It’s 11pm and I’m about to go to bed.  If you know anything about me, this is unusual.  I usually go to sleep around midnight or later.  In fact, going to sleep late and getting up early isn’t that unusual for me.  Used to do it all the time.   But for some reason I am completely wiped out every night.

And it’s not like my son Nathan is a hard baby at night.  He actually sleeps 10 to 12 hours a night.  He goes to sleep around 6 pm and wakes up around 5:30 or 6 in the morning.  So you’d think I should have nothing to complain about.  I know of parents who suffer through truly cranky and/or colicy kids all night.  And I used to do this kind of schedule all the time.

I remember only a couple of years ago that after working 12 hour days I’d go workout at 11pm to avoid the crowds at the gym and not got to bed til 2 or 3 in the morning.  You’d think that that would be more exhausting.  Nope.  That was cake compared to a day spent taking care of my boy.  I don’t quite understand why this is.  Taking care of my son and spending the day with him is a blast, but man I feel like I got run over by a truck.

I have to say that this is truly the most joyous but also the most physically hardest thing I’ve ever done.

My parents are in town this week, which is one of the reasons that I’ve been unable to post regularly.  Kinda paradoxical, considering that I actually took a week off to be with them (they live in NYC and this is their first time seeing Nathan in person) and I thought that I’d have more time to write since I’m home.  Not true – I’ve actually had less time because I am spending more time interacting with the baby, with my parents, with the family, etc.

Anyway, here I am, almost midnight, and I just finished dream-feeding the little guy, and my Dad is sleeping in the living room, and I sit here and think how it’s amazing that there’s three generations of Kim men under my roof right now.  Supposedly I look a lot like my dad, and act like him too (according to my Mom).  We’re both impatient, can be temperamental (although I like to think I’m much better at this than him), and can act like a little school boy when we get excited about something.  Now I see this little guy – he can’t talk yet so I have no idea what he’s thinking – but here he is, all temperamental when his diaper is wet (he’s a veritable diaper diva!), unwilling to wait an extra second when he’s hungry, and he gets all excited and hyperventilates when he sees something he likes.

I’ve always been happy to be be told that I’m very much like my Dad – even the things that we get made fun of or the things that my Mom complains about the both of us, it gives me a weird pleasure to know that I’m like him.  And now here is little Nate – a splitting image of me and my Dad.  I wonder how much like the two of us he will be when he’s older?  I wonder if he’ll be happy to hear that he’s like us?