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Jan. 16, 2000 - Sunday
Harry is one month old now and his mother says she can still remember the pain of labor. I can also remember the events of Dec. 16 fairly well. Nevertheless, with a month removed from the anxiety of those last couple, slow-moving hours before his birth, the romance of the day is already gaining momentum. It's easy to look back on our first meeting with Harry through the benefit of a personality we've started to come to know. It's easy to say how calm and good-natured he was even at birth. But, Harry's birth was really just an introduction to a person we knew nothing about, except he was ours and we'd been waiting a long time to meet him. There was more mystery in that initial meeting than the romantic would like to admit. There was more biology, too. Yet, it's probably the combination of those various things with the anticipation and the romance of it that makes the experience so memorable.

Is our life all that different now? I don't know, but I don't think Harry's turned it completely upside down. In many ways it's not too different from bringing our cat home at first (Paavo was probably more trouble as a kitten than Harry). There's no question Harry captures most of our attention now, but we're still in an early novelty stage when everything is fascinating. Nonetheless, I'm back at work (though not quite the same hours), we still watch too much TV (though a little less), I play guitar, and we even take Harry shopping. We're fortunate to have many good friends and family who have come to visit Harry and kept us from being too isolated. We even have plans to bring Harry with us to some friends for dinner later this week. But, unlike the cat, we can't very easily leave Harry home and go to the movies or a concert. We love being with Harry and he's a constant source of inspiration, but I'm sure there will come a point when it stops being fun to change diapers and constantly feed him and his mother and I will need to balance our own adult lives and intellectual stimulus with Harry's less outgoing needs. Just this past weekend I thought it would have been nice to see a movie with Harry's mother and know that we'll have to work harder in the future to do things for ourselves. OK, so our life is a little different.
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