A few things about pregnancy we weren't sufficiently warned about

Since this could go awry very quickly, let me state from the outset - my wife served as primary resource for this post, and I have made every attempt to present this from the woman’s perspective. With perhaps a dash of my own brilliant insight and stunning wit.

I tried to get her to write this post, but she couldn’t find time to put on shoes and get out of the kitchen. Ba-Dum-Ching.

Oh, I will pay for that.

In all seriousness, I did invite the wife to write a guest post, but she politely declined, and left it to my debatable talents to “spin” her insights in an appropriately humorous and/or poignant fashion. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a small collection of things that occurred to the two of us in the space of time it took to write a blog post. Our method seems sound to me. Anyway, here we go.

1. Your baby is not the only one who will need diapers. Between the constant compression on your bladder, the medical recommendation that you consume more water than is physically possible, and the sudden internal kicks and jabs your organs are subject to, you will, from time to time, have exactly .46 seconds warning before urination begins. It’s a fact of pregnancy, and any woman who tells you she had a baby without ever peeing herself is a filthy liar.

2. You may poop in front of complete strangers during the delivery. In fairness, we did hear about this prior to getting pregnant, thanks largely to maliciousness of Dr. Cox on “Scrubs.” At the time we thought it was funny. Mere weeks from our due date, it has lost some of its charm.

3. That line about “perfect hair and skin” during pregnancy is BS. Pregnancy does increase the bodies production of protein, which in turn makes hair and nails grow better, faster and stronger. Freakishly so, in some cases. And, in many cases, pregnancy does give your skin a healthy clarity and ethereal glow... not to oversell it. BUT, if you happen to be pregnant with a beautiful baby girl, as approximately half of all pregnant women will be, the hormones of your new baby may come into conflict with the hormones in your own body, causing your entire physiology to bug out. This can have all kinds of dermatological consequences that are not included in the marketing materials. (Personal note - my wife is the most stunning pregnant woman ever, and is far too hard on herself).

4. It’s not just booze and cigarettes you’ve got to put down. Most people are familiar with the big three admonitions about pregnancy - no drinking, no smoking, and limit your caffeine. The “no drugs” admonition is often taken for granted, but perhaps it should not be. In any event, if that were the end of the story, pregnancy would be by no means easy, but at least a touch easier on the pregnant woman. Unfortunately, there are a plethora of other things you are supposed to avoid while incubating your bundle of joy. Among the more notable - soft cheeses (like feta and queso), deli meat, sushi, many artificial sweeteners, fish, virtually every over-the-counter drug that actually works, and much, much more. Oh, you also aren’t supposed to raise your core temperature above a certain point, so depending on who makes the recommendation, you may be told not to take hot showers while pregnant. Jacuzzis and hot tubs are right out.

5. Absolutely everything is a sign that your baby is in dire trouble. This paranoia, for lack of a better term, is particularly prevalent in the first trimester. Every bit of food must be examined, every product analyzed, and every action carefully considered for even the most hair-brained, Mouse Trap(TM) -esque scenario under which it could cause harm to your child. (Personal note: my favorite instance of this was my wife’s first trimester fixation on, and fear of nachos. Because of the soft cheese rule, these were deemed off limits. A midwife told her to go have some anyway, which she did, promptly determining she had caused irreparable harm to our child. Really, she felt guilty for days. That is, until she called Monterrey’s and found out their “queso” was melted white American - a cheese of dubious quality but which is perfectly safe to pregnant women and the unborn.) Stomach twinges, lack of stomach twinges, gas, lack of gas, the cancellation of your favorite program by Fox - all of these things will throw you into a panic about what is happening to your baby. In the vast majority of cases, the answer is “nothing that shouldn’t be happening.” This is just an uncomfortable process.

6. Alcohol-free alcohol is absolute crap. There is a niche market for pregnant women in the alcohol industry, for those who miss the taste of beer or wine, or want to fit in at parties where other people are imbibing, or, in my wife’s case, want to prolong the illusion that you are not pregnant in order to make “the big reveal” more compelling (hint: hide the O’Doul’s label behind a coozie). There are an impressive number of alcohol-free, or close to alcohol free beers, and an increasing number of “pregnant safe” wines, such as those sold under the Fre label. I’ve even been told that some of the non-alcoholic beers available to servicemen and women at PXs nationwide are actually pretty good. But the non-alcoholic products we’ve tried are just terrible. Far from satisfying a craving for a particular taste, they are just as likely to piss you off.

7. Your bellybutton is about to flip out. Not really a big deal, but kind of disconcerting. As your baby grows, your sexy little innie will slowly transform into a strangely distorted pocket for baby to kick. It may or may not go full blown outie, but depending on where your baby rests and how much pressure is put on that spot, you’ll be seeing more of your bellybutton than you ever have before.
If you were an outie to start with, you may get a pass on this.

