To our family and friends,
How do we even begin to summarize the events of this year? There is one huge addition in our life and besides that, is there really even anything else to mention?
Yes, you probably already guessed it; we added a blog to our family. Our good friend, Steven Hays, finally got us hooked onto blogging and now we have joined the blogging community.
We’re kidding; that is not the biggest addition in our lives this year. This year has been all about Aidan. I am glad that he has finally arrived solely for the fact that the pregnant Steph phase of life is over.
This journey through pregnancy was a foreign world to me. If any one of you dads has recently pioneered these lands, you know exactly what I’m talking about. How do you explain Stephanie’s strange eating habits? It was not so much the 5 meals a day that worried me. It was something else. I had to eat my meals protectively, guarding each bite with my life. I could not understand how a baby, 1.43 centimeters long, inside her stomach could cause my wife to scarf her meals down as if she had a flip top head and then attack my plate with the aggressiveness of a lion hunting down its prey.
So, pregnancy came and went. Aidan finally arrived (9 days late) on July 19th. He came into the world in the 75th percentile measuring 20.5 inches and 7 lbs. 3 oz.
Steph and I love being parents. I know we could not possibly fully grasp what we were getting in to, but we love figuring it out. I have observed a couple things during this world of parenting that I just don’t understand.
We are thankful Aidan is a cute little baby and we did not pop out a Sloth from the movie Goonies.
When we are out and about, we’ll often times here people compliment us on how cute Aidan is. But, why the crazy sayings? For example, “Oh, you’re just cute as a button.” Gee, thanks. What a sweet compliment. We’ll take it. Has anyone recently taken a good look at a button? Every morning, when I get dressed, I button my dress shirt. I’m not usually moved to think, “These buttons sure are cute.” Or, how about this one? “Oh, he’s so cute; I could just eat him up.” What is that all about?! Is this a normal occurrence in people’s life? You scan your world in search of the cutest things so you can throw it in your mouth and devour it. Steph thinks that little pugs are cute, but I’ve never found her in a park cornering one, grabbing a hold of it, and throwing it in her flip top head.
Frankly, I think it’s probably scary for baby Aidan to hear someone say, “You’re so cute; I could just eat you up.”
Please know I am definitely not trying to be critical of the actual people expressing their kind words. So, please don’t hear that message. I’m just amused by how and where we (our culture) came up with these phrases. They seem quite random to me.
Oh, and by the way, Stephanie questioned me using the reference to Sloth earlier in our newsletter. She thought I might offend someone. So, I just wanted to make this clear. If any of you parents out there reading this letter are the parents of Sloth, I did not mean that your baby was not cute. I think he’s cute as a button.
On a more serious note though, parenting has magnified something critically important in my life. As a daddy to baby Aidan, I just love him so much. From day one, I’ve loved him. And when I say day one, I don’t even mean day one of his birth. I mean day one as in the first day we found out we were having a baby.
Since his birth into this world, I fall more and more in love with him. How is it possible to be so in love with this person in such a short time? I want to protect him; I want to provide for him in every way possible. I would lay down my life for him.
I can’t help but to think how these emotions I feel are real emotions that our Heavenly Father feels about us. The more amazing thing is that His love for us is perfect and ours is not. Therefore, how much greater is His love for us than ours for our own child? I can not comprehend it. Being a dad makes me realize how much more I am grateful to have a relationship with our Heavenly Father and to be called into His family through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
