Things

In the early days we used to sit down in the living room and watch you sleep. Though, to be perfectly honest, which I always am, when the circumstances warrant it, which is, I suppose, not exactly perfect honesty, you mostly cried. At this point in time it was not the sort of misting up that you associate with a particularly touching movie, or wonderful novel. No. It was more like squalling as though you had been pulled from a blissful place into entropic hell. As it turns out, my dear, you were probably not remiss in squalling.

But you see, in those first days, when your mother couldn't really get out of bed, and I was bent over you changing your diaper nearly in the act of praying, almost to you, as though you were a golden calf, hoping that you wouldn't scream. What I'm saying is, those days were hard. When you would close your eyes and scream at the world around you, at the profundity and absurdity of it, when you would flail with your arms and legs in a way that I was near certain would have taken you miles away had we just put you in water. So much quieter.

And darling, while we're here, me peering down at your balled up face turned scarlet in anger, we should probably talk about shi-. You see, in those first days you generally held on to your bowel movements, uncouth I know, until after I had removed your diaper. And then, generally at 4 A.M. or so, as your tiny dairy aire was lifted in the air to assure maximal cleaning, you would shi-, prodigiously, as though you sought to create a masterpiece of modern art on the walls of the nursery. This, you proclaimed, is the future of art. What I'm saying here now, my dear, is that I want to apologize for squelching your artistic creativity at such a tender age, for wiping off those marks that you thought were indelible from window and wall. But in truth, I don't miss those days. Art, my dear, has always been dying, or isn't it pretty to think so.

Baby

I skipped over a lot of blogging days because I had a baby. Okay, I didn't actually have a baby, but I'm not being held responsible for caring for the baby as though I had one. Though it seems grossly unfair apparently people now expect me to continue to care and love this little thing for eighteen years and perhaps even longer.

I'll eventually cover the first few days, which mainly involved rushing up and down stairs and making sure that s wasn't suffocating herself by smashing her nose against my chest too tightly. I want to cover that most sacred of baby stories, why the nanny in Britain shook the baby.

As it turns out, at least for me, this is apparently not true for S, a baby screaming at the top of its lungs for ten minutes or so is not the greatest thing in the world. However, when they start to take it up into the thirty minute range it's fairly easy to start harboring all sorts of rather unspeakable thoughts about one's child, like, I wonder if anyone would notice if I just dropped her back off at the hospital, or let's be honest, much worse.

The real question is what you do in those times of near homicidal rage at this supposedly sweet little child. I learned to cope by turning my music up to insane levels and breathing deeply three times, and then trying to achieve some sort of Buddhist like peace with my place in the world whilst my child screams at the top of her lungs for reasons beyond my understanding.

I believe that what I'm experiencing is just a microcosm, accelerated perhaps, of the general human experience. Such as, the seeming dichotomy of inflicting the most pain upon those we love, which would seem to imply that love is perhaps transient. Ie, if s were to come out of a crying fit and immediately smile at me, the reverse is far more likely, I would be experiencing, near simultaneously, one of the greatest highs (yes folks, she's smiling, and has been for more than a week, which I'm pretty sure is advanced for a kid her age. And even if it isn't I don't really care because it's just so damn cute) followed by one of the most annoying sounds in the world, lil s crying. It is seemingly incongruous that I could kind of desire tossing s out a window when she can just as easily make me talk in a baby voice and dote and beam with joy and do all those sorts of annoying parent things that I swore I wasn't going to do.

Perhaps this isn't indicative of the human condition, perhaps it's just parenting. And sometimes, you just sway to the music and wait for her to go to sleep, or to turn her blue eyes to you and open her toothless mouth in what is either the world's best smile or merely a cute smile interpreted as something far greater by a first time parent.

Driving Home

After we'd completed our interminable purgatory in the hospital, which included breast feeding classes, (males need not go, though I was there for the blow by blow while Sadie, unlike the well behaved child in the bassinet proceeded to cry until I rocked her to sleep)and nurses us showing how to finger feed our hungry little urchin.

