The Registration Experience

There's something strange about registering for gifts for your baby. I've heard people debate which is worse - registering for wedding gifts or registering for baby gifts - and I think there are strong arguments for each side.

With wedding gifts, the difficulty is that both people involved have a strong opinion. You end up having ridiculous arguments about what forks "feel right". After spending the previous ten years of your life using hand-me-down plates and the cheapest towels they sell at Target, you suddenly find yourself debating between the most expensive and second-most-expensive set of fancy knives. I can't even begin to imagine how many physical altercations have occurred within the walls of Bed, Bath and Beyond between couples registering for their wedding. It's a painful process - but it's one that you can feel confident about at the end of the day. You are forced to compromise and pick your battles - good life lessons and the foundation of a strong future marriage. So while it's painful going through the process, the outcome is usually that you're pretty happy with the things that you get - you realize that it turns out you end up using the boring white dishes way more than the fun colorful ones that you fought so hard for. You realize that it is nice to have fancy towels, and that a second set of sheets actually is useful.

Then there's registering for baby things.

With baby gifts, the difficulty is that both people involved really have no clue what they are doing. Instead of being able to look at two different items and form an opinion based on life experiences, you find yourself staring blankly at two different types of baby strollers - seemingly the same in every way to the naked eye, yet usually dramatically different in price. With nowhere to turn for help, out come the baby books. You hope that these books are written by some trustworthy government regulated source... but somehow they always seem to recommend the most expensive items, which makes you wonder if their opinions aren't just bought by whatever company slips them the most money under the table.

The bad thing is - they've got you, and they know you've got you. For one, you don't know any better. Two, baby item manufacturers have cleverly devised a way to ensure that you can't even rely on the experience of your family and friends who have already gone through this endeavor before... by telling you that the items that were perfectly fine for babies as recently as five years ago, are suddenly death traps waiting to pounce upon your poor unsuspecting child at any moment.

It really is genius. What parent is going to pick up the "cheap" version of a product when a book tells them that it's putting their unborn bundle of joy in harm's way? The logical side of your brain rationalizes "there's no way they'd sell crib bumpers if they really were dangerous... and they look so cute!", but then the other side of your brain chimes in, reminding you "you didn't even know what a crib bumper was two weeks ago... maybe we should trust this book instead."

So there you stand. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that our baby registering experience involved me carrying two different baby books, the store issued item scanner, and my trusty iPhone (which annoyingly reminds you that most items you registering for can be found cheaper on Amazon.com.)

After spending way too long reviewing the different options available for item #1 on a list of 100 things, you pull the trigger on the scanner and move three feet to your left to repeat the process with the item #2.

The other thing that's weird? You have absolutely no idea what your child is going to like. Registering for many baby items is like buying a present for someone who you have never met and have no idea of their taste... and someone who won't like a token gift of money in a card. Some babies like to be rocked. Some like to be rolled. Some like to be shaken. Some like to be stirred. But you have no idea which one you're going to end up with... and making a wrong decision here could make your life a living hell for the next three to six months. Pressure!

The rule of thumb seems to be "buy one of everything and try it out, as money is no object when it comes to getting a crying baby to go to sleep." I've seen new parents walking around in a zombie-like state, offering up their cars in exchange for a good night's sleep, so I'm inclined to think that there is some nugget of truth to this rule. But what this means is that there's a really good chance that your child isn't going to use or enjoy a good portion of the items that you just spent hours of your life researching and debating... so that's a little frustrating too.

The one saving grace in this whole process? I've found that baby stores usually are playing surprisingly decent music over their speakers. We've probably made at least ten trips to baby stores over the past few months, and nearly every time I've heard some decent tunes. Stuff that they seems inappropriate at times (Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run"). Songs that they shouldn't know since they weren't on the radio (Jack Johnson's "Constellations"). Bands that they shouldn't know exist since they're not carried by major labels (Guster). It's all very strange. But all I know is, if they got rid of all the baby stuff, put in a bar, and added some TVs playing sports, baby stores would be an okay place to hang out on a Sunday afternoon and get drunk.

