The Critics Corner Pt. 1

One of the inevitable side effects of having children is exposure to children’s entertainment. This can lead to a variety of reactions. Some of it may bore you (Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story. Yawn.), some of it may make you laugh (Disney/Pixar’s Up. Yay.), other examples might make you want to poke yourself in the eye with a sharp, pointy stick (Teletubbies, Barney the retarded dinosaur. Stab, stab, stab.).

Like most old people, Daddy has decided that everything was better when he was a kid. Particularly the cartoons. My not so humble opinion is that nothing will ever be better than Loony Tunes, Tom & Jerry, and stuff of that generation. This is an objective statement. Because I say so.

That being said, right now Baby Girl has developed a fondness for something called Wow Wow Wubbzy. It’s pretty easy to see why. The animation is simple, bright, no sharp edges, and has plenty of silly sounding noises, in short, everything kids like. I can see why it’s popular, and why Baby Girl has developed a liking for it. It is, like most cartoons these days, enjoyable on exactly one level. Which makes it almost as exciting as golf. Well, as exciting as golf before Tiger Woods decided to moonlight as a third rate Hugh Hefner.

Part of what made cartoons like Loony Tunes so awesome was that it had a certain depth to it. You could laugh at the surface level stuff (Daffy Duck getting his beak blown every which way in the classic Rabbit Fire episode), as well as some of the more adult asides that Bugs was apt to make. Plus, despite having no idea at the time, Loony Tunes also gave me a certain appreciation for classical music.

So what do I think of Wow Wow Wubbzy? Well, it is as these things go, not horrible. But there are a couple things I’m not sure I want Baby Girl picking up on. First off one of Wubbzy’s sidekicks is an enormous lesbian rabbit. Now, they never explicitly say that the rabbit is a lesbian, but the signs are there: she’s the biggest character in the show, and she spends her time building machines and carries an enormous tool box. The only reason we know she’s a female is that she’s pink. I’m not sure I appreciate a children’s show perpetuating these kinds of stereotypes. And she wears overalls and speaks with a southern accent.

Another of Wubbzy’s sidekicks is, well, I’m not sure what kind of animal he’s supposed to be, but he wears a collared shirt and tie, has glasses and speaks with what I’ll assume is supposed to be a British accent. He is, if you haven’t guessed already, the “smart” one. Why can’t smart people be cooler than this? I suppose the British thing is cool, but really, why is it that still today, glasses are what signifies smartness? I’m pretty sure if we all thought about it, we could name dozens of really stupid people who wear glasses. Sarah Palin. There. I win.

All of that aside, Wow Wow Wubbzy seems to amuse Baby Girl, and for that reason, I suppose I can’t argue with it too much.

The Partnership Part of The Process

To say that this whole thing has been easy would be a bit of an exaggeration. Mommy and Daddy have both had moments when they frustrated each other enough to make the Pope kick out a stained glass window.

There are conflicts over all sorts of things. Much like the rest of life, there are different expectations and different ideas about how each should go about their day and the process of raising a kid. Sometimes Daddy doesn’t do enough of the required reading or maybe as much of the housework as might be expected of him. Sometimes it feels like Mommy forgets that even if she doesn’t understand why something like boxing makes Daddy happy, the fact that it makes Daddy happy ought to be enough.

After all, Daddy doesn’t spend his time out at bars, carousing with people of questionable character and whatnot. At least not in Dallas. Daddy has also committed to cutting that way down when he gets back to Seattle. He realizes that fatherhood is difficult enough without living the life he was leading before fatherhood. And realistically, Daddy certainly doesn’t want Baby Girl to get the impression that hanging out with the some of the assorted hooligans Daddy has in his contact list is the best way to go through life.

So there’s a give and take in this whole thing. And sometimes the give and the take are at complete odds with each other.

So what do you do?

I suppose it comes down to a combination of compromise, capitulation and acceptance. Daddy has accepted that for the time being, his career as it were, is on hold. Right now Mommy pulls down more than Daddy could, and as much as that might bruise Daddy’s ego, it certainly isn’t anything he can change at the moment. Raging at the perceived iniquities of life rarely does much other than exhaust one, although there the occasional cathartic element to the experience.

Daddy is also the one who expressed a concrete desire that at least one parent be home with Baby Girl during the time in which she is under our direct control (until she is 18). Now that it turns out that Daddy is the one that has to do that, I can hardly backtrack and hope to maintain any shred of credibility.

Mommy on the other hand has accepted (for the most part) that Daddy is going to spend a good chunk of his free time at the gym learning the practical applications of applied violence. She really hasn’t accepted that Daddy is committed to doing this without health insurance, but she tolerates Daddy (for the most part) because the gym has turned into Daddy’s stress outlet, social life, and only way to maintain some semblance of masculinity while covered in baby spit, handling baby poop, talking in baby talk and handling chores that would have gotten him shamed out of the Man Club thirty years ago.

Daddy on the other hand has capitulated on a number of issues. Baby Girl’s baths (99.9% of which Mommy handles, but Daddy is committed to doing it her way should he find himself in that situation – see Poop, Pt. 1), will no longer be handled via baby bath barca lounger and hosing off said baby. Daddy will, almost always, end up feeding Baby Girl when she is being fed via bottle, and Daddy will, almost always, be the one to put Baby Girl down at night, and sooth her when Mommy can’t stand to hear her cry.

Mommy has capitulated on the idea that Daddy will ever, and I mean ever, completely give up cursing. Or that Daddy will be the one to change Baby Girl’s diaper first thing in the morning. Daddy is not now, nor will he ever be, a morning person. Mommy has, for the most part, given up on trying to change that. Although I do have to be somewhat more civil than I used to be at Oh-God-Thirty in the morning.

As to compromise. Mommy has gotten Daddy to do most of the laundry, although she has had to concede that Daddy will continue to fold things in a manner which still irks her to no end. She has also gotten Daddy to accept that, despite what he may feel about it, dinner is not whenever he feels hungry, while she has accepted that to Daddy cooking is a contact sport and if things get messy in the kitchen during the creative process, well, dammit, that’s just the way it is. Daddy does clean up afterwards.

It’s a precarious balance with a new kid, particularly when as a couple the idea of a kid was an abstract thought at best. The sudden jolt from carefree vagabond to responsible adult can shock even the most prepared person, and to the unprepared it can feel like a brick bat to the noggin.

Additionally, our situation – far from home, without any kind of a support system – can cause all kinds of stress on a couple. There are days when it is easy to understand why there are so many single parent households in this country. Raising a kid is stressful, and if two people don’t love each other a whole lot, in combination with having a strong well-grounded sense of responsibility, as well as the ability to talk to each other, it would be easy to walk away from the partnership.

A Week of Firsts

This past week has been quite a doozy for Baby Girl. She was taken on her first zoo trip, as detailed earlier, she started on solid foods, she managed to pull herself up to her feet, she literally crawled over Daddy, who was trying to keep her from going from one part of the room to another, and more importantly, our precious little snowflake has turned six months old.

The six month mark is pretty impressive for us, because, let’s face it, for a guy who has had the kind of commitment issues I have, and the track record I have with keeping plants alive, anyone who took the “under” on the over/under couldn’t be blamed for doing so.

The solid foods milestone has been entertaining so far. As I understand is normal for most babies, Baby Girl ends up wearing more of her food than she eats. At first it was a challenge to get the spoon into her mouth, we would end up with about half the food in her mouth, and the other half on her bib, with a smattering of food on her Bumbo and a bit on the floor. Once we figured out how to get the spoon in her mouth (I go in sideways, tipping towards her mouth once contact is made with the bottom lip, and leave it in her mouth as she slurps away and I can see her swallow), I was convinced we had nailed it. Then she spit out about half the spoonful, somehow managing to get it in her nose.

