Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Enjoying the Silence

I just put my wife to bed; she stayed up late tonight.

During the first trimester, a woman's body is adjusting to the new life forming inside of her. My future baby, which by now is a robust 1.2 centimeters long, is growing at an astronomical rate. And of all the ways in which my wife will change - her hormones, her demeanor, her physical shape - we are well into the first change: she is tired.

Now, my wife could sleep before she was pregnant. For her, napping is an artform, something to be practiced, explored, and relished. But my non-pregnant wife would stand in awe of my pregnant wife.

Between the little body growing inside of her, sapping her strength, and breaking a caffeine addiction, my wife sleeps often. Her average bedtime has been 9 pm the past few weeks (to which another pregnant friend of mine admired, "wow, how does she stay up so late?"

On weekends, napping takes up most free time prior to Sunday at 6 pm. Granted, she can stay up if she chose to. But if there is no valid reason, why bother.

This frees me up a bit.

I've busied myself in this time by playing video games, writing on this here blog, catching up on television, reading, and generally being a couch potato.

It's ironic: on the verge of the most life-changing experience, my wife's body is easing us into the transition by giving us what we both have enjoyed, more sleep for her, more lazy quiet time for me.

I guess that's Life's little way of saying in that soothing voice, "Hey, I know this is gonna be tough, so enjoy a little forced downtime, on me. I know it'll get frustrating and will curtail your usual nighttime habits, but it's ok, just relax. Let the peace and quiet surround you."

And you know what, it is relaxing - the nights in, the lazy Saturdays, the general calm and quiet, all of it.

And somewhere, Life is chuckling, wearing a smile so broad that the curls of each lip puts a squint in the eye. "Enjoy it now, my friends," Life is saying, "because it will never be this quiet again."

Sunday, January 28, 2007

This Week in Fatherhood

This week in fatherhood publicizes and celebrates fathers across the globe. We laugh at their foibles, chuckle at their misfortune, and remind ourselves that there are no prerequisites to fatherhood. Let us all learn from their idiocy.
  • From the promised land, we learn that the family that drinks together shouldn't drive separately.
  • I think the problem here was that they were found on land that wasn't zoned agricultural.
  • Of course this son was upset, if his dad's dating 20-somethings, that limits his own dating pool.
  • Just a week until the Super Bowl, and it's nice to see that the Sex Cannon's family traded their blue and white gear for some blue and orange gear. Please note that Rextacy was named for his father - the original Sexy Rexy. I can only speculate (though I'd rather the boys at Kissing Suzy Kolber do it instead) that the "birds and bees" conversation in the Grossman household was much different than the one in mine.

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Thursday, January 25, 2007

I'm Not Joking, She Looks Like Lyndon Johnson

In its third season, "Seinfeld" uncovered a widely-known, but little publicized secret: Not all babies are cute. Some, in fact, are downright ugly. I was thinking about this when one of my friends, in a compliment to my wife and me, said, "you are going to have a beautiful baby."

Don't get me wrong, my wife and I are hot, but we weren't always. I was born bald and jaundiced; my wife, also bald, was born as many inches tall as she was wide.

My baby?

As an parent, I will be required to believe that my son or daughter is the most beautiful creature to ever roam this Earth. Will I be able to separate myself from a lifetime of cattiness and snark to actually believe that? Or will I have the sense enough to know when to send some baby photos to the Ugly Baby Contest?

I know my baby is the fruit of my loins and all that, but how do you brag about someone who looks like they just got into a bar fight?

I think my tactics here will be my default tactics:

  • Repress myself into believing my baby will be beautiful and the envy of Gerber baby food commercial producers nationwide.
  • Deny that my baby has any physical imperfections, despite any evidence to the contrary.
  • Assault (men)/Insult (women) who try to say otherwise.

After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and no one can tell me that my child is not beautiful. Even if my kid does look like Dwight Eisenhower.

Monday, January 22, 2007

The Tell

A pleasure unique to the "What to Expect When You Weren't Expecting" set is found during The Tell. The Tell, or The Reveal, is the method by which expectant parents share their news. My situation is fantastic for The Tell because it is wholly unexpected by all but, being married, is wholly endorsed by all.

If we were among the couples that make public their sexual exploits history of trying, or had even gone public with our intentions to have a baby, The Tell would have been much less fun.

Our Tell is nothing short of sheer, unbridled surprise. I believe that the amount by which your pregnancy intentions are public are in inverse proportion to the amount of surprise during The Tell. Even if you've told no one but your parents or your closest friends that you are trying to have a baby, there is still a small amount of relief when you've conceived. If you are a couple that has gone through months of trying and fertility testing prior to conceiving, your Tell is met with as much relief as surprise.

But when there's no hint of conception efforts, well, your Tell is just plain fun. And so are the reactions.

We told my mother this weekend by slipping her some ultrasound photographs, saying they were the first photographs of her grandchild. The only thing that could have produced more stunned silence would be if I went on to say that my wife was the one with a penis and I was actually pregnant.

