jacob & natalie's first years

Someday video now on Vimeo

2012-07-02T22:58:00.000-04:00

When do we first fall in love with our kids?

Photojournalist Michael Forster Rothbart tells his story.

This story first appeared in THE MOMENT, a book of wild, poignant, life-changing stories from artists and writers famous and obscure, published by Harper Perennial in 2012.

Someday: one father's story from Michael Forster Rothbart on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, my story was published in The Moment, a collection of personal essays. Today I finished editing this video, to be shown on the Smith Magazine website and at book readings.

Natalie meets Timmy

2011-06-11T12:03:00.002-04:00

Natalie is now 19 days old. She was due to be born in just 5 more days. She is doing well. Passed her birth weight and clocked in at 6 lbs 3 oz. last we checked. That's already half as big as our cat!

We're all doing fine and one of us (Jacob) is sleeping normally.

Here Natalie meets Timmy the Sheep. She was fascinated, and just stared and stared and stared. Before Natalie, Jacob always seemed normal size, but he grew three sizes the day she was born. Notice how huge his hand looks in relation to Natalie.

Welcome Natalie!

2011-06-02T00:27:00.005-04:00

Please welcome Natalie Claire Forster Rothbart to the world.

Natalie was born on May 24. She surprised us all by arriving 3 weeks early. Although she is just a petite 5 1/2 pounds, she is big enough to stop everyone in their tracks. Here is Jacob, very proud to hold her for the first time when Natalie was 9 hours old.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T12:03:00.000-05:00

Jacob and I built and photographed this winter scene together. Jacob is already 4 1/2, and says he wants to be a photographer when he grows up. Or a fire dog. Or a T-rex.

2010 has been a very full and wonderful year for us, and we hope it was great for you as well.

In the coming year, I pray that our lives (yours and ours) are full of activities and people that bring us joy and happiness. May our days be free from worry and our nights free from fear.

It may sound cheesy but I mean it. Happy new year!

10 Reasons Why

2010-06-27T21:46:00.008-04:00

We Don't Have Time To Blog Anymore

1. Amy is trying to finish her dissertation.
2. Mike is trying to write a book.
3. Jacob is trying to get someone to play with him.
4. Jacob is now a train engine named Hiro.
5. We're tired.
6. We're poor.
7. We're huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
8. We are moving August 1st.
9. We are traveling to Vermont and Maine and Michigan.
10. We can't even finish this list, never mind finding time to blog.

Maybe in the fall.

Jacob and the bats

2009-11-01T20:32:00.004-05:00

Photo by Jacob Forster Rothbart

This is Jacob's own photo of the bat puppets he made with his grandmother Irene and aunt Sarah. They used black socks and felt.

Jacob shows off his best bat grin.

Happy Halloween!

Green Thumb

2009-06-29T14:19:00.006-04:00

Jacob waters his tomato plants on our balcony.

Mike and Jacob planted tomato and basil seeds in old water bottles back in May. They are thriving in our greenhouse-like balcony, which gets too much hot sun to use it for anything else. Jacob has been diligently watering and tending his plants. The basil is producing well and the tomatoes have buds, but we are unlikely to actually get any ripe tomatoes before we leave Kyiv (in a month!)

Davy does 20/20

2009-06-12T11:09:00.002-04:00

Hi all,

We are breaking our long silence here to announce that Jacob's uncle Davy will be featured tonight on ABC's 20/20.

Read the article here.
See the video here. (Sorry, you'll have to suffer through an ad first).

So why our silence on all things Jacob? Honestly, we are all too busy living to spend much time recording our activities. Unfortunately.

We will be in Ukraine until the end of July and then moving to Oneonta, New York in August. Once we return to the U.S. maybe (hopefully!) we'll start blogging more again.

M

Happy Valentine's Day

2009-02-15T05:03:00.007-05:00

How sweet it is. Photo by AFR

Jacob enjoyed helping with baking on Valentine's Day. He helped roll the dough and cut out cookies. By the end he was covered in flour, down to his toes.

The months fly by. I am very happy that my valentines are soon coming to me. Amy and Jacob will move back to Kyiv on March 1st. Ura!