In the end, after finally making all your decisions, you come to a realization - that your unborn child is going to have nicer things in their bedroom than you currently have in your bedroom. I bought my dresser from Ikea. It came in a flat box that fit in the back of my Camry and took three hours, five Allen wrenches, and a lot of swearing to assemble. My baby has a dresser that cost twice as much, required borrowing my parents van to transport to the house, and is made of real wood. It's slightly nicer - but that' a good thing, since the baby is probably going to spend the next year crapping and peeing on it since it doubles as a changing table.

Is this a sign of things to come? Are we already spoiling our child with fancy furniture and the softest of all baby blankets? Wouldn't they be just as happy sleeping on the carpet and playing with bubble wrap? I have no idea... so for now, I'm putting my faith in the baby books. There's probably a pretty good chance I'll do enough stupid things to put my child's life in danger over the next year that it's smart to pay a few extra bucks to keep the material objects in the house from doing the same.

Parents always say that they want to give their kids a better life than they had. If we judge that expression solely on material objects, I'd say we're well on our way to giving our child the best life ever.

Making It Official

The great social experiment has finally ended.

A few posts back, I mentioned my desire to try and wait as long as possible before officially announcing our pregnancy to people like co-workers and fringe friends who you don't see very often. It was a test of the unspoken rule that you never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, ask a girl if she is pregnant, even if it's totally obvious. I was hoping to really put this theory to

the test by waiting until Kate was like 7 or 8 months pregnant, but since we're pretty social - and see people all the time - this proved a little impractical.

Instead, we found ourselves at a work picnic a few weeks back. Kate, a mere four months pregnant, showed up wearing a horizontal, tight-fitting, striped shirt. We went around our business as usual, talking with everyone, snacking on food... and making absolutely no mention of her very obvious pregnancy. The table was set.

Hilariously, an hour passed without anyone making any mention of it. The experiment was proving to be true! I would later find out that people were whispering about it behind our backs, in secretive dark corners of the park, confirming their suspicions that Kate was pregnant... but no one was brave enough to actually ask or comment about it.

There was one person there who actually knew Kate was pregnant, but she was under strict orders to not mention it to anyone and play dumb if anyone asked her about it. After an hour, she finally broke. Someone asked her if Kate was pregnant and she confirmed - giving them the confidence to actually walk over to us and say "Kate, are you pregnant?"

Experiment PROVED. Had a third party not confirmed it, I am quite confident that we could have made it the entire afternoon without anyone breaching the subject - and given how good I became about lying about it in the early days, we might have been able to hold out until the Christmas Party before anyone confirmed their suspicions. But with the cat out of the bag, we spent the rest of the afternoon discussing the baby and explaining my social experiment.

With that behind us, it was time to do one final thing to make the baby official to the world - announce it on the Facebook.

There's an expression the kids use these days - "making it Facebook official". It's when you post something on Facebook to proudly announce it to the world. The time when those really far removed friends from high school that you haven't talked to in ten years, but are secretly stalking you on Facebook, can find out what is going on with your life and live vicariously through your posts and pictures. It's all the rage.

Another thing that's popular with pregnant kids these days? Taking pictures of their ever-expanding stomachs and posting pictures of that on Facebook on a daily or weekly basis. It sounds harmless enough, but as more and more of your friends become pregnant, it starts to get pretty annoying to scroll through picture after picture of big-bellied girls on Facebook with the same token comments each week of "you look great!" and "can't wait to meet the baby!"

Determined to take this rite of passage and spin it on its head in typical Brian jackass fashion, I decided there was only one logical thing to do. I took off my shirt, had Kate take a picture of me holding my stomach and posted it on Facebook. Did this ruin any future I have of running for public office? Maybe. Is a good joke worth it? Absolutely (plus, I was never planning on doing something crazy like running for public office, so no big deal).

The comments were pretty hilarious, ranging from "Naked Brian is NOT the first thing I want to see when I wake up in the morning" (which I assume is a lie or joke) to "Eat something!" (which I take as a compliment that I'm not a fatty) to "Sleep now!"