The surprise reactions continued the next morning, though they were softened by the fact that my wife and I were actually calling relatives on a Saturday morning. Of course, some of my relatives went beyond surprised and had to demonstrate just how cool they are going to be in the face of a new relative:

Me: Are you ready to be an uncle?
Brother: Do I have a choice?

Wife: I'm pregnant!
Her Grandmother: I'll have to revise my Christmas budget

Me: [My wife] is pregnant!
My 96-Year Old Grandfather: That is great. When is the blessed day?
Me: She's due September 2
My 96-Year Old Grandfather: I have a dentist appointment that day.

And somewhere in America's heartland, we had to bid farewell to exchanges like the below. My mother-in-law who, for purposes of summer vacation cancellation, learned of the pregnancy first, but was sworn to secrecy, was let off of her leash.

Mother-In-Law: My daughter is pregnant! My little princess is having a baby, can you believe it?
Confused Barista: Uh, did you want the grande or the venti?

Thursday, January 18, 2007

First Baby Photos

I don't believe in magic, hocus pocus, or special powers like that. I have my doubts about fate, god, religion and non-empirical beings.

So does someone want to explain to me why, after seeing this photograph, all of my fears, anxieties, worries, doubts and stresses melted away? Must be magic.

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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Estimating Fatherhood

I couldn't decide whether this should be titled "Overestimating Fatherhood" or "Underestimating Fatherhood." In my few weeks as an expectant father, I've noticed some recurring themes in books written for me:
  • Men cannot be expected to successfully care for anything, even a houseplant that feeds off human urine (Admittedly, I may fall into this category, but at least I am aware of it)
  • Men are little more than stimulus/response organisms completing tasks like "purchasing new, safer car" and "bringing mommy applesauce" with similar effort and emotion
  • Men are troglodytes, capable of grunting and hunting, but little more ("Fire Bad!")

Where would I come up with such antiquated notions of men? My friendly neighborhood bookstore. I plugged "new father baby" into Amazon's search engine and here are the first two results I got (all emphasis is mine):

Also on the list:

Looking at some of the other, less offensive books, you'll see the authors are either doctors or women (and sometimes, even lady doctors!).

So, I guess my thesis statement is this: Men and New Fathers as inept organisms: stereotype rooted in biological truth, or self-fulfilling prophecy?

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

I'm Having an Inside Baby

By the time I was born, my parents had their DINKy time in dinky apartments and moved out of the city into suburban Philadelphia. The house on Harrison Avenue, where I lived for 18 years may have had its faults, but had all the trimmings a young child wants: a steep hill in front for sledding, twenty stone stairs to fall down toward the street, even a shuttered and mysterious insane asylum middle school just past the back yard. I loved exploring in our yard, creating trails up and down the front and back hills, digging up dirt and finding buried "treasure." My kid's gonna have to wait for that.

Just like cats, babies can be either inside or outside. Growing up, I had two inside cats. Once, the older one ran through the side door and disappeared for a few hours. She showed up later that evening, staggering and sobbing quietly; she had the same look on her kitty face that alien abductees have in television interviews. Something terrible had happened in her time outside. She was never quite the same.

Well, my kid better get used to being indoors. You see, mommy and daddy hadn't quite finished living in dinky apartments in one of the country's top-five most expensive real estate markets. We can afford to move and we can afford to buy. But we cannot afford a house, a lawn, a white picket fence. Our baby will call home a 1,200 square foot condominium in a mid-rise building on the outskirts of Washington, DC.

Who needs a yard when you've got parquet floors?

Granted, my child will occasionally venture outside, but by and large, my baby will be inside (mostly because daddy will NOT let him or her on the balcony). I don't think this will socially retard my child. Who needs friends from the neighborhood when you can just suck hard candies with the retired couple in 514 who daddy hits up for laundry room quarters?

Besides, inside babies are more tolerable. Ever been in an elevator with an annoying kid that wants to push the buttons for their floor, your floor, and five other floors no one wants to go to? My child will be sick of pushing elevator buttons by his/her first birthday.

I look forward to the natural father/child bonding process. I actually get a bit misty thinking about the trips we'll take to the trash shoot, taking my child to his/her first condo association meeting, and those nights you treasure, staying up late, listening to the dulcet tones of an ajoining unit's smoke detector. I am going to treasure these times together and chronicle them in a baby book, which will be kept safely in storage unit A-3.

Monday, January 15, 2007

$70,000 to Conceive

Last night I read the first half of this Washington Post Magazine article. A Washington, DC couple spent around $70,000 and a good chunk of their 30's trying to conceive through various methods.