Driving home we noticed that all the trees had lost there leaves. We were greeted by bare, skeletal things where only a scant few days earlier the park had been awash in gold. I discovered houses I had forgotten about, hidden as they were for eight months of the year behind a the veil of now lifted leaves. And as we drove home with our little grumbler sleeping peacefully in the back seat all the familiar streets looked changed because we were seeing them through new eyes. I suppose that is one of the good things about child birth for the adult, it marks the rebirth of that old familiar world yet again. What I mean to say is that everything felt different, and it was good.

Before we left the hospital we took pictures of little Sadie on her last day, trying to catch her between screaming fits. At home, we took pictures of her in the car seat before she started crying. It is strange how we obsessively create with cameras moments that occur so rarely. Most of the most beautiful things she does occur when the video camera is off but how to tell anyone that. To show them the moment when I turned her towards the mirror and our foreheads came together as we stuck out our tongues in unison, united in the smallest of ways. These things will never be recorded and like every memory they will disappear and be reborn as something different down the road.

The point that I'm trying to make is that everyone should get to drive a child home from the hospital. If only to remember that it is possible for the world to change in an instant.

Not about babies or Sadie

The truth of the matter is if I had to do it all over again, the whole mess of emotions and hours, and laughter, and conversation and silence, my god the silences, endless things. And beyond even that, the conversations, the banality of the everyday chit chat with folks that passes for existence, the truth of the matter is that I wouldn't do any of it all over again.

Why if I was the good Lord myself, I guess that I'd have taken one look at the universe and pronounced it good without changing a damn thing. I know. I know. It seems a strange complaint coming from someone on the other side of all the oblivions that we call night and day. I'd take a ship, if I could, like Noah, except instead of filling it with all of the animals, I'd fill it with nothing. I'd scrub the wood down to bare bones. I'd disinfect every last chance of it, to make certain that wherever I was going that I was doing it alone. I'd kill off as many germs in my mouth as I could. I'd take laxatives. Too far, you say. Not far enough, I'd answer. And I'd leave on a quiet morning, the sun putting ribbons of light through the clouds, and I'd head west, because explorers always head west. I wouldn't wave goodbye to anyone on shore for fear they'd hail me, ask me which way I thought the wind might blow or whether I might like some coffee, or maybe offer up a little tip on just how to tack properly. My god how I abhor the company of others!

I'd make way for an uninhabited island if the good Lord was good enough to provide one. I've never quarreled with plants or water, so I would not begrudge the presence of either on that faraway island. One suspects that I am only now enumerating something that the monks and poets have known for ages, that old love song we gathered up from our moderns: "Til human voices wake us and we drown." It is the same thing that drove Thoreau to Walden and likely the same thing that drove the good Lord to allow himself to be sent back to heaven. It is finished indeed.

I hear you now friend, whispering to me through all those thousands of miles of lines that connect us. I'll leave the term alone for the time being. You're reminding me of that night on the coast of Maine when we played cards and talked about all the places we'd like to go. I wish that I was there, I tell you, and you sound so confused. But certainly, dear friend, you were not there either. What is man but matter? And as Thales stated long ago, and I'm sure quite rightly you'd have to give him if you've stood yourself on a lonely cliff and stared out at the sea, all matter is composed of water. And so, dear friend, am I. How could I ever be anything at all?

Certainly the Lord did not kill everyone or else we'd have a race of inbreeds. Maybe they were just briefly swallowed up, the wicked not on the arc, those Egyptians crossing the Red Sea, before being washed clean and spat back out upon the shores of life. Certainly no conclusion is otherwise logical. How else to explain the fact that I nearly dissolved when we first touched. We are merely water, here one moment and gone the next. And I hear you reminding me that I said that no person could ever change. And listen closely, dear friend, for Paremenides was only partially mistaken, it is not the world that is unchanging, it is us, our souls and bodies. Do not the waves ceaselessly beat at the same shores like man upon his habits? Zeno reminds us both that all good philosophy is paradox.