That's the other funny thing about making it official. Most of the comments you get from people fall into one of four categories:

1. Congrats! It's the standard message - the token response that you are somewhat morally obligated to give or else you're a horrible person.
2. Sleep now! Apparently once you have a baby, you stop sleeping. I'm not really worried about this since I rarely sleep now - but people keep telling me that it's somehow different to wake up at 2:00 am and take care of a baby vs. waking up at 2:00 am and reading the Internet, like I do now. We'll see...
3. You guys are going to be such great parents! I'm not sure what people base this comment on, but obviously they are unaware of our success rate of keeping plants alive at our house. It's a good thing most greenhouses have awesome return policies when plants die, or we would need to take out a second mortgage on our house to keep flowers in our flowerbeds. Or do Blogging / Flip Cup / TV Watching / Googling skills somehow directly relate to being able to care for a child? Because I'm pretty good at doing all of those...
4. Your life is over. This is the most interesting comment, because it only comes from people who have kids. It's not like the comments you get from single guys when you get married about your life being over, where they are just trying to be funny or covering up their own fears about dying alone. What do they know that I don't? I decided to ask for the truth from one person who made this comment, knowing that she would give me an honest answer. Here's the exchange:

SKD: Congrats on your wife expecting. Your life is over. Welcome to the club.

Me: Thanks. I am going to copy and paste this into my next blog post.

SKD: Umm, yeah. That was kinda harsh. What I should’ve said is….”Life as you know it is over.”

Me: Don’t sugar coat it, give it to me straight SKD!

SKD: You want real? How about you come to Chi-town and babysit this weekend? It’d be something like this:

Anna: I want a snack.

Brian: Ok, what do you want?

Anna: ice cream?

Brian: At 10am?

Ella: Hey, somebody needs to come get the baby. He’s on the top bunk drinking contact solution. Again.

Anna: BRIAAAAANNNNN….HEEEEELLLLLP…..PEEASSSSSEEE….

Brian: What is it, Anna?

Anna: I need you to wipe my bottom.

Max: Crying. Don’t like. Don’t like. Gibberish. Crying. Don’t like. Don’t like. More Gibberish.

Brian: Ella, what’s wrong with him?

Ella: Anna took his trains. You need to punish her. Make her stand in the corner for 3 minutes.

Brian: Ummm, OK. How do I “make her”.

Ella: Beats me.

Max: Up. Up. Up. Up. Daddy. Up. Daddy. Up. Max want UP! Crying.

Anna: I want a snack.

Ella: The baby is poopy. We’re out of wipes, so good luck with that.

Max: Crying. Gibberish.

Anna: I want a snack.

Ella: I’m bored. Can you take us somewhere? Somewhere FUN.

Brian: Ok, where?

Ella: Disney World.

Max: CRASH. BOOM. SCREAMING.

Anna: I want a snaaaaccckkkkkk…

Ella: Can I watch a show? Mom recorded Terra Nova?

Anna: HEEEEELLLLLPPP…somebody needs to wipe my bottom.

Max: Crying. Gibberish. Agua. Max want agua.

Anna: I want a snack! Just a little one. Plleeeeasssse???

Ella: I am never having kids.

Me: Yep – time to start developing a drinking problem.

SKD: The sad part is all of this is real. I didn’t need to get creative at all…this is a normal 10 minutes around here. But hey, they are awfully cute! And when they are little they smell like heaven. You’ll see. ; )

Me: Hmmm – I trusted that you wouldn’t have had kids unless it was worthwhile. You better not have mislead me!

SKD: What if it’s just all a big conspiracy? People that screw up and have a kid are bitter and just want others to join them in their personal hell. Misery loves company, you know.

Me: That’s my greatest fear. Well, that and clowns. Hopefully you aren’t tricking me. If you are, I’m exposing this for the rest of society!

Don't worry society - I'll give it to you straight in a few months.

