We used to hear the words “mama, mama” droning through the tiny speakers of our bedroom baby monitors like clockwork sometime between 6 and 6.30 each morning. Leo is 20 months old now, and more frequently we’ll hear the words, “truck, truck!” The boy has a single-minded obsession with trucks. You know how they say that men think about sex something like once every 12 seconds? Well Leo thinks about trucks just as often. From the moment he wakes up, until bed time when he makes his last desperate pleas to just watch one more truck video, or look at one more book about trucks, the boy lives for trucks.
We got him one particular truck video from the library called “20 Trucks” which he’d be quite content to watch all day if we’d only let him. Leo already knows how to put a DVD in the player, so if we won’t put it in for him after he whines “truuuucccckkk, truuuuuuuuuuuuaaaahcccck”, “get …truck… on” 50 times, he tries to take matters into his own hands. One of the twenty trucks- #18 to be precise-is the most exalted and glorious of all trucks, the monster truck. Leo is mesmerized by scenes of monster truck carnage- he particularly likes a scene where a monster truck named Bigfoot smashes a bunch of parked cars. He likes to say “mons, mons” meaning, go back to the scene with the monster trucks. The DVD has a theme song which haunts me in my sleep……
Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can. Come on and try it now- lets all clap our hands! A tractor-trailer hauls a heavy load, a great big snowplow cleans snow off the road, I see a dump truck, its bed goes up and down! There goes a bus-taking people through the town; The Cee-ment mixers drum spins round, and round and round!
Man, I am such a loser for knowing the words to this song. Welcome to parenthood. No idea why the singer pronounces cement as See-ment, but you realize we are not dealing with a Lenin/McCartney wordsmith here.
Since the boy loves his trucks so much, I’ve resolved to take the boy to a live monster truck race soon. Luckily, we live right near Indiana, so we’re in a monster truck hotbed here in the Midwest.
He’s the proud owner of a huge variety of trucks himself- dump trucks, garbage trucks, pickup trucks, tractors, fire trucks, jeeps, tankers, and forklifts. You name the truck, and Leo’s got one. At least. He’s so proud of his fleet that he loves to walk up to strangers and hand them one of his trucks for their approval.
Recently, he sat in another kids toy car at the playground and wouldn’t get out of it, so we went to one of the most dismal places in the world- Toys R Us- to get him the same one. Toy stores should be fun places- we have a small independent store in nearby Oak Park that is great, they actually have lots of toys out for kids to play with. The only problem with them is that they only have high quality toys that appeal more to adults than to children. Toys R Us, on the other hand, pretty much just has row after row of boxes of crap. All made in China, and yet completely irresistible to a 20 month old. For some reason the Toys R Us near our house is always filled with people who look like they might be carrying some kind of developing-world communicable disease (I swear that the swine flu actually started at this store, but no one believes me), and the people who work there are surly and ignorant. Welcome to Toys R Us; now leave us the fuck alone. We brought Leo to the area of the store with the large sit-in toy cars, and, predictably, he was most taken with the largest and most ostentatious and expensive one- a $399 Hummer! We got him the equivalent of a Yugo for $40 and slunk out, reassuring him that it would get much better gas mileage. What a country we live in.
Leo’s a lot like his dad in many ways- he’s impatient, has a short attention span, is prone to rude or simply irrationally angry outbursts, blunt honesty, impetuous behavior, and likes to demand things he doesn’t need- but, unlike his dad, he still believes in the inherent good nature of humanity. He’s more than happy to amble up to even the most dangerous looking vagrant and say, “hi!” Most adults are quite nice to him, but not all kids are.
We accompany Leo to the playground every day and enjoy observing him with the other kids, most of whom are older than him. Sometimes it breaks our hearts though to see him approach other kids and enthusiastically say, “hi!” only to be ignored, or worse, told to get lost or pushed away. It probably doesn’t help that we live in a high-income neighborhood- don’t ask me what we’re doing here- with a high spoiled brat quotient. Leo is treated like such a prince at home, and by nearly every adult he sees, so he perceives the world to be his oyster and is surprised when he’s rebuffed by other kids. Nonetheless, he takes it in stride, even if he has to pick himself up off the ground after being bowled over by an older or bigger kid. We’re the ones that get our feelings hurt, not him.
Leo’s second obsession after trucks is his mom’s pregnant belly, which has now swelled to a 6-month bulge. “Tummy, tummy,” he’ll say, even if we are in a public place, meaning that he wants my wife, Jen, to lift her shirt and let him cuddle up against her stomach. He used to be obsessed with two body parts right above the tummy, and occasionally he still is, so the tummy kick is a welcome break for his mom.
Everyone knows that I have a penchant for using foul language at times, and Jen has been particularly concerned that Leo would pick up on some bad words. She herself rarely swears, so I took particular pleasure in the fact that she slipped up first, before me, a few weeks back. She said, “shit”, and he repeated it. He doesn’t use the word often, but he does use it judiciously and on appropriate occasions. For example, one afternoon he was watching his beloved truck DVD on a laptop while tapping away at the keyboard randomly. Eventually he pressed a key that stopped his video and we heard him say, “oh shit.” His non-swear word vocabulary has also been growing by leaps and bounds. He likes to say “ no money” and “no candy” even though he really likes both money and candy.
I can’t say that Leo is much of a gourmand, but he does like some unusual dishes for a boy his age: hummus, guacamole, trade joe’s chicken curry sticks, and pasta with pesto sauce are a few of his favorites. One of his favorite tricks is to say, “all done!” as soon as we put him in his chair before he’s even eaten anything. If this doesn’t work he’ll try to demand a Starburst fruit chew, a cookie or an ice cream cone. We used to be able to take Leo out to eat, but these days it’s a bit of a lost cause, because we end up spending most of the meal policing him as he runs rampant around the restaurant. As soon as he’s had enough of whatever he’s eating, he immediately wants out of his hi-chair and will start demanding, “go, go!”
Leo is also an extraordinarily delightful young chap who will gladly come by for a hug, and will occasionally even call us “cute.” We have a nice little mutual admiration society, just the three of us, and Leo gets along with everyone, especially people who can name at least 20 trucks. Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can.
Showing posts with label parenthood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenthood. Show all posts
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Friday, December 12, 2008
Confessions of a New Father: Question: How Big is Leo? Answer: He's Getting Pretty Damn Big
Leo is now nearly fifteen months old and is already well on his way to being a big boy. How big, you might ask? My son could tell you: “Soooooooooooo Big.” That’s pretty damn big for those of you scoring along at home. Other questions we’ve taken to asking Leo include:
“How smart is Leo?”
“How handsome is Leo?”
“How gifted is Leo?”
The answer, which Leo invariably gives with a raise of both hands over his head as though he were in a sports arena doing the wave, is always, “So _______”
Luckily for him, we haven’t started to resort to trick questions yet like, “How smelly is Leo?” (hint: the answer is “So ____!”)
On November 2nd Leo was christened. Good thing for him too, because the devil was probably starting to wonder if the procrastinating parents were prepared to let him play for the wrong team. Leo was decked out like a little John Travolta circa the Saturday Night Fever era, with a stunning three piece dove white suit and tie, made complete by his curly, long locks (which have since been cut). Like most children, he wasn’t too stoked about being dunked in a cauldron of holy water, though after I lifted him out and the deacon said a few words, he then told the gathered audience to give Leo a little cheer. I hoisted the boy up and down over my head a few times and he delighted in the cries of “Yeah Leo!” that came from the pews. He is nothing if not a sucker for adulation-there are few things he enjoys more than hearing his name accompanied by a good round of applause.
