Year One

Olivia turned one a few weeks ago. This is shocking in a number of ways. It is a trite, cliched, and utterly true expression parents use in describing the growth of their children when they say "time flies." It is equally and paradoxically true that it is difficult to remember clearly what life was like before kids. I don't get it either, but both are true.

One year is a great age. Of course, as I understand it, they are all great ages until somewhere between eleven and thirteen when every child suddenly needs to be beaten daily and locked in an Iron Maiden until they turn twenty-five. But that's a ways off. At year one, Olivia has a lot of personality. She is very social, and rarely fussy. This has nothing to do with her age or any successful parenting strategy and everything to do with luck. (Don't worry - whenever the hypothetical number two comes along we'll get our payback.) She loves books - being read to, throwing them, pulling them off shelves, tearing the pages, and (just to drive her aunt Sara crazy) dog-earring the pages. She also loves music, and has developed the fascinating habit of keeping a beat with her feet when songs she recognizes come on . I'd say she could replace the drummer from Nickelback, but I'd like her to maintain some standards.

She has just started to become somewhat pickier about what she eats. I don't think she actually cares what she consumes so much as she likes to screw with us about when she's willing to eat it and when she's going to throw it on the floor and laugh. Or feed it to the dogs, and then get angry at them for having the nerve to eat it. The good news though is that there is nothing (or virtually nothing) she can't eat now, which makes feeding her when we are out and about much easier. Where we used to have to stop and feed her healthy organic strained squash, we can now throw a bag of Oreos at the kid and watch her go nuts.

Olivia is tentatively trying to walk. What this means in real terms is that she is walking all over the house with one hand on walls, furniture, bookshelves, etc, then taking her hand off of said "support" for about one second, realizing she is free-standing, and plopping on her butt and crawling away. We're signing her up for a Five K in a few weeks. Nothing like the deep end of the pool to teach a kid to swim.

This past year has been pretty amazing. Part of me wants to take five and enjoy this phase a little while longer, but that's not how this whole thing works. I do look forward to seeing what comes next.

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.

Super Bowl Edition

In the spirit of ESPN's ten takeaways from last night's game, I've decided to offer up my own short list of takeaways for the common man - the man who, like me, is from somewhere other than Boston or NYC, prefers college football to the overpaid, over-praised divas of the NFL, and didn't really have a dog in the fight last night. This sub-par Bud commercial is for you.

1.  The commercials really seem to be going down hill.

There were a few decent offerings. The Chevy apocalypse commercial was good fun, and the lack of any sense of humor from Ford's corporate office this week only makes the commercial seem more valid. Clint Eastwood for Chrysler was powerful in a whole different way, but the Seinfeld/Leno effort to sell cars was a forced, weak effort, as evidenced by the fact that I cannot now tell you which car company they were shilling for. The E*Trade baby made his customary appearance, which was good for a laugh, but he's getting a little long in the tooth. Time for some younger blood, perhaps.

Mostly though, the commercials were just kind of blah. I'm probably the only person in America not putting the Ferris Bueller car commercial into the elite category, but Broderick just kind of mailed it in (almost as if he called in sick...how meta). The typical beer and Pepsi ads were universally forgettable. Betty White's appearance (regrettably advertising reality television) was at least worth a laugh.

2.  The halftime show was (much) better than I expected.

I heard Madonna was performing and automatically thought "meh." She's not my cup of tea on the best of days, and her best days are behind her. I thought.

I stand corrected. While her music is still not going to top my playlist, Madonna proved to me that she is still a knock-out performer capable to delivering a high quality product. The visuals were amazing, and the quality of the sound and dance was top notch. Apparently there was a "middle finger malfunction" with one of the featured artists - clearly in poor taste, but I missed it. All in all a great show. Anything would have looked good after last year's Black Eyed Peas fiasco, but Madonna took it several notches above the talent we've seen the past several years.

3.  I am not as young as I used to be.

Eating my weight in junk food at a Super Bowl party used to be no problem. Now, like staying up past midnight and trying to work the next day, it's a sure way to wreck myself. Keeping a six month old up for the game and then trying to get a normal night's sleep? Also guaranteed to start your next day off wrong.


4.  The Giants won.

Turns out there was a football game on last night too. This might seem obvious to some, but since the Patriots' receiver corp missed the memo, I thought it was worth reiterating.

Go the *&^% to sleep!

Parenthood is amazing. The show is moderately entertaining, I'm speaking here of the real deal. Having a kid - it's awesome. Those of you faithful readers without kids are undoubtedly in the phase of life where you are surrounded by people like me, high on their own blissful cloud because of the joy that comes from having a kid.

You can't stand me.

It's okay. I've been there. I know how unbearable I am. I also know that the ability to reproduce doesn't make me any better, smarter, or faster than anyone else. God knows you just have to look around once in a while to see that being a parent doesn't automatically qualify you as #winning at life. But, all other things being equal, it's pretty awesome.

