Confessions of a New Father Part Three

Confessions of a New Father Part Three

Gangsta rappers wax poetic when rhyming about their cribs. They fight, in fact, to get them featured on the MTV Cribs show, and many of their hit singles revolve on brining _______’s back to their cribs. Yet my son, Leo, aka LC, aka LC Hammer, aka Leo the Lip, is no gangsta rapper and thus he has no pride in his crib. In fact, the boy, who is now nearly four months old, has about as much affection for his crib as the religious right has for gay marriage. You would probably catch Pat Robertson at a gay pride parade before you’d see my son sleeping peacefully in his crib. For Leo, the crib is a confining dungeon of tall oak pillars and oscillating mobile detachments, which circle ominously above his head, and nothing more.

So what do the parents of a crib-hater do? We started by trying to pimp out the crib. The first step was to kit the periphery with a funky bumper adorned with animals. But animal prints are cold comfort to a child that prefers the warmth of his mother’s bosom to the cold confines of an all too spacious crib. So we bought a crib mirror, so that the young star could gaze at himself like narcissus, and hopefully lull himself to sleep. The idea of sleeping with a mirror next to you might sound sleazy to some- but we were willing to try just about anything. But the mirror was a bust, and so was the frog named Leap who sings the alphabet and then giggles like an obsequious prostitute, and the organ that has fluorescent animals that light up and sing lullabies. No, there is probably no toy anywhere in the sweatshops and warehouses of Guandong province that can make my son love his crib. But I’m still willing to dream- in fact-I am thisclose to shelling out nearly $100 for a crib vibrator device- again, like the crib mirror, its not as sleazy as it sounds- the thing is supposed to help your infant feel as though his crib were traveling 55 miles per hour.

Since the boy refuses to sleep in the crib, he usually spends part of the night in a little infant bed that lies between my wife Jen and I, and the rest of the night nuzzled right up to his mom’s breast area. I refer to the little bed within a bed as the penalty box- because he doesn’t prefer it, but he will get in there and allow us to keep him in their for brief periods of time. While he doesn’t like the penalty box, it does seem downright posh after a stint of fire and brimstone screaming in the crib. For him, getting sent into the box after being in the crib is like a prisoner being brought up from solitary to share H-block with his cellies, and getting the full upgrade right into his mothers arms, is, well, like stretching out in business class with a fine cabernet and some comfy slippers.

We’ve established that the boy is not a great sleeper, but there are other things that Leo is quite good at. Travel, for example, is definitely something that the boy can do. We flew to Buffalo twice, both times on Southwest, which has an open seating policy. I had nightmare visions of other passengers seeing us come down the aisle and receiving us with all the warmth one might accord a junior level member of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban. But the Lip was eerily silent on all four flights, and is similarly unobtrusive while riding in the car. Though his proclivity for motion has its price- sitting down on the couch and examining the evening paper is certainly not high on the child’s agenda. No, the boy can often only cope with the world if his father consents to pace around the apartment holding him aloft like the panchen lama being carried through the streets of Lhasa.

There is no mistaking that Leo is a mama’s boy. He laughs at my jokes and is not above watching sports on TV with me, but when he settles in on his mothers lap for a refreshing splash of breast milk and gazes up at her, star-struck, there is no question that he knows where his bread is buttered. Though I am not without utility as well. The role that I often play is akin to what fluffers do in the pornographic film industry-again not to be perverse- but my job is basically to occupy Leo until the headliner (Jen) is ready to work her magic. And that can sometimes be quite an undertaking.

Leo, like most infants, I suspect, doesn’t cry. People often talk about babies crying, but do they really cry? I have never seen a tear stream down my son’s cheeks, and the emotion he displays isn’t sadness but rather primal anger. He can wail, he can scream, he can whine, he can harrumph, he can fuss, he can hyperventilate, but he doesn’t cry. And when Leo is inconsolable he arches his back, straightens out his legs, closes his eyes, clenches his fists and raises them up by his head as though he were a televangelist summoning the Holy Spirit, and turns beat red as he screams as though he were trying to exercise poisonous demons that are eating out his intestines. It’s not a pretty sight- and, in truth, I am delighted when I can him over in this frenzied state to his mother, whose magic breasts and calm demeanor usually manage to hypnotize the savage beast.

Leo is an eager and enthusiastic eater. He likes a good breast milk buzz early in the morning, long before the drunks on nearby Madison Avenue peel the labels from their bottles of Bud. Leo would breastfeed 24/7 if he could. Of course there are times when he’s hungry and attacks the breasts with the gusto of a little Pac-Man, but there are also many other times when he’s not really hungry, but just wants a little camaraderie and perhaps just an aperitif of breast milk. In this respect, you could liken him to a social drinker. Jen is frequently flummoxed when I suggest that she breast feed Leo.
“He just ate a half-hour ago!” she’ll protest.
“So what, let him eat again!” I’ll counter, because its no skin off of my back, and the very act of breast-feeding makes the boy happy.

Leo is also a serious chick-magnet. The very sight of him smiling and cooing in his stroller can make grown women become all mushy and melty in public places. Sometimes I wish that I could loan him out to single friends, so that his charms could be put to more constructive use. Of course, it takes two to tango, and Leo returns the attention of his admirers tenfold, sometimes reserving his cutest smiles and most blatant flirtation for complete strangers that approach him in café’s restaurants, or on the streets. The little man revels in the spotlight, and is never too busy to make time for adoring fans.

Most importantly, my son is good at reminding us that there is still purity and innocence in the world. All it takes us a little smile, a fart, a good burp, some laughable, incoherent mumbling, or the look of tranquility on his face when he drifts off to sleep to remind us of how lucky we are to have him and how precious these early days of his life are. He may never be on MTV’s Cribs, but he might just be the only person in the world capable of making me feel O.K. after getting a speeding ticket for going 42 in a 30 zone. His dad loves him so much, that pretty soon, he’s going to have a crib that’s even faster than dad’s car.