12/15/1991

The right time for this would have been continuously over the past 2 1/2
years but right now is maybe not so bad.  I just loaded Madelyn and
Nathaniel onto an Amtrak train down in Birmingham, bound for Newark.
They won't get there till tomorrow afternoon, 22 1/2 hours on the train.
I wish I could go on the train.  I rode between New York and Richmond
once, spent most of the time in the cafe car.  But this isn't about me;
it's about Nathaniel, Nathaniel Richard Patton.  Or should I say
"Zachary", since that's how I first thought about him.  

Some of this may have been written before, and if I'm inconsistent,
forgive me.  There weren't so many long hours in the delivery room
waiting before I saw his black hair emerging first.  I said, "It has
black hair!", not wanting to impose a sex too early.  That was my
concern.  Madelyn's primary concern at that moment, as she's fond
of reminding me and a goodly number of other people, was not the
presence or color of the baby's hair.  I guess she was thinking more
about pain and discomfort.  I had hoped the relating of such a tid bit
might have distracted her; I guess it did but it's been ammunition for
her ever since.

Anyway, a while later all seven pounds, or seven pounds and two ounces
depending on which measurement you accept, were viewed through the glass
in the nursery as Madelyn was wheeled and I walked by on the way to her
hospital room.  Madelyn inquired, "Don't you just love him?!"  I imagine
I mumbled something in the affirmative but I definitely thought, "No, not
really.  I would protect him with my life as a matter of principle right
now; but how can I love him?  I don't even know him."  Well in the
morning the mother's love seemed only to have grown with feeding him and
such.  Of course I didn't know him, and that black hair seemed out of
place.  The name "Nathaniel Richard" was only finally decided on as we
drove Madelyn to the hospital for the delivery.  To me his black hair and
"E.T." skin made him seem like a Zachary to me.  I don't know why more
than that.  I continued to think of him as Zachary for several weeks and
had to be careful to mouth the name "Nathaniel", and not "Zachary".  I
thought of it (Zachary) as his secret name.  Kind of between me and him;
if the mother wanted to call him Nathaniel, well okay, but we knew
better.

After a while his follicles apparently realized his hair color was wrong
and all the black was gone by the time he was three or four months old.
His mother had begun to see more than one angle on having a baby.  It
wasn't all love and cuddling.  There were all night feedings and crying
and mostly just 24 hours of responsibility.  As she began to question
her unswerving love, I had gotten to know my son a bit.  Maybe he wasn't
long on personality yet but he was a definite individual.  I stopped
thinking of him first as Zachary but he wasn't simply Nathaniel.  He 
always had at least one other name.  Ones that I used out loud more
than Nathaniel.  I can't remember them all.  You think you're going to
write down all the stages and keep such a good diary.  Wouldn't it be
nice to have one from your parents on you?  But mostly you end up just
living the experience--and occasionally scribbling down a big event, or
capturing it on film or video.  I remember a few names, maybe Madelyn can
fill in more:  Pumpkin (Punkin), Buddy, Nat-man, Buddy-man, Than,
Streudel (Stroooooo-dle), Strude-my-Dude, Studley, Stud, Stud-Master
....

Communication came along later.  One of the first real language verbalizations
was an imitation of our sing-song way of saying "There-it-is" (High-low-high).
Another was as much gesture as vocalization:  he'd put his palms face upward,
shrug his shoulders and tip his head sideways as he made noise in the pattern
of "All-gone!".  He's gone through so many cute and semantically memorable
phrases.  I wish I had more to record.  One that I liked that he's begun to
outgrow is the use of "my" instead of "I", as in "My don't like green."
Which brings up his use of colors to identify objects.  Madelyn started it,
since he's real good at colors but obviously doesn't know the names of
all objects in his world (who does?).  It can be extremely frustrating 
if he's trying to talk about something and pointing and saying a color
in which 50 or 60 % of the objects in that direction share; but usually
it's quite helpful.  He generally drops articles and misuses pronouns,
"We go to store?", "Her is girl".

I haven't noticed him stuttering much lately.  When we went to pick out
a pumpkin in October he was having an awful time asking questions.  "Wha-
wha-w-w-w-wher-where we going, Mom-mom?"  It was the first time Madelyn and
I acknowledged it and it was a little concerning but we couldn't help
but laugh hysterical.  We suspected it was quite common and our books
say it is.  It's either gotten much less severe or we've gotten used to
it; or both.

I would have liked to have had Nathaniel read this first but since he's
still 3 years away from a "See Spot run." level of reading I'll share
it with others.  Maybe he'll listen if I read it to him.



2/13/92

"I am a bad guy !" he says; or "I am a tiger; I am a bad tiger,
Row-r-r-r!".

His most viscious put-down:  "You, You little nibble!"