Nine days old
The past several days have been very busy, emotional, exciting, and tiring. I went back to work on Tuesday and have caught myself daydreaming about Benjamin several times throughout the day. (I thank Anette for the photos and videos of him throughout the day.) I just want to be at home with Anette and the little guy. He smells so darn good and his skin is soft as a…well, you know.
All the time spent with Benjamin is a learning experience for me and Anette. We have such a wonderful little baby boy who has a great temperament and is teaching us how to communicate better every day. Even if we don't quite know the difference between the cries of “Change me” and “Feed me,” we now know well enough to react quickly to check the one and try the other: often he wants both. If we are lucky, Ben gives his approval with wonderful silence or a little smile. And those smiles are starting to come more frequently.
I just keep looking into the future, when I will teach him to swim, surf, find good Mexican food. I can't wait to take Ben camping up and down the coast or teach him how to ride a bike. I'm already planning our first fishing trip and first ball game. (And I guess I'm going to have to learn a great deal more Swedish and Polish, so I can join in all family conversations.)
That future will take a while to evolve, as our current relationship amounts to him looking - somewhat quizzically and somewhat familiarly - at my face (apparently in black-and-white) and me changing his soiled diapers (17 times in one day is the record so far) before handing him to his mom for food. It will come. And I'm not worried about that. I'm enjoying every second of the time I'm spending with our perfect little baby boy. That's right: I'm completely relishing cleaning up poop from my son's little butt. I never thought that I would ever write those words and actually mean it.