I can't begin to understand the feelings of the couple, and in particular the woman, Suz Redfearn, and her desire for experience pregnancy. I don't want to pass judgment on spending a college tuition on something that most people can do for free. I want to wish the family all the best, especially since they've bared their bones in a one-million+ circulation newspaper. I also want to tally up how much it cost my wife and I to conceive. I could probably get change for a twenty.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

I Can Barely Raise a Ruckus

(If you have been reading this blog and wondering why there are infrequent updates, you are my wife. Hi, honey. You should also know that tomorrow is our first doctor's appointment, followed by opening the public floodgates with baby news, so stay tuned).

The name of this blog is misleading. I may think that I'm on a nine-month odyssey, but that is just wrong. My life essentially took a left turn a couple weeks ago, and there is no turning around.

Lost in all the hullabaloo of conceiving a child and reading about the wonderful things that will happen to my wife over the next nine months is that shortly after my child pops out, I'm going to have to raise it.

It falls to me to provide invaluable guidance for my child like, "Don't touch that," "Don't put that in your mouth," "No," "Stop," and "Daddy likes his whiskey with lots of ice, not just two cubes."

Here's a little secret: I can't raise shit.

Aside from a fish I once kept alive in a fraternity house for a few months, I've never successfully kept anything alive or substantially improved the existence of anything I've lorded over. This includes:
  • A large spindly houseplant I was assured that was so immortal "even the most negligent bachelor can care for it"
  • Several turtles I had as pets between ages 12-17
  • My quarterbacks in Madden - sorry guys, I know I draft you and then lead you to 25 td, 25 int seasons, you make the playoffs and all, so what if your rating plummets.

So let this be an advance warning to all and especially my unborn child (who no doubt steals my wifi in my wife's womb): I am bigger than you, older than you, more experienced than you, and will do my best to raise you. I hope that I have enough moments of clarity between whiskey hazes that you turn out relatively normal.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Not the Best, but Not This Guy

I'm sure my anxiety about becoming a father will provide fodder for countless posts in the future, but for now, I'm comforted to know I'm not going to be as bad as this guy:

Man left son, 3, alone in adult bookstore parking lot, police say

At least you could've brought your son in with you. Dipshit.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Mom, Dad, You Are Embarrassing Me!

It might not be those words exactly, but I'd wager that about 60% of all parent/child conversations between the ages of 12-18 carry the subtext of this post's title. That got me thinking. There are conscious ways of embarrassing our children, say, visiting with my daughter's prom date in my underwear, and there are unconscious ways of embarrassing our children, for example, the kitchen in my childhood home.

When you are born to a blind mother and a father with free reign to not care about appearances, the results can be jarring and scarring. My parents bought my childhood home in the mid-1970's, and lived there until 2000. My brother and I lived in that house 18 years each.

My parents spearheaded a massive kitchen renovation before I was born. They doubled the size, put in new appliances, and modernized it. Modernized it for 1975, that is. And in 1975 it stayed for the next 25 years.

My brother and I grew up - in the 1980's and 1990's - with a kitchen featuring brown and yellow floral wall paper, brown and yellow floral tiles, and, to top it all off, a yellow sink basin. For years, well past disco's heyday and well before it was faux-hip again, I grew up thinking this combination of earth-and-vomit tones was a fairly natural occurrence. Like my father, I'm not very observant. I guess it is unusual to have a yellow sink. And the more I think about it, to continue with that color scheme into the dawn of a new millennium is pretty embarrassing.

So what modern relics will I hold onto, embarrassing my children? And what cutting-edge technologies will I look back on as today's eight-track, Pong, and mimeograph? Let's roll the dice a bit and find out what my future child(ren) will be teaching me to use...

Three Dimensional Video Games - This is a fairly easy prediction. Combine holography with whatever hamster powers the Wii, and you have a reason to keep the house child-proof for decades.

iBox - This is cheating a bit, since we are already headed in that direction, but I'm fairly certain that, by age 8, I will have to buy my child the new Apple iBox, a combination mp3 player, digital video recorder and player, camera, telephone, signal flare, scheduler, with full keyboard and broadband internet access. It will be no larger than a wristband and have multiple terabytes of storage.

Polka Dots - Laugh if you will, but did you predict that bold-color striped shirts would be a staple of every 24-year old male's wardrobe in 2004? Stripes will be out, dots will be in, but popped collars will never be cool.

Monochrome - So, let's see. My parent's hideous brown and yellow combination was "in" during the1970's and a latter part of the 1990's; Black and white contrast was big in the 1980's, so watch for it later this decade; Crazy teals and purples had their moment in the early 1990's (watch out for aquamarine in 2014!). By 2020, monochrome will be all the rage. Simple monochromatic color schemes will replace patterns and also be used as projection screens for the family's television, internet, and home scheduling system. Regis Philbin and "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire" will enjoy a renaissance.

Maybe I need to amend my statement above. When my daughter's prom date arrives to pick her up, I'll be sitting in our teal and purple living room, cursing at an iBox, secretly questioning her date's monochrome suit (with subtle polka dots on the shirt). And I'll be doing it all in my underwear.

Have a good time at the dance, dear!