Being Your Daddy

I hold you up above me and you laugh, a rich chortle that builds into squealing giggles as I raise you high again and again, then hold you close to me. You wriggle and breathe in my ear as your laughter fades. We go out, and I proudly wheel your pram through familiar streets which are the only streets you have ever known, while this city is still a little alien to me. I am from another city further north, and I want to take you there again soon. You were too young to notice much when we went for the first time.

I wait at a crossing with you and tell you we must wait for the green man to light up. You grin at me from beneath layers of coat and hat, your tiny face a shining beacon that makes me feel so much stronger. I see your mummy's face mingled with my own features in you. I see her strength and determination in you already.

We go home and you wait patiently for me to get you out of your outdoor things so you can play with your toys in the living room. I put on the TV and we cuddle a bit while I play you old cartoons from my own childhood. We play, you stand up a few times, and one time I am too late to catch you when you fall. Your tears hurt me. I hold you and tell you I'm sorry I didn't catch you, and that I love you. You turn to me and sniff, then kick your legs against me and laugh. All is well again. You're perfect, and I am once again astounded that I helped to create you.

I sit you in your high chair and struggle to get the straps from underneath your bottom so I can slip your arms through them. I should have thought of that before, but you don't mind me lifting you a bit to get to them as your favourite show is on TV and your little eyes are glued to animated antics. I call your name once you're safely strapped in and you have a bib on.

You look at me and say “Da-da-nanana-da-sheee” while I scoop a spoonful of dinner up ready for you. You take it from the spoon and a little ends up on your cheek. You are so beautiful, my son. You sit there enjoying your dinner with me, and I resist the urge to admire the adorable fact you have only got one sock on, as I should be concentrating on feeding you.

I read your bedtime story to you later on, and you watch me from beneath heavy eyelids before you drift off into dreams. I check on you in the night. Maybe too often. I can't help it. I love you my boy, and being your daddy is the most wonderful experience of my life. I am so grateful for you my son. I hope you know. I really hope you know.

Seems like a good time to come back.

Hey. I've been up since 3am with my son, now 7 months old, who has a cold which has been keeping him awake and very upset. I'm downstairs now, and he's asleep under a blanket beside me while I write this.

The past seven months have been a revelation. So much happiness mixed with so much stress and so little sleep. It's time I came back to this project and picked up where I left off. I'll take you through his life so far, month by month, in forthcoming posts.

Right now I just needed to reach out a bit and let you know that, apart from the cold tonight and some baby eczema, all is well.

That is, now that I've got used to the giant lack of rest, very little free time, the massive amount of cash being spent, the constant worry and the catalogue of unexpected bodily explosions.

But he's worth every second of it.

That's something people don't tell you when you become a parent. They tell you all about how awful you'll feel, how poor and how run-down, but the thing that 99% of people fail to mention is the fact that it's all worth it.

You change as a person. Your priorities change massively, with your child becoming the centre of your world very quickly and shoving everything else you used to do aside. But that's okay. It's fine, as instead you will raise a healthy and happy baby, rather than focussing on things that never really mattered all that much anyway.

Your social life and hobbies don't disappear completely, but they do have to take a back seat, as no matter how much they meant at one time, now there is something so much more important in your life.

I love my son more than anything, and it is a bond which continues to strengthen with the more he grows and understands.

Every day has been difficult and beautiful in almost equal measure, and once I can think straight, I'll bring you up to speed on what the hell has been going on for the past seven months.

I'm sorry I haven't written here much. I've been learning to be a first time daddy. I don't think I'll ever get the hang of it, but I'm doing my best. For him. For my boy. My beautiful boy.

He's still asleep beside me, and that look of serenity on his face after hours of being upset - that's wonderful.

I hope you first time parents are doing well.

A Filling And A Realisation

I had my first ever filling on Friday, which is quite an achievement considering I'm 33 and consume vast quantities of carbonated soft drinks. It was a weird experience, doing something so normal that I've never needed to have done before, but it made me realise something else entirely. While my lady's baby bump continues to grow in size and our son continues to kick and wriggle and make his presence felt, we are becoming the people he will remember when he looks back at his childhood in years to come.

To him, I will always have had this filling. To him, his mummy's hair will have always been the length it is now, and not the oceans of long black tresses that greeted me when I met her for the first time. He will remember the people we are starting to become now. Both myself and my lady are dressing a little more conservative than we once did, with our days as denizens of the alternative clubbing scene and its associated fashions giving way to a somewhat more subdued (but still suitably 'us') style of attire.

To our son, we will have always written for magazines and had books out, I will always have been a grumpy sci-fi and comic geek who harps on about how good things used to be, and his mummy will always have been a columnist for a top crafting publication. My collection of vintage genre VHS tapes will become the antiques that he will have no interest in but will accept as part of what dad likes. To him, I will have always been balding.

Our whole lives up to now will become the strange netherworld that is the Pre-Child era we find so odd about our own parents. I find that very strange, but also exciting.

You see, with such a momentous occasion hurtling towards us as such an alarming speed, I am finding this final stage of my child-free life winding down in a most pleasant fashion. Big things are taking place around me and involving me that will help to define the person that my son will know me as. All I hope over everything else is that I can be a good dad for him and hope that he loves me. I worry. I'm a parent now. That's what we do, isn't it?