Baby Greg [BabyDaddy Day 6]

For 9 months during the pregnancy, we called our son, "Baby Greg."

Calling him Obadiah felt a little strange for the first week. For months, our community rallied around this name. Amreitha hated the name, but soon her family called him by that name. Strangers who followed us online prayed for Baby Greg. 

Then, he was born, and I needed to resonate with the name Obadiah. 

Why did we name him Obadiah Light?

Obadiah means "servant or worshiper of God." This name felt right. I prayed about it for awhile and one night I woke up at 3am and felt like the LORD gave me a prophesy for my son concerning his name. This confirmed to me Amreitha and I landed on the correct name after brainstorming hundreds. 

Light is basically a shoutout to myself because Pradeepan means light.  That and we believe Obadiah will be a light and a carrier of God's light for the world. 

Obadiah Light Jeeva. 

Time Flies [BabyDaddy Day 5]

"Before you know it, your child will be grown. Enjoy every moment and savor all you can."

This phrase is something I hear almost everyday now. However, time is not flying. 

At night, when Obadiah has fussed and cried for over an hour and it seems like it takes forever for the bottle to warm up under hot water, time is definitely not flying. Time isn't even crawling. 

Time stands still when Obadiah falls asleep at the bottle and you know he's going to wake up in 15 minutes because he didn't get enough to eat. All I want is him to eat enough to fall in to food coma, but I know that's not going to happen. 

Obadiah is a day over three weeks old, and these days feel like the longest I've ever experienced. At the same moment, I'm wondering how it's already been three weeks.

Next week my little baby will be one month old! 

Time sure flies, doesn't it?

It's different with your own kids [BabyDaddy Day 4]

My wife is so generous. Once in awhile, out of this great generosity, she'll tell me, "I offered to babysit my friend's kid on saturday night!" Not many words make feel so angry and guilty for feeling angry like those ones. I can't help but think, "Suffer yes the little children." 

I like kids, but only when I don't have to change their diapers and deal with their crying and eating and their dumb baby stuff. Babysitting primarily consists of getting the kid calm enough to binge my latest Netflix show (Gilmore Girls. Jk). I like playing with kids in small bursts and then shrinking back into adulthood. 

It's different with my own kid. His crying is not as annoying as other kids. His diapers don't quite smell as bad. If someone else's kid kept me up every hour of the night, I would leave that kid forever. With baby Obadiah, I don't have that temptation. I remember leaving him the first time for an hour--I missed him within 5 minutes. It's different with my own kid. Lame things are exciting. Frustrating things are a pleasure--well, maybe not a pleasure, but less frustrating. 

Live your Life [BabyDaddy Day 3]

I know my life isn't over, but it feels like it. Tomorrow is Obi's 3 week anniversary, and I haven't had any free-time in that long plus hospital labor time. 

Visiting restaurants, exploring cities, last minute decisions to leave the house were simple affairs three weeks ago. Now, I go through a series of checklists to take a trip to the bathroom.

We have several interns at the church I pastor in, and today I told them, "live your life." Because I no longer can live the way I did in my 20s. I'm 30 now. Obsessing to learn a new instrument, impulsively gathering a group to run a marathon with no training, and other adventures I did without a second thought are now so much harder. With great passion, I asked them to live their dreams now before they end up like me. 

Don't get me wrong. My biggest dreams are still ahead of me. The only difference is now I have to be so much more intentional with every second and every minute of my day. In my 20s, I didn't know what I'd be doing in a couple of minutes. So, if you have a life without kids, I'll give you the same advice--live your life. 

Always Known Him [BabyDaddy Day 2]

It's like I've always known Obadiah. This has to be one of the strangest realities of being a father. From the moment I saw him, I loved him. I loved him with depth. He didn't seem like a stranger at all. 

Before Obadiah entered our lives, Amreitha used to say, "There's going to be a day we wouldn't be able to imagine life without kids." I'd typically argued with her and say, "My imagination is pretty good. I'll be able to imagine life without our kids."

Now that he's here, it honestly is hard to imagine a time he wasn't part of our lives. 

This love is growing, but it's been familiar since the beginning. I inherited a deposit of love for my son. It's like the love the Father has sown in me is welling up and filling Obadiah. 

Obadiah Light Jeeva [BabyDaddy Day 1]

Obadiah Light Jeeva

This is my son! We call him Obi for short. 

Over the next 30 days for the 2016 Blogrimage, I'm going to talk about being a father, showcase fun things about Obi, and document these early days of parenting. He's not even three years old, so I don't want to spend too much time on this blog.

Honestly, the last two weeks have been some of the hardest days for Amreitha and me. We got the baby and then both got two kinds of sicknesses. Ouch. But we are on the other side of some of those things, and I want to savor these early days with our son forever. 

Obi was born February 12, 2016. As soon as I heard him cry, I thought, "Whoa, this is real. He is hairy, and he is white."

Since that moment, I've had to learn and see things I spent 30 years being completely unaware of. So, over the next 30 days, you'll be able to learn some of those things from my perspective.