Six months.

(PAW2009 44/52)

It’s my intention to avoid becoming a daddyblogger. That is, in part, why posting has been so light here for the last, oh, six months: it’s six months today since Reuben was born. (He’s a bit younger in the photo.) Forgive me if I mark the occasion with a momentary relaxation of that policy.

Everyone told me that life wouldn’t be the same. My officemates at work seemed to take great pleasure in telling me all the things I wouldn’t be able to do anymore. They were right, to a point, in that having a baby boy in the house has comprehensively changed the shape and rhythm of life. To tell truth, I’m still figuring out how the routine of work and rest fits around his waking, sleeping, eating and playing. Something tells me I’ll spend the next eighteen or twenty years still figuring that out.

It’s not easy, especially to someone so sensitive to disruption of his sleep, but it is great, and wonderfully fulfilling in a way I find difficult to articulate. Every week he does something new and responds to the world around him in a different way, and every day I learn something new about how to approach that world. We’re blessed with a good-natured and sociable wee boy who, these days, is very quick to grin and laugh. He’s growing into himself as a person, even this early in life, and I’m excited to discover who he becomes.

I was nervous, maybe even reluctant, about becoming a parent. I was very fond of life as it was, and not keen to see it changed too radically. I had the (possibly common, I suppose) worry about how I would feel about the baby; expected to love this person I’d never met, what if I didn’t? I couldn’t see a clear way through the financial consequences of maternity leave and parenthood. All these things and more kept me subdued for months. These days, I’ve discovered — gladly — how completely a child changes your priorities and your outlook. None of those worries is a problem for me now.

Six months down the line, it’s easy and true to say that having Reuben around is the best thing ever.