The other effect of Baby Girl being on solid foods is what it is going to do to her digestive system. We’ve already experienced the first post-solids poop, and while I wasn’t home for it, I have been told that it was more…solid, and that it took Baby Girl a bit more effort to get it out. Mind you, she already looked like she was pushing a small car up a steep hill when she pooped. Apparently now it looks like she’s pushing an SUV up Everest.

I’ve also heard that it gets stinkier when they start eating solids, so the joys of parenthood seem as though they will keep multiplying.

We started solids over the weekend, so as to have both of us here, just in case things were more difficult than we had planned on them being. Starting in the morning, I’ll have her and all to myself for three feedings a day. I can only imagine there will be rice cereal covering a fairly large swath of the apartment, along with most every piece of clothing I own.

The other milestone she reached, managing to stand up on her own, is the more troubling of the bunch. I mean, I suppose it’s good in a holistic sense, we do of course want Baby Girl to continue to develop at a normal rate, however, it does mean that I will have to keep an even closer eye on her than I do now. As things stood, I could assemble her play yard each morning – consisting of random storage crates arranged to block off a modest section of the living room within which she could roam uninterrupted – and get things accomplished without worrying about her ingesting one of the millions of things that might kill her.

Now, since she can get up but has not figured out how to sit back down, I’ll be keeping an eye out for a standing baby who may be seconds away from falling backwards and bonking her cute little noggin on the carpet. We’ve been assured by the pediatrician that babies bonking their heads is quite normal and that we shouldn’t freak out every time it happens, but a parent’s instinct is to not let this sort of thing happen, and I imagine I will spend quite a bit of time zipping across the room trying to catch her as she explores the limits of gravity as it pertains to her lack of balance.

Family Outing

We took Baby Girl to the Fort Worth Zoo today. Mommy thought it would be fun little outing, and since we’ve heard that the Dallas Zoo runs a distant second to the Fort Worth Zoo, we figured, why not? It would be a chance to get out and about, explore a little bit more of our immediate surroundings, and enjoy what was turning out to be a spectacular day. Mommy had taken off the last two days of the work week, so we figured that we ought to put them to good use.

Driving in Texas is always an adventure. As I may have mentioned previously, it isn’t usually a good one. On its face, Texas would seem like a pretty good place to have a car. Lots of wide open spaces, a well thought out and executed highway system, and when not in their cars, a remarkably friendly and nice bunch of people. When you put those same friendly, nice people in cars however, they turn into the most remarkably retarded bunch of inconsiderate morons this side of the TSA. My single biggest complaint is that turn signals seem to be voluntary, followed closely by what seems to be a uniquely Texan desire to abruptly fit the largest, poorest handling SUV’s into the smallest gaps between two cars they can find.

It takes considerable concentration on my part not to use the full arsenal of four-letter words and their modifiers with our precious snowflake in the car. I’ve also started daydreaming way more than I should about car mounted paintball guns loaded with paintballs filled with neon pink bird poop. It also doesn’t help that Texans tend to veer wildly across the gap between the freeway and the exit, you know the one clearly delineated as a section of the asphalt one should explicitly not be driving on, rather than miss their exit.

Having braved the idiocy of the Texas freeway system, we arrived at the zoo, which despite Mommy’s notion that it might not be crowded because it was a weekday, was quite crowded. Not inconveniently so, but enough that it was full of lots and lots of people, most of whom seemed to be in the same circumstance as Mommy and myself, i.e. pushing a stroller and snapping semi-terrible photos on their iPhones.

The zoo itself is pretty well appointed as far as zoos go. Lions, tigers and bears, oh my. Our first stop was the primate section, which despite my fervent hopes, did not feature any of said primates flinging poop at the gawkers. There were gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, baboons, an assortment of smaller, fuzzy and cute monkey types, as well as a few monkeys of indeterminate origin. I suppose I could have read the informational signs describing them, but I was too busy keeping an open eye for some monkey winding up like Roger Clemens (who thanks to steroids, was nearly as strong as your average monkey), to worry about verifying their pedigree. Given the prevalence of the poop flinging reputation of monkeys, it was disappointing.

From there we wandered onto a replica of the African plains, where a couple Rhinos, some lions, a few giraffes, and a couple hippopotamuses were lounging in the sun. I do have to note that having had the chance to see some of these beasties in the wild in Africa, it is kind of depressing to see such magnificent animals confined to spaces that are likely smaller than what these animals considered to be their bathrooms in the wild. I suppose it’s how most people feel about their apartments in Manhattan. The rhinos in particular looked dismayed about their current circumstances, with one of them standing by the door from one enclosure to the next, looking like it would be happy to wreck the door if it had the energy anymore.

There were some elephants, some meerkats, a rather fat warthog, and lots of birds (we didn’t hang around the birds much, as both Mommy and I have had some issues with bird poop on our cars recently that have put birds on our not-getting-a-card-this-year list). We did get some good shots of the flamingos, which because of the opening credits of Miami Vice, I have a special place in my heart for.

Overall, it was a nice little jaunt. Mommy was disappointed that Baby Girl was more interested in the people at the zoo than the animals, but what do you expect from a 6 month old baby? We did miss the Komodo dragon, which was disappointing, but by the end of the day, Baby Girl was tuckered out, the sun was starting to worry us (nobody wants a bright red baby), and since we had walked more in the past three hours than either of us had managed in the past month, it was time to go.

The only other events of note were the animal adoption program we read about online and an incident in the car on the way home.

We have been considering getting a pet, but our hopes were dashed when we got to the Zoo, and realized that the adoption program they were running was more a of a give-us-money-and-we’ll-let-you-pretend-that-you-have-some-stake-in-a-wild-animal thing, than a take-home-an-exotic-mammal type of thing. We probably should have figured that out before we got to the zoo and saw the signs about adopting a giant sea turtle, but that’s what you happens when you get excited.

The other incident was that Baby Girl’s digestive tract started to act up as we hit rush hour traffic near home. She didn’t drop a deuce, but Lord we thought she did, and if I hadn’t been trapped in a hot car with no chance of escape, I would have been beaming with pride at the sheer pungent power of the smells she was creating with the thunder from down under. Mommy was in the back seat, which is what makes it funny.

Epic Fail Pt. 2

Things are devolving. For the second night in a row, Baby Girl has exerted her considerable lung power to avoid being left in her crib by herself at night.

I was at the gym so I didn’t have to deal with it (Mommy is a trooper, and puts up with a lot, and I do love her), but from what I understand, it was quite the event.

The problem is, if she doesn’t get better, we’re back at square one. Baby Girl in our bed, and no end in sight. This presents a number of problems. The first is that Mommy doesn’t really get the best night’s rest when Baby Girl is in our bed. We love having her there and we will definitely miss her, but Mommy has a tough job dealing with the general boobery at her Corporate Job, and she needs her rest. Lately Mommy has been calling me during the day, and she is, to say the least, not amused with the way things have been going. She’s tired, she’s frustrated, and the lack of a good night’s sleep certainly doesn’t help.

And to be completely honest, I feel a little guilty. Yes staying home with Baby Girl to take care of her is a lot of work, a lot of frustration (dear Dr. Baby Jeebus, why did you make kids so squirmy?), but I know that compared to what Mommy has to do, it really is the better side of the deal. The “New Economy” has necessitated some sacrifice’s from both of us (my pride, ego and financial self sufficiency, Mommy’s motherly instinct to be with her offspring), but if I had to pit my ego against her biological imperative, I know that as hard as it is for me, there is something primal in Mommy that is unsatisfied. There is a reason that you “don’t mess with a sow grizzly” as my own mommy used to say. The maternal instinct is powerful juju.

