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Schooled

February 26th, 2010

Last week we started looking at preschools for TB. He is one year old. To give you a frame of reference, most preschools don’t take kids until they are almost three. Which I realize makes us crazy people. But when raising a family you are often forced to rise up and meet the level of crazy in your neighborhood. Like an athlete taking his game to a new level for the Olympics. Or like going to prison and smearing feces all over your face and barking like a dog so no one wants to rape you.

In our case, it’s more the latter. Our neighborhood is Los Angeles and it is dragging us into a completely insane game of preschool brinkmanship.

I imagine the whole thing started innocently enough with a few overeager parents wanting to make sure the great preschool around the corner would always have room for their precious babies. So they asked to be put on a waiting list. So the preschool started keeping a waiting list. Then the family casually mentioned to their friends that they were now on a waiting list for preschool. Since parents are the ideal hosts and breeding ground for unreasonable anxiety, it took no time for every preschool in a 20-mile radius to be inundated with waiting list requests. Soon the waiting lists got too long so the schools started charging a fee for a spot on the list; a potential endgame move, but parents didn’t blink. So the schools started offering guaranteed spots to parents who use the school’s pre-preschool classes; these instantly filled up and eventually needed their own waiting lists.

This goes on down the line until you arrive at the current situation where some schools will actually put you on the waiting list when you are pregnant. In a few years those schools will probably sell branded pregnancy tests that, if used to detect the pregnancy, will automatically get your newly conceived baby onto the top of the waiting list; behind the yet-to-be-born children whose fathers have donated sperm to the school to be used, when the time comes, to conceive their children who will, in turn, be guaranteed first dibs on the good tricycle. I wouldn’t be surprised if some fertility clinics have already replaced the porn in their “deposit” rooms with full color brochures for Palisades Day Care. “Yeah, 3-to-1 kid-to-teacher ratio.”


Birthday

February 22nd, 2010

TB turned one this past week. Well, actually a couple weeks ago, but I’m a bit behind here because, well, maybe you’ve heard, I have a one-year-old at home.

Of course one is a big milestone; only seven years to go before we can send him off to sleep-away camp for the summer. I know that’s not the best take-away from my only child’s first birthday. But, to be fair, I’ve been thinking about it since he was three months old. There are summer camps out there claiming to fill all kinds of needs — sports, art, religious indoctrination. But as far as I’m concerned there is only one camp out there, “Mommy-and-Daddy-Are-Going-To-Costa-Rica Camp”. And TB’s bags are packed. I’m already coaching him on how to make a lanyard. So he’ll be fine.

But even if you’re doing more than fantasizing about shipping your child off to summer camp, I think it’s easy to feel inadequate around the big first birthday celebration. The bar is set pretty high, especially in L.A. Out here first birthdays often include caterers, live music, amazing swag; the kind of pulling-out-all-the-stops celebrations you normally associate with weddings or making a poopy in the toilet.

Just finalizing the guest list was challenging. I remember there was a small uproar when the first of my friends to have kids didn’t invite us, his childless buddies, to his son’s first birthday. Now I know he was doing us a favor. But at the time we got all bent out of shape and insulted and hurt. And then spent the next few years going to Chuck E. Cheese; invited out of spite. That is when I learned one of life’s most valuable lessons: never complain about not being invited to a child’s birthday party.

And that is partially why we decided to go with a smaller, family-only affair.

This still involved over 20 people, six kids, a crafts table, personalized M&Ms and way too much corned beef. (Always just double the turkey; I should know that by now.) In lieu of live entertainment, we looped a highlight reel of TB’s first year in Flip videos. That is until my cousins asked if they could turn it off to watch the Lakers game.

I hesitated for a moment before giving in. And that moment’s hesitation is, to-date, the most fatherly thing I have ever done. I already know all the clichés are true; I love TB more than I could ever have imagined and all that. But I actually thought about forcing people to sit through, not just a second hour of home movies, but a second hour of a ten minute home movie on a loop. That’s one step away from making people stick around after “Happy Birthday” to sing “Sunrise, Sunset.” That is being a parent.

