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Feeling down…

It’s late, after 1am.  I am up.  Working on a project for work – something unimportant.  My wife is upstairs in bed.  Why am I working again?  Because I know.  I know that going to bed just brings tomorrow sooner.  And tomorrow brings another 12 or more hours of the same thing today brought.  Nothing.  Emptiness.  Everyday is the same.  It’s like a calendar that is supposed to have a new cartoon on each new day, but for the last several years, I pull off today to see the same cartoon on tomorrow’s page.  Nothing changes.  I’m still not doing what I know I should be doing, I’m still fighting the same flaws, the same thoughts, the same issues, the same temptations.   I’m still failing in the same places.  When will I get it?  Whatever it is, that life has been trying to teach me for the last several years.

The toilet down here has a leak.

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You say that now…

Well, I don’t think I would call this a smashing success as far as journals go, but I am taking the time to write in here again – so its not a total failure either.  :)  I understand that anyone still taking the time to read this most likely wants to here about Zander and not me.  So here is a mixed mode post:

Most of our friends and family said the same thing to us a month ago, “Your life is never going to be the same!”  Well, I’m glad to say – they were right… and wrong!  Zander has changed my life – you could tell that from my first posting in this journals but almost everyone who told me that my life was going to change forever quickly added “Get all the sleep you can now!” or “You’re going to hate the next few months!”  While its true I’m not getting a lot of sleep – its not due to a screaming child thru the night.  Oh, and for everyone that said “she’ll change her mind, you’ll see” – wrong again (I’ll explain this one more in a minute). 

Zander is hands down the best baby I’ve ever met.  He sleeps thru the night, he’s quiet when he is awake, and his crying is not high pitched, not ear piercing, and not unbearable as many expected he would be.  No, he is perfect!  I know, all parents think there kid is better than everyone else’s and I’m not so foolish as to try to pawn off one of those “The nurse said that even though she has to tell every new parent their kid is the cutest, she told us that our kid REALLY was the cutest for real!” stories, but Zander really is a great baby.  He eats well, he took to a schedule very quickly, doesn’t have to be fed every two hours, and when it comes to his diapers, I really don’t know, I haven’t changed that many.  Which brings me back to the “she’ll change” comment. 

My wife and I agreed we were not going to have kids until we could afford it.  Everyone told us – “if you wait until you can afford it, you’ll never have ’em”.  Wrong again.  We defined the ability to afford having a child on one factor – would Stephanie be able to stay at home?  A yes answer meant yes we could afford it, and a no answer meant no we could not afford it.  We factored in the cost of diapers and formula and everything we could think of plus a lot our ‘new parent’ friends found out to make sure that we would not find ourselves stuck with a lot of added expenses we didn’t budget for forcing Stephanie back to work and we came up with the obvious answer – YES, we can afford to have a child. 

Ok, back on point, after we made the decision that Stephanie was going to be a stay at home mom, we agreed that if she didn’t have to work, she would get up at night to take care of Zander WITHOUT waking me up (I have to get up in the mornings for work, she doesn’t).  This is where the comments came flying – “She’ll change, you’ll see” and “We’ll see how long that last” and “Honey, don’t let him do that to you – he helped make this baby, he can help you suffer during the night!”.  Well, it feels good (albeit prematurely) to say – Wrong!, Wrong!, and “Stop talking to my wife with that man-hating view point!” 

Ok seriously, Stephanie is awesome!  If you read the post on day 5, you know how great she is.  She hasn’t changed her mind and I don’t believe that she will.  BUT the eternal caveat to all of those statements is still, “you say that now but…”.  I’ve gotten it all my life, and I’m sure you have too – you know comments like “When you get older” and  “When you get in the real world” and the latest for me “When you have kids of your own, you’ll see”.  Well, I am in college, I pay two mortgages, all of my own utility bills and credit card bills, and insurance bills.  I would say, I’m in the ‘real’ world.  Then there’s the “when you have a kid of your own” – which we just did, then the phase has turned into “he may be great now but he won’t always be this good.” and I’m waiting for the “well, one’s not that bad, what until you have more than one kid…”