There's beauty all around you. Take a look; be open to it. You'll see it, too.

"Daddy, I don't want to be in Ms. Marjan's class today."

I looked down at Jason. "What? You like Ms. Marjan. And all your friends have already moved up to her class. You're going to have so much fun being in the same class with them again."

"No, I'm not," he insisted sullenly.

I adjusted my grip on Eva's carseat/baby carrier—it was her second day at daycare, but my first day bringing her—and looked down at Jason, trying to be sympathetic but firm. "I'm sorry, buddy," I said, "But it's time for you to be in her class now. You've been getting all ready for this, and now it's time."

He didn't respond, just held my hand as we kept walking.

We were running a bit late this morning, so by the time we got to his new classroom—separated from his old "room" by just a short partition running across the space—the rest of the kids were already sitting down in their circle and the teacher was handing out little cards to each of them. We hurried to get his blanket, stuffed animal, and sweater into his cubby and then I led him over to the group.

"OK, buddy, can I have a hug?" I asked, kneeling beside him. He didn't say anything, just wrapped his little arms around my neck and buried his face into my shoulder. He didn't wail or cry out, the way he usually does when he's upset. He just hugged me tightly and sniffled a little.

I pulled away from him gently. "Look at me buddy." He lifted his teary eyes to meet mine, and I could see that he was trying to hold it together. "Jay, you're going to have a really good day. All your friends are here to play with you, and it's going to be lots of fun. You're a big boy, and you can do this."

His face screwed all up and his voice broke as he threw his arms around me again. "Daddy, I don't want you to go."

I looked down to my side where Eva was sleeping in her carrier. Jason has been a wonderful big brother, and I can see that he genuinely loves his sister. But it's hard on him, too, dealing with change over the past few months. Just last night he got out of bed an hour after I tucked him in, saying that he didn't like being all by himself in his room. I know it's because Eva sleeps in a cradle by our bed, and try as we might to explain that she needs to be in our room because she's a baby, and that she'll be moving into her own room soon, he can't grasp yet that different people have different needs. He just knows that everyone—even the dog—sleeps in Mommy and Daddy's room, except him.

All of that flashed through my mind as I knelt there holding him, and my heart just about broke. I want so much to show him that I love him just as much as I always have, and just as much as his sister. I take time to play with him, and give him as much affection as he'll let me. But right at that moment it didn't feel like I'd done enough.

A few moments passed, then the teacher called Jason over to help her. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and went over, and she shooed me away, mouthing "Have a nice day!" behind his head.

As it happened, Juliette stayed home sick today, so I was the one to pick the kids up after work. When I arrived, he was out in the yard, running around and playing happily with his little friends. He ran over as soon as he saw me, smiling.

I crouched down to look him in the eyes and smiled. "Jay Jay, can I tell you something?" I asked.

"What?"

"I love you very much, and I missed you a lot today," I said. "I thought about you all day."

He hugged me. "Me too, Daddy."

At stoplights, I like to look around at the other cars around me and see what the other drivers are doing. Usually they're just sitting and staring at the light, and these days it's pretty common to see them texting. Once in a while I'll see some guy picking his nose or some woman fixing her makeup. But my absolute favorite is when I see someone singing.

I've always been a car singer. When I was little, in the back seat of my mom's car, the chest strap of my seat belt would become a guitar and I would rock out to her Billy Ocean tape. Nowadays, I might sing to Jason about taking him on a magic carpet ride during our drive to pre-school. Sometimes I sing to my steering wheel about being a pair of underwater pearls or imploring it to bring it's sweet loving on home to me. Sometimes I sing softly, sometimes I get carried away. I have, on occasion, drawn smirks from other drivers.

But, you know, even though I look every day, I rarely see anyone else singing, or even so much as bopping their heads or drumming a finger on the steering wheel. Every once in a while, though, I'll look over and see someone, head thrown back, shoulders bouncing, belting one out with abandon. And on the best days, they happen to notice me noticing them while we both sing, and we share a little smile. Neither of us knows what tune is on the other's stereo, but there's still a recognition, a tiny bond. It only lasts a second or two before it's time to move again, but while it lasts it's wonderful.