I put on the Lakers game. Obviously. But I don’t regret the video at all. It’s going to be great to watch on the plane ride to Costa Rica.


Periodic Tables

February 10th, 2010
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
As anyone who has had the misfortune of talking to me knows, I produce a quarterly storytelling show called WordPlay. Comedy writers come and read their true stories while a DJ (the wonderful Chris Simental) spins a live soundtrack. I put myself in every show. I’m that self-involved. I often read something that started out as a post here. So now you can watch the video andread the post. Did you just wet yourself? I did.

“What the heck?!”

My 4-year-old nephew, Dan, had made his way over from the kids’ table to join the adults for dessert, and this, apparently, was his interpretation of how adults interact. Screaming, “What the heck?!” at random points during conversation. Which is uncannily accurate. If I had just been listening, I might have assumed my mom and cousin were having yet another discussion about caring for a bad back. It’s only a matter of time before he starts yelling, “I’m telling you, you need to try Pilates!”

The rest of the kids’ table had recently adjourned to the Looney Tunes marathon after running out of extra icing to put on their cookies. But for some reason Dan wanted to hang with the big boys, and he seemed to be having a blast playing his version of grown-up.

“Stop laughing. I hate laughing.” And why wouldn’t he be having fun; he was just visiting the adult table. When I was his age I loved visiting the adult table, too. But when you’re a permanent resident it’s much less fun. A lot like Vegas.

I think every family has its own schematic variation on the kids’ table/adult table theme. At my parents’ house we now use the satellite layout; the kids set off to one side in a containable geographic area where they can be seen, heard, and easily ignored. Some families go a step further, setting up the kids in an entirely separate room; a Lord of the Flies approach to the holiday season. If the party ends and no one’s head is on a stick, I guess everyone gets an extra cookie.

When I was growing up our holiday geometry was T-shaped; my grandmother’s heavy oak dining room table serving as the top of the T with a slowly deteriorating array of folding tables and chairs splaying out to form the base. The height differential between the random tables was masked with an equally deteriorating array of tablecloths. By the time you got down to the kids’ table at the base of the T you were pretty much sitting on an egg crate pulled up to an old sewing bench covered in something that could possibly be the Shroud of Turin.

Regardless of the specific geometry, I think there is always a certain pull during the holidays, after dessert has been served and the decaf coffee is flowing like water, for some kids to play adult, to pull up a chair, sip some milk with two hands and learn what it means to be all growned up.

“What the heck?” “Stop laughing.” For Dan, I guess this means being a curmudgeon. We are really letting his generation down. And, if we’re being honest, I blame my parents. They are the grandparents now and they set the tone. They started the conversation about sciatica.

During my kids’ table years things were much different. Sure, my grandmother had bunions the sight of which could make a grown man throw up in his mouth. But I never had to hear about them. Instead, when I took my place at the top of the T, I would always find my grandparents and their brothers and sisters— the historical, emotional, and genetic center of our family — playing poker. Adulthood used to be so much more fun.

Even on Yom Kippur, Judaism’s most sacred and solemn holiday, this crew didn’t think twice about breaking into a good game of seven card stud, low ball. Gambling in the face of God. That’s the kind of flagrant disregard for religious etiquette that can only come from knowing you’ve already paid your penance in life. Which they definitely had, and not because of the bunions. (Though, seriously, those were something). It was because they came from the Old Country.

My grandmother’s family moved to the U.S. from Poland in the early half of the 20th century. Though “moved” is too quaint a word for what they did. It’s not like their friends back in the shtetl helped them load up the U-Haul in exchange for some beer and a couple live chickens. Theirs was an 18-year journey beginning with my great-grandfather and some fuzzy stories about debtor’s prison. He came to — or quite possibly escaped to — the U.S. with his oldest daughter. Then, one steamship ticket by one steamship ticket, he sent for his wife and each of his other four children, oldest to youngest, ending with my grandmother who by the end had been left alone to care for her ailing mother.

