Who needs sleep?

Parents who are fortunate enough to have infants that sleep through the night (that being defined, in parent-speak, as a six hour window while it is dark outside) are both envied and despised by the rest of the parenting population. For a brief, magical period of time, we were those despised parents, who woke every morning at five a.m. to our daughters gentle nonsense coming over the monitor only a little bleary-eyed.

Then, one day a few months ago, Olivia decided to wake up at three. Then two. Then three again.

We were in denial for a while. Just a phase. Just a few off nights. She got thrown off by going out of town, by the change in time, by teething, by the state of modern political discourse. Ultimately, we had to admit, she was not sleeping through the night anymore. We got a night here or there, but nothing consistent.

As I have noted previously, Wife is the most awesome wife ever. While these middle of the night wakings are a bit of a pain for me, it is she who gets up to deal with them the vast, overwhelming majority of the time. Our usual midnight dialogue: Me: "grumble grumble work in the morning snore"; Wife: (as she stumbles to the nursery) I hate you." Yet, awesome as she is, Wife is not superhuman. When faced with a choice, at three a.m., between rocking our infant for an hour to soothe her back to sleep in her own room, or plopping her between two warm adult bodies in our own bed, keeping a firm finger on her pacifier, and going back to sleep immediately herself, Wife will choose the latter in 99 out of 100 cases. (The 100th being the "kick the husband until he fixes it solution.") The other alternative is the "cry it out" approach, which we were grand proponents of before we had a real live kid. This approach has the added disadvantage over the rocking solution of interrupting both parents sleep equally. I therefore reject it out of hand.

This is how we have come to the tradition of having the baby in the bed with us when I wake up in the morning.  Or, put another way, having a baby in the bed wake me up in the morning.

I'm usually a snooze alarm guy. I know, intellectually, that I am not getting useful sleep after that first alarm goes off. My response is "shut up, my bed is warm and cozy." But now, when I roll away to hit the Snooze, I run into an issue. In that instant, my sleeping infant daughter, so sweet and gentle, who is normally the rough diameter of a large roll of bounty paper towels and fits neatly between the Wife and I... that daughter expands instantaneously to take up the entirety of my side of the bed. While still asleep. So....I guess I'll take my shower ten minutes earlier...

I've also discovered how tall my little girl is getting in the worst possible way. While her tiny head still rests neatly at shoulder level with Wife and me while she sleeps in our bed, her feet are now in a position to do serious damage to her future siblings should her dreams call for tremendous kicking. (I think she replays the 1994 World Cup in her dreams about once a week). Awesome way to wake up. Really.

The best though, is when she wakes up in our bed, happy and bubbly, at 4:13 A.M. wanting to play. These days will never come again, and she's so cute and happy, and just wants to play with Daddy's hair and taste his nose and it's adorable. BUT IT'S 4:13 IN THE FREAKING MORNING.

Sleep loss is part of the package deal, and it creeps up on you in all kinds of subtle and not so subtle ways. The 2:30 kick in the boys being one of the less subtle ways. Nonetheless, it's worth it. I wouldn't trade it for all the sleep I could ever want.

Still...when the grandparents come to town, I'm taking a damn nap.

Nine Months

Obviously, regular posting has gone right out the window, along with predictable sleep patterns, and interruption free se- uh, sessions of Trivial Pursuit (yeah, that'll fool 'em). This is parenthood.

Despite the rather cliched complaints about having kids (all of which are true, which explains why parents are all, to a greater or lesser extent, terrible cliches themselves), Olivia is in a pretty fantastic age right now. We are approaching nine months - that magic point at which she has been an outside baby for as long as she turned the Wife's insides upside down. This gives me, as the dad, a new perspective on pregnancy. It lasts forever.

Some science types, attempting to make a name for themselves, have opined that human babies actually have a gestation period of 18 months - not nine. This is really me grossly oversimplifying their doctoral theses, but since none of us are going to care enough to read them anyway, I feel like I'm allowed. The reasons for this theory of human development are simple. Unlike most other animals, which are born with some basic abilities that might give them a possibility of survival, humans are born more or less useless (in a purely anthropological sense). It is only at about nine months (give or take) that a human infant begins to show the level of survival ability that other animals generally have within hours or days of birth. The theory goes that we are born in this underdeveloped state  because our far greater intellect (as compared with, say, a boll weevil) would require a head circumference at eighteen months too large to permit childbirth. So, we come out half-baked, and do the rest of our cooking on the outside. For nine more months. Give or take.

