Ten months. TEN! My kid is ten months old. I barely remember what it was like before him. In my memories, there's a duck-fuzz blonde kid bouncing on his haunches in the background. So weird. This is evolution: it makes you think that the baby is everything.
I've found out that I'm a pretty good dad. I like my kid. We hang out. It's a good time. When he's fussy, I take him and walk him around. I feed and change him about half the time. I get up and plug him (insert pacifier) in the middle of the night when he needs it. I spread ointment on his mandrill-like red butt when it's like that. I don't complain about it, I don't dread it, and I don't warn people away ("Don't go there! It's the plague!"). Nope, I have become a dad.
The kid started yammering "DA DA DA DA DAAA DA DA" this week. Totally on his own, I swear it. We were hanging out in the bathroom, looking at The Baby in the Mirror, and he just starts jawing out, DA DA DA. We practiced a little and I caught it on camera (youtube video to follow). When Carly heard him say DA DA DA the other night, she just melted. Poor thing, she's doomed. Wait until he learns to say MAMA (right now, "MMMAAAAA" is reserved for when he's mad).
This week, Carly was out of town for some work stuff, and I was a single dad. Every morning, I'd get up, wrangle the dogs, feed the kid, and drag him off to daycare, then go to work. In the afternoon, I'd go home and walk the dogs, then collect the kid and spend the next few hours entertaining him and stuffing him full of food before he'd crash and I put him to bed. All in all, a deeply exhausting experience. But not a daunting one. The Wolf and I had a good time watching cartoons and hanging out.
Now, I've had a bit of wine and Carly is napping on the couch, so I don't think I'll wax philosophical about how I hate the way that dads are portrayed in commercials and how it's hard to find a book that's cute and reassuring about babies and dads, because I'm quite okay with whatever the world does to ignore how I actually interact with my kid. It's all worth it because of this thing here:
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