It has been a week of distractions and projectile vomiting, but one thing is certain. The baby is 11 months old. He will be walking very soon.

I know this as an experienced father watching him pivot on one foot and spin gracefully to the floor, except for the part where he clocks the underside of his chin against the table on the way down. It reminds me of the way the novelist Raymond Chandler describes getting punched  - he would write ‘the floor came up to meet me and hit me in the face.’ The phrase captures the surprise on the baby’s face as the table gets in the way of his otherwise graceful descent.

His naps have grown to three hours sometimes, proof that he is building neural pathways like crazy. His eyes are alert to everything around him. He listens and repeats back sounds. He can wave good-bye. He laughs at his own jokes. His skin is soft as a baby’s ass, particularly on his butt. He has outgrown me in hair and will be a better tennis player. I know because he has long legs, long arms, a long torso, and a killer instinct to close a point. Well, I don’t know about that last part, but he can really suck on a tennis ball.

Oh, and I have to assume blame, in part, for the projectile stuff. I tried to bring garlic back into our cooking menu. No dice.

From time to time my daddy asks me, ‘Hey, how’s the neuron construction going?’  ’Pretty good,’ I always say, ‘pretty good.’ ‘Okay,’ he says, ’you’ll be going to college soon, so we better start saving some money.’

He’s right to get moving on that right away. I can sit up now, even though he thought I would learn how to drive a stick shift before I managed that. I have graduated from ‘army crawl’ to crawling really fast on all fours. I can scream quite loudly, especially when my mommy leaves the room. They call this separation anxiety, but I call it common sense. When you have a SuperMommy like I do, you want her around all the time. Here’s why.

• She comforts me after I close my hand in a drawer. Then she comforts me five minutes later, when I do it again.
• She takes me out for Indian food and lets me have a Salt Lassi. (Picture below.)
• She sings to me and reads to me.
• She has encouraged my vocabulary to expand from mama and dada to de de de, hmmmmm, hey ye ye ye, and kegi, which stands for kitty.
• She lets me turn over on the changing table while trying to diaper me, which sometimes results with the diaper securely fastened to my head. I don’t mind. My daddy doesn’t stand for these shenanigans. He pins me to the changing table like an Olympic wrestler.

Since my mommy is a hero to me, I have given some thought to a few things I would like to achieve with her.

My SuperMommy Bucket List

1. Summiting Mt. Everest in a stroller. Because it’s there. Not the mountain, I mean the stroller. It would take superhuman strength to push a stroller to Base Camp, but my mommy can do it.

2. Flying around the world in a two-person plane. Recently I took a plane to New York and back, and for parts of it I screamed so loudly that my daddy was looking for the ejector seat button. Lucky for him, that kind of plane doesn’t have an ejector seat button. But my mommy stood faithfully by me, so I think she would be my first choice as a co-pilot when we circumnavigate the globe together in a solar-powered plane.

3.  Journeying to the ocean floor in a two-person submersible. Because there’s nobody I’d rather be in a submersible with than my mommy, even James Cameron. After our heroic dive, as we were ascending slowly to ward off the bends, I know she would sing to me, even through slightly impeded by her face mask with its oxygen-helium-nitrogen mix.

Of course, SuperMommy, there is one more thing I should tell you. You don’t have to be a SuperMommy for me to love you. All you have to do is be there for me and love me. That’s super enough. Happy Mother’s Day.

No, I am not declaring for Mayor of New York even though I know I can beat Anthony Weiner. (Note to self: do not open a Twitter account.) I do know, however, that a lot of east coasters read this blog, and I told my parents it was time to put in an appearance over there. (I don’t know where the East Coast is but we took a plane to get here.)

I already met my grandpa Al and sister Carolyn on previous occasions, so it was nice to check in with them again. My mommy took me over to meet the Hudson River, which in my view closely resembles other rivers. (I’m trying to impress you, but I’m faking it. I’ve never actually seen any other rivers.)

