At about this time last year, I went to bed, kissed my wife good night, and wished her a happy due date. Five minutes later, her water broke.

Our little boy Mathias turns one today.

My first father’s day was pleasant and relatively low-key. Lisa and Mathias were off visiting one of her friends in the morning while I worked on an application for one of the Carlson School’s international seminars. In the afternoon we wandered down to Lake Calhoun for lunch and ice cream at the Tin Fish, which provided decent food at the cost of an unreasonable wait. Mathias, despite missing his afternoon nap, remained chipper for most of the afternoon, too, making it a nice day in general.

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Mathias has been going through some pretty big changes lately. After a couple of extremely long nights, his top two front teeth made their way through his gums last week, an event strangely timed with his new habit of flipping over in his crib. It’s great that he’s finally figured out how to turn onto his stomach without much effort, although for a few days it was a bit of a problem as he’d turn over, decide he didn’t want to be on his stomach, fail at getting back on his side, and subsequently flip the fuck out. He eventually learned to fall asleep on his tummy, though, and with that brought a new, and much welcomed habit: Sleeping through the night!

It’s difficult to state how great of a development sleeping through the night is… Both Lisa and I have benefited, although admittedly more Lisa than me.

I’m planning on dropping his bed in his crib this week. He’s close to standing on his own–he’s already pulled himself up on a few of his more sturdy toys–so it’s only a matter of time before he tries standing in his crib. If he managed to do that, it wouldn’t take much for him to flip himself over the side.

I don’t know what else to say, the little guy is amazing. It blows my mind that he’ll be one year old in a week!

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The next few weeks will be plenty busy. As of this week I’m back in school for the summer session, taking a class on corporate venturing. We’ll be heading down to Madison on the weekend of the fourth for a joint dedication ceremony with Dwight and Michele’s daughter, Nora, and also have a weekend date (for the opening of WALL-E) mixed in as well. That may not sound like much, but, you know, there’s a baby to take care of.

And with that, I still have some work to do on my seminar application, so this will have to be it for now. (Like with most things in life, I waited until the last minute to complete it. Deadline for submission is, uh, tomorrow.) More later.

You know the typical warm-fuzzy TV show or movie that features the little baby saying his first word? The first word, with lots of clarity around what it was and when it happened? Yeah, it doesn’t work that way. At least, it hasn’t worked that way with Mathias. He’s been quite proficient at pumping out the baby babble for some time now, including “da da da da” and “ma ma ma ma,” but assuming he knows what those sounds mean has always required a bit of a leap of faith on the part of Lisa and I.

As of today, there seems to be sufficient evidence that he has grasped “da da,” “ma ma” and a new one, “a da.” “A da,” which translates into adult-speak as “all done,” appears to count as his first multi-word statement as well. After weeks of “all done” from Lisa at the end of each of Mathias’ meals, Mathias has started dropping “a da” when he’s done eating.

Tonight I came home just a few minutes before Mathias was to go down for the night. Lisa, hearing me enter, asked Mathias “Do you want to see da da?” The response was clear and distinct, even from outside his room and down the hall: “DA DA!” And, true enough, he was looking for me as Lisa carried him out of his room.

Growing up, I never imagined myself as a parent. And now here I am, having little things like this melt my heart.

After such a long period not writing, I’m finding it difficult to get back into it again. That’s unfortunate, as there’s been a lot to write about. Mathias in particular has been going through a lot of changes as of late: He’s standing with assistance, is showing signs of (finally) getting ready to crawl, and has become quite proficient at feeding himself. His mom and I have gotten some (supposedly) expert feedback that we may be going too easy on him in trying to get him to sleep through the night, but we both run into philosophical issues in that area. After all, each of us gets up once or twice a night to get a drink of water or visit the bathroom… Is it unreasonable for our child to want to do the same?

Ah, the complicated trials of parenthood. If we spend all this time trying to figure out how to best handle his sleeping habits, I can’t wait to see what we do as we encounter other issues that are more complicated.

Beyond that, Lisa and I went on a date Saturday night. It was fun, if a bit expensive for our cash-constrained household. We didn’t do much: We started with a tasty but overpriced dinner at Duplex, following that with an hour or so wandering around Uptown and desert at Cafe Latte. None of those things would’ve been unusual 15 months ago, but now they’re rare moments to be enjoyed and savored.

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No news on my grades yet. Then there’s that immunization hold on my account… Had I started school two years earlier, it wouldn’t be a problem, but because of some apparent discarding of records, I may have to get a whole mess of shots before I can take another class. It would’ve been nice if this became clear a bit earlier in the year so I could have more time to respond to it, but I guess that’s how the U runs things.