Nine months or so also happens to be a pretty fun age. Babies have a lot of personality at nine months, and provided your baby isn't a total jerk (some are) they can actually be a lot of fun at this point.  Olivia can crawl now, which means every morning, after her first feeding session of the day, my Wife and I get our blood pumping by playing hockey goalie to keep her from stage diving off of our bed. She is also much stronger, faster, and more curious than she has been previously. Glasses of liquid within her eyeline are fair game to go in Daddy's lap. The only time we can safely stop paying attention to her for three seconds is in her playpen, where Beagle lays nearby staring at her, confused by the human version of his crate. If she is anywhere else, and we turn our attention away, we inevitably turn back to find her with baby wipes, power cords or dirty shoes in her mouth. This is an astonishing ability, really, since it doesn't matter if any of those items are even in the room with her when we set her down - she will force them to materialize.

We're expecting the letter from Hogwart's any day now.

The only real downsides to this age as far as we can tell are baby-proofing (see above if you are confused about why) and teething. Your average baby has six teeth between six months and twelve months. Some spread them out. Olivia is still sporting her toothless smile, but they are getting close, and will probably be coming all at once. She is not amused.

Got no creative closer this time - gotta get back to baby proofing. Hooray.

In which I expound on parenting like I've actually got a handle on this thing...

Olivia, with gas

Parenting, I've been told, is the most exhausting job you never get to retire from. I can see it.

The Wife and I have been parents (in the fully accepted, "outside baby" sense) for just over three months. Being a parent is a blast. It's also a lot of work.

Despite my expectations that having a kid is like having a dog that slowly learns to talk, kids don't get housebroken within a few weeks of bringing them home. They might, if you were allowed to crate train them, but child welfare agencies get a little touchy about things like that. Nor will the Wife comply with my wishes to "freerange" our baby. So, you've got the work of near constant diaper changing to contend with as a new parent. I mentioned in an earlier post that our daughter's bladder control is inversely proportional to the newness of the diaper. It's not as bad anymore, but she has gotten to the point where she is entertained - I'm not making this up - by immediately soiling a fresh diaper on occasion. She laughs all the way through the changing.

She has my sense of humor, and I am doomed.

Babies also cry. Some more than others. Some only with cause, while others cry for no apparent reason. Boredom, hunger, temperature, pain, anxiety, and sheer excess energy can all constitute cause, so they might as well all cry for no apparent reason. As a parent, you spend a lot of your time doing things to keep your baby from crying. Exhausting things, like holding your baby while standing up and swaying gently. Sounds easy? Try it for four hours straight. Don't have a baby? Try a ten pound flour sack, and keep in mind those don't squirm. If you don't believe you will spend a lot of time doing this, try to get a new parent to stand still for a ten minute conversation. See that unconscious sway? Yep. Muscle memory is a powerful force.

You also do lots of rather undignified things to keep your child happy (or at least quiet), like making stupid faces and singing and dancing. Well, "dancing" is a rather loose term. My daughter's current favorite form of entertainment is for me to move her feet rhythmically to a stupid little tune. She has no idea it's the song from Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars IV, but when she's a little older she may wonder why she has such an affinity for that scene.

Feeding your kid is a lot of work too. Mostly I get a pass on this since I lack the necessary equipment, but we've started supplementing with formula, so I get to help some of the time. The biggest challenge in bottle feeding is getting most of the food in her mouth rather than on her face, neck, bib, onesie, bunny blanky, or daddy's shirt. Oh, and don't take that thing away from her until she tells you she's done. This is usually conveyed by passing out.

