So, since it's all anyone wants to ask me: am I ready to be a father?

Yes. Next question.

What will Christopher be like? That's the one I always ask. Not that I obsess on it. After all, chances are pretty good that he won't be criminally insane, so it's not something I worry over.

For my part, I figure I'll advise him, play with him, scold him, employ him (bye-bye yard work), teach him, rap with him, take him to places I think are interesting - until he gets to be a teenager and won't want anything to do with me. Anyway, that's as much as I can do (or want to do) toward shaping his personality. After all, what can any parent do other than give their kid every reasonable advantage?

In the end, I figure he's going to be his own person. And all that's really important is that he's happy with who he is.

Then again, maybe not. So -

Here comes a new person with no job, no appointments, no best friend, no commitments of any kind, and a very limited (if any) understanding of how this world works. No preconceptions, no prejudices, an alien dropped here from outer space who just happens to look something like Cindy and me.

Hey, girls, maybe this is the perfect man! (Except for the no job part.)

Who knows? He could be a future President, or a successful scientist or businessman!

Or not.

I guess who you are is ultimately just the sum of your actions. So maybe I can already surmise bits of Christopher's personality from his actions. Feeling him through his mother's stomach, I would call him a really active fetus, and I would imagine that this means he will also be a really active baby.

He responds well to outside stimuli. Around the middle of January, Cindy was sitting on the couch reading a book. She set it down on her stomach (a convenient shelf), and Christopher gave it two sharp kicks which knocked the book off Cindy's stomach. I thought that was pretty pro-active for a minus 3 month old.

Anyway, I guess I'll get to meet him soon.

Walter