Tag Archives: parenting

What the cat heard us say

We’ve fallen into an evening routine with New Baby. Mommy feeds him and goes to bed while I stay up with him until he’s ready to sleep. This can take a while, so we have plenty of time for pleasant conversation:

New Baby (NB): “WHAAAA! I want Mommy.”

ME: “Mommy’s getting some rest. Play with me for a while.”

NB: “Got milk?”

ME: “No. Mommy’s got the milk.”

NB: “Ergo, I want her.”

ME: “You just ate.”

NB: “Yeah, but I like keeping a supply handy, just in case.”

ME: “Mommy needs her rest to make more milk. Sit with me and watch the hockey game.”

NB: “Your team sucks.”

ME: “You don’t even know which is my team.”

NB: “Which is your team?”

ME: “The Penguins.”

NB: “Ha! Penguins suck!”

ME: “Don’t be that way. What are you, a Rangers fan?”

NB: “I really don’t care who wins this dumb game . . . as long as it’s not the Penguins. Ha! They suck!”

ME: “Really? Well, guess what? I think it might be time for a diaper change.”

looking with my baby eyes

Looking at incredible images, such as beige walls, with his baby eyes.

NB: “Okay. I get it. No more sucking Penguins.”

ME: “Good. Let’s be friends.”

NB: “Hey, what’s that?”

ME: “What?”

NB: “Up in the corner, above the light.”

ME: “I don’t see anything. It’s just the wall.”

NB: “No. I’m serious. It’s incredible. I’m just gonna stare at it a while with my baby eyes.”

ME: “I don’t see anything.”

NB: “Shhhh! I’m trying to focus. These things aren’t turned on all the way yet. Now look what you made me do! It’s a pain in the ass to un-cross them.”

ME: “I still don’t see anything.”

NB: “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Look, the cat sees it too.”

ME: “The cat’s 100 years old. He’s probably seeing his life pass before his eyes.”

NB: “Okay, never mind. Turns out it was just a wall. Your cat’s messed up. I think I’ll cry for a while.”

ME: “Don’t cry. It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”

NB: “Gurgle, gurgle, sploot! Ha! I bet you didn’t know I could spit milk that far.”

ME: “You kids teach me something every day. Feel better now?”

NB: “In a sec. Wait for it . . . Pfffffrrt. Ah! That’s better. Sometimes, ya gotta release the valve at both ends, ya know?”

ME: “Now it really is time for a new diaper.”

one good kick

There will be kicking and screaming involved.

NB: “No, seriously, I’m fine.”

ME: “You’re not gonna wallow in that.”

NB: “Suit yourself, but you do realize there will be kicking and screaming involved.”

ME: “We’ll do this one real quick.”

Ten minutes later . . .

ME: “Quick kicking my hand. These snaps are hard enough to line up as it is.”

NB: “I believe I warned you about this very thing.”

ME: “Got it! We’re done! Now why don’t you settle down to sleep?”

NB: “Sleep? I did that all day. I’m hungry.”

ME: “You can’t be hungry again. It hasn’t been that long.”

NB: “Dude! Did you not just witness me making more room?”

ME: “Let’s let Mommy sleep a while longer.”

NB: “Hey, I think I see a nipple on your cheek.”

ME: “Suck all you want, you’re not gonna find any milk.”

NB: “I just need to peck at it. I know I saw a nipple.”

ME: “Your baby eyes aren’t turned all the way on yet. It was an illusion.”

NB: “See? I’m so hungry I’m delusional. Maybe I’ll just scream my head off non-stop until the end of time. Like so. WHAAAA . . .”

Thirty seconds later . . .

ME: “I hope Mommy enjoyed her nap.”

In Hell everybody wears a onesie

They sure do make some awfully cute onesies these days. It’s almost a shame that I hate onesies so much. Specifically, I hate the little metal snaps at the bottom of every onesie. I could do diaper changes in my sleep, which is when I am often called upon to do them, if not for those little, metal blood pressure spikes at tail of the onesie.

onesie

Cute, in a soul-crushing sort of way.

Usually, I reserve my disdain for objects that are ineffective. I hate onesie snaps exactly because of their maddening effectiveness. Or maybe I’m tugging at them all wrong, because I often struggle to get those little bastards to come apart. We have numerous onesies with tears in the cloth around the snaps caused by my incompetent tugging.

This alone would inspire only a moderate hatred, but the snaps aren’t done taunting me. Having finally unsnapped them and handled the diaper business, I have one hell of a time snapping them together again. My toils are exasperated because we’re blessed with yet another baby who hates diaper changes. As a service to him, and to me, I try to complete the procedure as quickly as possible. They say haste makes waste, but in reality it was the baby who made the waste, and he did it in a very deliberate fashion. Haste makes me fumble with those damned snaps until the baby is whipped into a frenzy of bicycle kicks. Dodging a windmill of feet doesn’t simplify the task.

The other night, my wife’s lovely voice called me out of my sleep. She was nursing New Baby in the rocking chair. “Sorry. I forgot to change him before I started to feed him,” she said. “Can you change him while he’s eating so he can go right to sleep when he’s done?”

You shouldn’t have to apologize for forgetting anything at 3 a.m. But you shouldn’t have to deal with the snaps from hell either.

We have a video monitor in our room that we once used to keep an eye on the other boys at night. We’ve lost interest in what they do in the dark, so we use it only as a soft light source when we get up with New Baby.

