About Last Night...

I started this blog last summer, late on an August night. I wanted to slow down my wife’s pregnancy. It was rushing by, and I wanted a way to capture this slice of time for myself, for my wife, and for our new baby. Won’t we want to look back on it for the rest of our lives? I thought when I started that once the baby came, I would have no end of things to write about. Each day would bring some new insight into parenting and the baby’s antics would provide a wealth of inspiration. Reality is much different. Sleeping in two hour increments is not conducive to deep thought and reflection. Currently, my days are a string of bottle feedings/meeting baby needs, making food, cleaning dirty dishes, and talking to friends and relatives on the phone about the first three things. Any spare moment I find I spend holding and staring at Violet. I am not complaining at all and I’m exaggerating a bit, but the point is that now that Violet is here, things are not exactly how I thought they would be – not better or worse – just different, and more often than not, it’s still a struggle to come up with something that I deem worthwhile to type up (and that Linda will allow the world to read – the next time I see you, ask me about her hands-free, breast pumping tank top). Part of the problem is that I’m a – for lack of a better word – snob when it comes to what I’ll put down here. I could go on and on about how beautiful Violet is and how every movement she makes is art, but so many others have done that before when it comes to babies. It’s like the songs that musicians write when they become parents – in my opinion, it’s always dangerous territory. Unless there’s some unique take on the subject, I forget it the moment after I hear it. If someone (or me) is going to spend the time and energy creating a song (or a blog entry) about their child, I want them to come up with something more than a variety of ways to say, “My kid is so awesome!” or “I love being a parent!” I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Maybe I just want to apologize for last night’s entry – it was the best I could do in my semi-conscious state. Part of all this comes from the fact that during today’s 10 AM feeding, I put on Colin Meloy’s live CD. There’s a song called “Wonder” that he wrote about becoming a father. It’s a song I’ve mentioned here before, and it’s worth doing so again because it’s a good example of what I’m talking about – someone who worked hard to put down something thoughtful about their kid  - something that stuck with me long after first coming across it. Please take three minutes and twenty four seconds to listen to it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwwEccxMPIY Ten years or so from now, I'll play it for Violet and tell her, "You want to know how I was feeling when you popped out of mom? Listen to this, 'cause Colin nailed it."

 7 days old.