Olivia is probably in the best phase of babyhood I can imagine, though undoubtedly I will say that of every phase. Right now, she is smiling and laughing all the time, babbling nonstop in her consonant-heavy language of nonsense. Undoubtedly, if we could interpret her revelations, it would just be "42" over and over again. She is rolling over, and getting close to sitting up on her own. She loves to stand and sway and cuddle, but can't yet crawl or walk away, so she's not getting into all the stuff babies eventually get into like electrical sockets and day-trading. And she's sleeping through the night.

Correction. She was sleeping through the night. We have begun to experience the dreaded dormis interruptus (not to be confused with another genus of interruptus that flows naturally from having kids).

For about three blessed months, Olivia slept through the night. 5:30 or 6:00 wake-up calls were common enough, but any new parent will tell you that this is an amazing lie-in. Especially if we actually went to bed shortly after we put her down at 9:00 or 9:30 the night before. Oh man, those were the days.

Then something changed. We don't know what, or why, but suddenly she stopped sleeping all the way through the night. She first started waking around two or three, crying or wanting to play. We assumed, because this was about the time she was mastering rolling over, that she was waking herself up with her new mobility, and it would pass. Then she started needing to be fed in the middle of the night again. After going months without a midnight feeding. She started fighting tooth and nail against being put in her crib. Lately, she just doesn't really go down at all. She sleeps fitfully for a few hours, then yells. Another hour. Another yell. Another...and another...

I do not get the full brunt of these midnight air raids. Saintly Wife sees to her at night so I have an outside chance of functioning at work (I really am the luckiest man alive, and I know it). But even so, it is taking its toll on both of us. I'm getting paler, and sunlight really irritates me. Also, I've noticed that I'm starting to sparkle sometimes, and no longer think Stephanie Meyer was just writing to pay the rent. Something is truly off about me.

Parenthood really is awesome. But if you can get a robot nanny to get your kid through the night for the first year or so, definitely jump all over that. You'll all be better for it.

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.

Teachable Moments

"Turn me around. The game is on."

One of the things I have looked forward to most about being a parent is the opportunity to share my wisdom and warped perspective on the world with my young, impressionable progeny.  As evidenced by previous posts, I have probably spent more time than is strictly healthy envisioning ways to turn my child (or should we be so blessed, children) into a veritable nightmare for the poor teachers she will one day be assigned to learn from. You poor, poor souls....

Even though my daughter is not yet old enough to retain any of my wise instruction, I am trying to get in the habit early of finding and utilizing “teachable moments.” The phrase “teachable moment” is a popular buzzword (buzzphrase?), which I can really only tolerate using with a healthy dose of irony and/or sarcasm. Since virtually all of my instruction to my daughter is laced with irony and/or sarcasm, I think I’m safe.

Over this Labor Day weekend, we encountered a few teachable moments. During the first quarter of the USC v. ECU game, I was able to instruct Olivia on the definition of a “piss-poor effort.” Spike TV’s Star Wars marathon allowed us to observe an “overly simplistic paradigm of good and evil.” On Sunday, we were fortunate to have a few people over to play cards, and we learned all about inside straight draws, bluffing, and throwing good money after bad. Not that there was any actual money involved. Ahem.

And my obligatory Labor Day weekend yard work and grilling allowed us to expose her to early olfactory associations: sweat, fresh cut grass, charcoal smoke, grilling meat = daddy.

The weekend was also full of teachable moments for her parents. The things I learned:
1. Nothing starts your day quite like a triple helping of spit-up in your boxer clad lap.
2. Four hours of uninterrupted sleep is a blessing beyond dreams of avarice when you have a three-week old infant.
3. There is a nexus of cuteness at which some adults will voluntarily cease all higher brain function in favor of making “squee!” noises. Mostly this effects the female of the species (not to be sexist, but it does), but there were a few males who lost all reasoning, too. In case you are wondering, the equation for this appears to be 2 human infants + 1 kitten weighing less than one pound crawling on said infants = 1 cretinous mass of adults.  
4. Until daddy grows mammary glands or the baby is bottle-trained, he is nearly always the wrong person to hold her, even when she’s not actually hungry. Conversely, if she is not actually hungry, nearly anyone with boobs seems to have the ability to keep her happy.
5. Our baby’s bladder control is inversely proportional to the newness of the clean diaper. To put a finer point on it, there is a 50% chance that any given new diaper will be soaked through before we pick her up off the changing table. That’s talent.

All in all, a very instructive weekend. Hope yours was just as good.

Milestones

OMG! I'm in an effing shark!

Today was the big two-week check up for Olivia. For the uninitiated, this is where a medical professional determines whether or not you are competent to care for an infant based on the only-partially-under-your-control metric of whether or not your child has re-attained or exceeded his or her birth weight. It’s fairly normal for a baby to lose up to ten percent of their birth weight in the first few days after birth, and slowly put it back on over (roughly) the next two weeks. 

