When do we first fall in love with our kids?
Photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart tells his story.
This story first appeared in THE MOMENT, a book of wild, poignant, life-changing stories from artists and writers famous and obscure, published by Harper Perennial in 2012.
Natalie is now 19 days old. She was due to be born in just 5 more days. She is doing well. Passed her birth weight and clocked in at 6 lbs 3 oz. last we checked. That's already half as big as our cat!
We're all doing fine and one of us (Jacob) is sleeping normally.
Here Natalie meets Timmy the Sheep. She was fascinated, and just stared and stared and stared. Before Natalie, Jacob always seemed normal size, but he grew three sizes the day she was born. Notice how huge his hand looks in relation to Natalie.
Please welcome Natalie Claire Forster Rothbart to the world. 
Natalie was born on May 24. She surprised us all by arriving 3 weeks early. Although she is just a petite 5 1/2 pounds, she is big enough to stop everyone in their tracks. Here is Jacob, very proud to hold her for the first time when Natalie was 9 hours old.
Jacob and I built and photographed this winter scene together. Jacob is already 4 1/2, and says he wants to be a photographer when he grows up. Or a fire dog. Or a T-rex.
We Don't Have Time To Blog Anymore
1. Amy is trying to finish her dissertation.
2. Mike is trying to write a book.
3. Jacob is trying to get someone to play with him.
4. Jacob is now a train engine named Hiro.
5. We're tired.
6. We're poor.
7. We're huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
8. We are moving August 1st.
9. We are traveling to Vermont and Maine and Michigan.
10. We can't even finish this list, never mind finding time to blog.
Maybe in the fall.
Photo by Jacob Forster Rothbart
Jacob shows off his best bat grin.
Jacob waters his tomato plants on our balcony.
Hi all,
We are breaking our long silence here to announce that Jacob's uncle Davy will be featured tonight on ABC's 20/20.
Read the article here.
See the video here. (Sorry, you'll have to suffer through an ad first).
So why our silence on all things Jacob? Honestly, we are all too busy living to spend much time recording our activities. Unfortunately.
We will be in Ukraine until the end of July and then moving to Oneonta, New York in August. Once we return to the U.S. maybe (hopefully!) we'll start blogging more again.
M
How sweet it is. Photo by AFR
Photo by Amy FR
Last week I moved to Ukraine. I'm excited to begin my Chernobyl project, but while I am working in logistics it is very hard to be so far from my family. I must confess: last night, I was missing them so much I got up at 2:30 am to look at photos of Jacob and Amy.
Now that I am an absentee dad, maybe I'll find time to post more recent photos of Jacob. But let me tell you, it's not the same as seeing the giggly sweet lion-roaring truck-rolling boy in person.
Mike
If you think 3 days and 1340 miles in a small car with a small child and a loud cat sounds like fun, we invite you to join us the next time we move. Despite tears and meows and far too many repetitions of the Sesame Street CD, we all survived our move to Maine. Actually, Jacob traveled quite well most of the time. Kanzhe is the one who threatened to drive us batty. He managed to meow for nearly 3 days straight, despite sedation.
Anyhow, we made it.
Our blog has fallen silent this spring and summer as we have all been way too busy to reflect. Today, we leave Madison. It's been our home for the past 8 years, (at least for those of us who are older than that) and we're sad to be moving on.
Tomorrow we start our drive to Maine, where Amy and Jacob will spend the fall. Mike leaves in September for Ukraine, where he will be doing a photography project on Chernobyl. Amy and Jacob will join Mike this winter. Amy is writing her dissertation and applying for teaching jobs. Jacob is writing circles and lines and singing Sesame Street songs.
Our fall address (and ongoing US mailing address):
86 Three Mile Pond Rd
Vassalboro, ME 04989.
Email addresses stay the same.
Thanks Madison, for being a great place to live!
Photo by Maciek Smuga-Otto
Jacob got his first haircut today, at Next Generation salon, a place that specializes in kids' haircuts. Jacob was very calm about it (and pleased to sit in the firetruck chair!) He is already 23 months old — we’ve been putting of getting his beautiful blond curls cut, even though strangers often mistake him for a girl. Today he just got hair trimmed, and the ringlets stayed.
Now that Jacob is 21 months old, he has started reading the New York Times. At 21 days old he was no bigger than the Sunday Times, and suddenly now he's sitting there reading it. Okay, okay: he only likes it for the pictures. A habit he'll surely someday deny when he picks up Playboy.
Seriously, though, Jacob is now interested in letters. For two months he's been pointing out his two favorites (B! O! he chants, sometimes getting them correct). This week he is able to identify seven (A, B, C, D, J, M, O) more often than not, though M, W, E and N all mean M as far as he is concerned and J is called “dub” (his word for Jacob). We've been playing repeated alphabet games and songs about our names – Jacob, mama, (formerly known as Amy), and dada. Today he was obsessed with his alphabet puzzles; he now seems to understand that letters have names and was parroting them back to us.
So, how about that weekly family blog, eh?
It's been 6 weeks since we returned to Madison and we've all been busy. We've been:
• unpacking boxes
• growing teeth
• restarting a photography business
• teaching 4 sections of an International Relations class
• starting pre-school
• starting a dissertation
• looking for part-time jobs
• starting to potty-train
• finishing a web site
• learning two syllable words ("allo? ba-all dow-oon wow")
• applying for a grant to go back to Ukraine
• staying up too late and getting up too early
• completing our 2006 taxes (we got a 6 month extension)
• wondering what in the world we're doing here
• pulling the cat's tail.
But maybe sometime soon we can add blogging regularly back on the list.
Our lawn is the best raked it has ever been. Jacob has loved leaves since he was 3 months old, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that he has taken to raking, now that his leaves are falling.
The first time out, I gave Jacob an old broom because he was so insistent on helping. He pushed leaves up and down the sidewalk. When it was time to go in, he refused to part with the broom, and proceeded to carry it around the house, banging into walls and doorways with it.
The second time, Jacob insisted on using a real rake, not a broom. Our neighbor Amanda (who has a 2-year-old) saved the day by lending us a toy rake. We made the mistake of leaving the rakes outside the door and now Jacob wants to rake every single time we come outside. He even takes his rake to school with him!
In sad news, my second favorite Jacob, Ann Arbor street musician Shaky Jake, died last month at the age of 82. Shaky Jake had been playing on the streets of A2 since I was the age of our Jacob, and his enthusiastic but off-key guitar playing was legendary. That man could put a smile on anyone's face! (Read more here, see video here or listen to the NPR piece here.)
If anyone out there has an "I brake for Jake" bumper sticker, I want it.
That's it. We're leaving. Jacob's taking his ball and going home. His parents are coming too. The next 2 weeks, we'll be traveling, and one or more of us will be in: Kyiv, Chernobyl, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Boston, Detroit, and Ann Arbor, before we finally land back in Madison in early September.
So don't expect to hear from us for awhile.
