My little girl, Amelie, turns 1-year-old this month. Incredible how time flies. It was Dec. 26 of last year that she made her ever-so-slow descent into the world and changed our lives forever. Now, as we close in on that milestone first birthday, it seems incredible how much she has changed. From lump to little girl in less than 12 months. It sounds more like a ready-to-eat stuffing commercial or one of those weight-loss ads. Boy, how the changes do come. Little feet are suddenly big feet. They were tiny, like a bird’s. Now they look like flounders. She’s toddling around the house, not without help from chairs and other supports, but it’s walking in my book. She has dozens of expressions, is gaining height and has more hair than some zip codes. But there’s one category I’m still not sure about: talking. Does she talk or doesn’t she talk? That is the question. To tell you the truth, I’m up in the air on that one. She’s never been a baby talker, uttering those cartoon-esque “goo-goos” or “ga-gas.” Instead, this sweet little angel with honey brown curls and eyes crisp as polished apples has always chosen a much less refined “Heh!” It sounds like what a trucker might give out while wolfing down spicy sausage.

I get confused with lots of directions. Give me complicated instructions — turn right over there, then stop — and I’m a basket case. My mind spins in somersaults trying to understand such strange and cryptic commands. It just can’t process them. Tell me specifically what to do with my hands — put them here, lift this way, rotate around and don’t forget to breathe — and it’s like I’ve just been told how to put the space shuttle together. My face goes blank, and sometimes I pee my pants. It’s why I was never good at knots. The bunny goes around the tree, down the hole, over the hill, down by the prairie, back up the hole … What the heck are they talking about? Next thing I know, I’m tied up in a tree screaming for someone to cut me down. I’m a basket case. Which is why days later I’m still not sure how well our first baby swimming class at the YMCA went, or whether I accomplished anything at all. This I can tell you: I sure didn’t understand anything at all. My wife signed up our family, including our little 6-month-old girl, for these very basic classes. No Olympic breast stroke for babies here. Mainly it’s how to handle your child in water, and for your child, how to handle being nearly drowned by your clumsy parents. It was a lot of fun. We swam, we splashed, we didn’t drown and my baggy board shorts […]

It took me two weeks to the point where I could write about Father’s Day — my first. Not the day itself. That was wonderful, and really gave me time to think about what it means to be a new dad. It helped me put in perspective what this little 6-month-old munchkin means to me (beyond the tax deduction), and I savored the moment. It wasn’t Father’s Day I needed separation from — it was “the incident,” which is now becoming a parent’s day tradition, as our little girl did the same thing when we went out to eat on Mother’s Day. Three guesses I give you. Need a hint? In college, this act signified the end of a VERY good night, or the beginning of a VERY bad morning. In Roman times, they had special places for you to go and do this after an expansive meal. It’s one of only two things your child can do in public that can horrify and embarrass you to the point that you consider changing zip codes. The other is breaking out in a Barry Manilow tune at the top of her lungs, and I haven’t experienced that one yet. But I got the full effect on this. There’s nothing quite like baby public vomitation.

Fatherhood: Is there another profession in the world where you’re woken up at 5 in the morning with the question: “So, you want to change the baby’s diaper or clean-up the dog vomit on the living room rug?” Now that’s living! How do you answer that? How do you choose? And obviously the diaper is in “interesting shape” if it’s offered as part of the bargain. This is a deal with the Devil, and there will be no winner. “I’ll take dog vomit,” I answer, and so begins another morning as “New Dad #103562.” Dads get asked questions in the morning like this: “Have you checked in on her yet?” “Yes, I just did,” I say. “And she’s breathing and stuff?” What exactly is the “stuff?” That’s never specified, and I, of course, lie. “She’s breathing and definitely ‘stuff.’”

“So, what’s the baby doing now?” comes the voice on the phone — my mother’s. She’s calling for her regular update on what’s new with Amelie, my 4-month-old daughter. “Right now, what’s she doing?” she demands. The answer is often disappointing. It falls into one of five categories: 1) She’s sleeping. 2) She’s lying there. 3) She’s getting her diaper changed. 4) She’s eating. 5) She’s spitting up on her mother. Sometimes it’s a combination of two or three. None are terribly exciting or translate well over the phone, so she probes for details. “Well, describe it,” she says when I tell her a diaper change is underway. “You want me describe ‘it’?” I ask her. “I’m not describing ‘it.’ I don’t want to be in the same zip code as ‘it’ and I’m sure not coming up with the words to paint that picture for you. ‘It’ will melt the phone lines.”

I was on my way to bed the other night when I looked down on the coffee table and noticed a book: “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” I shook my head and walked on. But it did make me think. As father of a 3-month-old girl, where do babies come from? The answer, I’ve determined, is the outer rim. The farthest reaches of the universe. Beyond the solar system, out in the galaxy and several more away … plus three miles. A place that can only be called “Strangeus Unusualia.”

I was sitting in a small, cramped Tampa theater, listening to a tone-deaf little girl belt out “Beauty and the Beast,” when it happened. It washed over me like a wave, like an electric shock. A chill. A flush. A fever. An epiphany. A jolt. A surge. Just like that, it happened — the rest of my life flashed before my eyes. “This is the future,” I thought to myself as the song dragged on, “and it’s out of key.”

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick … Waiting for the baby time bomb to go off. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick … That seems to be the story for the first couple of months of a baby’s life. That’s what I’m understanding, especially when you go out. My wife and I just recently got up the nerve to start venturing out of our cave with our new 5-week-old girl, Amelie. You get a bright shiny new sports car with leather seats and no teeth, and you want to show it off — the happy face, the good moods, the pretty girl, the adorable outfits. That’s natural. But it’s the Tyrannosaurus Rex that she sometimes becomes that gets me worried.

What is it about a refrigerator door loaded with junk — inundated with old pictures, to-do lists, magnets, bits of Thanksgiving dinner leftovers and random tidbits of life — that something meaningful occasionally cuts through the clutter while you reach for the water pitcher and gives you a boost. I read the saying, almost crowded out by a Key West chicken magnet and a New Yorker cartoon, and laughed.

So, this is fatherhood. Not so bad. Not so different. Normal life, I have been told, is over. Now the search begins for a new kind of normal. For a routine. For just a little bit of sleep. (In 22 years, I’m told, I’ll get some.) It’s been two weeks since my daughter, Amelie, was born, and already I have changed 32,000 diapers. Having never done so before this experience, I think I’m adjusting quite well.