Probably one of the most challenging parts of raising your baby is the unsolicited opinion. Now to be fair (and clear), not all "UFO's" (unsolicited f#$king opinions) are without merit. There are often times when they come in extremely handy and helpful.
*These are also not to be confused with solicited opinions - thanks to all our family and friends who have helped up along the way. Brooklyn also says thanks!!*
Where was I... right, UFO's... Okay, so your little boy or girl has come into the world by now and maybe, just maybe, you've figured out a few things in the first couple of days/weeks. Everyone is (hopefully) excited and happy for the new parents and really want to do what ever they can to help.. Here's the tricky part... Often, and I do mean often, that "help" comes in the form of a "UFO" and it starts off small. Something as simple as how to dress them, bathe them, change them, which is great but this can and undoubtedly will evolve to something much more, how shall I put this..... irritating!! The part that is most often funny (see: irritating) for me is that a lot of the time these "UFO's" are offered up by either a) someone who hasn't had kids at all b) someone who doesn't even know you or most commonly c) someone who hasn't had kids in the last 3 to 5 decades!!! Not to sound ungrateful or cynical but doesn't anyone realize that modern medicine and general child rearing has come a long way in 50 friggin' years. I know YOU think our daughter is hungry but WE know HER feeding habits! I know YOU gave your baby a bumper pad in their crib and made them sleep face down but WE DON'T! I know YOU are totally against giving babies pacifiers but WE AREN'T (and neither were the dental professionals we asked, so MEH)... If you are so against them then how's about I give you a call at 3 in the m-f-ing morning when we she's inconsolable for god knows why???
Yeah, that's what I thought...
And to those people, god love ya, that don't have children for a variety of reasons but still feel inclined to share their 2 cents from their fountain of baby knowledge and experience... Just keep it to yourself for the time being, hmm. We'll ask you if we need help, thanks.. Same goes to those people who have either just met you, have only known you for a bit or have known you for a while but haven't spoken to one another in years.. You folks can put a sock in it too... Love ya, but zip it.
I hope this little bit of insight will save you some frustration, perhaps and argument or two and maybe get you to put the safety back on before you go "postal". Good luck.
Cheers.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
To my wife and baby girl
Sometimes you stuggle in life. Sometimes you need a helping hand. Sometimes you forget to tell the ones you love how much they mean to you. Sometimes you take that for granted and don't realize that one day they may not be there to catch you when you fall...
Sometimes what you need to say has already been said by someone else...
Ooo I need your love, babe
Guess you know it's true
Hope you need my love babe
Just like I need you
Hold me, love me, hold me, love me
I ain't got nothing but love, babe
Eight days a week
Love you every day, girl
Always on my mind
One thing I can say, girl
Love you all the time
Hold me, love me, hold me, love me
I ain't got nothing but love, babe
Eight days a week
Eight days a week
I love you
Eight days a week
Is not enough to show I care
Thanks to Mr. Lennon and Mr. McCartney for their words. More often then not, they've already said exactly what you might be thinking or feeling. So take note
I love you "K" and Brooklyn, with all my heart. You make life worth living. Thanks for catching me when I fall.
Sometimes what you need to say has already been said by someone else...
Ooo I need your love, babe
Guess you know it's true
Hope you need my love babe
Just like I need you
Hold me, love me, hold me, love me
I ain't got nothing but love, babe
Eight days a week
Love you every day, girl
Always on my mind
One thing I can say, girl
Love you all the time
Hold me, love me, hold me, love me
I ain't got nothing but love, babe
Eight days a week
Eight days a week
I love you
Eight days a week
Is not enough to show I care
Thanks to Mr. Lennon and Mr. McCartney for their words. More often then not, they've already said exactly what you might be thinking or feeling. So take note
I love you "K" and Brooklyn, with all my heart. You make life worth living. Thanks for catching me when I fall.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Baby Brain - it's real and it's spectacular
Baby Brain - perhaps you've heard this term if you are already a dad or going to be one in the near future. If not, then this should be your forewarning, so pay attention.
I don't remember exactly when it started but I would say it happened around the 4 to 5 month period and continues on through until the baby is born and in fact, several months after that. Baby Brain is the process by which the wee one eats away at any and all brain functions. General movement is not seemingly affected but you can wave bye bye to all cognitive thinking, normal intelligent conversation and sentences that don't involve "goo-goo" or "gaa-gaa". Your baby is officially an "intellectual parasite" that is being harboured in your wife/girlfriend uterus and is living on her brains.... MMMMMM, bwains....
