Add a draft on fatherhood

Author: dguo

astro.config.mjs

@@ -22,6 +22,7 @@ export default defineConfig({
         mdx(),
         sitemap({
             filter: (page) =>
+                !page.includes("blog/fatherhood") &&
                 !page.includes("blog/peak-indignation") &&
                 !page.includes("blog/my-approach-to-authentication") &&
                 !page.includes("blog/making-my-own-wedding-website") &&

src/pages/blog/fatherhood.md

@@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
+---
+layout: ../../layouts/BlogPostLayout.astro
+categories:
+  - learning
+date: "2026-01-03"
+unlisted: true
+title: Fatherhood
+---
+
+I have a two year old son. I'm usually too tired to ponder what becoming a
+father has been like and the weight of that responsibility, but he is napping
+right now. Instead of doing the smart thing, which means taking the opportunity
+to nap myself ("sleep when they sleep" is common parent phrase #1), I'll try to
+dust off my writing skills, which have largely been replaced by my skill in
+changing a diaper in any situation (I can almost literally do it in my sleep),
+and explain my perspective of fatherhood so far.
+
+When friends who don't have children yet ask me what it's like, I always think
+of a Reddit comment that went something like: "the two best times of my day are
+when I get to hang out with my kid and when I get a break from my kid." This
+dichotomy is the essence of my experience. The way I put it is that at a
+practical level, having a kid ruins your life. Children are so demanding of
+time, attention, money, and energy. You'd have to be pretty foolish to choose to
+inflict that upon yourself.
+
+But my wife and I did! And I unequivocally love my son. Whenever he does
+something cute, which is ALL THE TIME, I think that all the pain is worth it.
+Maybe it's just evolution at work. I have to believe it's all worth it in order
+to do my part in keeping an unfathomably long, unbroken chain of parenthood
+going, all the way back to some single-celled organism floating in the
+primordial ocean. And now the other end of the chain has my silly son, who has
+recently taken to drinking his bath water while I decide whether to stop him or
+to let him grow out of it on his own.
+
+The pain is not fake though. Having a child is an enormous amount of work. It
+has made me appreciate my own parents in a new way. You could imagine how much
+work it takes, but you'll never truly understand unless you go through it
+yourself. I had this realization sometime around day 38 of severe sleep
+deprivation. At one point, my parents went through that for me.
+
+Parenting is truly a full time job. The kid might decide to wake up at 4 am and
+refuse to go back to sleep, and that means you are also up at 4 am. There's no
+choice. You change their diaper. You feed them breakfast. You play with them.
+You figure out what their mid-morning snack should be. Before they are done with
+that snack, it's already time to figure out lunch. You feed them. They take a
+nap. You have to decide between catching up on sleep and napping too. Or trying
+to get ahead of the backlog of chores while you can. There's always something to
+clean up or laundry to do. They wake up, and you play with them more. It's time
+for a mid-afternoon snack. Now it's time to figure out dinner. Then bath time.
+Then putting them to bed. Then you might finally have some time for yourself for
+luxuries like taking a shower or watching a bit of tv. Or keeping up with that
+chore backlog.
+
+With help from others, like a spouse, family, or a nanny, it isn't *so* bad. But
+this is just with one kid. At least you can trade off, and one person can take a
+break. I only have my son, but I know that once you have two kids, you
+just..don't really get breaks anymore because you're just trading off at best.
+And I don't know how single parents survive. They are superheroes.
+
+But throughtout all the routine, there are moments that feel like magic and
+remind you that have more to give, even though you would love to just hibernate
+and sleep and sleep and sleep. I remember holding my son in the first day of his
+life, and he was just screaming at me. I joked my wife that he reminded me of a
+[mandrake](https://youtu.be/G17jQg_pUJg?si=IM_F94EisOtQ0Sqh&t=70), and the
+nickname stuck for a while. Even though he was screaming at me, it was still
+endearing somehow.
+
+The next thing I know, he's two years old, and his occasional tantrums have
+evolved to a more sophisticated form involving laying on the ground and babbling
+at me unintelligibly. I can't believe he's two already. Time already felt like
+it was speeding by in my 30s, but after my son came, everything accelerated.
+Kids really do grow up too fast. When my son was an infant, I loved burping him
+after feeding him because it was so satisfying to get the gas out. But I don't
+know when I did it [for the last
+time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJQyhB0dws). Time feels even more
+precious than before.
+
+My favorite memory is the first time I realized my son could understand what I
+was saying. On a whim, I gave him a piece of trash, pointed at the trash can,
+and told him to throw the trash away. He walked over (he had recently learned
+how to do that), lifted the lid, and put it in. I wasn't sure if he knew what to
+do just because I pointed, so I waited a while and asked him to throw something
+else away without pointing. He did it again and even clapped for himself for
+good measure. This mundane act was one of the best moments of my life. I still
+ask him to throw trash away whenever I can. I have a hundred stories like this
+where him learning to become a real human provides the most grafifying moments.
+
+I'm also changing with him. What I value in life has changed, and a lot of it
+now revolves around giving him the best possible upbringing. I have to care
+about how good schools are now when I think about where to live. And making sure
+that I make enough money to afford his bottomless appetite for berries.
+
+Along with that comes an endless stream of things to worry about. It starts from
+the very beginning. You worry about the chance of a miscarriage. Then genetic
+screening. Then the anatomy scan. Then the gestational diabetes test. Then the
+birth itself. Then whether they are hitting their developmental milestones at a
+good pace. Then whether you're making the right decision about them drinking
+their own bath water.
+
+At some point, you need to accept that you're doing the best you can, and some
+things are just out of your control. Loving my son means accepting that
+something could go devastatingly wrong for no good reason. Being his father
+means giving him all I can anyway.
+
+Notes that I might try to work in later:
+
+Toys are so much better now. I sure wish I had
+[Magna-Tiles](https://magnatiles.com/) when I was a kid.
+
+I forgot what it was like to be an adult. When I went back to work, I felt like
+my brain had to turn back on.
+
+On the topic of letting go of some standards for your own sanity. First kid:
+infrared thermometer to make sure their crib is the perfect temperature. Second
+kid: I'm pretty sure I've fed him.