This is the time of year for retrospectives and resolutions, both of which always strike me as simultaneously necessary and kind of ridiculous. There's always so much navel-gazing and hand-wringing, and then there's all the subsequent navel-gazing and hand-wringing about the navel-gazing and hand-wringing. And yet, reflection is good for the soul, goals give you something to reach for, and, well, if I weren't the type to do my introspection in such a public manner, you wouldn't be reading this, would you?

So.

2011 was a year of discovery and redefinition for me. I found out that I am a good enough photographer that people will pay me to take their pictures. I got the first inklings of what it's like to be the father of a daughter. I learned that I can write on a schedule, but not when I'm also trying to support a photo business, a day job, two kids, a wife, a dog, and a social life.

I started out the year thinking of myself as a father, a husband, a writer, an engineer, and lots of other things. Now? Still a father and husband, of course, but with my daughter's birth and my son continuing to grow and change, those mean something different now. (I suppose that will always be true.) Am I still a writer? I suppose, since I still write, but I'm not really trying to be a writer anymore, being so caught up with being a photographer.

And what's the plan for 2012? What will I do differently? What will I start and what will I stop?

One thing I will stop is promoting this blog the way I used to. I've spent a lot of time over the past few years thinking and planning and trying to figure out how to get more readers, more pageviews. At one time I wanted to be the next Heather Armstrong, but I think we can all agree that the blogger-turned-Internet-celebrity ship has sailed. And that's just fine. I'm gratified (and a little amazed) that there are a few people out there who enjoy reading this site, but it's time for me to stop trying so hard to be popular and just write because it's what I like to do.

The rest? Maybe I'll lose weight, write more, take more pictures, get to bed earlier. It's not looking so great for that last one, so far, but who knows?

I'm looking forward to finding out.

This morning I stood in front of the house I grew up in, for the first time in seven years. It was different, and the same. Like me, I suppose.

I was surprised at how small it looked—how small the whole neighborhood looked, actually. And how graceless the lines were, how rough the walls. I didn't step onto the property, just stood on the gravel outside the driveway and looked in. The air smelled of oak and earth and river plants and cold, just the way I remembered. Familiar, but foreign now.

Everything about the old neighborhood was like that. The doghouse next door had the same names on it, though the people had moved away—and, come to think of it, those dogs are probably long since dead. The little stone mailbox down the street was gone and across from where it had stood someone had put up a mansion—with columns! But just past that was the thicket of cactus where my brother and I had hid and rained down with squirt guns on our friends. The big chalk shelf we used to swim next to was still there, but the river didn't cover it anymore. The same, but different.

Standing there looking at the house my parents sold seven years ago, I knew, finally, that I could never live in that town again. I've carried little bits and pieces of the place with me for all this time, leaves that I could press between the pages of my memory, or maybe old, worn photos that I could keep in my wallet and thumb the edges of every now and again. But I spent too long away; now these old photos are all I have, and coming back, they're all I can see. You can't build a new life around the ghosts of your old one.

I don't know exactly how long I stood there, my breath steaming in the cold of the morning, looking at that old house. Eventually, a man on a motorcycle rode up and parked in the driveway. "Hi there," he said, smiling.

"Morning," I replied. He tucked his helmet under his arm and pulled the keys out of the ignition. I blurted out, "I used to live here." I immediately felt pathetic, but continued on anyway. "Almost fifteen years ago now."

We chatted for a few minutes. I found out he'd been renting the place for four months. He was very polite; friendly, even. I felt awkward for interrupting his morning and quickly bid him good day.

I took a turn by my mom's old shop—empty now—and my old school. I took a moment to visit the tree we planted at my afterschool program to remember a friend who had died. I took a picture of it, then reached out and touched it's cool, rough bark. Some kids were playing at the playground next door while their moms complained about the school's plans to remove the sandboxes and replace them with wood chips. I'm not sure if they noticed me standing there, nor what they would have seen if they did. A strange man caressing a tree, I guess.

We like to think that when something or some place leaves its mark on us, it, too, retains some imprint from us. But it doesn't really work that way. You may not forget it, but eventually it forgets you.

Apropos of nothing, the line "Jazz to Moonbase 2! A ginormous, weird-looking planet just showed up in the suburbs of Cybertron!" popped into my head this morning as I was shaving. For those of you under the age of 30, that is a line from the 1986 animated Transformers: The Movie, which I probably saw twenty times or more when I was in elementary school.