When my grandfather was a kid his parents snuck him out of Czarist Russia alone, in a hay wagon.

My parents grew up with snow. Though, the way they go on about it, Dan will probably thinks that’s as bad as the Pogroms.

So I was 14 before I realized not everyone over 60 spoke with a Polish accent. And I still forget that some grandmothers teach their grandkids a good cross stitch instead of how to bluff on a low pair. My sister and I called this generation the Alta Kockers, or “AKs” for short. It’s a Yiddish term that means “old fart.” But in keeping with the beauty of Yiddish, it has simultaneously derisive and endearing overtones; unlike schmuck.

The AKs were all over 70 years old, under five and a half feet tall and in varying degrees of hunched. My grandmother herself couldn’t have been more than four eleven and was like a giant, Polish grandmother stuffed animal you might win at a carnival. “Ooh, ooh, Daddy, pop one more balloon and win me the Bubbe doll! When you squeeze her she giggles and says, ‘Oy, my little shayna punim.’” Granted, this would be a very strange carnival.

The whole lot of them worked in my grandparents’ garage making drapes. I don’t even think there are zoning laws covering the kind of operation they had going on back there; five to 10 retired immigrants working in an unventilated garage on heavy machinery dating back to the Hoover administration. But to me, it was normal. I figured everyone’s grandparents ran a sweatshop in their back yard. My sister and I spent many a Saturday afternoon picking up stray pins and needles for five cents apiece —violating about 37 different OSHA regulations in the process.

Playing poker with the AKs, I’d hear great stories about the Old Country. To hear them tell it, it was a magical, prewar land where Jews lived separately but in peace with their oppressive yet lovable gentile neighbors. Graphic stories of oppression involving angry, rock-throwing mobs somehow took on a detached, Old World charm when told between spells of bickering over who shorted on the ante. I pictured my great aunts and uncles as kids (their 70-year-old heads on 12-year-old bodies) being chased around by an old bald guy shaking a stick; everyone running around like a Benny Hill episode. “You crazy Jews…”

Sadly but inevitably, over the years our family and our holidays have grown smaller and smaller. I have two aunts and until after college had no uncles or first cousins. My family was very top-heavy. And throughout the ’80s the top started to give way. To make matters worse, I only had one set of grandparents because my parents are also step brother and sister.

Let’s just digest that for a minute and then I can explain. But I’ll warn you up front, the explanation doesn’t end with, “…and so they aren’t really step brother and sister.” Because they are.

Here’s the deal. My mom’s dad passed away before I was born; my dad’s mom, when I was around one year old. Then after my parents got married (and I cannot emphasize that word enough) one thing that I will never allow myself to picture led to another thing we will never speak of again, and my mom’s mom and dad’s dad married each other. So while, sadly, neither of my grandparents lived long enough to dance at my wedding, at least I danced at theirs.

For obvious reasons I’ve never asked my parents exactly how they celebrated the night they became siblings. But once you get past all the Appalachian undertones you’ll see the benefits of growing up with this situation True, I missed out on knowing two grandparents, missed connecting with a huge part of my history, of who I am. But I also never had to call anyone “Meemaw.” And for the holidays there were no negotiations or alternating years or running from one awkward, hostile dinner to the next. We just went to Grandma and Grandpa’s house and ate at the giant T.

My grandmother was the last of the Alta Kockers, outliving her second husband, siblings, sweatshop co-workers, and poker buddies by more than a decade. And with her passing, along with grief, came the stark realization that we’re now all one seat closer to the top of the T. Which is probably why we don’t use the T formation anymore. But you can arrange the tables any way you want, there’s no getting around it; everyone has moved up a generational notch. My parents are the Alta Kockers now. And if Dan’s perspective is any indication, the same kind of fondness I have for poker, my kids will have for sore necks, perhaps getting a little teary-eyed whenever they pass a Relax the Back Store.