But certainly this has all been said before. And all I really need is a quiet cabin in the woods in which to practice my own version of repentance, and two billion people to leave me alone.

The first few days

I can think of nothing so pleasant as the first few days/hours in a hospital right after a child is born via C-section. Oh wait, I can think of a thousand things.

Walks along old country roads
Amateur bee keeping
Counting fireflies in the backyard
Digging through trash cans for tea pots
Riding a giant sea horse
And so on...

Here's the strange thing about having a baby, they just give them to you. You get your very own baby whether you've read 9,000 books or not. They just leave the little thing in your hospital room (if you want, but you sort of feel guilty if you don't want to)in what they call a bassinet but what is actually a large plastic container.


As you can see that's definitely just a large plastic container that the hospital staff picked up at a local garage sale on the cheap. It's not exactly the perfect home you'd planned for your baby with matching curtains and Amy Coe bed sheets. No, it's a plastic box that daycares use to store old dirty toys/your newborn baby.

I digress. The main point is that you've got this little bundle of joy sleeping/crying/pooping bits of meconium that are less like your garden variety excrement and more like Elmer's glue. Such that, when you're the only person in the room who can stand up, it becomes your duty to change the baby's diaper despite your status as tyro, and all the while you're trying to remove this dark Elmer's glue from her rear end, holding her legs up, she's screaming at you at the top of her little lungs in a way that can only be interpreted roughly as, "What the hell are you doing? And, if you're going to do it, hurry up already?" (This may all have to do with the author's own insecurity about doing things that involve fine motor skills or that are just new and uncomfortable. He's willing to admit that there may be a whole class of parents out there who loved every moment of wiping up excrement while their baby cooed at them).

Rough sketch of a day at the hospital. We spent four days there.

10 P.M. Commence feeding the baby.
11 P.M. Have a "discussion" (may involve tears) about whether the baby is getting enough food/if the feeding and stuff is going right.
11:30 P.M. Change the baby's diaper. (see above)
11:45 Feed the baby again.
12:34 A.M. Finally soothe the baby enough to close your eyes.
12:45-1:30 A.M. Listen to odd grunts that may or may not be your child ceasing to breathe. Stand over the baby and watch their tiny chest move up and down, feel an overwhelming sense of love and touch her cheek.
1:30-2 A.M. Feed the baby and change diaper. Briefly squeal as s begins pooping out so much meconium that you're almost certain some of is fake.
2:30 A.M Finally settle down to sleep.
2:40 A.M. A nurse comes in to check S's blood.
3 A.M. Sleep.
3:30 A.M. The nurses change shifts and a new one comes in to check S's stats/ruin your life. Smile at her.
4-4:30-Feign sleeping while listening to your daughter make strange noises that might be just regular breathing for an infant.
4:30 Feed the baby. Discuss things like her sucking reflex and whether her hair will stay strawberry blond.
5-6 A.M. Soothe the wife and soothe the baby. Remember to smile at your wife but not the baby who misinterprets your smile as a grimace and thus begins crying. Teach your daughter to imitate you by sticking out her tongue. There she is in her little plastic box playing with her dad. She will be a good girl; you can already tell.
7 A.M. A nurse arrives to check on S's pills. They are good at swaddling the baby. You do not know how to swaddle her. This is your time to feel inadequate. You are good at holding the baby close and humming music to her. The room is a sauna. You've been told that babies get cold rather easily.

At some point during the afternoon or early evening you stand at the window with s in your arms swaying to the music playing on the Ipod. In the distance, telephone wires, brick houses, a steady stream of cars pulsing down Nebraska and leaving the city, a parking lot full of parked cars spitting exhaust, the sky, a pale blue, and a few clouds, like slivers of old bones strewn across a sea floor, and in your arms, a little blue eyed girl drifting off to sleep, and all these small pieces of your reality still too far away for her to perceive, too far away for her to even dream.