The Name Game

I’ve come to realize that I’m going to be responsible for a lot of components of my child’s life. There will be a lot of opportunities to mold them in my self-image and teach important life lessons through TV shows – but there will also be a lot of chances for me to screw stuff-up. However, for most of these potential screw-ups, there’s plenty of time and other external factors that can correct them. You give your child a terrible haircut, the hair eventually grows back. You teach your child to hate people from Pittsburgh, there’s a chance they grow up and eventually meet someone nice from Pittsburgh which makes them question that teaching. It’s nice that there are these “second chances” with so many things, because it takes a lot of the edge off of the scariness of parenting. Mistakes can be corrected, scars heal, and pencils have erasers.

Except for one thing. Their name. It’s the potential mistake that can last a lifetime.

(Yes, technically someone can change their name once they are a grown-up, but at that point it’s far too late. They’ve already gone through the potential trauma of a childhood of mockery and have learned to accept whatever name their parents gave them… plus it’s already written on so many things they own!)

With all this pressure around the name, it’s no wonder that there are countless websites and books dedicated to helping expectant parents to find that perfect name. There are lists of the most popular names in each state and country of the world, in-depth explanations about the origin of each name, and even random name generators that let you type in your last name and the Internet will pick a baby name for you. It really makes you wonder how in the world people came up with baby names twenty years ago.

Kate came home with one of these books from the library a few weeks back. It was approximately the size of a dictionary (or at least what I think dictionaries used to look like, before they went extinct) and had names categorized a thousand different ways. Having heard horror stories from friends and coworkers about the difficulties in picking the perfect name, we brought this book along on a long car ride to read it cover-to-cover and begin what we anticipated would be a nine month long journey of research, lists, analysis, and professional assistance in finding that perfect name.

As we drove along, I flipped through the book. Since we are not going to find out if we are having a boy or a girl (stay tuned for a Blog post on that decision at some point in the future), we had to come up with both a solid boy name and a solid girl name. After about fifteen minutes of reading names out loud with Kate, here’s what I quickly found out – I hate all names. I think part of it is a result of this book, which was far too “trendy” for my taste. The book was literally five-hundred pages long, and I don’t even think it listed “Brian” once. You want “Brice” or “Brixol”? It’s in the book. You want a more normal name? Eh… not so much. Not that there is anything wrong with picking a more “fun” name, but when you have a long German last name like I do, you know that over the course of your child’s life, they’re probably going to spend thousands of hours spelling and pronouncing their name for everyone. It would be a little cruel to give them a first name that requires the same… so that quickly ruled out about 90% of the names in the book.

Luckily, we had another resource – a listing of baby names that Kate had put together when she was fourteen. Fun fact – I have no idea where my college diploma is located, but within one week of finding out we were pregnant, Kate produced a scrap of paper listing potential baby names that was over 15 years old. You might say we are slightly different. Not that there was anything wrong with these names, but they were obviously names that were picked by a female with no male intervention. To her, the name “Nathaniel” is adorable. To me, it’s a little girly. (No offense to all the Nathaniels out there – but you really should just be going by “Nate”)

Long story short – after about five minutes, we quickly burned through that list as well with no strong name contenders. At this point, we decided to do things the old-fashioned way. We just started talking and thinking about names that we liked. I had very few criteria:

1. It had to be a name that worked at all ages. There are plenty of names that are “cute” when you’re a little kid, but wouldn’t work in a business setting (like “Precious”). Likewise, there are plenty of old people names that don’t work for a little kid (like “Gertrude”). I want a name that is age-less.
2. It had to be a name that was less than two syllables long. We’ve got the long last name, and I don’t want my kid to have to spend ten minutes writing his/her name out on the top of every test at school for his/her entire career. That leaves less time to actually answer the questions on the test, and will probably result in lower grades.
3. It had to be easily nickname-able. Although we’re putting all this pressure on ourselves to come up with the perfect name, at the end of the day the child will probably be called by their actual name less than ten percent of the time. I’m actually the worst offender of this in the world. I don’t call anyone by their actual name – ever. It’s always a nickname, a last name, a combination of a first and middle name, their initials, or just something random I come up with which makes no sense to anyone – but then I use it long enough that it eventually catches on.
4. It had to be a name that worked regardless of the kid’s personality. It had to be a name that could be fun, studious, sporty, professional, sexy, or presidential. Yes, during our debate about girls’ names, I said the worst sentence in the history of the world when I said “it has to be a name that can be sexy when she’s older”… and then instantly regretted it and vowed if I have a daughter, she will be sporty and not allowed to date boys until she is 30 or I am dead.

