Tag Archives: babies

You are my sunshine, but not necessarily my only sunshine

“You are my sunshine,

my only sunshine (along with your brother, who is also my sunshine).

You (in concert with your brother) make me happy

when skies are gray . . .”

Since we’ve had our second child, we have been careful about the words to the little songs of endearment we sing to the baby. Not wanting to inspire jealousy by leaving the older sibling out, we do all we can to fit our high regard for everybody into the song.

This requires us to think on our feet, because few songs of endearment are intended to address multiple individuals. Imagine Roberta Flack singing, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Several Faces or Sinatra crooning that classic, It Had to be You. . . and That Other Guy Over There. It is probably for the best that most love songs focus upon a single individual, but this means that parents who need to spread the love around may have to cut and paste.

There is nothing so sweet and melodic as parents singing sweet nothings to their babies, except when the melody is held suspended by the insertion of clarifying, parenthetical phrases. These phrases must be added whenever Big Brother is within earshot. At his age, he gets fewer songs of his own. Therefore, he must be included as an addendum to his baby brother’s lullabies. This leads to verses like the one at the top.

We are lucky that our preschooler exhibits hardly any jealousy toward his baby brother. The big boy likes having a little brother. Our only worry about his attitude toward the baby is that he sometimes wants to hug his little brother too vigorously. He doesn’t quite understand how fragile a baby is. When he becomes most zealous to show affection for the baby, we stand guard, ready to prevent the reenactment of a scene from Of Mice and Men.

We are careful not to fritter away our good fortune. My wife often reminds me to avoid telling Big Brother that I can’t pay him immediate attention because I am tending to Little Brother. This could cause resentment. Instead, I have to make up excuses that sound something like, “I can’t play trains with you right now because I have to get all of the milk out of this bottle through this tiny hole. Luckily, your little brother is really good at this sort of thing. With his help, I’ll be done and ready to play with you by nightfall.”

My kids may grow up singing the wrong lyrics to many decades’ worth of popular (and unpopular) songs, and believing that babies take bottles to help rid their parents of troublesome milk surpluses, but I won’t laugh at them. As long as they like and respect each other, I’ll tolerate their crazy notions. To my boys, I will make every allowance for such misconceptions, because, as Debby Boone was fond of singing, “Y’all light up my life.”

Cowboy band

“But the Yellow Rose of Texas (and the Blue Marigold of West Virginia, and also the Purple Violet of Eastern Maryland) is the only gal for me.” (Photo: Russell Lee/U.S. Farm Security Administration)

 

Who’s the weirdo with the stroller?

I am a periodic sufferer of a condition. Since I can find no official name for this complaint, I am going to name it myself. My problem is called Empty Stroller Syndrome.

Empty Stroller Syndrome (ESS) occurs almost exclusively in fathers of young children. It manifests itself in well-populated areas, including public transportation. A bout of ESS is generally brought on when the mother takes the child from the stroller to some location disassociated from the father, who is left with an empty stroller and no child in sight.

It is important to note that if you are out in public with an empty baby stroller, but have no children in your life, you are not suffering from ESS. You are suffering from being one weird dude.

Empty Stroller Syndrome: the silent stigmatizer.

ESS is an often misunderstood condition due to the fact that, to the unfamiliar observer, the sufferer closely resembles the weird dude aforementioned. Lacking a nearby baby, there is no recognized protocol for differentiating the ESS sufferer from the weird dude.

It dawned upon me that I suffered from ESS while I was riding the metro train in Washington, D.C. With two small children, we have many accessories to carry with us on outings. These many necessities were secreted in and about our stroller, with heavy baggage hanging from each handle.

Every time we boarded the train, my wife took the baby out of the stroller and held him on her lap. When we could sit together, this presented quite a natural scene. But on the D.C. subway, parties often need to disperse, transforming me into a solitary man with his heavily weighted stroller.

