Parenting Advice
I thought I would occasionally post some of the things I have learned about parenting that might be helpful to other people similarly afflicted with severe parenting ignorance. I really have no excuse for this ignorance since I had two great parents who fed and clothed me almost every day and taught me important lessons like even if you hit a mouse with your father’s giant boot chances are roughly 97% that it will not only be alive when you lift the boot up, but will have been turbo charged by your failed attempt on its life and will zoom across the floor with lightening speed, or at least way faster than an 8 year old with a big boot.
I also have, as I have mentioned many times in this space, a spectacular wife who devotes much of her time to raising our boys (which mostly consists of overcoming their genetic dispositions to argue with everyone about anything and undoing the things they learn from my brothers when they have been left unsupervised with the boys). So, my grounds for ignorance are shaky at best. And, if I do say so, with a lot of effort, I find myself not completely without a clue. So, as a public service, I thought I would share some of what I have learned and will periodically add to this list, assuming I manage to learn something else in the future.
Today, I will focus on new babies and new parents.
1. Babies often come with a reserve tank. No one tells you this, but it is undeniable. When changing Gibson’s diaper in the middle of the night, my routine would go something like this:
Step 1: receive elbow in lower back from wife indicating that our son is crying and needs to be attended to and changed.
Step 2.: promptly fall back into deep sleep.
Step 3: repeat steps one and two several times until my wife’s "gentle nudging" has done permanent damage to my internal organs and she has begun spitting death threats directly into my ear.
Step 4: Groggily fall out of bed, stand up and walk directly into the nearest wall.
Step 5: wander into Gibson’s room making sure to step on at least 3 items that, though hidden in darkness, can only be the spiked ball on the end of a medieval mace.
Step 6: carefully lift Gibson to my chest and shoulder to comfort the crying infant and hold there until the wetness running down my chest reminds me that simple comforting is not the only task at hand.
Step 7: upon discovery of wetness, mumble words that you should not say in front of children and hastily lay the offending child on his changing table.
Step 8: change Gibson’s jammies, clean up the alarming amount of feces, put the new diaper on, take the diaper off and then put it on right this time, find new jammies, preferably one of those baby sacks that just hang down like a long dress (though it is not a dress, do you hear me?), so you don’t have to mess with putting his legs in jammies, provide more soothing comfort and then lay Gibson back in his crib.
Step 9. Head back to bed, reach the doorway to Gibson’s room and hear the kind of rumbling that would make whoopee cushions blush. Turn back bewildered, go back to Gibson who is now screaming again, and got back to step 8.
That is the reserve tank. No matter how much Gibson filled his pants, he held some back to immediately soil a new diaper and jammies as soon as you laid him back down. Beware the reserve tank. You’ve been warned.
2. Speaking of diapers, as a new parent you should know that they are rubbish. The same society that has made space travel routine, that has protected us from dozens of deadly diseases, that has harnessed the sun’s energy and split an atom and created Tivo, can not produce a simple child’s undergarment that actually performs the rather mundane yet critical task of keeping the child’s potty offerings inside the undergarment and away from the actual clothing or more to the point, my actual clothing. All diapers leak and leak on a regular basis. Why? I don’t know. They all claim to leak less than the others and it’s all a vicious pack of lies. It is hard to know who to blame for this bizarre state of affairs, but if you want to blame someone, blame Osama Bin Laden. No one will argue with you. The lesson here is, bring several extra changes of clothes wherever you go.
3. For all children, not just babies, silence is golden only if you are in the same room with your children. If they are in another room and silent, especially if there is more than one of them, you are probably moments away from losing all your worldly possessions in a catastrophic explosion. Or at least, someone is probably drawing on the walls with a sharpie.
4. The expression “sleeping like a baby” to imply good sleep was invented by a disgruntled grandmother who, having blocked out any memory of any negative experience with babies, gets frustrated when her new grandbaby is “just sleeping all the time.” This grandmother is rarely if ever present with the baby at night, when the grown ups want to be sleeping, to see that baby will avoid sleep like his or her little life depended on it. The expression “sleeping like a baby” should be reserved to describe someone who has decided to try to sleep naked on a wasp nest while listening to Rage Against the Machine at ear-splitting decibels. All that to say, whenever your brand new baby sleeps, you should sleep, otherwise, you will never sleep.
5. Young children each come with some sort of magic power that works on their parents and grandparents. They can’t control it and it can’t be stopped. Each of them have the ability to interrupt whatever you are doing or saying simply by smiling or mispronouncing a simple word, or giggling or doing any more of 1000 things and hold your attention like you were hypnotized. Kids are the most amusing things in the world even when they do almost nothing. If you have a new baby, don’t fight the feeling to just stare at your new baby for hours on end, even if he or she is just lying there filling the reserve tank.
