Oh Crap, I'm Having a Baby...

I mean the 'crap' part literally. The headline for this blog isn't me freaking out and finally realizing that my life now belongs to someone who can't even form the requisite intent to run my life (not that many people would argue that I'm capable of that either). What it does refer to is the sheer number of diapers I've calculated we're going to go through the first six months: 2160.

Between books and classes we've come to an average of 12 diapers per day. Multiply that by 30 days in a month and then six months, and we're talking enough diapers to pad a fall from a ten story building. Maybe. But you get the point.

Now, if we're talking volume, let's assume that your average baby load will be about 8 ounces (about half a pop can's worth - which may be high or low, I don't know, and apparently it is the one thing you can't find on the internet. I'm just working off a best guess). Using the same math as above, we will be looking at 90 pounds of poop in the first six months. 90 pounds. There are sorority girls that don't weigh that much.

That is a lot of stinky poo myself and Alison will be responsible for wiping, washing, rinsing, and otherwise collecting and disposing of.

If you're wondering why this is so fascinating to me - other than that anything involving poop is funny to guys - it's that as things stand, I'll be the one responsible for most of it. Given the job situation I'm in, the economy will literally be sh***ing on me.

I suppose what brought on this sudden realization is that we are getting to organizing the vast amount of stuff we got from our friends and family (thank you all again, really...your support in this has been amazing). After the last package showed up, I realized the kid - who won't even show up to this party for another three months - has more stuff in this apartment than I do.

We made the trip to Ikea and picked up a new dresser to hold all of it this weekend. I'm amazed at how efficient those Scandanavians are when it comes to designing furniture that an organgutan could assemble if it were so inclined. Say what you will about the sometimes dubious quality of Ikea's furniture, if I can go from a box full of parts to a working dresser in two hours, you are doing something right. I can only hope the stroller, crib, pack-n-play, swing, baby bather and whatever else is in that pile come together as easily.

Something else that popped up this weekend was what exactly Alison and I consider the most important things to teach our child. Not the low level mechanical stuff like tying a shoe, using the toilet, not wearing underwear on their head, etc., but the more important stuff.

For me the some of most important break down something like this:

You Are Lucky! - by which I mean that no matter how bad you think you're life is, it ain't that bad. The day before I graduated college, I woke up in a cold sweat, freaking out about what was soon to be the rest of my life. I called my dad, who gave me one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten. it roughly broke down to 'if nobody is shooting at you, it's not that serious'. My dad has spent various parts of his life being shot at, in the jungles of south east Asia and the deserts of the Middle East, so he does have a frame of reference. I want to give my kid a chance to travel, and not just to the pretty places in the magazines, but to the butt cracks of the world, so that he/she understands that life, for a lot of people, really does suck. And not in a I-didn't-get-a-pony-for-my-birthday-I-hate-everybody kind of way. I mean in a five-people-living-in-a-shack-made-of-corrugated-aluminum-and-sharing-one-water-spigot-between-five-other-families kind of way.

Don't Be Scared of Failure. - I think a lot of people, including myself sometimes, forget that for every game-winning shot that Michael Jordan hit, there were a dozen or so he didn't. Nobody ever accomplished something worth accomplishing without a lot of stumbles, some falls and the occasional catastrophic mistake. And it really isn't about how many times you've been knocked down, it's about how many times you get up, dust yourself off and try again. As long as you're always +1 on the getting up side, it's all good.

Nothing Beats Hard Work. - There are a number of marginally talented people out there who are massively successful. We all have friends (you, or I, might even be that friend) who constantly bitch about some famous artist/musician/businessperson who really doesn't deserve the amount of success they have based on the talent or aptitude they display in public. And if it were based solely on talent, those people would be right. But I guarantee you in most of those cases if you looked at how much work those semi-talented people put behind their marginal gifts, you'd find that they have flat out, outworked everybody else.

Till next time...