It starts off slowly.. Staring aimlessly into space, pregnant (no pun intended) pauses between a question asked to answer given and the classic muddling of words. Nothing too significant by any means. Ah, but wait, there's more. Pretty soon all memory is shot to hell and the formulation of sentences are virtually non-existent. Imagine having your tongue 10 sizes too big for a mouth 10 sizes too small... That kind of stumbling over your words - it is just brutal... The birth of your child actually does nothing to help and in fact hinders the recapturing of ones linguistic abilities. How much can one develop (or redevelop) when your partner in conversation can't even lift their own head yet let alone speak?? Talk about reverting back to ones "caveman/woman" self, you end up sounding like Tarzan mixed with The Incredible Hulk.
"Baby no like sleep", "Mom need baby too sleep", "Baby go sleep now"
FYI, this process isn't unique to women either. I told you, they are "intellectual parasites" ... As soon as you hold your baby, an cerebral osmosis occurs fast and without warning... That little smile on their face when you pick them up and make funny faces at them or make strange noises, they aren't laughing at you. They are laughing because they are sapping you of all your brain power. They've got you right where they want you...
At some point this may go away and both "Ky" and I will resume normal brain functioning, I hope.. But until then I will bask in the glory that is our new dim witted, unfocused, brainless selves... Thanks a lot Brooklyn, thanks a lot...
"Daddy no like having no brain, me miss smart talk"....
I don't remember exactly when it started but I would say it happened around the 4 to 5 month period and continues on through until the baby is born and in fact, several months after that. Baby Brain is the process by which the wee one eats away at any and all brain functions. General movement is not seemingly affected but you can wave bye bye to all cognitive thinking, normal intelligent conversation and sentences that don't involve "goo-goo" or "gaa-gaa". Your baby is officially an "intellectual parasite" that is being harboured in your wife/girlfriend uterus and is living on her brains.... MMMMMM, bwains....
It starts off slowly.. Staring aimlessly into space, pregnant (no pun intended) pauses between a question asked to answer given and the classic muddling of words. Nothing too significant by any means. Ah, but wait, there's more. Pretty soon all memory is shot to hell and the formulation of sentences are virtually non-existent. Imagine having your tongue 10 sizes too big for a mouth 10 sizes too small... That kind of stumbling over your words - it is just brutal... The birth of your child actually does nothing to help and in fact hinders the recapturing of ones linguistic abilities. How much can one develop (or redevelop) when your partner in conversation can't even lift their own head yet let alone speak?? Talk about reverting back to ones "caveman/woman" self, you end up sounding like Tarzan mixed with The Incredible Hulk.
"Baby no like sleep", "Mom need baby too sleep", "Baby go sleep now"
FYI, this process isn't unique to women either. I told you, they are "intellectual parasites" ... As soon as you hold your baby, an cerebral osmosis occurs fast and without warning... That little smile on their face when you pick them up and make funny faces at them or make strange noises, they aren't laughing at you. They are laughing because they are sapping you of all your brain power. They've got you right where they want you...
At some point this may go away and both "Ky" and I will resume normal brain functioning, I hope.. But until then I will bask in the glory that is our new dim witted, unfocused, brainless selves... Thanks a lot Brooklyn, thanks a lot...
"Daddy no like having no brain, me miss smart talk"....
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Pregnancy - the female version of a pissing contest
Okay so weird title to a blog I suppose but let me elaborate on that thought and it will become clear what it is I mean. As a guy, watching your wife/girlfriend go to countless showers is an interesting process. The concept still boggles my mind but I understand that much like a wedding shower they are meant to give the couple/baby a little jump start in their new life.
Great!
However, here is where it gets funny from the husbands perspective - or at least my perspective. Pregnancy is the female version of a pissing contest - no two ways about it. They can deny it until the day they die but it is 100% true... Allow me to explain. As guys, we do this in a variety of ways... Do these sound familiar??
"Got here in 4 hrs 5 minutes and didn't stop at all, shaved 20 minutes off the trip from last year!! Made great time!!!"
or
"Yeah, I musta drank like 40 beers that night. Took home this model and her girlfriend and we yadda yadda yadda..."
or
"Ya shoulda seen it, me against like 10 guys in a fight and I pounded them all... then partied the rest of the night"
You know, the usual "d!ck swinging" that occurs when a group of us guys are together and our friends Jack Daniel's, Jose Cuervo or Anheuser-Busch are being passed around. Generally harmless, always funny and always to be taken with a grain of salt (and lemon and tequila as the case may be..).
