365 Days

Olive officially turned one at around 4:00 AM this morning (if you want to read the rest of THAT story, you can click here).

I am now officially the father of a one year old.

The birthday party was this past weekend, so today is a little anti-climactic. Olive already ate her cake (and we have discovered that she is the neatest eater of cake in the world) and she has already opened her presents.



I know it is cliché and cheesy to say, but time really does fly.

Sure, there are days when time most certainly crawls, or even seems to come to a screeching halt. Times like when you are stuck at home alone with a vomiting baby; her first diaper blow out; when you drop her on her head and have to take her to the doctor; when she is sick for the first time and won’t go to sleep; or when you are on your first plane together. Times moves at a glacial pace during those events. But most of the rough patches have to do with “firsts” and then the “seconds” aren’t so bad. The only problem is that there are a lot of “firsts” for a new parent.

But, for the life of me, I can’t fathom how I filled 365 days between birth and now. A year ago she hardly knew how to eat, how to breath. Now she is looking at me and saying “da da”, she is chasing her mommy, feeding us her dinner and she is smiling whenever we come in a room.

A year ago she was a third of the size she is now and she needed us to cradle her and keep her warm and keep her safe and close. Now she is running and tripping and face-planting and there is very little I can do about it. A year ago she was nestled up to her mother for dinner. Now she is eating cake.

This blog was originally supposed to be a way for me, a clueless dad, to work through the lessons of parenthood. But, really, I don’t know anything. Sure, I may know how to change a diaper more confidently, or the signs of an ear infection, or all the words to “Hush Little Baby”, but I still don’t know what the next hour, day, week, or month is going to bring. I don’t know when Olive is going to skin her knee for the first time or what she is going to think when we switch from formula to milk or if she will start to want to go to bed earlier or what the world is going to be like when she is two years old. I don’t really know if anything Leanne and I are doing is right.

Just 366 days ago my life was as it was for the previous 29 years of my life. Then 365 days ago it changed completely. And all I really know is that I couldn’t be happier.