Another significant milestone in Leo’s life was his first trip to the barbershop. We had to wait about an hour to have a private audience with Frank, my Sicilian-American barber from my grandma’s hometown of Villarosa, Sicily. Frank let Leo play on one of the vacant barber chairs and look at himself in the mirror. Leo was cool at the beginning of the cut, though his mood deteriorated rapidly as the cut wore on. Perhaps he wanted to wear his hair longer than Frank had in mind, but we’ll never know. Afterwards, we all repaired to a Greek dinner to split a massive chocolate milkshake- one of Leo’s favorites. The interesting thing about Leo and milkshakes though, is that he’s smart enough to not just want any old shake. One afternoon I brought him home one of those cheapie $1.50 shakes that comes out of a machine at a fast food restaurant and probably contains no actual milk or ice cream, thinking I was giving him a treat. He wanted no part of it. But offer the boy a sip of a $5 milkshake from the Oberweis Dairy, and he will howl with disgust if you try to take it away from him- even if its just you trying to get in a quick sip.
Leo started to walk about a month or so ago, and has actually gotten serious about it in the last couple weeks. The interesting thing about Leo’s walk is that its something of a cross between a drunken stagger and a confident swagger. Maybe we could call it a stwagger. He’s bold in the movement of his hips and in his pace- but he is also sometimes uncertain about whether he’ll careen out of control. Begin cliché’d, yet true, observation. Watching my son walk around the apartment is quite a site- somehow I just look at him and have a hard time believing how quickly he’s growing up. End cliché’d, yet true, observation. (I hope)
Leo’s a man of few, or more accurately, no real words at the moment, though he is fond of stringing together unrelated syllables and sounds. I’m fairly certain his first real, complete word is going to be “cookie.” Like his dad, he loves cookies, and is smart enough to know where we keep them. When he wants one, he points up to the cabinet and says loudly, “COOOH!” When I pull out the package he starts to smile and give himself a small round of applause. Yes, he must think, he’s going to get me a cookie, I’m training this sucker pretty good. Other foods that Leo likes include raspberries- he can eat them by the dozen- strawberries, soft pretzels, toast, jam, and teddy grahams. Boy can he take down the teddy grahams.
Of course, cookies and teddy grahams aren't his only guilty pleasures. He still enjoys breast milk as well- not so much for the milk itself mind you (he won't drink regular milk- only chocolate), but more for the sheer joie de vivre of it. When the chips are down- i.e. he's tired, hungry, bored, or has just had one of us take some item away from him when he was determined to have it- a little breast feeding is just the ticket to bring him down out of the doldrums or put him to sleep. Its also his early morning ritual. Typically sometime around 6.30 a.m. we'll hear some light clucking sounds emanating from his crib and echoing through our monitor system. The clucks become more insistent and louder if we try to ignore them and sleep in. Which we often do. Without success, I might add. When I liberate the boy from his crib and bring him into the bedroom, he reaches for Jen in bed instantaneously. I could easily sink into a pile of quicksand and the boy would not notice- which I'm ok with, given the circumstances.
After a brief and vigorous snack, the boy searches around our king size bed for the remote control, which he knows is the key to getting Sesame Street turned on. He'll snack a bit intermittently throughout the show, as red blooded Americans are wont to do, though rarely during the segments of his favorite characters- Elmo, Cookie Monster or Oscar the Grouch. Throughout the program though, he wants to have one hand on a breast- sometimes letting his little fingers just fish around as though he were reaching into a bowl of popcorn. Jen finds this habit to be most annoying and slightly embarrassing- particularly as he often starts putting his hand down her shirt in public when he wants a snack, though I do not fault the boy in the least. A young man needs something to fiddle with when he's watching telly or simply out in public having a good time, and a breast is just as good as a remote control or anything else. Begin cliché'd, yet true observation. Come to think of it, beyond breasts and remote controls, what else is there for the average American male? End, clichéd observation. (I hope) Whatever his motivations, its clear that the boy likes to breast-feed and weaning him is going to be a chore- though we hope to get it done sometime before he heads off to university. Breast feeding is Leo's way of unwinding after or before a long, stressful day of throwing food and toys and making random unintelligible proclamations, so we aren't ready to deny him the pleasure just yet.
Parents often like to speculate on what their children are going to be when they grow up. Typically that speculation involves lofty, high profile callings like law, medicine, garbage collecting or professional wrestling. I actually think Leo's going to be a demolition crew member. Who knows, maybe even a demolition crew leader. We do dare to dream in this household. The kid likes to destroy stuff. I bought him a whole bunch of elaborate Lego Duplo's a couple weeks ago in the hopes it would inspire him to build. I make him all kinds of elaborate stuff with them to get him interested in them, but all he wants to do is essentially wreck them. I build, he demolishes. The grander my structure, the more his glee as he dismantles it. Try to read the boy a book, he tries to rip the pages. Provide him with an in-flight magazine (we do this only if there is a significant delay) and he'll happily shred it. Ok, so perhaps his destructive tendencies aren't always a bad thing. If the demolition stuff doesn't pan out, he could also be a cable guy, as he loves to play with cords and wires.
Leo's a happy kid though, I must say. His default setting is a mischievous smile and a laugh. His laugh is one of the most pleasant sounds I've ever heard. It's impossible for me to be down about anything at all, when my son is happy. On rare occasions when he is angry- usually when something has been unjustifiably (in his mind) taken away from him- his look of disgust is almost comical, and we try hard not to laugh at him. I feel pride in him in even the oddest things- a particularly loud burp, a prominent fart, his propensity for gobbling cookies, when he throws a piece of food clear across the room! Damn, he's good, I think to myself, or sometimes out loud. I guess that, for a father, there is nothing more gratifying than seeing your son demonstrate your own traits, even if they aren't ones you are really proud of.
“How smart is Leo?”
“How handsome is Leo?”
“How gifted is Leo?”
The answer, which Leo invariably gives with a raise of both hands over his head as though he were in a sports arena doing the wave, is always, “So _______”
Luckily for him, we haven’t started to resort to trick questions yet like, “How smelly is Leo?” (hint: the answer is “So ____!”)
On November 2nd Leo was christened. Good thing for him too, because the devil was probably starting to wonder if the procrastinating parents were prepared to let him play for the wrong team. Leo was decked out like a little John Travolta circa the Saturday Night Fever era, with a stunning three piece dove white suit and tie, made complete by his curly, long locks (which have since been cut). Like most children, he wasn’t too stoked about being dunked in a cauldron of holy water, though after I lifted him out and the deacon said a few words, he then told the gathered audience to give Leo a little cheer. I hoisted the boy up and down over my head a few times and he delighted in the cries of “Yeah Leo!” that came from the pews. He is nothing if not a sucker for adulation-there are few things he enjoys more than hearing his name accompanied by a good round of applause.
