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She Wants a Baby! (Part 4 of 4)

By Steve Watters

After a season of celebrating our love with reckless abandon, we were blessed with a little guy we named Harrison.

Neither rationality and reason nor facts and figures can begin to capture the joy that a 2-year-old boy can bring. I’m the one who sounds like he’s going overboard on the emotions when I try to describe the thrill of hearing “daddeee” fill my ears every night when I open the garage door. I’m the one who sounds a little irrational telling another future dad about the magical way having a young child can re-open your eyes to the world around you—or about the new sense of hope and excitement it can give you for the future.

Sure, parenting is a challenge, like when a piercing cry drags me out of bed around midnight and I have to conduct a search and recovery mission for a stray “binkie” in hopes of pacifying Harrison. Or when I’m waiting for a plane to take off praying that he will quit squawking like a pterodactyl as he kicks the seats in front of us.

In fact, all my warnings that having a baby would change our social life, living arrangements and concept of free time all came true, but not quite like I expected. As I said, I like to think of myself as the voice of reason in my marriage, but I’m glad for once that my wife’s voice of emotion won the day.

Because I couldn’t imagine a better social life than the one our son adds to our family (not to mention all the families he has connected us to). I couldn’t ask for a better living arrangement than the one we walk into each night as we tuck Harrison into bed. And finally, I’ve never used my free time quite so constructively as it gets used now—passing on my heritage and my joy to a little guy who is literally and figuratively walking in my shoes.

Now if I could only teach him a little rationality.

Steve Watters is a project manager for Focus on the Family. His wife, Candice, is a freelance editor.