Reflections of, the Way Life Used to Be

So we're approaching Jackson's second birthday in a couple of days. It's been an interesting couple of weeks as my friend Kami is at BCH on bed rest while she awaits the arrival of her twins hopefully not for five or so more weeks. So I visit when I can, and her room is just three doors down from where we had Jackson almost two years ago. So I've been experiencing some serious de ja vu.

I went back and looked at my blog entries from two years ago at this time and it's amazing to me how different life is now, and how remarkably funny I was back then (kidding). Jason and I will sometimes reflect on life before Jackson came along and how basically we did absolutely nothing. Sure, Jason finished the basement, we played some sports, went to work, etc. But honestly...we did nothing. We had to have. Because there's no way we were doing anything before this because now we have no time because we are parenting. Life was carefree.

Sure, we had to be careful about what I was eating and what we were doing but at the end of the day, we would go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning and the only people we had to worry about were each other. And since we were both grown ups, Jason could roll out of bed, get a shower, get dressed and go. I could get up and do the same, and we didn't have to synchronize our watches and discuss our plan of action. Now everything is a plan, everything is a conversation. No decisions are made without determining what the plan is with Jackson and how our decisions and plans affect what needs to happen with him. It's something that you can't really understand until you're doing it.

So there's all these new responsibilities that at times feel inconvenient and cumbersome, but then there's all these new experiences that light you up. This morning I was getting Jackson dressed after breakfast and I gave him a high five for doing a good job. So he hops down off my lap and dashes into the kitchen and says, "Daddy! Five!" That seems like such an insignificant little thing, but what Jason and I know is that Jackson is now using our names to get our attention to do things that he would like to do. Daddy, befast (that's breakfast for those of you who don't speak Jacksonese). Mommy, bath. Mommy, out (of crib please). Daddy, sit down! Before it was all grunts and one word stuff, and now, it's Mommy, more meat please. Kids are cool.