Month Four Musings

The New Normal. As we enter the fourth month of life with Jackson, we finally have entered into the “new normal” routine. Since this isn’t Europe, the maternity leave vacation is seemingly over as quickly as it began, sending Kate back to work and Jackson off to school (some may call it “day care”, but “school” sounds a lot better to us – plus he gets a daily report card. More on that later). As with any change, I don’t think we’ve quite settled into a comfortable rut with the new routine yet. Mornings are still huge variables dictated by when Jackson wakes up. Do I shower first? Does Kate? What time will I be able leave for work? As a guy who likes to plan things like dinners three nights in advance, not knowing what each morning is going to hold has been a little bit stressful, but nothing compared to the stress that Kate has experienced with taking Jackson to school.

The good news is, she prepped herself for Jackson going back to school by imagining it was going to be the worst thing she has ever done in her life, that should we be dropping her baby (that she has lovingly cared for during the first three months of his life) into a cold, heartless, cruel world where people would throw him in a crib and leave him crying for hours on end. While school is surprisingly cold – seriously, they probably keep their thermostat at a crisp 60 degrees, compared to our house, which in the summer time might dip into the high 70s depending on how generous I’m feeling with the AC that day – the teachers there seem to be pretty nice and have already learned that Jackson hates his crib, meaning that he is always getting attention in the main room… and monopolizes the swing (suck it other babies!)

But the biggest thing that’s helped the transition into the new normal? Jackson freaking loves school.

The first day we dropped him off, and stood him on the ground next to another baby, you could see this look in his eyes like “whoa whoa whoa – there are OTHER people like me out in the world who are my size and actually move around, unlike garden gnomes? SWEET!” 

If Jackson is mesmerized by watching TV, he is hypnotized by other babies. It’s honestly shocking to hear the stories of how quickly he’s interacting (dare I say “playing” with other babies at school). It really makes you think that this is how nature intended things to be. Babies weren’t meant to spend all day hanging out with grown-ups. They’re meant to be hanging out with other babies, which is probably how things worked back in caveman times. All the women folk hanging around the cave with their babies talking gibberish to each other while all the men folk are out working at the Stone Quarry on top of dinosaurs.

Of course the problem with this 8-5 entertainment is that it makes napping a much lower priority on Jackson’s daily to-do list. Why would he waste time sleeping when he could be laying the groundwork for a future make-out session with one of the ladies at school? I understand his point, but this has been the biggest cause of concern for Kate in the new normal. The Monkey basically went from napping 3-5 hours a day at home to napping for 1-2 hours his first week at school.

• Was he still happy? Yep, smiles all around.
• Did he sleep like a champ in the evenings after school? Yep, like a dog that spent the day at doggy day care. 
• Did we still spend hours Googling “how to get your baby to sleep at day care” each night? Yep, and it turns out the search results are pretty weak, mostly comprised of crazy moms on internet message boards.

In the end, our logic was that Jackson hated his crib. When he was home with Kate, he’d nap for hours in his swing, or in Kate’s arms, or in the Maya Wrap – but very few times in the crib. Determined to overcome this “problem”, we vowed to put him through some crib training each weekend, forcing him to nap in it whether he liked it or not, buying a music machine that attaches to the crib, and committing ourselves to putting in the hard work required to make him a better crib sleeper.

(Ironically, before we had a chance to actually do any of these things, he slept one day at school in his crib for three hours.)

But the point is – when sleeping in a crib vs. a swing is the biggest of your worries about sending your baby off to school, things are going pretty good. However, there are a number of things I’ve learned about “day care” in the first two weeks that Jackson has been there…

Regardless of how often they tell you that they clean the place, it still feels dirty. I sweep my house maybe twice a month. I can’t tell you the last time I mopped my floors. Jackson’s school is cleaned, sterilized, and disinfected using a three-step method on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Lab tests would undoubtedly prove that his school is the cleaner place for him to be crawling around on the floor… yet it still seems dirty. I’ve come to the conclusion that when you’re in a room with seven other crawling, drooling, pooping babies, no matter what you do, it’s going to seem gross.

The ladies that work there have to be a little crazy. I can’t help but picture the first grade teacher in Billy Madison who is super sweet, loves all the kids, is a great teacher… and puts paste on her eyes when no one is looking. I mean honestly, can you imagine taking care of eight babies all day every day? Each one is a like a ticking time bomb that needs constant attention and supervision to keep the room from becoming total chaos. Plus, you’ve got crazy parents who are constantly second-guessing everything that you do (even though you’re probably taken care of hundreds of babies in your life compared to their one or two). I know day care is expensive, but good God – you couldn’t pay me enough money to do their job.

The fact that everyone buys their baby stuff at Babies R Us is painfully obvious. A quick stroll around the room and you’re guaranteed to see duplicates of every car seat, mobile, toy, and outfit… and that’s in a room with the super small sample size of eight babies. It makes your stuff seem a little less special… but also gives you confidence that if you’re buying all the wrong stuff for your baby, at least you’re not the only one.

But most importantly, it’s showed me that not all babies are created equal.

Comparisons. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the guy who thinks my child is the cutest thing the world has ever seen and all other babies pale in comparison. I’ll be the first to tell you that Jackson looks like a middle aged banker, and looked like a chubby Asian baby when he was first born. I’ll also be the first to tell you that ANY picture of a cute puppy trumps ANY picture of a cute baby, my own included. But being completely objective – there are a lot of weird looking babies out there.

I first noticed this trend on Facebook a while back. People would post pictures of their new babies and be met with a hundred comments of people saying how adorable and cute their child is… compared to my reaction which would range somewhere between “Eh” and “Ugh!” It makes you wonder – are people just obligated to give these same standard reactions and comments regardless of what the baby looks like? Or am I the only horrible person in the world who has ever said the phrase “Gross. I’m glad that’s not my baby”? Like I said, Jackson looks like a middle aged banker, but the kind of middle aged banker that you would do business with. Some of the babies out there look like grumpy old men who have been hardened by the war and would chase kids off their lawn with a Civil War sword… and they’re baby girls. I’m sorry, but nothing about matches the Facebook comment of “sweetheart” or “doll”.