Another significant milestone in Leo’s life was his first trip to the barbershop. We had to wait about an hour to have a private audience with Frank, my Sicilian-American barber from my grandma’s hometown of Villarosa, Sicily. Frank let Leo play on one of the vacant barber chairs and look at himself in the mirror. Leo was cool at the beginning of the cut, though his mood deteriorated rapidly as the cut wore on. Perhaps he wanted to wear his hair longer than Frank had in mind, but we’ll never know. Afterwards, we all repaired to a Greek dinner to split a massive chocolate milkshake- one of Leo’s favorites. The interesting thing about Leo and milkshakes though, is that he’s smart enough to not just want any old shake. One afternoon I brought him home one of those cheapie $1.50 shakes that comes out of a machine at a fast food restaurant and probably contains no actual milk or ice cream, thinking I was giving him a treat. He wanted no part of it. But offer the boy a sip of a $5 milkshake from the Oberweis Dairy, and he will howl with disgust if you try to take it away from him- even if its just you trying to get in a quick sip.
Leo started to walk about a month or so ago, and has actually gotten serious about it in the last couple weeks. The interesting thing about Leo’s walk is that its something of a cross between a drunken stagger and a confident swagger. Maybe we could call it a stwagger. He’s bold in the movement of his hips and in his pace- but he is also sometimes uncertain about whether he’ll careen out of control. Begin cliché’d, yet true, observation. Watching my son walk around the apartment is quite a site- somehow I just look at him and have a hard time believing how quickly he’s growing up. End cliché’d, yet true, observation. (I hope)
Leo’s a man of few, or more accurately, no real words at the moment, though he is fond of stringing together unrelated syllables and sounds. I’m fairly certain his first real, complete word is going to be “cookie.” Like his dad, he loves cookies, and is smart enough to know where we keep them. When he wants one, he points up to the cabinet and says loudly, “COOOH!” When I pull out the package he starts to smile and give himself a small round of applause. Yes, he must think, he’s going to get me a cookie, I’m training this sucker pretty good. Other foods that Leo likes include raspberries- he can eat them by the dozen- strawberries, soft pretzels, toast, jam, and teddy grahams. Boy can he take down the teddy grahams.
Of course, cookies and teddy grahams aren't his only guilty pleasures. He still enjoys breast milk as well- not so much for the milk itself mind you (he won't drink regular milk- only chocolate), but more for the sheer joie de vivre of it. When the chips are down- i.e. he's tired, hungry, bored, or has just had one of us take some item away from him when he was determined to have it- a little breast feeding is just the ticket to bring him down out of the doldrums or put him to sleep. Its also his early morning ritual. Typically sometime around 6.30 a.m. we'll hear some light clucking sounds emanating from his crib and echoing through our monitor system. The clucks become more insistent and louder if we try to ignore them and sleep in. Which we often do. Without success, I might add. When I liberate the boy from his crib and bring him into the bedroom, he reaches for Jen in bed instantaneously. I could easily sink into a pile of quicksand and the boy would not notice- which I'm ok with, given the circumstances.
After a brief and vigorous snack, the boy searches around our king size bed for the remote control, which he knows is the key to getting Sesame Street turned on. He'll snack a bit intermittently throughout the show, as red blooded Americans are wont to do, though rarely during the segments of his favorite characters- Elmo, Cookie Monster or Oscar the Grouch. Throughout the program though, he wants to have one hand on a breast- sometimes letting his little fingers just fish around as though he were reaching into a bowl of popcorn. Jen finds this habit to be most annoying and slightly embarrassing- particularly as he often starts putting his hand down her shirt in public when he wants a snack, though I do not fault the boy in the least. A young man needs something to fiddle with when he's watching telly or simply out in public having a good time, and a breast is just as good as a remote control or anything else. Begin cliché'd, yet true observation. Come to think of it, beyond breasts and remote controls, what else is there for the average American male? End, clichéd observation. (I hope) Whatever his motivations, its clear that the boy likes to breast-feed and weaning him is going to be a chore- though we hope to get it done sometime before he heads off to university. Breast feeding is Leo's way of unwinding after or before a long, stressful day of throwing food and toys and making random unintelligible proclamations, so we aren't ready to deny him the pleasure just yet.
Parents often like to speculate on what their children are going to be when they grow up. Typically that speculation involves lofty, high profile callings like law, medicine, garbage collecting or professional wrestling. I actually think Leo's going to be a demolition crew member. Who knows, maybe even a demolition crew leader. We do dare to dream in this household. The kid likes to destroy stuff. I bought him a whole bunch of elaborate Lego Duplo's a couple weeks ago in the hopes it would inspire him to build. I make him all kinds of elaborate stuff with them to get him interested in them, but all he wants to do is essentially wreck them. I build, he demolishes. The grander my structure, the more his glee as he dismantles it. Try to read the boy a book, he tries to rip the pages. Provide him with an in-flight magazine (we do this only if there is a significant delay) and he'll happily shred it. Ok, so perhaps his destructive tendencies aren't always a bad thing. If the demolition stuff doesn't pan out, he could also be a cable guy, as he loves to play with cords and wires.
Leo's a happy kid though, I must say. His default setting is a mischievous smile and a laugh. His laugh is one of the most pleasant sounds I've ever heard. It's impossible for me to be down about anything at all, when my son is happy. On rare occasions when he is angry- usually when something has been unjustifiably (in his mind) taken away from him- his look of disgust is almost comical, and we try hard not to laugh at him. I feel pride in him in even the oddest things- a particularly loud burp, a prominent fart, his propensity for gobbling cookies, when he throws a piece of food clear across the room! Damn, he's good, I think to myself, or sometimes out loud. I guess that, for a father, there is nothing more gratifying than seeing your son demonstrate your own traits, even if they aren't ones you are really proud of.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Confessions of a New Father: 8 States in 8 Months
Leo is now eight months old and has already lived a richer, fuller life than most of the people you see on Wife Swap- save for perhaps the family of traveling carnies that was on recently. (I swear I don't watch this show regularly) They had it pretty good. But Leo has been living a bit of la vida loca himself lately. He's already been to two NHL games, two MLB games, and done enough airline travel to know that when the pilot says, "we'll be getting cleared for takeoff shortly," that he needn't rush to secure his seat back or tray table. He's also learned that, if its raining, even sprinkling anywhere in the continental United States, Alaska, Puerto Rico, or Guam, the airlines will claim that the delays you are suffering through are related to "bad weather" rather than their own general ineptitude- even if you are flying from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines, and the bad weather is in the Netherlands Antilles.
Leo has flown to Buffalo, New York, Boston, Albuquerque (might I suggest that this city change its name to someting easier to spell?) and San Jose. He's been a real trooper on each and every flight- and that is saying something in this era of no-frills, hi-cost, delay ridden domestic travel. On our trip home from California, we had to sit on the runway at O'hare for "just a few moments" because our gate was occupied. The "few moments" turned into just under an hour on a sweltering hot plane filled with angry people. Leo was perhaps the most content chap on the plane, however, as we authorized him to shred the in-flight and Sky Mall magazines in his seat. For some reason the boy loves to rip and shred documents. He would probably fit in nicely on Hillary Clinton or Scooter Libby's staff in that regard.
We also had to sit on a hot plane at Logan for 2 hours before our flight took off a few months ago. He was also allowed to shred during that delay as well, so the basic rule of thumb has become: if there is a delay, the boy gets to rip, otherwise he has to make due with crawling around our laps and trying to eat whatever he can get his hands on. Lord knows its not easy to avoid hunger in the air these days- you're lucky if you get a bag of peanuts, even on a long haul flight.