I can’t even imagine what we’ll be talking about when my grandchildren come to visit the adult table. There will be no exotic Old Country. I didn’t even grow up with snow. Perhaps our disembodied heads kept alive in jars will regale the children with stories of the time when people lived above ground and robots weren’t evil. Who knows. But while living at the adult table may suck, it’s made much more bearable knowing that at least the kids still like to come and visit once in a while.


An Interview

February 5th, 2010

I’ve been interviewed. I can’t remember if that is the 5th or 6th sign of the apocalypse. It’s about my show, WordPlay, not about my failure as a man. So, technically, it doesn’t belong here. But I won’t tell if you don’t. Read it all in LAist.


Wake Up Call

January 30th, 2010

So things have gotten pretty exciting in our bedroom these past few weeks. I don’t mean to brag, but we have gone back to doing something I thought we might never do again after “the birth;” setting the alarm. It is – and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here – the single most amazing feeling in the world.

Before becoming parents we were big time snoozers. The last thing we did before going to bed every night was math. “I need to be out the door by 8 so… showering by 7:15; out of bed by 7; we’ll snooze three times…set it for 6:21.” The answer was always 6:21 but we did the calculations every night nonetheless. It was our Goodnight Moon.

Then TB came along and for almost a year now (has it really been that long? Cue music) we have been going to bed confident that the incessant screaming of our hungry and scared child will wake us up in plenty of time for work. Surprisingly, it isn’t significantly more grating than morning radio. But there is no snooze button. Initially I thought pressing down on his fontenelle might work, but TW talked me out of trying.

And so it turns out one of the unintended benefits of having a baby is that we were broken of our snooze habit. Who knew we could actually get out of bed right after waking up? Our baby sleep trained us way before we sleep trained him. And he didn’t have to slog through the forced cockney cuteness of The Baby Whisperer.

Once again, he wins.


The Elements of Style

January 22nd, 2010

I used to own this vest with peace symbols spray painted all over it. It was a pinstriped, six button affair – the kind of vest that used to come with sensible three piece suits – senselessly splattered with colored paint. I bought it on Telegraph Avenue in 1988 while visiting my older sister in Berkeley. It became my prized fashion accessory for years. When I was wearing ripped jeans, a t-shirt and the peace vest, I didn’t even need to check the mirror. How could I not look good? I had wavy, shoulder length brown hair and a penchant for wearing mismatched Converse Hi-Tops. In short, I had style.

In hindsight, it is possible that some people meant “style” as a polite euphemism. But still, I knew exactly what I liked and how I wanted to look. I could walk into a thrift store and spot my shirt on a rack in 5 minutes. My fashion inspiration came from rock stars, movie stars and my own imagination.

Now it comes from a mannequin at Banana Republic. I have been beaten down.

The fall from thrift store chic to showing up at a dinner party in the same striped shirt as four guys and one toddler is, as you’d imagine, a gradual process. more »


Finally, A Good Bedtime Story

January 14th, 2010

Now this will make bedtime more interesting.

Goodnight, Keith Moon

You know, I used to play the drums myself. Which isn’t really germane to this blog, but it still makes for a good story.


Not Just A River In Egypt

January 8th, 2010

Now that the holiday season is over and TW’s vomiting has subsided, we are running out of reasons to postpone planning for the arrival of baby #2. It is coming in early May and, contrary to earlier reports, will not be coming with a penis. Baby #2, as most readers (i.e. my family and friends) know, is a girl. The Girl, to you.

We’ve been in a bit of denial about what the arrival of this kid is going to mean for our lives. Not that we’re not excited. After all, this is exactly what we wanted. And we do truly appreciate how lucky we are. But if you want to read inspirational stories about people thankful for how blessed they are, get a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Or maybe read some more enlightened blogs. This is my blog. And I am easily rattled.