The good news is, in life’s race to being pretty, it’s how you finish, not how you start – so we really shouldn’t care what babies look like. My wife didn’t peak until later in life, and I’m thankful for that. I’ve been slowly getting less cute since I was about 4 years old, and I’ve accepted it. It just seems like as a society, we should be strong enough to give honest opinions about the appearances of babies, knowing that they’re going to change dramatically over the course of the next 18 years of their lives. Someday when a super model looks back on her baby pictures and thinks “man, I was ugly”, wouldn’t you rather be honest with her and say “yes, you weren’t the cutest baby” so that she respects your current opinions on her appearance? Or would you rather she assume that you think everyone and everything is pretty, thus lowering her current hotness factor? Plus, I’m fairly certain there’s something about telling the truth in the Bible.

Still, with the start of school the comparisons start. Who has the smartest baby? Who has the cutest baby? Who has the happiest baby? With two weeks of school under his belt, I can confirm that Jackson is in the running for “cutest baby”. One area that he’s not going to win? Cleanliness.

I mentioned before that we get daily report cards for Jackson. They’re similar to the report cards that you get later in life, only these track things like how often your child pees, poops, and sleeps. In his first two weeks, Jackson has also gotten a few written comments, one of which I hope he never sees on another report card for the rest of his life:

NEEDS MORE PANTS.

Apparently, Jackson is awesome at pooping – so awesome that sometimes it sneaks out of his diaper and stains his pants… and sometimes so good at it that he ruins multiple pants in the same day. This makes me think a few things:

1. How are the people at school changing Jackson? By turning him upside down first? Because I can’t remember the last time that he pooped out of a diaper.
2. A little poop on the pants never hurt anyone. Wipe it off, move on with life.
3. Pants should be optional.  At home, Kate is big on making Jackson look like a real person every day by wearing things like pants and socks. I’m all about putting him in a white onesie and calling it good enough (at least until he’s big enough to fit into his baby mesh shorts).

I just hope this report card doesn’t go into his personal file to haunt him for the rest of his life. I can just see Jackson applying for a job someday and having the person ask “so tell me about this situation where you needed more pants”. How embarrassing.

Toys. Last but not least this month, we’ve added some new additions to our arsenal of Jackson equipment around the house. First, a high chair, which brings him up to our level while we eat eat – and making him seem more like a person (eating at the table) than a dog (sitting in a bouncy chair on the ground looking up at us while we eat). Second, we finally set up the long-awaited exersaucer, a toy which we thought he would love ever since he was a few weeks old and we discovered that Jackson loves standing up more than anything.

Kate disagrees – but to me, this is the first major “toy” that Jackson has had. Sure, he’s had little stuffed animals and balls since he was born, but those required some grown-up intervention for him to keep interest in them (you know, moving them around, giving them names and voices, having them solve pretend crimes, the usual). He’s even had the bigger things like a swing – but that was more for sleeping than entertaining purposes. This is a full-fledged entertainment center for a baby. When Jackson sits in it, he’s got a variety of things to play everywhere he turns. Most importantly, it’s the first thing he has ever had that has the potential to entertain him – on his own – for an extended period of time (besides his fingers and feet). Now I won’t feel like I’m neglecting my child leaving him in a swing for a few minutes while I’ve got other things to do. Instead, I’m giving him the all-important “independent play time”. Less work for me and more fun for him? Everybody wins!

Immediately my mind fast-forwards to his first Christmas, birthday, and other upcoming events when we can actually give him toys that he’ll be excited about… and even further down the road when he’ll be able to toss football and play video games, which I can claim count as “father son bonding time” instead of “Brian playing time”. Sooner or later, having this kid is going to start paying off by getting me out of household chores. Booyah!

That’s all for this month. Time for me to celebrate my first Father’s Day the way our forefathers intended… putting my child to bed, pouring a whiskey, and watching sports. Happy Day!

Month Three Musings

Smile. Somewhere between month two and month three, having a baby starts to pay off. Granted, there is something intrinsically special about having a baby right from the start… you feel like God, having created life, you suddenly have justification for your house being a mess, you have an excuse to stay in on Friday nights and be in bed by 9:00 pm without your friends judging you, etc - but during those first two months you are doing a lot of internal justification and rationalizing that your baby likes you. Phrases like the following are running through your pretty frequently over the course of the first two months of having a baby:

“The baby sees me more than anyone else, they know I’m their parent.”

“The baby loves me – I feed / clothe / bathe him.”

“The baby would miss me if I wasn’t here. They like me more than their swing… or the lamp.”

Sure – those statements might be true… but you have no way to know for sure. For the first two months, you could perform a test on a baby - give them the option of either looking at you, a smiling, talking, real-life human being who is calling their name and motioning towards them… or looking at a blank white wall – and there’s probably an equal chance they’re going to pick the wall. It’s a little disheartening.

Then, one day, your baby becomes a real person. One day, you’re talking to your baby and they actually look you in the eyes. You see the little wheels turning inside their brain. They start to think “wait a minute, I’ve seen this guy before – he generally seems like a pretty cool dude, and doesn’t seem to mind when I suck on his arm or pee on him. I think I’ll smile at him to show him that I like his style.” And then they smile.

Suddenly, you have some evidence to back up all your crazy thoughts. Sure, they might also smile at the lamp from time to time, but there’s a pretty good chance that they do actually recognize you and appreciate all the blood, sweat, and tears that you’ve dedicated to them over the course of the first three months of their lives. You finally start to get some return on your investment!

