{Warning! This is a long post.}
Hi Bay-Bee!
You are a kicker and a roller! Watching mommie's belly move and bump out and in is exciting. Can you believe we have less than four weeks... 28 days (and counting)? Whoa!
I have to share this with you. I happened to stay up and watch the 11 o'clock version of Frasier. It was hilarious. The three of them (Frasier, Niles, and Dad) delivered a baby in a cab. You can imagine how funny that scene was with the three guys in a cab.
After the delivery, Dad expresses his amazement of the seeing the first moments of a person's life. "One moment it's a blob in the mother's belly and the next moment it's a person. One moment, blob. The next moment, person. Blob... person." :) How poetic! :)
After seeing the delivery of the cab driver's baby, Niles is reflective. He wonders, "Will I ever be a father? After watching this child's birth, it's something I really want... I think." :)
Frasier says that his parental feelings are normal and that it is natural for Niles to feel this as he is of fatherhood age. Frasier mentions that teenagers in school learn about childbaring and childraising by carrying around a 10-pound bag of flour. They learn the responsibility of holding it and keeping it in sight. Niles takes the idea and runs with it. Niles is going to carry a ten pound bag of flour. They go to the kitchen, Niles grabs the first white bag, "Extra refined... taking after his old man already!" Frasier replies, "That's the sugar. The flour is over here. Bleached. 100% Fat-Free, Best kept in an air-tight container. Sounds like Maris (Maris is Niles' very mean wife)." :)
With Niles carrying his bag of flour, Frasier and Niles meet at different places and have some funny episodes. Niles expresses his trials and tribulations with the bag. One story he relates is a dream. Niles has a dream that his baby (the 10-pound bag of flour) is abducted and he is sent muffins by the abductors. :)
After a week, Niles has accidentally stabbed, dropped, burnt, and drowned the bag of flour in some hilarious circumstances. Then Eddie, the Jack Russell dog, totally digs into the now motley looking bag of flour destroying it. Niles is crestfallen.
Dad consoles him with the speech of "Just Trust Yourself."
It was like this episode was written for me. It was hilarious, but also brought up some serious points about fatherhood and the mentality of fatherhood.
I wouldn't even hold Patrick (nephew - read other posts about him) when he was a baby. I was afraid I'd drop him or he'd cry. I wasn't comfortable at all. This probably comes as a surprise to most people as I fear very little and always appear very cool, calm, and collected. Babies, in general, have never been a problem. With Patrick, it was a little different. I really cared about Patrick.
I was afraid to hold him for fear of becoming too attached. I am one that either does something 0% or 110%. There is no half-way, winging it, or part-time with me. Patrick, being Sheri's sister's baby, put me in a quandry. How do I become attached to something that I was going to only have a part-time relationship with? My relationship with Patrick was weird for many years as I struggled with his being spoiled by five different sets of parents (his mother, Sheri and me, Jolene and Daryn, Hank and RoseMary (Sheri's parents), and Ray and Mary (Sheri's grandparents). He literally had five sets of parents. Can you imagine his Christmas?! Oh yeah, he was spoiled times five. I became the disciplinarian. Where everyone else was saying yes to a lot of his demands, whims, and tantrums, I was overly restrictive, limiting, and stringent. I'm not sure Patrick had a lot of fun with me.
That all changed on December 18, 2007. The day I died.
Not everybody knows, but due to complications from blood clots (after a pretty routine knee surgery), I flat-lined for around a minute before being resuscitated and had a temporary pacemaker installed. It was a scary moment as you can imagine. I won't go into all the details now, but I remember thinking about my dad (who died at the age of 54), about other people who had passed away way too young, and I thought about being a father. I thought about all the things I haven't achieved yet and knew it wasn't my time. I didn't even have children! For the first time in my life, I wanted kids. I was always pretty laissez faire about kids before. If it happened, it happened. But that wintry December day changed all that, I wanted a baby. A couple of months, a cruise to the Bahamas, and a dream vacation later and voila! We were having Bay-Bee! :) Our little souvenier.
I think about things a lot. You might say, "Duh!" :0). I am like Niles in that I worry about readiness and the damage I could cause. But Dad's words of wisdom echo in my mind, "Just Trust Yourself." I have to continue to say that to myself. Trust my judgment. Trust my instincts. I don' t have any experience in raising children, so that is all I have to fall back in... With all my book knowledge and street knowledge, none of it is child-raising knowledge. I need to just trust myself.
On another note, my relationship with Patrick is incredibly better. He is growing up to be such a great kid. I write him a handwritten note every week wishing him luck with his football games. He is doing so much better in school.
I have feelings like pride, sympathy, and love with him. I'm proud of how he has stuck it out in football even with being one of the smallest players. I sympathize with him when he gets run over on the field or I watch him standing on the sidelines instead of playing. I love him when he laughs when it is over or comes out of it with such a great attitude. He cracks me up and makes me smile just writing about him. I know we're having a lot more fun now.
He's such a good kid. He's had more love than probably any kid in America. Now he is starting to learn about respect, appreciation, and sharing. Those were three traits I worried about as he got a lot of love and a lot of things as he was growing up.
Before, we had a strained relationship but ever since December, we've been like buddies and I don't know what clicked, but something clicked in my head... and I learned something. I don't even know what it was, but there is a tolerance and a patience about me that wasn't there before.
Subconsciously and without any preparation, I am changing. Things that really mattered. I mean REALLY MATTERED to me are not as important. Fantasy Football, competition in softball and basketball, a lot of these hobbies and extra activities don't hold my interest or intensity any more. Something is preparing me for fatherhood. It's like I have already removed my focus from those items and re-focused on Bay-Bee, even if he isn't here yet. It's been very interesting to reflect on this.
Thank you for reading my musings. I wish my father had a blog so I could read his memoirs about me.
To Your Success,
Bay-Bee's Papa (Michael)
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