New Serna Baby

蕃椒

I know you don’t speak Japanese (course you don’t speak much English right now either), and neither do I.  Well, I do know a few phrases such as: Thank you very much, yummy sushi, greetings.  But mostly those are just to sound cool when at a sushi bar.  I know you haven’t tried sushi yet, but that’s not the direction I’m going here.

I wanted to introduce your fuzzy friend, Chili.  I know you know who Chili is, he’s been around almost since you were born.  Actually he’s about a month older than you, but he didn’t join our little family until about a month after you were born.  Like you he was very new to the world, and we had to teach him how to be gentle with you just like mom’s been teaching you how to be gentle with him.

He was a lot more mobile than you, and we had to teach him what things he can play with and which things he can’t.  I’m know your mom has been starting to teach you the same thing now that you’ve become a master of your own destiny with this new crawling thing you’ve learned.  But he’s growing up much faster than you, and he’s supposed to.  That’s his job - to look after you as you grow up.  He’s there to play with you.  He’s there to protect you from danger.  He’s there to be your friend.

And I hope you can be his friend.  He’s going to love you unconditionally his whole life, and I hope you can learn about love and life from his example.  I have no doubt you’ll come to understand why every little boy needs a dog in his life.

So that’s his name up there.  Those Kanji characters mean ‘Chili’ in Japanese, pronounced ‘Banshou’.  Japanese, of course, ’cause he’s a Japanese Akita.  It also happens that Banshou means ‘Evening Sun’.  Both good descriptions of your little red dog.

蕃椒…AKA Banshou, AKA Evening Sun, AKA Chili… yes, that’s correct… Chilidog.  He’s a ninja, by the way.

蕃椒

Growing a Personality

And I’m not kidding. I can see it from all the way over here! It’s huge!

I’m not entirely sure from whence they grow, or what they look like exactly, but you seem to be growing one. Or maybe personalities are like baby teeth; you’ve always had one, but only now it’s starting to surface. But you ultimately lose your baby teeth when your adult teeth finally push through. Are you going to lose this personality as you grow? Or does your personality grow with you, like your hands and feet?

I can’t remember being your age. Nor can I remember ever not being me. So I don’t know if I had a personality transplant some time (or several times) during my wee years. I have seen some of my personality traits come and go during the years that I can remember. Shy at times, outgoing during others. I have had periods of being driven, and times of fully embracing a laissez-faire perspective on life. But perhaps it truly is that, “The preceding verses are the halves of my soul, I’m just the battlefield and that is my role.”

You have so many expressions; so many looks. While your many smiles may seem similar, the glint in your eye - that sparkle of your soul changes with each one. You can be so chatty at times, constantly stoking this burning desire within me to understand what you are trying so hard to explain. I so want your energy and excitement to keep growing with your personality, and I don’t want it to fall out like baby teeth. I want it to be part of your life that you can remember, and therefore always be a part of you.

I guess selfishly I’m also hoping that this part of you, these glimpses I see of the emerging you will still be there when I come home. That while some of your traits may fade with time, I will nonetheless still see in you all that you ever were, and maybe not have missed a very special part of you that phone calls and photos failed to capture.

One, Two, Skip a few… One-hundred

So…

Daddy graduated from flight school,

Uncle Greg came to visit,

Chili (our puppy) joined our little family,

We traveled across the country in a big truck and Mom’s Acura,

We visited Jared and Jenni,

We got to visit your Great-Grandparents Serna and the Hollister Sernas,

And Daddy’s now part of the 4th Squadron of the 6th Cavalry back home in Washington… soon to deploy.

… I promise to elaborate on some of those events in the near future (with backdated entries). But as you can see your mother and I have been a bit busy to keep you up to speed on all the current events.

You in particular have been keeping mom especially busy. While we are very excited with how long you’ve been sleeping every night, you have proportionally been more alert and active during the day. This leaves us (Mom especially) with a exciting new opportunity to interact with, play with, entertain you during your every waking moment.

Okay, perhaps not your EVERY waking moment, but your little baby brain is definitely needing outside stimulus. And while we are beyond happy engage with you as much as possible, it’s the ‘trying to get other things done’ while entertaining you that has proved to be more difficult.

You have shown a particular affinity toward your (usually morning) exercise routines which your mother and I have managed to capture a couple of times on video.

Now when you can figure out what your arms do, we can include some upper body in your workouts.  I am particularly excited for you to learn how to ‘push the ground’.

Christmas Pictures

So we had some fun today taking some festive pictures. You were fairly cooperative, all things considered. Now of course by cooperative I would be referring to the fact that you only peed on your mother twice today. One of those instances I was fortunate enough to catch on video. Yes, this is another opportunity to embarrass you.

