One of my college professors once told me about her first few months living upstate after several decades spent as a New York City resident. Each night, she would lie awake until near dawn, kept up by all the quiet of the country. The peace and darkness was too drastic a change from the constant din of the Big Apple. What should have been a good, relaxing thing left her jangled and sleepless for weeks.

Likewise, this past Monday, I opened our general email box, prepared for the weekend’s onslaught of spam. Normal totals are in the hundreds and, as I retrieved the messages, the counter stopped at a mere 80 emails. I thought something was wrong. All day, coworkers fretted that email was not working since no one was getting ads for Viagra or offers from African princes to safeguard millions of dollars while their country goes through a bloody coup. I turns out our ISP finally started doing something on their end to block these unwanted messages and, without that e-bloat, things were quiet…too quiet. After months of complaints about the spam, now that we have gotten what we wanted, suspicion ran rampant.

Further evidence of bemoaning good news came to light this very morning at the crack of dawn. My eyes popped open, already fixed on the baby monitor in our room. Yes, it was still working. I rolled over to look at the clock: 5:47 AM. I had last checked the time over seven hours ago, right before I fell asleep. Hazel hadn’t made a peep all night for the first time ever. Obviously something must be terribly wrong; our family had just become a sad statistic. With trepidation, Megan and I creeped into the nursery like Abbott and Costello entering the mummy’s tomb. What horrors would we find in the crib? Braced for the worst, we leaned over the railing and peeked down, seeing a very asleep Hazel. Her wee chest rose and fell with respiration. We each let out a sigh of relief, the noise stirring Hazel from her slumber. So again, much like Abbott and Costello (I’m not saying who is who), we bumbled our way out of her room before she woke up, saw us, and wanted to play.

When everything goes our way, most people grow bored, untrusting, or downright agitated. Deep down people like complaining about the weather or the president or work or whatever. I wonder if we could handle living in a utopia. It’s like that ancient proverb: Mo’ money, mo’ problems.

A few days ago, as I motored through the Rockwellian wonder that is a New England autumn, an equally classic and poignant scene caught my eye. Along the roadside, a father was teaching his five- or six-year-old daughter to ride a bike. Pink and white streamers fluttering from the handlebars, the dad was pushing the girl’s bicycle along at a good clip, shouting out encouraging words to her with each footfall. His face was exuberant in a way that I hope I will be when I teach Hazel to pedal her first Schwinn (Huffy? Recommendations?). However, I cannot comment on the girl’s visage as sometime between the start of the lesson and when I saw the pair, her helmet had slid down her head and affixed itself firmly over her face, like a hockey mask. It could have been that she is just really psyched to be Jason Voorhees for Halloween, but I’d sooner chalk this one up to an overzealous yet oblivious dad.

I don’t think I’ll wind up like this guy, rocketing my daughter down a bumpy road while she’s blinded by a bike helmet, but I do see myself daily obstinately sticking to my Parental Plan A when Plan B would work so much better. If I’m rocking her to sleep, and she’s wriggling and fussy, I stay the course and rock the rocking chair more fervently in an effort to “wear her down” rather than just standing up to rock her or seeing if she wants more bottle. Like famed general, president, and drunk Ulysses S. Grant, I have leadership tunnel vision, and I’ll be damned if I’ll show any weakness in shifting gears, even if I have to send soldier after soldier into enemy fire - metaphysically speaking of course.

So if you ever see Future John running along, pushing Future Hazel on a bike while she is suffering from helmet failure, assume I have altitude sickness (very likely since I live at sea level) and knock me out.

As Megan pointed out the other day, even though this weblog is allegedly about parenting and such, I typically just work our daughter into an unrelated post concerning video game and cartoon references for the sake of maintaining my “father blog” street cred. I’m not saying she’s exactly right, but I will concede that I eschew the typical parent blog posts in favor of something that (if I weren’t me) I’d actually want to read. With that in mind, here’s a post in which I get all proud over Hazel’s current weight gain and position on the infant growth chart:

Hazel survived her four-month check-up Monday and passed each pediatric hurdle put before her. She graduated from half an eye dropper of infant Tylenol to a full dropper of pain-easing relief, which she may be needing over the next few weeks. Hazel’s gums are going through tectonic upheaval; her tiny two front bottom teeth have been marching steadily upward and outward over the past month. The doctor estimates that the wee white monoliths (can a pair of something retain the moniker monoliths?) will break through the surface of her pink baby gums in less than a month. As they get closer to cresting, Hazel spends more and more time sobbing in discomfort with a minimum of three of her fingers firmly rooted in her mouth. I feel for her; baby teeth don’t come in all at once, but average about two or so every month from the first dental outcroppings. Just another example of why intelligent design is a pile of hokum. There’s nothing well thought out about this system of tooth delivery.

The good news is that Hazel continues to pack on the ounces. She gained about 11 in the past week and now tops the scales at a whopping 13 lbs, 9 oz - more than doubling her birth weight. This weight gain has given her the stoutness of a bag of cement – I’m sure her fledgling balance enjoys her low center of gravity. But she has grown “taller” as well, measuring 24 inches from head to heel. Both these quantifications chart her smack dab in the middle of both the weight gain curve and the height curve - she’s in the 50^th percentile for each. To quote Scott Thompson’s Buddy Cole, she’s “the porridge Goldilocks chose.”