Thinking about that line, it occurred to me to wonder whether it might not be a little racist that Jazz's voice sounds black. And I wasn't sure whether the voice actor was black or not, and I didn't know if it would make it more racist or less if he were white. (It turns out that Jazz was voiced by Scatman Crothers, who was black, and who died shortly after the movie was released.)

But then, really, why did Jazz even have an accent? Why did Perceptor sound English? And, come to think of it, Shockwave and Starscream sounded vaguely English as well? What's up with that? All of them are robots from another planet. Why should any of them have regional accents?

That led me to think about Optimus Prime's voice, which made me wonder if Peter Cullen might not just have the best voice of all time. I could listen to that man read the phone book. I still get taken back to the excitement and amazement of childhood when I hear him say lines like "One shall stand, one shall fall, Megatron," or the "From days of long ago..." monologue from the opening of Voltron.

Thinking about voltron made me remember that live-action Voltron short that the AV Club linked back in October. I can't imagine that a movie like that could ever get made, or made well, but man, if it ever did I would watch the hell out of it.

I wondered, though, how a movie like that would go. Would King Zarkon really be the main antagonist? Because, really, Zarkon was a pretty ineffective villain. He pretty much had one go-to move—sending a Ro-Beast out to go destroy Voltron—and it always failed. Looking back, it's kind of baffling that he wasn't overthrown and someone more competent put in his place.

But, of course, none of the bad guy leaders in 80's cartoons really made much sense. Cobra Commander was supposed to be the leader of an international terrorist organization and he was a whiny loser. Even Destro, who wasn't as much of an out-and-out wiener, still made no sense as the head of a huge multinational corporation.

At this point I came back to myself enough to realize that I had spent nearly fifteen minutes pondering the minutia of some rather silly, extremely childish, and completely out-of-date pop culture items, and I had to marvel at just where my brain will go when I leave it unattended. But by then I was just about done with my shower and I had to start paying attention to real life again.

Just so you know, I am aware of the irony that this, of all things, would be the next thing I post after a rant about not being taken seriously as a mature adult. Maybe it's for the best that Juliette is the one to get the respect as a grown-up, after all.

I am a man. I am a father and husband. Around my house, I am responsible for things like taking the garbage cans out to the curb, squashing spiders, grilling, putting up Christmas lights, administering our home computer network, changing lightbulbs and batteries, assembling new furniture and electronics, and balancing our checking account. And, yes, I watch the occasional game of football.

I also kiss boo-boos. I clean the kitchen and dining room, every day. I change diapers. I feed babies. I bathe my son and brush his teeth and put his pajamas on. I take my son to school. I do laundry. I rock my daughter to sleep. I give my kids as many hugs and kisses as they'll allow. I play with them, but I also educate them about the rules of the house and society, and enforce those rules, and do so calmly. I sing to my son every night. I show up to doctor's and dentist's appointments, and teacher conferences, dance recitals, and music lessons. I am, in almost every conceivable way, as much a parent as my wife is.

Of course, none of that will stop people from automatically assuming that Juliette does everything around the house and that I'm essentially a very large child, obsessed with games and toys and not really a contributor to my family in any non-financial way. And no one will ever honor or venerate me as a nurturer or life-giver. I can't lactate or carry a child or give birth, so none of the rest of it really matters, not in terms of getting any respect as a parent.

Why does this even matter to me? After all, the people who really matter and who really know me—including the most important one, Juliette—know that I'm a good dad and a good husband. It shouldn't matter to me when some woman I've barely met rolls her eyes and mutters "Men..." It shouldn't offend me that the primary representation of fatherhood in TV and movies is of a bumbler who barely knows his children. It shouldn't bother me that Father's Day cards and commercials almost all have the message "You don't really want to be doing this parenting thing anyway, so why don't you take the day off?"

But it does. It really, really does.

I know it sounds like I'm trying to eat my cake and have it, too. I get that women have it bad in this world. No, I really do. I know that women receive less pay for the same work and less respect for the same level of expertise. I know that the vast majority of property and businesses are owned by men. I know that there is a systemic bias in our culture that steers girls away from "masculine" fields like science, technology, and business leadership. I know all of that, and, believe me, I am outraged by it. I hated it before I was a father, and now that I have a daughter, I hate it even more. I tell my daughter—who is too young to know what I'm saying yet—that she is beautiful, but I also tell her that she is smart and strong and that she has value apart from the way she looks, and that she can be anything she wants to be. I tell those things to my son, too.

