Confessions of a New Father Part Two

Confessions of a New Father Part Two

Shortly after I wrote Confessions Part One, which may have left some with the impression that Leo was quite a handful, my wife Jen and I discovered that the real problem wasn’t Leo. It was us. How to explain this sudden revelation? Easy- my mom and dad came for a visit. My mom, Joanne, had six boys from 1960-1966, and then one more, yours truly, in 1972, so she has more than just a touch of experience with babies, and despite the decades that have passed since her days of caring for infants, not much has really changed. The first day or two of their visit, Leo was strangely quiet, but I chalked it up to random luck. But the trend continued for the entire visit, and I soon grew to see that my mom really knew how to handle the boy.

Leo was as fascinated by his grandmother as she was by him. Not only did she place him in oddly comforting holds he had never experienced before, she talked to him. Boy did she talk to him. And the funny thing was he listened. Intently. In fact, I doubt if anyone has hung on my mom’s words so eagerly in many years. Leo was so fascinated by mom’s running commentary and litany of rhetorical questions, I could not help but wonder if, in the future, he might be able to serve as my spokesman since he and my mother clearly communicated so well together. My mom also is like the Grand Wizard of burp inducement. She could induce a burp out of a Sudanese man starving in the desert. Jen and I would beat on Leo’s back like a drum to no avail, but with my mom on the case, beautifully full and throaty burps spewed forth with little or no effort.

But all good things must come to an end, so after the visit we were left to our own devices albeit with a few new tricks learned from Joanne. We’ve been having a blast with Leo, treasuring at least 75% of the moments we have with him, but he had fallen into a pattern of behaving like a psychopath each evening, usually around 11pm. The festivities would usually kick off with an extremely unpleasant and unproductive feeding session. McDonald’s has the Happy Meal; Leo has the Angry Meal™. Angry Meals™ would usually go down like this: the boy acts as though he’s starving, and when given the breast, he at first attacks it with vigor, but only moments later, the slurping turns to fury, as he begins to wail and punch his arms at the offending breast, all the while howling and kicking his legs while his face turns Blackhawk red.

So we take a step back, and here I hover in, offering a concerned look, some rhetorical questions (maybe he wants to….take a walk, burp, savor the feel of a new diaper, read a truly good book, enjoy a particularly fine cabernet sauvignon, or for once in his life see a movie with Ben Stiller in it that doesn’t totally suck) or some moral support. After I take him on a walkabout, during which time I hop around, shake back and forth and talk like a man just let out of a mental ward who hangs around at bus station shelters or in the erotica section at Barnes and Noble. If I succeed in calming him, I then hand him back to Jen, and if I don’t, I hand him back to Jen anyways, and she tries to entice him more subtly to the breast, teasing him with a bit of maternal foreplay before getting on to the main event. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Often times while Jen is bathing or otherwise trying to mollify Leo I play the role of DPH, Designated Pacifier Holder, basically the guy who sticks his finger inside the pacifier and holds it there to make sure it doesn’t fall out. You might think that that sounds like a bit part, but its actually a crucial job, because pacifiers fall out of angry babies mouths about 4 times per minute, on average, when left to their own devices. I asked our pediatrician about the feasibility of inventing a device that straps the pacifier onto the back of the child’s head, but apparently there are some reasons why that can’t be done. Something about breathing or choking if my memory serves me.

When it comes time for Leo to hit the sheets, Jen wraps Leo up like a little pastel taco, in this device called a swaddle me, which actually functions as a straight jacket. (though I think Babies R Us would have a harder time marketing it if it were called a baby straight jacket) When Leo is content, he looks pretty comical in this thing, but when he’s angry he tries to bust out of it like a mental patient being carried away to his cell. One tactic that I read about on the internet for quieting an angry infant seemed to make no sense to me. Why would a baby be soothed by the deafening roar of a vacuum cleaner? We had tried classical music, but the boy can’t be bothered with it. The idea of plugging a vacuum cleaner in late at night seemed insane but we gave it a shot and it delivered immediate results.

