What do we do with a baby?

In the weeks prior to Santiago's birth, Ernesto asked me daily, "What do we do with a baby?"  Each time, my reply was the same:  "We love him."

The other night, Ernesto recalled those routine exchanges and agreed that yes, of all the things one must do for a baby, the easiest and most important thing to do is to love it.  And we both agreed that this baby runs no risk of running short on love.

It seems unfair that most of us will never really understand what our parents have done for us, or how much they love us, or the sacrifices they have made for us, or so many of the decisions they make regarding our lives until we become parents ourselves.  That's a ton of years of parenting that go unrecognized, or partially recognized, or resented by children.  And in many cases, we kiddos misunderstand parents' intentions for a chunk of those years.

And given that our generation is waiting longer and longer to have children, our parents have to wait longer and longer to hopefully get the credit they deserve for loving us the way they have and putting up with our sometimes ungrateful, know-it-all, "Oh my God, you're embarrassing me!" attitudes.

So I'd like to take this opportunity to thank mom and dad for everything they've done for me.  I'm starting to understand, just a bit, how much they must love me, how much they've done for me, and how drastically they had to alter their own lives for me.   And that every day they continue to love me and do things for me and that the greatest assurance in the world is that they will always love me and do these things for me just because I'm their child.  That's pretty amazing, especially given that I was a real pain in the ass from age 15 to 21.  Unconditional love.  I get it.

And I'm so damn happy to have the opportunity to be the parent, even if it takes Santiago a few decades to understand what that means.