Father's Day, Year Two

Sometimes, you hit a particular milestone--say, your second Father's Day--and you struggle to put into words exactly what meaning that milestone has for you. You knew the day was coming, and you specifically thought about what you might write, but you came up blank.

And then sometimes, the day actually arrives, and a series of events crystallizes your thought process, rendering moot hypothetical situations like one described in the previous paragraph.

This past weekend, the day before Father's Day, we hosted a small get-together for a few friends who recently had children. The kids in question are still quite young (says the guy with the 21-month-old), just 4 and 6 months old. We really enjoyed the time together as young families (at least, Hollie and I did. I hope everyone else did, too).

But for me, what was neat was watching two other dads interacting with their kids. I'm not about to wax nostalgic about LG as a 4-or-6-month-old infant; I enjoy a regular night's sleep too much for that. And it got me thinking about that time in our lives. I watched as these two guys went through the same routines with their kids as I did, and I realized just how much has changed in a really short amount of time.

For instance, I rarely need to rock LG to sleep anymore. She doesn't need me that way because she learned how to soothe herself to sleep. And while I do pay attention while she eats, she can mostly handle that task by herself, too, so I don't have to sit her on my lap or spoon anything into her mouth (minus the occasional vegetable). If she's fussy, I don't spend nearly as much time guessing what's going on in her head, because much of the time, she can tell me. In this small span of time, she's amassed a tremendous amount of skill and knowledge. She's still the same kid, but she's also sort of not.

And in another year or so, those kids will have the same skills and knowledge. Some of it will come from their dads, just like LG learned some portion of those things from me. It's not easy--though often fun--but we're building these little people, one nap, one spoonful, and one word at a time. When I see how far she's come, it doubles as a realization for how far I've come. (Cue the very special episode music.) And how much further we have to go.

Now that the metaphors have been dispensed with, I also have physical evidence for how far we've come. Last year on Father's Day, we went to a rinky-dink carnival at a local mall. You know the kind; half the thrill of any given ride is whether or not the thing will fly to pieces while you're in the middle of it.

Last year, LG and I rode the carousel, and it was difficult to get a picture because she spent most of the ride reaching out for me to pull her off the godforsaken fiberglass horse. This year, between the carnival and a trip earlier in the day to the Camden Children's Garden, she rode the carousel five times.

But who knows, maybe it was the chicken.

Hollie and I also crammed into a very small train last year, and while there was slightly less clawing to get off than on the carousel, we did bear witness to one of the first instances of the phenomenon we would come to call "worried hands." This year, there was no train to be had, which was fine because LG didn't need Mom and Dad cramping her style by tagging along.

Not when there were steering wheels and bells to be had.

I'll need Hollie to back me up, but I think she might have ridden that fire truck two or three times in addition to a similar set of jalopies, which she rode multiple times.

We take a lot of pictures, and we don't often take the time to compare one particular point in the year with another. The changes are fascinating and bittersweet. And, frankly, more than a little terrifying.