New York is a high-power city and I had to struggle a little to keep up the pace. Here I am enjoying a quick shot of espresso under my mommy’s loving eye.

We took a long drive up to Rhode Island, which for some reason involves arguing over directions and which road to take. I told my parents to turn on the GPS but they didn’t listen until they’d already missed the connection from the Merritt Parkway back to I-95. It’s hard, but sometimes I have to just let them make these mistakes so they’ll learn.

In Rhode Island I checked in with my grandma who calls herself Bopie. I looked at Wikipedia but there isn’t anything for a Bopie there, so I will have to ask her about that. Then I met my other granddad for the first time soon after we arrived in Jamestown. I’d say detente was immediate and there was a frank exchange of ideas.

I think if I do run for mayor he would vote for me.

We are staying in a nice house and I am learning to sleep in a Pack n Play no matter where it is placed. On the coffee table there was a magazine about something called golf. The cover showed a shot of a man using a stick to hit a defenseless little white ball. The headline on the cover said, ‘Long, Straight and Hard.’ From this, I have determined that reading about golf is not suitable for young children.

Later, at night, way past my usual bedtime, we went to someplace called a Yacht Club to celebrate my granddad’s birthday. I think it is nice that yachts have a place to gather and have a cocktail. My granddad is way into the double digits, but I don’t know how old because I haven’t tried counting that high. It was an exciting evening, so exciting that they gave me my own Secret Service detail.

Toward the end of the night I broke away to get in some reading about boats. I realize I like boats. That must be why they named me Boat-y.

For the father traveling along with him and his angelic mother, however, different story. First of all, since I am the father in question, I couldn’t change seats to get away from him.  Heroically – and I do think of this as heroic – I would not abandon his angelic mother nor abandon him in mid-flight. But I can tell you, when the flight was over, one doesn’t need to call a taxi at the airport so much as an ambulance. Preferably an ambulance to take you, sirens blaring, directly to a spa. I remember saying loudly, ‘I have to get off this plane,’ and then remembering we were still somewhere over Kansas. I remember thinking, ‘I need to order the largest container of whiskey they have on Delta,’ but then I remembered I don’t drink whiskey any more. Then I remember wondering if it would be appropriate to give some whiskey to a baby. But not just any baby, but to the one who has been kicking me in the kidney for three hours. On airplanes, they serve whiskey in those little bottles, which seem baby friendly enough.

When I suggested this option to my wife, she didn’t laugh for some reason. She is a marathoner, and she simply said, “Finish the race.” To unpack this expression a bit for non-runners, it means that even though your knee is exploding and your spleen is going to forcibly eject from your body any minute, you need to keep running.  Finish the race, finish the flight. It made sense, in theory.

The most terrifying thing about babies is that there is no reasoning with them. There is little negotiation when you have little legroom. You can’t say, ‘Hey buddy, here’s the deal. You stop pounding on my kidney with your big toe and I’ll pay for college, all the way through.’ He’s just not paying attention to anything like that. He just wants to slobber on that plastic spoon you handed him. Most importantly, a father’s complaints do not matter in this context. This is because in this context we have to answer to a higher authority.

When we were leaving the plane, red eyed, mentally frayed, near collapse, no less a higher authority than the pilot says to me, ‘That’s a good baby.’ I felt like a Supreme Court decision went against me, and there was no appeal.

Here’s the thing. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to pull myself up on things. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to stand up in my crib. But nobody – and I mean nobody – tells you how to get down again.

Have you ever had this happen? It’s three-thirty in the morning. You’re alone in your crib. You decide to pull yourself up and have a look around, you know, to see what’s shaking at three-thirty in the morning in your room. It could be exciting outside your crib – you have no way of knowing until you stand up. Mel Gibson could be trying to resurrect his career, right in your room. Tom Cruise might be climbing up something, because he does all his own stunts, and if he’s doing them in your room, you won’t want to miss that. Jodie Foster could be announcing something really personal, or bizarrely defending Mel Gibson – does anybody know why she defends Mel Gibson? Seinfeld could be working out new material in your room – you don’t know till you see. So you pull yourself up to your full height – which at ten months is getting to be impressive – and you look around.

