Thoughts on One Year of Fatherhood

It was one year ago today (almost to the minute) that I became a father.

I wasn't quite sure what approach that I was going to take to take in this blog. As you may know I try to avoid the sappy stuff here and after thinking about it for a while I thought I would save much of that for the little book that we (ok, Rebecca) maintains at home. Much of this will be fairly random.

I should probably start with the expectations that I had before becoming a parent. They were fairly simple - I would hold on for dear life until the boy turned 4 and could use the bathroom on his own. That's about it. I was insanely scared of diapers. I honestly thought that I would just be killing time until he could walk and talk and we could watch sports together.

At first the experience was roughly what I thought it would be. Rebecca and I spent the first week at "Camp Baby". The three of us essentially lived/at/slept in the family room for the first week. It seemed as though everything we did was a matter of life and death and we were on edge for the whole week. When the baby slept we slept. Day and night became intermingled.

Eventually we were able to move to the bedroom and Rebecca took the weeknight feedings and I took the weekend night feedings. I have never grown to appreciate an invention more than I did the DVR during that time. As the weeks went by I became less afraid of those times where it was just me and the boy. Even though Rebecca was new to the whole parenting thing she still had a lot more experience with babies than I did. My general rule of thumb was that if they didn't respond to "coochie coo" then I probably didn't want anything to do with them.

And then came December. We didn't have child care lined up until January so my job let me watch him during the day and then work at night. It really was a tough month. As much as I cherished my time with him it really was about survival. Trying to entertain a baby at that age was almost impossible. I would lay him in his jungle for a while and he would reach up and grab stuff but you could only do this for so long. It really became an hour-by-hour struggle. I would try to get through to the next nap and then until Rebecca got home. I would then pass the foootball off to her for the night so that I could work. Some of you are probably shaking your head at me right now because you had it worse. I'm sure you did but this just my own personal experience.

Things seemed to get a little easier once January rolled around. Rebecca had terrible separation anxiety as someone else was watching our child for the first time. One thing that really really helped is that the boy was sleeping through the night during the third month (it probably would have been even sooner but we didn't place enough importance on getting him into a routine).

As time went on the cool moments started to increase in frequency. Sure, you remember the first time that you thought he recognized you and the first time that he smiled or even giggled. One of our favorite things to do was to stand to the side of the laundry door so that only Jack's head was visible to the door coming into the house. It was absolutely heartwarming to walk into the house and see his grinning and sideways melon. Those were all sweet little victories.

As if being a new parent wasn't difficult enough we decided to remodel the basement at the same time. This took many more months than we had planned because we changed gears midway through (we were only going to make a playroom) to be a three room remodel that included making a home theater / playroom, bedroom and exercise room. During these months neither one of us did anything for pleasure. I would see him after work before he went to bed and then as soon as he went down I was in the basement working for several hours. Weekends were... well... long. Other than taking care of him we essentially lived for our Saturday night movie.

And then May happened. The basement project wrapped up (as did a very demanding project at work that required many nights and weekends) and we could both use the new rooms (Jack loved his play area and we loved the theater) and be free to do fun stuff again. We began taking a nightly walk down the by water after dinner. It was soooo nice to break the monotony of trying to entertain him in the family room. We also started going out to dinner and more as he loved sitting with us at the table in a high chair. I think for once he felt like he was really with us. Unless we had company dinner time usually consisted of us sitting at the coffee table in the family room while he sat next to us in his bouncer.

As summer rolled around it seemed as though the magic was almost daily. While Jack was not yet crawling he seemed to take to pulling himself up and standing. One day we went to fetch him from his crib only to find him standing up in his crib smiling back at us. That night we hauled him upstairs and put him on the floor with his toys as we worked to lower the mattress in the crib. In the middle of this process I happened to look down where he was only to find that he was not there anymore. He was gone. A quick scan of the room revealed the boy in the near corner of the room. He had scurried over there (he had not crawled until this time) and had the cat in a headlock. I'll never forget the "wtf is this?" look that the cat had on her face.

We had long looked forward to me taking off a week in July and my schedule at work finally allowed for it. We had a bit of bad luck in that it was in the high 90's every day and thus we were stuck inside for much of the time. We still have an absolutely fantastic week - we went to Olcott, the Zoo, Fantasy Island, and a couple of festivals. Jack also got his first taste of the pool and he seemed to really enjoy it (as long as you were holding him instead of putting him in his floatie).

Jack has entered a phase that I had no idea that I would enjoy as much as I do. He crawls and babbles and understands just about everything that you say. He says some words clear as day (pool, tree, and a few others. Much to someone's dismay he seems to be able to say "ta ta's" pretty well) but usually between his pointing and the tone of his babbling you can pretty much understand what he is saying. Speaking of pointing, this is something that he did at a very early age. We are absolutely delighted that his favorite activity is reading. He will scurry over to the bookshelf and grab his book (no matter where we hide them he will always find his favoties) and then scurry back ot you so that you can read it to him. While he is heding towards you he will alternate between babbling about his book and holding it up to you so that you can see it. As you may have guessed, these stoppages slow down the whole process. When he does get to you he will tap you to let you know that he wants you to put him on your lap. He'll turn the pages himself and then gesture to you to read it again when you are done. Over. And over. And over. At some point we just start to make up our own stories so that we can have at least a little bit of entertainment . This may come as a shock to you but I am usually more pleased with the invented stories than Rebecca is.

He has come up with a couple of new favorite activities. He'll point to the pictures along the shelf and want to see each and every one of them. We call this "roll call". He'll point to the first one and we'll say the names of the people in the picture (Rebecca dislikes that I refer to myself in our wedding picture as "zombie dadda" because I am so pale). and then point to the next picture when the names are done. He also enjoys taking his toys to the basement door and tossing them down the stairs through the cat door. He can also spend many minutes at a time opening and closing doors. He'll scamper over to the door and then open it up. He'll have to maneuver his chubby legs so that he can close it again.

I can think of so many really special moments. Many of them are when we are all together but some of them have been when it was just the two of us. I so look forward to being able to hear exactly what he is thinking but at the same time I don't want him not be who he is right now. I now completely get why people are so enthralled with this stage. It really is indescribable. I think one of the advantages that we have is that we had him a little later in life and we had the emotional and financial means to slow life down a bit and completely absorb every possilble moment that we could.

We struggled a bit over what to do with him on his birthday and we finally settled on going to Fantasy Island. This may seem a bit odd but it seems to have many of his favorite things - a train, kids, animals (he loves the petting zoo) and ice cream. He also handles the Ferris Wheel better than we do but that's another story. We'll have fun doing the few things that he can do there and look forward to the things that he things that he will one day be able to do. Some day he won't want to go to the petting zoo and he won't want to try to sneak up to catch mommy changing in the closet. I'm not ready for that day yet.