Sorry for the lack of a response to the comments of late. My boy caught his first fever, and it’s been no sleep / panic mode at my household for the past week. The fever has subsided, but it made me think of all the new things I learned as a semi-new dad (Dad for five and a half months).
1. Baby boys get morning wood. Just happened to notice it one morning as I was changing my boy’s diaper. On a side note, my diapers are a c to c plus in handling pee, and a f minus handling poop. My boy drinks all breast milk (boob juice as Ted would say), so his poops are pretty watery. When he poops on a diaper I changed, we pretty much have to change his clothes as well. On a side-side note, my wife is considering taking me off diaper duty just as she had taken me off 4 am bottle duty if you recall my last fatherhood related blog entry.
2. Never hold a baby over your face when he has just finished a meal. And if you do, don’t give him/her a wide, open mouthed smile. Trust me.
3. My boy eats his friends. So I have these plastic stick puppets of Ronald McDonald and The Hamburglar that I hang on a couple of key hooks next to my room’s doorway. Every time I pass by it, carrying my son, he would talk to them. (Gibberish). I figured he thought of them as friends, so one day, I took em off the hook and handed them to my son. He talked to them like normal, then proceeded to stick Ronald’s head in his mouth, savoring the taste of his plastic red hair. Well, turns out he tries to taste everything. I see him eyeing his own toes with hunger, he can’t quite reach ‘em with his mouth yet, but one day, they will know the feel of his gums.
4. Shutter speed is crucial for taking pictures of a baby. I’ve probably taken around 600 to 700 digital photos of my son. Only 5% of them manage to be of visible quality. The other 95% end up looking like some blurred mess. I posited the question on my facebook page and got back two words: Shutter Speed. Turns out my camera had a setting for babies. Below are two pics of my kid, before and after I learned of this magical camera setting.
Either all my friends are BS’ing me and are the scum of the earth or I should really stop buying my electronics from the desolate back alley vendor, five blocks from my house. I’m kinda leaning towards the latter there.
Either way, a good picture would look like this:
Only slightly blurry.
5. My status in his eyes seems to drop every month. If I were to create a ESPN style power ranking for this, it would go like this:
1. Mommy ( – - ) Still the King, er, Queen.
2. Milk Bottle (- -) After destroying Semi New Dad in a lopsided battle, it escaped with a narrow victory over Doting Grandma.
3. Doting Grandma (+1) Utterly trounced Semi New Dad with a perfectly executed game plan of “Spoiling”.
4. Semi Doting Grandpa (+1) Doesn’t take much to beat Semi New Dad.
5. Plastic Ronald McDonald Stick Puppet (+1) Tastes better than Semi New Dad.
6. Baby Wipes (+1) Smooth and Refreshing after a poop. Semi New Dad is still just Semi New Dad who improperly changed his diaper, before and possibly after a poop .
7. Baby activity circle (+1) Fun and stimulating. Semi New Dad, apparently neither.
8. Semi New Dad (-5) Rival for Mommy.
6. I’ve become infinitely more approachable in the eyes of women. I remember all the times I hung out with sausages when I was single and in decent shape. Now that I’ve gotten married, have a kid and put on fifty pounds, women actually talk to me. Could it be that overweight married dads = sexy? . . . probably not. Most likely, they see the ring and think “Safe to talk to.” And maybe a ”No hidden agendas” thought as well. But yea, I can totally converse with moms now that I can relate to the parenting experience.
7. This is probably the most tired I have ever been, and my social life has gone down the crapper (yes, even worse than when I was WoW’ing), but it’s been a totally awesome experience so far.
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Chur buddy, been missing your daddy posts. Hoping things were going as well for you as they are for me!
So, I will respond to you the way I have in the past, by each of your bullets
1) I’m not usually around for the morning wood (I work 2am-1230) so if this happens, mommy dearest gets to deal with it. My boy is lactose intolerant, so he’s on Soy formula. His poops are not quite watery, but completely not solid either, and DEAR LORD soy makes poop STINK! You can smell him from upstairs! (Though it does help being able to blame him
)
2) I believe if people don’t know this one already, they DESERVE to find out for themselves, lol
3) Little Stevie (my boy) absolutely LOVES to chew on his “wormie.” It’s a stuffed caterpillar thingie (exactly like the one from “The Hungry Little Caterpillar”) and he gets VERY upset if he doesn’t have it in arms reach. My boy seems to very flexible and lemme tell ya, it’s pretty funny watching him gum his own toes. Hard to think I was able to do that at some point in my life…
4) Shutter speed… Ummm… I just take a billion pictures on my phone til one turns out “good” I use my phone so I can directly upload to Facebook. (I think some people are getting tired of all those…)
5) Daddy is officially leading the polls in my house! Which transition I have noticed though is my good friend “Uncle” Karl has taken over from “Aunt” Crystal. SHE was very upset that Stevie wanted to see him more than her, lol.
6) This, 1000 times THIS! I think the ring actually attacts them. For once in their lives they can get a male perspective without the worry of “OMG he’s just trying to get in my pants!” And they just LOVE to tell you “Oh, you just wait til they get -insert age here- or start doing -insert random nightmare inducing activity here-”
7) I never understood why my wife was always so tired when we first got together. My step son was 1 1/2 then. Now, I can fully relate. But it’s like they say, Being a parent is the toughest job you will ever love.
I hope things keep going alright for you! That kid’s pretty darned cute.
Also,
FIRST?!?!?!?!?
