Promoted to Dad

The first time I felt a protective instinct, it was probably with a girl friend. There’s something about women that make them look vulnerable, and makes you feel protective. It’s a good feeling. You are the stronger one, and you won’t let any harm come her way. With a daughter, its that feeling multiplied by a hundred. She’s delicate. She’s tiny. Her clothes are so tiny my hands don’t have the dexterity to fold them properly. Her entire hand can grip half my finger. If she rubs her eyes she can cut her skin with her nails. Her shoes placed one behind the other are about half my shoe in length. I weigh ten times her weight. If aliens attack I’ll fight them off and save the world, just so she’s got a good place to grow up. Is it a good feeling? Sometimes. Sometimes it’s too much of a good feeling to handle. It also sucks when I fail. When she falls. When she pukes. When she bumps her head. Trips. Slips. Falls sick. Aliens? I can’t even fight viruses. (I recently learnt that nei...

She’s on the high chair, eating mashed potatoes and she throws her toy from the chair for the hundredth time? How do you react? Do you scold her for dropping it? (She’ll stop eating). Do you take away the toy? (She’ll stop eating). Do you pick it up for her yet again? At least she’ll eat. Person 1: Does your baby sleep throughout the night? Me: Almost. She wakes up maybe a couple of times, but she’s back to sleep in no time Person 1: You know you could train her to sleep throughout. Person 2: Has she started going to pre-school yet? Me: Nope Person 2: She could, and then your wife can start working. You could hire help for the rest of the time. There’s also day care. Parenting is a constant tug of war in your own mind. How strict should I be? When should she go to school? How much time away from parents would be okay? How much can we pamper her without spoiling her? People who give advice don’t help much either. When there are no right or wrong answers, you tend...

I love being the one who throws my daughter up in the air and catches her. The one who spins her around. It’s a different laugh I get. It’s a mixture of fun, excitement and little fear. When I pause, she’s still looking at me with a smile. She’s also taking a breather and preparing for her next round of fun. If I don’t give her that time, the laughter turns to screaming. We all need little pauses to catch our breath. Even when we’re having fun, we need to step back and take it in. If you can’t pause when you want to, then it’s work, not fun.

As the alarm rang early today, I thought about how important it is to wake up and quickly connect with team members in a different time zone. I decided to not waste another second. I hit snooze and repeated, for another 20 minutes. A few minutes after I dragged myself out of bed, my daughter was up. This got me thinking about how much she hates to sleep. She fights sleep as if it’s the enemy, and only when she’s completely worn out, would she let sleep take over. In the morning, as soon as she’s up, you can rest assured that she’s not going back to sleep. The reason for this is that everything in the world is so exciting. The places, colours, sounds, lights, noises, and smells, are all things of wonder.   She doesn’t want to miss out even one moment of being awake. I wonder if I was ever so excited about everything, but at least for the last decade I’ve been dragging myself out of bed. I love my life, I love my job, but I just don’t want to wake up. Thank you s...

My daughter has a laugh that could make anyone laugh. But she has two other laughs. One is the laugh, which laughs when I crack a joke. She’s figured out that I often joke and as soon as my wife laughs or giggles, my little one joins in, as if to say, ‘I get it too’. The third type of the laugh is the fake laugh. It’s a loud shrill laugh. It could be for no reason. It could be to test your mood or reaction. It could also be an invitation to a game, urging you to pass a fake laugh back to her. I like to indulge her in the game, and the funniest thing is that it often turns into real laughter, at least for me. I am really surprised by this, because I’m a guy who hates the concept of ‘laughter therapy’ where people force themselves to laugh. Here’s my message for you little one. I would take a fake laugh any day, from a genuine person, over a genuine laugh, from a fake person.

Marriage is like a job. I am not belittling it. Love is the foundation, but lets face it, you can’t sleep on the foundation for long. You need to work hard to make the building of marriage, so it’s like a job. You need to understand, respect and take care of your partner. Your partner is your partner in this job. With marriage I knew to quite an extent what the job description is. I had analyzed married people. I came to know of this job opening on a website. (We met on a social network) The interview process lasted for a year; there was an internship and finally the job. My first job. However the job description of ‘Dad’ is not very well defined. It sounds like some additional responsibility, and I’ve always believed that’s great. I had been asked if I thought I would make a good dad. Why not? I can make funny sounds, funny faces. I can do funny dances. I can bounce. I know all the songs from the 80’s. I can balance three beers while I finish them one by one. What...

You know that every stranger who looks at her smiles. They can’t help it. The slightly more extrovert ones, are compelled to wave at her, make funny faces or talk to her. In the end, while waving bye-byes they invariably say something like, ‘She’s an angel’. Of course she is. She’s our angel. Our bundle of joy. She makes the world a brighter place. She’s the apple of our eyes. If she was a character of novel, however, the one thing you could not have said about her is that she’s a flat character. No.     At times our angel has a dark side. She throws tantrums. She shrieks. She throws food all over herself, the floor and us. She takes pleasure in doing what she knows we don’t want her to do. Pulling at a wire. Taking off her clip. Poking me in the eye. Of course we get all our excitement from our bundle of joy. We hate having a control over our emotions. Our emotions have become just as child-like as they can be. One minute wanting to tear our hair out. Th...