One Year, Somehow

Baby Girl turned one-year-old the other day. 

I know all the "time flies" stuff has been tread and re-tread by parents for generations, but man, I cannot believe how quickly that went. And somehow I have, like, three memories of the first year of her life? Even worse, one of the few memories I do have is complaining about how time was creeping by. I think the year can mostly be summed up as thus: waiting for the girl to do something new, enjoying it for a day, remarking about how I can't wait for the next milestone.

Having a one-year old has so far taught me a few things. First, infants are just still really not my deal. I loved mine, and I want to have more, but the older she gets, the more I feel actually connected to as a person. I know I've said it before: I have loved her from the moment she was born, but I am learning to actually enjoy her company as she learns to do more and more cool shit. Learning to sit up, roll over, smile, laugh, all of that was great. But now...we are getting to the point of actually walking. Actually talking. I feel like those are the things that actually make us human. Those are things that unlock a thousand other things that we can do together, and I feel like I have been waiting forever for them! I want to take her to the park and push her on the swings and teach her to ride a bike and kick a ball! That's when real Daddy Dane is going to kick in. When she only eats real food. When she can sleep with pillows and covers. When she's my little person! Instead of my newborn baby. (Ugh I know I will miss this time, too. I guess that's just how this all works.)

Another thing I learned in my first year as a parent is that your parenting style is governed far more by what kind of kid you have than by your best plans and intentions. Adair and I were sure that as two easygoing, low-stress people, we were going to have the easiest little baby. We were so damn wrong! We have struggled to get her to sleep properly her entire life. She's pretty easily frustrated, and she still has times where she gets pretty needy and whiny, depending on what kind of naps she has had. But! She's an incredible eater. This girl will eat anything we put in front of her. And she's a crazy fast learner! She's ahead of the curve when it comes to walking, talking, gesturing, and generally just comprehending the world around her. We came to realize recently that, despite what parents might say, no kid is actually easy. You have to do everything for them. They have strong emotions but absolutely no capacity to express them properly. The are at all times in danger of illness, injury, and death. Kids are so hard! But every one of them is hard in different ways. Once we learned to recognize how ours was hard, and how she was easy, it was so much easier to make it through the rough times to get back to the good.

Most of all, I learned that to survive you really do have to take a tremendous amount of things in stride, and try to see the forest from the trees whenever you can. It hurts a lot of the time when she reaches out for Mama even though I thought she and I were having fun. It kills me when it's 3:30 a.m. and my shoulders burn from the workout of patting her back to go back to sleep. It's frustrating as hell when I get home from work and I can't even get my shoes off before she is crying in my arms. But all things considered, we really did get so lucky with her. She's healthy as an ox, she's growing and learning and getting more fun to be around every day. One week she gets a bad habit, the next week she's broken through it. A full year of that has made me into a better Dad and hopefully a better person. And it's almost summer!