Ideally, we would have put off TG until TB was old enough to fend for himself for a bit longer, like a few weeks or months. (When is that? Around 2?) But it’s not like we don’t know how these things happen. We knew exactly what we were doing when TW got into that public Jacuzzi at the Ukrainian bath house.
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My Decade That Was

January 1st, 2010

I began this decade pretty close to rock bottom. Not in an Intervention, selling my semen for grain alcohol and two half-smoked Kool Menthols kind of way. But rock bottom for a nice, upper-middle class Jewish kid from the San Fernando Valley.

I was at a New Year’s Eve party with all my closest friends from high school, sporadically employed and the only single person in the room. Starting the new millennium with a pity kiss on the cheek from my best friend’s wife was not what I had been led to believe partying like it was 1999 was all about.

As some of the wives tried to rally everyone for a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit, I nursed my 13th martini and was bitterly reminded of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

In high school they taught us about relativity through the example of a hypothetical man traveling at the speed of light for 10 years. When he stopped, he hadn’t aged a bit. His friends, on the other hand, were 10 years older.

It turns out this also happens if you move to Chicago.
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Dress Up

December 26th, 2009

When TB was born we got a lot of hand-me-down clothes, one of the many benefits of showing up late to the adulthood party. (Which, by the way, kind of lame party. I thought there’d be more cocktail weenies.) Besides being a great money saver, hand-me-down baby clothes give you interesting insight into your friends and family. Like, for example, I found out my sister finds baby boy tank tops much less skeevy than I do. I can’t put my finger on why; they just give me the willies. I feel they’re a slippery slope to baby mesh crop tops, which pave the road for this. But that is just me.

Infant fashion preferences aside, it’s amazing to have all these free clothes. We have bins of them, sorted by size, scattered throughout our house. TW is constantly shifting clothes from bins to TB’s drawers and back out to bins to be used for the next round of babies in our family. It’s exhausting to watch. I don’t know how she does it. And yet she still finds the time to remind me I should be helping. What a woman.

So we haven’t consciously picked out too many of the boy’s clothes. Which may be why, when we do buy him an outfit for a special occasion, we get a little too excited.

What with all the screaming and feces involved in a normal dressing session, “outfit” is way too strong a word for what I normally put TB in. I just grab two things in the same general color palette. On a good day one thing will be a shirt and the other, pants. But that doesn’t mean, given the time, I don’t enjoy dressing the kid up for my own amusement.

This weekend we’re flying back East for some general family visiting and a bar mitzvah. And if you don’t think we’ve had TB’s bar mitzvah outfit picked out for weeks, well, you haven’t been reading this post. Which would be odd. Why are you starting in the middle? What’s wrong with you? Commitment problems?

Not only did we buy TB a special outfit weeks ahead of time; we made him model it one afternoon. And as I dressed my 10-month-old son up like Little Lord Fauntleroy, I realized I’m now one step away from being a person who puts a sweater on a dog. And only a half step from that lady who puts a Santa hat on her cat.

The whole baby fashion industry relies on the fact that parents use their kids to amuse themselves. And especially in those first few months when your kid gives you nothing back but blank stares and bodily fluid, maybe that is a great service. Who knows how many baby shakings a well-placed argyle sweater vest has prevented?


To Give Or Not To Give

December 15th, 2009

So Chanukah is here. Or Hanukkah. Or maybe even Hanukah. Who knows? Maybe there will finally be peace in the Middle East once we Jews agree among ourselves how to spell things. But my more immediate concern this holiday is what to get The Boy.

His doting grandparents, aunts and uncles have all been asking what he wants. He is 10 months old. So obviously I think he wants better waterproof headphones and an electronic drum set. The new kind with mesh pads. Really, he’d be happy with a gift certificate to Amazon.com.