Judging from the looks I received from fellow passengers, some sympathetic men recognized, or at least hoped they recognized, an all too familiar case of ESS. Other passengers merely wondered silently about that weird dude who used a baby stroller as a pushcart for his sundry, joyless bundles.

Without the baby in place, the stroller was unbalanced. At every change in momentum, it was liable to tip over backward. Not wanting to risk injuring others, I guarded it closely. This made me look less the innocent victim of a crowded transport system, and more the weird dude whose precious, precious collections of plastic spoons and acorns must be jealously protected from a covetous world.

The shame of ESS. In the past it was difficult to build awareness because fathers were so shamed by their condition that they would not allow themselves to be photographed with their empty strollers.

In most cases, it doesn’t matter to me what strangers think. But I’ve put a lot of work into this fathering business, and I’d rather not be thought of as some kind of unhinged stroller pervert. I have the children to prove that there is a perfectly reasonable pathology behind my distant, glassy stare. They are elsewhere on the train, with their mother, the one competent to be the guardian of cargo more important than empty strollers.

I tried to ease the suspicions of my close companions by turning and yelling things to my family that hinted at more than a passing acquaintance between them and myself. I gave up this tactic when it became clear that the crowd did not relish a loud conversation about the probability of there being a poopy diaper somewhere among them. For those who could not see the family to whom I was speaking, this talk only added to my mystique.

Alas, there was nothing to do but quietly endure my flare-up of Empty Stroller Syndrome. In the distance, I could hear people clucking over the baby. Nobody ever gushes about how adorable my empty stroller is. In silence, they avoid making eye contact with me.

Faulty nipples, puke, and war paint (just another day at home)

Recently, we boys in the family got one of our periodic chances to spend some quality time together without any womenfolk around. Mommy was out for the evening, so we got to play in an estrogen-free zone for several hours.

The night got off to a good start when the baby decided he didn’t want anything to do with his bottle. I got it into his mouth a few times, but he got angry and spit it right out. As fast as I could try to bring the nipple to his mouth, he would slap it away with his little judo hands. He even made all kinds of martial arts grunts, groans, and other assorted utterances. Okay, I’m pretty sure that some of them where baby swear words, but they went well with his karate chops.

Since the baby wouldn’t eat, I thought I’d try to get some dinner into the big boy. While I was in the kitchen, making his meal, I heard him turn on the water in the downstairs bathroom. “What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m washing my hands,” came the reply from the bathroom.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know.”

This was suspicious, but I had other chickens to fry (literally). I heard him leave the bathroom, so I let it go until the noise of the water running repeated a minute later. “Come here,” I requested. He came into the kitchen looking like a wild island warrior, sporting black, magic marker stripes all over his face, arms, and legs. He even had a little extra for a mustache over his top lip. His hands were clean, though.

He wanted to know if Mommy would yell when she came home. I told him it was a distinct possibility. He wasn’t concerned that I might yell. I didn’t, so I guess he was right. I think he suspected that I might think it was kind of cool, which maybe I did, secretly. I gave him a wet rag and told him to get to work, unless he wanted to take his chances with Mommy.

It could always be worse: I don’t have the first clue as to how to deal with girls. Also, I’d be lost without a machine to toss the vomit-covered clothes into.

Meanwhile, I tried another bottle on the baby, with no better luck. Fortunately, my kids have a dad who figures it out once in a while. With the wailing baby in one arm, I rooted around the pantry with my free hand, looking for a faster nipple.  At last, I found one, but it came with a different bottle system, so I had to wash out the new bottle, one-handed, before I could try my theory.

The baby took the new bottle without even attempting to drop-kick it across the room, though he did shoot me a look and mumble something in baby words about me finally finding a nipple that had an actual hole in it. I let his sarcasm slide, because even in a house flowing with undiluted testosterone, somebody has to be the bigger man.

By now, the big boy had cleaned up all of his parts that he could easily see in the mirror. He was all set, as long as Mommy stayed in front of him. We worked on eating his belated dinner. He gave it the old preschool try, but wanted to give up with still too much left on his plate. I asked him to at least finish his biscuit. This was my mistake, as I had not been clear that he shouldn’t attempt it in one bite. He put about five times too much food into his mouth, which made him gag, followed closely by the puking.

