Oh there it goes, switching back to ‘flying’ again. Parenthood can teach you a bucketful of mind-bending concepts, if you can find enough brain power to absorb the lessons. For instance, the way that you experience the passage of time is almost entirely a subjective affair. It’s all perception, man.
I remember that during the first months of fatherhood, time would stop when Max was upset. It took a very long time to understand that there is no reason to hurry into panic when a baby is crying, because they can cry for a very long time and be just fine. It also felt like I would never get a full night’s sleep again, and that had a fair amount of desperation attached to it.Now that we are 2 years down the road and sleeping (fairly) well, it seems silly to have been so forlorn about sleep in the past.
If I could send any piece of advice back to the brand new dad version of myself, I’d tell him that things are going to hurry by and he should just relax and ride it out. Getting trapped into a mindset where you think your woes are endless and eternal is a stressful way to live.
I’m still surprised when we reach a milestone in his development, as if some part of me keeps assuming his current stage is the finished product. The first time I realized he hadn’t worn a pull-up all day, I was astounded. Figuring out that he could use a normal fork and spoon was also a revelation. So things are speeding by, like the summer that just rocketed past, and it’s okay to look forward to the upcoming changes.
That’s not to say that time still doesn’t drag occasionally: when he’s high energy, low sleep, and full of mischief, the minutes crawl by. Right now, my poor wife is trying to entertain our little daredevil as he bounces off the walls like a gremlin on a sugar high. I better go rescue her.
Chris Loblaw, Author 