He's a good dad.

From Saturday, I think. Perfectly imperfect & sweet photos of these two. It was sunset, & a little dark, so my aperture was wide open. Mike is a little blurry as a result, but perfectly imperfect. It's okay. 

It's funny being a new parent, for a lot of reasons. It's a curious thing to see how a baby changes the dynamic of a marriage & relationship, too. You learn a lot about yourself & your spouse after you create a human being together & then have to co-parent. 

There are a lot of things about myself that I know I could maybe adjust a little bit. I'm opinionated. I can be bossy. I think that I'm mostly always right, & that I know how to do things best - especially when it comes to parenting our son (because I've read ALL of the books, of course). My filter maybe doesn't always quite filter everything that it should (but I like being honest!). I'm really, really neat - sometimes to a slightly-crazy fault. I get anxious. 

Like I said. Adjustments. I'm working on a few things. 

But Mike. He's generally just cool as a cucumber, like the day when Quinn was born. I was a crying, screaming disaster, totally terrified & sure that I was facing an imminent death. On the other hand, I don't even remember Mike looking scared, if only a little worried. He was a calm & steady.

So today, Quinn had a fever. And was generally just sad & not himself (teething?). He screamed the kind of scream that I hadn't heard since those first weeks as a newborn, with big alligator tears accompanying shrill & piercing screams. Like I said, sad. Anyway, we'd had just a few times in his first weeks of life where he'd cry & cry, & I'd be home alone, helpless & generally kind of terrified because I just didn't know what to do. So today, when I heard that cry again, all of those feelings came zooming back & tears immediately stung my eyes, but I quickly remembered - I know what to do now. So a few minutes later, Q calmed down (the boy loves his swaddle, & oh my goodness was he tired), finally went to sleep, & his fever eventually broke. 

And Mike? Once again, he was calm & quietly helpful & generally just tried to stay out of my way as I insisted on taking charge. And of course brought humor when he said something along the lines of, We could sell him! He's so cute I'm sure we'd get a to of money for him.

I'm half proud / half scared that Q has gotten some of the fire that I have in my personality. I think it will (can?) serve him well - that's the proud part - but he'll be lucky if his Dad's personality rubs off on him, too.