The second issue is that it leaves very little time for Mommy and Daddy to have Mommy & Daddy time. Being in Dallas has been difficult, what with the lack of any kind of support system down here, and while most couples have family and friends to whom they can drop their precious snowflakes off with to get some R&R, Mommy and I have been forced to go it alone. It hasn’t always been easy, and it takes its toll on a relationship. I, for one, miss being able to watch movies in a theater, have a civilized meal at a restaurant, and snuggling with Mommy uninterrupted.

The third issue is one of habits, good and bad. We certainly don’t want Baby Girl to grow up so attached to us, that she has trouble adjusting to real life. We would prefer that she have a sense of independence. And while we don’t expect that she will be able to go out and survive a night on the streets at six months old, sleeping in her own bed would be a good sign that we are heading in the right direction.

Issue four is one of personal laziness and sloth. Daddy has been pretty bad, much to Mommy’s frustration, about reading all of the required materials one has to read to raise a child. Daddy has been very bad. Mommy will vouch for this, and more than likely use it well into our old age as a point to illustrate what a lout I can be. I don’t mention this as a dig at Mommy (because I know she’s reading this), I mention it because I know I could do a better job at it, and I know I should. And I also know that if Baby Girl doesn’t find her way into her own bed soon, in a peaceful and organized manner, that I will be reading quite a bit more about baby sleep habits.

Now there are a number of reasons I haven’t read as much as I should have about baby sleep habits. One is that I have this stubborn belief, as wrong as it may be, that the natural order of things will generally take control, and that anything we do or don’t do to speed the process along, will most likely interfere with millions of years of human evolution, and somehow muddle things up. I realize that I am most likely wrong in this way of thinking, and am trying to overcome it.

I also have a stubborn streak a mile wide, which generally expresses itself in the following way:

“Daddy, do something.”

“OK dear, I will do it.”

Two days later:

“Daddy, did you do what I asked.”

“No dear, but I am going to.”

Four days later:

“Daddy, you need to do this stuff”

“I will, I will.”

Six days later:

Stuff is not done, and I feel like if I do it now, I’m giving in, because let’s face it, the Male Ego© is an incredibly stubborn and illogical mechanism. I am working on it. Slowly.

Epic Fail

So, as you may know, we’ve been trying to transition Baby Girl from our bed to her crib. We’d pretty much settled on the cry-it-out method. We get her to the edge of sleep, then put her down in her crib. It usually results in her crying a bit but eventually she ends up sleeping a few hours before she wakes up. It went from almost an hour down to about 15 minutes, with one night where she never bothered to make a fuss. We’d won! We had conquered the problem of the sleeping child.

Then there was tonight. To say it didn’t go well is kind of an understatement. She actually went to sleep, or an approximation thereof, in about 15 minutes. Then Daddy had to go make a mess of things. Now to be fair, what I did was strictly in the name of safety and not wanting to have to explain why my daughter suffocated in her sleep.

I went in to make sure our little munchkin hadn’t buried her face in a blanket and cut off oxygen to her tiny, yet extremely smart brain. Well, to me it looked like there might be an issue. Granted I probably could have just put my hand on her and checked to feel the rhythmic and peaceful breathing of a sleeping baby. But instead of doing that, I decided that she needed to be moved onto her back, because, I figured why risk it, she looked like she was buried in her blanket.

This is where the fail part starts. The screaming I unleashed by moving her to her back was epic. It was bloody murder times 10. She threatened us with great bodily harm, lawsuits, three kinds of violence and finally, that if we didn’t get in there and pick her up, she’d exclusively date musicians in high school.

The other effect was that Mommy gave me a look that is best described as withering.

So we went and got her out of her crib. The look on her face was triumphant.

Tomorrow night we’ll try again, hopefully with better luck, because I miss having our bed to ourselves. Plus, Baby Girl takes up too much room. She just sprawls out, like she owns the place, and let’s face it, who’s going to tell a baby she needs to stay on her side of the bed?

Trying to Keep Up

Silly me. I thought raising kids was supposed to get easier once you got the process rolling and got into a groove with it.

Baby Girl’s newest little trick is what I’ll call the stop, drop and roll. She stops what she’s doing. Drops a deuce, and rolls all over the place while I’m trying to change her. Used to be she would lay there calmly, staring intently up at me as I tried to make sure I got all the poop wiped up without getting it all over the changing table, or myself. She was polite, well-mannered, well-behaved and generally cooperative. Now however it’s like trying to fit an eel for a dinner suit. She squirms. She rolls. She grabs the side of the changing table to propel herself onto her stomach, regardless if there’s a steaming pile of poop underneath her or not.

If, God willing, I’m able to get her changed without repainting anything in a stinky shade of brown, she then proceeds to make it impossible to get her dressed again. More than once I’ve just given up and put her in a onsie, since the I have a hard time matching up the buttons on her PJ’s when she’s being cooperative, so doing it while she flops around like a fish on dry land is almost as hard for me as calculus.

She’s also started become increasingly mobile. We removed the top deck from the pack-n-play, because Baby Girl has figured out that she can pull herself up and has nearly launched herself out of the thing once or twice. Gravity is not a baby’s friend.

She really does like moving though. I’ve partitioned the house into sections so she can roam free during the day. The judicious use of boxes, suitcases, and furniture has created a nice play area for Baby Girl. We would have used her pack-n-play, but we have started transitioning her to sleep in it and she now officially hates to be in it. The pre-sleep screaming has dropped dramatically from around 40 minutes, to about 15 on a good night, so we’re making progress. But if you drop her in the pack-n-play during the day, she automatically assumes you expect her to sleep, and starts lodging a verbal, if incomprehensible objection within seconds. It’s loud. The neighbors probably think I have her hooked up to some kind of medieval torture device.

So the house is partitioned off during the day, making it look like we just moved in. But it keeps the munchkin occupied while I try to get things done. One of the more amusing things to come out of it is that apparently Baby Girl is confused by corners. She got stuck in one, seemingly couldn’t figure out how to get out of it, and was not amused by the situation. I’ll admit that I chuckled at it.

She is, as babies tend to be, quite curious. This has led to a number of almost heart attack inducing moments. Like when she removed the sonic bug reppeler from its socket and tried to put it in her mouth. Or when she tried to topple the Diaper Genie diaper disposal unit. Or when she started crawling for the underside of the kitchen counters, towards a day’s worth of dropped food (I’m a reasonably talented cook, but neatness is something that escapes me. On any given day you could probably figure out what we had for dinner the night before by referencing what dropped on the floor and has been kicked under the counter.).

She’s exhausting. And from what I’m being told by friends, who have children of all ages, I shouldn’t expect this to get any better. Only 35 more 6-month stretches to go before she’s off to school. Which means I get a nap sometime around the time I turn 62.

I Never...

This is a game called “I Never”, the Parenthood Edition.

I never thought I’d find myself babbling incoherently in public again. I quit drinking, except on very rare occasions, years ago. Now however, I find the words “ooga booga booga, bay bay girl” coming out of my mouth in very inappropriate places. Like crowded malls, restaurants, and Starbucks. With increasing frequency, and at volumes I never would have thought were appropriate.

I never thought my reaction to being puked on would be to wipe the person’s mouth off with my own shirt, and then rub the rest of the puke into my shirt so that it didn’t get on my shorts, and then go back to whatever I was doing as if nothing happened.

I never thought my reaction to a screaming child two tables over at a restaurant would be a knowing and sympathetic smile shared with the child’s parents.

I never thought there were as many children in public as there are. Funny how you notice different things when your priorities change.

