A few things

First of all, I’m pretty certain that I’m going to stop writing about raising a boy in Brooklyn, when we move from Brooklyn. We are moving to Portland at the end of this month, and while I’m looking forward to the move, I’m feeling like Brooklyn Dad is going to be something less than it has been. I’m appreciative of the record of his first couple years, but for now I’m feeling a little ambivalent about continuing. I’ve started using Day One a bit more, which is a journaling app for the phone and computer. It’s keeping me reasonably, if intermittently, honest about keeping the record going. The public part of this (well, quasi-public, considering that there are a very small number of people who read this blog) is, well, I don’t know how I feel about that part.

More mundanely, we went to the playground today, after going with great success yesterday. They’ve installed (well, situated) an imagination playground at the 9th street Harmony playground, at Prospect Park. Yesterday, on a great sunny day, we played with those blocks, then went on (as we call them) the squeaky bridge, then the wobbly bridge. Then after some guiding and cajoling, even the corkscrew slide! My god, the corkscrew slide, man! The corkscrew slide!

Sunhat? Check. Shades? Check. Sunscreen? Check.

Today, it was pretty empty, and it was raining all morning. B, excited at the prospect of the turny slide, marched right up, went right down…and completely zoomed down the slick, wet slide. Around the slide, onto his butt, his back, his hands. Nothing was hurt (the ground is that soft stuff), but this completely freaked the kid out. The one parent who was witness to my all-star parenting moseyed over, impressed, to tell me he was hauling ass at ‘superhero speed.’ It was 5% scary, but the rest hilarious. Like I could see in slow motion the unfolding of my mis-judgment about the slide’s speed, then super-fast speed up of flailing child down the slide.

I finally got him to go again sitting on my (now soaked) lap, and we went a few more times this way. I’m hoping he isn’t put off of the slide now, but we will see. He was all, ‘don’t want the wobbly slide!’

So yeah, good stuff. My single parenting week continues. I’m not even going to go into the FaceTime with nana, where I thought it would be funny to stuff him into a couple of taped-together boxes, and he started getting stuck and then crying. I’m simply taking credit for video chatting with my mother-in-law. It’s a fathering clinic round these parts, I tell you. A clinic.

On my lonesome

This week, my better half has trekked off to Portland, to find us a place to live. This has left me with the little madman running about the apartment, wanting to play with scissors, go outside, not be in the rain, ride his bike, not wear sandals, wear sandals, not wear pants, play with the stapler, watch a movie on the computer (which for him means a 2-minute clip of a Sesame Street clip or somesuch), watch a movie 100 times in a row, eat chicken parm, but not that piece, and no cheese, please, and no tomato sauce with it, but with the crunchy peas (which have no nutritional value) dipped into the baby-food peas and brown rice (but only a dip dip), go in the stroller, walk, go in the stroller, walk, go to Tea Lounge for banana bread (just a little bit? please?), not eat the lentil soup because it’s too hot, but dip the pita bread into the soup (which really means just eat the pita bread (which has no nutritional value)), and read 5 books, and sing 5 songs, and have some water, and pee in the big potty, but just wave my hands in the air not dry them on the towel, but also to have dry hands, and call mommy please, and just sing one more song. And papa should go to sleep too. Right here next to the crib, please.

The bad news is, it’s been just over 24 hours. The good news is, we’ve got 6 more days to go.

We did go to Tinkergarten today, and played with mud. And got a full-on happy dance about this. Mud! Glorious mud! And a remarkably (well, not by their standards, but more by my own ‘oh crap, I forgot to bring a shovel’ life) well-planned outing and set of activities. Thank you Meghan and Kyla, for such plush artisan mud! I’m finding sycamore trees everywhere now! If you are by Prospect Park this fall, sign up. They will be worth it, and unless you’re on top of it, full.

Feeling this, but really secretly feeling this.

Master-class fathering

I was on my own the other evening, as baby mama was out getting high with her girlfriends (ok, she said she was at some sort of event at the International Center for Photography, but seriously, we know that’s a euphemism). Luckily, I’m a stone cold pro when it comes to dinner/bath/bedtime. Tonight, after a balanced meal of chicken, applesauce, raspberries, and plain yogurt (yes, our baby hadn’t eaten a vegetable in like 3 weeks, thank you very much), we did a little bath time. While rinsing his hair, I accidentally poured hot water over his head and down his back. He freaked. out. It was hot, but not scalding, man. I mean, life throws you curveballs, right? Roll with them, baby!

Instead, incredibly startled, crying, upset baby. I picked him up out of the tub to comfort him, and he peed on me. Poor little bubeleh. I literally scared the piss out of my baby.

So yeah, sometimes I don’t get it quite right.

inspired

My all-purpose response to everything the baby hates. Now I just need to make the stamp…

Don’t fear the dropper

Hey there, my beautiful baby, yes, just your papa giving you hugs. No, no, there’s no ulterior motive here, just sweetness and light. Awww, there’s a sweet hug, so much love. What, that? No, pay no attention to mama and that bottle of bubblegum pink stuff. No, that’s not for you, you can stop giving her the skeptical looks, just sweet sweet. What? This position? No, I’m just holding you to the side a bit, nothing to worry about, certainly nothing to start getting a little antsy over. Yes, there, there. Why am I holding you so tightly? Just love, all love, no no, just holding your arms a bit to give you sweet hugs. Why are you struggling, just relax, she’s just playing with that dropper full of yummy goodness of OH DEAR SWEET GOD JUST GET THE MEDICINE DOWN HIS THROAT, I’M HOLDING HIM AS TIGHTLY AS I CAN, YES I KNOW HIS HEAD IS MOVING, GOD THE SCREAMING THE SCREAMING…and cries and recriminations, and it’s ok, yes, just some medicine to make you feel bett–OK, QUICK GET THE SECOND DOSE DOWN THERE, JUST SQUEEZE THE THING WE’LL WIPE IT UP LATER AND AHHH THE SCREAMING THE SCREAMING AND–ah, all better, ok, yes, just love and sweetness and the clear knowledge that I will betray you at the drop of an amoxicillin dropper.

