Who's Your Daddy?!

For the past three weeks I've been working earnestly to devise plan in which Kimberly and I both could forever stay home with Ethan. After many hours of planning and deliberations the talks have ended and the verdict has been issued. Today, I returned to work. Yep, back to reality. No more catching up on missed sleep throughout the day, no more eating a lunch at home that took longer than 20 minutes, and no more holding my son as much as possible during the day. Kimberly is now officially manning the ship alone, she's flying solo, she's going solitaire, she's...well you know what I mean. All of my students were constantly asking me about the past few weeks, mostly to waste time during class to get them out of work, and wanted to know what it's like to be a dad. After thinking about it a little I've decided it's very difficult to put into words. As I would tell my students about the events that have taken place the whole deal starts to sound, well, not so much fun. A week in the hospital sleeping in a fold out chair, watching my wife get poked and prodded with every needle in the place, dealing with a jaundice baby, daily trips to the hospital for blood checks, daily updates on how mommy is healing or not healing, eight dirty diapers a day, diaper blowouts and many episodes of crying in which I am trying to figure out what he's telling me. So in the end the conclusion I've come to is very simple in explanation. Being a daddy is incomparable to anything else. Now I understand when my friends say that there's just nothing like it. You can't explain why after all that seemingly irritating stuff occurs, you just can't wait to see what happens next. Maybe a yelp or a cry you've never heard from him before, maybe a different glance of his eyes, maybe a new grunt, hand wave or facial expression, or maybe the best reward of all...a smile. So in the end I am honored and blessed to be the Daddy.