So, yes, I know there is inequality in the world, and that I am a member of a group that benefits from that inequality. I also know that we live in a culture where the stories we choose to tell ourselves, especially at this time of year, teach us that the things that we associate with masculinity—physical prowess, career, money, authority—are ultimately shallow, immature, or empty, and that the truly important things in life are home, family, and personal relationships. The things that I'll never really be given credit for, not in any general sense.

And you know, maybe I could still deal with all of that if not for the fact that my kids seem to feel the same way. Oh, I know they love me, but it still stings that Jason's first request in the morning, every morning, is "Mommy," and if he sees me first instead, he cries. That he'll often ask for her to sub in during my parts of our routine, but rarely the other way around. That he usually only cries for me when I'm not around, but often cries for her when she's right there. Eva seems to show that preference, too, though at this point I'm hopeful that it's mostly due to her desire to eat.

In the end, all I can do is what I already do: the best I can. I hear tell that the current crop of dads is the most involved and nurturing group of men in several generations. Maybe by the time I'm a grandfather, fathers will get the recognition that I seem to want so badly now.

I'm not really holding my breath, though.

Here's a brief, non-inclusive list of things that have happened since I wrote my last review: I had a birthday, Jason had a birthday, the seasons changed, I shot my first wedding, and my daughter was born.  I also read five books and saw three movies.  Here are some quick takes, just to help me get caught up:

The Wise Man's Fear: After such a strong debut and after waiting impatiently for as long as I did, I was a little worried that the second installment of Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller Chronicle wouldn't live up to my hopes. I needn't have worried, though—this second chapter may be even better. I'm not sure how Rothfuss will be able to wrap up this series in just one more book—there seems to be so much story still untold—and I'm sure that it will be years yet before I get to find out, but, man, I'm hooked. (Read 6/26/11 - 6/30/11.)

Manhood for Amateurs: I received this as a birthday present from a friend of mine who has very good taste in books, and who paid me the incredible compliment of telling me that she chose this for me because it reminded her of my writing. Having read it, I can kind of see what she means, in that the essays in this collection are about the same sorts of things that I tend to think and write about: fatherhood, American culture, pivotal moments of his youth and young adulthood. The difference is in the quality of writing—it almost seems impossible but his prose is both unmistakeably in his voice, so particular to himself, but at the same time so resonant and familiar that it felt like he was reading my mind. Suffice it to say, if you enjoy the stuff I write here, you will love this book. (Read 7/6/11 - 8/15/11.)

Cars 2: It seems thin praise, but mostly what I can think to say about this movie is that it's not as bad as everybody said it was. Sure, there wasn't much to it, a lot of the milieu didn't make sense, and the first movie was better. But it was a fun little diversion, and Jason liked it enough that he's still talking about some of the characters three months later. (Viewed 7/9/11.)

Winnie the Pooh: I wish I could tell you more about this movie, but I fell asleep about 20 minutes in, and didn't wake up until the credits rolled. What I do remember seemed a little smug in its postmodernity—the movie is presented as a book being read, and it breaks the fourth wall several times by having the characters interact with the printed text of the book—but the characters were mostly as I remembered them and Jason liked it. ("Viewed" 7/17/11.)

Storm Front and Fool Moon: One of my co-workers loaned me the first two books in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, and I tore through both of them in three days. They were, as he presented them, quite fluffy but very fun reads. Urban fantasy isn't typically one of my favorite genres, but I enjoyed the characters and the fast-paced, action-mystery plots, and I'm looking forward to picking up the rest of the series one of these days. (Read 8/16/11 - 8/18/11.)

