Mobile Menu
The alarm goes off early on my days with him and I am already awake.
I am not a morning person by nature. Ask anyone who has worked a shift with me. But something changes when I know I am going to pick him up. I am already thinking about what we are going to do. Which park. Whether the library is open. If I have what I need to make French toast sticks. By the time I pull into the driveway to get him I genuinely miss him and he is not even in my arms yet.
That is what nobody tells you about being a dad. The missing starts before the time apart even ends.
We have a routine and he knows it as well as I do. If he wakes up early, we go to Safeway. He knows exactly why we are going and he knows exactly what he wants. A sprinkle doughnut. Every time. No hesitation. He picks it out himself and carries it like it is something precious, which I guess it is.
French toast sticks for breakfast when we are home. French fries if we are out somewhere. Cheese sticks whenever he can get them. The kid knows what he likes and he is not apologizing for it.
The library is one of our spots. He walks in and goes straight to what he knows. The dinosaur toys. The magnets on the easel. The coloring station. He does not need me to direct him. He just goes. I sit close and watch him work and I think about how fast this is all moving and how I want to remember this exact version of him.
He figured out how to climb into his car seat by himself a little while ago and I did not see it coming. Just hauled himself up and got situated and looked at me like he had been doing it his whole life. I still strap him in but the climbing is his. He claimed it. That is who he is already at two years old. He wants the challenge. He wants to do it himself.
Keeping up with his energy is the hardest part of the day and I mean that in the best way. He does not stop. He is all the way in on everything, the park, the floor, the toy aisle at Walmart, chasing me around the apartment. Matching that takes everything I have and I would not trade it.
The moments I keep coming back to are the quiet ones. Snuggling on the couch. Riding a slide together at the park with him in my lap. Sitting on the floor with toys scattered everywhere and nowhere we have to be.
And bedtime. My favorite thing he does is fake sleep. I am in there trying to wind him down and he gets this look on his face and then closes his eyes and starts fake snoring. Full performance. The whole thing. I have to turn away so he does not see me laughing.
Every time.
I am not sure what I did to deserve these days with him but I do not take a single one for granted.
Jason David Newton is a father, mechanical technician, and lifelong Moses Lake, Washington resident. Read more at jasondavidnewton.com