Dressing a child ... I'm not sure that I can give a better description than one I've read previously so I'll just steal it. Dressing a child is like trying to get a live squid in a fishing net without any tentacles poking out. With girls I think the problem is exponentially more complicated. Little boys get onesies. Maybe overalls, or a shirt and pants combo. If you are really ambitious, you might try putting your little man in a button up and clip on bow tie, depending on the level of pretentiousness you are going for. You are not likely to put him in tights, or bloomers, or put bows in his hair. But girls can be infinitely accessorized (see above picture for illustration). They also make a game of seeing how quickly and stealthily they can ditch those accessories, with extra points for leaving a sock or headband in bizarre places. I, for instance, don't recall leaving our daughter in the pantry (it's not a walk-in, in any case), so I'm not sure how her socks wind up in the back corner.

This is only a short list of the myriad "jobs" required to maintain a baby in good working order. And, keep in mind, this is only what is required during the "easy" period between getting your baby used to being out in the real world and when they start to crawl, walk, and talk, which necessarily means crawling away from you, falling down a lot, and repeating everything you say. How you are supposed to handle a kid at that stage I suppose we will figure out when we get there. Right now, we will try and enjoy her immobility and the more-or-less-reliable six hours of sleep a night she allows us.

In exchange for all this effort you get a helpless poop-machine, who laughs at your nonsense and owns you in every sense that matters. The joys of parenthood are not logical, and they are certainly not economic, but there is an inexpressible joy that comes from watching your baby achieve the simplest, most objectively silly task, like placing a pacifier in her mouth (the wrong way around) or roll over for the first time or hold her head up unassisted and follow you with her eyes. And any father with an ounce of his twelve-year old self left in him will get sophomoric glee from hearing his baby belch with impunity, and fart like a bellows with a huge smile on that little face.

The next twenty some odd years or so are pretty well booked for me. I don't think I'd have it any other way.

This Kid is Never Freaking Coming.

For those of you without the direct experience of pregnancy, the final month of the process is about the least comfortable any human being can feel outside of a third world prison or a Waffle House bathroom stall.

To say nothing of how the woman feels.

Undoubtedly, some of our Constant Readers are thinking – “thanks, I still have to go through this one day and you’re making it sound so bright and shiny for me.” Others are thinking “shut up – you two haven’t even hit your due date yet. Come back and complain when you’re carrying an eleven pound bowling bowl at 44 weeks.” To both camps, I can think of no more apropos response than to give you a giant raspberry.

If your first thought was “Only one man would dare give me the raspberry…. Lonestar!!!!!” you are definitely in the right place.

My wife, like most pregnant women, is subject to the “rule of eight” – that being, eight months of pregnancy makes you so ready to no longer be pregnant that you would literally punch your own grandmother to get labor started. Fortunately for grandmothers everywhere, there is no actual connection between receiving such a punch and triggering labor in the puncher. Therefore, only the most irritable of pregnant women suffering through the rule of eight actually follows through on the punch. (Get it? Follows through?) My wife has mercifully avoided many of the common pitfalls of pregnancy – overwhelming nausea, swollen feet, sore backs, etc. have mostly been absent from our household for the last eight months. Still, try carrying a concrete block that kicks you in the ribs periodically and you’ll see that even a relatively “easy” pregnancy isn’t a job for weaklings and pansies.

We have officially reached “term.” I don’t really understand the technical meaning behind the various stages of pregnancy, but “term” is good. I gather it means the baby is pretty much good to go at any point. It also appears to be the time when women who have sworn off pharmaceutical inductions and other medical interventions will start using folksy medicine as a metaphysical crowbar to pry the baby out of the womb. Our plan for the first night the baby was term was a dinner of eggplant parmesan and pineapple (both reputed to encourage contractions and possibly trigger labor), followed by a long walk (which can also help encourage labor) around the neighborhood. I hate eggplant, and Publix was out of pineapple (what the hell, Publix?!), so dinner was thwarted. Also it was hot outside, so the walk was postponed until September. But in theory, we are implementing all means at our disposal to encourage our baby to arrive early rather than late. Other suggestions that have been made to us include Mexican food (I fail to see the logic here) and bumpy car rides (same principle as long walks, I guess). Yes, we are also aware that sex can help trigger labor, but it would be really crass of me to dwell on that here.

