I've been wrestling with my feelings about Frank's arrival. Back in 2008, when we decided to find out if Tilly was a boy or girl...and we were told she was her...I felt an instant and then evaporated twinge of sorrow that it wasn't a boy. The rest is history on that one, but I remember that feeling.
This time, when we found out it was Frank, I felt the reverse...a twinge that I couldn't have twice the incredible dad-daughter joy I have felt with Tilly.
I have been so head over heels in love with being Tilly's dad, that I think I forgot that it took time to establish feelings about Tilly. Frank's here, and he eats, and sleeps, but until the last week or two, I have gotten nothing in return.
Totally selfish, I know, but in my heart, I think I have been mourning the loss of Tilly...Tilly as the unbridled, unabridged, unapologetic center of my universe. And maybe I was expecting more from him than he's ready to give as his penance for knocking Tilly out of the center ring.
That's changed now-Tilly as my sun around which I revolve. For better or worse. It's just taken me time to come to grips with the fact that life just took a step up in complexity, nuance, and joy.
Frank smiled at me for the first time (intentionally, at least) on November 17 while we were watching a Gopher's football game. That was the official start of our relationship, I think. The last few days (I write this on December 3) the smiles, looks, tracking me with his eyes, attempts to talk and sing...they're all coming around. He's coming down the track now. He's waking up from his post-womb slumber. It's game on.
When I went to post on Tilly's blog with the last images I really took of her before she had her brother join her on this ride, Google told me that my memory was all used up (and I would have to pay to keep posting over there...http://matildalouiseconnolly.blogspot.com). There was something so symbolic about that to me.
This summer at lunch, a friend had told me that it was probably good I wasn't having another daughter, as she doubted there was room left in my heart. It's something like that. It was just us and Tilly, just me and Tilly. Me and my Tillbird, the center of my universe. Another acquaintance had told me, "One kid is just an accessory. TWO kids...now that's a family." It's something like that, too.
Here we go buddy. Tillybird, you will always be my everything. Now, I just have more of everything.
Again, game on.
