It's midnight already?

Photo Credit to Erika Gerding - Thanks so much for the awesome photo Erika! (View Erika's Blog)

Pregnancy is a disease*. I know that's a bold statement to make, and I have very little science (translation: none) to back it up, but I'm sure that I'm right, just as I'm sure that the world is flat. My arguments are as follows:

+ It tends to be contagious
+ It causes memory loss
+ It appears to cause "selective hearing"
+ In women, there is a tumorous growth in your belly that seemingly doubles in size every 4 seconds, and leeches you of your very life force.

If that's not a disease, I don't know what is. I would like to touch on a couple of those points, if you don't mind.

Contagious
I won't lie to you. I don't exactly know how this works with women. They call it the "baby bug". When a woman is pregnant, it's only a matter of time before pregnancies start popping up all around you. They say it's "in the water", but I don't have any beakers or bunson burners to independently verify this.

Men are different. We purposely (maliciously?) try to force pregnancy upon our friends.

Me: "Hey man, Sarah's pregnant. Looks like yours truly is gonna be a dad."
AnyMan: "Oh boy, the last thing the world needs is another 'you' running around."
Me: "That joke gets funnier and funnier everytime I hear it."
AnyMan: "Dude, your life is over. Say goodbye to ever having fun again."
Me: "DUDE, you should get your girl pregnant. It'd be awesome. Our kids could play together."
AnyMan: "Yeah, ummmm... I don't think so."
Me: "C'mon man, being a dad is going to be awesome. I'm trying to share the awesomeness with you."
AnyMan: "It's ok. I think I'll just stay lame and, you know, do whatever I want whenever I want."

Memory Loss
When Sarah was pregnant, she misplaced her wallet, cellphone, the home phone, keys, the dogs, our house... everything. To top it off, Sarah seems to have forgotten that she forgot everything. She's already planning for a sibling for Tyler (in a few years, back off).

The memory thing affects me, also. Although I can remember just about about every detail of Tyler's birth, the colors of the memory are muted and not as intense. I'm sure that before long I'll be recalling the memory to friends as a wonderful, pain-free experience.

Selective Hearing
This one didn't come to me until yesterday. We've already cleared up what my non-parent male friends may have said to me when I told them Sarah was pregnant. When I told people that already had at least one child about my pending membership in the Daddy Club, they would say that it is "the single greatest, most rewarding thing you'll ever do". And they were right. I can't even imagine not having Tyler around.

But let me talk about yesterday. When I finished with work, I played with Tyler for awhile, ate dinner, played 2 games of cribbage with Sarah, played with Tyler, watched "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", and played with Tyler. When he went to bed, I turned on the Browns/Giants game, and Sarah started catching up on email. When the 4th quarter rolled around, and I realized that the - until now - undefeated Giants weren't going to win, I pulled out my laptop and started catching up on my news sites. When I finished that, I opened up my news reader so I could catch up on blogs. I glanced at the clock and saw that it was midnight. What? It's midnight already? I needed to be up and getting ready for work in just 4 and a half hours!!!

That's when my eyes really opened up. It wasn't just that I didn't have time to read the blogs. As I looked around the room, I started processing what I was seeing. A burp cloth on the couch, six childrens' books from the library scattered on the floor, a camcorder with a drained battery next to the dog bed, a camera on the floor, a pacifier over here, a doggie bone over there.

Things started coming together like they do at the end of M. Night Shyamalon films. I was spinning in circles in one direction, and the camera was rotating around me in the other direction. Memories and conversations replayed in my head. Although I was listening to what my friends were saying at the time, my brain wouldn't let me HEAR everything that they were saying.

At the time, what I heard was, "Becoming a dad is the greatest, most rewarding thing you will ever do."

My brain filed away the rest of the conversations into an area of my mind that I couldn't access. Yesterday, the floodgates to those inaccessible areas either opened or came crashing down.

"...but you won't have time for ANYTHING any more."

"Kiss your hobbies goodbye, because it's all about the baby now."

"Get your butt in gear, because Sarah's going to need more help around the house."

I became light-headed as I realized that I simply do not have the time to maintain my current daily habits. There aren't enough hours in the day.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must mention that I believe I'm addicted to the internet. No joke. I check my email constantly. You know, just in case there is an emergency, and the person decided to email me instead of call me. I check Digg about 4 times a day. Yeah, I think I've got a problem. I have an action plan to combat the issue. I haven't told Sarah about this, because she wouldn't believe that I can do it. She's accepted my addiction and sees it as part of the status quo now. It's win-win for me though. If I do limit my 'net use, she'll be surprised and happy. If I fail, well, she's none the wiser, unless she reads this blog. But let's face it, she's only online for about 2 minutes a week, so she's not likely to catch this post.

It sure would have been nice if there was a memo that mentioned that days are still only 24 hours long when you have a baby. I was under the impression that, since the human population in our house increased by 50% from 2 to 3, the number of hours in a day would increase to 36. It would have gone a long way towards making things more manageable for me. It turns out, and here's the shocker folks, that the universe does not revolve around me. It only seems like it because it revolves around our flat planet.

* That reminds me; I broke up with a girl once by saying, "You're like a freakin' virus, and I'm tired of being sick." In hindsight, I'm thinking that wasn't the most tactful of ways to end a relationship, but it was amazingly effective.