Two Months.

It has been almost two months since I blogged, and I think, I can finally say, that I am feeling like a human being again. Little baby girl Crady has gotten her act together. She is more adorable than a drawer full of puppies, and I feel like my wife and I actually see each other when we talk to each other now.

It would be an understatement, to say I underestimated how much my life would change with the birth of this baby girl, and now much I underestimated how much work and patience it would take. I was not built for it, but thankfully I was redesigned to better handle it. I had to pray a lot. I had to think about the future, and how at some point the crying would stop, the sleep would return, and that our basic goal was simply not to kill her and keep her breathing.

But it was hard. I will admit that I was always glib (yes Tom Cruise, I was glib) when parents complained about their babies. It was uninteresting, boring talk to listen to. I was dumb. I should have been listening and feeling empathy for these poor new parents. When they handed us the pamphlet about Shaken Baby Syndrome, I laughed and acted like it was craziness to pass it to me. But having had a fussy baby, I now know better. I understand the urge to take out frustration. I understand the irrational thoughts that come with sleeplessness. The helplessness that makes everything seem ten times more serious than what it really is.

So I allowed myself to have the irrational thoughts. To think that we had made a mistake. To think (only rarely) that this was the worst decision that we ever could have made, because we had it so terribly easy before that. But I also prayed. And remembered that we prayed very hard to have this baby. And I looked at how terribly perfect she was. And slowly we learned to cope, and baby learned to trust us, and peace and excitement over the baby returned to our house.

And now I couldn't imagine anything better. The pure unadulterated joy that we experience when she smiles and coos is amazing. It is rare. The purity and quickness of it, is something that I had only experienced a few times, briefly, like one of those whirlwinds that blows the leaves in the corners of building, quick, amusing, and gone.

So I am thankful for perspective. And I am thankful for the struggle, which hopefully has made me more empathetic to others, and more appreciative of what I have now.