For me, this is probably the moment when a baby starts becoming a person. It’s the first step towards social interaction, the first step towards being able to communicate with the outside world, and the first step towards Jackson being able to appreciate all the hilarious things I say to him all the time. The smiles become a measuring stick for how much a baby likes you, a pick-me-up after a crappy day at the office (hypothetically speaking, of course), and an elusive sight that quickly vanishes as soon as the cameras come out, much like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. Any day that you get some smiles is a good one.

Of course, the next step in this communication evolution is the laugh. Thus far, Jackson gives a “talking laugh” – you know, the kind you would give if you didn’t really think that something was funny, but were actually saying the words “ha ha ha”. I’ll classify it as a laugh for now, but either he hasn’t quite mastered the belly laugh yet, or my jokes aren’t actually that funny and he’s just humoring me.

The other interesting thing about babies? The line between laughing and crying is razor thin. One second they’re smiling and talk-laughing at you… then without notice, it becomes a cry. “Ha ha ha ha… waa!” It’s mind-boggling. On numerous occasions Jackson has gone mid-laugh into cry and mid-cry into laugh. On some occasions, he’s even done the elusive laugh-cry, where’s he doing both at the same time. The eyes say “I’m not happy”, but the mouth says “you are entertaining me. Keep it up, large person who cleans up my poop.”

Stress. But life with a baby isn’t always smiles and laugh-cries. It can also be stressful… like the most stressful hour of my week each week – the sixty minutes each Sunday that I’m at church. Babies inside churches (or any other quiet place for that matter) are a ticking time bomb that could go off at any minute. It’s horrible. You nervously keep one eye on them at all times, looking for any cracks in the armor or signs that loud noises might be coming. Church time is spent unleashing one preventive measure after another upon your child in hopes of avoiding a loud outburst. Rocking. Pacifying. Picking the baby up. Shaking the baby. Passing the baby to someone else like a hot potato so that if he does start crying, the congregation will look at them and think “what horrible parents, they must be sinners” rather than looking at you.

The good news is, this leads to plenty of prayer going on in church, although most are some variation of “God, please keep my baby quiet”. I guess all those prayers must be paying off, since thus far Jackson has been nearly silent in every church he’s ever attended. Heck, he even slept through his baptism, and that involved forcing him to wear a dress while a stranger dumps water on his head. What is this, a fraternity initiation? Still, the prospect of a mid-mass melt-down, especially during one of those “quiet reflection” portions of church is absolutely terrifying. I can’t wait for the day when Jackson is old enough to develop Catholic guilt so that I can shame into behaving at church.

Baby Books Become Useless. One of the things that Kate and I have discovered is that all the baby books that we have become utterly useless around month three. Up until this point, they’ve been giving us day-by-day, week-by-week instructions on how to properly raise our child. We’ve followed them pretty closely, and they’ve worked pretty well. Jackson is a very happy, calm baby who sleeps a ton. The problem is, every baby book either ends on month three – or jumps from month three to one year. There is literally no advice about what to do during months four through twelve. The authors cop-out and say things like “each child develops differently” or “congratulations, your baby is well on their way to being the happiest baby on the block”, and then just assume that everything is magically going to work out for the next nine months.

Clearly, someone is putting far too much faith in me as a parent.  

I’m fairly certain Jackson isn’t self-sufficient quite yet – maybe next month – which begs the question - what do we do now? Some talk of “tough love”, letting a baby cry it out, teaching them that the world is a cold, cruel place that they need to learn to tackle on their own. Others say this will make your child grow up to listen to goth music and hate you. On the other extreme are people who continue to baby their babies, attending to their every need and desire, teaching them that the world is caring, loving place full of sunshine and puppies. However, this risks creating a child who grows up thinking that everything in life should be easy, guaranteeing that they will never be able to become a Bengals or Notre Dame fan. It’s a pickle! I’m sure the answer lies somewhere in the middle, but without a so-called “expert” telling us how to get there, we’re left to navigate the treacherous waters of child-rearing on our own…

Back to Reality. Or are we? Month three marks the hardest part of every mom’s life, at least according to my unofficial research of females that I know – wrapping up maternity leave and heading back to work. Their lives have been fully consumed by one thing – taking care of their baby - for a quarter of the year… and suddenly, the party is over and it’s time to return to the reality of work. For fathers, this was a much smaller event that took place a week or two after the birth of their child – like when the NCAA tournament ends.  For mothers, many have literally spent every waking moment for three months staring at their child – it’s more like the end of the NFL season. It’s a hard transition. Work is like baseball. Sure, it fills the time in the day and keeps you entertained, but the same level of love and affection isn’t there. You spend your free time thinking about your fantasy football team – er, your baby – and can’t wait for it to return.

The silver lining here? In the case of Jackson, he’s going to start going to day care where there will be a staff of people who have degrees in things like “How to Care for a Child”, “Teaching Babies to Nap in Cribs”, and “Advanced Sock Puppetry” – critical skills that people like KB and I lack. We do our best to make up for these deficiencies with things like unconditional love and undivided attention, but it’s somewhat nice to think of day care as a safety blanket – someone else that can ensure we’re not missing anything crucial to successful child development… and if we are, someone that can take steps to fix our mistakes. It’s like an insurance policy for our parenting skills – and I kinda like that.

So while I know it’s going to be an absolutely brutal few weeks as we get adjusted to the “real life” or working and having a baby, I take solace in the fact that it’s a critical step in making Jackson a well-adjusted human being who can go out into the world, make friends, and learn things like baby sign language and Spanish. Over the past three months, we’ve done the best we can to arm him with all the defense mechanisms we can – a thick layer of body fat to get through the lean times, cuteness to help him receive favor from his teachers, and now the ability to smile and talk-laugh, which should help him get out of any sticky situations with day care bullies, and also help pick up day care chicks.

It's a big beautiful world out there. It's time for Jackson to start experiencing it.

Month Two Musings

It's already time for ANOTHER blog post? It seems like only days ago that I was writing about the first month of life A.J. (after-Jackson) - but here we are at month two. Or is it week eight? Or year 1/6? It's all very confusing. I mean, I understand the need to communicate with others about how old your baby is, since saying "he's zero years old" doesn't really paint much of a picture - and sounds weird. But should I be counting his age in weeks or months? Or days? Or just making the days count?

