This feeling of fakin' it. I still haven't shaken it.

Incipient fatherhood awaits me. Admittedly, I've had basically the entire year up to this point to get used to the idea (we found out about the peanut's existence on the day before New Year's, after all). It's not that I'm particularly nervous, nor feel wholly unprepared, having been through birthing classes (cleansing breath, soothing touch, and why vomiting should be viewed as a positive thing), breastfeeding classes (tickle, tickle, pop the kid on), fatherhood classes (when bathing, use a different surface for each eye to prevent the spread of infection, and NEVER SHAKE A BABY!!!!). I've built cribs, shelving units, rockers, and had the car seat installed. I've even continued my long-running dabbling with insomnia, just to be maximally prepared.

No, what surprises me, even to this day, is the extent to which I'm beginning to realize how much parents fake it. I'm 30 now, by which point in my parents life I was 5 and 6. Good Lord, but it's hard to imagine having done this six years ago. Seriously, it makes you wonder what they were thinking...and yet, I'd like to think I turned out ok. Not to say we'll be the best parents in the world, but somehow the species has actually managed this trick for many thousands of years, and our ancestors for hundreds of millions prior. Even cats, among the laziest creatures in the world, manage to raise kittens when not consuming pounce and napping. And yet, I suspect most of them faked it too, at least at first.

Suffice it to say, this is not a knock on any of the parents I know, including my own and my co-blogger. They seem to have done/be doing a fantastic job, even though I can't imagine they had any more preparation than we managed to get, nor more sleep than we're prepared not to get. That they managed to keep their sanity in just about all cases, and in many cases their hair as well, we'll just chalk up to one of the mysteries of life.

In the end, I've tried to figure out the whole parenthood thing, and I still can't escape the conclusion that babies are a lot like cats, but you have to monitor their poop more closely and they aren't anywhere near as good at cleaning themselves. Lest this worry you, remember that my cat is certifiably neurotic and occasionally possessed by minor demons, and then consider the likely fate of our children...

To conclude, my honest and sincere thanks to my parents, and to all parents everywhere. Somehow y'all manage to do a job that seems more complicated than any task one should ask of a person, with vastly insufficient technical documentation and instructions, and much too little respect for what you do from many of the rest of us. If I've ever shown anything other than the proper respect and admiration, I'm certainly about to get my comeuppance. If I did show the proper respect and admiration and all that, well, I was probably doing it to buy your sympathy so we could get you to babysit someday. I may be faking it, after all, but I'm sneaky like that. I learned it from my cat.

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