pressure

I often wonder if, even now, I am pressuring my son into my own interests. I am a huge space and science nerd (and had the standard little boy dream of being an astronaut before reality came by with it's "normal expectations") and the wife and I (emphasis on the latter) are already doing the whole space thing with him. Room painted a deep sky blue color, decals of rockets and stars and planets everywhere, rockets on his clothes, books about space, etc. Is it too early to be putting all this space stuff on him? I mean it's not like we force him into things, and at this age it's not like he really has any other interests other than Caillou and cookies and Elmo and trains and trucks and playdoh and painting and reading and...ok, he has a lot of interests apparently, but it's not like he doesn't seem to like the space stuff or anything. I don't know, maybe I'm being ridiculous for being concerned over such a thing, especially at two years old. If he's not into space stuff or whatever else I'm in to (cooking, being awesome). Even still, do I cut back on focusing on this one interest and instead open him up to a lot more stuff? I think I do a pretty good job about exposing him to other things as well, but is that really the case? And will I feel disappointed if when he is older he DOESN'T have the same interest in space or whatever that I do? I like to think that I won't, but again, who knows. I guess being aware of situations like this is better than just assuming that he'll love what I love, right? I just don't know what I'm going to do if he decides to be into sports because I have no idea how most sports are played/scored/etc. Of course if he does get into sports, I will do whatever it takes to nurture that, including figuring out how many goals are in a bases loaded touchdown freethrow and whatever else happens in sports.

names

I was thinking the other day about the various nicknames that the wife and I have for our son. With another kid on the way (a daughter, at least as far as we have been able to tell -- she hasn't been very cooperative) I was thinking about what I would call her, other than her name, I mean. I realized that the whole nickname thing really just comes out on it's own, doesn't it? Even now when talking about the coming baby, we use nicknames that kind of just formed (the term "bun in the oven" led us to calling the baby "bun", then after finding out it is (most likely) a girl, it morphed into "bunella", for example). Same with our son. We have a couple of "established" nicknames that we use pretty regularly, and I can pretty much trace them back to their beginnings. It's not like we just sat down one day and decided to call our son by a specific nickname, so why am I finding myself focusing on trying to come up with a nickname for #2 already? I can only assume it's because as the dad-to-be, I feel like I'm pretty much doing nothing while the wife does everything (namely the whole baby-growing thing, but other things as well). Maybe I am trying to trick myself into thinking that if I come up with a nickname or whatever then I've "done my part", as completely stupid as that sounds. Not that I'm not doing other things of course (getting things ready for the baby, etc) but when compared to what the wife is doing, it makes me feel like nothing I have done, or really could do, could compare. So long story short, thanks for doing all that baby making stuff, wife.

Age

It's hard to believe that my son is already going to be two years old. Where does the time go, really? I'm 28 right now. I've known him for 1/14th of my life already. And that fraction is going to keep growing. Next year I'll have known him for 10.3% of my life. How is that even possible?

People said from the get go that time will go by faster than you realize. I see they were right.

Oh well. As much as I will miss being able to hold him all the time and being able to actually have him sit still for a minute, I still find myself thinking sometimes that a part of me can't wait until he's even older. I can't wait to be able to sit down with him and have a conversation about things he likes, his hopes, his dreams. How amazing will it be to see the baby I knew grow into a man?

Hi

I have been a stay at home dad for getting close to two years now (will be two years in June of 2012) and it has been a very interesting/awesome experience. I have been able to watch my son grow, have been able to spend an amazing amount of time with him, and hopefully have kept him happy. I've tried to keep the house in an acceptable state for the wife, but with a toddler running around knocking down everything I pick up, it's been a bit of a challenge. I love it though. With baby number two on the way soon, I figure now is as good a time as any to start writing down some stuff. What stuff? Who knows. Another in the long line of parenting blogs out there, I guess.