Tracking a Baby's Age. Girls obsess over this stuff. They have books that tell them what their child is supposed to be doing at each stage of their life for the first year - but the problem is that some publications count in weeks, and some count in months. Jackson was born on February 16. So does that mean he's not "two months old" until April 16th? Or, since the average month is 4 weeks long, is he two months old when he's 8 weeks old? In that case, it would have been back on April 12th. It's only 4 days, so it really doesn't make that much of a difference - but it's of tremendous importance when it comes to things like taking "two month pictures" and sending around Email announcements about what's been going on for the prior month of Jackson's life. It's also important to be able to stack rank your baby against your friends' babies to make sure that your baby is better than theirs.

As for me, I've got one resource for tracking my child's development - an iPhone Baby Center app that tells me what should be going on each day for the first year of his life. I don't read ahead, so I'm not spoiled - but that does make me somewhat clueless about what exactly is going to happen in this first year. When do babies start walking? When do they start talking? It could be next week or next year, I'm not sure - but I'm sure the iPhone will tell me about when I need to know about, no sooner and no later.

So what should be the standard tracking metric? Well, like any good American, I don't really understand fractions, so using 1/6 of a year is out. If I've got my handy iPhone app to help me out, I will easily be able to tell you that Jackson is 8 weeks old - if not, there's no way I'll be able to remember how many weeks old he is. It seems like the only logical choice is to track based on months, so that's what this Blog (and I) will be doing. The only tricky thing is going to be when someone asks me how old Jackson is and we're not close to the 16th of a month. I guess in those cases, I'll just round down to the prior month - effectively setting Jackson up to under-promise and over-deliver on those developmental milestones. Smart.

Admitting You Are Wrong. Speaking of the iPhone, I'll be the first to tell you that it's easily been the most life-changing thing I've bought since my first 13 inch TV when I was 16 (which I'm still using in my bedroom to this day). But it's also something that I resisted for years, telling others that I didn't need such a fancy phone - and my good old flip phone that just made phone calls was fine by me. I was stubborn and fought the good fight for years before realizing that I was unable to fully live my life without a smart phone. I now look back on the past five years of my life and wonder how much better they would have been if I had an iPhone all along.

Similarly, before Jackson was born, Kate thought we should get a video monitor for his room. I told her that this was crazy, and a good old fashioned audio monitor would be fine. Then, on one fateful day this past month, the wife decided it would be a good time to cash in all our Baby's R Us gift cards on a breast pump and a video monitor... and just like the iPhone, I can't imagine life without it.

Before you're a parent, you don't really realize how many noises babies make all the time. When they're happy, when they're sad, when they're sleeping. There are very few times when Jackson isn't making some grunting / honking noise. There is very little difference between his "I'm sound asleep and dreaming" grunt and his "I'm suffocating myself face-down in a bed" grunt. But having the video monitor allows you to quickly confirm if he's happily dreaming of boob whiskey fountains or somehow gotten himself into mortal peril. I have to assume if we didn't have it, each night after he went to bed, we'd be running upstairs to frantically check on him every ten minute, which would really cramp our TV watching schedule.

Also? These video cameras are amazing. The one we got came with two cameras, which you can control with the display. Want to pan left or right? No problem. Want to look up or down? Yep. Want to use the camera as a walkie-talkie? It does that to. It's like a home defense system / spy camera rolled into one. I can to use this to spy on people in our house when we leave the room to make sure they're not talking about us - or when we're still using this 15 years from now and can use it to spy on a teenage Jackson and his friends in the basement to ensure they're not drinking beer or making out with chicks*.

There are some things in life that are worth spending money on. Video baby monitors are one of them.

New Developments. As I mentioned, Jackson is now a real person who sleeps in his own room, instead of some mooch who has to crash on the floor of our bedroom. That's a pretty big development - but I'd say the bigger one is that he's now able to look at and recognize things like his toys. I was really starting to wonder why we got so many bright-colored, animal-filled things for him to lay in and play with, when all he really wanted to do is look out the window, the black and white pictures on the wall, or the lamps. It would have been much cheaper (and fashionable) to just have him hang out in our house with our existing decorations and chairs - but everyone told us that we needed to get all this baby stuff for him.

Now I understand why.

He'll sit in his Rainforest Bouncer and watch the monkey swing back and forth for a good twenty minutes without blinking. He's so intently focused on that monkey. It makes you wonder what's going through his little head while he's watching that monkey. Is he trying to figure out what makes it move? Trying to figure out what it is? Making sure the monkey doesn't come to life and attack him? I have no idea. But it's good to see him doing something productive with his time, like guarding us from evil plastic monkeys. Although he's not really using his hands to grab things yet, I look forward to the day when he gains that skill set - just in case the monkey does come to life, he'll be able to grab it and retrain it until the authorities can step in and assist.

Cuteness as self-defense. Although he can't really use his arms or legs yet for anything useful, I realized that he does have one very powerful defense mechanism. He's pretty adorable. I have to think at some point along the evolutionary timeline, God realized that people wouldn't want to take care of something that requires so much attention and only repays you with crying, pooping, and sleep deprivation... that is, unless it's pretty cute. This rule doesn't just apply to babies though - look at nature. There's a reason why puppies and kitties get adopted and the hot girl at the bar doesn't pay for her drinks even though she's super annoying - it's the ultimate self-defense / preservation mechanism.

This past month, Kate made the foolish decision of visiting Jackson's future day care... and came home really upset at the prospect of leaving her poor defenseless baby out there in the cold, cruel, world all alone. "He's so little!" she cried. While this is true, I reminded her that there's a really good chance that Jackson is going to be the cutest baby in his day care class - and therefore will get the most attention from his teachers and will be taken care of better than the uglier kids in class, so he'll be just fine.

