Lebanon, New Hampshire  

December 2006  

Dear Friends and Family,

Last night I had the great blessing of sleeping eight hours, which has not always been the case since Zosia was born. I thought perhaps the whole family had slept through through the night. But Magda soon informed me that she'd been feeding Zosia at two and then four o'clock in the morning. It certainly is easier to be a daddy than a mommy, is what I've come to think. I was secretly pleased that I'd managed to sleep through the ruckus of Zosia demanding a pre-dawn feeding. Or perhaps I didn't sleep through it but managed to fall back asleep before the memory could stay with me. Who can tell? By the time I woke up for work I felt rested, in any case. There are not too many mornings like that.

The main Christmas news is that we are learning how to take care of a baby. This is such a dominant feature of our lives now that it seems scarcely worthwhile to mention anything else. She's a demanding little girl, in that she doesn't like to be left alone and she needs entertainment. Usually someone to hold her is entertainment enough, but she's happier if the person who holds her changes every ten minutes or so. She gets bored with the same old mommy and daddy. Her quietest, most peaceful times have been when she's passed around from visitor to visitor or relative to relative in the course of an afternoon.

Sometimes in the night when she wakes up screeching, we cannot calm her even by feeding. My only recourse is to put her in our baby carrier (which straps on the front of me) and then under my big winter coat, and then to go out for a walk. I think being under the coat reminds her of being in the womb. Usually by the time I make it to downtown Lebanon she is sleeping. I try to walk around town for a while to give Magda a rest at home. During the day I can go to the library with her under my coat. At night, everything is closed. I've spent time in the vestibule of the bank (admitted by my ATM card) reading the free newspapers. There are a lot of farm animals for sale in the classifieds here, much more so than in any other place that I've lived.

When I get back home the trick is to keep her sleeping, but to somehow slip out of the baby carrier so that I can sleep too. It's not easy. Somehow she knows that she's no longer attached to me (the body warmth's gone, I suppose) and she wakes up again and we start all over. I don't mind if she hollers a little bit during the day, but during the night I'm afraid she'll wake up the neighbors so I try to soothe her as quick as I can. It's distressing sometimes not to be able.

The birth itself on November 14 was very beautiful. All the videos and books and magazine articles in the world can't really prepare you for being there.

Magda hopes to go back to work part time perhaps in February. We hope that I'll be able to work an earlier shift and get home so that she can put in some hours at her company in Hanover. There aren't really shifts, so to speak, at my office, but there are some other people who come in around 5:30 in the morning, so I'll see if I can join the club.

We live in a shabby apartment where the wallpaper is peeling off, and the walls aren't thick enough. It's centrally located to the town, at least, and we've managed to warm up the place somewhat. In the end, for me, the most important thing isn't how you live but whom you live with. I've lived in a lot more exciting places than 16 Green Street in Lebanon, but I've never lived with such great people as Magda and Zosia. So for me, it has been a nice year.