The Lion King: Ever since we got that CD of Disney songs for Jason, I've been excited for him to see The Lion King, and he's been excited as well. When it came to theaters in advance of the Blu-Ray release (I could go on and on about how much I hate the whole concept of the Disney Vault, but that didn't stop me from snapping up the Diamond Edition as soon as it became available) we headed over to our local cineplex, where we found that the only showing at a good time for us was in the 3D theater. Which is unfortunate, because this movie was really not well-served by being re-done in 3D. Let's leave aside the argument that 3D is gimmicky and distracting and potentially migraine-inducing—the bigger problem is that the 3D version is way too dark. This is a movie that is all about bright, beautiful, cinematic scenes, and to have it all smothered and dulled by light-eating 3D glasses is just shameful. It looks better on my TV at home, and that's just not right. (Viewed 9/17/11.)

I do have one more book left to review, but since I just finished it a couple of days ago I'm going to let it marinate a bit more and give it its own post, hopefully next week.  Until then, have a happy Halloween!

Just a little administrative note: I'm no longer part of Amazon's affiliate program, so I no longer receive a commission for sales through links on this site.  The links are there now only as a convenience to you.

"Ugh, this place stinks."

"Yeah, you noticed?"

"It smells like balls."

"I don't even know what that smells like."

"It smells like unwashed balls here."

"Gross."

"It smells like balls with manure smeared all over them."

"It probably smells like anything with manure smeared over it."

"Balls."

"It smells like your face with manure smeared on it."

"My face smells like balls?"

"I don't know; I don't know what balls smell like."

"This smell is really… earthy."

"Well, that's a nice way of looking at it."

"Earthy and ballsy."

". . . You're going to put this on your blog, aren't you?"

This is long overdue.

It's been an interesting experience, the last few weeks, a superposition of opposites that, oddly, makes me think of Dickens. Things have been both familiar and new, challenging and easy, fun and aggravating. It hasn't been the worst of times, of course, and I feel like maybe we are slowly finding our way toward the best of times.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The morning of September 19th—the morning of Eva's birth day—I woke up at 4:13, two minutes before the alarm went off. I stayed in bed for four more minutes, just enough time for Juliette to get up and make her way to the shower. Somehow we both managed to get cleaned up and slipped out without waking Jason up or Juliette's sister, who was there to be with him that morning while we were out. I felt guilty about leaving without telling him, but it was easier this way.

We left the house at about a quarter past five—Juliette's c-section was scheduled for 7:30 AM, but we had to arrive two hours early to fill out paperwork and get ready. (We chose for Juliette to have a c-section again rather than attempt a VBAC.) At one point during the drive, Calexico's "Close Behind" came on the radio, and I commented to Juliette that I had been listening to that song a lot right around the time Jason was born. We laughed at the coincidence, and arrived right on schedule.

By 5:51, Juliette was in bed and had the fetal monitors on. We got three texts in the next two minutes, the most interesting of which was from her sister: "Suck on your saliva." (Juliette hadn't had anything to eat or drink in about eight hours by then, and she was very thirsty.)

Then we waited. For the next two and a half hours we talked and looked at our phones and wondered how much longer it would be. At some point, the nurse came in and told us that another woman had needed to have an emergency c-section, so we would have to wait until the operating room became available. That was, of course, just fine with us—we could wait, which in and of itself was striking considering how much pain Juliette had been in when we arrived at the hospital for Jason's birth. So we waited. 7:30 came and went. We checked our phones a lot. I took a lot of inane pictures, like this one:

Our turn finally came at 8:25, at which point the nurses had Juliette out of the room and wheeling down the hall almost before I knew what was going on. As we passed through the doorway, Juliette exclaimed, "Mike, look!" I followed her finger to the sign beside the door, discovering that our LDR room had been dedicated to someone named Eva Hough.

I should back up a second and explain something. You see, until that moment, we didn't really know what our daughter's name would be. Just as we had with Jason, Juliette and I had come up with a short list of possible first name-middle name combinations that we liked, but after that we wanted to wait until we saw what she looked like. "Eva" was on that list, but so were three other names. Now, I don't really believe in signs or fate, but when we saw that sign, we both just knew.

Just a few moments later, we were at the operating room door. Juliette was wheeled directly in, while a nurse politely directed me to wait there and said someone would come get me when they were ready to begin.

And then I was by myself.

I don't want to make more of this than it's worth, because as tense and anxious as I felt while I waited outside that operating room, I wasn't the one about to be sliced open. I wasn't the one being handled by a bunch of strangers. I wasn't the one being poked and pinched to see if my spinal was working yet. (It never did fully kick in, but I'm getting ahead of myself again.)

