Eve

I remember this night a year ago. We had arrived at the hospital in the morning and by that night were half sleeping after the epidural. At 8:11 the next morning, Lyla triumphantly emerged. Everything happened so slowly, but so fast.

That's how this year has been. During my parenting leave, Lyla would spend 30 minutes drinking a 4-ounce bottle. Just getting her down for a nap some days felt like eternity. Everything took forever and yet again, in retrospect, time flew.

I wonder how tomorrow will feel. It's Lyla's birthday, yes, but let's be honest: this first one is really about us. It's about Julie doing all the work in that delivery room. It's about the nurse putting me in charge of Julie's left leg to make me feel useful. It's about becoming parents, that instant when everything else suddenly became less significant, that instant when our purposes in life were so utterly defined and in sync.

Sometimes non-parents complain that the only thing parents want to do is talk about their kids.

You're damn right they do.