Dear Liam,

Though I don’t intend to mimic what others do better, it would be wrong of me to ignore the fact that you’ve been with us for a full half of a year now. Six months is a long time. Heck, your big, furry older brother only lasted about a week and a half before he was threatened with bootleg horse tranquilizers. So to think that you’ve made it 183 days and we haven’t sunk that far, well that means your future is awfully bright.

Six months ago you arrived under special circumstances, after much anticipation and a lot of pain medication. Seeing you for the first time was without a doubt the most surreal moment of my life, and something I will take to my grave. Little did we know then, as I sat rocking you in the dark in the hospital room, what was to come for either of us.

You quickly became a full-fledged member of the family, getting more car miles under your belt by week five than some people achieve in their entire life. You were a true sport and slept all 24 hours in the car. The ocean breeze also found a way into your heart and we have yet to find something as effective in lulling you to sleep. Be ready little man, you have a lot of traveling ahead of you because it’s a passion your mother and I share.

As the summer months rolled by, you learned new tricks. You started rolling over at three months and by five could go both directions. You found your voice and fell in love with talking to us (or to the dog, or to the couch). And then came the period where you realized that you had both hands and feet, and that all four parties could get together and hang out. Nothing is safe from your grasp, least of all mom’s bottle of vitamins. You send those things flying across the kitchen! Those Zippy Zoos have been the best thing we ever bought for keeping you pacified. Who would have guessed? And that’s why you have no other toys.

In the past few months you’ve come to truly enjoy Jonas and flail with glee when he thunders by. When he’s near, you stroke and pet his coat gently. And then you poke him in the eye because daddy taught you that. God love him, Jonas doesn’t even flinch. The worst he does it lick your face and trot off to steal your toys. He’s teaching you that life is full of compromises, son, so humor him as he thinks he’s being a good role model. He’s a working breed after all. It’s a shame we have no photo documentation of your budding friendship, but for some reason both of you freeze like deer in headlights when the camera comes out. I find this sketchy.

Above all else, the thing that amazes me most is that you’ve become such an aware child, both emotionally and physically. There is not a brief moment of dad’s stress or a sound around the house that doesn’t go unnoticed by you, your silent gaze and slow turning head denoting the moment. You scrutinize everything, and then quickly glance at one of us to see our reaction. Usually you laugh and bury your face in our shoulder, my heart melting each and every time.

The next few weeks will be tough; I’m not going to lie. More traveling, your first Christmas and then off to start daycare. This will break your parents’ hearts. Please understand that your mother and I want nothing more than for one of us to be able to stay home and take care of you ourselves instead of entrusting you to strangers. Sadly though, we can’t afford it, mainly because we both picked ridiculous majors in college that had very little real world application. Remember this when you’re 21 years old and blithely doing Jello shots of whisky in the middle of your senior seminar.

So in six months we’ve run the entire gamut, from possible colic (which was really just underfeeding…sorry!) to having four shiny teeth and loving your cereal. You’ve gone from being completely helpless to playing by yourself, bouncing around like a crazy man in your jumper station. You’re so much more of a tiny person now and seeing you is like witnessing the missing gap between your mother and I, the last puzzle piece in our lives placed gently together.

Little man, I thank God every day for bringing you into my life. For the first time I finally know what true, simple joy is. I don’t know what I did to deserve this gift, but I sure as hell know I’m going to do whatever I can to be a good father to you. Because that’s the only thing I can give you in return.

Lesson 1: Try direct carving the peanut butter using a mini spatula and rotating base. Call them “condiment circle formations” and pledge to uncover the mysterious forces behind such natural phenomena. [Seen here is a rough work in progress as edges need to be refined. Apologies for horrible mobile photo.]

A tooth is a funny thing. An absence of one means something went wrong. An absence of them all either means you’re old or else still fresh in this world (or that something went very wrong indeed). The arrival of these two signaled the end of picturing him as a tiny baby, and announced a new era of pacification, one that does not involve human fingers. Those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where he mows down a carrot suddenly have taken on a new meaning to me.

It’s been a month since they showed up, a very long month for all of us as we try to push through to the holidays, to wrap up projects and check things off lists. And though he weathered his first two teeth like a champion, I suspect we’re currently in the throws of another showdown with his gums. Bright red cheeks and general uneasiness have set in again, forecasting what we can only assume to be more teeth on the way. A shame he’s too young to really be comforted by his teething ring.

So we wait to see if our parental diagnostic skills are correct, and we wait patiently for a little holiday cheer to fill the house. All the while other things like this website or learning how to sit up, they fall gently by the wayside. But that’s okay. Things have a way of setting their own order in life. And I need to learn not to question it.