What people don't tell you before your first baby is that you don't always feel lovey-dovey towards him when he arrives. So you feel guilty for a few days, until one day you look at him and are overwhelmed with a Mama or Papa Bear feeling, because at the center of every cell in your body you feel rooted to this squirming little thing that clings to your fingers and burrows into your skin looking for a breast.

The Wife was in love with him the moment I put him in her arms, and now he's starting to grow on me as well. I'm not sure he likes me yet, however; I sit with him bundled in my arms, and he gazes up at me with a suspicious expression, as if he is thinking: "You are not the Mama." Once he gets past the need to eat every two hours maybe he'll find me more interesting.

I've tried to spend more time with the boys these past few days, to remind them we still love them. They've all taken to baby brother, though until he can wrestle he's of limited use to them. For the most part they pet him the way they pet our kitten, or they take his head in their hands and say Hello, baby Isaiah, and give a pretend squeeze, because by now they've heard Mom or Dad tell them to be gentle, for God's sake, about a million times. He likes to watch them, maybe because they are smaller, and closer to his scale, or perhaps because something in his genes is already called out to do little-boy things, only his muscles won't yet respond. So he watches them with a slightly less suspicious look (because they, too, at the end of the day, are also not the Mama).

Another piece has been added to our puzzle; this is how it feels, as if all along we were waiting for this boy to arrive and make us more complete. This is why we are parents, the Wife and me, and many of you reading, why we endure the terror and heartache and deprivation, because we are not completely us otherwise. We trade a world of black and white for a world of color, and become more fully ourselves and more fully something better at the same time. This is what they do for us even as they drive us crazy. But it's a good crazy.