Baby 101
A concise primer on child rearing, in the unlikely event that my friends should ever be so unfortunate as to ask me for advice on rearing a child.
First, a word about the small, pink creature that we will call, for simplicity’s sake, Baby:
Baby is, from birth, a master negotiator. Baby’s preferred tactic, frightening in its simplicity, is to scream, at a volume you previously would have thought unreachable for so small a creature, until she gets what she wants. Baby can not be bargained with, bribed, cajoled, or intimidated. Offers of money, future leniencies, automobiles, and the like will be disregarded without consideration; statements such as, “It’s okay,” “Please stop crying,” “Why are you unhappy?” and “For the love of God, PLEASE STOP CRYING” will receive no response. Cessation of the referenced crying will not occur at their repetition, no matter how desperate and filled with longing said repetition may be.
Baby does not listen to reason or abide by rules of logic. Explaining to Baby that Baby has absolutely no reason for crying, in that Baby has been fed, changed, and burped, perhaps even all at the same time, in the last fifteen minutes, and thus does not have a leg to stand on in this whole negotiation, will not weaken Baby’s position. Subtle pleas for sympathy along the lines of, “I certainly wouldn’t mind being waited on hand and foot all day, and if you really think about it, you’ve got a pretty good thing going” will not appease Baby.
Baby does not accept the fact that the cheeseburger you’ve been thinking about all day was just delivered and must be eaten while piping hot as a reasonable excuse to cease negotiations (i.e. stop crying).
Do not attempt to handle Baby and eat the aforementioned cheeseburger simultaneously. Baby, like the cheeseburger, is awkward to hold single-handedly and easily breakable.
No, Baby does NOT want a bite of your cheeseburger, and under no circumstances should such be offered.
On crying Baby: dealing with crying Baby is akin to being a bomb disposal technician. Like a bomb, the task of defusing (i.e. calming) crying Baby can at first seem overwhelming and impossible. Stay calm. With each successful defusal, the task gets easier and your confidence grows. However, do not get complacent, as even the slightest slip can cause Baby to explode, killing you and everyone else in a thirty-foot radius, and driving your partner, the hot-head, refuse-to-play-by-the-rules bomb disposal technician-in-training, to go on a manhunt for the mad bomber who brought about your death which climaxes in a fight to the death on an out-of-control train on the Los Angeles subway system.
Upon review, appears the bomb disposal technician analogy has some flaws. Disregard.
There is a little known addendum to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that he drew up after a long weekend with his newborn niece and which he tended to refer to as Einstein’s Bylaw of Screaming Baby. Said bylaw says, basically, that time spent with a screaming baby moves way, WAY more slowly than normal time spent with, say, a beer and the Tivo’d episode of last night’s SOPRANOS. Over the long weekend in which the bylaw was created, Einstein managed to scribble the following formula down on a paper towel with a Sharpie:
B = XT
In which T represents the normal duration of Time, B represents the corresponding duration in Baby Time, and X is a variable drawn from a number of factors, including the decibel level Baby’s screams are currently reaching, the volume of bodily waste Baby currently has in its diaper, and whether the Baby has managed to urinate all over itself in the process of Einstein’s attempting to remove said diaper. Einstein also observed that, when X ? 10, severe anxiety, depression, and visions of sprinting to your automobile and fleeing to a remote beach in South America can result.
Rest assured, however: terrifying as it may seems, Einstein’s Bylaw of Screaming Baby can be used to your advantage. For example, should your wife/husband/partner request that you run out for diapers, and should you return three hours later smelling of alcohol and singing old Broadway showtunes, your partner may well assume, with the aid of Einstein’s Bylaw and your slurred assurances, that only fifteen minutes have passed, clearly nowhere near enough time for her mate to have gotten sauced at the local tavern.
On teething: teething, I have been told, can be a hellish nightmare of an experience filled with agonized cries and many, many sleepless nights. Be prepared. Always keep a duffel bag with at least a week’s worth of clothing, toiletries, and several hundred dollars in cash readily available.
Do not be discouraged by any of the above, however. Baby is not without her positive aspects. One is that Baby will treat everything you have to say as the most enthralling thing ever heard. When you are speaking to her, Baby will give you complete, undivided attention unlike anything you have ever experienced. You can read Baby The New York Times Style section, and Baby will stare at you with wide, fascinated eyes as though you are passing on the secrets of the universe. And when Baby is showing The Love, you will feel as though you can move mountains, as though you are the recipient of the emotion that is Love in its purest, most unadulterated sense, and you have never tasted anything so sweet. Baby will stare at you like you are, hands down, the greatest friggin’ thing she has ever seen, and at her tender young age, that may well be the case. Of course, if Baby is hungry, disregard the above: Baby will want nothing to do with you unless you happen to have a pair of lactating breasts.
On coolness: Baby should not be treated as your second chance to “be cool.” Making Baby listen to the Arcade Fire or the Vines will not ensure “coolness” and freedom from torment in the formative grade- and high-school years for Baby. Long-term studies have conclusively shown that babies brought up listening to the Arcade Fire and the Vines are just as prone to adolescent awkwardness, poor dress sense, feelings of isolation and insecurity, and the inability to say the exact right thing the moment the cute girl from Biology walks by in the hallway as children raised listening to John Denver or Barry Manilow, if not more so.
That said, Baby is, at the tender baby age, extremely acceptive and non-judgmental regarding your taste in music. Baby will not mind if you just have to play that Peter Cetera song from KARATE KID 2 over, and over, and over again. In fact, Baby, if sufficiently fed and rested, can appear to enjoy said song in equal measure, with no hint of sarcasm or disdain. And if Baby is clearly not enjoying said song, well, until Baby has the facilities to verbally request the cessation of the song and the deletion of Peter Cetera’s entire catalogue from your hard drive, Baby will just have to deal with it.
While on the subject of coolness: you are currently, secretly, harboring the hope that you will be the coolest dad ever, perhaps because you still wear Converse All-Stars and listen to the Vines. You are not, in fact, the coolest dad ever, and attempting to be so will just result in disappointment and missing out the patently not-cool things you can do with Baby, such as gaze awestruck at her, speak gibberish to her, read to her from The New York Times Style section, pop wheelies with her stroller, and generally do all the things that a love-struck dork can do.
In particular, don’t think you look cool with the Baby Bjorn. Even Bono on his Coolest Day Ever, which is probably around the time ACHTUNG BABY was recorded, would not look cool wearing a Baby Bjorn. Bono could be carrying a miniature Natalie Portman in his Baby Bjorn, and he would still look seriously lame. You, mere mortal that you are, don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.
These Days
These days are long. I tend to wake up exhausted, plowing through my day job and struggling to carve out hours to write. But these are also days that include slow-dancing with my daughter, her head nestled against my chest, to the sounds of Bruce Springsteen singing "O Mary Don't You Weep" as the late afternoon sun fills the room, as I stroke her soft brown-going-on-blonde-going-on-red hair, as she sighs contentedly into my shirt, as tears well in my eyes for no reason whatsoever and my heart expands so much it hurts.
These days are long, but over too quick, and they are sprinkled with moments that make the other less enjoyable hours pale and inconsequential in comparison.