So, yes, I know that I had the easier part, but that doesn't mean it was easy for me. I had thought that having gone through this once before it might be easier this time. The thing is, watching your wife go into surgery—even a routine, well-understood, everyday kind of surgery—is not easy. I paced and fidgeted, rubbing my thumbs across the fuzz on the inside of my mask. I took pictures of everything: the walls, the doors, my hands, the scrub basin, the blanket that lined what would be my daughter's first cradle. I massaged my palms to keep my fingers from clenching. I gave thin smiles to the nurses and doctors that walked in and out of the OR. And I looked at the door a lot, wondering what was going on inside as the minutes ticked by.

The door was, as doors often are, uncommunicative.

They finally let me in at two minutes to nine. Juliette was stretched out on the table, a sheet of blue fabric separating us from her belly. She looked up at me when I came in and gave me a smile that I imagine was meant to be as reassuring as the ones I had just flashed the doctors, and was just as unsuccessful as mine probably were. I sat down beside her and took her hand. I don't remember much about the next few moments—I don't know what we said to each other, and I don't remember exactly when they started cutting. I do remember Juliette's eyes alternately widening and clenching shut, and the way she sounded as she gasped in pain. I do remember telling her "You're doing great," and the way her brow furrowed as she shook her head in response. I remember the way she gripped my hand tightly, and how her hand felt in mine as I squeezed back, and how her hair felt under her cap as I stroked her head and tried—and failed—to comfort her. It wasn't supposed to be this way—it hadn't been this way the last time—but something about the shape of Juliette's vertebrae was making the spinal ineffective.

I had told myself that I was not going to look behind the screen this time. I had looked when Jason was born, and the sight of Juliette's stomach cut open and the doctor's fingers inside her, pushing muscle fibers aside, was too much for me—I still can't think about it without getting emotional. But I had also been able to see Jason's head pop out, and somehow the need to do the same, to bear witness to my daughter's first moments, was more important than my desire to save myself the trauma of seeing my wife's insides. So I looked, just in time to see the doctor do something and a gush of what must have been amniotic fluid—but looked a lot like blood—come splashing out of the incision. I looked away, then forced myself to look again a few seconds later and saw Eva's head slip out of the hole in Juliette's stomach. What a strange thing it is, to see something at once so wonderful and so terrible.

The doctor began to push the baby out, and Juliette moaned. I turned back to her and put my hand on her forehead. I think I told her it was almost over. And then it was over, and the doctor lifted our daughter up above the screen and showed her to us.

And in that moment, I didn't see the blood dripping off her, or how pale and gray her skin was. Just then, what I noticed was how much deeper and louder her voice was than Jason's had been, and how much stronger her cries were. Funny, where your mind will go at the biggest moments of your life.

It was 9:05. The whole ordeal, which Juliette and I would both have sworn was at least half an hour, if not longer, was actually just seven minutes. The nurses took Eva—by then we both knew that that was her name—over to another table to wipe her off and wrap her up. I hesitated; I needed to be with my daughter, and I needed to be with my wife, and I didn't know which one I could stand to abandon. Fortunately, Juliette is more clear-headed than I am—she told me to go and be with our new girl.

And, boy, she was angry. Not that I can blame her, of course, being pulled from a safe, warm environment where she could be lulled by her mother's heartbeat into a cold, stark, brightly lit hospital room. Again, I was struck by how much more powerful her lungs were than her brother's had been at his birth—and at the time, I had been impressed with his pipes, too. The nurses wiped her down and presented the cord for me to cut, then wrapped her up and put a hat on her, and I brought Eva to meet her mother for the first time on the outside.

I wish I could remember what Juliette said just then, to me or to Eva, but it's gone now. What I do remember is marvelling at how much like my grandfather Eva looked. "You're definitely a Sakasegawa," I told her.

Just a few minutes later, Eva was in her little hospital bassinet, and I was wheeling her down the hall to the waiting room where Jason was sitting with Juliette's parents and sister.

"Hi buddy!" I greeted him. "I have someone for you to meet!"

"Is that Tinkerbell?" he asked.

"Yeah, that's your sister!" I responded. "Her name is Eva."

Jason stood up on his tiptoes and peered into the bassinet. "I like her," he declared.