I Write. You Read.

Before Simon — Part the Second (follows The Beginning) We knew we were pregnant, but decided it was a good idea to get official confirmation. Angie got an appointment fairly quickly with our regular doctor, and soon we would find out that yes, indeed, we have a baby on the way. The first test was correct…as were […]

What’s the word for “more than overwhelmed?” “Überwhelmed?” I really need to know, so I can use it the next time I get that feeling that hit me today on the bus ride home from work. That feeling that hits me almost every time I spend more than a few seconds thinking about Simon and […]

Ask any new parent what their biggest adjustment has been, now that they have a baby in their lives, and I’m willing to bet most of them will have the same answer: sleep, or more precisely the lack of sleep. Everyone seems to have their own ideas on how to “deal” with the sleeping problem, […]

Somebody somewhere once said that it takes a village to raise a child. If that’s the case, then it seems we may have brought the majority of our village with us to Simon’s baptism. Between Angie’s side of the family and mine, with a smattering of close friends, we brought twenty-eight people (Including Simon, Angie […]

In the years before becoming a father, I had plenty of opportunities to change dirty diapers. I passed on every single one. You could probably make the case that I was afraid to deal with dirty diapers. Maybe I was a little gun shy when it came to putting myself in the line of fire; most […]

Sometimes I wonder how much I could sacrifice in my life and still consider myself “happy.” Once it was a purely rhetorical exercise, protected as I was by youth from responsibility. I imagined what my life would be like without cable, without eating out, without easy access to the internet, without movies. Do I really […]

They say having a baby changes everything. An easy thing to say, a harder one to understand. My wife was the first to express it in words, but I was thinking it too: the world we encountered upon leaving the hospital with Simon had changed in a fundamental way. Colors are different. Sounds are different. People […]

BEFORE SIMON — PART THE FIRST Early one spring morning in 2003, way before I would usually wake on a Saturday, my wife shook me conscious. She probably looked a little apprehensive, but that’s only conjecture on my part; I was still groggy. All of a sudden, though, I was awake, spurred into consciousness by words to […]