8. Online pregnancy forums are your frenemy. Pregnancy is kind of terrifying for a woman - there’s a lot that can go wrong (all of it fairly unlikely, but possible) and many women put a lot of pressure on themselves because of the feeling that anything that goes wrong is their fault (which in most cases - aside from alcoholics and drug-users - is not true). It is therefore pretty natural to seek out the advice and counsel of women who have gone before and those who are in the same boat. In the absence of a strong support network of mothers and soon-to-be-mothers, internet forums fill the void for a multitude of women. While the information on these forums is sometimes accurate and helpful, a lot of the stories shared on these sites are of the “worst-case-scenario” variety, making these terrible and terrifying situations appear more common than they actually are. It’s the same principle as a customer service complaint - you are far more likely to tell people about a BAD experience than you are about a standard, or even an extraordinary experience. Moreover, some people who utilize pregnancy forums intentionally post bad information or inflammatory stories. They are, in internet parlance, trolls. Take these forums with a big grain of salt if you use them at all.

9. Your baby doesn’t have to be very strong to hurt you from the inside of your body. This is less about a lack of warning than it is about a lack of clarity in the degree and type of discomfort that will be experienced in pregnancy. Ligaments stretch, muscles separate, hips spread, and organs get rabbit punched. Even when the kid is being inactive, his or her head or feet can rest heavily on all kinds of things not designed as bedding. Unfortunately, delivery is not really the end of the pain your baby will cause you. We have it on good authority that a few days after delivery, when your milk arrives (I assume by Fedex - editor) you will want to die. Hooray! We needed something more to look forward to!

10. None of that crap matters. Well, yeah, it matters - just not in the long-term. You get a baby out of it. Which is awesome. Also, the discomfort and indignities of raising a child and worrying about them night and day for the rest of your natural life will take a much bigger toll on you than nine months of extra weight and hormones. So enjoy your pregnancy!

They did it again!

For those of you buried under a rock, or who do not have a single Facebook friend with a remote connection to the state of South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Gamecocks won the 2011 College World Series last night in a 5-2 win over the University of Florida Gators. There is very little I can add to the voluminous coverage this event has already received, so I'll keep this short, and highlight some of the...high...lights... ahem.

- USC's win last night set new records for consecutive NCAA Tournament wins (16) and consecutive CWS wins (11) .

- USC joins a handful of other schools (six) to repeat as National Champions.

- USC had the distinct honor of having closed out Rosenblatt Stadium, the home of the CWS for over 60 years, in 2010. This year, they have opened the new home of the CWS - TD Ameritrade Park.

Additionally, there are a plethora of individual storylines that are simply phenomenal - Christian Walker playing through a fractured wrist bone not the least of these. But I'm not a sports writer - I'm just a fan who is immensely grateful that they won this series in two games so I can go to bed at a reasonable time tonight.

Well done Gamecocks. You give me hope that my daughter will not grow up despairing because of Gamecocks athletics.

Freedom!

Cat was released from quarantine Saturday morning after his run in with another animal and subsequent bout of minor surgery last week. He had to be kept away from Beagle and Auxiliary Dog while he had a drain in his back so they wouldn’t mess with it. Even after getting the drain taken out, he has to keep that ridiculous cone on his head for a week, which has caused me no end of amusement.

I’m allowed to laugh at him. I had to clean the bathroom after he was freed. I had to clean up what I can only describe as a nightmare of excrement and sadness. He gets no sympathy from me ever again. I deserve to laugh at him.

Besides, in the long run, Cat will be fine. He’s just got a few more days of looking mildly ridiculous, and a month or so for the fur on his butt to grow back. The only real tragedy in all of this has been the breakup of Beagle and Cat. As readers of the earlier DFTC blog (yep, I just abbreviated my own blog. My pretension knows no bounds.) will remember, Beagle and Cat had a very strange, boy-on-boy, cross-species thing going on. Snuggling and making out between the two were not at all unheard of. Throughout the quarantine, Beagle spent a good bit of time looking meaningfully at the door to the bathroom where Cat was sequestered, as if asking “what the hell? Where’s my cat?” Unfortunately, once Cat was let out, and Beagle saw the cone, he decided they should maybe see other people. He could have been more sensitive in his delivery of this message - freaking right out every time Cat got near him was pretty cold.

It’s disappointing that Beagle could be that shallow, yes, but to be fair it would never have worked out anyway. The world just wouldn’t except them. For now, I think the joy of being sprung from the clink has softened the blow of the breakup. For now...

Review: Saturday Morning Cartoons

As a continuation of a previous post, I thought I would post a review of some of my favorite shows from my own childhood, and invite comments from the blogosphere about their own favorites. This involves a little more audience participation, so Constant Readers - both of you - let’s see it.

In no particular order:

Muppet Babies - Muppet Babies was a great concept for a cartoon. Since every exciting thing that happened was in the imagination of the kids (were they really kids? eh... too philosophical) they never needed much of a device to get rolling on any kind of adventure imaginable. The random vignettes from Star Wars and Nosferatu were a nice touch, largely attributable to Gonzo (with whom I could deeply relate). I have had occasion to see an episode or two within the last year (probably bootleg, but I won’t speculate) and they actually hold up pretty well over time. The animation is somewhat dated, in that it has the less-than-smooth look of hand drawn cartoons, and everything actually looks like something specific, as compared with the intentionally sloppy, poorly rendered animations of more recent vintage. Also, listening to Miss Piggy’s voice is something like putting bamboo shoots under my fingernails, if my ears had fingernails. On the whole though, I’d watch this with my kids.

