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And just like that, #1 is four years old.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout my own parenting journey, one of the most heard things I\u2019ve been told is to not blink or take any time for granted, because it\u2019ll all be over in the blink of an eye and the kids will be grown and be pains in my ass before I know it, and I\u2019ll wonder where the time went when they were still in diapers and couldn\u2019t do anything for themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n Honestly, I think I\u2019ve done a pretty good job of not taking my time for granted, and I\u2019m so often reflecting on the past and I think in this age where everyone has phones and cameras on their phones and it\u2019s fairly possible to chronicle our lives through photographs, that it makes it easier to have a visual reference to reflect with as we can simply just open up our photos app and scroll through time.\u00a0 That, and the fact that I\u2019ve also been a prodigious brogger for more than half my life at this point, and I\u2019ve always got the means to not only look back in time and reflect, but to also read my very own words to recall specifically where I was throughout the journey of life.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll often times just stop and watch my kids doing the things they do, and marvel at the state they\u2019re in now, as opposed to when they were babies or infants or toddlers, because it\u2019s just incredible watching someone else\u2019s journey through life, through the eyes of a spectator, and of course being their father, I\u2019ve literally seen just about every single day of their lives.<\/span><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s safe to say that I\u2019m the first face they see in the morning, about 99% of their lives, I make the vast majority of their meals, and I put a tremendous amount of physical and time effort into my kids regularly.\u00a0 There are times in which it feels like a lot of work, but I don\u2019t regret any bit of it, and I take a tremendous amount of pride in trying to be the best dad I possibly can be.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing I won\u2019t do for my children, and the only thing I really care about at all is being a good dad.<\/span><\/p>\n But #1 being four years old, that\u2019s still mind-blowing to process, even though I know the day is coming.\u00a0 It\u2019s just so hard to fathom that it\u2019s literally been four years since she came into existence five weeks early, right at the on-set of COVID and the (majority) of the entire (intelligent) world shutting themselves into isolation.\u00a0 Being born so early, she was whisked away into the NICU and stayed there for two weeks, while mythical wife and I had no idea what was really going on with her health, the world, coronavirus and everything else because so much was going on concurrently right then.<\/span><\/p>\n Looking at her now, it\u2019s hard to believe she was ever considered an at-risk baby that had to be connected to a heart monitor for the first four months of her life, because within six months, we stopped referring to her as \u201cadjusted age\u201d and never looked back.\u00a0 She\u2019s a strong, healthy four-year-old that\u2019s ridiculously smart, thoughtful, and brings joy to my life on a daily basis.<\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s fully potty-trained, never has any accidents, knows all her numbers and letters, has demonstrated some rudimentary reading ability, and I have a feeling math will come fairly natural to her, as she\u2019s apparently understanding the processes of basic arithmetic, even if she doesn\u2019t know what the words addition or subtraction mean yet.<\/span><\/p>\n She remembers damn near everything, and is so quick to remind me of when she thinks I\u2019ve screwed something up, and seems to be able to recall things from the past now, which shows her budding brain being able to store and recollect memories, and even going to sleep, she always remembers to remind me of what she wanted for breakfast the night before.<\/span><\/p>\n Not a day goes by where she and\/or her sister isn\u2019t the brightest light of my entire day, whether it\u2019s by making me laugh, something sweet they do or say, or just the happy peace I feel when I watch them doing kid things.\u00a0 So I\u2019m happy to do whatever it takes to bring happiness to their lives\u2026 like taking a cake decorating class, so that I could make my child a triple-layered chocolate cake with buttercream and a dark chocolate drip ganache. \u00a0But even if it\u2019s basically pure trash food, it\u2019s also a symbol of growth for my child in that her original severe intolerance to eggs has dissipated over time, and she can at least handle having it in baked goods or cooked into things.<\/span><\/p>\n Still not going to give her a straight up omelet or scrambled eggs, but considering I still can\u2019t eat those things without considerable punishment, who knows if she\u2019ll ever fully grow out of it, or be as limited as I am.\u00a0 Only time will tell, and hopefully there will be many more decades of years to bear witness to what happens next.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" And just like that, #1 is four years old. Throughout my own parenting journey, one of the most heard things I\u2019ve been told is to not blink or take any time for granted, because it\u2019ll all be over in the blink of an eye and the kids will be grown and be pains in my … Continue reading Year four of forever<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[67,193,71,56,192,99,25],"class_list":["post-49820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-birthday","tag-dad","tag-famiry","tag-food","tag-kids","tag-reminiscing","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49822,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49820\/revisions\/49822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}