I never thought my girlfriend would accuse me of driving like an old man, because I now prefer caution over the near maniacal death trip every other idiot on the road seems to be on.

I never thought I’d be breaking out a large baggie of white powder in a crowded mall, without any fear whatsoever of being arrested.

I never thought I would be so vehemently opposed to the ever increasing slutification of children’s clothing. Disgusted by it in a generally aloof manner, sure, but not to the point where I wanted to slap the designer for being such a dirtbag.

I never thought I’d find myself turning off a TV show because I was worried about what kind of effect it would have on the other people in the room. Dear Jeebus, have you people seen the crap they put on during the day? No wonder kids these days are turning into hopeless douchebags.

I never thought my biggest concern when leaving the house would be whether or not the bag I packed had enough diaper wipes, diapers, burp clothes, a change of outfits, a boobie hider for impromptu feedings, toys, hand sanitizer, changing pad, purified water for formula, and an extra bottle. All I ever needed before were my keys, my wallet and my phone.

I never thought that I would find myself cleaning someone else’s poop off my hands with anything less than rage in my heart. These days it’s mild bemusement.

I never thought I would find myself debating the merits of leashing children. Frankly I used to think it was a great idea. I was all for muzzles too. Now I think I’d slap any stranger who had the temerity to suggest it.

I never thought I’d find myself telling myself that I needed to sweep and vacuum on a daily basis. Or look at a coating of dust on an entertainment center, and immediately start looking for the pledge.

I never thought I’d be able to wake up earlier than 10 a.m. on a regular basis without a gun to my head. Now I find myself conscious around 7 a.m. almost every day like it’s normal.

Of course I never thought I’d have kids either, so I guess that’s what I get for thinking.

Attack of The Not So Sleepy Baby

We've been trying to get Baby Girl to sleep in her crib the last few days. The results have been mixed at best. On the one hand she has fallen asleep on her own in her crib. On the other hand she usually spends an average of 35 minutes screaming at us, threatening us, and generally expressing her extreme displeasure with out decision to remove her from the adult bed.

Her screams range from the mildly displeased to the vengeful shrieks of a woman wronged. It is incredibly difficult to ignore and pretty painful to sit through. One the one hand we know that she is physically alright and isn't in any danger. On the other hand we can only imagine what she must be thinking about when she's in there all alone and very unhappy. The urge to run in and save her is pretty overwhelming.

The stupid part about all of this is that nobody has any answers on how to go about this. Let me rephrase that. Everybody has an answer on how to do this and none of them agree with each other. Some people say let the kid cry it out, some people hear that and accuse you of child abuse. They say if you let the kid cry it out, you're creating abandonment issues.

This I kind of scoff at. First of all, any abandonment issue we might possibly create is going to be wiped out the first time Baby Girl tries to go on a date I forcefully offer to chaperon. Odds are she'll be wishing we'd abandon her by the time it's all said and done.

Second of all, the times we have gone in to pick her up and comfort her, she breaks out in a huge grin as soon as we do. And it isn't a "oh my god, I'm so glad to see you, I was so scared" relieved grin. It's a "I win sucker!" grin.

So we'll see how it goes.

We're going to pick up a video monitor here pretty soon. The audio one is nice, but we can't tell if Baby Girl has her face buried in the corner, and Mommy, and I to some extent, have nightmares that she'll suffocate herself. So in the meantime we run into the other room to check on her every fifteen minutes or so (thank the Dr. Baby Jeebus for DVR pause buttons.).

Some friends of ours recently got one, and it works well for them. So well in fact that the husband has used it to ask his wife to come downstairs and make him breakfast. Luckily for me, our place isn't big enough for me to have to resort to that. I say luckily for me because, it is exactly the kind of thing I would do given the opportunity, and it probably wouldn't go over too well with Mommy.

The biggest benefit so far to having Baby Girl getting her own bed is that now Mommy and I have time to play snugglebunnies. After six months of sharing a bed with a little munchkin, it is kind of weird to have some alone time, and in some ways it's like starting to date all over again. Only this time, we're both well past the stage of being embarrassed about farting in front of each other.

I will say that I miss having Baby Girl to cuddle with. The attachment I feel for our little poop machine still amazes me from time to time.

The Night of Her Discontent

Baby Girl was kicked out bed tonight. After almost six months of snuggling happily with Mommy & Daddy in the adult bed, she was evicted and sent to live in her crib.

To say she was unamused would be something of an understatement. There were a solid 37 minutes of what I can only imagine were threats of violence and grave bodily harm coming from the second bedroom until she finally tuckered herself out and grudgingly gave into sleep.

As I type this, she is sleeping soundly, although she did wake up for a trip to the milk tap, and we expect that she will be up again sometime soon for another feeding.

Up to this point Baby Girl has been pampered pretty well when it came to sleep. She gets rocked to sleep, was right next to the milk tap while she slept, and generally had a couple warm bodies to cuddle with.

Like all good things this had to come to an end. Mommy & Daddy haven’t had much time for adult recreational activities, and more importantly haven’t had a whole lot of nights of good sleep. Mommy can be sarcastic when she’s in a good mood, so Mommy without a good night’s sleep can be more than a little caustic.

It doesn’t help that Mommy doesn’t really see shades of gray in life, and Daddy is fully aware that life has approximately one million, seven hundred and sixty thousand, four hundred and fifteen shades of gray, applying to everything from how dishes need to be done, to how towels should be folded, and what exactly constitutes breakfast (occasionally cheesecake, occasionally pasta, you just never know).

Needless to say, it would have given Mommy gray hairs by now, except that she’s Japanese and they age very well, so I don’t expect her to have gray hairs until well into her 90’s, whereas I already have enough of them that if they were all in one area of my head, I could braid them.

We waited for the weekend to give the eviction a try, because we figure a) I’ll be around to suffer with Mommy through the first few nights of the process, instead of at the gym, and b) there’s less chance our neighbors will care that there is a screaming baby next door to them since they still seem to have social lives involving alcohol and fun.

Now, given that Baby Girl takes three naps a day, along with her night time bed time, we can expect that I can look forward to three to four hours of screaming per day for however long it takes Baby Girl to actually accept her new arrangements. The upside is that her screaming is still more enjoyable to my ears than most of the music on the radio these days, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Adjusting to Fatherhood – Part 1 of Many

I blew it last night. I came home to grunted, one-word responses to my greetings and apologies, along with Mommy in bed, not particularly happy with me.

I didn’t poison Baby Girl, or drop her on her head or anything. But I did forget that my life is no longer my own. And I suppose the truth is I blew it not just as a father, but as a partner to Mommy. I didn’t do anything ridiculously stupid, just inconsiderate and kind of insensitive.

I think I’ve adjusted pretty well to that idea. Overall it seems to have caught hold with minimal resistance. I’ve given up just about every bad habit I used to indulge in, and given that I was doing it for Baby Girl, giving it all up wasn’t that bad, in fact most of it was pretty easy. The right motivation can do that, I hear.

Of course, I haven’t fully adjusted, otherwise I wouldn’t be in the doghouse right now.

So what did I do? Well I went to the gym and stayed a bit longer than I usually do without telling Mommy I would be staying that long. Insensitive, I know. Inconsiderate, I know. There really isn’t any defense. All I can offer by way of explanation is that a number of factors have combined to challenge my sense of, well, I guess my sense of manhood, and it has resulted in my getting back into martial arts and spending a lot of time punching people and getting punched back, doing ungodly amounts of work at the gym, and a streak of competitiveness I haven’t really given much serious thought in a while.

