Like most young children our son has a very good memory.  At least it appears that way from the vantage point of middle age near middle age.  We’ve often said that by the time he is ten years old, he’ll have far exceeded our cognitive capacity.  He’ll be so disgusted with our feeble, scatterbrained ways by that time; it will be a sad state of affairs.

But has it already begun?  I think the boy is already becoming more responsible than I am.

I had to take a shower and I was about to set a cordless phone in the bathroom so I could hear it ring.  Our son, though, really likes to answer the phone.  So, I thought, I’ll give him the telephone; he can take the call, bring me the phone if necessary, etc.

I gave him the phone and his charge; he agreed to the task.  I headed to the bathroom.  Then I could hear him calling me with a very serious tone.  I went back.

“Wait.  I have to know,” he began, “which button do I have to press to answer this phone.” It was a cordless phone he rarely — if ever — uses.  He’s more familiar with another one.  He rightly recognized that this one had very different buttons.  I indicated the “Talk” button.

“OK.  OK,” he answered, then, before I turned away, “and . . . and . . . how do I hang up.” He’d noticed this phone doesn’t have an “O – F – F” button like the one downstairs.

With that he was satisfied.  Mere details, yes.  But, for his age, to take his job that conscientiously . . . probably just parental pride, but I was impressed.

If I had that kind of foresight when I was 4 years old I’d be . . . well, I don’t know where I’d be, because I don’t have that kind of foresight.  Anyway, it really comes to something when your 4 year old is more thorough than you are.

I cried when I found out. Actually, that’s not quite true. I was hysterical. Eleven months of being unemployed. Eleven months of looking for work and even starting a business and feeling like I had failed at everything. Eleven months of dealing with the financial, emotional and mental stress associated with all of this. So when my wife told me the test was positive, I felt my world crashing down upon me. Was there any other way to make life harder than it already was except by having a baby when you’re unemployed?

Fortunately, within a couple of days I was able to handle everything a bit better. In fact, the following weekend we went with my wife’s family to the Bronx Zoo where my wife came up with calling the little being (because we thought there was only one at the time HAHAHAHAHA) inside her, Okapi.

Her pregnancy was progressing normally, though my wife could barely eat and was sick almost every day. She felt absolutely miserable. I was still unemployed and awfully frantic about finding a job (as you can imagine), but at least it gave me all the time in the world to join her for doctor appointments and her first ultrasound.

I had no idea what to expect when we walked in. I had seen ultrasound pictures, but to be able to see the baby growing inside my wife that we had created together was something I could not even imagine. Then we saw the first pictures and I was in shock.

“That’s...That’s not a shadow, right? There’s really two in there?” I stammered.

Before the technician could respond, my wife said, “But they’re not identical, right? Because they have two sacs?”

It is pretty easy to tell which one of us adjusted to having two Okapis quicker.

The technician summed it all up by saying, “two.” He was a real charmer.

When he finally left the room and we had a chance to talk privately, we just looked at each other, trying to figure out what we could possibly say that would describe what we were feeling.

She said, “Well, that would explain why I feel so sick.”

“And you said you weren’t sure you wanted to be pregnant again so now you won’t have to,” I replied. We smiled and hugged.

The technician in a moment of kindness that seemed completely out of character printed out a series of pictures of our Okapis. They were only at nine weeks since conception. I remember this feeling so clearly; when we got out of the office, I wanted to show the whole world this picture of the two little beings inside my wife. While we waited at the elevator it took everything I had not to show the woman who traveled down with us. When we got the street I almost stopped someone walking into the building to show them. I was so excited and awed by the entire possibility of two.

That night, I created a web site that only had one page - the picture of our little Okapis. Then I called my parents and told them to go to the web site and they got to see exactly what we saw when we found out. That was how I shared the news with our friends and family. By showing them the picture and letting them figure it out on their own. It was incredibly enjoyable to hear the different shocked responses and to know we weren’t the only ones who were stunned by this turn of events.

Do you remember how you found out and/or the first time you saw the ultrasound?

One of my son’s favorite games is Collecting Letters. Now when you live in NYC and you commute to school via Mass Transit that doesn’t mean looking out car windows calling out letters when you see them. In NYC that means how many different subways can we get on during our commute to school.

Most days my son just wants to sit on my lap when we even get a seat. His usual routine is asking for his juice cup or trying to see if I have any cookies in my back pack. He knows his daddy has sweet tooth so he figures and knows correctly that I have stash.