Thundercats - Nothing like a bunch of poorly drawn man-cats in spandex fighting an intergalactic mummy to get your day going. This show is truly terrible. I do not know what I saw in it. I will undoubtedly take some flak for this assessment from certain die-hards, but seriously - lay aside your nostalgia and just watch it! I am lumping it in with Silverhawks (produced by the same company, I believe) and He-man as a few cartoons that simply didn’t survive the journey to adulthood. In short bursts, any of the three can render some entertainment value for unintentional humor (especially some of the more homo-erotic moments in the original He-Man). Still, I don’t have any desire to inflict these on my kids.

Voltron - Sadly, Voltron doesn’t do much better than Thundercats in the retrospect-o-meter. I will give it props for some of the animation, truly scary monsters (you know, to a kid), and for having a pretty B.A. robot made up of five pretty B.A. robots. I really loved this show as a kid, but the dialogue is pretty terrible, and there’s only so much you can do with this formula. Not that this has stopped a stream of much-worse ripoffs from being produced in later years (MMPR anyone?)

The Real Ghostbusters - They had to add “The Real” to the title because of a dispute with another studio over its own Ghost Busters property - something to do with a gorilla I believe.
Sadly, I have not had the opportunity to go back and watch any of these episodes in recent years. As I recall, the show was pretty well written, very funny, and adding Slimer as a regular member of the team - while not exactly canon - was both a clever cast addition and a brilliant marketing ploy. You know at least half of you had a Slimer toy of some description.

Animaniacs/Tiny Toons - Some will say you cannot put these two together. Fox did, in a single one hour time slot after school, and that’s the beginning and end of my argument. Animaniacs was certainly the more clever of the two shows, and had some legitimately educational aspects (the Country Song, anyone)? But the animated shorts format of the show inevitably led to some segments being much weaker than others (I pretty much changed the channel everytime the damn pigeons came on). Tiny Toons was more predictable, with longer stories, and was a transparent attempt to pull new viewers towards the classic Warner Bros. cartoon characters with new, “rad” versions of those characters (i.e., Buster and Babs Bunny, et al). Still, it was not without its charm (who didn’t love the Tiny Toons music videos for They Might Be Giants’ “Istanbul” and “Particle Man”?). Both shows would be welcome in my house.

I also want to make special mention of Batman: The Animated Series. I mention it separately because it doesn’t have the little kid appeal of the others on this list, and I was a good bit older when it came out. Batman’s animation was not the best I’ve ever seen, but it was unique and stylized in a way that fit the feel of the show. More importantly, it had some of the best writing of any cartoon I’ve ever seen, and the writing holds up - I’ve seen several episodes in adulthood and was equally impressed. I wouldn’t mind watching this again just for me, let alone with my kids. Besides, who doesn’t love Batman?

There are tons of other cartoons that I remember with greater or lesser clarity, but I’d love to hear from some of you. What were your favorites? How’d they hold up if you’ve seen them more recently?

The Gamecocks, the CWS, and Dads

I thought this would make a good, if belated, Father’s Day post. Somehow the link to a video of Samuel L. Jackson didn’t have the same tone.

For those of you not tuned in to the world of College Sports, or even those who just don’t care about anything other than football and basketball, you may not be aware that the Gamecocks of the University of South Carolina are currently defending their national championship title in NCAA men’s baseball at the College World Series (the CWS for short) in Omaha, Nebraska. Go Cocks! (See, we are allowed to say stuff like that out loud in South Carolina without anyone raising an eyebrow. Try that in Chicago.)

So far, so good. The Gamecocks are 2-0 in CWS play and have tied the NCAA baseball tournament record for consecutive games won (carried over from last year) with 13 straight. Not bad for a few kids from Columbia. They currently need one more win to get to the best-of-three national title series for the second time in two years (and I believe the fourth time in the program, but don’t quote me on that). They will get their chance on Friday night against the winner of the loser’s bracket game (Cal v. UVA), which will be played on Thursday. We will anxiously await the results of both of those games.

What you may not be aware of, even if you have followed the CWS, is this little item. David Roth, the father of Gamecock’s pitcher Michael Roth, was forced to choose between his job and following his son to Omaha. David missed seeing his son play, in what essentially was his breakout performance, at last year’s CWS, because he could not get the time off from his job selling cars in upstate South Carolina. He vowed that if they made it back to Omaha this year, nothing would stand in his way. Ultimately he quit his job to follow through.

David Roth has taken some flack from members of the public for this - giving up a stable job in this economy seems like the height of foolishness. But he has his supporters too, and personally I think the odds are good that his job may still be available for him after this tournament is over, or some member of the Gamecock nation might have an opening for a salesman and dedicated father. But who knows? Frankly, I doubt all that was much of a consideration for David. I suspect he just wanted to watch his son play.

