An international sensation

Oscar had a big weekend, visiting with the Sauvages of Paris, Roxana of Los Angeles and David and Tomas of Prague. On Saturday, he made the scene at an April Fool’s Day marching band Battle Royale in Fort Greene Park, where he watched his dad play with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. After defiling his tender ears (actually, mom and Rox tailed at a safe distance with the stroller, and Oscar was an angel, hardly fussing even on the frequent occasions when dad hit a sour note or forgot his place altogether), he hung out with 6-week-old Sam, son of our friends Sharon and Lucas, who graciously hosted a feeding or two at their nearby manse.

We must grudgingly concede that Sam could give Oscar a run for his money in the Cutest Baby Ever competition. He's a real bruiser, too. At 10-pounds-something, Sam would totally kick Oscar's ass in a slap-fight. Fortunately, he's a big sweetie, and, you know, totally oblivious to all but the boob, as they are at that age, so it didn't get ugly. Nonetheless humbled, we gathered up our Tynans and went for a birthday (dad’s) pizza at L'asso, which utterly botched dad’s order. But the waitress was really nice and brought us some excellent make-up tiramisu, gratis.

On Sunday, we observed the one-month anniversary of Oscar's arrival on dry land (and my 33rd year) over birthday bagels with Gramma, the Sauvages, and Bob and Esther Broner. Bob, a renowned artist, remarked on Oscar's fine features.

This is really more of me than I ever wanted up on the Web, but Jen, who has a quite a knack for getting me to post half-naked pics of myself, insists that it's very cute.


Oscar hasn't really taken to water all that well. His first couple baths were something of a fiasco, with plenty of wailing and thrashing, but I took him into the tub with me last week, as one of our baby books recommends (for daddy-baby bonding, since moms otherwise hog all the quality time with their frivilous feedings) and he was mostly fine, if a bit wary. Maybe we just hadn't gotten the temperature right before, or maybe he felt better about it with me in there too.

So tomorrow, my leave ends and, head bowed, I shuffle sadly back into the 9-to-5 world. Or, this being New York, city of workaholics, the 9-to-6-or-7-if-you're-lucky world. My share of our division of labor (Jen has handled input, while I've taken care of output) will fall on Jen, who will discover the joys of diapering. Days, anyway. That's assuming she can find time to change them between the increasingly unceasing feedings. Oscar has been ravenous of late, seldom going more than an hour without a suckle.

It's a huge transition, but of course, nothing compared to that which we'll have to surmount when Jen goes back to work in September. We haven't begun to try and figure out how we'll manage that one, but lots of people do, most of them with far less means than we have. The few friends we have with young kids in the city seem to use a patchwork of daycare, babysitters, friends and relatives, all the while working, sleeping and caring for the kids on rickety Jerry-rigged alternating schedules. Will we ever see each other? Will mealtimes become a sort of shift change, where we break bread, punch the clock and stagger past one another on our separate ways to labors of love or for sustenance?

For the time being, I'm trying to figure out where in my head I'll find space for the tedium of workaday life with this all-consuming, all-important little creature now taking up most of my psychic hard drive. And I'm absorbing the rueful fact that I'll be missing out on a lot of those moments with him I've taken for granted this past month -- which I was very fortunate to have at home in the first place, paternity leave being a fairly new concept and the province of a select few enlightened employers.

In the meantime, our little boy is gorging himself like a deer tick at an Upper Midwestern fat camp and broadening his palette of sounds and expressions. He's even begun to curl his lips, at times, when he's contented and alert and scanning the face of the adult holding him, into the faintest whisper of what might be an emerging smile -- just a tease of one. Nothing like his mother's, which could power Times Square when she's truly amused, but enough to suggest that when it emerges from its chrysalis, it'll be something to behold. And perhaps enough incentive to get his dad through the workday.