From what I've heard.
And I don't have any reason to doubt those who tell me I have no idea how different, how new my life will be once the baby makes that big transition from fairly low-maintenance to ultra high-maintenance. Indeed, it's already starting to become that different.
I'm not sure that I handle transitions so smoothly - kind of like an engine low on transmission fluid. Even just the shift the past week or two from the frenzy of finishing house projects to the relative calm before the storm (a quick Google image search of "baby in a tornado" didn't net me anything useful to link to here) has been weird. We bought our house two years ago and never really finished construction on it or unpacking boxes into it until more or less now, and so coming down off of months of always having too much to do and trying to settle into a less busy pace is just ... not easy. We've got a little more time for a few days, but soon we won't. Crazy.
A month or so ago, after a stressful morning at work in which I was feeling the squeeze from work in addition to all the other life stuff stressing me out, I went to pick up Kathryn from her job so we could get lunch. After venting a little to her, she asked me, "Do we need to go to China King for lunch?" What a wonderful woman. That much at least will never change.
For everything else, though, I don't try to maintain any illusions that I'll recognize my life even as soon as a week from now. When I hold my son for the first time (and sob), endure my first week of sleep-deficient nights (sobbing), drive for the first time with an infant in the back seat (sweating), and whatever else the super-near future entails, I undoubtedly will feel like an alien in my own skin, but a happy one at that, like the ones that come and vacation on Earth and return to their home planets without leaving a credible piece of evidence that while they were really here, they weren't really from here. You know, that feeling.
Whether or not I recognize my life at that point isn't so important, though. Because it will be awesome. And I'll be the proudest dad there ever was, and we'll have the cutest baby boy there ever was, and Mommy will have had the easiest labor there ever was (a dude can dream), and we'll realize more deeply than ever the goodness of the Lord to us in giving this little person into our care.
I'll keep you posted. From the underside of the world.
