I have three sons. Chaz is twenty. Alexander is four and Teddy is one. I have created a true American family. I don't have a unique perspective on parenthood, but it's at least unusual.

This I know: your babies are going to amaze you. I think Chaz was five when he shot me with his first you're-not-as-smart-as-I-thought-you-were glance. I can tell that Alexander's been thinking it — Teddy still thinks I'm God, and God I love him for it.

I recently named Chaz Editor-in-Chief of the HTPYB website. He was an obvious choice. He's been an editor at the Brown Daily Herald at Brown University for two years. Chaz can really write and think, but boy can he find typos and grammar bottlenecks, and boy do I need someone who can find them. Being Editor-in-Chief of this website does not hold the cachet of an editorship of a big American university newpaper, but, believe me, the money is through the roof!

Anyway, I love this picture of Chaz and me. Every time I look at it (which is often — it's about six inches from the refrigerator door handle), I feel the pride I felt at George and Mary's wedding. Please take a close look at my eyes. That's what my eyes do when I getting ready to pop a gasket from pride.

And I certainly hope there's some version of the following in your future: Your baby is six foot two. He exudes confidence. You know he knows how to make you look smarter than you are in front of lots of people you wish to impress.

People with babies say "one is my favorite age" and then the kid is four and they say "gee, four might be my favorite age" and you get the idea.  Well, it just may not get any better than twenty.

So if you find any misspellings or verb tense tangles on the website, I don't want to hear about it.

Chaz's email address is chaz@kelsh.com.

If anything sneaks through the cracks, I blame Chaz. Hey, I'm still his father.

Heartfelt thanks to Kevin Monko for one of my all-time favorite photos.

PS Eleven minutes after I sent Chaz the above copy for editing, he responded with this:

Dad,

All set. What a flattering entry. Thanks.

Also:

"Cache" is a hidden store of items, or a portion of computer memory used to store items for quick retrieval. "Cachet" is prestige or the state of being admired.

Love, Chaz

That's my boy.

Anna Quindlen is a famous Pulitzer Prize–winning author. For several years, she wrote a column for The New York Times called Public and Private. One day she would write about world affairs and the next day she would write about what the other mothers in her baby group were talking about. Anyone who read Anna’s column knew Anna loved babies.

I had a set of baby photographs and needed a writer. Four women in my life independently suggested that Anna Quindlen was perfect. I knew somebody who knew somebody and I got her home telephone number. I cold-called her. It went something like this:

“Anna, my name is Nick Kelsh. We’ve never met. We have mutual friends.” (To quote Huckleberry Finn, “That was a stretcher.”) “I have a set of photographs,” I said.

Please understand that Anna is a lovely person. She did try to give me the heave-ho, however.

“I’m sure they’re perfectly wonderful photographs. I couldn’t possibly take on another project,” she said.

I came back with, “Could you just look at the pictures?”

I heard a sigh and just to get rid of me she said, “Sure, I’ll look at the pictures.”

We were on the phone for all of 45 seconds. I never even got around to telling her they were pictures of babies. I FedEx’d her ten prints and the next day she sent me one of my all-time favorite emails. It went something like this: (Actually, it was much better written than this. She is, after all, Anna Quindlen.)

“Why didn’t you tell me they were pictures of babies? Of course I have to do this project. When do we start?”

Right from the start, she totally got what this was all about. Close-ups of angelic bodies through the eyes of a parent. Anna and I both knew that when you have a baby of your own it’s like seeing a human being for the first time.

In the end we did two books together — Naked Babies and Siblings. We were on Oprah! and The Today Show a couple of times each.

This is one of the original photographs I sent Anna. It pretty much sums up the feeling for the whole project — an attempt to take a new look at timeless perfection.