Monday Morning Quarterback: Parenting Edition

I just passed my three year anniversary of becoming a stay at home dad. There was no ticker tape parade. There were no high-fives or any smacks on the ass. The mail got delivered today, the Little Man's preschool was open and there are no known Burl Ives' songs released about this day. I also forgot all about it. It was just any other day.

Until yesterday.

Over the last three years, I have learned a thing or two. We're talking about practical, useful information, the kind of insight that people would kill for if it was political or religious. Then again, maybe you like to read parenting books or have more than a platonic relationship with your Kindle Paperwhite. Then feel free to move along.

The thing with parenting handbooks (aside from baby and toddler 411, those two were gems for us), aside from there being too many to list, is that they are all useless. They all have the same mundane and you're-a-moron-if-you-don't-know-this general knowledge chapter list. If you have seen Knocked Up, you are prepared, or at least as prepared as the books can get you and whatever questions they answer. I'm not saying that they don't serve a purpose. For the Mrs, I think it was more mentally soothing to her to read about what would be happening or what to expect even though it all went out the window as soon as we arrived home with The Little Man for the first time.

Here are a few practical, useful things you should know that no one or at least not may people will tell you before you become a parent. These are things I wish I had known beforehand. Things they never mentioned in the all day birthing class - instead we watched the birthing video (awful thing to make people watch), we learned what the size of a baby's stomach is at one and two months (that turned out to be oh-so useful at 3 AM when The Taz couldn't be soothed; that's not even useful as a fun fact) and lastly how to put on a diaper (let's just get this out right now, if you can't diaper your child without professional instruction then maybe parenting isn't for you). No. This will cover none of those topics. And for that you're welcome.

1. Diapers leak.
They sure do. A lot. And we're not just talking about pee. Try as you may, but if your child has bowel issues, the elastic only holds so much. You'll try to size down in diapers. Then maybe size up. You'll switch brands. All to no avail. Infant poop is not like your poop. It's...well...it's different. The intestines are all getting worked in. Perhaps new foods introduced either physically or maybe through mom's milk. It's going to happen. Hopefully you'll be lucky and the explosion (they're not always as simple as a leak...think more of pipes bursting...yeah you got it now) will happen at home, but it can happen anywhere and you will undoubtedly will not be prepared. At least you are now forewarned.

2. Like your Doctor.
The interview process is fine and dandy and even recommendations from friends can be helpful, but in the end it's you in there with the Doctor and your kid(s). Your personality may not jive with theirs and if it doesn't, then switch doctors. You don't need to have the "it not me, it's you" conversation, just call the office and ask to switch doctors (and FYI, it's always them and it is never you). Assuming you are planning to stay where you are, it's important to like and feel comfortable with your child's pediatrician. Some of them are there because they love what they do, and some are there because they are doctors. It's easy to tell the difference, just trust your gut and move along.

3. Kids get sick. A lot.
This has been the hardest lesson to learn and more so to accept. But this is an unfailing truth. Your kids are like sponges for two things, curse words and viruses, and after three years of staying home with the boys I'd rather them cuss me out than have to administer another dose of Children's Tylenol. However, I suspect, that I'll get that wish in about 12-13 years if I play my cards right. And if you have two kids, it's generally even worse as they volley the virus back and forth until they knock it out or off to you. What's even worse is that there is often little you can do to help them. When you get to your third or fourth sick visit to the doctor's office in as many months, you start wishing for stupid things like infections. Infections have cures. Viruses take time. We have dealt with RSV (respiratory scyntial virus) for the past two years. Hearing your kids cough like 80-year olds with emphysema is not pleasant and the doctor's comment that "just think of it as each cough is one cough closer to health" doesn't make it better. The good news: year over year the infections get less and less dramatic. The bad news: they continue to happen year over year.

4. Rectal temps are the only temps.
I had a hard time with this one. I wanted to use every other device out there from temporal thermometers to underarm readings. They are useless. I don't know what it is, but popping a thermometer up your kids poop chute is going to give you valuable and accurate information, as much as it may pain you to do so. It is better to know this going into things than vice versa. It will save you money and time. And as much as you think your four month old may hold this against you later in life, you are wrong. Just lube it up, put it in and move on.