Unfortunately, there’s not much going on in your room at that hour, no movie stars, no Seinfeld, no anti-Semitic outbursts, nothing, but now there you are standing in your crib, grasping the bars tightly with your little hands – and you get stuck. I’m talking STUCK. As in can’t get down. Can’t lower yourself because that’s too complicated, can’t just let go because you’ll fall on your ass, which is softly wrapped in a diaper, but it’s an inelegant way to get down, and nobody has told you yet how to remove one hand, then the other and slowly lower yourself back to your expensive, soft cocoa-mat mattress. Has that ever happened to you?

Of course not. Because you’re not a baby. It has never happened to you. But it happens to me every night, and when it does, I scream my bloody head off for help.  My legs get weaker and weaker, steadily bowing under my now impressive weight, my little arms tire, my fingers go white gripping the crib, all trying to prevent a potentially injurious drop of, well, it must be eight or ten inches on to that soft mattress. But I can’t count, so I don’t know that isn’t dangerous. Tears run down my chubby little chin as I howl louder and louder for assistance. And wouldn’t you know it? The only people who can help me are fast asleep. What are they doing asleep at three-thirty in the morning? Don’t they cover each other’s shifts, propping their chin in weary hand, eyes fluttering closed, popping open, hearing the cry of a child in distress, and making a heroic rescue?

It never happens like that, but eventually somebody comes in and talks me down off the ledge.

By the way, I hear my parents talking about something called teething a lot. If anybody knows what that is, would you drop me an email or comment?  Thanks.

The people who take care of me, otherwise known as my parents, have gone off their rockers.

I know I am supposed to eat table legs and cats. But when they put a rice crispy in front of me, I really have to question their judgement. I know I will never, ever choke on a table leg. It’s so big, eating a table leg is as safe as can be. I will never catch the cat, so trying to eat him is not a problem. But a rice crispy? A little piece of soft sweet potato? Or a tiny little piece of cooked carrot?  What are they thinking?? They are willing to risk a lot when they put those things on my high chair tray and expect that I transfer them into my mouth.

I’ve tried telling them they have to stop wasting time cutting cooked carrots into pieces and get to the real work of clearing all the furniture out of this place. I mean everything – I have no need for furniture and I need room to crawl and climb. I can crawl really fast now, and I can climb up anything. I have scaled couches like they are Everest. I have made my bedroom Annapurna base camp for my treks. I have tossed my lunch on their rug so often as to change the color scheme. You don’t need rugs with a baby in the house, and you don’t want furniture in the way of the baby when he is crawling.

Of course, they have not cleared away any of the furniture. They still use it for sitting on, to give themselves a break from cutting up carrots. When I speak to them as articulately as possible about the pointlessness of this they always say, ‘Oh isn’t he cute, he’s saying mama mama and da da da da.’ But I am not saying those things at all. I am saying they need to stop cutting things into small pieces and get to work clearing away all the plants, all the tall objects that might tip over, all the wires – anything that might get in my way.

Oh, you say, but if they take away all the wires they will have no lights. Not a problem, I say. At this time of year it is still light when I go to bed. If they went to bed at the same time as me they wouldn’t need lights anyway. Oh, you say, if they remove the furniture they will have no place to sit and watch television. I say television sucks. The rickety stand the TV sits on is too tall anyway, and I will be tipping it over soon enough. Oh, you say, if they remove everything from the house that isn’t baby-proof then they will have nothing to do all day but watch you crawl around.

Ah, now you’re catching on.

