Papa says…: Well, today marks two weeks.  It’s certainly an interesting adventure to have an infant around the house, that’s for sure.  Most things were slightly up or down from “as expected”.  Changing the cloth diapers?  Slightly easier than expected.  Giving Holden a bottle full of breastmilk?  Slightly harder than expected.  Sleeping at night?  Slightly easier than expected.  Leaving the house to do anything or go anywhere?  Slightly harder than expected.  Actually doing that stuff once we manage to leave the house?  Slightly easier than expected.

Of course, other things were a bit farther up or down that scale.  The first two nights home?  Much harder than expected.  Every night after that?  Much easier than expected.

That said, I want to briefly address something.  The most-often-heard phrase (for me at least) of the entire pregnancy was: “This is going to change your life forever.”  (Or some variation on that phrase.)  Two weeks into it, I would like to say that I really don’t think this is true.  There.  I said it.  The moment our son was born was a beautiful, awe-inspiring moment.  But I didn’t have a sudden, overwhelming urge to vote for McCain or decide that our VW Rabbit wasn’t safe enough or that I needed to start socking away more money every month.  This is not to say that my life is exactly the same anymore.  I’m not a dummy — I realize that we have a son now and that there is some added responsibility there, etc. etc. etc.  But it’s not like we didn’t know that.  It’s not like you go through the whole pregnancy thinking Oh, my life is always going to be EXACTLY LIKE IT IS RIGHT NOW even after the baby comes.  Maybe we were just well-prepared for this in the first place.  It isn’t like we impulsively traveled to exotic locations anyway.  It isn’t like we ever cavalierly dropped a couple grand on a TV or jumped out of airplanes for fun or even had large, frequent house parties.  Having a baby in the house just doesn’t seem (to me) to be that big of a lifestyle change.  And I think that if we do it right, we can keep doing things the way that we’ve been doing them — with some minor changes to procedure and some relaxation of Papa’s otherwise tendency toward rigid scheduling — without having to feel like we have sacrificed anything.

Which is not to say that things are exactly the way they were two weeks ago.  Some of the priorities that make up the cardinal directions on my internal compass do seem a bit realigned.  Those priorities were always there, it just seems like they have perhaps shifted a bit.  Like my personal magnetic north swung around a little.  Again, this isn’t anything drastic; these are feelings I’d always had about priorities that had always been there.  They are perhaps just slightly rearranged.  Spending the past two weeks with A. & H. has given me a chance to reflect on certain things and I’m beginning to think that I might need to line up some changes to ensure that I can live in a way that matches those priorities.

Maybe that’s what people mean when they say Oh, it’ll change your life forever.  But they never say it that way.

(NOTE: If you came here looking for updates about The Boy…  Well, A. has said she’ll be making a post along those lines soon enough.)