Interestingly enough, there have been a lot of news stories about how the economic crisis has affected men more so than women, at least in the sense that most of the people who have been laid off have been men. That in turn has led to an increased number of so-called house-husbands, who, let’s face it, before we were in that position, most of us who weren’t in that position, kind of snickered at, because the manly thing is to get out and earn a living and provide for the family, kill buffalo, skin them and bring home the meat to roast over an open flame while we bragged to the other hunters about how we killed the thing with only a matchstick, a potato and an empty carton of milk.

Partly because I have been put in the role of Daddy Day Care, I got back into violent sports to keep my man ego from feeling like it had been dressed in a tutu and named Shirley.

So there’s that.

Then there’s the fact that, like it or not, I am getting older. The grey hairs are popping up with increasing frequency, the joints hurt more than they used to, I need more sleep, less spice in my food, and I no longer think that just because the volume goes up to 11, I should automatically assume that I need to put it at 11 (a coupon to Dick’s Hamburgers for the first person who can name that reference). This is relevant because there’s a guy who just started at my gym, who is bigger, faster, younger, and probably better looking than I am. Right now I can still whup him because I’m in better shape, and I’ve been doing this longer, but he’s a quick learner, and I have a feeling that he’ll be handing Daddy his ass pretty soon.

Which means I’ve been working harder, staying longer and generally fighting off the inevitable as much as I can, because, well, I don’t want to get older dammit.

All of this isn’t to say that my sudden desire to get back into shape and sharpen my skull thumping skills is completely selfish. I was, until I started wrestling in high school, kind of a chubby kid. I won’t say it was the only thing that made grade school, junior high and parts of high school a living hell (the comic books, bad clothing, and general dorkiness didn’t help), but it played a part. And once I quit wrestling and went to college, and put a few pounds back on, I’m pretty sure it effected my self confidence, but my overall impression of myself. Let me put it this way: I was down in Pioneer Square one night and some crackhead had the audacity to comment about my tummy. When a crackhead has feels like it is OK to say something about your weight, we’ve passed the point of things being OK. You’re a f&^%ing crackhead! What the are you doing criticizing anybody?!?! YOU SMOKE CRACK YOU MORON!

As much as I am doing this for me, I am doing this for Baby Girl. First of all, parents are a huge influence on who you become as a person. I want the example I set for Baby Girl to be a good one. I want her to know that physical fitness and well being are important, are something to value, and something to strive for. I don’t want her to think that just because America is getting fatter by the minute that it’s alright. It isn’t. And I don’t want her to have me as an example that it is. Not to say I want her to be anorexic, but I damn sure want her to know that a good workout schedule is an important part of life.

Second of all, and some of you may see this as overreacting, or unnecessary, but I want any guy she brings home to have a healthy, not overwhelming but definitely healthy, sense that if the screws up, I may not only want to, but that I am quite capable of thumping him for it. I also plan on investing in a number of handguns to heighten the affect.

None of which excuses the fact that I should have taken the minute it would have taken to call Mommy and let her know I was staying late. I’m sorry Mommy. I do love you and I know I was an inconsiderate ass.

Dear God Where Did All Of This Come From?

One of the things I noticed, even before Baby Girl was born was how much stuff babies need. Not that I would deny anything to Baby Girl, because let’s face it, I would buy her anything she asked for, if she could ask in a language I could understand at this point (“Half a million flashing lights set to the terminally chipper sounds of your baby toys? No problem. Give me a half hour, I have to sell the car.”). But having said that, I am astounded by the shear amount of toys, clothes, furniture, accessories, health products and organizational items this kid has accumulated.

Mommy and I have about five pieces of major furniture in the living room. On any given day, Baby Girl has four. There is the exer-saucer (her office), the playpen/crib (which in its capacity as a crib, she refuses to sleep in right now), the stroller (she used to like being rocked to sleep in it), and her play blankets. All of this stays out in the living room because at any given time, our little diva may have the need for one of them, and when Baby Girl wants something specific, she wants something specific. Nothing else will do.

This list doesn’t include the swing she has grown out of, the rocker she is kind of “meh” about these days, the dresser (bigger than me and Mommy’s dresser), and the bin of toys in the other room. Again, nothing I’m complaining about because of course, we want Baby Girl to have everything she needs (“You desire a pony farm with a tea party house? No sweat kiddo, Daddy only needs one kidney.)

And the clothes…dear Jeebus, the clothes. I know where women get their closet sense from. It is bred into them at birth. Baby Girl has more outfits than she knows what to do with. And I mean that literally, she would probably be happy in the same onesie for six days at a time, kind of like Daddy and the shorts he wears every day. But that wouldn’t do because, Baby Girl is a cute Baby Girl and her wardrobe must reflect that. The only problem is that Baby Girl is growing like a weed. What fit her last night, no longer fits her in the morning. Which means that as soon as we buy an outfit, we best get her dressed, break out the camera and take pictures while we can, otherwise we’ll never get the chance to see her in them again.

As I’m sure will happen a lot now that I am a parent, I understand something I never understood before I was a parent, namely how frustrated my parents got when they had to buy more clothes for a little person they just bought clothes for a few days ago (maybe a slight exaggeration on the time frame, but another thing I’m beginning to realize is that days fly by at the speed of thought when you’re taking care of a kid).

Now, none of this means I resent Baby Girl for her prodigious amount of stuff, nor would I take any of it away from her, or deny her anything she wants (“You want formula flavored with spices from a remote, almost impossible to reach region of the Kashmir mountains? Give Daddy a minute, he has to arrange a sherpa and some armed guards.”). What it does mean is that I am astounded at the lengths I will go to for another human being, given that I usually have trouble justifying washing a dish for myself if there’s another, perhaps less appropriate, but fully functional alternative available – for example I have in the past used the coffee pot for cereal.

The Fears of a New Parent

To say I was never fond of child molesters before I had a kid would be an understatement. Really, there isn’t a much lower form of criminal, unless you count the lawyers who defend them and most of congress.

Now that I have a daughter, well, it would be an understatement to say that my distaste for these types of people has grown.

I mention all of this because in the past few days, we’ve received a number of notices in the mail about the registered sex offenders living in our area. The city of Dallas is kind enough to provide this information, and it certainly is nice to know that someone is keeping track of them, seeing as how they have failed to do what they should have done and shipped them to Iraq to use as IED detectors. And by detectors I mean they should be forced to drive ahead of the convoys of troops who are currently forced to put themselves at risk finding those things.

At this point I’m more disgusted with these people than afraid of them. Baby Girl is under constant supervision by either Mommy or myself, and anyone who gets within 20 feet of Baby Girl is under the watchful, protective, and if needed violently disposed eye of one of the two of us.

But that won’t always be the case. As she grows older and starts doing things on her own – going to school, playing outside, etc. – the dangers presented by these types of degenerates will increase.

This scares me for a couple of reasons. The obvious one is that I would be devastated if anything ever happened to my little girl. The less obvious one is that I would likely do something that would land me prison if something ever happened to my little girl. I know that in a civilized society we are supposed to let the cops and courts handle this type of thing, but the odds of my letting that happen are slim to none. The person responsible would end up paying dearly not only for what they did to my Baby Girl, but also what they did to me. I cannot imagine the sense of failure and horror that overcomes parents when something like that happens to their child.

Now, I hadn’t ever considered what I would do to keep my kid safe, other than make sure she gets a solid education in self-defense techniques, but actually having a kid has sent me deep into thought on the matter and I’ve come to the following conclusions:

1. Wherever we send Baby Girl for preschool, daycare or anything else, I’m going to have my own background checks run on the employees and their family members. These places ostensibly do it themselves, but it seems every so often that you hear a story about someone slipping through the cracks and into some kid’s pants. We won’t be taking that chance with Baby Girl.

