December 27th – January 2nd – Best Week Ever/2010 – Best Year Ever

Last week was the best week of my life. Prior to today, I’d spent the last 12 days at home with Amy and Ryne. That is the longest that I’ve ever been able to stay at home with Ryne (I got five days at home after he was born before I had to go back to work).

Here are some of the things that we were able to do with Ryne over the break:

Celebrate our first Christmas together
Watching him smile with frequency
Mimicking me and sticking out his tongue
Learning to blow spit bubbles
Sit, listen, and focus for stretches were I would read him multiple (sometimes up to five) books at a time
Celebrate our first New Year’s Eve together – a nice little family dinner at Governor’s, and watching TV shows on DVD before falling asleep prior to midnight – it was the best New Year’s Eve I’ve had in a long time
Celebrate our first New Year’s Day together
Watch Ryne roll over for the first time

To someone without kids, this list probably looks lame. But it isn’t/wasn’t.

I knew that I would enjoy Ryne and love Ryne, but I never imagined enjoying him so much and loving him so much.

The joy of having a child and watching that child are indescribable. I never understood it until Ryne was actually here on Earth. You can not find joy like this anywhere else, from anything else.

I love the life that I have. I am blessed with a great family, good friends, a good job, and good health. I could not think of any single way that my life could be made any better. I am so blessed, and so thankful for that.

2010 was a great year, probably the best year ever. I told Amy that recently, and she asked me why. I told her, “Ryne.” Ryne is the sole reason as to why my 2010 was so incredible. 2011 looks promising, though, too. Just imagine all of the change and growth Ryne will go through. I will get my first Father’s Day to celebrate. We will take our first family vacation together. Ryne will celebrate his first birthday. And I’m sure that there will be countless other things that will make 2011 unbelievable.

I’ll finish by recounting my version of dropping Ryne off for his first morning of daycare (which was today), which officially concluded my best week ever. Ryne woke up early, which was good because we were not rushed getting out the door, and because Amy and me got to play with him a tiny bit. I didn’t think that taking him to the sitters would be difficult, I really didn’t. However, as it got closer and closer to the time that I needed to leave the house, I started to move a little bit slower. I didn’t want to put him in the car seat. Unfortunately, I did because I had to (he needs diapers and formula – those things cost money – mom and dad have to work to get money). While at the sitters things went fine. He wasn’t fussy and he didn’t cry (he dealt with this much better than his mom and dad did). After talking with his sitter for a couple of minutes I had to tell him goodbye and that I loved him, and kissed him on the cheek. As I turned to leave I watched him watch me out the door with his big, wide-open eyes; it looked to me like he looked a little sad and a little scared, which made me A LOT sad. And while I didn’t cry, I did get choked up and was forced to fight back the tears. I never saw this coming. It was much harder than I’d expected. I can not think to imagine how much harder these things will get as he gets older…I don’t want to imagine them; I’d kind of like for time to just stand still.