Busting at the Seams

If you walked into our house today, you would think Emily and I were moving. There are boxes everywhere, an industrial sized roll of bubble wrap, and pictures sitting on the ground instead of hanging on the wall. Unfortunately we are not moving, we are attempting to fit another resident into our already cramped home.

For the last few weeks, we have been tasked with the job of deciding what can stay and what gets shipped to Salvation Army. Our extra bedroom, which served as a home office/media room/storage room/just throw it in the extra bedroom for now room, has been cleared out and is ready for the new arrival, but it wasn’t easy. Having to decide which of your possessions, ones you have had forever, can stay and which can be shipped out, was no easy choice.

It’s amazing how much junk you can accrue over time without even knowing it. At times it was baffling, staring at something you had completely forgotten you own, and at other times it was exciting having discovered something that triggered a trip down memory lane. In the end though, if it was the former, it was thrown in the box with the other forgotten treasures.

I guess in a sense we are moving, though not physically. We are packing up our belongings we have held onto as a way to stay connected to our youth, and moving into the parenthood. So rather than pine for days gone by, we are now eagerly waiting the days coming where we will watch someone else collect treasures of their youth until one day they need to decide which stays, and which goes. But by the time that probably happens, science will have most likely perfected shrink ray technology and my kid can just minimize it’s belongings and throw them in a drawer….ahhh the future.

-AP

Three's Company

“I’m going to be somebody’s father.”

Those were the words that kept echoing through my head as my wife and I watched a tiny heart flutter away in the blurry black and white monitors in front of us. The rapid beat of my newly created offspring felt like the sound of adulthood finally catching up to me. This was the first time the pregnancy felt “real” to me.

It was a crisp fall morning when my wife ran outside waving a little plastic stick that sported two faint pink lines. These tiny, hardly noticeable marks, were a signal that our lives were about to change forever.

I stood in shock. Even though we had been trying for a while, it still caught me off guard. As I hugged my wife and wiped her tears, inside I thought, “No waaaay. We need a second opinion. She probably bought the generic pregnancy test brand! I need the most expensive one they sell!” We bought two more tests, each one was positive. We were having a baby.

For those who remember my blog from a few years ago, (where I was searching for the maturity it took to be a husband) you'll be happy to know that I am pretty sure I found it and am doing quite well in that arena. Today, my wife is in her 6th month of pregnancy. I have wanted to start this blog for sometime but I could not think of what I wanted to say, that was until this weekend.

We are in the process of cleaning out our extra bedroom in preparation of converting it into a nursery. On Sunday, my wife started moving things into the closet as I was playing with my new iPhone. When she called me in to see the progress, I was met with my inspiration for this blog.

Hanging in the closet were the many baby outfits we had accrued since that fateful fall morning. I had seen and held all the clothes before but seeing them hung, in a closet, on hangers, threw me for a loop. There was going to be an actual person living in this room a person who would depend on us for EVERYTHING.

See, until that point, the only thing that was “real” to me was the pregnancy. I had not fully grasped the concept that it would result in another person coming into my life. I mean, I’m not stupid, I knew pregnancy equals baby, but emotionally, I had not come to that full realization yet.

I went back in after that and stood and stared at the little clothes hanging in what used to be our junk closet and started to touch them and I finally saw them for what they are. These are my child’s possessions. These will keep him or her warm during the day and snug at night. They will get spit up on and soiled from time to time. They will go through many wash cycles and hung back up by Emily or me. These belong to my child, and my child belongs to us.

-AP