I don’t know what the consequences are for failing to achieve this threshold, but I suspect water-boarding is involved. Fortunately, I don’t have to find out – Olivia is back up to fighting weight with 2 ounces to spare. Overachiever.

Despite the sleep deprivation and total lack of coherent feedback from our child, I can see why so many parents make a big deal about this age. The first year, and definitely the first month, is packed with milestones. First car ride (almost necessarily the one home from the hospital), first outing, first trip in the stroller, first time in the crib, first time you interpret a random hand stretch as your daughter giving you the California howdy... there’s a lot going on if you are observant enough to pay attention. There are also a lot of firsts for parents. First sleepless night, first infirmity brought on primarily by lack of sleep and consequent loss of immune system, first night spent sleeping (or trying to) on the floor of your child’s nursery, first poo, pee, and/or vomit related stain found on your clothes while in public, and so on…

The firsts are fantastic. I’m trying not to miss any, but I know inevitably there will be some I can’t be there for. Mostly because I haven’t found a way to stay home and watch the baby all day long and still get paid. If any of you out there can think of a solution to this dilemma, please let me know. As much as neither my wife nor I want to closet ourselves off from the world (we don’t) it is hard not to selfishly hold on to these early days for ourselves alone. Especially when we see our friends’ children, a mere two months, or four months, or nine months ahead of Olivia, and see what a huge difference such a short period of time can make.

Hell, the first two weeks have already made a big difference. She’s already gained two ounces.

Things I've learned in one whole week of parenthood

We received a lot of advice and warnings from experienced parents in the nine months leading up to the birth of our daughter. We also endured the taunts and maniacal laughter of those who couldn’t wait to see us dealing with the trials and tribulations of parenthood. These are people who supposedly love us. I’m convinced at least a part of the joy of being a grandparent is an unhealthy dose of schadenfreude.

Needless to say, much of the advice we received, whether good natured or not, turned out to be right on. Here’s a little of what we’ve learned so far.

You will not sleep again.  Duh. I never said these were going to be profound. Certainly each baby is different, but in general they have no respect for clocks, schedules, or the fundamental difference between day and night. If you can catch two or three hours at a stretch, consider yourself fortunate.
It’s not been long enough to assess how well we operate on such a poor sleep schedule. I’ll hazard a guess - not well. But so far, we’ve done better than I would have guessed. That is not to say “well,” but we do what we can.

Listening to your baby crying for no discernible reason is about as helpless as you’ve ever felt. Every parent goes through it. It’s as inevitable as Congressional gridlock, and almost as painful. Your baby has one means of communication available to her when she is born - crying. Crying can mean anything from “I’m hungry,” to “I’m tired,” to “I’m in pain.” It can also mean nothing at all, as some of the literature will tell you that babies sometimes need to cry for some period merely to expend excess energy. I don’t know that I buy this, necessarily, but there are definitely cries that appear to have no obvious cause. They. Suck. If you are remotely human, you don’t like hearing your child cry. Having it go on for hours and knowing you’ve tried pretty much everything humanly possible to alleviate the cries makes you feel like the most incompetent parent in the world.
If those cries happen to take place at night, and feed into the lack of sleep discussed above, then... well, your nights aren’t going to be fun.

Car rides and strollers are kind of magic. Our kid doesn’t exactly love the infant carrier. The idea of being strapped in to something doesn’t sit well with her, so we tend to get serenaded with high pitched cries every time we have to take her somewhere. As soon as the car gets up to speed or the stroller starts bumping along, the volume falls to zero. I suspect this will not last forever, or at least not for the duration of long car rides to visit family, but it is pretty nice to know we have an almost surefire way to put our baby under without pharmaceuticals. 

Digital cameras are a godsend. I used to fancy myself a hobby photographer. I haven't picked up a camera in any serious fashion for several years, but I have taken more photos in the last ten days or so than I have in the previous ten months. I am very glad I don't have to pay to have all of them developed. Even a biased dad like me recognizes that the blurry picture of my daughters foot isn't really worth keeping.

Friends and Family are incredible. Southerners do food for almost any occasion. Someone die? Feed the family. Somebody born? Feed the family. We've had a lot of friends and family taking care of us, in many more ways than just keeping us nourished, and that has allowed us to spend more time focusing on our new addition. We are immensely grateful, and I can't imagine doing this without some kind of support system in place. Also, we have a ton of leftovers if anyone is hungry.
Mostly, I’ve just learned that I’m a big sap. Having a kid is pretty awesome, and we’ve spent a lot of time just staring at her sleeping. It’s hard to be human and not get a little sappy about your kid, so I fully expect I will embarrass myself will all manner of unmanly demonstrations of sentimentality in the coming months and years. I probably won’t share all of those.

Oh, and I’d like to throw a shout-out to Lumos Studio (www.lumosstudio.com) for the photograph above. As I mentioned, I'm a biased observer, but I happen to think they do some pretty damn fine work. Thanks guys!

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?