Still, anything to help my wife in a time of need…

Statistically, first babies are not swift in arriving. I say “statistically” even though I’ve never looked at the stats, but accept as truth that first babies are more often late than they are early because I was late, and that seems right to me. I’m pretty sure it’s true. In any event, most women in my experience would prefer their babies arrive early (see above re: the last month of pregnancy and discomfort). This desire may also have something to do with the hope that, should a baby be a week or two early, he or she will have a slightly lower birth weight and be a commensurately easier delivery. Don’t get me wrong – most mothers aren’t looking for a low birth weight baby. If they were we’d see a tobacco section at Buy Buy Baby – that’s just capitalism. But given the choice between a seven pound baby and an eight pound baby, both otherwise perfectly healthy, I think most moms would say less is more. I don’t know how much of a difference those ounces would make, and barring a rather disturbing change in physiology, I never will. But I do kind of doubt a week or two one way or another makes a huge, or even a predictable difference in birth weight. I apparently lost weight in the two weeks after my due date before I was born. I’m reasonably certain my wife would not take an extra two weeks to shed a few ounces off of our daughter.

What I do know is that however long or short pregnancy feels, the final month seems to stretch on endlessly when you’re in the midst of it. In retrospect, I’m certain it will appear to have happened in the blink of an eye – that’s sort of the nature of things at this stage of life. But right now, it seems time is slowing to a crawl. We are ready to meet our daughter. My wife is ready to have ten minutes where I can hold her for a change. I’m ready to have the thermostat set above “arctic.” We are, in short, ready. Still scared as hell, but ready.

And, in the true spirit of foreshadowing our lives to come, our child is going to keep us waiting.

On Geeking Your New Baby

Let’s be honest. It’s not really as if our soon-to-be born child will have much of a chance to be anything other than a massive geek. Her tastes may run counter to ours in some ways, but she has virtually no chance to get out of our house without being inclined towards something innately dorky - science fiction or fantasy literature, elaborate and complex board games, dwarf tossing, etc. She will almost certainly go to college quoting Star Wars, Monty Python, and/or Firefly. I’m more than okay with that.

And none of this precludes the possibility that our daughter (or any subsequent children) may have talents that lie in territory not exclusively belonging to geek culture. I doubt we will raise up a future University of South Carolina Quarterback (I wouldn’t tolerate the arrest record, for one) but I can’t rule out the possibility altogether. Maybe music will be more their game. One can be a music geek, but can also be musically talented without being geeky about it. At least in theory. Most of the talented musicians I know are geeks. But I digress....

Regardless of where life takes our children, we, like any good parents, want to give them every advantage. That means geeking them, early and often.

“Geeking” a baby is just “geeking out” or expressing your geek tendencies in an outward fashion, specifically directed at and expressed upon a target: your child. Before your child is old enough to have and express preferences on clothing, television, toys, food, pop culture, and political ideologies all of these things are left to you. By geeking your baby, you can influence those future preferences. Be warned that the influence may not always manifest in the way desired or expected. Backfires have been known to occur. Minor example - my sister and I had polar opposite reactions to constant childhood exposure to Jimmy Buffett. While recognizing that many infinitely more talented musicians will never catch a break, I happen to enjoy Jimmy Buffett in almost any context. On the other hand, until fairly recently my sister entered into drooling convulsions anytime she heard the opening chords to “Come Monday.”

In retrospect, that might have actually been a positive reaction. But I digress again...

Anyway, despite the risks of backfire, if you can’t have a little fun at your new child’s expense, or at least with their assistance, what is the point of parenthood?

“So,” you ask, “how does one ‘geek’ their baby?”
I respond, “I’m glad you asked.”
You return, “So tell me already.”
I reply, “I will.”
You say, “okay.”
And we move on….

Clothing
Perhaps the easiest way to geek your baby is in your approach to dressing them. There is virtually no limit to the inappropriate, novel, and incredibly geeky items you can buy for your kid. Take, for instance, these Star Trek onesies from Thinkgeek.