Happy Hallowe'en

2008-11-01T17:29:00.003-04:00

Photo by Irene Forster

For Hallowe'en, Jacob was a lion. He marched (or ran, actually) in the Hallowe'en parade and helped aunt Sarah pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters. And he roared at all of them. In fact, he is still roaring a day later. He also discovered those dangerous gateway drugs, M&Ms and Smarties. Roar!

mane attraction

2008-10-01T04:40:00.002-04:00

Photo by Amy FR

Jacob and Amy got their hairs cut yesterday. Jacob's hair is no longer in his eyes, and he still has his curls, but hopefully they will be out of his face.

Yes, he is, in fact, sitting on a monkey.

separation

2008-09-30T13:03:00.001-04:00

Last week I moved to Ukraine. I'm excited to begin my Chernobyl project, but while I am working in logistics it is very hard to be so far from my family. I must confess: last night, I was missing them so much I got up at 2:30 am to look at photos of Jacob and Amy.

Now that I am an absentee dad, maybe I'll find time to post more recent photos of Jacob. But let me tell you, it's not the same as seeing the giggly sweet lion-roaring truck-rolling boy in person.

Mike

a moving experience

2008-09-05T20:55:00.004-04:00

If you think 3 days and 1340 miles in a small car with a small child and a loud cat sounds like fun, we invite you to join us the next time we move. Despite tears and meows and far too many repetitions of the Sesame Street CD, we all survived our move to Maine. Actually, Jacob traveled quite well most of the time. Kanzhe is the one who threatened to drive us batty. He managed to meow for nearly 3 days straight, despite sedation.

Anyhow, we made it.

on the road again

2008-08-22T01:02:00.001-04:00

Our blog has fallen silent this spring and summer as we have all been way too busy to reflect. Today, we leave Madison. It's been our home for the past 8 years, (at least for those of us who are older than that) and we're sad to be moving on.

Tomorrow we start our drive to Maine, where Amy and Jacob will spend the fall. Mike leaves in September for Ukraine, where he will be doing a photography project on Chernobyl. Amy and Jacob will join Mike this winter. Amy is writing her dissertation and applying for teaching jobs. Jacob is writing circles and lines and singing Sesame Street songs.

Our fall address (and ongoing US mailing address):
86 Three Mile Pond Rd
Vassalboro, ME 04989.

Email addresses stay the same.

Thanks Madison, for being a great place to live!

best friends

2008-07-25T13:03:00.003-04:00

Photo by Maciek Smuga-Otto

Best friends Jacob Forster Rothbart and Eli Smuga-Otto ride the train at the Vilas Zoo in Madison. Jacob and Eli are in daycare together and have really bonded. They are very different but they play very well together (most of the time!) On Fridays they take turns visiting each other so 3 of the 4 parents can work. This Friday, Eli's dad Maciek took them to the zoo.

hair today

2008-03-23T01:02:00.002-04:00

Jacob got his first haircut today, at Next Generation salon, a place that specializes in kids' haircuts. Jacob was very calm about it (and pleased to sit in the firetruck chair!) He is already 23 months old — we’ve been putting of getting his beautiful blond curls cut, even though strangers often mistake him for a girl. Today he just got hair trimmed, and the ringlets stayed.

The Times, they are a changin

2008-01-21T23:27:00.000-05:00

Now that Jacob is 21 months old, he has started reading the New York Times. At 21 days old he was no bigger than the Sunday Times, and suddenly now he's sitting there reading it. Okay, okay: he only likes it for the pictures. A habit he'll surely someday deny when he picks up Playboy.

Seriously, though, Jacob is now interested in letters. For two months he's been pointing out his two favorites (B! O! he chants, sometimes getting them correct). This week he is able to identify seven (A, B, C, D, J, M, O) more often than not, though M, W, E and N all mean M as far as he is concerned and J is called “dub” (his word for Jacob). We've been playing repeated alphabet games and songs about our names – Jacob, mama, (formerly known as Amy), and dada. Today he was obsessed with his alphabet puzzles; he now seems to understand that letters have names and was parroting them back to us.

time passes

2007-10-14T01:22:00.000-04:00

So, how about that weekly family blog, eh?

