A year ago, I frantically snapped photos as a person I’d never met held up my newborn son lion king style over the top of a curtain covering my wife’s tummy. I remember the doc behind me giving me the go-ahead to take pics with a loud “Now! Now!” and thinking how strange it was to be in a sterile operating room full of doctors in masks and gloves, wearing scrubs myself, but somehow taking pics on my bacteria-coated phone was OK.

But I sure am glad to have those photos now. I still look at those fresh-out-of-the womb pics a lot, thinking about how much has changed, but how much our little boy, now one year old, still seems like that tiny scrunchball, intermittently wailing and barely conscious, covered in weird goo.

Parenting for a year has been massive and mundane, challenging and surprisingly instinctual. Honestly, I wish I could write something longer and more coherent about it all, but I have no grand, overarching lessons. And maybe that’s ok, because thinking about it in grand scope would bend my brain too much. Hell, I can’t even properly think about how to finish babyproofing this house (really gotta put something in front of the fireplace, like yesterday).

We take it a day at a time and it’s a lot of trial and error, adapting to change. Still though, I’ve learned a few things after a year of this, in no particular order:

Parenting is a ton of fun, except when it’s miserable, and it’s the most miserable when it’s terrifying, however infrequently. But ugh, the terror.
Terror like the raft of complications he unknowingly caused on his way out of his mom’s belly. Or his innocent, doe-eyed stare in a restaurant high chair, not realizing he had glass shards stuck to his lips after biting into a water glass. Or that poorly worded call from the doctor’s office that left us in sweats for two days because we thought he was born with a rare, life-altering ailment (narrator: he wasn't). Freaky stuff, all.
Poop, puke, drool, screaming, crying, fussing? Honestly, bring it on. He laughs when I change a poopy diaper and, last I checked, baby laughter has curative powers matched only by penicillin.
I default to “kiddo” instead of “son” because somehow I always feel like “son” is going to turn me into emotional mush at any given moment.
Before him, I thought I’d never be one of those people who posted ad nauseam about their kids on social, including and especially those posts about your kid hitting a milestone each month. But yeah, here we are 12 months later and all his development minutiae is chronicled in-depth on my Insta feed. Powers of social media resistance are no match for a baby’s gap-toothed grin.
Time so rarely works in your favor - it’s too fast when you’re happy, achingly slow when bummed out - but even so, the pace with parenting is just different. The last year has been less linear, more like some weird Star Trek slipstream where you step through a portal, blink, and suddenly everyone’s in old age makeup and someone’s evolved into a weird lizard baby.
Also on those miserable times - they sure can bring out the worst in you. Sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion - it’s all added up to me probably saying things I regret, or snapping with a snarky comment, more times in the last year than the last 10 combined. So, apologize earnestly and often, I think is the takeaway there. It also helps to have….
…an amazing partner. My wife has given all of herself and more to our boy in the last year. Literally, figuratively, abstractly, concretely, daily, weekly, monthly - there’s no way to look at it where she’s put in anything less than 150%. She is my hero, though that was true before we had a child, too.
I will likely never do anything else so cool and meaningful as being his dad.
He is a perfect little thing.