I'm not going to act like it's going to be easy to drop him off at day care - it's going to be terrible... and as a parent part of you kinda hopes that your baby actually is going to miss you. But let's be honest, there's probably a strong chance that as a three month old baby, he's going to have no idea what's going on. As long as he gets to drink boob whiskey, sleep, and guard against evil plastic monkeys, he's going to be happy. Also, although my iPhone hasn't confirmed this yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that babies have memories like gold fish - and to Jackson, a full day of us abandoning him at day care will really only feel like we abandoned him for a few minutes, which feels much more responsible.

Here's hoping I'm right about that.

Holidays. Although technically, Jackson celebrated St. Patty's Day last month, he celebrated his first "big three" holiday was last week with Easter. It's kinda funny that although he's totally oblivious to everything that is going on, he still received not one - but TWO Easter baskets, complete with the whole "hunt for the Easter basket" activity caught on film. Although KB is clever, and filled his basket with toys and books that he had already received, but had yet to be used (money savings!), it's still a little bit funny that we're already going through all of the normal traditions that we'll do when he's old enough to remember them. We dyed Easter eggs, hid baskets, sung Easter songs (okay - technically I think there's just the one, but we threw in some church songs as well), etc. We have a lot of this caught on film, so that one day when he's older, we can get these pictures out and prove to him that we didn't cheat him out of a single holiday in his life - but it's also nice to start establishing those family traditions.

Although technically the merging of family traditions start when you get married, it becomes for real once you have a kid. All the sudden, I'm responsible for Jackson having the same memories and expectations of holidays that I have from when I was a kid... and that's a lot of pressure. But I must say, as anticipated, holidays become infinitely more fun when you have a baby / child to share them with - all the sudden hiding Easter baskets seems like a perfectly logical thing to do, and they are actually filled with candy and toys as opposed to candy and booze, like they were B.J.

Gym. Lastly, this week marked my triumphant (embarrassing) return to the gym after a two month hiatus. The good news is that I remembered where it was and how to operate the machines. The bad news is, I was pretty much spent after five minutes. When people ask me what the toughest thing about parenthood is, I have to say it's the time management - and actually, that's probably been the only tough thing about having a baby. It turns out the Lion King was right - there's more to do than can ever be done. Life has suddenly become much more of a juggling act between work, home, friends, and baby - and it seems like no matter what you decide to do, there's always this nagging thought in the back of your head that you're neglecting some other area of your life... like going to the gym.

Back in the day, the gym was a mandatory stop on the way home from work. If you didn't go, you felt guilty. It was like being a Catholic. But now that I think about only having a few hours with Jackson after work on the average weeknight, it seems crazy to waste that time ogling the girls at the gym - I mean "working out". However, then I remember that if I don't go to the gym, I'll revert back to "chubby Brian" days, become a fatty, and probably die sooner in life - which would result in me being able to spend quality time with Jackson when he's older, and we're able to ogle girls at the gym together. So I suppose I can't play the "I have a new baby" card excuse forever, and this is yet another ball to juggle in life.

Still, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy to make the decision to go there again anytime soon, especially since their stupid non-digital cable doesn't have the Travel Channel anymore -unless of course Jackson is screaming his head off at home. In that case, I'll have to put my personal health above spending a precious hour of time with my baby. Sorry buddy, but you'll thank me one day.

That's all for this month!

* and by "beer", I mean non-Miller Lite / Beast beer. By "chicks", I mean uggos.

Month One Musings

Incredibly, it's already been a month since Jackson was born. I guess we're going to keep him since I think the return policy only lasts three weeks.

It's hard to believe that it's been a whole month. The time has gone by really really fast - yet on the other hand it already feels like we've had him forever. One month in, here are the things that I have learned:

It's weird to start using your baby's name. A lot of this is probably due to the fact that I don't call anyone by their real name - ever - but it's just weird to start saying Jackson's name out loud after all those long months of keeping it a secret and calling him EJ. I've actually accidentally slipped and called him EJ a few times since he was born - but it's funny that the number one name that both Kate and I use for our son is "monkey". Some people think it's offensive - but those people are racist. Come on, babies are 100% like monkeys. They hang on you a lot of the day, grip your fingers with their hands - try to grip things with their toes (even though they can't), and are basically furry little animals. I sometimes feel like I'm yelling at him, or he's in trouble, if I use his actual name. So for now, it's a lot conversations about monkeys in our house.

"How's the monkey doing?"

"How long has the monkey been sleeping?"

"What did the monkey poop on today?"

I feel like these are probably the same conversations that zookeepers have on a daily basis. The only tricking thing about using the nickname of monkey is that I have to keep reminding myself to never ever shake the monkey, even though Dave Matthews has a song about it.

The exercise ball is the most valuable piece of furniture in the house. About two weeks after having Jackson, I discovered the one sure-fire way to get him to stop crying. It involved picking him up and bouncing him up and down - which results in him immediately stopping crying and getting this panicked / confused look on his face. He looks around with big eyes, his jaw drops open, and moves his arms up and down - perfectly quiet. I'd like to think that he's having fun when I do this -but in reality he's most likely afraid for his life.

The problem with this method is that after about two minutes of doing it, my arms feel like they are going to fall off. Turns out that I probably should have been doing some arm exercises at the gym once in a while over the past five years instead of just always using the elliptical machines - but that's where all the cute girls work out, so I stand by my decision.

Enter the exercise ball. I can sit on this ball, hold the monkey, and bounce up and down - and it has almost the same effect. I can always tell how things are going when I pull into the driveway and look in our window. If I see Kate's head bobbing up and down, I know that Jackson is being fussy. If I don't see that, I know that he's behaving himself. It's a good system - plus we're really strengthening our cores!

If you grab Jackson's arms and pull them above his head, he will instinctively stretch out his legs to do a big full-body stretch. This, along with being able to instantly make him stop crying by bouncing him make up the only party tricks he knows at this point. Not a very big repertoire, but he's only a month old, so cut him some slack.