Usually we can’t even play the letters game as the subways and platforms are way too crowded during rush hour and I am dressed for work. Today he saw that I was dressed down and that the trains for some wild reason were not as crowded.

OK so there is a part of the game where he calls out letters but those are of subways going in the opposite or like direction.  When you ride the subway you are not heading North, South, East or West You are heading either Uptown, Downtown, Manhattan Bound, Queens Bound, Brooklyn Bound or Bronx Bound. Our fellow passengers are therefore treated to choruses of “Uptown B” or “Downtown F”.

Today we scored a “trifecta”. A “trifecta” is when you can take three subways, making each connection perfectly, without waiting for a single train, going above ground or going off of your normal route to school. Today we took the F, the D, and the V all in one trip. He was very excited as we only did this once before and usually we miss the connections slowing down the trip to school.

By the time this post is published his school will be over for the year and while my commute to work will be shorter I will very much miss this quality time with my son.

For a daily view of the NYC Subway system check out the daily photoblog NYC Express at http://www.travisruse.com and maybe you’ll catch a shot or two of NYC dad’s commuting with their kids just like me. 

My wife and I had the great pleasure of dumping our two oldest kids off at the grandparent’s house for the week. (Is “dumping” to harsh of a term when they asked for the privilege?) We were able to experience a bit of old life, with only one kid in the house.  The oldest two are 5 and 3 while the youngest is 18 months.  What a difference it makes when numbers are on your side again!

At any rate, it’s amazing how much you miss about a little person’s personality when he is the youngest of three and the others are so very loud.  The most fascinating thing about it was how independent this baby of the family is.  When he stayed behind with us, I was half expecting that we would need to focus more on him and that he would demand more attention now that he was not competing for time against his brother and sister.  But that simply turned out to not be true.  He almost entirely entertained himself.  Even as we would play “with” him, he often seemed oblivious to us and focused on his own “task at hand.”

And now that the oldest ones are back home, you can see it as they run circles around him and he sits in the middle of the living room with a book on his lap (upside down) pretending to read.  It is as though he is in the eye of the storm.  He is in a world of calm as the cyclone on chaos circles around him.

I know I often say that I wish I could have the energy of the youngsters, but there are times when I wish I had the ability of this little one to block out the crazy world around him and focus on the task at hand, whatever it may be.  I just pray that it takes a while for the elder siblings to finally rub off on him.

My little girl collects rocks.

She collects rocks wherever she can find them.  Jagged rocks and dull rocks.  Large rocks, small rocks, blue rocks, white rocks.  Rocks in funny shapes.  Rocks in normal shapes.  Rocks with faces or personalities. And rocks that don’t have a single remarkable quality except that they’re rocks.

She tells me, “Daddy, I found some nice rocks today.”

“And where are they?”

“In my collection.”

At this point, I’ve learned, it would be prudent to conduct a search of my rascally four-year-old smuggler.  But alas, I refrain, being the trusting father I am, and she scurries on her way to marvel at her legendary rock collection.

Its location, she imagines, is secret.  But I don’t need to look for it, because it always comes looking for me.

I find rocks in her bed.  I find pebbles beside the toilet, presumably having fallen from her pockets.  Dust in the vacuum cleaner mingles with an assortment of stones.  When I do laundry, I don’t find loose coins at the bottom of the washing machine, but rocks, all sorts of rocks, all suitable for a wondrous collection but none having found it.

Sometimes a pine cone accompanies the rocks, or a dead dandelion picked for daddy.  Sometimes the rocks gather for conversation in her shorts.  Sometimes they party in her jacket.  The rocks flow into our house like settlers drifting westward across the plains searching for freedom and happiness.  They traverse stairs and bathtubs, foyers and countertops, all on a quest for salvation.  They seek my daughter’s rock collection.

But they never find it.  Because her rock collection exists only in her mind.  She collects these rocks daily, but forgets them moments after they leave her hand.  She’ll tell me all about her collection, and she’ll confess a love of gathering and hunting and finding just the right specimen to tag and shelve.

But there is no rock collection.  It’s an object of fantasy, residing only in her wonderful imagination.  And to a father who marvels every day at the power of a child’s mind, it’s the most splendid collection I’ve never seen.

I shall encourage her collecting.  So long as I don’t step on any more blasted rocks!