Friday Donuts: Five Things I’ve Learned as a First-Year Dad

It’s 7:17 on Thursday night. I just put Baby Blue Eyes to bed and poured myself a glass of Cabernet. Mama Blue Eyes has book club tonight, so I’ve got a Ribeye that I’m gonna make as soon as I’m done writing this.

It’s been a long week. Between launching Locked On Dolphins Hits, keeping up the other podcasts, handling daycare pickup, trying to find time to work out and being a dad, it would be easy to ditch writing a Friday Donuts this week.

But this is a special week. It’s Baby Blue Eyes’ first birthday this weekend. And she’s really the reason this column has become what it is over the last 12 months. It’s a big week, and I’m going to rise to the occasion, even if it takes a little red wine to get me going.

I’ve been thinking about this particular column for a few weeks now. I didn’t want to write a sappy piece about how much I love my daughter. I do, obviously, but that’s not interesting to you. (Maybe none of this is, but hey, we’re in too deep already.)

Here’s what I settled on: What I’ve learned in a year about being a dad.

This isn’t another thing: It’s not what I think anyone else should do as a dad. This is not a list of instructions and it’s definitely not advice. One thing I’ve learned as a dad is that there is nothing worse than unsolicited parenting advice. I’m not doing that here.

I’m just telling you what I learned about being a dad to my kid in my heterosexual marriage and my multicultural family. Maybe some of this resonates. Maybe you agree. Maybe you think I’m an idiot. Either way, here it is. The five things I’ve learned as a first-year dad.

For most of my marriage, I would say we’ve had close to a 50-50 say in most decisions: Where we’ll live, what we’ll do on weekends, big expenses, etc. That went out the door when Baby Blue Eyes was born. Honestly, it probably stopped when Mama Blue Eyes was pregnant.

It’s not a complaint. The things about our marriage are still 50-50, but parenting is not. She’s the CEO. She has the vision and the instincts. I’m important, too! Like, I’m not working in the mailroom. I’m still in the C-suite. Just instead of CEO, I’m the CRO or something. I’m in charge of certain things, but more broadly, my job is to help execute my CEO’s vision. She leads, I execute. And that’s the way it ought to be in our marriage. I believe moms have instincts that are much rarer in dads, and my wife’s instincts are off the charts. I’ve gotten the hang of it by now but, twelve months ago, I was six months away from being six months away.

That said, I have taken ownership of some things that fall within my direct purview. Like music, car seats and macaroni and cheese. Like I said, still important.

I didn’t know how things would change when I became a dad. I knew I couldn’t be as selfish with my time. That I’d have to compromise some of my worst workaholic tendencies and that going out at night with my wife wasn’t going to happen for a while.

But we found ways around it. I still work, but I take a long break and get back to it after she goes to sleep. We still go out, but during the day. I still go to the gym, but I have to use my time more efficiently. I listen to music, drink wine and laugh with my wife. We just do all of that while in the orbit of Baby Blue Eyes.

It took a while. I wasn’t sure I would get here after those first couple of months. But I learned that it’s possible to still do the things I enjoy as long as I’m being intentional.

I don’t mean that bullshit “My 5-9 before my 9-5” thing that has taken over my feed.

(Count yourself lucky if you haven’t seen this. Just a bunch of young fathers setting up a tripod for a fake wake-up to brag about how they run an “easy 10 miles” before the sun comes up, consume 60 grams of protein and work on their side hustle before heading off to an office. By the way, they never once acknowledge their kid. How about a video of your wife doing all of the important work while you’re doing chin-ups, pal?)

I try to wake up early enough to get 30-60 minutes of my own time to get my day started. Maybe it’s catching up on emails, starting work or doing some meal prep. Whatever it is, making sure I get that time to handle my stuff before parenthood kicks in helps me feel less behind and more in control of my day.

“They grow up so fast” is so cliché, but it’s true. My wife and I say that nauseating shit to each other all the time. Every other day feels like some kind of checkpoint. It’s a small bat mitzvah every time she goes up in diaper size.

When we scroll back to old photos, it’s crazy to think about how much she’s changed. She’s gotten bigger, has more hair, and we know that eventually she’s going to stop looking like a baby and start looking like a toddler, and then a little person.

But I found a time machine. No matter how much she changes, when she’s sleeping, she looks just like she did the day she was born.

Being a dad is hard. The constant wake-ups, juggling work with parenthood, being on alert all the time, standing up nearly every time you sit down, tracking milestones, daycare drop-off and pickup, learning that leaving the room to take a piss is a compromise, figuring out how to keep her alive. It’s exhausting.

But Baby Blue Eyes doesn’t know that. She doesn’t know that after I’ve gotten two hours of sleep, recorded four podcasts, washed her bottles, picked her up from daycare, and now she wants to play, the only thing I want to do is sit on the couch and doomscroll. She doesn’t know that I’m still frustrated about something I screwed up at work and that I have 127 emails begging to be checked. She doesn’t know that I feel woefully behind with work, that the house is a mess, and that the last thing I should be doing is sitting in the middle of the unswiffered floor watching her bang two spoons together.

She doesn’t know any of that. All she knows is that she’s happy I’m there.