Here is how the chain reaction happened. His mother was carrying him past a potted plant. He grabbed a leaf. Both plant and pot toppled from their high shelf, ricocheted off a rare, discontinued Kovacs lamp, and banged to the floor, launching potting soil like a spray of blood at a crime scene. The lamp suffered a scar but was not broken.

And what of the baby? The baby has been exonerated, pardoned of plant-smashing and deadly intent to kill a lamp. He has been declared innocent by judge and jury. That’s because he has the best defense lawyer in the business – his mother. I can’t forget the chain reaction, however, because it has set the past in motion.

Today my older son brought by boxes and bags of my old writing: stories, novels, screenplays, all smelling of mold, fungus, and paying my dues. His mother is moving from the house we’d lived in for decades. It was time for me to reclaim the pages of the past, the typewriter I’d used to write plays on, and a mysterious box with film in it.

Some of those stories from long ago are spooky, some are good, and all of them pull me back into the tac tac sound of a typewriter late at night as a baby slept in the other room. I stood tall then among imaginary people in an extraordinary world. I wrote fiction for money, I wrote fiction for love, but mostly for the latter, which is why I stopped writing fiction. Sometimes, when you use fiction writing to make money, it is too easy for other people to take away your power. They don’t buy your script, decline to publish your story, and you have to find another way to buy food. It pretty much sucks, and it can suck the love out of the writing. This is what happened to me, I think. This is a pattern I plan to break this time around.

People ask me, ‘What’s it like being a dad again?’ It’s completely different this time. I see the future and I see the past, and I see how they mingle. The baby is teething now, so we are back to getting little sleep, just as it was when he first arrived. But that will change. He is eating a lot more, so we need more money, reminding me of the desperate tac tac of a typewriter in the night, tapping out a story to sell.

Being a parent is like water. So much is in motion, moving back on itself. He is climbing on things, encouraging us to baby proof as he reaches for electrical plugs and wobbly tables.  Suddenly, he has become a thinking, desiring entity, more than a miracle machine of life force. You can feel the consciousness of him. This is no small achievement.

People say he has his mother’s hair color, his grandfather’s blue eyes, his brother’s height. I say these qualities are all him, intrinsically his, alone. Being a parent is like water, but there is a quality to our baby that is like a rock. We parents must flow around the steadiness of his personality. He has become formed in a way that will remain for a hundred years should he live that long, and he probably will because he will be living in the future.

You know how you can look at somebody who is quite old and then look at their baby picture and see the same person? The same glint of the eyes, set of the jaw, the crooked smile?  Today, I can turn that time machine the other way. I look at him and see him at twenty, at thirty, even at seventy if I squint to de-focus my eyes. This is the chain reaction he has set in motion.

The mysterious box with film in it that my son brought over today contained my first film made in high school. I wrote a careful script for it, blocking out every move. The day we were to shoot it – in Super 8 – the script was lost. We had to improvise all the dialogue. The effect on the movie was that it made little or no sense. Like scenes from a marriage or memories of laboring to birth a baby, it washed over you, a series of disconnected situations flowing from moment to moment, like water. Later, of course, we found the script, but it was too late. We’d already made the movie by our best instincts.

The next picture is me finding my mouth. I am starting with yogurt in this picture and, as you can see, it took just a couple of tries. Way faster than learning the harmonium.

The next picture is me practicing my broadcast-ready smile for later in life, for when I am on television (if it is still called television by the time I am on it). Can’t you just hear me saying, ‘Here are today’s top stories. President Malia Obama appointed Lady Gaga Secretary of State today. Secretary Gaga will learn the job from the extremely old yet still coherent former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.’

The next image is of me in the park, interrupted as I was about to eat some dirt. You can see that I am not pleased about the interruption. I really wanted that dirt.

I do not drink coffee, so having business meetings in Starbucks doesn’t work for me. Instead, here I am meeting in the park with my colleague. He has the same name as I do, and that’s what the meeting was about.

It is important to look for bugs.  Remember this because it is good advice.

