do. Suddenly, everything switches to the future tense—where you want them to grow up, what schools to look into, all that. Your mother and I have had more conversations about the next four or five years in the last few months than we had in the years we’d been together. Until you, everything else in the future had been hypothetical and tentative, like a report of a spate of beautiful weather on the horizon, but when we saw you on the 3D ultrasound, you were concrete, imminent.

It’s a good change—and one that we are ready for—but there’s no real preparing for it, I can tell you that. One day, it just sets in. For me, I looked at your mom’s belly and I said, “Yep, I think it’s about time we finish that bedroom.”

Take care,

Pops

 

 

 

A Letter to Oliver, Week 19 | Subject: The Mayo Clinic, Mayonnaise, Developing Hearing

28. February 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dear Oliver,

So I’ve been following along with the stages of your development in What’s to Expect and on the Mayo Clinic’s webpage, and reading about the whole process has got me thinking, and there are a few questions I wanted to ask you. (Son, by the way, if you’ve ever searching for the Mayo Clinic on the Internet, don’t go to mayo.com. That’s the website for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, and instead of getting helpful medical information from a respected source, you’ll see pictures of entirely unhealthy sandwiches slathered in mayonnaise. Then you’ll probably get hungry and go and make a sandwich. I did.)

Anyway, according to the Mayo Clinic’s page, in Week 15 (a few weeks ago, from your perspective), your skeleton developed bones. Since you’re my man on the inside, can you tell me what’s that was like? I don’t remember. Was it a gradual process, or did you take a catnap and wake up to exclaim, HOLY COW, I’ve got phalanges! If the latter is true, don’t feel embarrassed. I do that sometimes myself, and I’ve had them for years. (Plus, phalanges is a pretty fun word, you have to admit.)

I also saw that in Week 17 “fat accumulates.” I bet that was a little depressing. Anyway, get used to it, it won’t be going anywhere. Unless you get a prenatal treadmill or something, but that’d probably be complicated, plus, I don’t know how good you’d be at running given all you do is wiggle.

More recently, your ears developed, so I will be reading you books soon. I’ve already been saying good morning and good night for some time. If you feel a guy squishing his face up against your mom’s belly and saying things in a funny, slightly British, voice, that’s me. I don’t know why I use the British voice; I guess when my face is all squished like that I feel like I have to use some sort of outlandish voice. Anyway, I’ll also make sure each of the animals in the house make some noise near your mother’s belly, so they can introduce themselves.

I’m sure you’ve already heard Bullwinkle. He’s the one always barking; he’s a dachshund, which is a German word that means “loud and stubborn.”  You’ve no doubt heard Xerox as well. He’s a cat, and he’s always hungry and he informs us of this by saying MaomaoMaoMaoMao until we feed him. Then when he’s finished eating, he comes back upstairs and says Mo! Mohhhh! as if to pretend he’s a cat named Mo that hasn’t been fed yet. The other two animals are girls. Not surprisingly, they are quieter and far less obnoxious. Truffles (the Terrier) sleeps most of the time, though if she sees a bicycle, she absolutely loses it; we never let her watch the Tour de France for this reason. Then there’s Peanut, our other cat. You’re going to have a hard time hearing her, because she doesn’t make any noise. She tries, but no noise comes out. Instead, she just makes this gasping noise and it looks like she’s saying the word meh. Basically, she’s the only cat I know that lip-syncs. But once you’re born, you’ll have no trouble seeing her. She’s absolutely huge. She’s so big you’ll probably be able to see her from the car on the way home from the hospital. She’s more of a geological landform than a cat, really.

Oh, and speaking of hearing, I’ve got a bit of a favor to ask. Your mother always says that since she’s carrying you around, you always vote in her favor about any matters at hand, meaning that I’ve perpetually outvoted, 2-1. Now I’ve done my best to do most of the work around the house and to be as accommodating as possible when it comes to food options and the like, but your mother has invoked your “vote” on matters that you probably don’t care at all about, such as which zombie movie we should watch or what shirt I should wear to a family gathering. That’s where you come in: at your last ultrasound I saw how much you were kicking, it was like a Tae-Bo class in there. The doctors tell us that your mother will begin feeling your kicks somewhat soon, and I’m counting on it. Here’s my plan: I want to set up a codeword with you, and anytime you hear it, I want you to start kicking. My hope is that your mother will be distracted by your miniature martial arts and will change her mind about the issue at hand. (Of course, I don’t want you to go crazy with this, as I happen to like your mother quite a bit. Plus, she’s your ride.) Anyway, let’s make the codeword Schnauzbart. (It’s a German word that means “Walrus Moustache.”) Of course, I will try not to invoke this “nuclear option” too often, but I wanted to make sure the option was there if I needed it.

