Fatherhood, the 2 Year Checkin
We’re different. We’re the same.
It’s New Year’s Day. I’m staring into the bathroom mirror at my mother-in-law’s home—late 30s, shaved head, and a dime-sized hickey on my forehead. A souvenir from attaching a suction spinner to my head to entertain my son and his toddler friends. It’s been there for three days.
We spend a few days on the Upper West Side each New Year to celebrate with soba and osechi. The dynamic is different now. My almost two-year-old is the star of the solar system.
He squeals. He plays. He pulls us outside on single-digit winter mornings (the playground is a critical, regulating force). His urges shape our schedule from mealtimes to naps. It’s both new and natural. As we close in on his second birthday, I can’t help but reflect on fatherhood and how it’s all going.
His firsts
I was on a call with a friend yesterday, recounting the story of introducing my son to cereal and milk.
Yoko was out of town. I poured milk in a bowl for him at the dining table and realized—he’d probably never seen milk in a bowl before. 🤯 Only in a bottle.
So I pour the milk in, and I hear, “Wowww.”
I put cereal on his plate. “Wowww.”
I transfer a piece of cereal into the milk. “Wowww.”
His eyes are focused. Attention locked. We spoon the first bite into his mouth. “Mmmm!” You should have seen him drink the cereal milk out of the bowl minutes later.
This past year has been full of the kid’s firsts. First cereal, first scrape, first multi-word phrase, first audible laugh at a screen. Seeing him experience things for the first time puts a magnifying glass on the mundane. I had these firsts too, once. They just didn’t make it into memory. But they mattered (I choose to believe). Sometimes wondrous, sometimes shocking and hard.
Some days, I’m jealous of how the world is new for him. And I’m grateful my jaded eyes get to see him see things for the first time.
The dude loves trucks
Yoko doesn’t have a driver’s license. As a born-and-raised New Yorker, she’s pro public transit and lightly anti-car. But that doesn’t matter to my son. The dude loves vehicles.
Cars. Blue cars. Red cars. Orange cars. Buses. Planes. Pickup trucks. Jeeps. Garbage trucks. Dumpster trucks. Small trucks. BIG trucks. Taco trucks. Mobile cranes. Excavators. Car carriers. Helicopters. Trains. Boats. Hovercrafts. Shinkansen...
I swear his brain is running a background process constantly searching for the sounds of sirens. A faint ambulance ululates in the distance, and his ears perk up like a dog sensing a squirrel.
Now I find myself seeking out vehicles. “Is that a garbage truck over there?” “Wait, it has a snow plow!”
I see the cycle. The kid lights up because of a thing. I like seeing the kid light up. So I source more of that thing. It’s joyous, potentially expensive, and just part of being a parent.
If nature accounts for more than I can comprehend, maybe my job is exposure. I can’t predict what will light you up and inspire you, kid. But I hope to introduce you to a wonderful range of things so that you can find your things.
We’re neighbors now
For the year or two before our kid’s birth, I felt untethered from New York City. It was the tail end of COVID, and many of the things I loved about being a NYC person just weren’t the same.
A chunk of my top 10 people in this town moved away. Some moved “home” to start families and get space, others went on new adventures. That was quietly hard. It wasn’t about losing people I saw all the time. I had already slipped into the middle-life social zone of “I’m close to that person and grab a meal with them every few months.”
It was my social self-image that took a hit. I was “supposed” to be Kevin, extrovert who sees people and rallies friends. And the number of close local friends on speed dial had dwindled. An odd and deflating feeling in a city of 8.5M. What was I doing here?
But then we had a kid. I’d heard stories of parenting and isolation, but my experience was different. Becoming a parent evolved my relationship with our neighborhood. I’d lived in Sunset Park for almost ten years, but becoming a dad here changed the game.
We found a daycare a short walk from home. We met people there: teachers, parents, their kids. We spent time with them, planned and unplanned. Our kid became a conversation starter. I started interacting with the Chinese aunties in the park as my son copied their dance moves. We learned the names of the cashiers at the grocery store as they greeted our son.
Now we almost always run into someone we know on the street. It’s a dream. And it filled a gap in my life in an unexpected way. Maybe what I was missing wasn’t a roster of buddies to grab food with on a moment’s notice but that sense of community. Being witnessed in the place I call home.
Everything is parenting
I have a budding thesis: everything is parenting.
The kid sees all. He has eyes, and he’s with us constantly. Sure, he sees what we do with him, but he also sees:
How we communicate with each other
How we interact with our space
How we exchange with loved ones
How we treat ourselves
If he’s a sponge, he’s absorbing far more than what I’m consciously providing. And if I care about what he’s taking in, I need to care about how I’m living my life.
My friend Sophia used to say “every moment is a brand moment” in the context of work. Your reputation is the accumulation of all the big and small moments, not just that one big meeting.
It’s overwhelming to think about! There’s no hiding! You can’t fake the funk!
But the “everything is parenting” perspective is also freeing. There is no “performing” as a parent. It’s impossible to put on a mask all the time in every situation.
I can only lead by example. I can only accept that my faults are part of my parenting. And if I want to have a chance at imbuing my child with some specific quality, I sure as hell better work that out for myself first.
Yoko and I have had joyous moments and hard moments around the kid. In both, we’ve tried to treat each other how we hope he will treat others. We say to him, “absorb these vibes” because that’s the best we can do.
It feels like it’s all about to change
I sense how we interact with this kid is about to change. Who am I kidding? It already has.
I used to worry about packing the optimal amount of formula to ensure he had a bottle available every three hours. Now I’m triangulating scripts between ChatGPT and my wife on how to tell our son it’s not ok to stand on his chair during dinner. “Chairs are for sitting.”
If chapter one is about survival, chapter two is about... Emotions? Regulation? Experimentation? I don’t know?!
Sometimes I look at him, like this New Year’s Day uptown, and I wish I could bottle up every detail of the moment. I wish I had a sci-fi tool to record it all as a snapshot. What he looks like, how he sounds, how I feel, what it smells like... Some hours are so slow. Some weeks are so fast. And he keeps changing, as do I.
Maybe that’s what makes being a parent both maddening and special. You witness this kid’s life moving forward like an unstoppable train. You work so hard to keep it fueled and on the track—packing meals, changing diapers, holding his hand as he walks, picking him up when he sandbags. And at the same time, amidst all that effort to propel life forward, you wish it moved slower.
We read a Sesame Street book to the little guy a couple times a week. It’s called We’re Different, We’re the Same. Our kid changes hourly, and the surprises keep coming. The other day he grabbed two oven mitts and ran out of the kitchen yelling a single word, “Gloves!” This is coming from a guy who seemed to hate all types of gloves for the month of November. That tension of change and constants, and yearning for both, is what makes this journey so juicy.
So how is it going? We’re different. We’re the same. We’re wonderful.
Love you and our kid so so so much ❣️❣️❣️
I just read this out loud to Diana as we're eating some post-hike pie. So many feelings were shared in between bites. Thanks for sharing Kev!