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What's my biggest surprise?

I while back, when I had just a few months service as a stay-at-home dad, somebody asked me what had been the biggest surprise.
"The bottles," I said. "Good God, the bottles!"
You see, back then, I thought I spent half the day in the kitchen preparing and washing and preparing bottles for Willow.
The bottles are nicely tucked away in a plastic box in the attic. They've been up there a while, actually, but my answer to the same question isn't all that different.
The busy has relocated, that's all.
Willow turns 18 months tomorrow, and to me, she and I are as busy as ever. Actually, it seems to me every day has been busier than the previous since the day she was born, or at least since she was a week old (that first week is brutal).
Let me share a few topics of busy with you.

Dishes

These things never stop coming. I feel like I'm hand-washing dishes at a Golden Corral ... AND I'M USING AN ELECTRIC DISHWASHER!
I have no memory of how we did dishes before Willow came along; I suspect the house elf did them. As I've noted before, that house elf is GONE!

Laundry

I spend most my Mondays and Thursdays doing laundry. This takes a long time to do, especially considering I have an 18-month-old separating my separated laundry, putting newly dried clothes back into the washer and unpacking clothes from the drawers where I just put them.
But she loves this stuff, so I keep letting her slow me down.
Again, the house elf who did our laundry before has disappeared.

House

I keep the house as tidy as I can. That's all I'm going to say about that. Damn house elf.

Meals, kitchen

I prepare supper during the work week. This isn't so hard, mainly because I don't create gourmet meals; I heat and serve mostly. The problem is supper comes at the end of the day and needs to be ready for my reinforcements (Mommy). I ... am ... tired at the end of the day (and so are my reinforcements, God bless her).

Keeping Willow alive

This is the biggest task of all.
In summary, Willow gets into and climbs onto EVERYTHING. ALL. OF. THE. TIME. If I did get a break from the tasks listed above, I never get a break from chasing around my young one.
Specifically, if I take a long blink, I might lose track of Willow, and she might be dipping her toes into the toilet water.
But let me delve deeper into the notion of keeping her alive. Being alive is also the act of living, of having fun and learning.
I not only have to keep Willow breathing, I have to keep her entertained and exploring. I have to play with her and teach her.
She needs to breathe every living second, and she needs to be engage every waking moment.
Fun, true, but also exhausting.

This is just a glimpse, folks. There's also the stuff like fighting with her to brush her teeth as if I were a CIA agent trying to break a reluctant informant or wrestling with her to change her diaper as if she were a 600-pound sumo guy who did not want to relinquish his space. Remember this day if you think I'm exaggerating. I'm not.
So what in the world was I expecting, you might ask. I laugh at this now (and my wife does too), but I really expected to be bored. I expected long periods of, well, nothing happening. I expected lots of naps, and I expected lots of sitting around watching Willow play.
Nope.
This job is 100 percent interactive, whether I like it or not.
And you know what, I kind of like it.

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