Women - forever more cerebral then men - use the "shower" format for their own version of this contest. Showers, or as I later learned any opportunity at all, are when the ladies get to bludgeon the mom-to-be with their tales of the tape, so to speak. To the untrained eye and ear of a guy it could sound like the normal, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, "hen house cluck fest" talk that occurs when women get together in large groups. But, to the trained ear, the normal random chatter is filtered into an onslaught of "anything you can do I can do better".
"48 hours of labour and he came out sideways with shoulder pads on"
"Well, my little one took 4 days to be delivered and was breach, back labour and had a barb wire umbilical cord - 30 lbs 14 oz 32 inches long"
***Thought size didn't matter ladies***
"Please, mine was a week long delivery and then after he was born, in the middle of the night, jumped out of his bassinet and climbed back in!!"
The list gets longer each time. The baby gets heavier & longer and labour time goes from hours to months, and so on. Sounds a lot like when we go fishing ladies, scary to think you're not that different from us eh?? Now having said all of that, some women deserve the opportunity to flex their "uterine muscles". "Ky", as my only example, has every right to brag, in my opinion. A few days prior to giving birth to Brooklyn we went to the hospital thinking it was go time. Turns out - Kidney stones. Nice... Few days later she gave birth and unfortunately had to have some minor surgery to allow Brooklyn to enter this world.
**Sidebar: this is where the whole "extra stitch" joke comes into play - slip the doc a 50, it'll work.... Joking, don't do that...**
Several days after Brooklyn was born, "Ky", while still healing, was back in the hospital with more Kidney stones. Did I mention her labour was 12 hours and most of that was pushing... These are non-embellished stats so I give my wife full props for being tough as friggin' nails. I'd have passed out on push number one I think... So to recap - kidney stones, labour, kidney stones. I believe the term "bring it" comes to mind..
So all I can say is, listen in once in a while fellas, you may hear some interesting and funny "stories" that resemble our version of "the one that got away"....
Cheers.
Great!
However, here is where it gets funny from the husbands perspective - or at least my perspective. Pregnancy is the female version of a pissing contest - no two ways about it. They can deny it until the day they die but it is 100% true... Allow me to explain. As guys, we do this in a variety of ways... Do these sound familiar??
"Got here in 4 hrs 5 minutes and didn't stop at all, shaved 20 minutes off the trip from last year!! Made great time!!!"
or
"Yeah, I musta drank like 40 beers that night. Took home this model and her girlfriend and we yadda yadda yadda..."
or
"Ya shoulda seen it, me against like 10 guys in a fight and I pounded them all... then partied the rest of the night"
You know, the usual "d!ck swinging" that occurs when a group of us guys are together and our friends Jack Daniel's, Jose Cuervo or Anheuser-Busch are being passed around. Generally harmless, always funny and always to be taken with a grain of salt (and lemon and tequila as the case may be..).
Women - forever more cerebral then men - use the "shower" format for their own version of this contest. Showers, or as I later learned any opportunity at all, are when the ladies get to bludgeon the mom-to-be with their tales of the tape, so to speak. To the untrained eye and ear of a guy it could sound like the normal, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, "hen house cluck fest" talk that occurs when women get together in large groups. But, to the trained ear, the normal random chatter is filtered into an onslaught of "anything you can do I can do better".
"48 hours of labour and he came out sideways with shoulder pads on"
"Well, my little one took 4 days to be delivered and was breach, back labour and had a barb wire umbilical cord - 30 lbs 14 oz 32 inches long"
***Thought size didn't matter ladies***
"Please, mine was a week long delivery and then after he was born, in the middle of the night, jumped out of his bassinet and climbed back in!!"
The list gets longer each time. The baby gets heavier & longer and labour time goes from hours to months, and so on. Sounds a lot like when we go fishing ladies, scary to think you're not that different from us eh?? Now having said all of that, some women deserve the opportunity to flex their "uterine muscles". "Ky", as my only example, has every right to brag, in my opinion. A few days prior to giving birth to Brooklyn we went to the hospital thinking it was go time. Turns out - Kidney stones. Nice... Few days later she gave birth and unfortunately had to have some minor surgery to allow Brooklyn to enter this world.
**Sidebar: this is where the whole "extra stitch" joke comes into play - slip the doc a 50, it'll work.... Joking, don't do that...**
Several days after Brooklyn was born, "Ky", while still healing, was back in the hospital with more Kidney stones. Did I mention her labour was 12 hours and most of that was pushing... These are non-embellished stats so I give my wife full props for being tough as friggin' nails. I'd have passed out on push number one I think... So to recap - kidney stones, labour, kidney stones. I believe the term "bring it" comes to mind..
So all I can say is, listen in once in a while fellas, you may hear some interesting and funny "stories" that resemble our version of "the one that got away"....
