People often ask me, "What's the difference between couplehood and babyhood?" In a word? Moisture. Everything in my life is now more moist. Between your spittle, your diapers, your spit-up and drool, you got your baby food, your wipes, your formula, your leaky bottles, sweaty baby backs, and numerous other untraceable sources-all creating an ever-present moistness in my life, which heretofore was mainly dry.
The jewel in the baby product crown is the stroller. And if in America you are what you drive, then in Parentland, you are what you push.
There was a period where our child's birth was getting really close, and we still had nothing. We were dangerously close to calling him Untitled Baby Project.
A new child in the house is a huge tourist attraction. It's like Disneyland, except there the lines are longer and no one brings casseroles.
When people talk about wanting to have children someday, what they really mean is that they want babies. Nobody wants an angry adolescent. Nobody wants an obnoxious seven-year-old trying to wear out dirty words they just learned in school that day. What they really want is cute, adorable babies who love you and need you. The bad stuff is just the price you agree to pay for having the good stuff.
Just because a baby cries, I discovered, doesn't mean there's always something wrong. Sometimes babies wake up for no real reason. They just want to check if they're doing it right. "This is Sleeping, right?" "Exactly." "I just lie here?" "That's right." "Okay." Then back to sleep they go.
The most rewarding part about being a dad is just looking at children who didn't exist at some point. The first time you saw them, they were the size of a quarter, in a sonogram, and now they can pour orange juice and yell at each other.
When you realize you would consider not having a child just so you could take an occasional snooze and be available to see Batman Retires the same weekend it comes out, you have to take a good hard look at yourself and acknowledge, I am a shallow, shallow person.
When you get busy, the priorities change. In your twenties, you hang out with who you were in school with. Then you grow up and you hang out with the people you're playing ball with, things you like doing with. When you get married, it changes a bit and you lose some friends, or you gain other friends. You gain couple-y friends. It changes again when you have children, and then when your children are the focus of your life.