Ten minutes later, we had both of our names. I’m fairly certain that in the history of the world, it was the quickest that two baby names had ever been selected. Granted we may grow to hate them both over the next six months and have to go through the process again – but for now, we’re happy with them. In the end, I think one of the best things about the names we picked were that both are very easily convertible into other names – there are acceptable variations of both that we gave the kid an out just in case they really, really hate their name. Look at us, already being the best parents ever!

(Actually, it turned out that picking out middle names to go along with the first names was much, much more difficult since there was an added variable in the mix. Now we had to ensure that the middle name went with BOTH the first name AND the last name – and still passed the classic “middle name test” – that being, it sounds like someone is in trouble when you say the first, middle, and last name all together. )

The other funny thing is that at the end of all this, I realized how unimportant the name actually is. It’s not the name that makes the person, it’s the person that makes the name. Someone can be named “Lazor” and go to bed each night at 8:30 pm. On the other hand, someone can be named “Ruth” and party like a rock star five nights a week. All it takes is one person to make a name awesome for the next generation… or totally ruin it for everyone currently living with it.

I’m just hoping that our child falls into the first category and not the second.

Breaking the News

There comes a point in every pregnancy (one assumes – I’ve only been a part of this one… as far as the wife knows. Shhh!) when it comes time to make it “official”. No, I’m not talking about when you announce it on the Facebook – but when you finally start telling friends and family the big news. All the sudden, the baby goes from a little secret between the husband and wife (and area bartenders) into something that is public knowledge… and generally spreads like wildfire.

Girls like to choreograph these announcements like the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. There are props, elaborate schemes, and hours of tense buildup to the eventual moment. It only comes after hours of internal debate of which order to tell others, ensuring that the order that someone finds out you are with child is directly proportional to how important that person is in your life. It’s nice, but a little crazy.

Guys are the exact opposite. Aside from telling my parents (where I had to do it a typical Brian way – that is, being a jackass and burying the lead behind the excitement I had over my new iPhone), I’ve told people in exactly one way thus far – waiting until a conversation naturally veered in that direction and then saying “oh yeah, we’re pregnant” or something along those lines. It’s simple, direct to the point, and doesn’t steal the thunder from any other events or conversations that are going on.

Like most things in life, I think my attitude towards announcing a pregnancy is a direct result of the following scene on Scrubs, where JD and Turk stage an elaborate scheme only to have it fail in the end… and in the end, it doesn’t matter:

But aside from how you do it, when you finally make the announcement, I’ve found there are five possible reactions, almost solely determined by which group a person falls into:

Family Members – the most excited ever. Especially the parents, who finally are going to have their own grandkids to talk about after years of putting in time listening to their friends and family talk about their own grandkids. Fresh blood in the family means the family name (potentially) lives on for another generation and there is once again a reason to have toys at Christmas. Given that they are the first to know, when they start jumping in with a lot of in-depth questions, it leads to a lot of answers like “good question, we haven’t talked about that yet”… which can pretty quickly turn the “fun” of the announcement into the feeling of “holy crap this is for real and we have no idea what we are doing”.

Females with Babies – second only to family members when it comes to excitement. It often involves screaming, jumping, clapping, and a mob-like rush of the new mother with rapid-fire tips, suggestions, and stories about all-things baby. Finally, another female to join their club! The best advice I can give to a man who encounters one of these scrums? Back away very slowly and don’t make any direct eye contact.

Males with Babies – unlike females, the male reaction to the announcement usually amounts to some manner of hand-shaking, fist-bumping, or beer-cheering, followed by two to three minutes of polite small talk about the very basic basics about the baby, followed by an immediate return to the prior conversation - generally about sports, food, or recounting stories of stupid things you did in college.

