Half Year
She has a number of distinct laughs: The throaty chortle she uses when she’s amused by our games of peekaboo and silly faces, the shrill delighted squeal she uses when surprised by happiness such as a tickle or a raspberry blown on her soft little tummy, the wide-mouthed tchkkkk of air escaping tightly stretched lips and firm tongue that she does when she’s cracked herself up and convulsed into a little twitching ball of self-congratulation. I love each and every one of these laughs, but the one I love the most is the braying “ha-ha-hee-hee-hee!” of genuine mirth when something really cracks her up.
The first time I heard it I was changing her diaper and trying to make her smile as has been my custom from nearly day one. I’m not as much of a speed-changer as other dads I’ve spoken to who view the chore as a sort of Nascar pit crew scenario whose principle measure of success is beating a previous best on the stopwatch. I certainly don’t spend as much time at the changing table as Nik or most other moms I’ve encountered, but I try my best to interact with the baby as I process her waste receptacles because I figure it’s not her fault she’s too short and too immobile to use the toilet. Heck, even I bring a book with me to the bathroom so the way I see it, people need some entertainment when they have their business taken care of.
I couldn’t say what led up to the moment, but it was probably the usual barrage of tickles and hugs and exaggerated smiles. At one point though I grasped both of her wrists and lifted them up to my closely-shorn hairline and tickled the tips of her tiny fingers with the stubble. She squealed a bit with excited glee. So I pulled her arms up higher and drooped my head down a bit lower and drug her little palms across the close-cropped pate of my balding head. With a clutch of her stimulated fingers and a laugh that sounded for all the world like a delighted little girl as opposed to an amused newborn, she screeched out the now-familiar sounds of real person laughter. The sound was so surprising and remarkable that it forced a hearty laugh of my own out of me and for a couple of minutes the two of us took turns cracking each other up. Whenever we would regain our composure I’d rub my head with her chubby baby fingers and we’d start all over again.
It took a long time to change that particular diaper.
Mistakes, I’ve Made a Few
We’ve made a lot of mistakes already as new parents. Thankfully and mercifully none of them have resulted in anything seriously detrimental to our baby’s health. One that stands out in my mind is mistake I made in planning a bunch of family visits almost immediately after the birth. The problem wasn’t in the family, it wasn’t even in the visitation, the problem was merely in the additional set of worries and responsibilities that come with having people over when added atop the already crushing weight of adjusting to life with a newborn.
For their part I think our families were gracious and patient with us. It couldn’t have been easy. I read a lot and assumed from the data gathered there that the early days would be times when any and every helping hand would be more than welcome. A lot of the visitors we had were in fact there to offer support, be it emotional or by attending to chores we would maybe otherwise have let slip or in perhaps subliminal offers to assist with the baby. The hitch is that Nik and I are stubbornly, perhaps stupidly, independent. We feel a collective loathing to admit that there is something that we need help with, that we can’t handle entirely on our own. I think in a way we felt that we had waited nearly ten years to have children just to make sure we were, in fact, ready so yeah, help appreciated but not necessary.
Especially with my family it was just too much too soon. Nik and I were exhausted and terrible company. We sat around. A lot. We watched mindless TV. A lot. We fed the baby. We changed the baby. We rocked the baby. We watched more TV. Our schedules were dictated by the child we were determined to handle on our own, without apology. As first time parents who were accustomed to being basically homebodies anyway it didn’t feel so different from our normal routine, just a bit more intense and filled with 100% more dirty diapers than we were used to. What did feel different was the parade of guests. We don’t have house guests often: We’ve lived in smallish apartments for ten years. We’re the mobile ones, we do the visiting. Having people up in our space was awkward for us. We were trying to adjust to the idea of being a threesome instead of a couple and that’s weird enough, now we have my family and… well they probably felt like we were the worst hosts in the world.
They weren’t wrong.
But the mistake wasn’t in them coming. It wasn’t—I don’t think—even in us being preoccupied. The mistake was in planning the trips so close to the baby’s birth. Many of the trips were planned also to coincide with my leave of absence from work, so I think there could have been some more consideration of that to begin with. A lot about the time I spent on paternity leave would be done differently if I did it again. I’d have saved some time, if possible, to take a bigger chunk of time off later in the year. Like around the halfway mark. Like around now. Callie is so much different now than she was when everyone was coming out to see us and her. Nik and I are so much different now. I often think about how little I get to see my daughter during the week: I leave for work before she wakes up and I get a couple of short hours with her when I get home before we have to go through her bedtime routine and then I put her to bed and try to spend some time with Nik before one or both of us collapses into exhaustion. Nik does her best; she comes out to have lunch with me about once a week. She sends me pictures and messages during the day telling me about the activities her and Callie enjoy, relaying funny little anecdotes of the things she does.
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