This is the last weekend I’m on paternity leave for our beautiful baby Reece, who just turned 6 months old yesterday. Please excuse the gratuitous baby pic.
He’s literally the cutest entity that has ever existed, in my completely unbiased opinion. Some of the highlights of the last two months:
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Seeing his strength improve to the point where he can hold only two of my fingers to balance and manage to stand even on quite unstable surfaces. He can also roll over, hold his head perfectly straight, sit up without assistance, and has better posture than me. I have to be careful when I give him objects that aren’t perfectly safe for him as he can clearly pick up things as heavy as a Coke can and flip it faster than I can react.
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Improvements in communication. We used to get straight up bawling before he convinced us to feed him. We’re now at the point where he just has to stick his hand in his mouth a few times before we get the idea.
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Developing intelligence. There’s clearly something going on behind those big brown eyes. Most of the time Reece complains these days have to do with being bored. We are constantly struggling to make up new situations for him and I expect this to summarize our next 5 years of parenting.
Anecdotally: at his 4 month doctor’s visit, he had the memory / deductive ability to realize it was going to be painful and started crying when we entered the building. At his 6 month visit, he had isolated the pain to the second time the nurse comes into the room (to administer the shots) and started crying then. Smart!
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Unique personality beginning to show. Reece is a calm baby who listens carefully to what we have to say, tries to replicate what we do, has a great attention span (10 minutes), and loves sleeping. He takes some time to warm up to new people / locations but is happy after a gradual introduction.
For me personally, paternity leave was an opportunity to connect with Reece, family, and friends. These transitional times have always been my time for building old and new connections and taking stock of what’s important. I called people I haven’t spoken to in a decade. I read, drew, and wrote. Even my GitHub is active for the first time in a long time. I’m blisteringly happy.
I lucked out in having only one major house disaster during this time - a slab leak in our hot water pipes. Getting all new pipes in our house is a big box checked on the list of items ensuring our house will last long enough to raise our children in.
I’m very grateful that work and my team gave me this time off and really meant it, e.g. I was able to disconnect. This is the longest I’ve taken off since I graduated college and I’m grateful to MichaelR and everyone else on my team for keeping the ship running in my absence.
I return to work refreshed and driven, with a new goal to show Reece exactly what a man who wants to treat others right and achieve his dreams must do.