Getting a good picture of a baby is hard work. The wife talked me into getting professional baby pictures taken (I wasn't going to suffer through three years of complaining like I did when I talked her out of getting engagement pictures) - and I'm glad we did because getting a good picture of a baby requires an army of people, a high speed camera lens, and usually results in taking like 35 bad pictures first. In our attempt to take his official "one month" pictures on our own, we fired off about 20 pictures on the regular camera, another 30 on my iPhone, and took an HD video to try and extract out a single good frame. The result? We'll be trying to take this picture again today (one month and one day - but don't tell anyone) because they all sucked.

Jackson loves TV. I suppose it should come as no surprise that Jackson loves the TV - he is my son, after all. But it's crazy how he's only one month old but will instinctively turn his head towards the TV and watch it, with a wide eyed, mouth agape gaze. But the good news is that he doesn't only like TV - he will also instinctively look out the windows of the house during the day as well, so there's a slight chance that he just likes the light, and isn't already hooked on the Today Show, Ellen, and Cosby Show reruns (the top three things the wife watches during the day while feeding him). But I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he starts learning valuable life lessons from TV just like his dad.

Kate loves the iPad. I don't know what women did before iPads existed. How did they watch episodes of How I Met Your Mother to entertain themselves during middle of the night feedings? Were they forced to go to a room with an actual TV in it and use DVR? How barbaric! I'm glad we don't live in such pre-historic times.

Jackson's first visit to a public place (non-family and doctor-related category) was to BWs. Although technically a bar (which might make us "bad parents"), it was lunch-time, we ate food -and clearly BWs wants you to bring babies there because they brought this sling thing to our table to let us put his car seat in it and give him a better view of the March Madness games on TV. It's fitting that his first visit into the outside world was to the establishment where I spent most of my time during college - narrowly beating out the library by about 10 hours a week. Wings. Beer. Sports. Babies. All the essentials.

Jackson loves Boob Whiskey. What is Boob Whiskey, you ask? It's just milk (and no, Kate isn't drinking whiskey. That would be irresponsible. She's more of a gin and tonic girl), but whenever Jackson drinks it, he is like a drunken sailor afterwards. Boob whiskey all over his mouth, eyes rolling back in his head, passing out drunk (and sometimes peeing himself) - just like his daddy after a long night of drinking regular whiskey. So that's become another phrase that has entered our lexicon.

"How's the monkey?"

"Drunk on Boob Whiskey"

"Good for him"

Now there's a conversation you probably wouldn't overhear at the zoo.

Jackson loves sleep. At some point, I'm sure Jackson is going to turn into a terror (because all kids are rotten at some point in their lives - in my case it was ages 18-34), but knock on wood - this kid has been an angel 90% of the time. He's sleeping in 5-6 hour chunks (which means we're also sleeping in 5-6 hour chunks - booyah, that's like a full night of sleep for me pre-baby!), eating like a champ (gained a pound and a half in a little under two weeks), and is generally a pretty mellow monkey.

The other 10% of the time? That's when he's doing things like peeing on me (three times), pooping so much that we have to change his clothes, or screaming his head off before I relent and get up off the couch to move to the exercise ball. The good news is, I know that I'm a parent now - not because I've been peed on, but because the third time he peed on me, I waited like two hours before washing my hands or changing my pee shirt.

That's right. Parenting = cleanliness going out the window. Although I guess in some ways, based on the condition of my former apartment, I guess I was always a parent...

So there you have it! One month under our belts, already old pros. Assuming Jackson never starts to crawl, talk, or want to eat anything besides Boob Whiskey, I think this parenting this is going to be super easy!

The Big Day

It turns out that I might have been a little over-ambitious in thinking I would be able to live Blog the birth of my child. I blame this on TV, movies – and pretty much everyone I’ve ever met for totally lying about how child labor works, giving me the false sense that I was going to have hours upon hours to kill waiting for the birth of my baby. It turns out – that isn’t always the case.

Here is the story of the birth of my baby, along with the ten lessons I learned along the way.

1. Sometimes you can be in labor without even knowing it. Let the record show that my wife is ridiculous and awesome. Throughout the course of the past 10 months, she has continued to work long days, go to the gym, run errands… and still stayed up later than me at night. So I suppose it should come as no surprise that her labor was a little different as well – mostly in that she didn’t realize she was in labor until she was about to have a baby.

In hindsight, given how strong she was throughout her pregnancy, I should have realized something was afoot that fateful Thursday morning when she wasn’t feeling well and decided to not go into work until lunch time. However, given how annoyed and tired she was getting of people asking her why she was still at work and when she was going to have the baby, I assumed it was more to avoid all the questions than because of any true discomfort.

When I Emailed her from work around lunchtime and she said she was feeling “weird”, I offered to come home and check in on her. An hour later we were at the doctor’s office, finding out she was already 5 cm dilated. A half hour later we were at the hospital, and less than four hours later we had a baby… but we didn’t even need that much time!

2. Doctors are pretty worthless and nurses do almost everything. I suppose I should have known this lesson from listening to Carla complain all the time on Scrubs, but seeing it action really drove the point home. When we first arrived at the hospital, an army of nurses got Kate all setup , took down a thousand pieces of information, and then one nurse (Tara) stuck around with us and guided us through the entire process. I’m fairly certain that if Tara had the authority to deliver our baby, KB would have had our child less than two hours after arriving in the hospital. Instead, we killed time and slowed contractions for another two hours while waiting for the on-call doctor to arrive. He strolled in the room, made a few jokes, and five minutes later we had a baby. The doctor wrapped up, then another army of nurses cleaned the baby, checked things out, and stuck around in the room until we left.

Hmmm – I wonder if this is what my employees say about me at work…

3. The man should pack the hospital bags. Let me paint you a picture of how every request from KB went while she was in labor:

“Can you get me my good socks?”

“Sure, where are they?”

“In my hospital bag”

“These?”