5. Having two kids is twice the work.
I am an only child. I don't know what it's like to have siblings. But I had one son before I had two. I naively thought that I had this whole infant thing down pat. Diaper, feed, rock, repeat. Even on basic levels, my boys could not be anymore different. The Little Man was relatively easy as an infant. Taz, not so much so. The Little Man was a vegetable hoarder. The Taz...what are vegetables? The Little Man has always been a cautious little guy. The Taz just wants to be let out of the cage. Aside from the fact that I have diapered and fed both boys, nothing about them is the same. What one likes, the other may not. Unless the thing liked is a toy, then they both want it because the other one has it; this is one of the few eternal truths of siblings. What works for one boy, may not work for the other. One may require no child proofing of your home, while the other may require a SWAT team level of security. Don't assume. Don't ever assume. When you assume, you end up like me.

6. You. Will. Never. Sleep. Again.
I used to judge good sleep by a solid, uninterrupted night of 8-10 hours. I now find myself thinking that 5-6 will get the job done and that 3-4 is good too. Even when I have the opportunity to (which I can count on two hands over the past almost four years), I still don't sleep soundly or late. I wake up naturally, albeit groggy around 6 every day and either get out for a run or scour the internet on my phone for an hour or so until the kids are allowed to get up. This is not the result of a few early wake ups as much as it is years of Pavlovian experiences when my kids wake up screaming at odd hours. I used to go into their room to check on them, but have learned that 99% of the time that they just have bad dreams sometimes and then quickly get themselves back to sleep or into a better dream. Give them 5-10 minutes to sort it out and then if they don't get back to sleep then check on them, if you don't hear anything then try and get yourself back to sleep. Try is the key word. Now my dog scratching himself at 3 AM, the Mrs tugging on the sheets or the AC/heat kicking on wakes me up and keeps me up for about 30-45 minutes at a time. The stupid thing is I still set an alarm.

7. Development charts are not the end all, be all.
A lot of pediatricians live and die by the developmental charts. They are these sometimes overly generalized and absurdly specific lists of what your child should be doing by what age. Some doctors use this chart as an accurate measure of developmental success and failure, while others realize that kids all have their own time tables. The Little Man did not start talking until about 16-18 months. Taz is 19 months and doesn't say much besides his grunts for "yes" and "no", "dada" is an all encompassing term, "cat","dat" for when he points at something and supposedly he said "dragon" the other day for the Mrs (I am sure that is going to be a useful word going forward). Both of the boys have had tremendous comprehension from an early age, it's just their speech that has been slower to come around. We've never been terribly concerned. We have The Little Man in speech therapy now and he is doing fine. Our sole goal is simply to do as best we can to see that he is starting on the same playing field as his classmates when he enters kindergarten. Maybe we will have to do the same with Taz. Who knows? But don't put too much weight in or lose sleep over the chart. If your child is healthy, happy and active, then you're doing a great job. Everything else will fall into place as it should.

Hope that some of this helps you out. I think this sort of information would have been useful to me earlier on. But then again, maybe I would have forgotten it all as soon as we got home from the hospital that first time.    

 

    

You'll Miss These Days...I Doubt It

My boys are everything to me.  Literally everything.  When they're happy, I'm happy.  When they're upset, I'm upset.  Generally speaking, I love spending 9-12 hours a day with them...except when I don't.  I'm not ashamed to to say it.  My kids sometimes irritate me like alcohol on a chaffed crotch.  And like a chaffed crotch, you sometimes simply can't get away from it.  Sure you can lie down, take a shower, apply some Triple Bond but in the end you can't escape chaffed crotch and you can't escape your kids (this may be the only time that the words "crotch" and "kids" appear in a sentence together without Chris Hansen waiting in the wings).  My mom always had a phrase that never hit me as a kid, but as a parent it has truly resonated with me: "I may not always like you, but I will always love you".  And whether you have the cajones to admit it out loud or not, you know it's true.