It's been 6 weeks since we returned to Madison and we've all been busy. We've been:

• unpacking boxes
• growing teeth
• restarting a photography business
• teaching 4 sections of an International Relations class
• starting pre-school
• starting a dissertation
• looking for part-time jobs
• starting to potty-train
• finishing a web site
• learning two syllable words ("allo? ba-all dow-oon wow")
• applying for a grant to go back to Ukraine
• staying up too late and getting up too early
• completing our 2006 taxes (we got a 6 month extension)
• wondering what in the world we're doing here
• pulling the cat's tail.

But maybe sometime soon we can add blogging regularly back on the list.

I rake for Jake

2007-10-08T13:03:00.000-04:00

Our lawn is the best raked it has ever been. Jacob has loved leaves since he was 3 months old, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that he has taken to raking, now that his leaves are falling.

The first time out, I gave Jacob an old broom because he was so insistent on helping. He pushed leaves up and down the sidewalk. When it was time to go in, he refused to part with the broom, and proceeded to carry it around the house, banging into walls and doorways with it.

The second time, Jacob insisted on using a real rake, not a broom. Our neighbor Amanda (who has a 2-year-old) saved the day by lending us a toy rake. We made the mistake of leaving the rakes outside the door and now Jacob wants to rake every single time we come outside. He even takes his rake to school with him!

In sad news, my second favorite Jacob, Ann Arbor street musician Shaky Jake, died last month at the age of 82. Shaky Jake had been playing on the streets of A2 since I was the age of our Jacob, and his enthusiastic but off-key guitar playing was legendary. That man could put a smile on anyone's face! (Read more here, see video here or listen to the NPR piece here.)

If anyone out there has an "I brake for Jake" bumper sticker, I want it.

traveling fools

2007-08-21T02:01:00.000-04:00

That's it. We're leaving. Jacob's taking his ball and going home. His parents are coming too. The next 2 weeks, we'll be traveling, and one or more of us will be in: Kyiv, Chernobyl, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Boston, Detroit, and Ann Arbor, before we finally land back in Madison in early September.

So don't expect to hear from us for awhile.

swing time

2007-08-18T14:03:00.000-04:00

Jacob loves the swing. He can sit there for an hour at a time, watching the older kids on the playground as we push him back and forth.

Soon we will return to the U.S. It's been a fabulous 8 months, yet recently we've been thinking of things we will not be sad to leave behind (visa headaches, inexplicable bureaucracy, bad traffic, the national absence of bagels). Nevertheless, we will all miss having a playground just outside our door. We've promised Jacob that they do have playgrounds in America too.

As you may notice, we gave Jacob his first haircut recently. Just his bangs, which were falling into his eyes. He squirmed every time the scissors came near, and neither of us had cut hair before, so it is not, let us say, the straightest of cuts. Fortunately his curly hair hides it well. At first many Kazakhs assume Jacob is a girl. It is very rare here for a baby boy to have such long, gorgeous hair. Sometimes we correct the error, sometimes we just accept compliments on our "beautiful girl."

ice, ice, no baby

2007-08-03T18:09:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday Amy gave me a lovely gift. She took Jacob for the day and sent me off to the mountains. I enjoy hiking with Jacob, but it was also fun to spend the day scrambling over loose scree and snowfields up above Talgar Pass.

This photo shows a small snowmelt pond on top of Bogdanovich glacier. Over the years so much loose rock has fallen on the lower part of the glacier that it isn't apparent you are actually walking on top of the glacier until you come to a section of bare ice such as this.

When I spend a day like this, I start to think that maybe I should give up photojournalism and be a nature photographer.

playground confessional

2007-07-24T14:35:00.000-04:00

The best thing about our apartment, in Jacob’s opinion, is the playground, and the best thing about the playground is the sandbox. Amy bought Jacob a bucket and shovel set, and the boy has commenced to dig.

I have to confess: for me the sandbox is boring. There are only so many times I can fill the bucket up with sand and dump it out again before I go mad. The toy rake is not a lot of fun either. Things have gotten a bit better since we started bringing Jacob’s yellow ball with us. He can’t catch yet, of course, and doesn’t quite throw either, but some days, rolling the ball is not a terrible way to pass the time.