Females without Babies – suddenly there is one fewer member in the “girls who will go out partying” club. Suddenly the female is faced with two options – either going along with the rest of the females and faking their way through the conversations about pumps and poops, or subtly sliding over to the male conversation and potentially alienating themselves from the rest of the females – who suddenly look at this outsider with distrust and fear.

Males without Babies – but as bad as the post-announcement moments are for the females, they’re even worse for the males. Not only do they have to potentially fake interest in conversations that they REALLY don’t care about, but this exponentially increases the odds that the next time they are alone with a female friend, the conversation is going to quickly slide into the danger zone of talking about babies (or in the case of single males, marriage). That’s not anything any guy wants after a nice evening of drinks with friends.

It really is quite funny how this makes it sound like there are such strict battle lines drawn between those with and without kids – but it’s kinda similar to marriage. As soon as you get married, you want other people to get married. Sure, part of it is to help ensure that you single friends aren’t out having too much fun without you – but also because you know that at the end of the day, it’s great and you want your friends to be just as happy as you are. I think the same logic applies to babies. Once you have one, you want your other friends to join in the joy that they bring… but also to be sure that you aren’t the only one stuck at home watching a baby while everyone else is out partying.

Oh yeah – one more thing. Remember earlier when I said I’ve only told people about the baby through normal, natural conversation? Well that’s about to change.

When I got engaged, I had this great idea to not tell anyone at work about it so that one day I could just say something like “hey guys, I’m going to be out of the office next week getting married”… again – basically the opposite of what I saw happen when girls got engaged at work, which resulted in a lot of screaming and attention. So once I found out that we were pregnant, I had the exact same idea. How hilarious would it be to just show up at the Christmas party with Kate 7 months pregnant? The reaction on peoples’ faces would be hilarious – and we could finally push the limits on the debate of “will you ever call out someone as actually being pregnant if they don’t tell you they are?” As a male, the answer is “no way in hell”, even if someone looked 7 months pregnant.

My downfall with the engagement was putting up a fake proposal on my Lost Blog – which I thought was equally funny… but it turns out that a number of co-workers read the Blog and the word spread quickly.

My downfall with the baby is going to be the same thing. It only seems right to link the Lost Blog to the Baby Blog since they’ve been anxiously waiting for me to start writing again for the past year… but in doing so, it will inevitably spill the beans to co-workers who still periodically check the Blog.

So here is my plea for a happy medium – co-workers who know me, please refrain from telling everyone at work as quickly as possible. You know you would rather see the experiment of the 7 month pregnant wife at the Christmas party play out, wouldn’t you?

The Art of Deception

I’ve discovered that one of the ironic unintended results of becoming pregnant is that it instantly makes you a liar to all the people that you care about most. I know, I get it – you don’t want to tell people that you are pregnant too early due to the risk of miscarriage and all that other sad stuff. Prolonging telling people the good news is a way to potentially prevent having to tell them horrible, horrible news in a horribly awkward conversation. I’ve seen it happen before at work. It’s ugly.

Person A: “Hey Person B, getting excited about the baby?”

Person B: “We lost the baby.”

Person A: “So… how about this weather?”

::awkward silence for five minutes, followed by both parties feeling like crap for hours::

So I’m on board with not telling people about the pregnancy until things are “safe”. But isn’t it a little hilarious that the first true parenting skill that new parents learn to develop is how to tell bold-faced lies to everyone they see?

I guess when you think about it, it makes perfect sense – since parents have to do a good deal of lying to their kids for at least the first ten… or twenty years of their lives. You know, things like:

• “The Easter Bunny is real.”
• “Santa Claus is watching.”
• “There’s nothing to worry about, we know exactly what we’re doing.”
• “I didn’t drink until I was 21 – and you aren’t going to either!”

So really, all we’re doing now is practicing for later in life, right? This is nature’s way of getting us in the mindset of becoming parents, where you often avoid the truth for the sake of the greater good?

Maybe.

