Monday, August 9, 2010

The Scrunchy Face

I was once told, probably sometime during my wife's pregnancy, that the day your child smiles at you for the first time will be magical and amazing and will melt your heart and make you realize you have a little person, etc., etc.

And when my daughter smiled at us for the first time, it was all that. It really did send me to another place. But I knew she was "my daughter" when she started making what my wife and I call "The Scrunchy Face."

It is exactly what it sounds like - my daughter will, in moments of happiness (laughing or babbling), scrunch up her face in a "super smile" that is both insanely cute and wildly entertaining. Her eyes crinkle and her dimples will pop and she will smile her biggest, almost toothless grin.

And the best part about it is that, when she does it, I do it right back to her and we look alike.

Now it may seem strange that it would take something like this to make me feel like she is my daughter, especially since a lot of people have said she looks like me. It's not her looks, though, that I am talking about. It's the fact that when she does it, I do it back to her - and we both laugh.

So, more than my "looks" (God help her), maybe she has my sense of humor. And that's something unique to me and her.

And that's how I know she's my girl.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

So this guys walks into a delivery room....

"It's a girl."

You could have pretty much knocked me over with a feather when the doctor said that to me. I mean, really and truly - my legs were wobbly and everything.

And it wasn't because we had been told it would be a boy and it was wrong. It had just become an unspoken agreement between my wife and I that we were having a boy. After all, I was one of three boys, my brother had two boys of his own... and our baby had been tracking bigger all during my wife's pregnancy.

During those 41 weeks (our daughter was a week late), I used to joke with people all the time that "My family only makes boys" and that "if I have a girl, I'm screwed" because I had no reference point for how to raise a girl. My wife, also one of three, has a younger brother and sister and seemed a little less trepadacious about having a girl, but still... we just thought "boy" all along.

The funny thing is that, all throughout the pregnancy, I stubbornly refused to find out the sex of the baby. I had always said that having a baby is one of life's few, true surprises - if you choose to not find out, you really won't know what you're having unil that magic moment when the doctor says "it's a..."

Even when I asked my wife to marry me, I was reasonably sure she would say yes, mostly because we had always talked about it and we were living together, etc. But this was a true surprise. And one that I would never have spoiled, no matter what.

I know how to raise a boy. I'm a little out of my depth when it comes to a girl. And the truth is, I love that.

Because now my daughter and I get to find out how to grow up together.

New direction, same author

So about 100 years ago, I started this blog ostensibly as a way for me to keep the (very) dim pilot light on for my nascent sportswriting career.

A lot has happened since then, tho - including a seismic event in my life that has, quite simply, profoundly straightened out my priorities and simplified my worldview.

On January 11, 2010, I became a father. And, to use the most devalued and overused word in today's popular lexicon, it has been the most amazing journey of my life.

Hence, this blog will have a new "flava" - it will be about my life as someone's father. I might still discuss sports or pop culture or politics or whatever, but it will most certainly be through that prism.

Because that's exactly where everything in my life that really truly matters now begins.

I'm someone's Dad.

And it's the greatest thing in the world.