Parents - the good ones, anyway - make all kinds of sacrifices for their kids. I know, because I can’t imagine there is anything in this world I wouldn’t do for my daughter, and I haven’t even had the pleasure of meeting her yet. Most of the time though, parental sacrifice is not of the big gesture variety exhibited by Mr. Roth. Not to take anything away from Mr. Roth’s actions, but it’s the everyday, unsung sacrifices that make the biggest difference: foregoing a trip, or purchase you were looking forward to so your kids can take a field trip or go to camp; putting hobbies on hold so you can spend a little more precious free-time at tea-party or soccer games; working a job you hate, or even a job you like for longer hours than you want to so your children have everything they need.

The thing is, I doubt most of those parents - again, talking about the good ones - see any of that as a sacrifice. Still, it bears saying thank you. So, thanks Dad.




...and Mom, but Mother’s Day was a lot longer ago.

The Birthing Plan

The concept of a birthing plan (or birth plan, if you prefer) is a bit foreign to me as a first-time expectant father. This is not a part of the process heavily advertised by movies and television, and I suppose for a portion of the pregnant population in the world at large, it is probably not a part of the process at all. It is possible, in fact, that the whole “birth plan” concept is limited to women seeing midwives or considering water-births, home-births, or some other -birth that does not involve the use of groovy drugs. (Yes, I have seen enough of “The Business of Being Born” to know that the effect of many of these drugs is less than groovy. This is just a blog - please keep that in mind). In any event, a birth plan is part of our process since my wife has decided to go with a mid-wife practice. I say “our” process even though my contributions to the birth plan have been vague grunts and remaining silent when my wife tells me how things will be in the delivery room. I’m not the one who has to push, so who am I to argue?

Based on my observation, a birth plan is simply a checklist of things you desire to occur or not occur during and immediately following the process of delivery. Among the things included in the birth plan are the medical interventions you do or do not wish to have, whether or not the father will cut the cord, whether you would like the hospital staff to give the baby it’s first bath or do it yourself, etc. At their core, I think a birth plan is a blue-print for the best case scenario within the delivery room(which will rarely happen), but ideally the birth plan allows you to think through the contingencies, and what ifs to plan for the unknown. Birth plans are personal to each couple involved in the birth of a child. That said, there is a reason why the mother bears primary responsibility for a birth plan - they are going through the thick of it. Even the most involved father is little more than a coach to the athlete putting forth the effort to win the game. We would screw it up if the plan were left to us.

Here is my rendering of several birth plans, written by a few hypothetical males:

The “Typical” Male, circa 1920-1950: Pace nervously in the waiting room of local hospital, gripping hat in hands, and sweating profusely, until told of child’s arrival and sex. Fail to inquire as to condition of wife. Strut around hospital waiting room with sh**-eating grin on face, handing out cigars and slapping backs of complete strangers. Collapse into chair exhausted from all your hard work.

The Workaholic (I could just as easily call this “The Lawyer”): Remain firmly at your desk until your wife calls to let you know she’s at eight centimeters. Rush to meet her at hospital via taxi, so as to continue answering emails on Blackberry, Droid, or iPhone all the way to the hospital. Assuming (a) wife found her way to hospital without you, and (b) the delivery is not over, continue checking emails during contractions and pushes when wife is distracted by pain. Take half a day off from work to make sure wife and child are settled in after delivery is complete.

The Modern D-Bag: (variation on the workaholic): Remain fixated on Droid, iPhone, or personal video game console throughout delivery. Sigh deeply and offer to get wife some ice chips, or something, at least once to demonstrate that you are “part of the process.” During grunts of pain, ask doctors if she can get some more drugs without consulting wife’s desires. At no point make contact with wife or hospital staff. Do not put device down until baby is crowning, and then only to make some variation on the comment “ew.”

The Media Whore: Arrive at hospital with video camera, digital SLR, and some device linked to your personal Twitter feed, Facebook account, and, if you are out of touch with modern trends, your MySpace page. Proceed to document the entire experience over the vehement, vulgar, and at times psychotic objections of your wife. Ask your wife to interact with the camera more. Narrowly avoid having camera smash to the floor as your wife’s fist clocks you in the ear. Get plenty of action shots below the equator, and send them to Facebook as soon as possible.

The Clueless (based on a true story, kept anonymous to protect the dense): Wake in the middle of the night to your wife telling you she thinks her water broke. Recognize vaguely that baby’s due date is still several days away. Without moving, tell wife she just peed herself, to take a shower and go back to bed. Roll into fetal position and put arms around head to avoid pummeling blows. When blows subside, grudgingly join wife in trip to hospital where you find (surprise!) she is in fact having a baby.

I can have a lot of fun mocking stereotypical behavior of fathers everywhere (as well as the occasion specific instance of real-life cluelessness) because I haven’t been there yet. I am certain that, given a few more months, I will be able to add to this list all the ways I made a fool of myself while watching my daughter come into the world.

In which Cat gets his a** kicked and costs me a few hundred bucks

Hey, not every post can be about babies, pregnancy, and parenthood. To paraphrase my wife, our impending addition is only the center of our universe, not THE universe.

I have never gone out of my way to hide my disdain for Cat. He was brought into our home on my wife’s wishes and has never paid her an ounce of attention since his first day. Instead, he reserves the bulk of his “affections,” for lack of a better term, for the human being in the house that really couldn’t care less about him (that would be yours truly). Cats can’t actually feel affection - just possessiveness. When you think your cat is loving on you they are really just marking you as a personal possession. You are the machine that delivers food, and little more.

