And that’s why we do all this stuff

Despite the fact that my wife and I are trying to get back to normal, sleep-at-night “regular people” schedules ahead of her return to work on Saturday, last night I was told at around 10 o’clock that I needed to somehow pull together a bunch of Halloween-themed songs for a function at my niece’s pre-school the next morning. I had already shorted myself considerably on the sleep front Tuesday with the idea in mind that I would, in fact, be going to sleep at a “decent” hour (i.e. not after 9 in the morning after an all-night shift with the little guy), and would wake up a couple of times to bottle-feed Evan. So needless to say, I wasn’t thrilled with this. It took me most of the night to try to track down a bunch of such tunes, which I don’t normally keep in stock in my collection, and I didn’t get around to actually beginning to assemble the aforementioned compilation until about 5:00 a.m.; Evan woke up at 5:30 and I went to feed him. I was dead to the world, basically feeding him on autopilot. It was almost 6 before he sucked down the last of the bottle (by the way, those little disposable-bottle baggie things are really cool), and he was sleepy, and I was too, only he’d actually get to lay his head down when we were done, rather than going and sorting through a bunch of “spooky” ’50s and ’60s novelty songs that I just barely peripherally remember from my oldies radio days.

I burped him to no avail, and then he held up right next to my ear and gave me a big ol’ baby BELLLLLCHH. Right in the old man’s ear.* I had to keep from laughing too loud at that and waking up the whole house, and as I was putting him down in his crib, he looked at me and laughed with a little baby smile that could’ve melted lead. He must’ve seen that it had some effect on me, because he kept doing it all day.

If there’s a better reason to become a dad than to soak up all those baby smiles and kiss away all the baby tears that I possibly can, it certainly hasn’t occurred to me yet.

* THAT’S MY BOY!

P.S. The real beauty of the Halloween music CD that I made? It then proceeded to not get used at all. For anything. Long story.