The life & times of Emery Dean Toothaker

The life & times of Emery Dean Toothaker
"unconquer' hope, thou bane of fear" miguel de cervantes

mom has been at me for a long time to post a blog and finally i am giving it a third try. those who have read the blog from the start know how badly i tanked the first two, so hopefully we can start from scratch with this one. to begin with i would like to reintroduce myself as dad and offer this heads up to all first time fathers. see your child for the first time with the mother. if you are not a proffesional, ie obgyn, mid-wife, nurse, or mormon you run the risk of getting caught in the crowning, similar to a deer in the headlights. all linear time stops and achieve total enlightenment into the concept of the big bang. the 9-12 months after the birht are spent trying to put linear time back in order. the one thing that will consitantly stay out of linear order is trying to remember your life without your child. por su puesto: carrie and i were aquainted in high school and i can rememeber a few of the interactions that we had had only now emery is a part of those memories. can't explain it and won't even try.

i love being a father and our son is by far the most amazing human being i have ever met along with his mother. because we don't have a gauge or litmus test to let us know how we are as parents we have to get our cues from emery. everything that emery is telling us is that we are the the most rockin parents in the whole world.
emery and i have our routine m-f 1-5. on these days we visit either the boise art museum, the library, camels back park, the zoo, the ymca and a basque restaraunt bar gernika. it's all new to emery and he is never bored. our eyes become refreshed as we watch him discover and we rediscover. boring no longer has a definition. what gives me the greatest joy is watching how people and other kids interact with emery and how he interacts with them. with adults he has this contagious joy and even the most sullen of people will have moment with emery and then they are all smiles. it's the way he interacts. with kids he turns on the sponge and learns through mimicing and enjoys the eye to eye interaction. i believe that people are caught off guard by emery's personality. my favorite quote to date is, 'why mr. toothaker i believe your son is flirting with me.' why yes yes he is.
there is so much more that i could write about, emery is starting to use sign language, he has new cousin due in june, he's a natural swimmer, he can turn the pages of a book in the right direction and on and on. i have to save my material. there is a lot of catching up to do and i will need some fill material. there is a dice game that i would like to start called,'where in boise is emerydean toothaker' the number on the di will correspond to a place.you role the di move your emery figure on the board and i tell you what we did that day. those who land correctly will win the pot of what ever you want it to be. the intervals will be spaced out because dad is going back to school for practical degrees this time. numbers 4 and 5. the current pipe dream, and it might take some convincing with mom, but to find that great job back in seattle. we miss our friends there tremendously and long for your influence in our sons life. boise is a good place and great place to raise a kid. there is something unique to raising your child in the place where you were a child yourself. i would like to close with this quote by the sage george burns,'happiness is having a close knit extended family that lives in another state.'

casey at the bat

"unconquer'd hope, though bane of fear", miguel de cervantes

mom has been at me for a long time to post a blog and finally i am giving it a third try. those who have read the blog from the beginning know how badly i tanked the first two, so hopefully we can start from scratch with this one. to begin with i would like to introduce myself as dad and offer this to perspective first time fathers: see your child for the first time at the birth with the mother. unless you are a proffesional, i.e. an OBGYN, Mid-wife, doola(sp?) or mormon, you run the risk of getting caught in the crowning. (similar to a deer caught in the headlights). what happens when you see your childs face for the time with out the mom all linear time stops and you achieve total understanding of the concept of the big bang. since fathers don't have this life growing inside them the first 9-12 months, after the birth, is spent trying to assimilate everything and put time back into linear order. the one thing that stays consistantly outside of this linear order is trying to remember your life with out your child. por su puesto: carrie and i have been aquainted since school and i can remember a few of those brief instances where we interacted and talked; however, now those memories include emery. i can't explain it.

i love being a father. our son is by far the most amazing human being that i have ever met other than his mother. because we really don't have a gauge or litmus test to let us know how we are doing as parents we have to get our cues from emery. everything that emery is telling us right now is that we are the most rockin parents in the whole world.
emery and i have a routine. i pick him up at 1-130 until 5-530 m-f. we get the afternoon together. boise is pretty basic and we have set places that we go: camels back park, the zoo, the boise art museum, the library, ymca and the basque restaraunt gernika. this is easy because it's all new to emery and it becomes new to us. our eyes become refreshed through his and boring routine is thrown out the window. what gives me great joy is watching how people respond to emery and vice versa. all people do the usual 'oh cute kid' routine and then emery starts to interact. this catches them off guard and all of a sudden these sometimes, not often, sullen strangers who were just being polite find themselves sincerely smiling and made completely happy by our son. emery exudes a contagious joy and everyone catches it. my favorite quote, to date, is,"why mr. toothaker i believe your son is flirting with me!" why yes, yes he is.

there is so much that i could write, emery is starting to use sign language, he has a new cousin in due in june, he's a natural swimmer, he knows the proper direction to turn pages in a book and on and on but i am going to save my material and spread it out over time. there is a lot of catching up to do, but an exercise of patients stems the hyperactive. because emery and i have a set routine of places that he loves it will make this blogging much easier. if you want you can make it into a dice game of 'where in boise is emery dean toothaker'. the 'y' and gernika are same day visits, but the other visits are spaced through the week. each place visited will have a coresponding number off the di. you role and move your emery figure to where you think he will go and then i will blog the adventure we had. 6 is the wild card and i will have to plan something special and it will be the special blog. this may go on a two week interval. dad heads back to school begining the quest for two more degrees and they are science based! hopefully in two and a half years dad can begin to look at jobs back in the seattle region (current pipe dream with a need to convince mom) when it rains here and we take emery out he is soothed and very content. to our friends in seattle you are sorely missed and we long for your influence in our sons life. boise is great there is something special and unique to raising your child in a place you knew so well as a kid. i would like to close with a quote by the sage george burns, "happiness is having a close knit extended family that lives in another state."