Despite my borderline hostility toward Cat, I would not knowingly allow him to die if there were something I could do to prevent it, if only because my wife would never let me hear the end of it. It is this weakness in my resolve that Cat takes advantage of by taking his life in his own hands, and leaving me to pick up the pieces.

In this week’s installment of life with Cat, Cat managed to get his butt kicked - or to be more literal, bitten - by another animal. Probably another cat. And, to be fair, we haven’t see “the other guy” so to say Cat got his butt kicked is making certain assumptions about his fight-worthiness. Probably, those assumptions are warranted, but let us not digress. He came home this weekend after a night of prowling the neighborhood, looking for all the world like nothing was bothering him except for the failure of breakfast to appear before him at his whim. Except he had a nasty, roundish, oozing wound in the center of a bald spot on his rear, near his tail. Awesome.

All of this would be a mildly diverting tale and nothing more except for one thing: A cat bite is apparently the suburban wildlife equivalent of shooting up with a hypodermic needle full of raw sewage. The bite (again, located on Cat’s butt) turned necrotic. Ever smelled gangrene before? It is not in my top ten favorite smells of all time.

I dropped him off at the vet Monday morning, caterwauling from his carrier. The last time we had to drop him off for a procedure was when he got fixed. His procedure was slightly more involved than normal, and he came away with stitches and one of those ridiculous head cones, which pleased me greatly. And then, despite the vet’s assurances that he would sleep for three days, he got out of his cone and split his stitches within five minutes of arriving home. We were back at the vet within fifteen minutes. This did not please me.

A few hundred bucks later, we again have a cat with a head cone. It would be almost comical if not for the pathetic look of the rest of him - shaved from the mid-back to the tail, with a drain stuck in the bite wound. No stitches this time - can’t really do that with an abscess, so at least that’s one less thing to worry about. Also, our house is now pleasantly serenaded by the constant meowing from the upstairs bathroom. Cat has to stay quarantined away from Beagle and Auxiliary Dog (just to keep them from messing with the drain or the cone). He is thrilled with this.

This is how our week started. It can only get better, right?

Training Babies (n.)

Not to be confused with training (v.) babies, since this is very difficult to accomplish, especially if you are trying to train them to do more than cry, poo, or eat. Training (v.) babies to operate heavy machinery, clean dishes, and weed gardens, for example, will likely lead to a lot of frustration, and a burnt out clutch or two.

No, we are discussing training babies (n.). Much like training wheels on a bike, training babies (n.) are very helpful for someone who wants to get the feel for parenting without knocking their teeth out by face-planting on asphalt at 30 mph.

I might be taking the metaphor too far...

Anyway, training babies (n.) are simply those infants you have access to, preferably for short durations, who can provide you with some real baby care experience: changing diapers, bottle feeding, comforting criers and teethers, distracting the destruction prone... the usual. Ideally, training babies (n.) will go back to their mommy and daddy without giving you the ultimate in parenting experiences - the sleepless night. See my previous post and the link to the talented Mr. Samuel L. Jackson reading a story for more on that subject.

I have been fortunate to have access to a few training babies in the last several months. Babies of friends, babies at the church nursery, babies snatched off the street, Auxiliary Dog in a diaper and onesie - you know, the usual. Here are a few things I have learned.

1. Spinning a baby around after a feeding and handing it back to the parents, while funny, is not really good for the baby. Or the parent. And what goes around comes around.

2. In a large enough cross-section of babies, there will always be one who is terrified by your mere presence. (This may only apply to males who haven’t shaved in a few days.)

3. In a large enough cross-section of babies, there will always be one who finds the outlet without the safety cover, the cabinet without the child-lock, and the lever that opens the diaper pail.

4. Babies love silly dances. They love them even more when they go on for hours. Don’t try. It’s like trying to wear out a retriever with a game of fetch.

5. Whatever you do to comfort a crying baby will most likely be the exact wrong thing.

6. With the exception of terrified child (see no. 2 above) most babies are fascinated by facial hair. And noses. And want to taste both.

7. The concept of putting a baby down for a nap is a joke perpetrated on us by our own parents and parents who have gone before us. They won’t go down. Not even with tasers.

8. Baby smell is up there with fresh cut grass, sawdust, and baking apple pie as a smell that confirms a benevolent creator who is infinitely creative, and really thought of everything.

9. The smell of a baby's diaper confirms that man is fallen, and that true evil does exist in the world.

10. Babies who are otherwise fine will get fussy 30 seconds before their parent or guardian comes back to get them from you, thus confirming your parenting incompetence to your peers.

Any other pointers or thoughts from the reading masses?

Bedtime Story

In honor of Father's Day weekend (or that's the excuse anyway) audible.com and some other websites have been featuring free downloads of Samuel L. Jackson reading the (adult) children's book "Go the F**k to Sleep."

I'm hardly the first person to link to it, but if you can get past the language, it's pretty funny. And frightening for someone in my position. Here's a youtube video of the reading. Enjoy.