We got him to the toilet mostly in time. There were just a few small spots to clean off the linoleum. His dinner was wasted, but there were no nasty vomit stains to clean up off the carpet. Overall, it would have to be classified as a success, as far as puking goes. He flushed the toilet and announced that he would like some gummy bears for dessert.

The baby took another little bottle. He didn’t seem very satisfied though. He was beginning to miss Mommy, or at least the part of her he knew best. Bottles were not at all the manner of taking nourishment to which he was accustomed, and he would not let the affront pass without complaining to the management.

And then, it looked like things were going to get worse. The big boy had picked up the hand bellows from the fireplace and was aiming it at the baby’s face. He was going to poke the baby in the eye before I could stop him. But he didn’t poke the baby. He held the bellows in front of the baby and squeezed, blowing a puff of air into the baby’s face.

The baby stopped his crying and laughed – not smiled, not gurgled, laughed. It was the best, heartiest, happiest laugh I have ever heard from this baby. The big boy squeezed out another puff of air. The baby practically convulsed with guffaws. The big boy laughed. I laughed.

They did this for several minutes – puff, laugh, puff, laugh. Sometimes, nobody can make a boy laugh like his brother can. Sometimes, a long, difficult night can turn itself around on the simple whim of a child. Sometimes, all the boys of the house just need to hang out and be boys together.

Once in a while we just need our Man Time together, in spite of the consequences.

Milk it while it’s still cute, kid

In considering the traits the baby is displaying at three months old, I wonder which of them he will carry with him as he grows into a young man. I’m fairly certain that he won’t continue to view every naked moment as an opportunity to pee on whatever or whomever is within range. That could get very socially awkward, and if it doesn’t, I don’t think I want him hanging out with that crowd.

Of all the cute things a baby does, how many of them would still be cute if he did them later in life? The boundaries of cute shift over time, and there are some things that won’t be so cute down the line. That being said, he can cut out the indiscriminate peeing any time now, as that was never cute, in spite of his misguided notions.

This would not be cute in an adult

Our baby loves chewing on hands. I understand babies wanting to suckle on fingers, but he’s moved past digits. He loves to sink his gums into some juicy thumb butt. A little shank of thumb is his favorite, but he’s not above savoring a bit of knuckle or wrist when the mood strikes him. I don’t have meaty hands, but what meat I do have is, apparently, quite delicious.

These are even better dipped in melted butter.

Maybe he would chew on my ankles if I held him with my feet. Perhaps he’d chew on whatever was available, excepting, of course, my gristly, spiny shoulders. But I think he prefers hand meat, because when my hands are not available, he munches his own. His thumb is just not enough. I’m going to start wearing gloves when the teeth come.

This won’t do much for his social life

When he’s happy and engaged, the baby coos adorably. It is one of the most endearing things about him. Yet, the cooing is not going to be so cute when he’s 17. I hope he doesn’t approach the girl he wants to take to Prom and just start giving her the “ooooo, ooooo, ooooo,” treatment. Sure, it’s cute now – it’s so cute that it’s all he needs to say. But that 17-year-old girl is going to want to know when he’s picking her up, and she’s probably not going to have her hair done by ooooo o’clock.

“I’m here to take your daughter to indiscriminately dive-bomb people in the park . . . uh . . . I mean . . . Prom.” (Photo: Gary Kramer/U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service)

By the time he is 17, he’s going to need to be more articulate than a pigeon. Of course, I’m sure he will be, under normal circumstances. I just hope he doesn’t panic and resort to babbling random bird noises every time he comes near a pretty girl. My fear is not unfounded; there is some precedent for this kind of behavior in his nuclear family.

Babies change so quickly that I could be writing about different traits in a week. I just hope all of those future traits are contented ones . . . and none of them lead to cannibalism.