2. The parents of any friend of my daughter will get the same treatment. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I’ll be damned if my Baby Girl is going to be out of my sight under the supervision of someone I haven’t checked out thoroughly.

3. GPS tracking for children has come into its own – you can check out some of the stuff here – and I would imagine that at some point we’ll outfit baby girl with some kind of device to keep an eye on her. Given what they have available now, I’m guessing that somewhere down the line, I’ll be able to chip Baby Girl like they chip pets (not that I’m comparing my precious snowflake to a family pet, but you get the point).

4. As mentioned before, I am going to make sure Baby Girl is gets solid self defense training as soon as is reasonable. Will she be able to win a fight with a bigger stronger guy? No, most likely not, but most predators aren’t in the mood to win fights, they want victims who are going to put up as little fuss as possible to avoid drawing attention. We may even give her a can of mace or a stun gun. If the school she’s going to has rules against that sort of thing, well, maybe we’ll find one that doesn’t.

5. I will make certain that anyone who might have the opportunity to hurt Baby Girl – daycare workers, teachers, parents of playmates, etc. – understands full well that I will hunt them through the gates of Hell should anything happen to her. I don’t know that I will word it quite that way, but I’ll make sure the point is made.

Is all of this a little extreme? Probably. But as a new parent these are the kinds of things that go through your head when you’re thinking about someone trying to hurt your child. It is not rational, it is not reasonable, it is blind fury and extreme desperation.

Truth be told, most of this probably won’t happen to the degree I’m discussing now. It might be awkward for Baby Girl if I tell her playmate’s parents that I have run background checks on them and that I’ll bury them in the desert if anything happens to her. It will also be awkward trying to explain to Baby Girl why I had a microchip implanted in her like an alien abductee.

But then again, I may just do all of it, for her protection as well as mine. I don’t know if I could handle anything happening to her, and that may sound selfish, but I really don’t know if I could.

Being Happy, Baby Smiles and Some Reflecting

Mommy was reading something on her iPhone in the car one time which basically said that babies smile 300 times a day, and adults only smile 10 times a day.

If that doesn’t make you pause, think about life, and consider that maybe as adults we’re doing it wrong, I’m not sure what will.

The best thing about baby smiles is that they’re not the sad, forced expressions you generally get from your waiter or the girl behind the counter at The GAP. They are pure, simple and thankfully there is not much to consider with them: the kid is happy. Whether it’s because they have figured out that when you wave the bottle at them they’re about to get fed, they think that your dancing is funny (while Mommy finds my dancing funny, it really is more of a embarrassed-for-me, oh-my-God-you’re-retarded kind of way), or they’re just happy to see you.

A friend of mine once told me that we’re all trying to be the person our dog thinks we are. I’ll modify that slightly to say that now I’m just trying to be as awesome as my daughter thinks I am. Not an easy task as she gets older (not only trying to be that awesome, but maintaining some level of awesomeness in her eyes once she hits that teenager phase). But I’ve always been a glutton for punishment.

The most surprising part for me has been exactly how happy someone that makes this much noise and leaks as many fluids as this kid does, can make me.

I had never really considered having kids (except under pressure from various grandparents who expected someone to carry on the family name). In fact, given my record with plants, I was pretty sure kids were out of the question. And quite frankly, my professional and social life at the time Mommy and I found out about our little munchkin to be, were not exactly geared towards the endeavor. They weren’t even close.

To be fair, given what you go through when you have a kid, I’m not sure there is ever a convenient time to have them.

Now, given all of the above, I want to assure anyone reading this, I cannot imagine not having Baby Girl in my life. The thought of not having Baby Girl in my life on a daily basis has brought me to tears once or twice. Yes, I Daddy, previously the cynical, outlaw type with nary a care for the future and a pretty laissez faire attitude towards the future, a fairly anti-social bent, and commitment problems, was brought to tears by the thought of not being inextricably tied to someone who cries loudly, needs me to dispose of her body’s waste byproducts, and has completely ruined my plans to start a band, tour the world and engage in the types of things you don’t mention in a baby-oriented blog.

And I couldn’t be happier with that.

It really doesn’t make sense. But every time I look down at her in my arms, I melt like a snowball in an oven. When she smiles I forget that the world is filled with loads of stupid people, lying politicians, vapid celebutantes, evil scumbags and bad drivers. All I can think about is how much I love this girl and how much I want to keep her smiling, even if I have to dance like a drunken bachelorette, five shots of Jagermeister past the dignity threshold.

I have found myself doing incomprehensible things to coax a smile from this kid. I have stood in line in a crowded Starbucks babbling like a half-wit, using a baby talk voice at what was probably a louder than necessary voice for the smallest hint of smile. I’ve made googly eyes, stuck my tongue out and made noises that no dignified man would ever make, in the hope of seeing her crooked little grin light her face up.

What’s more, even though I’ve sacrificed public decorum for the most fleeting of smiles, I could really care less what those people in their business suits and outrageously expensive track suits are thinking as I abandon any pretense of public social respectability in the pursuit of a baby’s smile. Being tied down to a baby has been oddly freeing. I guess that comes from the realization that I would trade the lot of them to Al Qaeda if it meant that Baby Girl would giggle for me.

I suppose this ought to worry me, as it means that I will probably be willing to call in a bomb threat to the local Toys ‘R Us if it means I can keep the rest of the Christmas crowd away long enough for me to lay hands on the last Tickle Me Elmo (or whatever it is next year) for Baby Girl. I have already told Mommy that if Baby Girl requests a unicorn at any point, I will buy a mini-horse and have a horn surgically implanted in its head to satisfy her demands.

Mommy has said that I am wrapped around her finger and that my little princess will be spoiled beyond belief. I suppose she’s right. And I never saw it coming.

Like A Sailor Pt. 1

“Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.” – Mark Twain

As has been pointed out by any number of people, from Mommy, to my parents (mostly my own mom), and one colleague in particular, I have a filthy mouth. I have a degenerate’s vocabulary, which tends to litter almost every conversation I have with multiple four-letter words, a couple three-letter words, and a number of words with higher letter counts related to the preceding three-, and four-letter words.

I curse. A lot.

It’s always been this way. I have had a penchant for profanity, and have been getting in trouble for it, ever since I can remember.

While Mommy, before she was Mommy, and was Sexy Lady (not to say she isn’t Sexy Lady now, but it has been usurped as her primary roll, much as my previous incarnation as Rebellious Rebel who is Rebelling has been usurped by my primary role as Daddy Day Care), has always taken issue with the frequency with which certain words were used in everyday conversation, the vehemence with which she objects to me using such language has increased dramatically.

This is of course due to the presence of Baby Girl, and Mommy’s fears that one day Baby Girl might come home from school with a note describing in vivid detail all of the naughty words she was calling her teacher. Or worse yet the inappropriate language Baby Girl might use in front of someone while in the presence of Mommy.

While part of me is terrified of that day, if I’m being honest, a good part of me is laughing on the inside at the thought of it. Let’s face it, kids using profanity is hilarious. Not only do those words sound funny coming out of the mouths of babes, they usually pick the most inappropriate times to use them, increasing the hilarity by a factor of 10 or so.

For instance, when I had my appendix out, I was in Germany, in a German hospital. My own mom had taught her little munchkins German, and was very proud of the fact, and as I remember the local doctors were pleasantly surprised to find that the ugly Americans had bothered to learn the language of their host country. Now, after the surgery, I was hooked up to the requisite bottles of IV fluids etc., and at one point the doctors had to poke another needle in me to find a better vein. The intern who was sticking me took about six tries to find said vein. I took issue with his incompetence and began to let loose a stream of words that my mom certainly hadn’t taught me in German. She was standing there next to the doctor, in what I can only assume was extreme mortification. Now however, she laughs at the whole thing.