Now I don’t really believe you’re actually going to be embarrassed. Well, maybe the first time you have a little girlfriend who has internet access. I’ll have to ask Angelo and Anthony whether they’d be embarrassed by a video like that being seen by a girl. I think you’re so young that nobody’ll care. Now if I were to catch you on video in the future when you’re thirteen years old and still wearing jammies with little booties built in - well then you might find yourself taunted just a bit.

So to fairly balance that little flick, here are your Christmas pictures to show the world how handsome you are.

Still Pictures

Since I couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) have the video camera rolling continuously at the hospital, I thought I would post some of the still images Oma and I took while we scurried frantically hither and thither on your birthday.

Yes I realize it’s Christmas, and I’m just now posting these pictures. You’ve been a handful, kiddo. Don’t worry, I’ll get your Merry Christmas posted soon enough.

Digital Kid?

You will never know a world without internet. You will never know a world without cell phones and text messaging. You will never know a world without digital cameras and camcorders. You weren’t but a few hours old yet and I had already posted videos to YouTube.com chronicling your entrance into the world.

You and your cousin Rogan (not to mention little Kaitie and Liam, who shall be very special penpals) are going to have access to some of the coolest technology the world has ever seen. I was talking with Liam’s dad, Mr. Don, and we were discussing how kids in developing nations are beginning to have access to educational laptops that can be hand powered out in the middle of the desert, jungle, or whatever. Even kids in third world countries are going to be plugged in.

Suddenly there’s this huge responsibility to ensure you learn not to use a hammer to drive a screw in - electronically speaking. One of these educational laptops I was looking at had installed the first computer programming language I ever learned back in 1st or 2nd grade. Logo (better know for its Turtle Graphics) is kind of like a digital etch-a-sketch that we used to use to command a robot turtle. Admittedly I became somewhat nostalgic realizing that the basics I learned are still viable tools for teaching today. Then once the nostalgia wore off, I was struck by the idea that kids in third world countries are going to know more than kids in the United States about what makes their Xbox 360 tick.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m no more worried about this than teaching you how to read or properly throw a football. I am just continually blown away as I look at you at just how pristine and unspoiled your little mind is, and how much fun it’s going to be to introduce you to all the hows and whys of the myriad of electronics you’re going to grow up with.

Speaking of YouTube, this seems to be the most popular of the videos I’ve posted so far - and probably will eventually be the most embarrassing for you, which is naturally why I posted it here:

(Of course, the other videos can be accessed by clicking the YouTube.com link in the first paragraph)

So what do you think of the world so far?

I imagine that right now, you’re feeling a bit like Alice. Hmm? Tumbling down the rabbit hole? Well, no blue pill is going to end this trip for you buddy. Welcome to the real world.

So here you are, my son. David Brian Serna is the name I give you. You are loved and you are strong. I will expand on the etymology of your namesake at another time, for now all you get is the paraphrased version. There was, however, a very long time ago, someone very special with the first part of your name. He was, among many other notable endeavors, a musician. Your mother and I are both musicians, but that’s not why I mention this. We both hope to see you grow loving music and perhaps be a musician yourself, but neither is that why I bring this up. I wanted to tell you about this particular musician because of what he did with his music.

David loved God with his music. His whole life, through all his ups and downs, David always loved God with his music. Now David was not a professional musician when he wrote most of his music, but even though he was not a professional musician, the largest book in the Word of God, Psalms, is attributed to works throughout his life. David was a lot of things during his life, even a soldier like your daddy, but he always loved music and always loved God with his music.

You’re probably going to be a lot of different things during your life. A builder, an artist, an explorer… so many possibilities in that little tiny body of yours. You may have dreams as you grow of being a cowboy or an astronaut. But through all the things that you do, and all the things you become I hope you can always remember to love God with your music.

S.E.R.E. sucked…

…but not entirely.

What’s S.E.R.E.? That’s where I was for the last three weeks. Twenty-one days, specifically 363 hours of really good training.

What kind of training? Survival, evasion, resistance and escape training… S.E.R.E., get it? No? Well, son, I can’t tell you about a lot of the stuff we did because it’s classified secret. That would be most of the E.R.E. part. I can’t even tell your mom. But don’t worry, we’ll cover ALL SORTS of the survival part when you get a little older.

