Still Working On This Thing
It's a lot to absorb. It's funny going back and looking over this thing, seeing the various foibles and things that have been on my mind since college. A lot of them don't seem as important now. I don't agree with the argument that being a parent forces you to "grow up," someone who is a parent _should_ grow up as much as necessary, but just because you should do something emotionally doesn't mean it just up and happens.
But being a father doesn't mean I can't spend much of the day online reading Cracked or gaming, it'll just mean the whys and hows of doing those things changes. It's funny that the hobbies are the things I have to remind myself will be safe, but they've been important to me since I was a teenager.
I know my professional life is perfectly safe; I have colleagues who have had a baby while in graduate school, one of whom had the physical act of having the baby herself. And Cori's will be safe too; this doesn't do much to advance her career, but maybe this will gives time for the economy to recover before she's solidly in the market again. We'll have daycare lined up before either of us know it!
We got baby stuff the other day and that was nice, and then went shopping today for pre-natal vitamins. Our first parenting class was interesting. The fact that they're run by Focus on the Family doesn't thrill me at all, but fortunately you can pick and choose which instructions you're going to hear. I hope we're going to get that ultrasound done soon; getting a due date on this thing is really going to be crucial. We're already at that "quickening" stage.
We're working on converting the bird room into the baby room, the birds and their cages moving out here; everybody making sacrifices of space for this new thing happening. We won't be fostering cats for a while, but that's okay; Victoria is safe in her forever home with us and we'll foster cats again when we have more free time. After all, we'll be able to see how well the prospective cats get along with little kids!
Even if Cori and I aren't always on the same page about the various aspects of this thing, at least I know we're working together here. I couldn't do this without her, which is an admittedly silly thing to say given the respective genders involved, but the emotional weight of the moment is what I'm talking about. I've tried putting a couple of different emoticons in place here, but my little hamster down there usually makes a pretty strange face when I do that.
So I'll go with peaceful, the feeling I'm doing my best to live these days. It's a stressful time, but with love and togetherness, I know Cori and I will get through it. And after that we'll have a baby around, and a child after that, but a change in something isn't the same as the loss of something. It'll be the start of something new, an addition to life rather than a subtraction from it.
But being a father doesn't mean I can't spend much of the day online reading Cracked or gaming, it'll just mean the whys and hows of doing those things changes. It's funny that the hobbies are the things I have to remind myself will be safe, but they've been important to me since I was a teenager.
I know my professional life is perfectly safe; I have colleagues who have had a baby while in graduate school, one of whom had the physical act of having the baby herself. And Cori's will be safe too; this doesn't do much to advance her career, but maybe this will gives time for the economy to recover before she's solidly in the market again. We'll have daycare lined up before either of us know it!
We got baby stuff the other day and that was nice, and then went shopping today for pre-natal vitamins. Our first parenting class was interesting. The fact that they're run by Focus on the Family doesn't thrill me at all, but fortunately you can pick and choose which instructions you're going to hear. I hope we're going to get that ultrasound done soon; getting a due date on this thing is really going to be crucial. We're already at that "quickening" stage.
We're working on converting the bird room into the baby room, the birds and their cages moving out here; everybody making sacrifices of space for this new thing happening. We won't be fostering cats for a while, but that's okay; Victoria is safe in her forever home with us and we'll foster cats again when we have more free time. After all, we'll be able to see how well the prospective cats get along with little kids!
Even if Cori and I aren't always on the same page about the various aspects of this thing, at least I know we're working together here. I couldn't do this without her, which is an admittedly silly thing to say given the respective genders involved, but the emotional weight of the moment is what I'm talking about. I've tried putting a couple of different emoticons in place here, but my little hamster down there usually makes a pretty strange face when I do that.
So I'll go with peaceful, the feeling I'm doing my best to live these days. It's a stressful time, but with love and togetherness, I know Cori and I will get through it. And after that we'll have a baby around, and a child after that, but a change in something isn't the same as the loss of something. It'll be the start of something new, an addition to life rather than a subtraction from it.