In the weak light, with one eye closed, I did battle with baby snaps on my wife’s lap. At the end, I couldn’t get them lined up right, but two one out of three would hold until morning. I went into the bathroom for two seconds to wash my hands.

good enough

That oughta hold ‘im.

On my way back to bed, I was startled by the most egregious report that ever issued from a baby’s bottom. (I would spell the sound phonetically, but there aren’t enough letter sounds in the English language to do it justice.) I jumped as if someone had fired a pistol beside my head.

Oh God! This one was bound to be nasty!

On the bright side, it was another chance to get all three snaps lined up.

What’s another syndrome among family?

New Baby is settling in at home. We’ve begun calling him New Baby because after two years we still are in the habit of referring to Buster as the baby. Until we come to terms with Buster’s boyhood, he is Old Baby and his little brother is New Baby.

It still seems surreal that Buster could have a little brother.

My wife worries that Buster will develop Middle Child Syndrome. For that reason, she always wanted to have four children. Now that she has to deal with the reality of three boys, she has switched gears. She’s leaning less toward birthing another child and more toward viewing a little psychotherapy for her middle child as a solid investment.

I’m not worried about the man in the middle. Buster already has Buster Syndrome. Maybe that other syndrome is just the antidote he needs. He could use a little soul-searching to slow him down and temper some of those ragged edges.

Buster's glasses

The ravages of Buster Syndrome.

So far, Buster has adapted admirably to his new position. He shows only tenderness to New Baby, channeling all of his aggressive tendencies toward his big brother. Needless to say, his big brother is fine with this. It leads to no fighting, whining, or tattle telling at all.

Whether Buster’s treatment of New Baby stems from pure kindness or the fact that he sees the writing on the wall is uncertain. New Baby is a beefcake. Buster is a little squirt. Unless he conjures up a growth spurt, Buster will be a big brother in name only within a few years. He is wise to plan for that day.

Until then, New Baby has sharp claws for self-defense. I don’t know what part of evolution demands that babies be born with long fingernails. He can’t hold his head up or make his limbs bend to his will, yet New Baby has razor talons. This somehow makes sense to Nature. In theory, his claws could be used to protect himself, if a predator caught his spastic hand and scraped his fingernails against itself. Otherwise, they only protect him from having a smooth face. Nature likes self-inflicted scratches I guess.

Not a bumbo fan

“Feel the wrath of my pinky claw!”

New Baby doesn’t have to wield his bird of prey claws against Buster, even if he could control them. Buster is committed to being a good big brother. As to being the middle child, I think Buster will have no problem carving out a comfortable space for himself. He will defend his things from the grabby hands of his little brother with vigor equal to that he used snatching them from the hands of this big brother. His zeal will be an example to all.

I don’t worry about any of the boys adjusting to their new roles. The one I worry about is the cat. He flirted with neurosis dodging only two boys. Now he faces a trio of hazards even as his reflexes decline. If anyone qualifies to blame their troubles on a situational syndrome it’s him.

in the cat's bed

There is no place in this house for you to find solitude, Mr. Cat. It’s kind of like being a parent.

Is it too late to rename them Barry, Robin, and Maurice?

I am prone to bouts of nostalgia for the 1970s. It was the decade of my innocent years. The ‘70s began with me forming my earliest memories and ended with me standing on the cusp of teenagerdom. It is appropriate that I have a soft spot for those days.

Why my children so easily follow me into that ‘70s groove, I can’t explain. The decade of their formative years is not half over with yet. They should be assembling the mental scrap book that will draw their hearts back to these good old days in times to come. Maybe they are, but in their spare moments, they are boogying back to the ‘70s right beside me.

Musically, the ‘70s decade was an odd dichotomy of timeless classics and curious songs that seemed fitting at the time, but now make me wonder what other questionable choices were being made by the grown-ups of my youth.

This doesn’t mean these song aren’t still fun to sing, especially if you are riding in the car with the other two members of your boy band strapped into their respective booster and toddler car seats.

When Le Freak (remembered by children of the ‘70s as Freak Out!) came on the radio, my bandmate in the booster said, “Oh yeah, I know this song.” I found that a little odd since I’d heard it about five times since sixth grade and not at all since he was born.

Chic

The record that made us all freak out.

As if sensing my skepticism, he began singing along to every “Freak Out!” – of which there are many.

I’m convinced our bandmate in the toddler seat did not know this song, but he picked it up quickly. He began echoing every “Freak Out!” his brother sang. This being a new number to him, he was just a little off the lyric so that his contribution sounded like “Eee Ow!”

Being the founding member of the band, I could not sit idly by. There was no room between instances of “Freak Out!” to add a second echo, so I took up the role of singing the “Awwwwwww” buildup to each “Freak Out!”

Altogether, we drove down the road sounding like this:

Driver’s seat: “Awwwwwww”

Booster seat: “Freak Out!”

Toddler seat: “Eee Ow!”

Repeat the cycle.

A lot.

It’s the main feature of the song.

Back in the day, it seemed like a fun song. Then it seemed like a stupid song. Now, it’s a fun song all over again. That’s the magic of the ‘70s.

It put us all in good mood.

When the new baby is up to singing, I may just bow out of the group and see if we’ve got a brand new generation of Bee Gees on our hands. Being a child of the ‘70s, nothing could be more appealing to me. If Chic could put me a good mood, driving around with my own set of Bee Gees in the back seat would put me on top of the world.

Bee Gees

I’m thinking my new Bee Gees won’t be quite so hairy.