…beautiful angelic light from heaven, and the clear ringing of silver bells…ahh screw it. Toddler Harbat bit me last night and I called her a wild dog. She cried, there were hugs and apologies all around, and all was forgiven as we had dinner together. So is having a kid all joy? Nope. Neither is it pulling down your pants to look at a blood blister on your thigh. Usually it’s both in surprising proximity.
If we rewind a half hour, Toddler Harbat and I got home and she wanted to read a book before dinner. “A Sesame Street book,” she requested. I plopped down on the couch with one of the volumes from the1970s-era collection of Sesame Street books my wife found on eBay. They smell glorious, like old paper and new stories waiting to be discovered. Toddler Harbat climbed onto the couch and sat beside me and that’s when it hit me. Holy crap, she’s a little person. A real person.
Please don’t think she wasn’t a person to me before. But if you have kids, you know the first few months you don’t have a person, you have a crying and snuggly lump that can’t see too well. But last night on the couch, there was a real person sitting next to me, one with friends, fears, hopes and aspirations. Even if those hopes are to get another My Little Pony to be friends with Toola Roola, a new acquisition from this past weekend. She can talk now, well enough that we can have conversations. She can sing songs I don’t know, can pass on all the scuttlebutt from school, “Addison fall off the slide and hurt her arm!”, and can even make jokes.
So having a kid is like…
Writer, architect, father, husband.
You make parenthood seem a little less horrifying than I'd previously thought.
Well, except for the wild dog part of it…
Oh, if you have kids you'll get bit, punched in the throat, kneed in the nethers, your eyelids and ears will be forcibly separated from your head, and you will be thrown up on. A lot. And it will still be worth it.
Although I have no children of my own, I have a teenage nephew who as a child once decked me with a Barney video cassette and on a later occasion punched me in the eye. Oh, he let me know he was going to punch me. I just never thought that cute little boy would really do it. He was around TH's age at the time. He's 13 now and I still remind him of this.
Parenting–the biggest challenge in your life with the greatest payoff! Love the picture! It just doesn't get better than that.