It’s just funny how much of a game it all becomes. Once you’ve been married for a few years, people (unjustifiably) start expecting that you’re going to start having kids… and that becomes the go-to topic of conversation for any gatherings. I think that part of it is due to the fact that life gets more boring once you are a grown-up and just working all the time. Babies are an exciting change, something to talk about other than your boring job that no one cares about or the things you are doing around your house that just lead to Kate wanting me to do stuff around our house. People are excited about them and want to talk about them – and yet once you actually have one, you spend the first three months telling people you don’t… and working like hell to prevent them from finding out.

I guess the second part of the equation wouldn’t be too much of an issue were it not for our good friend alcohol. If it weren’t for the fact that every social event involving our group of friends involves alcohol (translation – we’re fun), it would be a lot easier to hide. But like I said, since we are still awesome, it can lead to some tricky situations. Once one couple in a group of friends has a baby, they become hawks – on the lookout for someone else to join them in the world of parenting, carefully monitoring who is drinking and who is not. They are well aware that “I’ll just have a water” is code for “I’m pregnant”. They know that cozies can easily disguise a soda to look like a beer. They know what it looks like to slowly fake drink a glass of wine for two hours and then have it suddenly disappear after you step away for a moment.

I kid you not, I’ve seen friends go and buy shots of alcohol for suspicious girls and have them drink it to prove that they are not pregnant. Ridiculous – but admittedly effective… or at the very least proving who is a really, really irresponsible mother willing to do anything to keep up the game.

Also crazy? How willing bartenders are to go along with the game. If you ever want to have free non-alcoholic drinks at a bar – and are a female – just go up to a bartender and tell them that you’re going to order “gin and tonics” all night (wink wink) but instead make them as tonic water with lime. I think the bartenders like the game as much as the females do, because they ham it up with “here is that drink you ordered ma’am, I hope it’s not too strong for you” and then end up not charging you at the end of the night for any of them. I wonder if this is a topic covered in bartender school, or if they just feel special knowing that they know you’re pregnant before most of your friends or family. Again, ironic. I think the first five people to know that we were pregnant were bartenders.

As the male half of the pregnancy equation, the game works out pretty well for me. I’m the one trading drinks with the wife, pounding them, and trading back to make it appear that she’s drinking along with everyone else. Sure, I look like a total lightweight since I’m drunk twice as fast as everyone else – but hey, anything to keep up the game, right? Plus, I’ve got a built in DD for the next year. Might as well take advantage of it.

Once the game ends, and it’s safe to own up to your pregnancy, of course people are quick to come out with stories about how they knew it because you bought life insurance, or that they suspected something when Kate actually volunteered to be a DD at a wedding – but still, I’d like to think that we played the game well… and are now pretty well prepared for working together to lie to our future child.

Also, now that we’ve successfully played the game and seen things from the other side, we’re going to be even better at calling out future friends when they’re pregnant! Get the shots ready.

Living the Dream

It’s been a while since I’ve sat down to write a Blog – so hopefully I remember how this works.

When I last wrote, I lamented that I was desperately searching for something worthwhile to write about - something important enough for me to sit down and spend a few hours each week thinking about and dissecting. Foolishly, I was looking for this in the world of television – assuming that only a TV show could provide me with enough source material to spend hours thinking about something, over-analyzing something, and eventually putting those thoughts down as words for the world to see.

I was wrong.

At some point in history, people decided that there were three critical components to fulfillment in life – three things that equate to “living the American dream”. In order, they are getting married, buying a house, and having kids. Since this Blog started, I knocked out the first two. Now it’s time to work on the third. That’s right Internet friends… Kate and I are expecting a baby!

When people find out, their first question is always something along the lines of “are you excited?” and they sit anxiously awaiting for you to start gushing about how this is the greatest thing to ever happen to you, that you are counting down the seconds until your little bundle of joy enters the world. Then I always disappoint them by answering: “probably equal parts excited and absolutely terrified.”