Being a handsome eight month old boy certainly has its advantages. Leo has strangers doting on him wherever he goes, and he lapps up the attention like a hungry dog- returning every smile that comes his way and making friends wherever he goes. Leo is so popular,that when we're in an enclosed space with a stranger that doesn't remark on him, we find ourselves wondering about the deficiencies in that persons character. A small sample size of the people that Leo has charmed lately: a cashier at a health food store in Nederland, Colorado that wanted to hold him, the Mexican waitresses at Nuevo Leon in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago- who like to carry Leo around the restaraunt and speak to him in Spanish, the concierges at the Hyatt in Denver- who remembered Leo by name and wanted to know about his every move in their city, the staff members of several wineries in the Sonoma Valley who no doubt poured us better wine because they liked Leo so much, and a slew of high school girls that played peek a boo with him for half of our flight home from Denver. Someday I aspire to be as popular as my son is now, or as my dog Homer used to be, but I'm not holding my breath.
Meanwhile, the boy's development is pretty astonishing. He can shimmy around the house as though he were a NAVY SEAL stealthily sneaking up a hill along enemy lines. Aside from shimmying and shredding, he also loves to handle cords, wires, remote controls, cable boxes, and/or any other electrical devices he can get his hands on. If he did't have my genes, I'd say he might make a really good electrician when he grows up. He's a damn good traveler-in fact, he probably throws less tantrums than his dad does while on the road. As far as his reading habits go, he's still a bit more into chewing on his literature, which is probably a good thing- the boy's a deep thinker that likes to work through the ideas in his own way. Recently, Leo learned how to use his mom's stomache to make fart noises- and this makes him very happy. He still loves to breast-feed, but he's no longer into the traditional sit down at the table kind of meal anymore. No sir- he likes to feed standing up, or better yet, take ocassional sips while jumping on his mom as though she were a trampoline while intermittently looking at me to see if I'm looking at him.
The most remarkable thing about this age, IMO, is how infectious his smile and laugh are. Leo is one happy little guy- and when he's laughing and smiling and squeling, flashing his two little teeth, you really can't help but feel the warm glow of his charm. Of course, the boy is still not without his peculiarities and phobias. His smile turns to howls of anger when you have to take his shirt on or off. Don't even think about trying to strap him into a car seat, stroller, hi-chair, etc- if he's in a cranky mood, and, don't even think about putting that damn suction thing he hates up his nose to suck boogers out. He hasn't yet learned to throw a tantrum when you take something away from him, though, and we aren't planning on giving him any lessons in this behavior either.
Leo is 3/4 of a year old- and he has improved the quality of our lives immensely- when I'm gone, I miss him within an hour, and when I get home, I practically want to run up the steps to get my hands on him. More experienced parents say it'll just keep getting better. Ummm, right, but only up until a point right? When they start requesting Hannah Montana tickets and iphones- surely that won't be better than the hi-times we are having now?
Leo has flown to Buffalo, New York, Boston, Albuquerque (might I suggest that this city change its name to someting easier to spell?) and San Jose. He's been a real trooper on each and every flight- and that is saying something in this era of no-frills, hi-cost, delay ridden domestic travel. On our trip home from California, we had to sit on the runway at O'hare for "just a few moments" because our gate was occupied. The "few moments" turned into just under an hour on a sweltering hot plane filled with angry people. Leo was perhaps the most content chap on the plane, however, as we authorized him to shred the in-flight and Sky Mall magazines in his seat. For some reason the boy loves to rip and shred documents. He would probably fit in nicely on Hillary Clinton or Scooter Libby's staff in that regard.
We also had to sit on a hot plane at Logan for 2 hours before our flight took off a few months ago. He was also allowed to shred during that delay as well, so the basic rule of thumb has become: if there is a delay, the boy gets to rip, otherwise he has to make due with crawling around our laps and trying to eat whatever he can get his hands on. Lord knows its not easy to avoid hunger in the air these days- you're lucky if you get a bag of peanuts, even on a long haul flight.
Being a handsome eight month old boy certainly has its advantages. Leo has strangers doting on him wherever he goes, and he lapps up the attention like a hungry dog- returning every smile that comes his way and making friends wherever he goes. Leo is so popular,that when we're in an enclosed space with a stranger that doesn't remark on him, we find ourselves wondering about the deficiencies in that persons character. A small sample size of the people that Leo has charmed lately: a cashier at a health food store in Nederland, Colorado that wanted to hold him, the Mexican waitresses at Nuevo Leon in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago- who like to carry Leo around the restaraunt and speak to him in Spanish, the concierges at the Hyatt in Denver- who remembered Leo by name and wanted to know about his every move in their city, the staff members of several wineries in the Sonoma Valley who no doubt poured us better wine because they liked Leo so much, and a slew of high school girls that played peek a boo with him for half of our flight home from Denver. Someday I aspire to be as popular as my son is now, or as my dog Homer used to be, but I'm not holding my breath.
Meanwhile, the boy's development is pretty astonishing. He can shimmy around the house as though he were a NAVY SEAL stealthily sneaking up a hill along enemy lines. Aside from shimmying and shredding, he also loves to handle cords, wires, remote controls, cable boxes, and/or any other electrical devices he can get his hands on. If he did't have my genes, I'd say he might make a really good electrician when he grows up. He's a damn good traveler-in fact, he probably throws less tantrums than his dad does while on the road. As far as his reading habits go, he's still a bit more into chewing on his literature, which is probably a good thing- the boy's a deep thinker that likes to work through the ideas in his own way. Recently, Leo learned how to use his mom's stomache to make fart noises- and this makes him very happy. He still loves to breast-feed, but he's no longer into the traditional sit down at the table kind of meal anymore. No sir- he likes to feed standing up, or better yet, take ocassional sips while jumping on his mom as though she were a trampoline while intermittently looking at me to see if I'm looking at him.
The most remarkable thing about this age, IMO, is how infectious his smile and laugh are. Leo is one happy little guy- and when he's laughing and smiling and squeling, flashing his two little teeth, you really can't help but feel the warm glow of his charm. Of course, the boy is still not without his peculiarities and phobias. His smile turns to howls of anger when you have to take his shirt on or off. Don't even think about trying to strap him into a car seat, stroller, hi-chair, etc- if he's in a cranky mood, and, don't even think about putting that damn suction thing he hates up his nose to suck boogers out. He hasn't yet learned to throw a tantrum when you take something away from him, though, and we aren't planning on giving him any lessons in this behavior either.
Leo is 3/4 of a year old- and he has improved the quality of our lives immensely- when I'm gone, I miss him within an hour, and when I get home, I practically want to run up the steps to get my hands on him. More experienced parents say it'll just keep getting better. Ummm, right, but only up until a point right? When they start requesting Hannah Montana tickets and iphones- surely that won't be better than the hi-times we are having now?
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Confessions of a New Father Part Four
Countdown to Armageddon
February 8- the date loomed before me ominously on the calendar. My wife, Jen, needed to travel to Washington, D.C. for a meeting, and I was to be left nominally in charge of my four month old son, Leo, for an intimidating fifteen consecutive hours. I say nominally, because, in fairness, he is always more in control of the situation than I am- he has the power to make life very pleasant or quite miserable, depending on his whims and fancies. The longest I’d ever been in sole custody of my son prior to the dooms-date was about 3-4 hours, so I was fairly worried about how we’d both make it through the day.