But predictably, TW would not let me use our son as a conduit for my greed. She’s become rather adept at not letting me do things for myself while claiming they’re best for the boy. Like when I try to put him to bed at 4 in the afternoon on Sunday. “Look at that yawn, poor guy’s exhausted.” Maybe I’m not as subtle as I think.

Anyway, what did surprise me was that TW actually had non-joke answers. In an organized Google document. This is not because she is a presumptuous, greedy bitch but because she is a natural at this parenthood stuff. And she knew some people would want to get TB presents and that they’d be asking what he wanted and if we didn’t have answers they would begrudgingly sulk off to Target, aimlessly wander around for twenty minutes looking for something clever, give up and give us something that involved a loud, dancing monkey. As the aunt to 8 kids under 8 she is well aware how much better it is to be told what a kid wants.

Especially boys. TW is not a girly girl by any stretch. I think she’s been working on the same container of eye shadow since our wedding three years ago. And I mean that in a good way. But she is still a girl and understands little girl tastes. A doll, a set of beads, something you can take care of or control. Girl stuff. But nothing puts her in a bad mood quicker than the boy toy aisle. To her it is just a sea of pointless plastic crap that will probably just take someone’s eye out. Boy stuff.

I thought she was being dramatic until I volunteered to get the presents for my nephews on our last Target run. As a former boy myself, I thought I would “get” the boy toy aisle. I love all that crap: Star Wars figures, Nerf balls, B.B. guns. But, seriously, I think to handle the boy toy aisle these days you have to have spent a year in Japan and not be prone to seizures. My nephews wanted Bakugan which, from what I can gather, are action-figure warriors that tuck into spheres which then pop open and give the owner ADHD.

So TW was just trying to save people from what she knows can be a painful task by compiling a list of what we think our 10-month-old might want. A list intended solely for those who actually want to get something for a 10-month-old. Which I’m not 100% sure is me. I obviously will not deprive his grandparents of getting him presents on his first Hahnooka. I am not a monster. But do we really need to go through the motions of buying and wrapping gifts for a 10-month-old? And if so, are we sure he doesn’t really want those BOSE waterproof headphones?


Trash Day

December 10th, 2009

We’ve been in our house 2½ years now. Which I admit is a long to time to actively not throw something away. One of the first things I did when we moved in was remove a valance hanging over the large window in our living room.

My grandmother ran a drapery business with her siblings when I was a kid. Well, business is a strong word. What do you call ten retired immigrants working on heavy, lead machinery in an unventilated garage? Let me rephrase: my grandmother ran a Polish shtetl sweatshop in her backyard when I was a kid. They would let me and my sister run around with magnets tied to sticks, picking up stray pins and needles for five cents apiece — because OSHA and the Department of Child Services have no jurisdiction over the shtetl.

My point is, I know what a valance is. And I know a horrendously ugly one when I see it because my grandmother made them. (And made me clothes out of the spare material, but that is a story for another time.) The thing had to go, is the point. And I was fairly impressed with myself for removing the 7-foot-long monstrosity with minimal structural damage to the wall.

Now what to do with it? In our apartment we could pretty much set anything out on the curb and it would disappear within 2 hours. Old chair? Broken TV? Half of a bookshelf? No problem. Slap a handwritten “FREE” sign on something and it would be gone. We called it the “magic curb.” I liked to imagine the neighborhood squirrels were decorating a clubhouse.

So I was surprised to learn L.A. County’s official trash policy: all trash must actually fit inside the trash bin. No matter, I put the valance out with the trash anyway. I figured, really, what are they going to do? Just leave it on the side of the street?
Yes. That is exactly what they will do. Motherfuckers. The squirrels would have killed for that valance. Probably would have used it to make a beanbag. Those crazy squirrels.

So I get back from work on trash day and see the valance lying on the street. And here is what I hate most about homeownership: this is now my fucking problem. No landlord to complain to, no magic curb, no anthropomorphic squirrels. Just me and TW and anyone we want to hire. So I dragged the valance into the garage and propped it up in the corner, its flowery pink material mocking me. And I figured I’d deal with it the following week. That was 2½ years ago. The valance has not moved. Every time I pull into the garage I briefly think someone’s grandmother is trying to build a fort in there. What I don’t think is, “Wow, I should deal with that.”

