Last year at this time, the daffodils had already bloomed and were beginning to fade. And so, on that Sunday morning in the middle of February when the time had come, Barbara and I struggled out to the car, hopped in (or, perhaps more precisely, plopped in), took one last look at the drooping yellow suns in the corner of our yard and drove off to the hospital.

This year the weather is much more typical. Which is to say that some days are in the 60s and some are in the 20s. And that was just last week. Today we're in the middle of a minor ice storm (so far, the streets haven't frozen and there's just a millimeter or two of buildup on the trees). Max may or may not have a first birthday party--if the weather turns really nasty, then our friends can't get to our house.

Really, though, if the worst thing that happens in a baby's first year is that his birthday party is canceled, you've got to put that down as a pretty good year.

Still and all, there are a few things that I wish people had mentioned before the little guy arrived. These are thoughts that I've been passing on (perhaps harping on would be more accurate) to prospective and expectant parents in the last year.

For starters, newborn babies do four things: Eat, sleep, poop and cry. And the frequency doesn't necessarily match the order listed. Still, all that would have been fine (even with Max's often incessant shrieking) if he'd been able to express even the slightest bit of personality during the first two or three months of his life.

Newborns are slugs. Loud, smelly slugs, but slugs all the same. They don't move. They don't smile. They don't wink. They don't do anything except, well, you know. There's passing references to this disturbing phenomenon in the books, but no one really makes a big point of it. They should.

First-time parents are utterly overwhelmed by a new baby. They don't know how to change diapers. They don't know how to give baths. New moms and babies don't know how to breastfeed. And new parents definitely have no idea what to do when their baby screams without end day and night.

If all that's not bad enough, this supposed "bundle of joy" is completely unresponsive. There's no "thanks" or even a shy smile of appreciation, just an intense, but decidedly noncommunicative, stare. A stare that seems to ask "who's this crazy man holding on to me and why is he torturing me like this?" The baby blues are much more than a chemical imbalance. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that new parents might get feelings of rejection from their baby.

It does get better. After a few weeks, babies begin to recognize and even acknowledge their parents. Once they're three and four months old, they begin to swing their arms and express themselves somewhat. And then teething begins.

Most of the teething stories I heard were along the lines of: "Well, she cried for a little bit, and then there was a tooth." Max started crying at about three months, and the tooth didn't break through until he was five months old. And even then it took another month for the thing to actually come in all the way.

I don't know which is worse, a colicky baby (I have an issue with "diagnosing" a baby with colic, since colic isn't a disorder or illness but rather a word meaning "cries a lot for no discernible reason") or a teething one. Especially those first teeth, which led to weeks and weeks of sheer outrage. And if you thought the cries of an uncommunicative baby sucked, wait until your child can actually put emphasis into particular syllables of the cry. Talk about pain.

Anyway, we're mostly past that. Max's teething issues are now limited to an hour or less at a time, and while they're really intense (the shorter the duration--say, five minutes--the more focused the pain, it seems) they go away quickly. And then Max is the happy baby once more.

I didn't expect Max to be an eternally joyous being. I remember my childhood, and much of the time I was pretty ticked off about one thing or another. And I know my parents were better than most. I just expected to be able to, you know, fix things. Make life better so that Max could be happy just about all time. But I can't. Not all the time. I shouldn't, either, though that's another subject completely. Simply put, I should work at being the best dad possible. Max can take it from there.

Most of the time, that's been good enough. As he's grown older, Max has become more and more agreeable. He's always shouting out to people and making faces at them (and he never complains when they say "what a pretty little girl you are"). He dances--really! He already knows not to eat books (most of the time, anyway) and when we read to him, he giggles when we get to passages he enjoys most. He's threatening to walk, and he refuses any help from Mom or Dad in the process. He's an astonishingly neat eater (though I'm sure this will change as we start to introduce the spoon and fork). He's a fun kid. It's been a good, if exhausting, year. And there are many more to come. Which, in the end, is what makes having children a worthwhile endeavor.

Jon Worley is happy to report that Max's birthday party went off without a hitch despite a driving frozen rainstorm.