My fears intensified in the days leading up to the dooms-date as we practiced bottle-feeding Leo in preparation for the big day. As I’ve noted before, Leo is a big fan of breast-feeding, and will only deign to bottle-feed if he is desperately hungry, and even then, he makes it abundantly clear that he views the whole bottle thing as an affront- an assault, in fact, on his good name. As soon as you pull the damn bottle out, you get a look that says, you expect me to lower myself to this indignity? And our prep feedings in the lead up to dooms-day were worse than ever. Leo would grudgingly allow his mom to bottle-feed him, but wanted nothing to do with me when I’d try to assume the position. Every time I’d get the bottle near his face, he’d swat it away, with a shockingly powerful thrust, almost like Shacquille O’Neil stuffing an opponent in the paint- get that shit outta here!
So I took to employing unusual, coercive tactics on him, as though I were some unethical government operative dealing with an uncooperative detainee at Guantanomo Bay. It was relatively easy to smother one of his arms up against my body and hold it there, but subduing the second arm, in order to prevent him from swatting away his bottle like a meddlesome fly, proved somewhat more difficult. The problem is, that when he’s dealing with me, he’ll only consider eating from the bottle when I’m standing up, and preferably when I’m upright and walking. Please don’t ask me why, but I have the feeling it has something to do with him making sure that I’m as uncomfortable as possible- I guess he figures that if he’s losing the breast, that he’s at least going to make sure I’m not happy either. So one of my arms is occupied holding him, and the other arm is holding the bottle- so subduing Leo’s second arm is something of a challenge. I’ve tried placing something interesting in his hand for him to grasp- but that usually only works momentarily- until he decides he wants to swat the bottle. I can try to reach around and physically restrain his second arm, but that makes him angry and it’s hard to hold him that way anyways. The last thing that entered my mind was handcuffs- but I soon thought better of it, remembering that in this country, you could probably lose custody for employing such a tactic.
A Crisis Averted
Jen left us around 5.30AM on March 8, and even before she was out the door, Leo was crying. Only 15 more hours of this, I told myself, fully expecting the boy to be inconsolable for the entire time his mom was away. At four months, he was already a moma’s boy, and this was going to be his first time without Jen for an extended period. I was certain that we were going to have a miserable time together. I put my head right up against my son- with my forehead flush up against his, and said something to the effect of, “Its just you and me today, tough guy, like or not, I’m all you’ve got.” A couple minutes later he stopped crying and we drifted off back to sleep together. I woke up some time later and was reassured to see the boy lying perpendicular to me on the bed, still asleep. I looked at my watch and was stunned, and frankly thrilled to see that it was 8.15! How on earth had we slept in so late?
Leo woke up a few minutes later, and I brought him on a little tour of our apartment, poking him in and out of every room, pointedly showing him that his mom was nowhere to be found. Everywhere we went, he was sort of craning his neck, looking to see where his mom was. Again, I worried that he’d melt down. But a remarkable thing happened- the boy rolled with it, and we ended up having a great day together. He still wasn’t happy about the whole bottle-feeding arrangement- but he did it with some coaxing- and he behaved like a gentleman for nearly the whole day. Normally, I’m accustomed to being second fiddle around the house- and I’ve come to grips with the fact that Leo would rather usually be with his mom- but on this day, he seemed to understand that I was the only game in town, and he adjusted his behavior to me accordingly, treating me to dozens of smiles and laughs the whole day.
Later in the afternoon, Jen’s mom, Kathy relieved me for a few hours and I was able to run some errands, and Jen ended up coming home on an earlier flight that evening. Leo and I had managed to make it though the day together- he tired me out but was a really good kid-but I was happy to hand him over to Jen when she got home, but part of me was already missing the good times Leo and I had together. “Someone’s happy to see his mom,” I told Leo as I handed him over to his beaming mother. For some reason, we often refer to Leo by the word “someone” instead of Leo, as in, “someone filled up his diaper,” or “someone woke up on the wrong side of his Moses basket today.” Somehow in our weird parental parlance, someone=Leo. “He doesn’t’ seem that happy to see me!” Jen complained as Leo sat content, but not ecstatic in her arms. “Jen, he’s not like a dog that’s going to attack you at the door, and its not like he didn’t have fun with me today,” I told her. The sheriff was back in town, and I knew I was again going to be relegated to deputy, but, as I lay down on the sofa and unfurled my newspaper, I felt pretty good about it.
February 8- the date loomed before me ominously on the calendar. My wife, Jen, needed to travel to Washington, D.C. for a meeting, and I was to be left nominally in charge of my four month old son, Leo, for an intimidating fifteen consecutive hours. I say nominally, because, in fairness, he is always more in control of the situation than I am- he has the power to make life very pleasant or quite miserable, depending on his whims and fancies. The longest I’d ever been in sole custody of my son prior to the dooms-date was about 3-4 hours, so I was fairly worried about how we’d both make it through the day.
My fears intensified in the days leading up to the dooms-date as we practiced bottle-feeding Leo in preparation for the big day. As I’ve noted before, Leo is a big fan of breast-feeding, and will only deign to bottle-feed if he is desperately hungry, and even then, he makes it abundantly clear that he views the whole bottle thing as an affront- an assault, in fact, on his good name. As soon as you pull the damn bottle out, you get a look that says, you expect me to lower myself to this indignity? And our prep feedings in the lead up to dooms-day were worse than ever. Leo would grudgingly allow his mom to bottle-feed him, but wanted nothing to do with me when I’d try to assume the position. Every time I’d get the bottle near his face, he’d swat it away, with a shockingly powerful thrust, almost like Shacquille O’Neil stuffing an opponent in the paint- get that shit outta here!
So I took to employing unusual, coercive tactics on him, as though I were some unethical government operative dealing with an uncooperative detainee at Guantanomo Bay. It was relatively easy to smother one of his arms up against my body and hold it there, but subduing the second arm, in order to prevent him from swatting away his bottle like a meddlesome fly, proved somewhat more difficult. The problem is, that when he’s dealing with me, he’ll only consider eating from the bottle when I’m standing up, and preferably when I’m upright and walking. Please don’t ask me why, but I have the feeling it has something to do with him making sure that I’m as uncomfortable as possible- I guess he figures that if he’s losing the breast, that he’s at least going to make sure I’m not happy either. So one of my arms is occupied holding him, and the other arm is holding the bottle- so subduing Leo’s second arm is something of a challenge. I’ve tried placing something interesting in his hand for him to grasp- but that usually only works momentarily- until he decides he wants to swat the bottle. I can try to reach around and physically restrain his second arm, but that makes him angry and it’s hard to hold him that way anyways. The last thing that entered my mind was handcuffs- but I soon thought better of it, remembering that in this country, you could probably lose custody for employing such a tactic.
A Crisis Averted
Jen left us around 5.30AM on March 8, and even before she was out the door, Leo was crying. Only 15 more hours of this, I told myself, fully expecting the boy to be inconsolable for the entire time his mom was away. At four months, he was already a moma’s boy, and this was going to be his first time without Jen for an extended period. I was certain that we were going to have a miserable time together. I put my head right up against my son- with my forehead flush up against his, and said something to the effect of, “Its just you and me today, tough guy, like or not, I’m all you’ve got.” A couple minutes later he stopped crying and we drifted off back to sleep together. I woke up some time later and was reassured to see the boy lying perpendicular to me on the bed, still asleep. I looked at my watch and was stunned, and frankly thrilled to see that it was 8.15! How on earth had we slept in so late?
