Quin, Age 6. First grader.

What I'm here to discuss is toughness. It's somewhere in the blurred areas of delusion and reality but this little guy, who last year was the youngest and probably smallest in his school of 532, has stormed through the towering expectations (and bodies) of kindergarten and run with open arms to the next challenge: first grade.

First grade, as Quin may have told you, does not have "discovery time" and they "don't get a snack." These are the grave concerns shared by our son. Also, there is homework. A lot of homework. I didn't have homework until the fifth grade, and I don't think I actually did any of it until high school, but with the low tremor of foreboding in his voice, Quin has warned us of the specter of "lots of writing, reading and even math."

But, Quin, we think you can handle it.

You might recall that Quin was one of the angriest babies on the planet. He came out with some squeaks, and then became a quiet observer (as I've imagined any tiny human with a grumpy face would.) I remember, on day two of the silence, I said to Sarah, "Well, maybe we're just really good parents?" She laughed because neither of us knew what we were doing. A day prior they had to push us out of the hospital. One night you're resting in the warm womb of the maternity unit, the chair you're in created by women who want men to be just as uncomfortable as their wives, but you're surrounded by professional help and the world's greatest medical technology. There's even a closet full of free snacks. And then...an elderly nurse corrals you and your loved ones and briskly guides you into the cold cruel world. It's kind of like what a newborn goes through, but this time it's your whole family, and you're scared and grump-chirping at each other about how even though the baby is too small for the carseat, shoving stuffed animals like packing peanuts isn't going to make him any safer.

The outside world is harsh, and I don't know if you've ever seen a tiny infant in the impersonal steel and fabric of a used car, but it just seems wrong. The baby should be wrapped in soft, exotic cloths and carried home by a fleet of butterflies flanked by My Pretty Ponies and Sargent Pepper trumpets. The cartoon sun would climb the sky with a happy slide whistle and animated birds would join regional royalty in song. That, however, is not what happens when you take a baby home from the hospital. You bicker about exceeding 12 miles an hour while the mother weeps to the baby about being horrible parents. You don't even have a chance to try before you're already feeling someone else should take over. So when we got home and Quin didn't cry for a day, it felt like we'd truly conquered something.

At some point things changed. Maybe it was the morning when I was holding our new, little baby and one of the guys working on our house shot me with a nail gun. And that could be it altogether; the Skil saws the hammering, the smell of cigarettes from home-wrecked, halfway house inhabitants hired by our incompetent contractor all piled on my insecurity and fed right into our son. But about September 4th of 2007, Quin let loose. He let fly an anger and frustration that was not only loud and scary, but that would last until November.

We remember with great fondness being at our neighbors for dinner. They'd just had baby Jake five days after Quin. Jake's dad commented on how loud his son could cry. And then his son cried and it sounded like a distant goose. It was loud enough, however, to make our son cry, and when he did, it rattled their home. And we left that night huddled around our shrieking offspring hoping that no one would call social services. Our neighbors bid us a hearty farewell buoyed by the fact that we were leaving with the loudest crier.

Things would change again. Quin would eventually smile, but not until out of sheer sleep-deprived madness we loaded our baby, our dog and a small fridge for breast milk into our Toyota Corolla and drove nearly six thousand miles. After all, Quin seemed to like the car, so why not make it his life? It worked, or maybe he This is the actual first smile.took pity on us, but on November 7th, 2007, I believe, I caught our pissed off little man smiling for the camera. From that moment on, things changed. Our guy was a new man. No longer would he scream from 6pm until 2am; no longer would we destroy pilates balls by bouncing on them for hours at a time (that's a trick you parents of angry babies should consider.) No longer would I accuse Sarah of eating too much spicy food therefore upsetting our son's tummy. No longer would we whisper shout at each other about the whereabouts of burp rags after midnight. Our son would sleep.

Unfortunately, much of everything after that is a blur.

I do recall some of his benchmarks. In late 2009 he had his first joke: "When I fart it's like 'rawr' but when Daddy farts it's like 'RAWR'!" I was so proud. On his 100th day of kindergarten (which was a big deal with cupcakes and tedious little home projects like gluing 100 marshmallows to a piece of paper,) I asked Quin how he liked being in elementary school. He told me he liked it, and then he shared with me a little secret: He said that on the first day of school, as the magnitude of the situation settled upon him, he told himself, "Quin, this is kindergarten. If you're good you'll be good." I've never loved anything so much in my life. 

At first with parenthood you're simply shocked that there's a baby in your house, and then you've got these guys who are running, jumping and doing dangerous things. They get smarter and smarter and you find that their strengths are the biggest pain in your ass. Quin is a savvy little memory tycoon who I'm pretty sure recalls the uterus. I have to hide a crap toy for up to three years before I can throw it away. And, Quin, you can stop checking the recycle bin for kid art. I'm burning it now. Ha! Just kidding. That'll be in the winter.

I'm also impressed how you know how fast I'm driving relative to the posted speed limit.

For me, right now, to sum up Quin, all it takes is one picture. It's of this kid looking like there is clearly something wrong. His face is swollen like Jake Lamotta and he's got a crazy bump on his arm. It's his first week of first grade and life has pummeled him. Two mosquito bites, usually button-sized on a normal person, turn into angry gourds on this kid. So he's got a Cro-Magnon thing going on, and he's just had this random infection on his arm drained. According to Quin, he didn't cry when the nurse squeezed it, but he wanted to. Also, he reported that the resulting discharge shot into the nurse's hair. Sarah confirmed the story and that his little brother nearly fainted.

This is all going on with this guy--and there's the scary bowel thing--and I snap a photo of the happiest kid in the world. In the morning I'm not exactly a spinning wind chime of joy, but that doesn't matter to him. Neither does the facial swelling or the mysterious infection. He's cool. He's six now and he's in the first grade. The world is fickle but our guy carries his own anti-itch cream. Quin, buddy, you've got this.