Since becoming a parent 2 1/2 years ago, I have noticed how crazy some parents can get when it comes to talking sh*t about their kids.  Like some cultural taboo or something, some parents just won't do it even as Junior is standing there punching them in the thigh with all the fury they can muster - it's just all smiles and sunshine to them.  When you share stories of your own kids shortcomings: whining, stupid fears, contrary disposition etc. these parents are always the first to say: "Well, they're just going through a stage.  You'll miss these days".  The hell I will.

For the first 4 months of my youngest son's life (he's almost 6 months now), I was open with just about anyone who asked that dumb question: "Aren't babies the best?  I just love them at that age".  No, as a matter of fact babies are not the best.  I can't stand them at this age".  I told my Mrs Griswold Wanna-Be multiple times how much I disliked my younger son.  She was always hurt by it, but it was true.  Then she would intermittently ask me: "Do you like him now?"  And of course I would say: "No".  I told her that I loved him and if he needed my heart to live I would rip it out of my chest for him without a second thought, but that's love.  Completely different.  I'm talking about liking, as in getting enjoyment from being around him, sharing memorable moments, looking forward to seeing and spending time with him.  These were not things I did with my younger son, until about a month and a half ago.  I was all too happy to hand him off to my wife as quickly as possible and whenever possible.  He was fussy, didn't sleep and all-in-all was a completely inconsolable baby.  We think that he may have had some gastrointestinal issues, which he has since appeared to work out, but excuses or no excuses - he was a d-bag.  Around 5 months, I bought into him.  He smiled when he saw me.  He took decent naps.  He made adorable sounds.  Yet I know that when he's around 2, I'll like him even more.

What it boils down to is that I don't really care for the infant stage.  The inability to do anything for themselves is in no way endearing to me.  The 18 diaper changes a day, the sleepless nights, the fact that only Mrs Griswold Wanna-Be could satisfy his hunger (no, I don't have boob envy - I was happy to feed him pumped breast milk, but could only do so when it was available), the 100% dependance on you and the 20 minute cat naps.  What is there to like about this?  Though my 2 1/2 year old whines all the time and is terrified of the most ridiculous things (birds, doctors, taking medicine, and guy friends of ours that are taller than me) I thoroughly enjoy my time with him more than with my 5 month old.  He can express himself pretty well, he has a goofball personality, he is reaching the age where he can be reasoned with and he has a similar love for Legos like me.  Sure, he makes me want to put my head through a wall sometimes but so does my wife...for that matter so do I.

Then as for these people that come up to us in the store, at my son's preschool or wherever else I may be with one in hand and the other Ergo'd/Baby Bjorn'd and tell me how precious my kids are - especially my younger son and how he's at the best age.  These people are idiots and probably liars - but mostly idiots.  I'm busy looking forward to when my kids can entertain each other, wrestle around, tell me about their days.  My 2 1/2 year old is nearly there in all of these departments and I love it.  But I know my 5 month old is still at least 16 months from even touching on these items (as I sound a deep inhale and deep exaggerated exhale).  I'm over being thrown up on 5 times a day, I really am.  My shoulders wreak of nearly digested formula and there's always dried snot all over my pants and sleeves at the end of each day.  I'm a walking petri dish for every cold virus that ever dripped out of a kid's nose.  I'm lucky to get to spend the time that I do with my kids as a stay-at-home Dad, but don't tell me I'm living the dream, because if this is what you dream about then you have some issues.

At the end of the day, I know that these proverbial bumps in the road are just stages.  My kids will go through hundreds of them on their way to adulthood and while I know I'll enjoy some of these stages, the others I may loathe and I'm all to happy to admit it.  These happy, go-lucky, no sh*t talking, enjoy these days type of parents are questionable characters at best.  The type of people I would unfriend from my Facebook contacts, yeah that's right, it's like that.  See, what I think resonated with me so much about my mom's phrase "I may not always like you, but I'll always love you" is that it was real and it was brutally honest.  I like to think that this was the major trait I took from my mom and I'm proud of it, I won't lie to your face to save your feelings and I hope my kids get that from me.  If I'm being an asshole, I want them to call me on it.  However, if they actually call me that, though secretly I'll be proud of them, they'll be grounded for a week.