If I had someone to talk to, I’d be better off. The two-year-olds out there are not great conversationalists. The one-year-olds are worse. And their parents aren’t so great either. My Russian is good enough to fool people into thinking I understand them. We’ve now had all the conversations I know how to have. More than once. The weather. What we are doing here. Whether America is better or worse than Kazakhstan. How crazy the traffic and the rents are now. How old Jacob is and when he naps.

No, wait, there actually is one conversation I don’t think I’ve yet had with other parents on the playground: the fruits and vegetables I want to buy when I go to the bazaar. Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow.

There is one three-year-old, Denis, who likes to whine to me about what is wrong with his toys. I am pleased to say I understand most of his Russian. Jacob sits listening to him with wide eyes. Memorizing all those complaints to use later, I am sure. But like emptying the plastic bucket, there is only so long I can listen to Denis before I want to bury my head in the sand. Which happens to be conveniently located nearby.

And sure, I talk to Jacob. He understands, we think, at least 60 English words. And he responds with half a dozen of his own: ba[ll]. Ba[ll.] Bo[ttle]. Da. Mama? Uh. Ba[ll]. Remember that Far Side cartoon, What A Dog Hears? “Blah Ginger, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah, Ginger.” In this case, Jacob is like Ginger. He also barks, by the way.

Jacob completely disagrees with my assessment of the playground. Every day, he can’t wait to get out there. He has started to bring us his shoes when he thinks it must be time to go outside. Then he brings us our own shoes, to be sure to drive the point home.

And now that he can walk, the playground is an even more exciting place. He has been so delighted to walk his way from one part to another. He grins enormously with the thrill of voyaging from the park bench to the swing. He is still not very sure-footed; he grabs my hand for tricky moves like stepping from the sidewalk onto the grass.

Watching Jacob explore and enjoy himself is the sole redeeming facet of a morning on the playground. Every time we go out, he finds something new. This week, his favorite game has been picking up handfuls of gravel, studying them, and then passing them to me. Try as I might, though, I can’t find anything marvelous about them.

Sometimes I feel like a bad father because I often don’t enjoy playing with Jacob. Amy has been reading new-parent discussion lists like those at babycenter.com, and she assures me that there are plenty of stay-at-home moms out there, also going slowly mad in their own sandboxes.

backpacks!

2007-07-18T13:48:00.000-04:00

Jacob loves being outdoors. Mike's parents bought us a baby backpack, which makes it much easier to haul him around. Earlier this month we spent a night at the GAISH Astronomical Observatory in the Zailiysky Alatau mountains near Almaty, then climbed the dirt road up to Big Almaty Peak. Behind Jacob and Amy is 4317-meter (14,163-ft) Peak Sovetov.

Jacob has a new word: backpack ("bah pah")! We were practicing our B words: ball, bird, banana, bath, boat, baby, bring, bye bye. Jacob may think that every important thing starts with the letter B. (Except mama, of course). Our beautiful bright bouncing baby boy brings back bluebirds before breakfast.

Then I tried some P words, and he was mimicking me but not quite getting the sound. So we introduced him to backpack and he took to it. Now he has been talking about backpacks all day. He definitely knows his backpack and he is glad to tell the world about it. It's a little scary how fast he learns.

Here there be dragons

2007-07-08T14:03:00.000-04:00

During a Sunday afternoon picnic at Lake Issyk, in the Ili-Alatau National Park, Karolina Reno (age 3 1/2) decided she was a monster on rampage, ready to eat small boys like Jacob. After much growling, it all ended well, however: they later gave each other wildflowers.

Almaty has been hot this summer. Every weekend we try to get out of the city and into the mountains. Fortunately it isn't hard to do. Lake Issyk is about 35 miles (60 km) from Almaty, at 5,775 feet elevation (1760 m). It is fed by glaciers on nearby 16,332-foot Talgar Peak (4978 m); the water is a frigid 48 degrees F (9 Celsius). Despite the chilly water, I still went for a swim. It took me 15 minutes to get myself in, and 15 seconds to get back out!

See another photo here.