And, a shameless plug. A little activity that I did for my step sons birthday this year
http://cheezburger.com/6554229504
1. Ah man, I feel you with the lactose intolerance. My sis in law’s baby is allergic to milk protein. They got her drinking this extra sensitive formula. I smelled her spit up once, it was Pee to the Yoo! Kinda like rotted fish. Well, on the bright side, at least you know when your boy needs his diapers changed. And the morning wood is just morning wood. I had no clue babies got it too.
2. haha.
3. lol, yea, I saw the wormie. Pretty awesome. My boy is startin to squirm like a worm. Ah I can imagine the toe gumming. I think that is must video material.
4. Is that the instagram photos I keep seeing on FB? And I think fellow parents are more understanding of all the pics we put up. Since we’re all guilty of it.
5. Sick! Finally some love for the dads. lol, I’m guessing Stevie is starting to differentiate between the sexes. I might be a lil bias in saying this, but guys are more fun to hang with anyways. Okay, ALOT biased.
6. Might not be just women saying that. I’m starting to say that to parents with newborns. lol.
And thanks man, your kid is cute too, (I was going to type ” a cutie pie”, but I gotta let my estrogen levels know who’s still the boss around here.)
Awesome bed by the way. If they ever make the “Justice League Avengers”, your stepson’s bed paved the way. The Iron Man looks totally sweet.
A couple things I thought I’d point out:
Firstly, if he eats his friends, maybe hold off on getting a dog. Just saying, lol.
Secondly, judging by those photos, I’d say either the shutter speed on your camera is still not fast enough, or your kid moves like The Flash. XD
Lastly, it’s too ironic how you become more approachable after you’ve already married. =\
lol, my wife is totally afraid of dogs unfortunately. Or fortunately for the dog in this case.
Haha, that would be ridiculously awesome if I got to raise a superhero. Sadly, I most likely need to pick up a new camera.
Yea, the irony is definitely there. Kinda goes hand in hand with that other saying “have time, but no money. Have money, but no time.” In this case though, I don’t mind. I think the random women that talk to me now are just interested in platonic conversations.
Hey, just to create some cross-webcomic love, I JUST read an update from Greg Dean of Real Life Comics whose wife launched a geek cloth diaper shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/SeamsGeeky. He claims the diaper they developed is one of the best available.
Just something to consider…
Sweet, thanks Joe. I will have to check in on those diapers. And if they really are the best ones available, you sir, are a life saver.
#2….one of the funniest things on your site yet… as for #6- be careful, it maybe much less innocent then you are expecting(i.e. “he’s married and not gonna be cligy” etc…) bitches be crazy… and keep up the good work on #1, the sooner you are off diaper duty the better..however if you work from home may be tough to avoid that one…i changed a total of 1 diaper in my life and will not want to ever do it again(not my child, as i have none that i am aware of…that being said i am certainly hoping i don get a call from the maury show) any way keep at it and feel better soon
lol, let’s hope you never get called up onto the maury show, although that would be pretty awesome publicity for gut tube. Yea, diaper duty definitely sucks, but it’s a necessity. I still change the occasional diaper and now that my boy’s gotten older, boy does it stink. Poop only goes downhill as they get older. I guess that’s another thing I learned.
Women aren’t necessarily more attracted to dads; it’s just that they see you as being safe and comfortable, without the tension produced by a seducer like Ted or the danger of a serial killer like Ted Bundy.
It’s a sad state of affairs but it’s a perilous world in the U.S. for women. I read about how a 79-year-old woman got raped and I was filled with despair (as well as a bit of chagrin…79 years old? Really? Was she the only one he could catch?). I had thought that I would be safe from such sexual predation as I grew older and uglier and could no longer attract male attention the way I did in my twenties. But I still have men hit on me, even giving off the vibe of a frumpy, 40-ish baglady. (sigh) It’s enough to drive any self-respecting woman into a convent.
Yea, that’s the vibe I get. It’s nice to have a safe, platonic conversation with the opposite sex from time to time. I feel like women are more open to the idea of talking about kids. Not generalizing here, just based on my experiences.
Man, rape is sad in general, but a 79 year old? That is really sad.
And I don’t think people consider 40-ish, old anymore. What’s the saying? “40 is the new 20?” As for the frumpy bag lady vibe, I’m guessing it’s not strong or it’s non-existent. My advice, stop being so sexy, lol.
Dude, I have 3 boys. They all like to sleep naked, eat naked, do everything naked. They alllllll have erections alllll the time!!! It’s gross. I’m surrounded my penises!!!!!! Haha Seriously though, when we had our first (7years ago), and I discovered “morning wood” on him at like 2 months I was concerned! I thought we were going to be raising a pervert! Lol future rapist or something. Needless to say, if my husband and I decided to have another kid we hope not to have a girl. These boys wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they were forced to wear clothes indoors.
About the poop, my first 2 had some hardcore allergies so they had to be formula feed and their poop did stink so incredibly bad! This last one I have been able to nurse for almost a year and his poop is still watery! He is still exploding his diapers. About 2 weeks ago I woke up to the sweet smell of his poop all over our bed. I kid you not, it was all over my knees. Lol My husband takes care of the poop diapers. I have a saying around here: I birth the kid, you clean his butt. Lol
lol, your own little nudist colony. Ah yea, allergies are tough, did a blood test for my kid at one, he’s allergic to milk, eggs, wheat, soy, peanuts, and probably some other stuff. So far breast milk is okay as long as my wife doesn’t eat the stuff he’s allergic to. Yea, my niece was on neosure or neocare or something with neo, it smelled ridiculously bad. The milk smelled bad, her burps smelled bad, farts, poop, everything. Ah, good to see you’re laughing off the watery poop. I guess that’s all you can do. My kid has gotten better with it, pretty solid now, but the smell is worse. Ah you have a good husband there. Not many are skilled at the poop diapers.