I mention all of that only to highlight the fact that, indeed, kids and profanity are awesome, even if it does take some time for the hilarity to find its proper place.

All of that being said, I do understand why Mommy would prefer Baby Girl didn’t pick up my adult vocabulary. I would agree that having Baby Girl walk into a family get together and say “Hello mother******” would not do much for my standing with my in-laws-to-be, and would have Mommy red in the face with rage in her heart.

So I’m modifying my speech as much as is possible for a guy like me given the time constraints I’ve been given (as in, Mommy would prefer I stopped cursing altogether immediately). Stopping cold turkey is unrealistic. Not only is it too deeply ingrained in my brain, but I am an observer of the political and social happenings in our country, and too many of our political and social figures really are ****ing useless bags of ****, and I would find it hard not to call them like I see them. Also, I live and drive in Texas, and God bless ‘em, most of these people turn into retarded donkeys when they put the key in the ignition. They are to driving what Paris Hilton is to dignity and class.

I am making improvements though. Since most of the time when I’m in the car, Baby Girl is in the car with me, and a good deal of the stress I feel the need to curse to relieve is in the car, I have managed to reduce not only the frequency with which profanity spills forth, but I also have managed to modify my choice of words. I’ve almost completely stopped using curse words that start with “f”, “c”, “m”, “s”, end in “hole”, or modify any of the those words.

I am now almost exclusively using “ass” and modifications thereof. “Ass hat”, “ass pants”, “ass clown”, “dumbass” and “jackass” are now my primary means of expressing my displeasure with the not only other drivers, but the mass of humanity that I take issue with.

Mommy probably isn’t going to be pleased if Baby Girl says “ass hat” in a public setting, but it beats the alternatives.

And really, if I can train Baby Girl to say “ass clown” whenever a member of congress opens their mouth on TV, who can be mad at that?

Mommy and Daddy and Disagreeing

Having a kid highlights a lot of things in life. Time (or lack thereof), sleep (or lack thereof), that being an adult sucks (did you know kids smile on average 300 times a day and grown-ups do it like, ten?), how much easier it is to tolerate previously intolerable things (the noise from children’s toys).

Another thing that comes into crystal clear clarity are the differences between yourself and your partner in the child raising endeavor.

When you’re dating, or married to someone, the little differences you notice between yourself and your partner are usually the kinds of things you can get past, tolerate, or work on with minimal animosity and stress. Yeah there are exceptions to that, but you get the drift. When it only involves the two of you, your habit of leaving your socks on the floor and her belief that there is a steering wheel in the front passenger seat are things you can deal with, things that in spite of their sometimes annoying nature, are also the things that endear them to you, because it really is the imperfections that make the person, and the person as a whole is who you love. Perfection is boring, and certainly doesn’t leave much room to grow.

Babies, however, bring out differences that the both of you take personally. It’s easy to understand. The little life you are trying to protect and raise and grow into a functioning adult is the single most important thing in your life. You understand that small mistakes can have far-reaching consequences, and because even after millions and millions of years the science of raising children is woefully and inadequately understood, you can never be sure which of those little mistakes might be the one that leads your little munchkin down a path of destruction and misery.

So taking certain child rearing decisions personally and what may, from the outside seem way too seriously, is completely understandable when you look at them from the inside. Now, to be fair, I might not agree with Mommy all the time, but I understand that from her point of view, she is always erring on the side of caution. None of the things that Mommy takes issue with that I do are overreacting on the side of throwing caution to the wind. I do occasionally think she is overreacting, but she also thinks I’m usually not being careful enough. I’ve learned that arguing these points with Mommy is a surefire way to get myself thrown in the doghouse.

Case in point: We live in an apartment complex. Parking in this complex can be hit or miss. You’re either right out the front door, or a ways off in the parking garage. Usually we manage to snag a spot out front, pretty close to the front door, less than say, a hundred yards away.

Now when I go to pick Mommy up from work the standard procedure is as follows: put Baby Girl in car seat, head to car and pick up Mommy. Where I usually end up getting myself in trouble is when I don’t bundle Baby Girl up in enough warm gear to make Mommy happy. My thinking is that, even if it is mildly chilly, Baby Girl will soon be in a nice warm car, and the less than thirty seconds she is exposed to the elements aren’t that big a deal. This has put me on the receiving end of cross looks and exasperated comments more than once or twice.

I don’t think it’s a big deal, Mommy thinks it is a big deal. There are other things like this (the bathing issue discussed a couple days ago in the Poop Part 1 post for example), that I am learning not to argue about, because, ultimately I understand that Mommy is coming from a place of genuine concern, and not some unreasonable place.

For my part, I want to get baby girl into some form of martial arts as soon as I can. The world is an ugly place, and I want Baby Girl to be able to defend herself as best as possible against the stupid boys she is going to inevitably run into. I also don’t ever want her to feel pressured into anything because she doesn’t have the confidence to stand up for herself because of any physical intimidation. I’m not sure Mommy understands quite how seriously I take this particular issue, but it is something that we’ll work on. The same way that I try to remember that Baby Girl needs to be protected from the elements, even if I don’t think they’re particularly harmful.

In the end, you figure out that raising a child is a series of compromises, not of anything pertaining to Baby Girl, but pertaining to how you perceive things, how you handle things and how you go about convincing your partner of things. Whereas up until we had Baby Girl, there were things that we learned to live with and love about each other (socks, driving habits), there are now things we won’t compromise on, not out of ego, not out of pride, but out of our desire to see the best for our Baby Girl. It’s the art of give and take, when you realize that both of you want what is best for her, and even if you don’t agree with your partner, you learn to accept that those issues are not about you or her, but about the kid. And who isn’t going to do what’s best for the kid?

Pride in Our Offspring

Here’s the one of the weird things I’ve noticed about being a new parent. I take more pride in people saying what a cute kid I have, than I do in almost anything else. I mean, I beam with pride when co-workers, casual friends, or strangers compliment me on Baby Girl.

Now, I know this has got to be pretty common – the taking pride part, and probably the compliment part, because really, who’s going to tell someone they have an ugly kid (come to think of it, one of Mommy’s friends doesn’t have a disconnect between her brain and her mouth, so at least one person might tell us the kid was ugly if she was) – but I was wondering why I took so much pride in it. I’ve accomplished a few things in my life, and by far people telling me the kid is awesome outstrips any of the compliments I’ve gotten for anything else.

Here’s my theory: while the things I’ve worked for and accomplished have been pretty cool, they’ve all been things that, as far as I’m concerned, just about anybody could do if they decided to. There isn’t much in life people can’t do if they put their minds to it. So as far as I’m concerned in my head, most of what I’ve accomplished isn’t all that impressive to me, because anybody could do it if they wanted. I don’t really view myself as all that inherently special. I’ve just applied elbow grease and brow sweat to a few things.

But the kid…the kid is something else. Our genes aren’t something we can work on. They are there, waiting to be deployed, and there’s nothing you can do if you are going to pass on the gene for a uni-brow, cankles, bad skin or a hairy back. So when you manage to produce a decent looking offspring, it really does confirm that you have some inherently good qualities. Now in our case, I’m guessing most of those physical qualities that people are complimenting our Baby Girl on came from Mommy. I’m not so delusional as to think that the good looks came from Daddy’s side. I’m just hoping she got my general good health, good cheekbones and maybe my passable athletic ability.

So when somebody does compliment Baby Girl, I guess I get that swelling-up-with-pride feeling because I have some confirmation that my side of the gene pool wasn’t polluted beyond redemption by some of my earlier life choices. If you’ve met my family, you know I was given a pretty good starting position in the genetic lottery. I come from a long line of pretty sharp folks, with passable looks (no hunchbacks, nobody who looks like they’re wearing a mohair sweater when they’re in a bathing suit).

