Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Happy Birthday Isaiah. Five Already?!

There's an inherent anxiety, when you find out out you're going to be a father. You start doing math in your head thinking: Do I make enough money? How much do I need to save for college? And I'm realizing that this anxiety never goes away.  I watched my Lil Man grow in his mother's belly and with each passing day the anticipation grew of being able to do all the things with my little one that a father looks forward to doing with his child. Only the Mrs and her doctor can explain the Kool Aid smiles that my father and I sported as we high fived and hugged upon hearing the news that Baby Carroll would be a boy and the Carroll lineage would continue. Given that his parents both hover around six feet tall, there would be sports to teach, I'd get to show him how to shoot a basketball, and talk to him about how to treat a woman right like his grandfather did me. The awesome responsibility of making sure my son stays on the straight and narrow excited me because I knew I was prepared, and I looked forward to beginning the journey.

What I didn't have a full grasp of when Isaiah was born five years ago was that there's a little bit of lag time before I get to drop all this wisdom on him. While we spent plenty of quality time together in the pre-walk, pre-talk days, if I didn't have any milk when it was feeding time, then I was useless. If he fell, there were times when only Mommy's bosom could settle him down. Watching football with Dad came a distant second to watching "Shake It Up" with Mom.  As we reach birthday number five, however, the balance of parental contribution is starting to move back towards the middle.

Most days I'm up and out of the house before the rooster hits his snooze alarm. While this means little sleep for me, it gives me the chance to get back home before Lil man goes to school or meet him when he gets there. On the days where he asks me to take him to school or when he runs to tell his teacher that I've come to visit, I know that he's glad to have me around and that my effort is appreciated even though he promptly tells me to go back to work when he's done with me. Every exuberant greeting affirms that the foundation is being laid so that when he needs me for more serious issues, he knows I'll be there. I've got too much to share with him not to be.