Leo woke up a few minutes later, and I brought him on a little tour of our apartment, poking him in and out of every room, pointedly showing him that his mom was nowhere to be found. Everywhere we went, he was sort of craning his neck, looking to see where his mom was. Again, I worried that he’d melt down. But a remarkable thing happened- the boy rolled with it, and we ended up having a great day together. He still wasn’t happy about the whole bottle-feeding arrangement- but he did it with some coaxing- and he behaved like a gentleman for nearly the whole day. Normally, I’m accustomed to being second fiddle around the house- and I’ve come to grips with the fact that Leo would rather usually be with his mom- but on this day, he seemed to understand that I was the only game in town, and he adjusted his behavior to me accordingly, treating me to dozens of smiles and laughs the whole day.
Later in the afternoon, Jen’s mom, Kathy relieved me for a few hours and I was able to run some errands, and Jen ended up coming home on an earlier flight that evening. Leo and I had managed to make it though the day together- he tired me out but was a really good kid-but I was happy to hand him over to Jen when she got home, but part of me was already missing the good times Leo and I had together. “Someone’s happy to see his mom,” I told Leo as I handed him over to his beaming mother. For some reason, we often refer to Leo by the word “someone” instead of Leo, as in, “someone filled up his diaper,” or “someone woke up on the wrong side of his Moses basket today.” Somehow in our weird parental parlance, someone=Leo. “He doesn’t’ seem that happy to see me!” Jen complained as Leo sat content, but not ecstatic in her arms. “Jen, he’s not like a dog that’s going to attack you at the door, and its not like he didn’t have fun with me today,” I told her. The sheriff was back in town, and I knew I was again going to be relegated to deputy, but, as I lay down on the sofa and unfurled my newspaper, I felt pretty good about it.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
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.
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.
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.
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.
Confessions of a New Father Part One
"Nothing can prepare you for having your first child," we heard over and over again during my wife Jennifer's pregnancy. So I worked hard preparing myself to be completely and woefully unprepared. While Jen pored over volumes of books on babies, became a regular visitor to scores of baby related websites, and spent hour upon hour agonizing over which products to buy for the baby (we settled on all of them), I was pretty much just along for the ride, excited about the impending arrival but more or less just a spectator observing the mayhem. If there was no way to get prepared, what was the point in trying?
Childbirth is obviously a woman's show, but the American mans role has changed an awful lot since I was born. My dad- who has a lot of experience having had six sons- tells me that in his day, the nurses would tell men to wait outside during labor.
"You felt kind of relieved not to have to stay," he said.
The situation was still the same when we lived in Macedonia, (and probably in many other countries as well) save for the fact that instead of waiting in the hospital most men repair to a local bar with their friends in a testosterone soaked orgy of male bonding drunkenness. But these days, American men are expected to be on hand for the delivery and that's a good thing.
Still, just because we now have ringside seats for the delivery experience, it doesn’t mean we have any idea what the hell we’re doing. Jen's contractions began at 7AM, and grew stronger and more frequent before we arrived at the hospital at Noon. I naively assumed that our baby would be born some time that afternoon, and that we’d be home in time to watch the Cubs game together that evening. I was right about watching the game- the hospital had a great wireless connection that allowed us to watch baseball on mlb.com right in the delivery room, but wrong about the being home early part. By 11pm they told us she still wasn't ready to start pushing. At 1AM, the doctors began to talk about having to a C-section. By 3.15 AM, we were told that she was finally ready, and I thanked my stars that I wasn't required to do any pushing, as I was mentally and physically spent and probably couldn't have pushed a shopping cart, let alone a child by that point.
Once it was time to push, I figured the baby would be spewing forth some time soon, but our child, as it turned out, was perfectly content in the womb, and was in no hurry to come out. I was exhausted and became more so just watching all of the effort that Jen was putting forth. The doctors and nurses, bless them, were wonderfully encouraging, repeatedly telling Jen, "good job," and "you're almost there!" But after three plus hours of pushing, I couldn't help but think, you told her she was almost there HOURS ago!
"We'll have to use a vacuum to suction him out," they finally told us after three hours and fifteen minutes of pushing. I didn't think they were going to wheel in a Hoover or a Dust Buster, but I really had no idea what this would entail. Nonetheless, within moments I saw his little head, covered in slime, in what was surely the most surreal moment of my life. I'm sure that this moment is bizarre for any first time Dad, but our little guy procrastinated coming out for so long, I had begun to wonder if he would ever show his face.
The all female team of doctors and nurses pulled him out, hoisted him up, told us, "it's a boy!" and then handed me a set of scissors to cut the cord. The next thing I knew, he was swept away by a team of doctors. Jen eventually got to bond with him for about 30 seconds, but I didn't get to hold him until several hours later that day. It didn't matter though; the gravity of the occasion awed me. In my mind, I knew that I was going to be a dad, but I just couldn't believe that it somehow just happened. I arrived at the hospital with just a wife, but I'd be leaving with a child in tow.
Before Leo even arrived home from the hospital, he already had a closet stocked with Buffalo Bills, Sabres and Chicago Cubs bibs, outfits and hats. How could I inflict such horrible sports teams on my son? Ok, so inheriting sports teams that no only lose regularly, but also manage to do so in the most heart-wrenching manner possible, might not be good karma, but what was I supposed to do? Get the kid Cowboys and Yankees gear?
The first days at home with our boy flew by in something of a haze, kind of like a great night out where you drink too much and later on know that you had a good time, but don't remember exactly what you did. I do know that I spent hours just gazing at my son, who we named Leo, and marveling at every little thing about him. The first things you notice, of course, are how tiny and fragile he seems. Everything about him is small, save for his voice! Sure, I've heard lots of babies cry before, in fact, I normally sit next to inconsolable babies on airplanes without fail. But your baby's wail is different. You can't just shake your head and think, can't they quiet him down? The "they" is now "us." Leo's wail is an angry, primal scream that could shatter windows, and when it happens it sure as hell cannot be ignored.
Jen is very cool and composed, even when Leo the Lip is wailing as though his innards were being pealed right off of him. Jen is such a good mom, I sometimes want to confirm with her that she has not, in fact, done this mothering thing before. I, on the other hand, am a rank novice, and when left alone with Leo when he's in "Lip" mode have a tendency to panic. In all fairness, Jen has changed most of Leo's diapers, but my first encounter with Leo's undergarments was probably enough to put me off on the task for a lifetime. The boy had soiled himself so thoroughly that it was hard to tell where the shit ended and where the boy began. The diaper was so loaded down with crap that it weighed about as much as a cinder block. Leo's legs were coated in shit, as was his outfit, and I had no idea where to even start, the child needed a full scale bath, not the dainty little wipes Jen had on the changing table! To make matters worse, Leo is not a big fan of being changed to begin with, so he was screaming bloody murder while kicking his legs around and flailing his arms like a man with a gunshot wound trying to hail a taxi to the hospital in a downpour.
"JEN, PLEASE COME QUICK!" I yelled loudly enough to elevate above Leo's screams.
