Growing up too fast

How many times do new parents hear this phrase?  Like constantly, right?  "Make sure to spend as much time with them as you can...they grow up too fast!"  It made me want to rip those do-gooders' hair out from the follicle every time they said something like that to me.  The first year of raising Desmond was no easy feat.  And, I know some people are going to think less of me after I say this, it wasn't terribly enjoyable either.  Don't get me wrong...I love Desmond and I would do anything for him, but, if I lived in a perfect world where I could interact with my baby without doing all of the banal parenting duties, I would have.  I could think of a hundred things that I would rather have been doing than changing him or trying to get him to eat or trying to get him to stop crying (however, when he fell asleep on my chest at night and I could hear him breathing and could feel his little heartbeat against me...nothing is better than that.  Not even the prospect of a massage from a partially nude Ryan Gosling...I mean my fiancé.)

Man Oh Manischewitz

But guess what?  That year FLEW by and now he's basically a little boy who can walk and sort of talk (well, babble) and can think and reason and play.  It's amazing.  I love hanging out with him now.  I mean, even changing his diapers has become more fun (I call his penis a "bing-bing" - in a Spanish accent, it sounds like "beeng-beeng" - and when I ask him to find it, he points at it and grins.  So cute!)  He still loves reading books and is way into trucks, airplanes, bikes, and motorcycles.  He's losing a lot of his baby face chub and his feet are growing into regular toddler sizes now (the kid has teeny feet).  I found myself tearing up when I started putting away his 12-18 months clothes.  When he grew out o his newborn clothes, I rejoiced because that meant that he was getting closer to an age that wasn't so boring.  

Our 3-year-old neighbor's toy.  Desmond idolizes him.

I'll be the one teaching Desmond how to drive since I've only had one speeding ticket in my life and Billy's had like, oh, 5.

 And although anything over 8 hours a day alone with him drives me bat shit, those 8 hours are so enjoyable any more.  So, like the saying goes, the days are long and the years are short.  That was my mantra to get me through those dark ages and voila, here I am, having a blast with a 17-month-old.  Whoulda' thought?

Doesn't he look like he's on his way to his first day of college?  Turned up collar, hipster hair, corduroy pants, ironic dolphin shoes, and the requisite hippie amber necklace.

Let's go shred, bro!