For those of you who think I’ve been tooting my own horn here, let me dissuade you of that notion real quick. I mention those few good things about myself and my lucky hand in life, only because I’m pretty sure I could have made more of it by now if I had applied myself more in certain areas of my life. I refer to most of these things with a hint of bittersweet regret, because, I do know that I still have a lot of potential to live up to, and frankly having the kid has reminded me that I may be running out of time here.

I’m proud of Baby Girl and the compliments she receives because I recognize that she may be the best, most important, and most successful endeavor I ever have, or ever will undertake, and that somehow, if she does turn out to be as awesome as some people have said she is, and I hope she will eventually turn out to be, it might, to some degree, mitigate my failings in other parts of my life.

Poop! Part One

Let's talk about poop, baby (sing it)
Let's talk about you and me (sing it, sing it)
Let's talk about all the good things
And the bad things that may be
Let's talk about poop (come on)
Let's talk about poop (do it)
Let's talk about poop (uh-huh)
Let's talk about poop

All apologies to Salt N Pepa for stealing their hit song about sex (Let’s Talk About Sex) and turning it into a poop joke. But let’s face it, if it hadn’t been for sex, I wouldn’t be talking about poop right now. So it all comes full circle and all is right in the universe. Or something like that…

Back before our precious snowflake made her entrance into the world, I mused about how much poop she would actually create in our lives. I estimated (I think, but I’m too lazy to check) that there would be a high school basketball team’s starting line-up’s weight worth of poop in the first year. Six, maybe seven hundred pounds, or so.

Turns out, blessedly so, that we probably won’t hit that mark. What we have discovered, much to the relief of my nostrils, and the dismay of the baby wipes manufacturers, is that babies our baby’s age don’t poop every day, let alone multiple times every day. Though they do occasionally poop twice a day; more on that later.

Right now Baby Girl’s poop schedule is once every three to five days. This is great for me, as I am, as I may have mentioned before, Chief Diaper Changer. This is a position I volunteered for at first (watching a woman go through pregnancy causes some strange reactions to one’s own guilt about having played a part in said pregnancy), and am locked into by virtue of being a Stay-At-Home-Dad (a manly one, who spends what free time he does have doing manly things, like punching people and kicking heavy bags at the gym).

Aside from the frequency, the poops aren’t that smelly. Another relief, believe me. I’m bracing for when she starts on solid foods, when, I have been assured, both the frequency and pungency will increase dramatically. I’m also guessing they’ll get messier.

So far things haven’t been too messy. She has blown out a few diapers, resulting in me needing to give her a bath, something I have managed to do singlehandedly, which I promise you, was no easy task. Bathing Baby Girl is a pretty involved task, seeing as how she squirms like an eel. Also it isn’t easy because I have been guilted into giving her a bath the way Mommy prefers, which involves both me and baby girl taking a bath. My preferred, but no longer used method, was to put her in her bathing chair (essentially a water safe Laz-E-Boy), soap her up and spray her off with the removable showerhead we installed, flip her over, repeat and dry.

This method had a number of results: a) she got cleaned in a time/energy/effort efficient manner, b) Mommy accused me of treating my daughter like one of the fish down in Pike Place Market, c) baby girl tended to cry bloody murder the whole time, and finally d) I acquiesced to both Mommy and Baby Girl’s wishes that she be bathed in a more peaceful, less-likely-to-result-in-crying way.

The other result of the blown out diapers has been the effect it has on baby girl’s clothes. Specifically they get poop all over them, generally all over the inside of the back of the garment, because the poop tends to shoot up and out the back of Baby Girl’s diaper. One time it looked like someone had taken a paint roller, dipped it in a pan of brown paint, and rolled it down Baby Girl’s back. Not a pretty sight.

Now, the first time it happened, Mommy was ready to toss the soiled clothing in the garbage. Daddy, on the other hand, being strangely responsible, said “no”, and made her wash it. I mention this because, the first time Baby Girl really blew out a diaper on Daddy’s watch, it was an ungodly mess, and since I hadn’t let Mommy throw out the poop-stained clothing when she wanted to, I knew I couldn’t throw out the clothing now that I was the one who had to deal with it.

The problem is, I hate poop. I love poop jokes, talking about poop with my friends, laughing at the people who fall in poop etc., but I really hate the stuff itself. This is why I use what Mommy would describe as an unusually hefty amount of toilet paper when I myself poop. I want to avoid getting it on my hands at all costs.

So when faced with a piece of baby clothing which had been drenched in the stuff I took the following approach, since I couldn’t follow my first instinct and throw it out because Mommy would never have let me hear the end of it after I hadn’t let her do the same: I soaked it in the sink for a couple days, put it in a plastic bag and hid it under the sink in the spare bathroom until Mommy found it and berated me for being lazy and scared of poop. I was hoping she wouldn’t find it until Baby Girl grew out of it and I could toss it away guilt-free, no washing/handling/messing involved.

Time Part 1

Time is such a weird concept. Sometimes a minute can feel like an hour, sometimes an hour can feel like a minute. I used to feel like I had all the time in the world. This was of course before I turned 25, when, I suppose, most people feel like they have all the time in the world. Nine years later, at 34, I feel like time is running out, partly because, well, I’m 34, and partly because as a parent, there’s so much in the world I need to teach my daughter about, that I’m not sure I’ll have the time.

It is also kind of pressing because, frankly, I don’t remember much about the last five months or so since she was born. It’s kind of a blur. And I ask myself, how the hell did five months just pass, without me noticing. I drink very rarely these days, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep through it.

The first thing you notice when you have kids is that time seems to disappear. You remember being busy all day, but you don’t really have anything to show for it, except a (hopefully) smiling baby, and a few more diapers stinking up the garbage. And since the days vary very little, other than the occasional milestone the kid hits (this week it was Baby Girl getting up on all fours for the first time), one day is fairly indistinguishable from the last. Which to some extent explains where the last five months went.

The second thing you notice is that even though it has only been five months, it may as well have been forever ago that you didn’t have a kid, because life before the kid seems like distant memory. Having time for yourself, your significant other, your career, your hobbies, your life, is a distant memory. Everything you do is packaged into varying chunks of time between feedings, naps, changings and those brief interludes where you get to sleep.,

I don’t know where this next part comes on the list, third, fourth or maybe eighth, but she’s almost 6 months old. Which assuming she either goes to college, hates me and moves out, gets a job and moves out, or some variant of the above three, means I only have another 35 more 6-month periods of time to spend with her. And while at some point I’m sure I’ll be ready for her to leave, right now, that 17.5 years just doesn’t seem like enough time to spend with her.

Then there is the realization that of the 18 years I’ll (hopefully) have direct control – as much as any father really has over the little princess that has him wrapped around her little fingers – there are about five of those years (the 13-18) where she’ll be dating, and I would gladly trade five years of diapers, baby puke and screaming for five years of having to threaten her possible boyfriends with extreme physical violence and waiting up worrying about whether or not some ill-mannered little chump is trying to paw at my Baby Girl.

You also get a sense of mortality when your kid comes, because, up until now, I kinda figured I was going to live forever. At least, I never thought far enough ahead to think that I was going to ever die. Now of course, all I can think of is how I’d better be nice to this little ball of volatile bodily fluids, because one day she’ll be picking out the retirement community I’ll dodder away my old age in. And while that seems like a long ways off, the gray hairs given to me by my woman, my own stupidity, and by my Baby Girl, are beginning to suggest otherwise.

Right now, however, it is time to go to bed.