Jen came running in and, at first, was annoyed with me for unnecessarily alarming her. She had thought that Leo was hurt. But once she realized how utterly panicked I had become over his overflowing diaper she got the giggles and could not stop laughing for hours.
I have, on several occasions, suggested that we enroll Leo in anger management classes, but Jen thinks he's still a bit young. The thing that I find fascinating about babies is all of the crazy facial expressions they get. Leo has a sleepy look, an alert look, several angry frowns, but the one look that he can't do is the smile. I think it's interesting that babies can immediately frown but that it takes awhile for them to be able to smile. But then again, I think just about everything my son does is edge-of-the-seat fascinating. Look he's yawning! Now, look he's stretching! He's putting his fist on the side of his head! He's trying to gouge his eyes out! Hey, he's pulling my chest hair, SHIT, IT HURTS! I jump up off the sofa several times each hour to get my camera, and I already have about 14,000 photos of him lying around the house in various moods and states of dress and undress.
Leo is a really smart kid already. I think he already knows to save his most fierce tantrums for when his mom is away or otherwise occupied. One of the first times I was in sole custody of the boy was- please don't laugh- during one of Jen's showers. I could tell Leo was hungry- in between piercing screams he was trying to fit his fists in his mouth. I had to try to play the role of green room host, keeping our guest occupied until the host of the program could entertain him. But I was doing a crappy job, and as each minute crept by I kept thinking this may be the longest shower of my life, this may be the longest shower in recorded history! Jen's shower was probably no more than 15 minutes, but its amazing how long fifteen minutes can be when you have an angry and hungry infant on your hands.
The interminable shower though, was just a warm-up for my first real night alone with Leo. One Saturday night in September, Jen needed to attend her sisters hen party, making Leo and I bachelors for the evening. Jen left me with what she referred to as a "soft feeder" with which I was supposed to feed him while she was gone.
"The soft feeder is better than a bottle because it helps them avoid nipple confusion," she told me, and not knowing any better, I just nodded my head in collusion.
I'm no expert on the phenomenon of nipple confusion, but I seriously doubted that any son of mine would find the concept of nipples to be very confusing, and time has proven me correct on this issue. Jen and I had also had a mini-disagreement regarding pacifiers on this same nipple confusion point. I believe, firmly, that pacifiers are one of the world's great inventions- when they work. Jen was concerned that a pacifier would cause nipple confusion and screw up her breast-feeding efforts, but Leo took to the pacifier right away, and I begged and pleaded on his behalf and mine for its continued usage. (and I won)
So there we were, two men on a Saturday night with some sports on TV, a pizza and some good Octoberfest beer for me and a soft feeder on the coffee table for Leo. Everything was just fine for the first fifteen minutes after Jen left. Leo was sleeping on my chest like a little lamb, and I couldn't help but think, what's all the fuss about, this is easy! But then the beast began to lurk. It started with some minor fidgeting which I tried to shrug off, then there were some gurgling noises, then a low whimper, and before you knew it- all out kicking and screaming. Don't panic- remember your training- get out the damned soft feeder. But I soon learned that the soft feeder should really just be called a baby shovel. Sure, I'll grant you that its shovel-like feeding mallet looks and feels nothing like a nipple, but the damn thing is so wide compared to his mouth, that even if the child was cooperating, feeding him with this shovel would be a serious challenge.
But Leo was not cooperating- far from it- he was shaking and gyrating his whole body like someone with real soul on a dance floor, screaming and repeatedly knocking the shovel with his hands. I gamely pressed on, trying, more or less to ram the shovel like tool down his mouth, but the boy was having none of it. He was hungry- no doubt- but he kept shaking his head around like he was having a seizure and each shovel full would either swamp him with too much milk or would stream all over his face and chest. If I had our dinner together on film, it would be hilarious, but it was not so amusing at the time. Leo was used to drinking his milk straight from a breast and could not seem to understand why his dad was shoveling milk down his throat with this strange device. I began to count the minutes till Jen got home, and when the moment arrived I felt an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt bad about it, but our men's dinner had been a complete failure and I wanted my boy to eat.
The trials and tribulations of dealing with a newborn are funnier than hearing about the joys, aren't they? Just admit it, you'd rather hear stories of impossible diaper changes and failed feedings than of fatherly bliss, right? Just human nature, I understand. But what makes all of the work rewarding are those moments you get with your child that are so sublime that they bring you to a stage of contentedness that you've never experienced before. When Leo lies on my chest, his heart beating right against mine and looks up at me with his bright, wide eyes, there is no warmer, more righteous feeling on earth. No matter what else has come before, or what will happen afterwards, in those moments you feel as though all is right with the world. Until the Cubs fail to advance runners in scoring position, and get unceremoniously swept out of the playoffs by the no-name Diamondbacks. Then, you're angry again. But it doesn't last as long or sting as bad, when you have your beautiful boy on your lap rhythmically sucking away happily at his pacifier, that marvelous invention that has saved the world.
Childbirth is obviously a woman's show, but the American mans role has changed an awful lot since I was born. My dad- who has a lot of experience having had six sons- tells me that in his day, the nurses would tell men to wait outside during labor.
"You felt kind of relieved not to have to stay," he said.
The situation was still the same when we lived in Macedonia, (and probably in many other countries as well) save for the fact that instead of waiting in the hospital most men repair to a local bar with their friends in a testosterone soaked orgy of male bonding drunkenness. But these days, American men are expected to be on hand for the delivery and that's a good thing.
Still, just because we now have ringside seats for the delivery experience, it doesn’t mean we have any idea what the hell we’re doing. Jen's contractions began at 7AM, and grew stronger and more frequent before we arrived at the hospital at Noon. I naively assumed that our baby would be born some time that afternoon, and that we’d be home in time to watch the Cubs game together that evening. I was right about watching the game- the hospital had a great wireless connection that allowed us to watch baseball on mlb.com right in the delivery room, but wrong about the being home early part. By 11pm they told us she still wasn't ready to start pushing. At 1AM, the doctors began to talk about having to a C-section. By 3.15 AM, we were told that she was finally ready, and I thanked my stars that I wasn't required to do any pushing, as I was mentally and physically spent and probably couldn't have pushed a shopping cart, let alone a child by that point.
Once it was time to push, I figured the baby would be spewing forth some time soon, but our child, as it turned out, was perfectly content in the womb, and was in no hurry to come out. I was exhausted and became more so just watching all of the effort that Jen was putting forth. The doctors and nurses, bless them, were wonderfully encouraging, repeatedly telling Jen, "good job," and "you're almost there!" But after three plus hours of pushing, I couldn't help but think, you told her she was almost there HOURS ago!
"We'll have to use a vacuum to suction him out," they finally told us after three hours and fifteen minutes of pushing. I didn't think they were going to wheel in a Hoover or a Dust Buster, but I really had no idea what this would entail. Nonetheless, within moments I saw his little head, covered in slime, in what was surely the most surreal moment of my life. I'm sure that this moment is bizarre for any first time Dad, but our little guy procrastinated coming out for so long, I had begun to wonder if he would ever show his face.