Some thoughts on nicknames

It is well known amongst those with children and even those folks who have spent time with them, children, that it is important to give a small child, particularly girls, a nickname.

From Wikipedia:

A nickname (also spelled "nick name") is a descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official name of a person, place or thing. It can also be the familiar or truncated form of the proper name,[1] which may sometimes be used simply for convenience (e.g. "Bobby", "Bob", "Rob", or "Bert" for the name Robert). The term hypocoristic is used to refer to a nickname of affection between those in love or with a close emotional bond, compared with a term of endearment. The term diminutive name refers to nicknames that convey smallness, hence something regarded with affection or familiarity (e.g., referring to children,) or contempt.[2] The distinction between the two is often blurred. It is a way to tell someone they are special and that you love them. It is a form of endearment and amusement. As a concept, it is distinct from both pseudonym and stage name, and also from a title (for example, City of Fountains), although there may be overlap in these concepts.
A nickname is sometimes considered desirable, symbolising a form of acceptance, but can often be a form of ridicule.

As such, the new addition to our family is in great need of an appellation that will redefine her existence within our structure. We've been in the process of trying out nicknames since the day she was born. I'm now eager to solicit some help in deciding on the proper name for little Sadie.

Monkey-Sadie derived this nickname by curling her prehensile toes up and clinging to one of the parentals chest in a decidedly primatey kind of way, curling her back and tucking her head down just underneath your chin.

Pro: The derivation story is nice.
Cons: Young ladies aren't particularly fond of being compared to apes.

Monkey Chicken-This name arose from S's freewheeling commitment to not actually making sense when applying a nickname. S doesn't feel constrained by things like applying a nickname to a particular action, rather, it's justifiable to just string together a second animal name after the first.

Pro: Uh.
Con: Everything else.

Little baby poops a lot-This name, earned by almost every child in human history, applies most specifically to s's habit of waiting to do her most outrageous pooping sans diaper.

Pro: It's true.
Con: It's not that creative, and it has the word poop in it, which is offensive.

Little Baby Cries a lot-See above, but go ahead and switch out poops for cries.

Grumbles: s, probably like most babies, I don't spend a lot of time with babies, has a tendency to start grumbling when she is about to wake up or fill her diaper with shi-. These little grumbles are a first warning sign to her parents that they should prepare for fussiness.

Pro: I kind of like grumbles.
Con: I think I might sometimes call her Grumble cakes after a Homestar Runner skit.

Sadie Cakes-This nickname came out of nowhere. Sort of. Her middle name is Kay, and so it seemed kind of natural to come up with something else that was appropriately cute to describe her. Sadie Cakes seemed to fit.

Pro: Lots of family type folk like it.
Con: Sometimes I like to agitate a little.

That's why I'm going to use this blogging space to give Sadie her publicly sanctioned nickname. The sort of nickname that I expect everyone to use if they aren't comfortable with calling her Sadie. If they feel that pull that we all do when we see something small to come up with a different name for it.

Marquis de Sadie-It's just a great nickname. It's strength lies simultaneously in its historical significance, minor obscurity and incongruity. If you want to learn more about the original Marquis de Sade see the Wikipedia entry on the link. The gist of the link is that he was the sort of guy that French prostitutes thought was a little gross. If that doesn't speak highly of a man's character than I don't know what does. Thus, S and I can exchange witticisms about how s is terrorizing us with her screaming like a French Prostitute.
Note: S doesn't have as rich of a sense of humor as I do, so she has yet to engage in any sort of banter that would be deemed inappropriate, funny, or just mildly interesting.

However, I just wanted to get that out there before we started introducing her around to folks. Either Sadie, or the Marquis de Sadie. Thank you.