“No – my good socks”

“These?”

“No, the ones that look nice!”

“I don’t see any other ones”

“In the small pocket of the bag”

“Which small pocket? There are like six”

“The one on the left”

“My left of the bag’s left?”

“Forget it! I’ll just wear these bad socks!”

However, it should be noted that the woman should actually be the one to determine what goes into the bag. As referenced above, she packed at least three pairs of socks in her bag. I packed my own bag. It was full of snacks, electronics, booze… and one undershirt and pair of mesh shorts. No real shirts, no pants, no socks.

I packed for the hospital like I packed for my 11 day trip through Italy back in college – taking half as many items as clothing that I needed, not caring if I looked gross or smelly. You know it’s a bad sign when you wake up the morning after your baby is born and look into your bag and say “Huh, I guess I wear these socks today too”.

4. The man’s job during labor is to stand around and do nothing and say nothing. During the classes, they tell you ways that you need to be supportive of your spouse during labor, but they always followed it up with “if she’s uncomfortable or having a contraction, don’t say anything.” I also found out that “if she’s uncomfortable or having a contraction, don’t touch her.” I would try to rub her back or give a massage (like I learned in class!) but she was having none of it. This just goes to show, as Sully warned me, that the Lamaze class was really just an excuse for pregnant ladies to get an afternoon of massages from their spouse, rather than offering anything worthwhile that can be used during the actual labor and delivery of a child.

5. Not all babies come out gross. Based on TV shows and movies, babies come out bloody, covered in goo, or generally with crap all over them. Not my baby. Came out looking pretty much clean, aside from needing a little wash of the hair. I was fully expecting to not want to touch my kid until they were cleaned, sterilized, and disinfected – but instead the baby was fully touch-able right from the start.

6. Walk away from your wife and be with the baby immediately post-delivery. I got a ton of good pictures, had some instant quality bonding time, and kept a close eye on the nurses tending to my child to ensure they weren’t doing anything sketchy or trading him out for a less pretty baby while no one was looking. But the best part? I have no idea about what matter of gross-ness was going on with my wife right after the baby was born… and I am eternally thankful for that. All I know is that it involved garbage bags full of something being carted out of our room and the floor being mopped up. The last time I’ve seen a scene like that, it involved Dexter.

7. There are way too many “rules” regarding telling people about your new baby. Granted, given the rushed nature of the labor and delivery, we didn’t have sufficient time to do things like send mass Emails or text messages out to people – but instead hit the highlights (calling the parents, sending a few texts, posting the scenic view from the delivery room on Facebook). But after the baby was born, I immediately wanted to post pictures on the Internet and tell the world… but no, instead you have to go through this hierarchy of importance where you have to call some family members, let them contact others, and get the go-ahead before telling semi-strangers via Facebook.

I’m sorry – but text messages and phone calls cost money and are inefficient. I can post one message on the Facebook for free and everyone knows exactly what’s going on. Freedom of information!

8. Two days in a hospital room is plenty. You would think that as the parent of a newborn, you would be freaking out and love the comfort of knowing an army of skilled nurses and doctors were around, checking in on you and ensuring you weren’t accidentally killing your child. However, we both found that we couldn’t wait to get out of there to start living our real life, sleeping in a real bed, and eating real food. Maybe I’m being selfish, but I’d rather roll the dice and assume I can just “wing it” taking care of my baby if it means I can do so from the comfort of my own couch.

9. The first night at home with a baby is the equivalent of a year’s worth of worrying about a house. As I’ve mentioned before, home ownership is for suckers. You lay awake at night worrying about things breaking, trees falling on your house, the roof leaking, and drafty windows increasing your energy bill. But with a baby? You lay awake at night listening to each breath they take, waiting to ensure you hear another one and they didn’t randomly stop breathing. It sounds absurd, but after all the work and effort of having a baby, it would really suck to lose them the first night because you weren’t paying close enough attention to their breathing.

The good news is that now that I have a few nights of sleep under my belt, I can assure you that babies make the craziest noises ever when they sleep – ones that sound like they’re choking, ones that sound like they’re gasping for breath, and ones that sound like they are growling – but apparently these are all normal. Babies are just weird like that.

10. Any male who tells you that they don’t care if they have a boy or a girl is lying – at least for their first child. I’m absolutely guilty of this. All throughout the pregnancy, people thought we were having a boy – based on how Kate was “carrying the baby”, the baby’s heart rate, and witchcraft tests involving pencils. Even Kate assumed she was going to have a boy. I realized that if we ended up having a girl, it might seem like the whole world was disappointed or rooting against her from the start, and that didn’t really seem fair. Obviously my child was going to be awesome regardless of if it was a boy or a girl, so I started saying “I think it’s a girl”. I even bet on “girl” in the office pool that was setup at Kate’s work. But I have to admit, when the baby finally arrived and I could proudly announce to Kate “it’s a boy!” I was pumped - the family name lives on! Although it’s silly, when you have such a unique last name as I do, there’s a concern that at some point it might totally disappear from planet earth. Now I know it’s a got a fighting chance to live on for at least another generation.

(Also, not to be sexist – I know that girls can play sports and drink beer… but it’s a little more of a guarantee with a boy. With a girl, people might have looked at me weird when they found out I was saving a can of Miller Lite on each of her birthdays in order to have her drink them all when she turned 21 – but with a boy, it’s a hilarious idea that’s going to be a great photo op and bonding moment 21 years from now.)

Without further ado, I’m proud to announce to the world the birth of Jackson!

(Lost fans, I know what you’re thinking and the answer is “yes”. The fact that this is a spinoff of Jack did come into play when deciding on a name. After all, were it not for Lost, Kate and I never would have started dating, and he wouldn’t even exist.)

I’m not going to be that annoying guy who thinks that his kid is the best ever, but I will say this – before he was born, one of Kate and my biggest fears was that he was going to be an ugly baby. You know the kind, where you have to awkwardly tell the parents that it’s a “cute” baby and then in the car ride home you say “I hope our kid doesn’t look like that.” Jackson was born with a full head of hair, wasn’t super fat, and looks like a normal person – so by baby standards, he’s pretty good looking.

