Tag Archives: fatherhood

You want to name him what?

In a couple of months, we will be welcoming our third boy child into the world. The thought of this glorious event is sometimes enough to make me want to run screaming into the night.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the idea of having a third son to share all the love and lumps with. If I can teach my growing brood to annoy, charge, and tackle each other, they will have less time to do those things to me. Plus, in those moments when their demons are sleeping and their testosterone is quieted to a slow simmer, there will be one more example of fleeting sweetness to enjoy for 3-5 minutes fortnightly.

The part that tempts me to share my terror with the neighbors at 2 a.m. has to do with practical matters. Will he eat the groceries we’ve clipped coupons for? Will I ever be alone with my wife again? Did I just push back my retirement until NEVER? Will our Golden Years be constructed of tin and duct tape?

Before getting caught up in these long-term worries, I guess we should tackle the more pressing issues, like deciding upon a name for Baby Number Three that is shorter and more endearing than Baby Number Three.

The first time my wife and I ever put our heads together to think up a baby name, it went swimmingly. We amicably agreed upon the perfect name . . . for a girl. We’ve held onto that name, and the memory of that peaceably-reached agreement, through nearly three boys. The names of the first two were bitter struggles.

99,999 more than we need

How about a book of just one name that we both can agree upon? Imagine all the trees that would save.

Neither of us is above compromise though, which is why our first two sons have names at all. Somehow, we found two boys’ names with which we both can live. I am not certain there are more than two boys’ names with which we both can live. This is why we have not yet bothered to discuss naming the impending child.

We have no desire to enter into that fray again, so we avoid it. This will continue to be a good strategy until that moment when a hospital administrator approaches my wife’s bedside with a clipboard in hand and a gaping blank on her page. Then, the wheeling and dealing will be fast and furious and the result may not be worth the already-spent nine months of peace.

still can't agree on a name

I feel like this whole baby name debate has aged me. (Image: Harris & Ewing)

Fellow Blogger, Don, from Don of All Trades, has hinted that we should name this child after him. While I agree that Don is the perfect name for those already named it, I hesitate to add another one to the population.  Don of All Trades has a catchy ring to it, but there’s hardly room for a middle name, and the kids might shorten it to DOAT, which has an awkward sound to it.

Perhaps we should auction off the naming rights. The proceeds might alleviate some of my other fears and it avoids the fight that’s brewing. Any bidders?

Whose turn is it to run away?

“I’m running away from home. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t stay here and let everybody be mean to me, so I’m running away.”

Did you ever feel like saying that to your kids?

I felt like that over the Martin Luther King Day long weekend.

The five-year-old had been home from school with the pukes on Thursday and Friday, so he was just a little stir crazy.

The one-year-old had inherited the bug from his brother. He wasn’t sure his fever was enough to let me know this, so he cemented my understanding by puking all over me. That was fun. It gave me another opportunity to bathe him, and if there’s one thing fathers love to do, it’s give toddlers baths – stinky, sick toddlers most of all. The best part was that I had to defer showering the puke off myself until he was clean. Society frowns upon letting a baby marinate in his own juices.

If I’d been smarter, I would have left the smell on me longer. This would have deterred the big boy from climbing on top of me, every time I sat down, with his One Hit Wonder, “Daddy, what game can we play?” Kindergarteners who have been away from their friends too long suffer a play deficit. The deficit deepens every minute, and it begins at crisis levels.

“How about we play that game where Daddy puts everybody to bed and opens a bottle of scotch at 11 a.m.?”

“No? Then sit quietly and think up other games and I’ll tell you when you hit one that’s better.”

Much crying and whining later, Mommy came home, upset over trouble with a sponsor for a school fund-raiser she’d volunteered to coordinate. She was so upset she didn’t even respond to all the crying and whining I was doing. The toddler was feeling well enough to fight with his brother, which took an iota of pressure off me to supply the latter with a marathon of fun.

Boys will be boys

“Break it up, boys. And don’t nobody puke on me anymore today.” (Image: Stanley Kubrick/Look Magazine)

When the boys quit trying to break each other, the big boy jumped on me, demanding that I assume the roles of his missed schoolmates. The little boy cried his I’m beyond comforting, but keep trying to comfort me anyway cry to remind me that, when he wasn’t hitting somebody, he was at leisure to remember his hurting tummy.

After dinner, I snuck away to the bedroom and turned on sports. I don’t remember what game was on, but peace was the prize. I couldn’t relax though. I kept thinking about poor Mommy, down there alone with those demons. I felt guilty about abandoning her. Finally, my conscience made me go back down into the vortex. The boys flew to my suddenly magnetic personality. Tumult ensued.

A while later, I realized Mommy was gone. I quieted the boys enough to listen for the upstairs TV. It was on, but it was no longer tuned to sports.

And it was still only Saturday.

Puking with a quiet dignity

“Daddy, I had to puke in the night,” he told me.

Of course, my first feeling was one of concern; Mommy gets a tad bit grouchy when she has to add an extra sheet-washing to the schedule, and I have to live with her.