Nice, right? I hope the red one says “please keep an eye on me” on the back. Look hard enough and you can probably find similar items for the science fiction/fantasy tale of your choice. The interwebs are full of strange and wonderful things for babies like Yoda-ear knit caps, vampire teeth pacifiers, and baby Cthulu hooded towels. Well, I haven’t actually seen that last one, but if it doesn’t exist already, somebody should make it. In any event, dressing your infant appropriately (or inappropriately as the case may be) can make them a living, breathing billboard to your own person fanboy or fangirl tendencies. But there is no real reason to spend lots of money on clothing your baby in geek garb. One of the best ideas we encountered in the myriad baby showers that were thrown for us (our friends and family are awesome, by the way) is the concept of a “onesie station” where guests decorate plain onesies with personalized messages or art. Your kid will need lots of onesies (or “creepers” if you prefer that term, though why you would I don’t know). Based on advice from older parents, having a stockpile of relatively plain onesies for layered garments, emergencies, and for days you’re just not out to impress anyone with your infant-related fashion sense is a good idea. Packs of these plain onesies go for about what a single elaborate onesie can cost. If those relatively plain onesies happen to get decorated by your incredibly geeky, fabric-marker loving friends, that’s just all the better.

Undoubtedly, you will end up with some sappy and sentimen–I mean, beautiful and caring messages on some of your onesies if you do something like this. But if your friends are like you, you’ll probably have some success on the geek front as well. Our showers resulted in some gems that included an original rendition of Trogdor that was quite good, a reference to the whole “a dingo ate my baby” scenario of the eighties, and a onesie declaring my daughter to be “daddy’s little tax deduction.” Damn right. Sure, they may not be professional print quality items, and yes, they almost certainly will violate some copyright laws somewhere, but there’s something uber-geeky about homespun (home-decorated, at least) geek-baby clothing. I approve.

This does not even address the subject of Halloween costumes for infants and all the geek-splendor that can result. It’s really just too easy to go crazy there, but I’ll touch upon kids and costumes in a little while.

Reading Material

For the first few months of your child’s life, it doesn’t much matter what you read to them. Mostly they are just absorbing your voice, and the simple rhythms of language itself. The whole issue of “attention span” is kind of a moot point. Why not take advantage of this fact and read something you enjoy to the baby? On my read aloud to-do list: The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, and possibly the Dresden Files and Dark Tower (maybe with some creative editing and skipped chapters). It could just as easily be Tolstoy or Melville, but if I can’t stand to read it why would I subject the baby to it? Some of these can be cycled back through as kids get a little older and have the attention span to follow chapter books. Others (Dresden and Dark Tower, for example) will probably go back on the shelf until at least adolescence. But, you might as well get them accustomed to the universes geeks play in early.

Fortunately, it’s not all on you once you get your children to the point of basic literacy. There’s plenty of books for children of all ages that can indoctrinate them just as well as you can. Take a look at this....

If Star Wars isn't your bag, you can rest assured that similar board books exist for whatever your interests... or the interest you want to encourage in your kid. Personally, I kind of like the idea of teaching our kids that E is for Ewok and S is for Stormtroopers.



Socializing

If you aren’t going to be those parents who closet themselves off from the universe when your first kid is born, then inevitably your kid is going to get packed off to one or more social gathering, concert, monster truck rally, or other event which piques the interest of you or your spouse. Since you and/or your spouse can be assumed to be in some sense a geek by virtue of the fact that you are still reading this post on this blog, these interest will run similar to those I have written about previously (see my post on Growing your Inner Geek).

Realistically, midnight movies are probably not going to happen for you for at least a while after a baby is born, unless you have an awesome and incredibly understanding babysitter. In any case, taking your baby along is a bad idea. Seriously – if I find that awesome babysitter, I don’t want your kid crying through the movie. Please don’t do it. But there are other events your baby can tag along to, and possibly even participate in.

If you happen to be in to table-top role playing, make your player character (PC) a parent and use your baby as a prop to help you get into your character. Or assign the baby to play some of the less interactive Non-player characters (NPCs). Some bartenders just grunt, so there’s a place to start them. Whatever you do, don’t let the baby hold your dice. Nobody likes to pause combat for the Heimlich maneuver.