Now I’m not talking the kind of survival training King Leonidas “gets” to do in the beginning of 300. His was a sort of test which decided his ability to become both a man and a king. Since you don’t have any foreseeable future as a king of, well, anything, I am thinking we might try a slight variation on their technique. Which is not to say that I’m ruling their method out, I just think that you could benefit from a different approach to wilderness survival training. We’ll even give it a fun name like Camping, or Backpacking. You might even think it’s a game or sport especially if we mix in climbing, shooting, or playing around in the snow.

Running around in the woods never gets old, even when you haven’t eaten in several days if you can believe that. Seriously. When you’re young you get to run around pretending you’re some kind of ninja special forces guy saving the world from destruction, planning an attack on an impenetrable enemy stronghold or hiding from imminent capture by an evil terrorist organization who is tracking you down. When you get older, you can run around pretending that you’re young again without a care in the world, making “forts” in the woods and putting your best Swiss Family Robinson skills to work. Trust me, it’ll all make sense the first time you get to sleep outside in a world that is very different from the one indoors.

You’re gonna love this book. No, it’s not the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. It is the original and still the best reference for boys and young men on stuff that every young man should know. The new version, sadly, lacks both the Norman Rockwell painting on the front cover and tons of great information on plants, insects and wildlife. Don’t worry, I’ve got a copy from when I was a Boy Scout, and we’ll be golden.

So that would be the part of S.E.R.E. that didn’t suck. The stuff I can talk about is the survival training where they taught us knots (learned in Boy Scouts), water procurement (learned in Boy Scouts), shelter construction (learned in Boy Scouts) and fire building (learned in Boy Scouts). I’ll grant you that they did elaborate quite a bit and I did learn some new techniques and procedures that were useful, but are you sensing a trend here. It’s a bunch of fun stuff that you can start doing as a little kid and NEVER gets old. I know right now it’s all about TOYS ‘Я’ US, but trust me, soon it’ll be all about R.E.I. and MSR. Oh, the fun we’ll have. And I promise, I won’t even make you wait until you’re older.

Another Poo-Machine Family Addition

Say hello to your furry new cousin, Diego!

HAHAHA, you silly little boy, that’s a puppy, not a cousin. Grant you, he does poo a lot, drool a lot, and lacks all sorts of coordination, but I assure you, he is a puppy. Here’s a cousin. You’re so naïve.

But then, you’re supposed to be. Your being right now is almost the definition of naïveté. In addition to his ability to create unbelievable amounts of poo and drool, you also share with Diego this lack of worldly knowledge and experience. You’re both bestowed with a certain amount of innocence and openness to learn and adapt and become a part of this world you’re coming into. But Diego will forever live in the now, his memories and experiences only seasoning his moment to moment existence. You, on the other hand, are like some sort of super sponge that absorbs and absorbs but never gets squeezed out.

It’s kinda crazy that even holding you and playing with you while you’re so young you won’t even remember will partially shape and mold the boy and man you will someday become. I know, I better not screw that up, eh? Lucky for us your ability to adapt can even compensate for my screw-ups.

Despite not being a cousin, I am looking forward to the two of you playing together, ’cause every little boy needs a dog in his life.

In the meantime…

Your older cousin was born. Rogan James McKay Davidson. I know, he’s got lot’s of cool names and you only have one so far, how horribly unfair is that. I don’t really think that it’s unfair at all, I just enjoy rubbing it in - but he does have a cool name. His name means “red-headed” from Irish and Gaelic origin, but the word on the street is his hair isn’t so red. But as I recall, Alex Rogan wasn’t a red-head either but he still managed to save the Earth (and Rylos, I suppose) from Xur and the Ko-dan Armada pretty much single-handedly.

So he’s got that going for him.

That and the fact that he has hair - which seems to be the in-thing these days. Roughly five hours before your cousin Rogan entered this less comfortable, bright and noisy new world, my goddaughter-to-be was also born. I know, babies are coming out of the woodwork here. Kaitlynn Marie (Kaitie to me) was born 6:20pm CDT (20.5in, 7lbs 5oz) to our friends Clif and Stephanie Russell - and also had hair… a fuzzy little head full of hair.

No, I don’t think there is such a thing as a god-cousin. Little Kaitie may, however, end up being your distant cousin umpteen times removed since Stephanie’s family tree does in fact have some Lucero branches in the northern New Mexico, southern Colorado area. The jury’s still out on that one.

But you’re changing the subject. I was talking hair, and from the last peek into your insulated little world, you’re sporting a real nice Kojak look right now. Hardly fair, I know. You’ve still got three and a half months to work on your little coiffe. And in all fairness, compared to your uncle Greg, I was pretty much bald when I was born too.

Oh, and for the record, you needn’t fear Clif, he doesn’t really eat babies. He’s on a diet.