Ear infraction

..er, infection. Baby’s first ear infection! Awwww. Because nothing is better than a baby who is feverish, having been relatively sleepless on a 10.5 hour airplane trip back from Hawaii, with an ear infection. While I was here in NYC, baby mama and mother-in-law traveled back without me. This is such obviously good fathering that I don’t really have to say it, right?

We took him to after-hours medical clinic, where cutey Jewish boy doctor put him on a course of anti-biotics and Motrin. Baby loved getting his ears checked, which I could tell via my mystical father-senses, and the fact that he was screaming bloody murder throughout that process. But it was a bloodcurdling scream of joy.

So all are back at home now, some are sleeping off the effects of jetlag, others are sleeping off the effects of fever and ear infection. And here I am, blogging the shit out of the thing. Time for morning coffee.

words

Baby can basically get a couple of consonants strung together, mostly just ‘ba ba ba ba ba.’ He loves to just babble this way, but mostly nothing but ba ba ba. This despite my repeated attempts to get him to say ‘papa’ or ‘mama’ or some other words.

Today, he started saying ‘ma ma ma ma ma’ is baby mama’s general direction, so obviously she thinks it’s his first word. Then he looked at me, and said ‘Bert.’

Now baby mama is calling me Bert. So is my mother-in-law.

The indignities never end, do they?

Baby-less

For my (belated) birthday, my wife got me a night away, with her and without the baby. So I write this from the top floor of the Moana Surfrider hotel, in Waikiki.

Baby is with my mother-in-law, who generously agreed to do a 24-hour stint with our 7-month-old while we get drunk and watch the sunset – and for the first time since being un Hawaii, not the sunrise.

Incidentally, no one told me how hard it would be to leave our baby, even knowing it is with his grandmother. We put together detailed instructions for grandma, and still I feel totally anxious and can’t even really relax, despite the drinks. I really just live and miss our baby.

Nah, I’m fucking with you. We did leave a list of pro-tips, or at least baby mama did. But after a couple of drinks at our favorite local beach bar/restaurant (Duke’s), and a dip in the ocean, I feel so relaxed I may slip into a coma and STILL show up for mire drinks down under the banyan tree.

Love and love and more love to my wife and MinL for making it happen.

birthday

So, today is my 40th birthday, and I am now officially older than dirt. I thought I would have a bit more angst about turning 40 than I actually do, but something about having a 6 month old baby makes it harder to introspectively focus on (and complain about) what’s happening to you.

But 40 is 40, and I can be a little thoughtful about what’s going on in my life at middle age.

On the negative side, my career is about to undergo a pretty major transition, and we are anything but settled in where we are living and spending our time. I’m somewhat unsatisfied with how both of these things are going. I know, most of our friends are going through some version of this ennui, on the job front at least, but somehow I thought I would find something that I would be passionate about waking up to do every day. And I have decidedly not given up on having a job that fills me with warm and fuzzy satisfaction.

On the positive side, partner and baby. I was skeptical for years that having a baby and being married would make me happy. And I do think that I perhaps would be happy if I didn’t do either of those things. But I am deliriously happy with both partner and baby. So far we have avoided being crazy with each other and with parenting. I’m not saying it’s been easy, or that we’ll keep our shit together going forwards. I am saying that there is much less challenge on these two fronts than I had imagined as a 20-something kid.

So I’ll take this birthday in stride. We’re not doing much of anything for it, and I’m not really a birthday party kind of person anyhow. Some time when we get back from our summer vacation, maybe we’ll throw some sort of party. Until then, things are…wonderful. All my problems are 1st world problems, and the wonder and joy that are my baby mama and my baby make up for all of them.

Cold

My brother relates that when his boy was one year old, he got really sick for the first time. Poor, helpless babe couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sooth, and didn’t know what was going on. My brother gathered him up in his arms, held him, and told him everything was going to be ok. Babe turned to his dad, trustingly. And threw up directly into his ear hole.

BB caught a cold or something this past weekend (after getting immunization booster shots on Thursday. Coincidence? Doubt it. The vaccine-autism-cold virus-conspiracy continues!), which has been mildly annoying from the medical perspective, but incredibly disturbing from the parenting one. Somehow used to getting 6-7 (interrupted) hours of sleep a night, I am now getting 4 or so. Baby can’t breathe, wakes himself up, cries. I rock him in my arms until he is sleepy again, put him down in his crib. Baby immediately wakes up, coughs, sneezes, makes a chokey-wheezy sound, and I pick him up, rock him, etc. Baby mama, who is also sick, takes her turns in the rocking sleeping roulette. And she should, really. It’s from her that BB got his cold in the first place.

Meanwhile, because I’m not a heartless asshole, I’m trying to keep both of these yokels in sleep patterns. Over the weekend this meant a disparate amount of childcare, which is par for the course in these circumstances. I want both to get well, and soon. But it also just highlights that however much we seem to have things together, we are just a hair’s breath from having it all go to shit. All it takes is a cold, and suddenly the machine falls apart.

That said, baby seems to be feeling better. And baby seems to be feeling better. I took BB up to Morningside Heights during our super-nice-awesome day yesterday, to meet my colleagues. So almost two hours of subway, plus a short nap on my office floor, plus some meet-n-greets, and things do appear to be back on track.

And now that he’s gotten his cold out of the way, we’ll thankfully never have to deal with that again.