If you are headed to a Con, take your baby along. You will probably have better luck getting pictures with geek icons like Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion if you ask them to take a picture with your cute kid, and those are memories that will last a lifetime. For you… the kid will have the pictures at least. You’ll probably have an even better time if you go in costume, and incorporate the baby in the theme. There are some easy ways to go about this – Batman and Robin, or any superhero with a sidekick is an obvious choice. Han and Chewy, Kirk and Spock, Aragorn and one of the hobbits (hehe... that’s just funny, I don’t care who you are), are a few other ideas. But you could get obscure, as Con-going geeks are wont to do. Don medieval armor and a sword, and wear the baby in a backpack/carrier, and you’re Michael Carpenter! (For those of you unfamiliar with Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, Michael Carpenter is a Knight of the Cross – a modern day paladin who slays evil with a sword that may be Excalibur. He’s also a good Catholic, and always has babies in his house. …Admittedly, it loses something when you have to explain so much.)

Those are just a few things that come to mind. How else can you geek your baby?

The Final Countdown

If you saw an image of Gob Bluth throwing colored hankies awkwardly into the air when you read that post title, you've come to the right place. But this post has nothing to do with Arrested Development. That was just a cheap ploy to get you here.

We are quickly approaching the point where our first child’s birth is days away rather than weeks (hence "The Final Countdown"). It has become apparent, as the philosopher once said, that this sh** is about to get real.

I am looking forward to parenthood. I hope that truth comes across in my posts. I am incredibly excited to meet our daughter, and I look forward to watching her grow up and become an intelligent, beautiful, talented smart-ass just like her mom and dad (okay, so my intelligence, beauty and talent are debatable).

But obviously, something as significant as parenthood comes with a generous side order of change, even above and beyond the extra tick on the census tally of your home and the extra tax deduction on April 15. There is the obvious lack of sleep from having a newborn in the house. There is the financial pressure of providing for a child’s health, education, and overall well-being from birth until (ideally) 18 or (realistically) 27. There are decisions you didn’t need to make when it was just two adults living together. And at some point, you will probably drive a mini-van. If your pride or vanity just can’t handle that, you’ll drive a mini-van that calls itself an SUV.

All in all, it’s a big shift. The closest life change one can draw an analogy to would be marriage. Marriage and parenthood don’t really have a lot in common - I’d like to think the former would come before the latter in most cases (I’m old fashioned) but besides the obvious relationships between the two concepts, similarities are hard to come by. In marriage, two individuals (adults?) go from making decisions that impact only themselves, to making decisions (hopefully in concert) that impact both. In parenthood those two people, who quite likely haven’t completely figured out the first part, now have to make decisions for a completely helpless brand-new human being whose only contribution to any given debate will take the form of a piercing cry, or if you’re lucky a gas-induced giggle.

Both marriage and parenthood involve change, but you only get a big party for one of them. Whatever you may say about baby showers - good, bad, or indifferent - I don’t qualify them as parties. Yes there are gifts and food, and you may even have a good time if you manage to avoid the inevitable “guess the baby food” games, but I just don’t think they qualify as “parties.” No one ends up dancing naked, making out with the dog, or going home in the back of a squad car. Not usually anyway. With a marriage, on the other hand, you often get a wedding reception (which can be a real party depending on the circumstances) and a bachelor/bachelorette party.

Bachelor parties.... well here’s the thing. I don’t know the history of bachelor parties as a concept. Maybe it’s a holdover from the days when wedding celebrations were week-long affairs. I don’t know. This isn’t an academic examination of modern wedding culture. What I know from my observation is that bachelor parties as popularized in movies and television have it exactly wrong, and fortunately for me, most of my friends have got it pretty right. In popular culture, bachelor parties are mostly about haranguing the groom-to-be for what he is losing: ostensibly, his freedom, by which we mean his freedom to sleep with anything that sits still long enough, his freedom to throw money at half dressed women named Bambi who are just paying their way through college, and his freedom to drink himself into embarrassment. Most of my friends who have had bachelor parties have treated them as celebrations of what is being gained. Yes, there may have been some good natured ribbing, and yes, copious volumes of alcohol may have been consumed, but it was all in a spirit of camaraderie and encouragement that doesn’t exist in movies or on TV. Yeah, I’m old fashioned, and I’m actually pretty proud of that. I did go to one bachelor party where the groom-to-be kicked a party-goer in the face as we all attempted to tie him down with duct tape, bury him in the sand on Folly Beach, and put makeup on him. But that’s a story for another day..

