You're a dad, enjoy the moment! - crques's Blog

crques's Blog

You're a dad, enjoy the moment!

Posted on June 19, 2009 at 04:14 PM.

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First of all I'll give everyone a little background on my situation here. I'm a first time dad of a wonderful 22 month old little boy named Kayden. As you can imagine, my wife Bessie and I are very proud of the little guy, and he's changed our lives so much for the better and brought us closer together. Although I consider myself to be a good dad, as someone that works full-time as well as taking graduate classes, I don't always stop for a second to enjoy my family or the great moments I share with them the way that I should.

Most mornings my wife has to leave for work before I do, so I'm usually worrying about whether or not I've gotten everything ready for work, getting Kayden up and dressed, making sure his things for daycare are packed and ready to go, whether we're going to make it on time (I drop Kayden off at daycare before going to work) and so forth. Well this morning was one of those hectic mornings that he and I sometimes have. As I'm getting dressed, he woke up crying for "Mommy" as he often does in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning. After getting him calmed down and content, and explaining that Mommy was at work and we would see her this evening, I noticed that we were running late.

After a struggle to get him dressed (like most toddlers I'm sure, he likes to run and hide whenever it's time to change his clothes) I began rushing around like a mad person trying to get everything together and us out the door. Because we were running late, I wasn't exactly as enthused as I should have been with his playfulness and his poking around to watch cartoons and play with his toys. After hurrying him along, we finally made it to the car and began our trip to daycare. On our trip he felt the need to continuously toss his sippy cup full of milk into the floor (which I fussed at him over probably more than I should have) and cry to get out of his carseat.

We finally arrived at daycare at 7:57. I am supposed to be at work at 8:00 and my office is located about a mile from his daycare, so I'm thinking that the frantic paced morning has paid off and I'm going to be on time. As we enter the daycare building, I notice a sign that read "Doughnuts with Daddy Morning - Friday June 19th." At this moment I realize I had seen the sign the previous day but had forgotten all about it. Knowing that I had no time to spare in order to be on time for work, I looked down at Kayden and decided that he and I were going to share a doughnut.

As we're sitting in the cafeteria munching on our blueberry doughnut (at 8:01 remind you), I can see the glow of excitement and happiness around him as he's having breakfast with his daddy at daycare, instead of the normal drop off routine. Once we finished our doughnut, I walked him to his room, gave him a kiss and hug, and told him that I loved him and would see him after work. He returned the kiss and hug and to my surprise, he offered a wave and a "bye daddy" as he calmly strolled into the room. Normally he tries to hold on to me as I leave, sometimes crying and asking me not to go bye-bye, so this was totally unexpected.

When I get to the car, I see that it's now 8:07 and I'm officially 7 minutes late. Knowing that I have to stroll by the boss' office to clock in, instead of worrying what he'll say or wondering if I'll face any disciplinary action, all I could think about was the special "doughnut sharing moment" I just had with my son and how happy he was to have me there with him. Like most of us, I find myself stressing too much over things that aren't as important as I think they are, while taking for granted the things that are truly most important. At that point, I smiled and thought to myself that moments like these are what being a dad is all about. It's funny to think that someone as young as my 22 month old son can teach me something, but he did. He taught me to take time to "enjoy the moment," and you know.......I think I'm going to do that more often.