Then they get out their pitch forks and torches.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to say that I’m not pumped by the prospect of raising a little person in my self-image. There are definitely some things that I cannot wait to impart upon my offspring:

1. Teaching my child the meaning of unconditional love. How? By teaching him/her to follow the same sports teams I follow. The Cincinnati Bengals. Notre Dame Football. Dayton Flyers Basketball. Pretty much every sports team I like inevitably breaks my heart on an annual basis – yet I still keep coming back for more each year. Talk all you want about people learning about unconditional love of a spouse or friend. If your friend punched you in the face every year for the past 30 years, you wouldn’t keep coming back. (PS – stay tuned for a future Blog post about some heavy soul searching on if I can, in good conscience, raise my child to be a Bengals fan.)
2. Teaching my child the importance of listening to CDs from start to finish (not just the hits). Sure, there’s nothing wrong with rocking out to the current Top 40 hits – but if you really want to get to know an artist (and not get totally burnt out on them), it’s pretty critical to enjoy their entire catalogue. Plus, then you can be the annoying guy who is too cool for an artist’s popular hits. And don’t even get me started on the importance of listening to and understanding the lyrics of songs – it’s pretty much what takes a song from being good to being “life changing”.
3. Teaching my child how all important life lessons can be learned from TV shows and movies. Two events stick out in my mind that really drove this point home. One, in high school when I summarized up the book “The Great Gatsby” by comparing it to a single episode of “Dawson’s Creek” (which I thought actually drove home the point better) – plus Katie Holmes was pretty hot back in those days. Two, my Lost Blog – which taught me to question such heavy topics as “Faith vs. Science”, “Fate vs. Destiny”, and “Kate vs. Shannon”. It got me learning about ancient hieroglyphics, learning about dead philosophers, and decoding cryptic messages that basically required a PHD in advanced mathematics. Don’t get me wrong – I learned a lot of stuff in school as well, but having the ability to continue to learn from modern media means that I am still learning every day.
4. Finally justifying why I own so many Disney movies. I’ve taken some crap for this over the years. Is it weird that I have all the songs from Aladdin and Lion King memorized? Maybe. Is it weird that I cried during not one – but TWO Pixar movies in the past five years, but at no other point in my life? Maybe. But once I have a kid, it’s perfectly normal to have all these movies sitting on my DVD shelf. Much like marrying Kate gave me justification to finally own “Mean Girls”, having a kid finally gives me justification for owning the Toy Story collection. I can’t wait.

Having said all that, if any male tells you that they are not scared about having kids, they are either an idiot or lying through their teeth. Let’s get back to the American Dream – the trifecta of spouse-wife-kids.

Getting married? Right on. It’s awesome. I have someone in my life that is basically on my side for everything. She is legally required to support me in everything I do and like me better than anyone else in the world. Also, it’s someone to help split up the chores and duties of day-to-day life, provide you with someone to share all the great moments in life, and is forced to like you even when you sick or have a busted nose due to a pool injury. Love it.

Home ownership? It’s for suckers. I don’t know who started us down this path, but they should be in jail. Listen, I understand how some people feel that “pride of home ownership” when they look at their house and it looks great with a well-kept yard, freshly painted walls, and an interior free of any clutter or dust. But do you know how you get to that? With a ton of hard work. Here’s what it boils down to – I work somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-12 hours a day Monday through Friday at my job. I’m pretty good at it (any coworkers reading this Blog would debate this point) because I spend a lot of time doing it. Why would I want to come home and work more – at something I’m not good at, and will never get good at unless I spend a ton of my spare time doing it? Aren’t I supposed to be resting when I’m not at work so that I’m ready to tackle the next day? In my mind, America would be a happier place if everyone left work and just relaxed at home on the weekends. Drink some beers, eat some food, hang out with friends. Don’t spend your weekends cleaning gutters or remodeling kitchens – it just makes people stressed and angry.

Which brings us to baby-making. It’s really the tie-breaker in the “American Dream” equation. Is it going to be something fantastic like marriage, where once you have it you never know how you lived without it? Or is going to be something like home ownership, where everyone tells you that you should do it but it turns out to be a ton of work without a corresponding level of payout? Of course, if you ask anyone that has kids, they’re going to tell you that it’s the best thing in the world. They’re legally required to say that or else the government will come and take their kids away from them. But what’s the truth?

I’m about to find out.