...Actually, that was the entire story.

But I bring up this concept of bachelor parties because I am curious: what would the concept of a bachelor party look like if it were changed and applied to a couple on the eve of becoming parents? Unless you are celebrating before you start trying to have kids, you’re probably not hitting the bars for a drinking binge. People frown at resting your beer on a baby bump. Clubbing? My wife and I have never been much for the dance club scene (such as one exists in Columbia), but I’ll admit the image of the two of us on a dance floor during her eighth month of pregnancy with “Techno Chocolate” blaring in the background is kind of hilarious. More specifically, the image of the likely reactions we would get is what gets me laughing. Even more innocuous, nontraditional forms of celebration are limited either by the condition of pregnancy or by the absurd heat of South Carolina summer. I tried to convince her that go carts were perfectly safe, but that was a non-starter. Same with paint ball, though the look she gave me was almost as painful as a paintball welt. The golf balls on the putt-putt course literally melted when they hit the cement. A midnight movie? We’d both fall asleep. Maybe that’s the most practical form of celebrating/preparing for being parents. Sleeping. For about 48 hours straight.

I don’t know the answer. So I put it again to our Constant Readers - particularly those of you with kids - what would you do if you had a night (or dare I say, a weekend) without the responsibilities of parenting? If you could go back and celebrate the the transition from pre-parental life to having a child, how would you do it?

Registering

The difference between creating a gift registry for a wedding and creating a gift registry for a baby is the difference between an autumn drive in the mountains and having a cheese grater rubbed over your knuckles while someone threatens to kick your dog. The foliage tour may not be your cup of tea, but it need not be unpleasant, and can actually be quite enjoyable. The latter, however, is both immediately painful and causes you immense disquiet for the future well-being of another creature which is dear to you.

In the context of wedding registries, the following questions, statements, and lamentations might be made:

“Do we really need formal china?”
“Who in our family is going to pay for a $300 pillow, let alone a set of two?”
“Hell yes, register for the bar kit!”
“Do you need to make ray gun noises every time you scan an item?”
“No, beer and video games are not appropriate registry items.”
“This is kind of fun.”

By way of contrast, the following might be said while registering for a new baby:

“What degree of impact has this product been tested for?”
“How many times has this product been recalled?”
“Why are you implying my child will die if I don’t by this?”
“What is this? What does it do? Who would need that? Why? Can you start over please?”
“There are different kinds?”
“This is mildly terrifying.”

The difference obviously is that the wedding registry is all about the wants (framed as needs, no doubt, but wants all the same) of two individuals who presumably resemble adults and are able to fend for themselves. The baby registry, while full of wants and whims, is primarily about the needs of a helpless, squealing newborn, and is being overseen in most cases by those same two presumed-adults, a year or several down the line, who are slowly realizing they don’t have a clue what adulthood and responsibility are all about. There is immense pressure to choose correctly, to cover every base, and to do everything in your power to protect your new child from Entropy - that is, the scientific principle that the universe is out to kill us all.

We put this pressure on ourselves, completely ignoring or forgetting that thousands of years of human history have passed with human infants wearing strips of cloth or nothing at all, sleeping on hay, and playing with sticks and rocks in order to get all of us here. We defy history, choosing instead to give our own children better than one in ten odds of survival by buying the latest and greatest gear rolled out by Graco, or Britax for the big spenders. The pressure is not eased at all by the overt upselling of the big-box baby stores, where the employees will pass you from department to department on your introductory tour, give you intense demonstrations of the high end products and not quite tell you that your child will be killed or maimed if you buy a lesser product. The big-box stores not geared specifically for babies are no better, since they just hand you the registry gun and assume you know what is best for your baby. Right.

All of that is a meandering preamble to the real reason for this post: listing and mocking some baby oriented products. These products were chosen more or less at random for usefulness, ridiculousness, mock-worthiness, or sheer oddity. And because I was able to find them with a simple Google search.