Warping the Next Generation Made Easy

I firmly believe that a parent is charged with raising up their children to be good, upstanding and productive members of society. I believe that a child’s moral compass comes from his or her parents and the beliefs with which they were raised. I also believe that talking at length about the important values and beliefs I hope to instill in my children, particularly without any context in which to frame them, is pretentious, presumptuous (I have not actually been a parent for a single minute of my life at this point), and incredibly boring. Instead, let me share a few of the less important beliefs I hope to instill in our children before I unleash them on an unsuspecting world.

1. Light bulbs work by magic. In the true spirit of the dad from Calvin and Hobbes, nonsensical explanations for everyday occurrences have got to be some of the most fun you can have as a parent. Light bulbs work by magic, cars move through the power of my mind, and the sky is blue because they ran out of green paint while working on the grass are just a few of the items of nonsense I plan to teach our children (feel free to steal these, this type of madness works better the more it is spread around). Will they be mocked mercilessly if they made it to school with these beliefs intact? Certainly. But I think in later life they will look back fondly on those days as the times before they had to have their father involuntarily committed.

2. Beagle is Your Older Brother. Wife is really not on board with this one, but I envision this coming up in the context of the “where do babies come from?” line of questioning. As I explain to our children that only married mommies and daddies are allowed to have babies*, I can then transition to my wife and I, who were not yet married when Beagle came along, so instead of having a real human baby, we had a dog. And he is their older brother.
“But what about Auxiliary Dog?” the child will undoubtedly ask.
“Don’t be silly, child,” I’ll reply. “He’s just a dog.”

* I recognize that this line will only fool them for the period between birth and their first glimpse of prime time television, but I’ll take what naivete I can get.

3. Han shot first. If I have to explain this to you, it will mean nothing to you. If I don't, then just keep fighting the fight.

4. Today’s children’s programming has nothing on the stuff we watched. This is not so much a belief as a self-evident truth. Yes, a lot of the cartoons I grew up with fail the test of time (beyond the nostalgia value, does any adult really enjoy the original Thundercats?). But, from what I have seen, today’s cartoons are almost uniformly crap, and the whole Saturday morning cartoon experience has been subverted to talk shows and advertising. I would like to accumulate DVDs of the best of my childhood - Bugs Bunny, of course, but also Animaniacs, Ghostbusters, Garfield and Friends, Muppet Babies (which may or may not be legally available, due to some of the Lucasfilm footage used in the closet shots), Rugrats, and classic Disney shorts. I am open to other suggestions from the eighties and nineties, but this is also an area where I am prepared to be proven wrong. Other than Phineas and Pherb (the only suggestion I’ve received from more than one trusted source) are their any modern cartoons, or non-cartoon children’s shows, worth 24 minutes of mine and my child’s time?

5. Dirt is good. Girl or boy, it doesn’t much matter - a chunk of their childhood needs to be spent outdoors. This is the closest to a spiritual belief I’ve included in this short list. It’s not that we are incapable of having fulfilling and satisfying lives spent primarily indoors (though one could make an argument). It’s more that *I* am incapable of doing that, so they have to come along for the ride.
The wife is not wild about this one either, so if anyone has suggestions for fully equipped cabins surrounded by wilderness? That’d be great....

I am open to other suggestions. What kind of oddball things did your parents do? What kind of inappropriately strong beliefs in mundane matters do you intend to inflict on your kids?

The Big Reveal

Whenever you tell friends and loved ones that you are expecting a child, inevitably someone (usually a female) will ask the mother-to-be: “How did you tell him he was going to be a dad?” While this utterly predictable question leads to telling the same story something like 159 times, and increases the pressure on the woman to be “creative” in making the big reveal, it is not altogether a bad question. I’m convinced most men would find out by getting punched in the face by a woman screaming “What did you do to me?!” if not for the fact that they would have to tell that story to their friends over and over again later. Oh, and explain to the ER docs how their husband fell down some stairs. In any event, whether you care or not, here’s how it went down for us:

I came home from work one Wednesday evening in early December to find my wife, already at home, with dinner just about ready to come out of the oven. This was not an unheard of set of circumstances, but a very welcome surprise just the same. Before dinner was done cooking, she took me to our Christmas tree and handed me a wrapped present, explaining that she’d bought it for me that day and thought about putting it in my stocking, but changed her mind and wanted me to open it now. The gift was a book titled “Babies: An Owner’s Manual.”

I got a wry smile on my face, thinking very little of it at first blush. I’ve always been a little slow. We had been talking very seriously about having a baby, and had, I suppose, been actively trying for about two weeks, but I honestly figured this was just some instructive reading for our hypothetical future. I was looking forward to a lot more trying before we saw any results, but as the man says: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. It wasn’t until I looked at the very meaningful look on my wife’s face - wide eyes that seemed to say “why did I marry the dumbest man on the planet - that I realized this book was more than her usual planning ahead. What can I say - I am not the brightest crayon in the box.

