My One Year Tumblrversery
As I’m sure you all have marked on your calenders, set up an email notification, and an alarm/reminder on your digital calenders, today marks the first blogaversery for The Great Daddy Project here on Tumblr. One year in, 216 poor to mediocre posts, 2,200 liked posts and thousands of followers I’ve fooled into thinking I was interesting enough to follow…not too shabby.
A year ago I was looking to start a blog, which was destined to be abandoned three weeks in if my history with other blogs was any indicator. Then, my wife got preggo (my boys can swim!) (a surprise considering the sheer volume of Mountain Dew that was consumed during my teenage years) and all of a sudden I have reason to blog and write often. Here was my first post a year ago:
Well, that headline is a little misleading but I’m sticking to it.
The truth of the matter is, my wife and I have been trying to mash up our parts and make a baby for the better part of a year, but some medical issues put that on hold for a bit. We were planning on throwing the power switch to the baby factory to the “on” position in February, but in a rare moment of luck, we found ourselves staring at the Clear Blue Easy home pregnancy test digital display reading “Pregnant” in the middle of December. Not that I wasn’t, or am not completely ecstatic about it, I just wasn’t ready for it. I’m trying to be more ready as the days pass, giving me a real reason to blog about something worth writing about.
While I cannot wait until my wife lets loose our little alien from her loins, a lot of changes are happening and need to happen before I can be the father I want to be. I wanted a place to to chronicle these changes before the kid makes his/her first appearance and continue through after he/she is here. I thought it might be cool to look back at these posts in a few years and laugh at my rookie mistakes (or pinpoint the moments I fucked up and my kid pays the price in adulthood), or marvel at my sound parental judgment (or more likely an accidental parental victory). I think it’ll also be pretty cool to have something for the kid to look back on a little later.
With that said, my wife is 11 weeks pregnant today, and I couldn’t be happier. Despite my bad attitude and pessimistic outlook, I somehow hit the jackpot with a beautiful wife who is now carrying my first child. Life is pretty damn good right now.
Today, I remain just as a big of kid as I was then, only now I’m a full time Stay At Home Dad who looks after my five month old son. I look back at that post and remember the how scared I was about being a Dad and all the changes I felt I needed to make in my life. I like to think I used those nine months to prepare accordingly, well if nothing else, by the time Dylan arrived I was ready. The fear was replaced with excitement, hope, and love. Although, I’m pretty sure I’ve saddled my son with the fear that I’m his Dad at this point.
A year ago, I had no idea was I was doing back then or what to expect. Today, I still don’t know what to expect or know what I’m doing…I’m just better at faking it.