Well, I’m finally getting back to normal after SXSW.  There’s still a stack of people to contact, photos to upload, and a report out to do at work, but other than that, the concerns are the familiar:   Baby, schoolwork and workwork.

In other news, I missed my baby’s first two teeth.  They arrived while I was in Austin.

In other baby news, he apparently loves techno.  Or, at least, he loved techno at Urban Outfitters today.

Yes, we still shop at Urban Outfitters.  No, we’re not 12.

Not much else to report.   I’m still coughing.

Kind of a rough couple days. Lisa’s feeling better, but Mathias has come down with a cold. All things considered, he’s handling it pretty well, but he’s making his dad paranoid. The occasional hacking from his room is actually kind of comforting in a way. It’s a signal that his little body is working through whatever he’s dealing with… And that he’s still breathing.

Note to any prospective parents out there: This is the kind of stuff you’ll end up worrying about. You may even be able to tell that you’re overreacting, but you’ll still do it.

Stories like this in the paper don’t help. Of course, that’s not even remotely comparable to what we have in the Danielson household–Mathias has gotten his shots, has health care and, more than anything else, has a cold, not the flu–but it’s still a bad thing for a parent to read just as his or her son is coming down with something.

~ ~ ~

Back to studying.

I got a call from Lisa that Mathias rolled over on his own this morning.  While he’d managed to roll over a number of times before, those cases had all been on soft surfaces or inclines, both asterisk-producing qualifiers worthy of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.  This morning was on a hard surface, his play mat, meaning he finally found a way to not get stuck on the arm he was trying to cross over.

Typical of Danielson, he decided to do it by himself with no one else around.  I of course was at work, but Lisa didn’t see it happen, either.  She’d walked out of the living room for a few moments to take care of something, and when she returned Mathias was laying on his stomach with his head up in observation.

I came home tonight all ready to study, but instead found myself confronted with a sick baby and an equivalently stressed mom. I’ve gotten some studying done, and am feeling slightly better about the test on Wednesday–slightly–but still wish the little one had picked a different time to get sick.

Ah, parenthood. Lisa occasionally mentions that she sometimes feels she’s going insane when staying at home with the baby all day, but from my point of view she’s doing a remarkably good job. I’m sure if I was the one staying home I would’ve gone coo coo for cocoa puffs a few months ago. It’s kind of weird: She often suffers from a lack of adult interaction, I often suffer from too much of it, and we’ve found no great way to bridge the gap. There have been a number of days where I’ve come home completely wiped out from work and school wanting nothing more than to have an hour or so of down time, only to find her in a position 180 degrees from mine. Long term, this will get better as Lisa and I start going on trips again, or even start finding the time to go out on a few dates. Until then, though, there will probably be a few more nights like this one.

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A few hours after going to sleep, Mathias awoke agitated and cranky. Lisa and I both took turns trying to put him back to sleep, but both of us failed. I came close at one point, but he caught a coughing fit a moment after I put him in his crib, and we were back to square one.

Eventually Lisa and I ended up together in his room with a few of the lights on, with both of us taking turns holding him. He calmed down, started sucking on his fingers, and quietly stared back and forth at the two of us, apparently comforted by the fact these two people he’d grown very familiar with were sitting there keeping him company. And in that way, while it wasn’t a good evening, it wasn’t a completely bad one, either.

In addition to the regular studying and errands handled this weekend, our family headed off to the SuperTarget in Roseville to get some portraits made of Mathias. (I’m kind of old school and wanted to go to Sears, but Lisa had heard good things about the Target studios.) Mathias actually seemed to enjoy the photo shoot, although the end results were kind of disappointing, with the overall quality somewhat akin to what you’d see on a ProLife Across America billboard.

Next time we decide to do a portrait, I’ll probably just buy a fancy set of sheets and do it myself. When we get the prints I’ll see what I can do to scan them in and get them up on Flickr.

~ ~ ~

In other Mathias news, I wouldn’t be surprised if our little guy starts talking in the next few weeks or so. He’s been making various baby sounds for quite some time now, but sometime over the past few days he’s started enunciating in such a way that his sounds seem less like baby babble and more like some unknown foreign language. This is just another one of those things I never thought I’d find exciting, but, let me tell you, it is.

A quick Mathias note:  Our little man is standing!  Okay, so he still completely lacks the entire balance thing, requiring mom or dad to actively steady him, but as of today he seems able to counter gravity for two to three seconds at a time.  He’s still working on effectively grabbing larger objects (i.e., the kind he could steady himself with), too, but seems to be getting closer to success there as well.

I’m amazed at how quickly our little baby is growing.  At this rate he could very well be running around the place by the time he’s one.