Two weeks ago, my son John Paul Pax Wildermuth was born. The first thing I thought when I saw him was, “holy God, he’s big!” The second thing I thought was, “He! It’s a he! The baby’s a HE!” Ever since those first few moments, my thoughts have mostly followed in that same pattern - shock, surprise at the shock, realizing there is relevant information in that shock, and then coping with this new information. For instance, I had no idea that my . . . oh wait, the baby (and mom) need me . . . okay, back. Crisis averted, baby changed, fed, and now swinging to the sound of an ocean above him, with strange colored lights and plush fishes circling like anti-vultures of happiness.

Here’s a shock - John Paul wasn’t born knowing how to eat. Here I’ve been told all my life that humans are just another animal, and my son doesn’t have one breastfeeding animal-instinct in his body. Apparently he has to learn how to eat. As I sit with this stunning news, the relevancy begins to dawn on me - I, the dad, will now have to enter into the newborn food chain. Apparently the one-flesh of man and woman goes further than I thought. Now, armed with tubes, syringes, pumped breastmilk, and a sanitized finger or two, I’ve been feeding John Paul late into the night. We recently moved to a “natural” kind of bottle, one that will hopefully not cause the baby to mistake a bottle for a breast. Again, Nate is surprised, shocked, and discovering the relevancy of this new information.

My life has a new center of gravity. Thank God. As my wife sleeps in bed with a fever, and my JP sits next to me asleep, I thank God for the perseverance of this new soul that has been entrusted to me. I wonder what further surprises are in store for me. Did I tell you about the quick draw urination that happens in between diaper changes? Ah. THAT was a surprise. There must be a giant conspiracy among parents not to tell their children about all these little tidbits of information, like, “baby boys like to urinate at their faces, and yours, given the opportunity.” Hah!

“Skype is a proprietary Voice-over-IP program that uses a proprietary protocol. Skype is seducing free software users into using proprietary software, often two users at a time. Using proprietary phone software means that we can’t be sure who is listening in, because we can’t see the code. The Chinese government, for example, was found to have been spying on Skype conversations already, and they are probably not the only ones. We do not want to encourage the creation of a Skype compatible client, but instead, we want to encourage you to create, contribute to, or promote the use of free software replacements for Skype, such as Ekiga, and to encourage adoption and use of free VoIP, video, and chat protocols such as SIP and XMPP/Jingle.

Ways to help. The easiest way to help is to not use Skype and to encourage the use of a free software replacement instead. There are a number of programs, such as Ekiga, Twinkle, Coccinella, QuteCom, and SIP-Communicator that are working replacements for Skype. The Mingle project builds on Jabber to provide multiparty calling, and is supported by a grant from the NLnet Foundation. NLnet also supports the openMSRP project in this area. Users of such programs should file bug reports and feature requests to the projects. If you are not a developer, you can consider contributing to documentation and tutorials for such projects, as well as filing feature and bug requests. Developers should consider helping free software VoIP and video, chat, and multimedia communications projects.”

Hi

For some reason I can’t login anymore so now I have to post from wef3.  So, just wanted to share that things with the baby are GREAT.  Just this morning, Nate began to give John Paul a discourse on the theology he’s been studying.  So I realized that if he can tell John Paul everything, I don’t have to listen to all the theologizing single-handedly!  And, it is pretty entertaining at the same time to hear Nate lecturing at a clueless newborn sucking on his finger to be fed.  The baby has to use a feeding tube connected to either my breast or nate’s finger in order to eat.  For a couple different reasons (one being his tongue’s a little short) he was having trouble breastfeeding - so now we’re just plugging along with this weirdness until he grows a little and gets  a good hard suck.  . .  I have been living in my bed.  I like it actually although my backside gets sore. . . (I know you all were dying to know this important info.)  Aunt Terry came by last night and other friends have been dropping in which helps keep my spirits up. As nice as we’ve made the basement, I’ve definitly noticed it getting smaller and darker since I’ve been home the last week and a half.   We’re hoping to bring the baby to church this Sunday.  That will be nice.  But I guess we have to be careful not too many sick people are around him.  Two days ago he gave us some good smiles - no they were not intentional cuase develpmentally he can’t smile for a while but even if he was just stretching his mouth muscles, it was really cute and its good to know his mouth will be able to make a smile when the time comes for him to choose to do so.  So, basically John Paul just eats, sleeps and poops.  He barely cries except when he’s getting a diaper change or maybe bath.  I hope he stays that way! Nate is making a video of him for you all.  Until then,  xxoo Angela