Also – maybe the most mellow baby ever. The first few days in the hospital he was poked and prodded by a ton of people and just kinda chilled through it. Granted, now that we’re home he’s decided that crying his face off for a few hours in the middle of the night is his favorite pastime, but for the other 20 hours of the day, he just likes to eat and sleep – just like his dad. It’s a good thing I’ve slowly been teaching my body to not require sleep over the past few years…

So there you have it, the story of how Jackson entered the world. From this point forward, the story is going to be about Jackson learning about this world – and how he changes the world of his parents. It’s going to be exciting and scary and hopefully fun, just like the past 10 months!

The Final Countdown

Let’s hope I’m a better parent than I am a blogger.

After basically two months away, I figure I should probably get at least one Blog in before the big day arrives… whenever that might be. As I mentioned in the past, it’s weird to spend months collecting all sorts of paraphernalia – clothes, toys, snug-a-bunnies – for someone that you don’t know, and have no idea if they’re going to like any of them or not. Likewise, it’s a little weird spending over nine months counting down to a mystery date when that person is going to arrive. It’s almost like telling a child “Christmas is coming sometime in December… or maybe January – that’s when you’ll get a ton of awesome presents!” Without having a locked date on the calendar, how does one know how to gauge their excitement? You need to start slow and then have the anticipation build as the date grows closer. Peak too soon and you’ll just start getting angry as the days turn into weeks with no presents. Wait too long and it might sneak up on you without you knowing it, leaving you unprepared – and making the presents a little anti-climactic since you haven’t been anxiously awaiting them with baited breath.

When this Blog started, the last thing I would have thought I’d ever write is that KB and I are “ready to have a baby” – but against all odds, we’re there. We’ve gone through the gamut of baby perquisites, and are ready to graduate. Best I can tell, these are those requirements to have a child:

1. Tell family and friends about forthcoming baby.
2. Determine names for forthcoming baby.
3. Second guess names for forthcoming baby.
4. Settle on names for forthcoming baby.
5. Deflect anger from family and friends about not sharing baby names.
6. Register for one of everything at Baby’s R Us to prepare for forthcoming baby.
7. Attend multiple baby showers.
8. Be spoiled by family and friends with baby gifts.
9. Worry about child already being spoiled.
10. Get to know the people that work the return counter at Baby’s R Us on a first name basis.
11. Assemble baby furniture and accessories.
12. Curse. Drink. Repeat.
13. Rearrange house to fit assembled baby items.
14. Come to the realization that your house will never be “neat” ever again.
15. Attend baby classes.
16. Forget everything you learned in baby classes (oops).
17. Read baby books.
18. Achieve a false sense of confidence that everything will be fine based on reading said baby books.
19. Stock up house with enough food and toiletries to last six months.
20. Pack hospital bags. (Female = clothes, baby items, personal items; Male = electronics, snacks, games, flask)

Am I missing anything? I feel like that just about covers the experience up until this point.

To be honest, this has all been a lot easier than I thought. Part of it is probably due to the fact that pregnancy has changed the wife exactly 0%. She still works the same crazy hours, she still goes to the gym most days, still sleeps like a baby at night. She has more energy than me most days and we haven’t had any crazy drama. I thought I’d have a lot more fodder for the Blog over the past nine months, but it’s been – dare I say – a pretty easy pregnancy. I’m sure that statement is going to totally jinx me for post-pregnancy life, but at least that should provide some good topics for the Blog.

So now we play the waiting game (which sucks way more than Hungry Hungry Hippos). At any given point in time, probably the biggest life-changing event of your life is going to happen, and you have no idea. Leading up to the something like my wedding, I had time to plan ahead. I could coordinate my projects at work so that I didn’t have a ton of stuff happening while I was on my honeymoon. I could savor things like my last meal and last night of sleep. But this baby could come at any time – middle of the night, middle of the day, weekday, weekend, holiday. For all the planning and preparation we’ve done, it’s the one thing we can’t plan for… which I suppose adds a fun element of surprise and excitement to the situation – but it also puts you in this weird limbo state. We’re making plans for upcoming weekends that we may or may not keep. We’re avoiding getting super drunk (I guess technically that’s just me) or letting our cars ever have less than a half tank of gas in them. We are on constant, cautious watch – waiting for the big event to arrive. It’s a strange feeling.

When I started down this path last spring, I was equal parts terrified and excited. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but somehow through the course of reading the books, taking the classes, and installing the car seats, the terror started going away. It becomes real and then it just seems like something normal, something that is a part of your life instead of something that’s coming in to change it. Right now I’m pretty much all parts excited, aside from the small percentage of worried that comes from not knowing when the baby is coming… and that tiny thought in the back of my head that once in a while reminds me that I have absolutely no idea how to care for another human being – but I’m sure it will be just like tests in school and presentations at work, where I can just wing it, make a few jokes, and get by with my charm and good looks, right?

(True story – I’ve had a few dreams about taking care of my baby… and in every single one of them, I’m able to reason with the baby. Like, explain to them why they shouldn’t be crying, and they nod their head, understand, and stop. Sometimes they are even able to talk and say things like “of course, why was I being so silly?” – in a British accent sometimes, don’t’ ask me why. If I don’t have the most mentally advanced child in the history of the world, there’s a small chance I’m in for a rude awakening.)

Technically, we’ve got two weeks left before this kid is fully baked, but now that it’s mostly an excited feeling inside me, I can’t wait for those two weeks to get here. Like a kid in the middle of December waiting for Christmas, I just want my presents!

I half-jokingly have told people that I’m going to live Blog the birth of my child. We’ll see how the logistics work out – it might be reduced to hilarious one-liners on Facebook – but stay tuned. My next post will either be immediately pre-baby, or post-baby!

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.