happy

really, there is no entry here, other than i got a neat shot of my boy smiling. i love his smile. i need to get a video or audio recording of his coos and burbles before he actually starts forming words.

two steps forward

stranglehold
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

this was shot near the end of june.

there he was, the boy and his bink and his not recommended plush sleeping companion in the crib with his not recommended plush crib bumpers.

but he was asleep on his own for about six hours at a stretch.

then he got bit of a cold and he wound up back in bed with mama and papa. he hasn't been back since.

we're marveling at his growth and his progress with sitting up and his alertness and all.

as exasperating as it is to re-train him, i know it's just a matter of time before he returns to his crib and continues his road to becoming a person.

i told kris this evening as he slept in her arms to burn that sight into her memory -- his toothless head, those full cheeks, the slowly filling pate of hair -- for we will surely turn around and we will be old and he will no longer be a boy.

social butterfly

new best buds
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

last month, as i charted the boy's progress, i wondered how he'd handle june, what with his baptism and the wine and jazz festival in our sights.

well, let's just say he handled things like a champ.

didn't cry once during his baptism or even his post-sacrament dinner at the taste of asia (which ran about an hour too long, thanks to ordering snafus.)

and during the festival -- hell, he was astoundingly social and even managed two naps -- one during headliner joe lovano's set.

(he did catch something of a cold, with a bout of sniffles and congestion that pretty much obliterated the progress we made with having him sleep by himself in the crib at night. back to square one on that.)

and he even got to meet my buddy carrie, and her lovely daughter and mom, as well as a pair of carrie's workmates, sarah and andrew.

they were up for a memorial service for carrie's husband, mike, who died in florida and was raised in new jersey, but spent most of his work life here.

just a tidbit on mike: he and i were on a grocery run down in charleston, s.c., and he counseled me on relationships. he didn't try to sway me one way or another -- didn't presume to be an expert. but he did relate how fulfilling it was to make the commitment to settle down.

i didn't know it then, but his words were one of the first to help me recognize a good thing when i was seeing it. (yeah, yeah, so it took two years to sink in ...)

june in the rear view mirror

father's day
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

as months go, let's just say there have been better.

as much as my fear makes me a glass half-empty kind of guy in my heart's darkest parts, my hope forces me to approach things with a half-full optimism. (duh.)

and as much as i hated -- HATED -- losing two friends and colleagues, i have to believe that celebrating my son's baptism and my first father's day outweigh the sorrow at their deaths.

hope is forward; sorrow is back. and in this life we can only go in one direction.

mike and bob -- i love and miss you both more than either of you or i know. but i carry you both in heart and mind going forth hence, in my outlooks and my decisions. and i believe i will be the wiser for it.

God rest you both. pray for us and pray for our boy.

people who died

this fellow was one of my bosses before he passed away suddenly last monday.

bob kelly had been hospitalized since our boy's baptism in the middle of june and was rehabbing after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure. he died of cardiac arrest.

he was gone within hours after news of the death of west virginia's sen. robert byrd that same day.

we were already in the midst of an all-out blitz reporting on byrd's passing when our office manager got the call that our managing editor was dead as well.

deadlines being what they are, we could spare little time reacting to the news. we just worked diligently, mostly in silence.

we diverted two reporters to do a write-up on bob and ran a story on 7a, as close to the front as we could that day.

(i believe he picked the day robert byrd died to pass on so as to prevent us from putting a story about him on the front page.)

he was that modest; but his impact was huge.

during his tenure, he worked to turn dull reporters into sharper writers.

and he helped this would-be journalist get beyond creating prima donna design contest entries and instead strive for readable, direct visual presentations -- with smart concepts and execution, of course.

most of all, he had a terrific nose for news.

he personified "crazy like a fox."

for a paper decimated in a buyout and stripped of staff, ideas that sounded half-cocked gave our remaining reporters gems that our more monied competition missed entirely.

he gave our david rocks to hurl at the goliaths.

yes, some would call his management style hard, but you need a stone to hone a blade. (and he was as hard on himself as he was with his reporters, referring to his own work as well as others' as "drivel.")

i always liked to say that as aggravating as he was as a boss, the maddening thing was that he was right half the time -- the real pisser being that you never knew which time that was going to be.

already racked by arthritis, he'd been sick ever since kris and i came back from south carolina five years ago. he'd been hospitalized and was recovering from a near-fatal mrsa infection; i don't think he was quite the same man after that.

i'm especially sorry to have only gotten to see the photos of the man as an all-state basketball player at his memorial service. i had long been aware of his exploits on the court; i just wished i could have seen evidence of it, in light of his delicate state when i knew him.

my friends and former colleagues george and chris wrote terrific appreciations of him last week. and an artist friend and former colleague of bob's in wheeling created a lovely rendering of him as she recalled "the best boss i ever had."

we had just celebrated the life of my friend mike the day before all this happened.

i don't think the full impact of any of this has sunk in yet.

as for mike and bob, i know i'm going to miss them personally; bob for sure for his savvy contributions to the paper. as regards byrd, i have the horrible feeling this whole state won't begin to know how much it misses him until the money he diverted to us stops coming.