This picture is better than yesterday’s. It’s very similar, but it’s not the same. Abby’s hands add a certain scale and humanity to it that I find charming. Feels like American Gothic, parenthood, album art, that sort of thing. 



We went out for our first real trip away from the homestead that wasn’t just a car ride where Abby and Roby stay in the car, or we go see the Midwives. 

We went to Carrier café, where Abby used to work. It was very busy because Darn Tough was having an annual sock sale down the road. 

One part of being a parent in the world I might have guessed after had I the brainpower, but still was not entirely prepared for was the degree of minor celebrity one enjoys with a fresh baby strapped to your chest.

It’s different from the celebrity of walking with a cute dog. With that sort of fandom everybody’s eager to say hello to them. You’re in the entourage of a minor celebrity.

A dog’s like Nick Cave, or William Gibson, or Tom Waits, the sort of celebrity that not everybody knows, a celebrity that isn’t so stratospheric as to be terrifying. The sort of celebrity you might actually talk to if you saw them in the wild. 

A baby’s more like Béyöncé or Bob Dylan or Britney Spears. Those people aren’t real, you wouldn’t talk to them, you wouldn’t know what to say. But you would smile at them, you would take notice. 

Walking around with a newborn strapped to your chest is like being Britney Spears bodyguard. It’s exactly like that. It is an incredibly apt metaphor that is pure and crystalline. All parents know this.