OK, that’s all I have to report at the moment. I hope you’re doing well, little guy.

With love,

Pops

Like Brett’s Letters on Facebook.

 

A Letter to My Future Son, Oliver | Subject: Onions, Space, the Final Frontier

24. February 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dear Oliver,

As you may be aware, your mother and I visited you last weekend at a special 3D ultrasound. All of your grandparents were there too, as were your Aunts Emily and Jackie and your cousin Charlie. We waved and addressed you and your cousin roamed around the room hugging various teddy bears and beeping everyone’s noses. (She beeped mine like five times. I’m glad she didn’t do it a sixth time, as I was pretty much out of a new oh-look-a-small-child-has-beeped-my-nose noises.) Anyway, you seemed to enjoy the attention. You waved a peace sign at us (really) and generally wiggled about.

All in all, the ultrasound was a lot of fun. The technology is pretty impressive—it produced an almost real-time image of you in the womb, which was fun to see. The technology isn’t perfect yet, however, as there’s a little bit of a frame lag in the images, so occasionally two images sort of morph together. This can produce some odd results. At one point, two images melded and for a second it looked like you had a tyrannosaurus head. Your mother instantly exclaimed, “We’re having a dinosaur!” and I said, “Awesome!” In a few of the shots, you look a little bit like an elderly goblin. (Don’t worry, I’ll love you whether you’re a dinosaur, an elderly goblin, or a baby. Even if you’re an elderly goblin dinosaur baby.)

Now I know this technology must sound pretty unimpressive, given you’re in the future and all. I mean, this is only 2012. We don’t have an emergency medical hologram, or a Leonard McCoy, or even one of those lame water-filled tanks that Luke Skywalker used in The Empire Strikes Back. (In ten years, I truly hope you understand all of those references.)

Anyway, you also probably noticed that we are no longer referring to you as Bernard. That name was just a placeholder until we found out your gender; at the ultrasound, we found out that you are a boy. We’re planning on naming you Oliver, and I’ve been attempting to break my habit of saying, “How’s Bernard?!” to your mother. Instead, I usually start off by saying “How’s Bernard” only to correct myself and say something like, ‘How’s Bernard-iver” or “Boliver?” I promise to break this habit by the time you are hatched.

As you may have overheard, we’re planning on a space theme for your future room. Now your mother might say that this is really just an excuse for your father to go on Ebay and other such online auctions to scope out sweet deals on space-related paraphernalia. But son, do you know that the Topps Trading Card Company issued a set of space-themed trading cards in 1958? 1958! And then there’s the 1965 All-Star Game Program, which features some great retro art with a whole bunch of stars in the sky and crucially, the game also was held in Minnesota at Metropolitan Stadium. (That’s not to mention the 1965 World Series Program, which featured two space capsules—SPACE CAPSULES!— colliding together.) Needless to say, I’m quite confident that someday you will inform your mother how absolutely correct I was about insisting that these items are essential for any infant’s space-theme room.

Finally, I have one somewhat serious matter to address. I was (ever-so-slightly) disappointed in you last week, because according to What’s to Expect you were the size of an onion. An onion, Oliver. Now you probably have no idea what an onion is, so let me explain the problem. Onions are terrible, awful things. They are these vegetables with many layers; the layers are like wrapping paper on a present, except in this case, they are never-ending awful presents and the wrapping paper only covers another sheet of paper and the only “present” is the vegetable itself, which is smelly and oily and makes you cry. Now you don’t want to cry, do you Oliver? Of course not. And neither does your father.

Anyway, there’s a happy ending to this story: you’re no longer an onion! You’re now a bell pepper! (Don’t worry, Daddy even loved you when you were an onion. After all you didn’t really have a choice in the matter.)

Just please do one thing for me: promise me that you’ll never turn into an onion again, even a make-believe one. (Especially not for Halloween! That’d be terrible.)

I can’t wait to meet you,

 

Brett

You can see more here: www.brettsletters.com
Like Brett’s Letters on Facebook.