The infernal humm of the vacuum is music to Leo’s ears. Our vacuum is just so loud, its like he just can’t compete with it, so he just submits like a chimpanzee who has just been tranquilized on Animal Planet. The only problem is that we hate listening to the vacuum, and I don’t imagine that our downstairs neighbors find it particularly melodic either, especially at three A.M. So we have to calculate, which is more annoying: Leo screaming or the vacuum humming. I can live with the vacuum, but Jen prefers to hear Leo, so we mix it up. The funny thing about it is that if we turn the vacuum off before Leo goes asleep it takes him awhile to realize its off and that he can start crying again. But not nearly as long as we would like.

Thought he may occasionally act like homicidal maniac bent on world destruction, our love for the boy is powerful and unconditional. I can think of no better way to illustrate this than to gross you out with an anecdote that might cause you to question my dear wife’s sanity. The other day, while changing Leo’s diaper Jen approached me with what seemed almost like a confession.
“Do you think Leo’s dirty diapers smell?” she asked.
“Not too bad,” I replied.
“I actually think they smell good,” she said, giggling a bit.
“You’re serious?
“Yeah, maybe I’m crazy but, I actually kind of like it!”

So while we have now established that, at least according to the unbiased opinion of his mother, the boy’s crap doesn’t stink and in fact smells good, let us move on to a story of public flatulence which proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Leo was my son, and removed any possibility that I would have to take Jen on Jerry Springer to demand a paternity test. Leo and I were at Borders, which on a weekday afternoon was very quiet but not empty. Leo was sleeping peacefully while me and several other people in the vicinity thumbed through books and magazines which we had no intention of purchasing until all of the sudden Leo uncorked a whopper of a fart which drew all eyes to me. The fart was a long, loud and protracted one, much like an out of tune tuba played by a 9 year old, and it sounded far too grown up to have been from a sleeping infant, so the dirty looks came at me. I just shrugged, feeling like a good dad for not pointing down at my son.

Leo might very well turn out to be an actor when he grows up, if not sooner. The speed with which he can move from one character to the next is simply breathtaking. One moment he is auditioning for the part of “content infant number one”, looking as though he has not a care in the world. He plays the part so convincingly that you, the parent, might feel so bold as to pull out a book or even lie down. But, beware, a split second later, and with no forewarning, he’ll be auditioning for the part of “child being dismembered by an alien” in some kind of macabre horror flick.

If the acting thing doesn’t work out, however, I kind of have the feeling that Leo might grow up to be a boxer. His default setting seems to be clenched fists held up high to protect his face, and he has a scowl that is not unlike the one that Ivan Drago wore before his humiliating loss to Rocky Balboa in Moscow where Balboa succeeded in winning over a hostile crowd of Soviet sports fans, telling them, “if I can change, you can change, we’ze can all change!”

Though I suspect Balboa wasn’t referring to changing diapers, I have to agree that he was right, even I can change, I must say. Not only can I change a mean (not to mention filthy) diaper I have something of a roll. Jen has had the misfortune of being in the direct line of Leo’s fire during several diaper changes, yet I have still somehow managed to avoid the golden shower treatment. Though I have to admit that the streak (for lack of a better term) kind of haunts me- every time I change him I go so fast that the whole procedure is something of a Chinese fire drill- all the while I am thinking can’t let him pee on me. Someday, though, I know, it will happen, because I peed on my parents and siblings, and they peed on their parents and siblings. It’s an ancient ritual, and definitively one of the perks of being an infant, I suppose. People spend their whole lives acquiescing to the demands of others, trying not to piss people off, as it were, but when you are six weeks old, you can just let loose and not worry about the consequences. Leo is six weeks old this week, and so he is free to eat his Angry Meals™, listen to the vacuum, indulge his mother with his sweet smelling diapers and listen to his grandma chatter to his heart’s content. I only hope he’s enjoying all of this as much as I think he is.