Still Here

Well, I suppose my paternity-leave-from-blogging should just about be coming to a close, given that Benjamin has now reached the 3 month-old mark. Here are a few updates:

-Last week, I went to an academic conference in Copenhagen. It was a great conference, and I got good responses to my paper, so I'm glad I went. I also got to see a good bit of the city. But it was so much harder to leave Watoosa and Benjamin than I had expected. I always miss Beth when I travel, but I was pretty much wracked with worry the whole time. So while I'm glad I went, I'm also glad to be back.

-Fatherhood has brought with it a whole range of emotional states that it's dizzying to keep up with them. Taking care of Benjamin (and Beth) in the early days was certainly one of the toughest emotional experiences of my life. Things have gotten easier now that we have him on a feed/wake/nap schedule. It's made a world of difference. But there have been times when the combination of stress and sleep deprivation showed me just how much moral formation I have yet to undergo.

-And yet... I have grown so attached to the little fella, much more than I realized until I had to say good-bye at the airport last week. I like the way he giggles and flashes his big toothless grin, and how he stretches his arms out when he wakes up, and how he makes little cooing sounds when he eats.

-I also love showing him off, seeing everyone delight in looking at him as they fight off their sense of disbelief at how he is just as unbelievably gorgeous as his father. Good stuff. When we took him into campus to let everyone meet him, we started off in the secretaries' office. As soon as she saw us, Jane, who was on the telephone, just burst out, "Baby! Must go!" and hung up on whomever she was talking with. She told us they'd understand.

-Watoosa and I were proud when we were asked if he could play baby Jesus in the Christmas pageant at church. Alas, we'll be out of town. Plus, he will probably be larger than the kids playing Mary and Joseph by then. And while that might nicely represent the relative importance of the characters to the story of salvation history, I doubt the organizers want to have a baby Jesus that has to be hoisted into the air by his parents with a series of pulleys and levers.

-Greta's status position in the household has, naturally, declined. She gets more attention from me, since that's pretty much the way things were before Benjamin arrived. Now that the cold weather has come, she likes to sit in my lap when I wear my robe, and she likes to sleep on my back at night. But unfortunately she doesn't get quite as much attention as she wants. To be more precise, she doesn't get the attention she wants when she wants it. Perhaps recognizing the new attention-hog, she completely ignores the baby. We'll see how that strategy works once he gets mobile.

-Benjamin had an early lesson in the difference between men and women when I picked him up in the middle of the night for a feeding. Since it was still during warm weather, and I had jumped out of bed, I was shirtless. He tried latching on. Let's just say neither one of us was happy with the outcome.

-Finally, I'd like to formally revise my pre-season football predictions.

I don't know if any of my former readers still check in, but take this as a sign of more regular writing, if you're interested. I have noticed that many people start their blog and then over time lose momentum. I 'm not ready for mine to go dark just yet.