You are powerless against it.
I also have, as I have mentioned many times in this space, a spectacular wife who devotes much of her time to raising our boys (which mostly consists of overcoming their genetic dispositions to argue with everyone about anything and undoing the things they learn from my brothers when they have been left unsupervised with the boys). So, my grounds for ignorance are shaky at best. And, if I do say so, with a lot of effort, I find myself not completely without a clue. So, as a public service, I thought I would share some of what I have learned and will periodically add to this list, assuming I manage to learn something else in the future.
Today, I will focus on new babies and new parents.
1. Babies often come with a reserve tank. No one tells you this, but it is undeniable. When changing Gibson’s diaper in the middle of the night, my routine would go something like this:
Step 1: receive elbow in lower back from wife indicating that our son is crying and needs to be attended to and changed.
Step 2.: promptly fall back into deep sleep.
Step 3: repeat steps one and two several times until my wife’s "gentle nudging" has done permanent damage to my internal organs and she has begun spitting death threats directly into my ear.
Step 4: Groggily fall out of bed, stand up and walk directly into the nearest wall.
Step 5: wander into Gibson’s room making sure to step on at least 3 items that, though hidden in darkness, can only be the spiked ball on the end of a medieval mace.
Step 6: carefully lift Gibson to my chest and shoulder to comfort the crying infant and hold there until the wetness running down my chest reminds me that simple comforting is not the only task at hand.
Step 7: upon discovery of wetness, mumble words that you should not say in front of children and hastily lay the offending child on his changing table.
Step 8: change Gibson’s jammies, clean up the alarming amount of feces, put the new diaper on, take the diaper off and then put it on right this time, find new jammies, preferably one of those baby sacks that just hang down like a long dress (though it is not a dress, do you hear me?), so you don’t have to mess with putting his legs in jammies, provide more soothing comfort and then lay Gibson back in his crib.
Step 9. Head back to bed, reach the doorway to Gibson’s room and hear the kind of rumbling that would make whoopee cushions blush. Turn back bewildered, go back to Gibson who is now screaming again, and got back to step 8.
That is the reserve tank. No matter how much Gibson filled his pants, he held some back to immediately soil a new diaper and jammies as soon as you laid him back down. Beware the reserve tank. You’ve been warned.
2. Speaking of diapers, as a new parent you should know that they are rubbish. The same society that has made space travel routine, that has protected us from dozens of deadly diseases, that has harnessed the sun’s energy and split an atom and created Tivo, can not produce a simple child’s undergarment that actually performs the rather mundane yet critical task of keeping the child’s potty offerings inside the undergarment and away from the actual clothing or more to the point, my actual clothing. All diapers leak and leak on a regular basis. Why? I don’t know. They all claim to leak less than the others and it’s all a vicious pack of lies. It is hard to know who to blame for this bizarre state of affairs, but if you want to blame someone, blame Osama Bin Laden. No one will argue with you. The lesson here is, bring several extra changes of clothes wherever you go.
3. For all children, not just babies, silence is golden only if you are in the same room with your children. If they are in another room and silent, especially if there is more than one of them, you are probably moments away from losing all your worldly possessions in a catastrophic explosion. Or at least, someone is probably drawing on the walls with a sharpie.
4. The expression “sleeping like a baby” to imply good sleep was invented by a disgruntled grandmother who, having blocked out any memory of any negative experience with babies, gets frustrated when her new grandbaby is “just sleeping all the time.” This grandmother is rarely if ever present with the baby at night, when the grown ups want to be sleeping, to see that baby will avoid sleep like his or her little life depended on it. The expression “sleeping like a baby” should be reserved to describe someone who has decided to try to sleep naked on a wasp nest while listening to Rage Against the Machine at ear-splitting decibels. All that to say, whenever your brand new baby sleeps, you should sleep, otherwise, you will never sleep.
5. Young children each come with some sort of magic power that works on their parents and grandparents. They can’t control it and it can’t be stopped. Each of them have the ability to interrupt whatever you are doing or saying simply by smiling or mispronouncing a simple word, or giggling or doing any more of 1000 things and hold your attention like you were hypnotized. Kids are the most amusing things in the world even when they do almost nothing. If you have a new baby, don’t fight the feeling to just stare at your new baby for hours on end, even if he or she is just lying there filling the reserve tank.
You are powerless against it.
Comments
David liked to keep illnesses requiring immediate medical intervention under wraps as his own private secret until Saturdays at 3 a.m. We grew to know the great folks at urgent care on a first name basis. Now he is a great guy as well.
I don't know why kids torture their parents, but I AM GETTING EVEN.
Perhaps the diaper problem you mentioned could be solved with Magnets?
You are invited now to write any letters of recommendation Gibson ever needs.