Nathan at 10 months
It's hard to believe the explosive rate of change Nathan has been exhibiting in his tenth month. There have been so many changes and developments that I'm afraid I'm losing track.
After he learned how to crawl he very quickly (within two days) was able to pull himself into a standing position using table legs, couches, coffee tables, our legs, doors, pretty much any surface taller than (or more vertical than) floor level. His proficiency in doing this has become so high that it would appear he's been doing it his whole life. He's working on getting better at moving to a sitting position from standing and already has shown marked improvement.
He's also been letting go of the things he uses to haul himself up with. Last night he stood, unaided, for four or five seconds. This is amazing to us.
Two weeks ago Nathan, with only two attempts, was able to climb a single step up from a sunken living room to the kitchen in the house of 
helloheather's mom and step-dad. He just crawled over to it, grabbed hold and hauled himself up as though he knew in advance exactly what he was going to do.
At the end of March, we took Nathan to the park and for the first time put him in a swing. It was a cold and damp day but he didn't seem to mind. He had a blast, especially when crazy daddy would "zoom" to him on the downward leg of the swing.
This past weekend he was able to spend time with torapines with whom he seemed completely enamored. He would give her such piercing looks and smiles; I think he was trying to show off in some cases...it was very cute. At one point, torapines raised her hands up and with a big smile said "yaaaaaay!" He immediately mimicked her. Every time she would do this, he would follow with both the same tone of voice and waving his arms around. It was wonderful to see.
Feeding him "solid" food has become a bit of a challenge. He's discovered that making raspberries while eating is a great way to spread his food from mouth to parent, and onto everything in-between. It's as if he's carpet-bombing the area with food droplets. But the interesting thing about this behavior is that he's actually trying to slurp the food off the spoon and that sometimes he just gets confused and blows out instead.
As helloheather pointed out in a recent blog entry, he has experienced the joy of being upside-down and now wants to be upside-down all the time (when picked up). From your arms he will throw himself backwards in an attempt to communicate this desire. But if you're not expecting it it can be very startling. Even though I now have learned to expect it, I still find it a bit stressful. Here's my child trying actively to experience gravity it one of the most abrupt ways available to him...I feel like I should carry him around wrapped in some sort of airbag suit...
In order to bring things full circle, I'll leave you with this: Because pulling himself up to a standing position has replaced jumping as Best. Activity. Ever., he's very excited to have helloheather or I hold his hands and allow him to "walk" all over the house. He walks in that typical "on the toes" baby sort of way, it's very cute. He receives so much joy from this activity and it makes us both very happy to see him so engaged.
Photographic Prints
helloheather and I have decided it's high time to start framing some of our photography. We have a number of empty frames and a number of empty walls...it's too much of a coincidence 
Deciding on a pattern/location of the frames is going to be the easy part. The hard part is, of course, choosing the photos. I suggested that we pick some of our favorite images from our vacations. This seems like a solid "theme" but then I started thinking about the sources of these images.
35mm film has the standard 2:3 aspect ratio we're all familiar with. It's why the 4x6 print is so ingrained into our minds: it is a print without any cropping. But for larger sizes like 5x7 and 8x10, of course, you end up cropping off parts of the image. If you are intent on printing, then you need to keep this in the back of your mind before even pressing the shutter button. You need to be thinking about how you're going to crop the image as you're looking through the viewfinder. With the digital SLR, even though the sensor sizes are smaller than a 35mm piece of film (unless you buy the very expensive Canon 5D or even more expensive 1Ds Mark II) the aspect ratio has been kept the same.
But in the world of the digital point and shoot, things took a turn. This, I believe, was not due to some desire to change the way we look at images, but rather a production issue: making sure you have the maximum number of sensors packing onto a wafer. (For more on CCD or CMOS sensors see: http://www.shortcourses.com/how/sensors/sensors.htm )
The upshot of that is that digital point and shoots have an aspect ratio of 4:3. Now, the "native" print size is actually 6x8, not 4x6. Every 4x6 you print needs to be (and is) cropped. Even 5x7's need a little bit of cropping.
So, of course, helloheather and I have images in all the above forms. In addition to having to scan a number of color and b&w negatives as well as color slides, we'll need to determine if image size or aspect ratio should drive our decision to print a particular image. Do we want one particularly good image to be a bit larger, if so, how much cropping are we willing to do? What if the image can't be cropped to 8x10, is it worth it to move to 8x12?
This is particularly daunting because of the sheer number of photographs we have. Especially when it comes to negatives...though they are well organized, there just are so many of them. But I guess I'd rather have too many than not enough. It would be a shame to get half-way into this project to find out that very few (or even none) of the images we have would be worthy of spending a number of years up on a wall.
a quiet moment
Saturday evening, after Aaron, Serena, and Charlotte had left and after the sun had set, Nathan and I were in the living room playing. As he usually does, he was crawling all over the place, paying particular attention to his little toy piano. Watching him while lying on my stomach on the floor, I was experiencing quite a bit of melancholy.
A rather heartfelt and simple song by Kate Walsh came up on the playlist on the stereo and Nathan paused in his play. He sat calm and quiet for a bit, looking around and looking at me. He sometimes does this when we're listening to music, especially with acoustic songs...just sits and listens. It was during this song that, for whatever reason, I was feeling my lowest.