The Beginning

I'd like to begin now as I've traveled across the River Styxx and into the abyss of child rearing where I can now dispense advice to other expectant parents such as

1) Don't lavish too much love on the first one, or you'll have nothing left for the second.

2) Kids are like goats; you can love them too much. (Insert a heavy dose of laughter on this one).

S: Sometimes I think she wakes herself up when she pees on herself.

You see. The above quote pretty much represents the epitome of my conversations over the last three weeks and S just dropped that gem right in the middle of blogging. I mean, my life is just full of literary gold.

Anyhow, I don't want to spend all of my teaching gems in a single blog. I'm planning on writing a parenting book, and I want to save some of them up for that. Lord knows S would probably buy it, and s wouldn't benefit from that at all.

First, let's talk about labor and delivery. The movies all lie. I didn't drive fast when the doctor told us to get to the hospital; I went and got a sandwich. Why? Because labor is a marathon not a sprint. And yes, the doctor said that, not me, but I'm taking credit for it anyway. The point is, we had the picturesque Hollywood sort of rush to the hospital, splitting a subway sub in the basement of a parking structure. It was crazy.

When we arrived in labor and delivery they put us up in a fancy room with cable television, a nice leather couch, and a private bathroom the size of s's nursery. Let me tell you a secret about labor; the first part isn't that bad. During those early contractions I watched Michigan get absolutely destroyed by Wisconsin while holding on to S's hand and helping her breathe. And, as I'm sitting there pondering the effectiveness of a 3-3-5 against a power running attack, it occurred to me that Hollywood movies lie. S wasn't going nuts and saying, "You did this to me." She was breathing nicely on an exercise ball with the game on. And, honestly, I was pretty excited at how easy things were.

As it turns out Hollywood isn't lying, and the latter stages of labor see your wife's face take on the sort of contortions you've only seen on the faces of horse right before they're to be put down. However, I'm going to choose to forget that part and break down just why a 3-3-5 isn't a sound defense against a two tight end set.

Advice to all expectant fathers

1) Bring extra snacks to the hospital room. Why? Because your wife/girlfriend is going to say things like, "Don't leave, I'm in labor. I need you." The sorts of things that are going to leave you feeling a bit hungry after ten hours or so.

2) It's okay to watch sports during labor. Why? Because labor is kind of boring for the person not in labor. As it turns out, watching someone else breathe heavily for four hours isn't all that compelling. Note: The latter stages of labor it's probably best to just be supportive and stuff. However, labor lasts a long time. If sports don't suit your fancy bring a book or cocaine or whatever.

3) Some of the nurses will act as though you don't know what you're doing. The best way to dissuade this admittedly obnoxious behavior is to ask questions of them, so that they understand you're not some country bumpkin; you're an educated man who wants to help his wife get through labor. If you want to take it to the next level it's best if you then offer to place the epidural and make a mildly unfunny joke about having stayed at a Holiday Inn.

4) Be supportive.

5-10) See 4.

When the Michigan game came to a pathetic close I leaned over to S and said, in all seriousness, "I wish Michigan's defense was as tough as my wife. If they were, we probably could have at least held them under 35." Watching your wife go through the first part of natural labor is a kick ass experience, and it will give you an entirely new appreciation for how tough she is. I recommend it to everyone. I think I would have been asking for drugs at about the ten minute rather than ten hour mark.

Later, we had a baby. She had a squishy little face, and when we heard her first of many wailing cries to come S started crying, and I held back my tears since I figured it would be best if someone in the family held it together in front of all the medical personnel. And in that moment, what I felt, and what I imagine others feel as well, is such an incredibly strong emotion of the kind that you thought you had left behind with childhood or at the very least, young love, a feeling so incredibly intense it nearly bowls you over.

And I've always had this intense fear of holding small babies when they've been offered to me by trusting mothers. But I can tell you that as the nurse crossed the room and held little s out, bundled in a cocoon of blankets, I felt like it was the most natural thing in the world to hold that little girl and to stare into those deep blue eyes.