DadCentric

Should've Worn A Diaper

I'm sitting in a rocking chair in a room. The curtains are drawn, the lights are off, and a white noise machine on a nearby shelf is busy forming a protective barrier against any outside sounds that would seek to disturb the slumber of this room’s inhabitants. In my lap lays my youngest son. This is his room we’re in, and it’s his bedtime we’re working on. I am giving him a bottle, his night-night bottle, the bottle that, along with my rocking and soothing, will send him off to sleep.

I sense that it's taking longer than usual for him to pass out. He is quiet, but restless. His blue eyes are wide open, betraying barely a hint of sleepiness. The heaviness that usually appears around his eyelids about this time is late. Which is bad because, as I sit here, I realize that there’s something I should have done before I sat here. Nature is calling, but I can’t come to the phone just now, but rather than go to voicemail, the ring just gets louder. I try to ignore it by focusing on the task at hand. I focus on the bottle, my baby boy draining its contents, the milk going down into his belly, his little digestive system taking it in and making use of its nutrients, the rest of it being shipped off to be turned into waste, the liquid parts of which will be stored in his tiny little bladder which he is still too young to control, which just reminds me of my own bladder, which seems fuller and fuller by the moment.

This post brought to you by Dell Children's Hospital and BlogPress for iPhone

Written at the ER...I'm typing this post on my phone in a dimly lit hospital room, my 19 month old asleep in my arms. SpongeBob is on mute on the wall-mounted TV, not nearly as entertaining as those Madagascar penguin fellows on before him. My right shoulder is soaked with baby drool. We're in the ER because this is where the pediatrician said we needed to go, the pediatrician I took my son to because of the 103 temperature that hit him today at daycare. It might be pneumonia, she said. Or swine flu, yep, that's still around, even if it's not front page news anymore. But don't be scared, she said. Very treatable, she said. Several times.

DadCentric on The Radio, Again

I will be live on the air at NuPoppa Radio this morning, 11 PST. The NuPoppa guys and I will be discussing fatherly stuff, including Father's Day, the Military/Industrial/MommyBlogger Complex, why the Mainstream Media continues to portray dads as idiots, and other timely topics. Tune in and shoot me some of your burning questions!

UPDATED: Here's the recorded version of my interview. Good times were had by all.

More Condescending Advice For Dads, Courtesy of CNN/Careerbuilder

Me like read Internet because me like movies of skatebored skateborde skatebord skateboard crashes. But sometime me as dad learn stuff from Internet, like when me read story from CNN about how me should be good daddy while me work job. 

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/06/22/cb.stay.at.home.dads/index.html

This good article! Me never think of use words to communicate, like article says to do. Me usually jump up and hit self on head or throw poop to make point. Me also think use calendar good idea; me use when need to remember trips on giant shiny metal bird, so me think good use calendar to make time to throw football with boy-child; me pencil him in for two weeks from now, unless WWE Smackdown on TV. Me can also bring family to work; boy-child and girl-child might like watch me lift heavy things. Thank you CNN for make me better dad. Now me go to refrigerator, try to see if me can catch ghost who turn on light when me open door. 

The Afterthought That Counts

The invitations for the Mother's Day ceremonies at my children's school starting flooding their backpacks about mid-November.

Can you come? Please come. Please Please PLEASE?!?

How many mothers will attend? How many grandmothers? Any great-grandmothers? Any females of child-bearing age who are in your domestic employment?

Then came the deluge of reminders. Don't forget, each said. Don't Forget! DON'T FORGET!

Oh, and there was this:

 

When the days (yes, plural) of celebration finally arrived, much tea and cake were consumed. Handwritten cards and letters were passed about. Sonnets and odes performed. Bette Midler popped in to perform "Wind Beneath My Wings" with a 42-piece orchestra. This, of course, followed the F-14 flyover but came before the trained killer whale that rocketed up through a cafeteria sink of greasy suds to create a spray that stretched 20 yards through the air and spelled out "Bless Your Wondrous Wombs" in kaleidoscope colors.

In all, the children celebrated motherhood for three solid hours, a Tony-worthy product of many, many months of heartfelt thought and detailed preparation. "It was amazing and beautiful. Much better than 'Cats'," said My Love, who came home misty from the second day's ceremony, clutching an 18-page souvenir program in her hand that deftly hide, upon her finger, a shiny new secret decoder ring.

A month later, here we are -- the Tuesday before Father's Day.

All is calm; all is trite.

See, I found this buried in my son's backpack:

Monsters In The Backyard

The little boy stopped suddenly, peered intently at a corner of the yard and pointed. “That monster is going to get us!”

It was the middle of a sunny afternoon, the kind that’s so hot it seems like stuff around you should be bursting into flames. I looked where he was pointing, but could see no monster. Which is not to say that there was no monster there. My son could see it, I could not. Why must I insist on assuming that he’s out of his 3 year old mind just because I’ve taught my eyes not to see the monsters lurking in the back yard?

