Shaving

I let the beard get too long. So much so the child was terrorized by seeing me. She didn’t think I am her loving father.

The laughter probably didn’t help. Nor did the change of clothes.

I usually do not go so long between shaves. Guess I ought to go back to the more frequent schedule.

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Tiny dopplegangers

It took a while to get a good ultrasound of Fleur’s face. When we did, there was no denying she was my kid. That wave of emotion was interesting. It felt like a huge connection to this new entity. Of course, it is good she now looks more and more like her mother not just because why look so ugly but to maintain that bond with mom even as she gets more independent.

Apparently the father feeling like I did indicates good things for their children.

“We find a child’s health indicators improve when the child looks like the father. The main explanation is that frequent father visits allow for greater parental time for care-giving and supervision, and for information gathering about child health and economic needs.

Fathers are happier parents

From an interesting article, Fathers are happier parents: Study:

1. “Fathers reported greater satisfaction with their lives and feelings of connectedness to others.”
2. “They also reported greater positive emotions and fewer daily hassles than mothers, or relatives or peers without children.”
3. “They even showed fewer depressive symptoms than men without children, whereas mothers reported more depressive symptoms than women who do not have children.”

Yeah, it is weird. It does seem like there is a brain change. Thinking about this reminded me that I read something years ago well before I became one saying there is a rewiring in the brain due to fatherhood. (paper) The new areas involve reward processing, which could be the greater satisfaction (dopamine) and connectedness (oxytocin); hormone control; emotional processing; memory; decision making. Yeah, I definitely find myself analyzing Fleur’s behavior looking at how she is problem-solving, learning, and adapting to her environment. For instance, now that she is crawling and exploring, she has learned we hover and watch what she tries to put in her mouth and tries to new tactics at getting things that are not toys into her mouth. (Of course, that means we have to adapt, so our Pre-Frontal Cortex [memory and decision making] has to learn her new tactics and try to new things to interrupt it.)