January 28, 2001 - Sunday
Sometimes I think that I'm just a pawn of nature. I know so many of the reactions I have are felt by millions of other parents with their own children and how they are all cute, smart, and endearing. Just the same, sometimes it's hard to care about that. Maybe I have no free will in the matter with Harry, I'm doing what I'm programmed to do, and that's just fine.

This evening, regrettably for the third night in a row, Harry woke up at about 10:30pm, apparently disoriented by something - perhaps a mild cold. Last night was particularly bad because he didn't seem at all ready to go back to sleep and kept his mother and I up far too long. Tonight, though, he was tired and didn't seem to happy himself to be awake in the first place. His mother and I were downstairs when we heard him cry out and I went up to look in on him. When I got into his room he was sitting up in his crib crying. It's far from the first time he's done that, nor is it the first time he's reached out to one of us as we've come into the room. However, now that he's talking a little more, he's really able to pull the string even more and, tonight, he got me good. Between his sobs of discontent, and through the arms that leaned toward me to pick him up, Harry mixed in a couple of teary "dad'ns' as if I were the one to make all his troubles go away.

Naturally, I picked him up with haste. It's hardwired in my brain, I had no choice. I quickly laid down on the floor and pulled a blanket over Harry who lay on my chest. I started a song and Harry was still. It didn't take very long at all for him to go back to sleep and so I struggled to get up from the floor without waking him, then put him back in the crib. His eyes opened for just a moment as he a lit onto the mattress, but he curled himself up into a ball with his little fanny sticking upward and his hands tucked beneath his chest and shut his eye again. And, as nature would have it, I was, indeed, the one. I made his troubles go away.


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