I guess you could say I was a little shocked. Why? I don’t know. This is the natural consequence when you do the stuff they talked about in health class without some form of preventative. But we weren’t really “trying,” you see. We were not-not trying. This is fairly lame distinction, but I didn’t make it up. We have had a number of friends and acquaintances who have found their way down this road before us. For a few of them, we had the stones to outright ask the question: “Were you trying?” [We’re nosy. Sue us.] Occasionally, we get the response: “We were not-not trying.” This apparently means the couple in question stopped using any form of birth control, but it is somehow distinguishable from actually putting forth effort to make a child. I suppose actually trying involves taking uteran temperatures and taking “lunch breaks” at 10:37 in the morning to get the timing right. If that’s the case, I guess “not-not trying” is really closer to forgetting a pill on New Year’s night and waking up with a long blank period in your memory, and several months of nausea in your future. Eh. I digress.

So, my wife told me the big news with a gift. I remember elation, then numbness, and then doubt (it was a very faint blue line). Really, as thrilling as the news was, it didn’t start sinking in for me until I started feeling her (our baby, that is) move around in there in the last couple of months. But the gift giving idea was a hit, and we ultimately ended up using that to tell our parents that they were about to be grands (a first on both sides of the family). For her folks we used a poem in a frame and a baby toy - a stuffed giraffe. For my folks, who were on their way to another disappointing Gamecock post-season bowl game, we used USC Grandparent T-Shirts. For our friends we cheaped out - we gathered them for a group picture at our holiday party, and instead of saying “cheese” we had them say “Ashley’s pregnant.” We still haven’t gotten the pictures developed, but we got some great looks.

My point, if I have one at all, is this: gifts that are given for no obvious occasion often come with strings. Twenty year long, multi-hundred thousand dollar strings. Proceed with caution if one is offered.

Don't Drink the Water

I’ve heard just about every expectant parent I’ve ever met say something to the effect of “there must be something in the water” because of the sheer number of pregnancies they notice while they are expecting their own child. To a certain extent, I think this is just situational awareness. You (or your spouse) is pregnant, so you are more likely to notice others in similar circumstances. Much like you fail to notice how many blue SUVs are on the road until you purchase a blue SUV. Unlike the SUV example however, most people don’t regret their decision after noticing all the other expectant mothers out there.

Maybe that’s all there is to the water theory, but our experience has certainly borne out the cliche. Of the married women in our immediate social circle, it seems that two out of every three are currently pregnant. In the world at large, the number doesn’t seem that big - at least until you set foot in a Target. That’s probably a topic for another time - I swear they use some pheromone to attract pregnant women and new mothers.

In any case, at some point all those pregnancies have got to turn into real, live, crying babies. And that’s exactly what has happened for one set of our friends. Congratulations to Amelia Shea on becoming an “outside baby” twenty minutes ahead of her due date. Congratulations to mommy and daddy as well. We all look forward to meeting this little one soon.

Dogs Just Know

As readers of the first iteration of this blog (i.e., my closest and most bored friends and family members) may remember, the wife and I have two dogs: Beagle and Auxiliary Dog. We also have Cat, who does not really qualify as a pet so much as a nemesis who lives in my house and poops on my floor, and survives only because of my wife’s compassion and desire to avoid bloodshed. But this is not about Cat. This is about our dogs.

Our dogs have been suspicious that something is going on in our house for some time now. Perhaps it has been the cleaning frenzy my wife has been conducting as she “nests” (I understand this is the accepted term, and is in no way demeaning). Perhaps it’s the bonnets and baby clothes she has forced Auxiliary Dog to wear around the neighborhood (this is called “annoyance training,” and it is good for dogs who are about to be invaded by small, noisy, handsy rugrats). Perhaps its being driven to the vet in a child safety seat (this is just because it’s funny). We’ll never know what gave the game away, but the dogs know something is definitely up.

Beagle especially has been melancholy lately. He’s been wearing more eye makeup and black fur, and listening to a lot of Dashboard Confessional. It frankly has me a little concerned, but I guess he’s always been a little emo. When we’ve been upstairs, in what will soon be the nursery, Beagle follows us up to the landing and lays down outside, staring at us with baleful eyes that seem to say “you guys are screwing up my universe.” Poor emo Beagle.

I suppose I can’t really blame the dog. My wife and I both had interlopers in our own childhoods that made less than stellar impressions (sorry sis, you were lame that first year). My own experience with expecting a younger sibling caused me to make up stories about my imaginary friend Charlie -who was also expecting a new baby brother or sister in the immediate future- causing wanton destruction and running away from home. I did try to reach out with the olive branch, though, and invite my three day old sister outside to play when she was brought home from the hospital. Needless to say, things went downhill from there.

My beautiful, amazing, compassionate, and gentle wife was more direct and just pushed her infant sister off the bed a few months after she arrived and later convinced her that she was an alien from another planet. That’s right - any older sibling can take the “you were adopted” route. How many could pull off the Kryptonian fable?

We adjusted. After years of therapy, so did our younger sisters. Beagle will as well. After he gets over the fact that I threw away his Dashboard CD. Auxiliary Dog seems largely unaffected by the goings on, and has elected to simply stake out his small pocket of space on the couch against all current or future encroachment. Unless Beagle, Cat, or one of us humans want to sit there of course.

