We have always mixed Annabelle's dishes in with ours. What I mean is, instead of having all the kiddie stuff on one shelf in the kitchen, we put her bottles with our stemware, her bowls side-by-side with our bowls etc. Partially because I have a pointless opinion that's how it should be, and party because I think it is funny that you have to reach around the baby bottles to grab a wine glass . . .
Baby bottles.
Annie hasn't used a baby bottle in probably 6 months and yet they are still rattling around on the stemware shelf. A while back I felt the time had come, I pulled the bottles down and put them on the counter. And there they have stayed. For weeks . . .
I can't toss them out. It's as if part of my earliest memories of fatherhood are somehow contained in these BPA-free bottles.
When we brought the wee one home, the wife would handle the midnight and 6am feedings while I took the 3am shift. Our family room still consisted of bare drywall, a bare concrete floor and no stairs but that is where we had moved all the furniture for the baby shower and we hadn't gotten around to moving it back to the living room yet.
I remember changing the diapers, heating the bottles in the dark and then sitting on the couch in that half-finished family room with the warm little football on my lap. I watched the entire Firefly series during those pre-dawn feedings - TWICE. As well as the John Adams miniseries and various other netflix I knew my wife was not interested in. To this day the theme song from Firefly makes me think of bare drywall and baby bottles (song is on the Ipod in the right-hand margin if you want to have a listen).
So the other night the time had come for another milestone. For the first time ever, the whole family had the same thing for dinner: Macaroni and Cheese.
We usually spruce ours up a little so the wife browned some ground for Annie's and added tuna to ours. Everyone got broccoli mixed in.
From my usual spot at the table I could still see the baby bottles on the kitchen counter . . .
They really are fine there . . . they don't take up
that much space . . .
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