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.

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?