1. Waste Disposal bags - the official description needs no help: “One for really hard-core greenies in keeping with current trends to cut down waste and keep in tune with natural rhythms. The idea is to monitor Baby’s bowel movements, and, instead of clothing them in diapers, let them do their thing whenever and wherever they please. The trick is to always have your 100% bio-degradable ‘baby poop scoop’ bag at hand to ensure their waste doesn’t become the planet’s.”

Yeah. It’s just like what you use when you take your dog for a walk. For your kid.

2. Pee-Pee Tee-pee - Doesn’t take much imagination to figure these out, but here’s a hint: my wife and I won’t need these disposable items for our daughter.


3. The Zaky Pillow - Pillow designed to look and feel like disembodied hands holding your baby in place. Have to admit, I found this on a fellow father/blogger’s site, and I have to agree with his assessment. Creepiest kid product ever. See picture if you don't believe me.

4. Milkscreen Test Strips - Brilliant little invention changes color if your breast milk is above a specified concentration of alcohol. Because let’s be honest, after nine months, no one gets to see the damn kid without bringing mommy a bottle of wine.

5. mamaRoo - Hi-tech “swing” features numerous movement setting designed to sooth your baby, including (inevitably) the setting for which it is named - the gentle hopping of a kangaroo. This device probably works wonders, seeing as it take advantage of the soothing genetic memory every human child shares of riding around in a marsupial’s pouch.

6. Any item, clothing or otherwise, ever featured on Toddler’s in Tiaras - Your three-year old doesn’t need high heels, diamond earrings, or anything made by Louis Vuitton. Especially if you are buying her formula with WIC vouchers.

What’s the most ridiculous baby-oriented product you’ve run across? More importantly, for us future parents, what’s the most useful?

Monday, Monday

I am a very typical office drone in the sense that I really drag on Mondays. I love the weekends, and it takes me a while to get started on Mondays. I loathe scheduling anything on Monday, and this goes double for Mondays that follow long weekends and days off (yesterday was one such Monday) - there's usually too many fires to put out to make it worthwhile.

Long story short - there's a very short list of things I wouldn't do to avoid Mondays.

Spending seven hours in a hospital with a wife in extreme pain is on that very short list.

My wife is fine, and the baby is fine, and for clarity's sake the baby is still in utero (not a Nirvana album - actually still in my wife). In fact, at no point yesterday was our baby in any distress whatsoever, as evidenced by the constant and enthusiastic kicks she gave the fetal heart monitor my wife wore in the Maternal Assessment Center. You think nails on a chalk board make an annoying sound? Try the squawk of a fetal heart monitor with the volume on ten while your baby does an impression of a Japanese women's soccer player scoring on an American goalie.

I'm sorry. Too soon?

Still, we had a bit of an adventure yesterday, with my wife extremely uncomfortable for the vast majority of the day, and only slightly better today. After seven hours we were discharged, only really knowing what the problem wasn't - no kidney stones or gall stones. Just extremely painful muscle spasms on her right side. Having felt pretty much useless for most of the day (not at all helped by what I think was my first ever migraine) I wonder how I will react when my wife is actually in labor. I kinda hope I can be less of a lump when the time comes than I was yesterday.

Also, although my wife maintains she was perfectly clear in her Facebook post from the hospital, I would like to apologize to anyone who was caused worry, panic, distress, bloating, or mild diarrhea by the post referencing IVs and monitors on her day off. I fielded more than a few phone calls, emails, and texts yesterday, and we are very grateful for your concern. Everyone is fine, and the countdown to baby continues.





Vaguebooking or not? You be the judge.

Great thanks are owed to the staff at LMC's Maternal Assessment Center. They were a great comfort, and very professional. And although waiting in a hospital for seven hours is never going to be a fun way to spend a day, waiting in a private room with a recliner and cable TV is about as good as the experience can get.

For those of you who have asked, my inevitable review of Harry Potter is on the way. I wanted to allow at least the opening weekend to come and go before posting it so those who really wanted to see it without the temptation of spoilers and or positive/negative hype coloring their view would have that opportunity. That said, if you really wanted to avoid all that I suppose you could just not read any such post until after you'd seen the movie. Oh well. Chalk it up to needless courtesy.

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?