A year ago I was on here writing about how if I wanted to have a baby I’d have to give up my stupid-expensive morning Whole Foods juice habit (a habit that was necessary to flush out my evening Craft Beer and Soft Cheese habit) because I earn a sock full of nickels each year and children are more expensive than kombucha. (If you don’t remember that post, scroll down like two centimeters. Or however many centimeters the last blog post or two is down on the screen of whatever device you’re using. That was a terribly-constructed sentence, don’t read too much into it. Hey, what if you’re a giant and the last posts are entire METERS down on your screen? Are you a giant? Hello, you. Welcome.)

So then, I don’t know, the moon got full or the water got infected and we pretty much just said “Hey! Maybe having a baby wouldn’t mean the complete devastation of everything good in our lives after all” and then the next thing I knew I was standing in line at CVS every night after work for a week straight clutching boxes of pregnancy tests and staring with a cold heart at ragamuffin children that were inevitably right in front of me beating each other to death with some sort of school supply while their exhausted mother halfheartedly swiped at them with one tired arm while the other lovingly cradled a shopping basket full of (presumably) NyQuil and Tylenol PM. “I may have made a huge mistake,” I would soberly tell the cashier each evening. “And yet every time one of these tests tells me that there’s nothing in there besides what’s usually in there, I’m a little disappointed.”

“We don’t know each other,” she’d answer, “So it’s weird that you keep trying to confide in me.”

“Thanks, Evelyn,” I’d reply. “You’re going to make a great godmother to the zygote that may or may not be floating around inside of me. Do zygotes float, Evelyn? Is that how that works?”

“Next in line,” Evelyn would say. We’re still quite close, if you’re wondering.

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All of the above was written approximately two weeks ago. It’s 7AM on Tuesday now and any minute my baby daughter will bust out of her swaddle for the thirtieth time since 10PM last night and I’ll go get her from where she’s laying sweetly with her dad. (Because I woke him up two hours ago so that he could put her back to sleep after her nine hundredth night feed because I have learned that dads evidently have magical chests that make babies fall asleep (possibly the only earthly advantage to a lack of breasts) and if I didn’t wash my hair and eat a bowl of instant oatmeal in peace then I would have no other choice but to build a boat, grow a mustache, sail away to South America and never speak to anyone ever again. NO OTHER CHOICE, PEOPLE.) (By “in peace” I of course mean “while the cats yodel aggressively for food and knock things over.”)

My baby daughter, her dad. My heart is fit to burst.