I am a very adaptable person that way. To a fault. My cubicle at work is decorated not with keepsakes I consciously set about, but things that have been set down and forgotten — by me or random passersby (or “co-workers,” as some people call them). Right now there is a 2008 cat calendar leaning against my monitor facing out to the aisle; a discarded Secret Santa gift…from last year. I believe it’s open to March (cat in a basket). I don’t so much create my environment as work around it. Then every once in a while I’m motivated enough to rip something down.

And so instead of dealing with the valance I took down a pair of accordion closet doors that somehow pissed me off. They didn’t even make it to the garage. I optimistically left them out by the trash cans thinking that if I passed by them every day I’d be more motivated to deal with them. Here’s how that plan went:

Day 1: Oh, man, I really need to deal with getting rid of those doors.
Day 2: Oh yeah, those doors.
Day 3: Hey, there are those doors that we keep by our trash cans.

As any rational adult might guess, this is an annoying quality in someone you are trying to build a home and family with. Especially since TW’s default response to most situations is worry. So her experience with the doors was probably more along these lines:

Day 1: Those doors look like they’re going to fall.
Day 2: Are those a fire hazard?
Day 3: I bet there are black widows living in there. If we don’t get rid of those today, we’re probably going to be arrested for child endangerment.

So with another kid on the way and our lives about to spiral even more out of control, I’m trying to be a bit more proactive. In fact, I just Googled “oversized trash pickup los angeles,” and guess what? There’s a simple online form. Who knew? I’m going to go fill that out right now. Look at me, shaping my world. And, here, as a public service, I’ll even save you the Google search. The Bureau of Sanitation Service Request Form. Happy trash day, everybody.


Changing

December 3rd, 2009

I love our son. Very much. But seriously, what the fuck? I get that since he can now crawl, sit up and pull himself up, lying on his back for a diaper change is not a top priority. And it’s not like he ever loved getting his diaper changed in the first place. But sometime in the last couple months the dude has become a friggen Weeble Wobble. A screaming, clawing Weeble Wobble. Lay him down anywhere and he instantly flips over, sits up, then grabs the closest thing – usually my lip or eye socket – and tries to pull himself up.

This can be cute when you are just sitting him down on the floor to play. You try to put him down, he pops back up, you both have a good laugh. But things are always less cute when human feces is involved. So on the changing table I find it necessary to impose my will. I try distracting him with toys and songs. If I’m lucky, TW is around and not vomiting, so we can double team him. If I’m really lucky, I’m at work. But inevitably, one of us just has to hold him down and go for it. Which is when the screaming begins. It is exhausting. I get that he’s discovered some new skills, but can’t he give it a rest for 5 minutes? I shudder to think what’s going to happen when he discovers his penis.
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Here We Go Again

November 24th, 2009

I’ve gotten surprisingly used to making oatmeal in the morning while my wife dry heaves and weeps in the bathroom.

Yes, she is pregnant…again. And in a bad way. Here is our new morning routine. The Boy wakes up between 6:30 and 7. (Or rather, starts crying between 6:30 and 7; when he actually wakes up is unknown and, if I may be frank, inconsequential.) I get up to fix his bottle and feed him. TW gets up, tries to put down some food and makes a sudden dash for the guest bathroom off of the kitchen. This has become our designated vomitorium. I feed TB while playing music and talking; trying to drown out the soul-shaking heaves of his mother.
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Bad Call