The all female team of doctors and nurses pulled him out, hoisted him up, told us, "it's a boy!" and then handed me a set of scissors to cut the cord. The next thing I knew, he was swept away by a team of doctors. Jen eventually got to bond with him for about 30 seconds, but I didn't get to hold him until several hours later that day. It didn't matter though; the gravity of the occasion awed me. In my mind, I knew that I was going to be a dad, but I just couldn't believe that it somehow just happened. I arrived at the hospital with just a wife, but I'd be leaving with a child in tow.
Before Leo even arrived home from the hospital, he already had a closet stocked with Buffalo Bills, Sabres and Chicago Cubs bibs, outfits and hats. How could I inflict such horrible sports teams on my son? Ok, so inheriting sports teams that no only lose regularly, but also manage to do so in the most heart-wrenching manner possible, might not be good karma, but what was I supposed to do? Get the kid Cowboys and Yankees gear?
The first days at home with our boy flew by in something of a haze, kind of like a great night out where you drink too much and later on know that you had a good time, but don't remember exactly what you did. I do know that I spent hours just gazing at my son, who we named Leo, and marveling at every little thing about him. The first things you notice, of course, are how tiny and fragile he seems. Everything about him is small, save for his voice! Sure, I've heard lots of babies cry before, in fact, I normally sit next to inconsolable babies on airplanes without fail. But your baby's wail is different. You can't just shake your head and think, can't they quiet him down? The "they" is now "us." Leo's wail is an angry, primal scream that could shatter windows, and when it happens it sure as hell cannot be ignored.
Jen is very cool and composed, even when Leo the Lip is wailing as though his innards were being pealed right off of him. Jen is such a good mom, I sometimes want to confirm with her that she has not, in fact, done this mothering thing before. I, on the other hand, am a rank novice, and when left alone with Leo when he's in "Lip" mode have a tendency to panic. In all fairness, Jen has changed most of Leo's diapers, but my first encounter with Leo's undergarments was probably enough to put me off on the task for a lifetime. The boy had soiled himself so thoroughly that it was hard to tell where the shit ended and where the boy began. The diaper was so loaded down with crap that it weighed about as much as a cinder block. Leo's legs were coated in shit, as was his outfit, and I had no idea where to even start, the child needed a full scale bath, not the dainty little wipes Jen had on the changing table! To make matters worse, Leo is not a big fan of being changed to begin with, so he was screaming bloody murder while kicking his legs around and flailing his arms like a man with a gunshot wound trying to hail a taxi to the hospital in a downpour.
"JEN, PLEASE COME QUICK!" I yelled loudly enough to elevate above Leo's screams.
Jen came running in and, at first, was annoyed with me for unnecessarily alarming her. She had thought that Leo was hurt. But once she realized how utterly panicked I had become over his overflowing diaper she got the giggles and could not stop laughing for hours.
I have, on several occasions, suggested that we enroll Leo in anger management classes, but Jen thinks he's still a bit young. The thing that I find fascinating about babies is all of the crazy facial expressions they get. Leo has a sleepy look, an alert look, several angry frowns, but the one look that he can't do is the smile. I think it's interesting that babies can immediately frown but that it takes awhile for them to be able to smile. But then again, I think just about everything my son does is edge-of-the-seat fascinating. Look he's yawning! Now, look he's stretching! He's putting his fist on the side of his head! He's trying to gouge his eyes out! Hey, he's pulling my chest hair, SHIT, IT HURTS! I jump up off the sofa several times each hour to get my camera, and I already have about 14,000 photos of him lying around the house in various moods and states of dress and undress.
Leo is a really smart kid already. I think he already knows to save his most fierce tantrums for when his mom is away or otherwise occupied. One of the first times I was in sole custody of the boy was- please don't laugh- during one of Jen's showers. I could tell Leo was hungry- in between piercing screams he was trying to fit his fists in his mouth. I had to try to play the role of green room host, keeping our guest occupied until the host of the program could entertain him. But I was doing a crappy job, and as each minute crept by I kept thinking this may be the longest shower of my life, this may be the longest shower in recorded history! Jen's shower was probably no more than 15 minutes, but its amazing how long fifteen minutes can be when you have an angry and hungry infant on your hands.
The interminable shower though, was just a warm-up for my first real night alone with Leo. One Saturday night in September, Jen needed to attend her sisters hen party, making Leo and I bachelors for the evening. Jen left me with what she referred to as a "soft feeder" with which I was supposed to feed him while she was gone.
"The soft feeder is better than a bottle because it helps them avoid nipple confusion," she told me, and not knowing any better, I just nodded my head in collusion.
I'm no expert on the phenomenon of nipple confusion, but I seriously doubted that any son of mine would find the concept of nipples to be very confusing, and time has proven me correct on this issue. Jen and I had also had a mini-disagreement regarding pacifiers on this same nipple confusion point. I believe, firmly, that pacifiers are one of the world's great inventions- when they work. Jen was concerned that a pacifier would cause nipple confusion and screw up her breast-feeding efforts, but Leo took to the pacifier right away, and I begged and pleaded on his behalf and mine for its continued usage. (and I won)
So there we were, two men on a Saturday night with some sports on TV, a pizza and some good Octoberfest beer for me and a soft feeder on the coffee table for Leo. Everything was just fine for the first fifteen minutes after Jen left. Leo was sleeping on my chest like a little lamb, and I couldn't help but think, what's all the fuss about, this is easy! But then the beast began to lurk. It started with some minor fidgeting which I tried to shrug off, then there were some gurgling noises, then a low whimper, and before you knew it- all out kicking and screaming. Don't panic- remember your training- get out the damned soft feeder. But I soon learned that the soft feeder should really just be called a baby shovel. Sure, I'll grant you that its shovel-like feeding mallet looks and feels nothing like a nipple, but the damn thing is so wide compared to his mouth, that even if the child was cooperating, feeding him with this shovel would be a serious challenge.
But Leo was not cooperating- far from it- he was shaking and gyrating his whole body like someone with real soul on a dance floor, screaming and repeatedly knocking the shovel with his hands. I gamely pressed on, trying, more or less to ram the shovel like tool down his mouth, but the boy was having none of it. He was hungry- no doubt- but he kept shaking his head around like he was having a seizure and each shovel full would either swamp him with too much milk or would stream all over his face and chest. If I had our dinner together on film, it would be hilarious, but it was not so amusing at the time. Leo was used to drinking his milk straight from a breast and could not seem to understand why his dad was shoveling milk down his throat with this strange device. I began to count the minutes till Jen got home, and when the moment arrived I felt an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I felt bad about it, but our men's dinner had been a complete failure and I wanted my boy to eat.
The trials and tribulations of dealing with a newborn are funnier than hearing about the joys, aren't they? Just admit it, you'd rather hear stories of impossible diaper changes and failed feedings than of fatherly bliss, right? Just human nature, I understand. But what makes all of the work rewarding are those moments you get with your child that are so sublime that they bring you to a stage of contentedness that you've never experienced before. When Leo lies on my chest, his heart beating right against mine and looks up at me with his bright, wide eyes, there is no warmer, more righteous feeling on earth. No matter what else has come before, or what will happen afterwards, in those moments you feel as though all is right with the world. Until the Cubs fail to advance runners in scoring position, and get unceremoniously swept out of the playoffs by the no-name Diamondbacks. Then, you're angry again. But it doesn't last as long or sting as bad, when you have your beautiful boy on your lap rhythmically sucking away happily at his pacifier, that marvelous invention that has saved the world.
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