However, on the head circumference chart (yes, they have one of those), her 16.5 inch noggin clocks in at around the 70^th percentile. Her head isn’t large enough to fit the Aleutian Islands inside or anything, but we have been finding it exceedingly difficult to fit hats on her cute cabeza. They all tend to pop atop her cranium like a New Year’s champagne cork at midnight.

Sincerely, Hazel’s dad, John the Self-esteem Slaying Jerk

So today Hazel turns the big Four-Em-Oh. It’s still amazing to think that she’s only been breathing air for less than half a year. I hit the four month mark back on March 30, 1979 - the same day that Norah Jones was born. Later, she would record our wedding song. I love meaningless coincidences like that. Consider this one discovered by Megan: her parents used to live in Winslow, ME. Now they live in Belfast, ME. WinSLOW…BelFAST…get it?

Speaking of connections that don’t really amount to anything, I was born in Derby, CT. Hazel was born in Rockport, ME. A derby is a type of hat and Rockport is a brand of shoe. Should Hazel decide to have child(ren) as an adult and said child(ren) are born in Tuxedo, NY, well then I’ll just be in lame connection heaven.

^{Author’s Note: I wanted to riff more on towns with clothing names, but I couldn’t find any others. I mean, I know about Chino, CA, but even having heard that word before, I’m not sure if they’re pants or what. I thought for sure there’d be a Leisure Suit, NV or Pajama, IL on the map. This deserves more study; there may be a graduate thesis in the works.}

I know that’s it’s only the eve of mid-September but I can’t help but look ahead. In a few weeks, the Twelfth Annual National Facial Hair Month (NFHM) kicks into hair-growing gear. I don’t think I have too many readers unfamiliar with this joyous event, but to sum up quickly: I dubbed October NFHM back in 1996 in an effort to be lazier about personal hygiene as a college freshman. Over the years, this annual eschewing of shaving in October has helped me with many a Halloween costume. I feel that gluing on a fake beard, mustache, or sideburns would be an affront to my hirsute ancestors. So year in and year out I grow the same beard, always groomed in the same way. In light of my new paternal identity, I think I should shake things up.

The way I see it, I have two options:

1. The first route, which would be just a slight variation on my standard practice, entails me growing a beard and never trimming it nor shaping it into an appealing shape. I’d simply put down my Mach 3 and let the follicles go for the glory. I’d do so in the spirit of such mythical daddy figures as Father Time, Father Christmas, and God. This method forces me to deal with neck hair and makes it nigh impossible to travel by air, but at least it would be something different.
2. I can go for the classic television father look and limit myself to having only a mustache this year. To me, the idea of “dad” is always mustachioed and typically wears shorts that are too short, exposing surprisingly skinny and hairless legs. However I don’t know if I could go 31 days looking like a child molester, Tony Orlando, or both.

So I haven’t decided yet, but I have a few more weeks before allocating some or all of my face to follicular wilderness. One thing is for certain: no matter my choice, I am sure Hazel will be scared of me for a while. But that’s the price you pay when upholding such a noble tradition. As always, once October rises forth like the Great Pumpkin, I hope you will grow along with me.

So Hazel is knocking on the four-month-old door and with that comes more milestones of maturity. She’s kind of like a Pokémon: she’s tiny, cute, and gains new abilities each time she levels up. Plus, she can projectile vomit an impressive distance and changes colors based on her mood.

Likewise, Megan and I acquire new skills, although I liken this to role playing games; the more experience we get, the more capabilities we unlock. Having already obtained the powers to shrug off (mentally) any baby bodily fluid with which we get splattered and a keen decoding technique to discern the meaning behind seemingly identical Hazel coos, we are now moving into the portion of parenting that I always feared to be toughest. We now have to be able to ignore our child.

Now this is science here, people, so don’t call social services just yet. Most experts agree that, around the time your baby crossed the four- or five-month mark, you should let them gain a little independence. This can be done by setting them near some toys and letting them play unassisted. Rather than place the plush toy directly in their grasp, place it next to them and let the baby reach out and grab it. We’re talking motor skills as well as self-reliance, so huzzah for this strategy.

Of course, this also means we need to block out her nighttime noises, letting her fuss a bit without running right in to cuddle her back to sleep. I thought this would be difficult, but let me tell you, when it’s two in the morning and I see the peak meter on the baby monitor spike with a single wail, I draw great comfort that medical experts suggest, nay demand, that I roll over and go back to sleep rather than drag myself out of bed and down the hall to her room. Not to say that we’re letting her “cry it out” for hours on end. If she fusses for a few minutes, then one of us gets up and checks her out. But we have officially (and sanctifiedly) moved beyond the bomb squad attitude to jump up at the tiniest cry.

So, today’s parenting lesson: Block out your child’s twilight shrieks, your beauty rest is more important and that probably isn’t a demon clown in their closet. Probably.