Book Review: Dinosaur v. Bedtime

For reasons that should be obvious, my reading habits are about to change. Radically. I suppose at first, it really doesn't matter what I read to our baby, since the phone book will serve just as well to accustom her to my voice as any work by Dr. Seuss. Still, my wife has drawn the line at Dostoevsky. She has a point - driving my daughter into depressive fits of alcoholism before her baby teeth come in would probably not win me Father of the Year. I figure that while she's still figuring out the whole concept of language, I can read her some of my own personal favorites (The Hobbit, anyone?), but once she is beginning to understand and pay attention to more than the sound of my voice, it is time for something more age appropriate.

To that end, my wife and I have started accumulating a small collection of children's books, through gifts and select purchases. We have even begun trying out a few of them on our yet unborn child, just trying to guage her interest. Okay, really it's more about my interest at this point. I'm trying to figure out which books are going to be fun to read to our kid, and which ones I will make my wife read to her.

Kidding.

We recently came across a very colorful board book called Dinosaur v. Bedtime. I'd share the cover, but copyright lawsuits against crappy blogs no one actually reads are all the rage these days, so I'll pass on that unless the publisher emails me permission after reading this rad review ("Bueller? Bueller?"). We found it while perusing a book store one day, and knew after one read through we had to have it for our baby. Well, for me, at least. The main character is a dinosaur. He roars on every page. He battles bowls of spaghetti, boring adults, and inevitably (warning: spoiler ahead), bedtime. Infinite possibilities for roaring noises and fun voices abound.

While the limitations of the little Dinosaur's language imbues this work with a rich sense of pathos, the real value of this work is in the subtle subtext.
... aaaand that's enough of THAT kind of review.

After spotting the book in the store, we decided to hold off for a little while (we were only about four months along at that point). Then I decided to buy it for my wife as part of her birthday present. Yes, I bought my wife a present for our child, which was really for me, on her birthday. I am just like those guys that get their wife a vacuum for valentine's day. Fortunately, my wife is not only smart, beautiful, funny, and good and growing human beings, she is also gracious. In fact, she admitted to me that she had also bought the book, for me, for Father's Day. Obviously, great minds think alike.

We took the book for a spin, with me reading to Ashley's belly. It was a little odd, at first, but the more granola-oriented pregnancy books all say this is fine idea. Who am I to argue? The baby certainly seemed to enjoy it - she danced, kicked, and punched every time the little dinosaur in the book roared. So either she loves the book, and we've got a early favorite for the bedtime story arms race, or I've managed to terrify my daughter in utero. Good days work in either case.

In conclusion, I will sum up my review of this book thusly: Reading Dinosaur v. Bedtime to my unborn child caused her to kick the sh** out of my wife. That's good enough for me.

It's a girl! .....Panic!

This is my daughter.

Yeah, that's right. My boys can swim.

She looks a little like an alien right now. We are optimistic the whole birth thing will clear that up.

In all seriousness, she is beautiful, and will be beautiful, but no one is permitted to recognize this in anything more than a platonic way until she is roughly thirty-five.

Having a kid... well, I am thrilled beyond description, but there is a reason why television and movies depict pregnancy as a completely terrifying experience. It is because pregnancy is a completely terrifying experience. And keep in mind (a) I am speaking from the perspective of an intentional pregnancy, and (b) I am speaking from the perspective of the male, who, physically, can do little more than fetch ice chips and cheer "Go Team" until the kid actually arrives. I strongly suspect pregnancy is even more daunting from perspectives other than my own.

Think about it - there is a human life, completely helpless, completely dependent, and bearing down inexorably on you and your significant other. You are over the moon with love and expectation, hope and dreams for your child's future, and simultaneously plagued with doubts about your own ability, irrational fears about every little thing that could possibly go wrong, and worries that you will not be able to provide everything they need. Ultimately, you just cross your fingers and hope you don't screw them up badly enough to turn them into a stripper, a felon, or a carny.

Now's the part where I admit to being a sexist, chauvinistic, misogynist by stating what every daughter's father I've met knows in the core of their being whether they admit it or not: all those fears are compounded when you have a daughter. Visions of first dates, broken hearts, crummy guys, and wedding days pound you out of the blue. You have an irrational desire to run over Bob Carlisle (that's a Butterfly Kisses joke, for those of you too lazy to google him). You buy a shotgun and start considering what clothes look most intimidating while cleaning said weapon. You no longer have the capacity to fully enjoy movies like Father of the Bride, which used to be a lighthearted romp.

At least that's been my experience. And my daughter is still T-minus ten weeks old. Roughly.

It's going to be a trip.

Redux

I started a blog in ... gosh, maybe in law school? Don't even remember now. In any case, it went by this same name and was sort of a conglomeration of randomness. My interest in blogging petered out along with the popularity of the blogging phenomenon, which now belongs mostly to a very few talented people who do it extremely well, and thousands of disenfranchised journalism majors. Posts stopped coming, and the few that made it on to the blog were more scattered and random than those that had come before. Not to say there wasn't some entertainment in that, but it wasn't doing anything for me, so I scrapped the whole damn mess.

Here's to a clean slate. If anything of discernible value comes from it, I'll be as surprised as you, Constant Reader. This much at least, I know for certain - the name I've slapped on the blog is more appropriate now than ever, for reasons which will become apparent in my next post.

Until then....