...So back to my thoughts on fatherhood (after a nice bit of rambling in that last post).

As I said before, my college days helped prepare me for the lack of sleep that I'm now getting with a 1 year old in the house, another one on the way, and a sick wife to boot. When I look at the number of times that I have forced myself out of bed early to get up with the boy, or have made myself stay up the extra 20 minutes to wash the dishes so my wife doesn't have to, I feel like I have been a super dad (if not a super husband as well).

But all of this stuff is mostly in the background - my son doesn't see me doing these things, and if he could, who would care at a little over a year old? I often worry that my actual 'rubber meets the road' parenting that I do with my son is only adequate, not super. True, the other things I do around the house, in the background, do contribute to him having a better life and more time with a less stressed mother for him. But I also worry that he's going to come to see me as the bleary-eyed, barely coherent person that I often am when I first wake up in the morning, and sometimes at the end of a long day at work.

I think for now, he's probably content with me tossing him in the air, or taking him on a quick wagon-ride around the block, but as he gets older, his interests are going to expand and I'm going to have to step it up to maintain the "Super Dad" label. While some of these things will invariably be fun (camping trips, building model rockets, or any number of other things that little boys enjoy doing), the thought of keeping myself active in his pursuits of learning and experiencing all of the fun things in life also makes me very tired. So very tired.

I think things will be better on the free time and sleep fronts by the time I'll be doing those things with my son (unless my wife and I lose our minds and decide to have a third child right on the heels of #1 and (soon to be) #2). I hope they are, because I'm either going to have to cut out a lot of 'me' time or start doing something to increase my stamina. I might even have to start exercising (shudder).

that's all for now!