“Come on, Daddy, we have to run!” There was no fear in his voice, not the panic you would expect to hear from a person advising you to run for your life from a vicious hellbeast on the attack. Just joy and exhilaration. There’s a monster over there and he’s coming after us and we get to run away from it before it catches us and sucks the meat from our bones and uses our femurs for baseball bats in its all-monster softball league game! Isn’t that just the greatest thing ever?!

And so we ran, the boy out in front, me behind him, and the monster, presumably, nipping at our heels. We ran up the slope of our yard, around the tree by the fence, past the deck, back down the slope, around the playset, and repeat. The boy pumped his little legs as hard as they would go and laughed the whole way. Finally he stopped. He always seems to stop short right in front of me, and somehow I always manage to just barely keep from running him over. It’s our little comedy routine. He smiled at me, breathing heavy after all that sprinting. “I think the monster is gone,” he said, “but maybe he’ll come back later.”

Michael Lewis and Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer...

I've received a few emails asking if DadCentric is planning on reviewing Michael Lewis' "controversial" new fathering memoir, Home Game. You'd be amazed at the number and scope of review requests I get from various PR, marketing, and publishing types - I'm not sure that I'm qualified to review Replens Long-Lasting Vaginal Moisturizer - and I do get a of requests to review Dad Lit books, but there was nothing from Mr. Lewis' people.

Just as well. Full disclaimer - I have not read the book, but after watching Mr. Lewis' recent appearance on The Daily Show, I'm not entirely sure I want or need to. I'd read his series of "Dad Again" columns on Slate, from which the book derives much of its material, and they'd left me a bit cold. "Seventy-six nights and I'd spent zero in the same room with him, unless you counted the night of his birth," he writes in one piece, "and the few times I stayed up until midnight to feed him a bottle of pumped breast milk before handing him over to his mother...His diaper needed changing about as often as he ate, yet I'd done that seven times, and remembered each event." The new book's most oft-quoted line is a revelation that Lewis has after several months with his newborn: "It's because you want to hurl it off the balcony and don't that you come to love it." 

Time Warp

So there I was, lying on my back under the kitchen sink, coaxing loose the old faucet so I could replace it with the new one. Not the toughest bit of DIY in the world, sure, but it still technically qualifies as plumbing, so getting it done brings about a level of job satisfaction at least a few steps above a successful light bulb replacement. Not to mention the wife’s adoration.

Wrench in hand, flashlight pinned between my head and the back wall of the cabinet to illuminate the object of my labor, I heard the sound of small feet approaching. The baby had already paid a visit, but now the three year old’s curiosity drew him my way. He asked what I was doing and I started to tell him, but as I spoke, I started to feel the strangest sensations. I looked up to where my little boy was standing and I could see everything in my field of vision changing. The color in the room faded to black and white, then went all grainy technicolor on me. My little boy’s shorts, tee-shirt, and bare feet were replaced with a little coonskin cap, short pants, and cowboy boots. My cut off camo shorts morphed into pleated khakis, my tee-shirt into a button-up plaid number that tucked itself right into the pants, and while I didn’t look in a mirror, I swear I could feel pomade shaping my hair into a nice respectable do, perfectly parted on the right. Off in my den, the dogs discussed who was to bring my pipe and who was to bring my slippers.

With changes like that, I don’t even want to think about what happened to our T.V.

The Answers: They Are Many

“So why do it?” she asked. The inquisitor was a friend of mine, married with no kids and no intention of having any. The “it” in this instance was the having of children. The question was not rhetorical. She really wanted to know. Why do people do this to themselves? Or more specifically, why did my wife and I?

I confess I had to stop and think about it for a moment. Not because we didn’t have our reasons for jumping into the parenthood fray, but because that time of consideration feels like it was so very long ago. Two kids ago, to be scientifically inexact about it. The whos and hows of the matter were pretty much a given, and all questions of why and when have long since been resolved. We are now so steeped in the execution portion of the plan, the everyday doings and happenings that take up so much of our time and brainpower, that the question and answer period is practically another epoch. 2005 B.K.

In our case, there was never really a question of should or shouldn’t we. We said our I Do’s knowing full well that we both wanted children. But still, we asked ourselves the question of why do we want to. From whence does this wish to procreate spring forth? Biological imperative? Social conditioning? A few chances to go at it like a couple of make-up sexing badgers with no worries whatsoever about contraception? The first two reasons, at least, can’t just be dismissed out right. Most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as slaves to natural urges or society’s demands. Human beings have proven their ability to withstand both of these forces from time to time, or otherwise keep them in check. Still, that doesn’t mean we’re entirely free of their pull. It’s just part of that whole being human thing. So I think it’s safe to accept that these influences play a role in the process.

And of course, worry-free fucking is always nice. Ask your mom.

DadCentric On The Radio!

Well, one of us, anyway. Right now I'm broadcasting live over at NuPoppa. So if you've ever wondered what I sound like in person, pop over and have a listen. (I'll give you a hint: think David Sedaris inhaling helium.)

UPDATED!!!!! Here's a link to the podcast. It's a half hour long and I only manage to curse twice.