Finally, my parents put me in this contraption. I don’t know what it’s called, but it was a lot of fun.

I wait till they take their eyes off me for a split second, whether at the park or in our home. Then I pick a leaf with some sharp stick things on it, pop it in my mouth, and start choking a little. Not too much, because I need to build the performance. But just enough to get everyone crazy. I’ve realized that this is a real bonding experience for us!

Mom and dad start slapping me on the back and attempting to remember the Heimlich maneuver, and I try tell them that it is all not necessary. I’m just eating a little leaf for the effect and to bring us closer together as a family.  By the time they realize that and know that I’m okay they are all rattled, but it still works okay, because we are all a lot closer. They have had to drop whatever they were doing that didn’t involve me, and also had to ignore the cat, my main competitor for attention, and focus completely on this powerful bonding experience charged with fear.  Nice!

When I am done scaring my mommy for the day I often consider trying to scare my daddy.  But he is not easy to scare. When I try the leaf trick, dad mutters something like, ‘If you want to eat leaves, I suggest accompanying them with a light vinaigrette. They are very dry otherwise.’

Spoiler alert: For those of you who are sensitive, stop reading here. I don’t want to shock you.

I am highly intelligent and not crude at all, but sometimes things just come together and it involves fluids. I have thought really hard about this and I have created an alternative way to bond with my dad.

When we are walking along and he is carrying me in the Bjorn, if I can get the angle just right I let go and it will soak through my diaper, through my pants, and onto his shirt. I know that he enjoys the warm feeling of closeness because he says funny words under his breath. And I know other people enjoy the closeness, too, because when they see the spreading stain on his shirt they point at us and start laughing.

It’s fun to be so close as a family. I think I would like to try eating dirt next.

Don’t tell my dad, but I took his iPad and signed up for something.  It’s called the Baby Society of Over-Dramatic Arts.

We babies, I don’t have to tell you, really need to work our parents and acting is a key survival skill. To get what we want requires the highest emotive ability, since we don’t yet have any words to express ourselves. I have really, really worked hard at my acting. I am proud to say I go one better than Pacino. He is often accused of scenery chewing (otherwise known as overacting), but I actually chew the scenery. I eat table legs and suck on strollers – anything to express my craft. I’ve gained 20 pounds for the role I’m playing now (I play a baby). I’m working on learning English. And I already speak Babble. Sometimes I do three costume changes a day, depending on how well my diapers are fastened.

My dedication to the craft of acting is complete. I yell like DeNiro when the people who take care of me don’t feed me right away. When being rolled about in my stroller like a little prince I have perfected a far-away look of subtle sadness that would be at home on stage in any Chekov play. Waiting for Godot? Try waiting for your parents to get up and feed you in the morning if you want to sample true emptiness. I can do snappy, rapid-fire dialogue that would work in any Howard Hawks film like The Philadelphia Story, but for now it’s all in Gibberish, another language I speak.

I believe there is no such thing as holding back for rehearsal. I give 100% in every performance, even if there are no cameras present. I cry a bitter river of tears every time my mommy leaves the house. I want her to hear me when she is halfway down the street. I think she can!  But I save the best fireworks for the nighttime, when my mommy gives me a 10 or 11pm nursing. She comes in, I have a snack, she cuddles me, and when she sets me back in my crib, I let loose. After studying my webinar lessons carefully I am able to release a heart-tearing scream that rips at her soul. I really relish the emotions I can bring up in her.

My father, sadly, seems immune to my acting skill. When I sit in my highchair, spoon in hand, moaning in hunger and looking like those actors in Les Miserables, he usually breaks out laughing. He has no appreciation for the craft of the Over-Dramatic Arts. But he will be wondering soon about the charge I put on his credit card to pay for the webinar. I hope he doesn’t notice it until I absorb enough of these lessons to achieve my greatest goal.

I am going for the Oscar for Best Baby in an Over-Dramatic Role. Winning would be nice. But even being nominated would be an honor.