November 16th, 2009
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As anyone who has had the misfortune of talking to me knows, I produce a quarterly storytelling show called WordPlay. Comedy writers come and read their true stories while a DJ (the wonderful Chris Simental) spins a live soundtrack. I put myself in every show. I’m that self-involved. I often read something that started out as a post here. So now you can watch the video andread the post. Did you just wet yourself? I did.
Obviously, I should not have called the meter maid a “mean person.” That was a bad idea. For many reasons. Not the least of which– we were parked in a red bus zone. It’s pretty hard to take the “pro” position on that one. I didn’t see her until it was too late. She had already started punching up the ticket. But I jumped out anyway for a last ditch desperation play: “I’m sorry, I can move. I just had to feed my baby.” I did not think for one second about using my infant son as a prop for sympathy, making this possibly the first real parenting reflex I’ve ever had. I’m afraid this doesn’t bode well for TB if someone starts shooting at me while I’m holding him.

My wife parked in the red bus zone so she could quickly hop out and buy an Ergo – the latest in baby carrying technology. I know that doesn’t sound like an emergency purchase, but you haven’t seen our son. At 7 months, TB is pushing the weight limit on the more popular Baby Bjorn and has already exceeded the weight limit on the other baby carrier we own – TW. The boy is in the 90th percentile for weight and height. His mom is in the 30th percentile and has chronic back problems. Good one, universe.
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A Fine Line

October 31st, 2009

“I love you.” The words echo through our house. “I love you.” “Hug me.” “Red nose.” I live in a fucking minefield of talking baby toys. All on hairpin triggers – god forbid the kid breathes and his toy doesn’t shriek some platitude at him. I’m not sure how this benefits a child; the expectation that everything talks to him or giggles or sings when he touches it. Personally I think it’s setting him up for some big disappointments. And possibly prison time. “I wanted to see what sound she’d make” is not the best legal defense.

When my sister had her first baby 7 years ago, I thought it was pretty funny to buy really loud gifts. A monkey that played the bongos; Chicken Dance Elmo. (I was also partial to animals dressed as other animals, but that’s an obsession I’m not ready to explore.) I’m still not sure what was more priceless, the look from my niece or the look from my brother-in-law.

Being one of the last of my friends and family to have kids, I’m just now realizing that I was kind of an asshole.
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Milestones

October 15th, 2009

The Boy is about to crawl. It’s imminent. There is a buzz in our house. The biggest milestone a baby can reach short of talking. Sure he’s figured out how to roll over and he puts his foot in his mouth, but those are milestones the same way the “Best OP’er” award I won at camp for always wearing OP shorts was an actual award. I feel like they pad the developmental milestones a bit to give new parents something to compete over during playdates. “Does your baby notice his hands? Congratulations! You’re winning!” I mean, if your kid happens to follow the list, great. But checking off “stares at faces” is about as fulfilling as checking off “put on pants” from your to-do list. (Though, I did never get to that one today.)
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The Parent Trap

October 7th, 2009

Mommy and Me groups: productive outlet for parental support or fear-mongering brainwash

OK, it’s unfair to single out Mommy and Me groups. Really it’s the whole parenting “industry” to blame. Or thank. I can’t quite figure it out. Because I do appreciate some information. What the hell do I know about being a parent? After diving into a few chapters of Taking Charge of Your Fertility back when we were trying to get pregnant, I realized I barely understood where babies come from, let alone how to raise them.
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Sing, Sing a Song

October 1st, 2009

“Looks like Mommy forgot to turn the TV off again.”

One of the most underrated things about having kids: it opens up a whole new channel through which you can be passive aggressive.
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Ready or Not

February 6th, 2009

The Wife was still in her hospital bed as I wheeled her to the post-partum room. It was the first private, quiet moment we’d had since the birth of our son an hour before. And the last we would share for quite some time. There was so much I could have said. So much I wanted to say. So it’s unclear why I went with, “That was the grossest thing I’ve ever seen.”
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Man of the House

January 1st, 2009

It was my first real project as a homeowner: replacing an existing motion detector light. And I was excited to reinvent myself as a man who fixes things around the house. It would be a welcome change from being the manchild who sticks inappropriate things down the garbage disposal.
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