As if to counter-point my feelings, Nathan did an extraordinary thing. He looked right at me and clapped his hands. Just like that, just at that moment...
I was overwhelmed with emotions. I didn't move a muscle, to see if perhaps I had been mistaken or if I had somehow misinterpreted what he had done...and so he did it again. And again. He just looked at me and clapped in that i-just-learned-how-to-clap sort of way.
As feelings of love, wonderment, and excitement washed over me, I still didn't move. I didn't call for helloheather (who was in the next room) nor did I pick him up and hug him. I didn't want to break the spell, I didn't want the moment to end.
It's truly bizarre how something so small can have such a profound impact on my psyche. As Nathan approaches his tenth month I can only hope to have more of these amazing moments.
Easter Weekend 2007
Easter weekend was generally pretty good. It was far colder than I had hoped, but at least there was no snow or rain.
hilhas1 and gonj came up and stayed with us this weekend, which is always fun. hilhas1, with only a few nuggets of information from helloheather and I, was able to make a number of tremendous discoveries regarding my family tree on both my mom and dad's side. It was quite amazing to see her work through census data and draw these connecting lines.
Saturday evening helloheather's dad and step-mom came over for dinner. Prior to that gonj and I and helloheather's dad tried out gonj's RC craft. It is designed to travel over the ground, fly, and go over water. It was rather difficult to control and we ended up hitting pretty much every tree or bush in the area. In other words, lots of fun.
Easter Sunday was spent at my aunt and uncle's near Rockford. We arrived over an hour late because Nathan was sleeping and we felt he needed the sleep more than he needed to be woken up and hauled around in the car. He might have gone back to sleep in the car, but we didn't want to chance it. As it turns out he was all full of energy for family when we arrived, so hurray for a good decision on our part.
Interestingly, for the first time (that I can remember) he cried because he didn't see either helloheather or I. When we arrived, everyone else was finishing eating, so my mom held Nathan while we load up our plates. But after losing sight of us for a bit (and I'm sure seeing all the unfamiliar faces), he became upset. It breaks my heart to see him sad, but I realized that this is another important step in his development. I'm amazed at how quickly he is growing up.
I know mommy and you sir, are no mommy.
Nathan has slowly but surely started showing a distinct preference for helloheather these past couple weeks. It started off simply as times when he was tired or hungry (or, in most cases, both). But the attitude has spread to other areas of his life. When I was trying to feed him sweet potatoes and apple sauce the other night, he kept looking across the table to helloheather, with imploring and pleading eyes all the while moaning. One morning, when getting ready for work, he was sitting and staring (and yes, smiling) at me from the floor. But as soon as helloheather came back into the room, he scrambled over to her legs, grab on, and try to pull himself up.
Logically I know this was bound to happen. I see him only a few hours a day, while helloheather is with him nearly every waking moment. And he does greet me with gusto when I arrive home from work, which is always a joy. Sometimes he really works himself up into a frenzy of happiness, rolling around or grabbing onto whatever he can and squeezing. His emotional responses are very strong.
There are times that I feel that fatherhood has turned me into a sack of crazy. Other times, though, I think perhaps it's simply thrown the crazy into sharp relief. The worry, the stress, the over-protectiveness is entirely a product of my own mind. I wish I could figure out a way to turn down whatever it is in my subconscious that feels I need this. Because I really don't think I do. However, it comes as naturally to my day as drinking water. "Hey, it's been an hour or so since you've had a worry...why not stress about how Nathan doesn't use you as a jungle-gym?"
I know that, while my brain is wrapped up in this nonsense, I'm not remembering the really important stuff. Like how he looks when he figures something out, or how he used to be when he was just a few months old. How he used to look without teeth (what a strange concept that seems now) or how he used to lay so calm next to me when I read him books. I have all these precious memories being covered with mold and slowly rotting away thanks to the climate of my subconscious.
Disconnected
As I've indicated previously, I'm unable to spend much time online anymore and so have been ineffective in keeping up with reading the blogs or emails of friends and family. Prior to this, I felt like I was doing a poor job of staying connected with people. However, this change has shown me how much further things could (and have) slipped. I feel very isolated and frustrated by the forces preventing me from staying more connected.
I have a copy of AbiWord Portable installed on a USB key now, with the hope that this will allow me the ability to write while at work without needing to be online. None of what I write will be stored outside the key itself, which makes me feel more comfortable. However, there's still the issue of getting it onto the blog complete with working links and (when applicable) photos.
It occurs to me that without much connection to the "virtual" world, I feel what I do have to say has little value anyway. Certainly my blog has not been the bastion of culture and enlightenment, (how many entries are not about either Nathan or photography?), but it has been important to me to keep communications between friends open. We don't get to visit with people as often as we'd like and so blogging seems to be the next best thing.
Perhaps one aspect of my frustration is that I've bitten off more than I can chew. I have this blog, the photoblog, a flickr community, and a dozen domains in various states of disrepair. So many unfinished projects and ideas dragging around my virtual sandbox weighs heavily on me.
I guess I just want to say: I'm sorry for not keeping up with what's been going on. It's not that I don't care. If I had the opportunity I would read and respond to every post and email. But sadly, for now, that won't be an option. I'll read what I can, when I can and I hope to post a little more frequently too.