Cheers.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Drool, poop and spit up - that's what baby girls are made of
At this point in my tenure as "da-da" there have been many an occasion in which upcoming dad's ask some very interesting but important questions... One of the most common is this:
"Dude, I don't know if I can handle changing diapers. I can't deal with the smell. Is it as nasty as I hear it is??"
And here is the answer - Yes
It smells wicked bad, it looks just as bad and you will undoubtedly wear some of it at some point. But guess what, you will survive. I personally don't know what "real" food does to the digestive system of a little one yet as we have yet to cross that bridge but "boob juice" (aka - breast milk) and a little formula equates into some of the most interesting "movements" you've seen or smelled. And I work near a bloody duck farm.
The truth is after the first couple, you get used to it. Now by no means am I implying that it becomes enjoyable at any point because that's just not the case. But you develop the necessary ability to hold back the old gag reflex. Poop is now a way of life. Wait until you have to empty the garbage/diaper genie - week old diapers are a punch to the senses like none other my friend. Some days you just have to sit back and applaud because there is no earthly way something that nasty should come out of something so amazingly cute.
*another good tip - don't cheap out on diapers... We tried to go more cost effective and ended up having more blowouts then a Jerry Springer show... And they never happen when you are prepared (IE. change of clothes). *
After poop is the much more palatable drool/spit up factor. At this point neither are really that gross but some ill timed spit up can cause some grief. Ready to go out for dinner - BLARGH - now you are changing your shirt (or entire outfit for the ladies - since something no longer matches the shoes/purse/earrings/whatever you were wearing). It is otherwise harmless. The drool, in my opinion, is quite funny. Nothing says "I love you dad" like a gigantic "wet willy" from your 5 month old daughter. Who knew they could get their whole damn fist in their mouth and then your ear!!! I swear Brooklyn must be dehydrated 24/7 because she is a never ending fountain of drool. Shirt - soaked, hands - ditto, feet - you betcha, and if she is really on fire her pants and probably what you're wearing too. It is a sight to behold. Love that teething...
I left out pee only because having a girl is nothing like the challenge of taming a baby boy and his - how shall I put this - you remember when you were a kid playing in the backyard in the summer, jumping through those sprinklers shaped like an octopus with arms flailing around.... picture that. But just as a heads up - you are getting peed on anyways. So enjoy, because it is part of the package.
"Dude, I don't know if I can handle changing diapers. I can't deal with the smell. Is it as nasty as I hear it is??"
And here is the answer - Yes
It smells wicked bad, it looks just as bad and you will undoubtedly wear some of it at some point. But guess what, you will survive. I personally don't know what "real" food does to the digestive system of a little one yet as we have yet to cross that bridge but "boob juice" (aka - breast milk) and a little formula equates into some of the most interesting "movements" you've seen or smelled. And I work near a bloody duck farm.
The truth is after the first couple, you get used to it. Now by no means am I implying that it becomes enjoyable at any point because that's just not the case. But you develop the necessary ability to hold back the old gag reflex. Poop is now a way of life. Wait until you have to empty the garbage/diaper genie - week old diapers are a punch to the senses like none other my friend. Some days you just have to sit back and applaud because there is no earthly way something that nasty should come out of something so amazingly cute.
*another good tip - don't cheap out on diapers... We tried to go more cost effective and ended up having more blowouts then a Jerry Springer show... And they never happen when you are prepared (IE. change of clothes). *
After poop is the much more palatable drool/spit up factor. At this point neither are really that gross but some ill timed spit up can cause some grief. Ready to go out for dinner - BLARGH - now you are changing your shirt (or entire outfit for the ladies - since something no longer matches the shoes/purse/earrings/whatever you were wearing). It is otherwise harmless. The drool, in my opinion, is quite funny. Nothing says "I love you dad" like a gigantic "wet willy" from your 5 month old daughter. Who knew they could get their whole damn fist in their mouth and then your ear!!! I swear Brooklyn must be dehydrated 24/7 because she is a never ending fountain of drool. Shirt - soaked, hands - ditto, feet - you betcha, and if she is really on fire her pants and probably what you're wearing too. It is a sight to behold. Love that teething...
I left out pee only because having a girl is nothing like the challenge of taming a baby boy and his - how shall I put this - you remember when you were a kid playing in the backyard in the summer, jumping through those sprinklers shaped like an octopus with arms flailing around.... picture that. But just as a heads up - you are getting peed on anyways. So enjoy, because it is part of the package.
Just remember that when your old and sporting diapers yourself you get to return the favour...
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