In col­lege, I was required to read a now famous book about change titled Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson. I didn’t think much about it at the time but, for obvi­ous rea­sons, it has been play­ing in the back of my mind ever since Sophie arived. You can read the syn­op­sis on Wikipedia. It’s about as long as the book.
I men­tion this as an expla­na­tion for why I haven’t writ­ten to this blog recently. I am still find­ing my cheese and have yet to expe­ri­ence any­thing resem­bling a rou­tine. It got so bad recently that last night I dreamed I was try­ing to stop play­ing video games in my dreams so that I could get some sleep. Even my own mind is against me.

This time of year is famous for lists so I now present to you:
Top Six Things A New Father Has Learned

1. Babies are like The Matrix.
   No one can be told what the baby is. You have to see it for yourself.
2. Babies are noth­ing but change.
   Think a baby will bring some change to your life? Buckle up! No mat­ter how much you try to pre­pare for a baby, you can’t. Kelly and I thought we had some great expe­ri­ence under our belt with all of the time spent with our god­child. Not even close.
3. Babies are like wis­dom tooth sto­ries: No mat­ter what, some­one has always had it more dif­fi­cult than you.
   I never knew that rais­ing a child could be so com­pet­i­tive. No mat­ter how inno­cent your antic­dote, some­one will usu­ally go out of their way to top what­ever you just shared. Think your wife had a rough birth? Wait until you hear from the woman who had 8 kids that came out in pairs in the back of a mov­ing taxi on a bumpy road dur­ing a bliz­zard. Feel over­whelmed with all the change in your life? Lookout! Here come the ladies who’ve had twins/quadruplets/sextuplets/octuplets to shame you with tales of end­less sleep­less­ness, repeated bod­ily infec­tions, and more.
4. If babies weren’t cute, you’d throw them in a river.
   Scientists have found that the phys­i­cal attrib­utes of babies trig­ger strong and sub­lim­i­nal emo­tions deep inside of us that elicit a response to care for them. Babies are cute for very seri­ous rea­sons of sur­vival. This is why you still want to cud­dle them after a solid hour of scream­ing for no good rea­son.
   “You’ve eaten! Your dia­per is clean! You’ve sat in every chair/swing/position I can think of! Why won’t you go to sleep?! Dear sweet Jesus, please make my baby just GO TO SLEE* Oh, honey look. She’s smil­ing. Awwww.”
5. The car is a great sleep aid.
   The Volkswagen com­mer­cial where the dad is putting his kid to sleep by dri­ving around the block is much more than clever marketing.
6. Starbucks cof­fee is worth the yuppy tax.
   When your wife finally gets her lim­ited dri­ving priv­i­leges, few errands are worth the trou­ble like a Starbucks run. She gets out to do some­thing nor­mal. She gets time away from baby. You both get cof­fee in the end. Win-win.