The boy was lying on the couch, watching cartoons instead of getting dressed. We had already determined that he was too ill for school. I knew he had a belly ache and a little fever, but I didn’t know about the puking.

Mommy didn’t know about it either. We didn’t know because there was no sign of vomit in his bedroom, which meant that he had made it to the toilet. That’s not so amazing; he’s a practiced puker who’s been well-schooled on the drill of running to the bowl.

What is amazing is that he did it without waking anybody up. This boy, who bellows about every little scratch and had already made sure I knew all about his upset tummy and aching head with repeated updates before 8 a.m., had gone about his puking quietly and climbed back into bed without anyone knowing about his midnight troubles.

We would not have been upset if he’d woken us for so worthy a reason, and maybe he should have, but there’s part of me is proud of him for being stoic about his business and not making a big deal of it.

This is a kid who will get out of bed and call for help on the flimsiest of pretexts. Aside from the normal crises of illness, bad dreams, and dire thirst, this child has risen from his bed to complain about the following list of late night circumstances:

  • His nightlight was in the wrong outlet.
  • His blanket was upside down.
  • His blanket was wrong side up.
  • His sheets were kicked all the way to the bottom of the bed and he couldn’t find them under the blankets.
  • He needed a fingernail trimmed.
  • He needed a BAND-AID for an infinitesimal, bloodless scratch.
  • He had needed to examine his scratch by the glow of his nightlight and couldn’t get the BAND-AID to stick anymore; hence he needed a new one.
  • His nose itched.
  • He was too hot, sleeping under three blankets and a comforter.
  • He wanted his radio on.
  • He wanted his radio off.
  • What he really wanted was a kids’ BAND-AID. One with Spiderman on it, which we don’t have.
I want a kids' Band-Aid

“If you don’t have the Spiderman bandages, I’ll take the ones with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on them.” (Image: Keystone View Co.)

After all of these dubious disturbances to our nighttime peace, this boy gets up in the middle of the night, goes to the toilet, pukes, cleans himself up, and goes back to bed without so much as a Guess what I just did.

Remarkable? Responsible? Grown-up? Maybe, but once he’s feeling himself again, I have no doubt he’ll burst forth from his room at night to alert us all to the emergency situation caused by his incorrect arrangement of dirty clothes in his hamper or about how his hair hurts.

Desensitized to parenthood

We’re waiting for our third child to arrive. We’re waiting passively. It will be a great day when he comes, but we aren’t counting down the weeks. We did that once, and it was fun, but by the third kid, the waiting becomes routine. It doesn’t mean we’ll love him less; it means we know what’s in store for us.

During the first pregnancy, the excitement and nervousness kept us invested in every new development. Most things we couldn’t see; luckily, we had a book to tell us all the changes our unborn child was experiencing. We consulted that book for a Baby Development Review every week. My wife read the progress report aloud while I made amazed comments: “Wow! Our baby has a neck now!”

We always knew how many weeks we had invested and how many we had yet to go. If you’d asked me, “When is your wife due?” I’d have answered, “In sixteen weeks and three days; probably around 9 p.m., I figure.”

Things are different now. I couldn’t find that What’d Your Baby Grow This Week? book to save my life. We’re going on faith that if the baby doesn’t have a neck yet, he’ll sprout one by his birthday. We still do the fun stuff, feeling him kick and whatnot, but we’re not pressuring him into growing fingernails by a certain date. He’ll be ready when he’s ready. God willing, so will we.

There’s an edge to parents that gets smoothed down by each successive child. That’s a good thing, because that edge can get between two parents and scrape the thin skin off both of them.

I can see the difference between our first and second boys. With the first, my wife was particular about the routines she developed for him. I was defensive about my ignorance of these routines. I’d be giving the boy a bath and my wife could see I was doing it contrary to accepted practice:

WIFE: “That’s not how I rub soap in his hair.”

ME: “It’s how I do it.” (Thinking:  Everything doesn’t have to be done your way.)

WIFE: “Here. Just let me do it.”

ME: “No. I’m perfectly capable of washing his hair.” (Thinking: You’re not the only competent parent here.)

We’d be disgusted with each other all day.

Now, when I bathe the second child, (Thinking: Oh man, the ball game’s about to come on.) I’ll act clueless about washing his hair:

WIFE: “Is that the way you bathe him now?”

ME: “Yup. Daddy’s running this show.” (Thinking: Go ahead, step in and take over. What kind of mother are you, letting me do this all wrong? Just put one hand on the boy and this bath’s yours. Touch him. Just go ahead and see how fast I run away to the TV.)

WIFE: “Whatever.” Then she claims the TV for the Lifetime Network while I’m stuck washing the kid.

I sure hope there’s nothing on TV when this new one needs a bath.

Shut up kids. Our program's coming on.

“Dang it, Martha, those young’uns can bathe themselves; The Lucky Strike Hit Parade is about to come on the air.” (Image: Russell Lee/US Farm Security Administration)