Rob Hyde - 2 Months

The second guest post, from a very good longtime friend, Rob Hyde. I haven't met his daughter Olivia yet, but I can't wait to. I was also honored when Rob and his lovely bride asked me to become Olivia's Godfather. We'll be traveling to New Jersey in June for the christening/baptism. I was going to start cracking jokes about Catholics, but then they might not let me be Godfather so I'll keep my mouth shut and put Rob's post below.

When I was asked by my 2 month old daughter’s Godfather to write a post about being a first time Dad, I really didn’t know where to begin. We attempted to prepare ourselves for parenthood in the nine plus months leading up to D-Day. We prepared Olivia’s room, purchased diapers and clothes, and went about our days as soon to be parents with all of the hoopla that comes with it. Now that she’s here, the world has become a very different place. I have been able to summon energy from areas that I didn’t know energy existed. I have become excited about poop! And burps! And Boogers! Everyday is a new experience with Olivia. She has become fascinated by ceiling fans. My wife and I can lay her down on our bed and she will kick and coo to the ceiling fan. She gets really going when we spin the blades. When the light is on and the blades are spinning on their own…We have an American Idol winner/soccer star! I’m hoping that this is a sign that she will be a successful aerospace engineer who designs new jet engines. It amazes me every day how she changes. She is starting to communicate better, advising when she’s hungry, gassy, or just in need of attention. Her smiles melt my heart, especially when she’s asleep and dreaming. This adventure I call parenthood is just getting started and from what I have heard, it only gets better and better.

Daddy, let's discuss that sports car stroller.

Matt Wiggins - The Before

I thought it would be a good idea to ask some of my friends to write a few guest posts for my blog to get some different points of view. I started with my friend Matt Wiggins because he is about to become a first time father, literally any second. He wrote the following as the 'Before' post and he'll be writing an 'After' once the after happens. One of my best friends on the planet also became a first time Dad a few short weeks ago and he has written a post for me that I will be putting up tomorrow night. I've asked some other folks, and have a few more in mind. I hope you enjoy, the rest of this post is Matt's writing.


As a relocated Ohioan living in the South, I’m still unnerved by people I don’t know smiling at me. Granted, it doesn’t happen all that often (Charlotte is really an annex of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York), so I was doubly unprepared for all the smiling that started happening when I was out in public with my wife when she was about 6 months into pregnancy. (It only took me a few weeks to realize that they were smiling at her, not me.) There were knowing smiles from veteran moms and dads and sympathetic smiles from other pregnant moms and it was generally a pleasant experience. 

Until a week ago. At this point we are only a few days from her due date and the smiles she now gets are nervous, apologetic smiles. For instance, last Saturday we were in the ice cream aisle of the grocery store (where else?) and a young woman and her friend entered the aisle talking to each other and did not notice Lisa’s belly until they were nearly even with us. But when she did, I felt the breeze from her head whipping around. Her raised eyebrows and wide eyes could be easily be translated as saying, “WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE, SHE IS ABOUT TO HAVE THAT BABY RIGHT NOW!” When the baby didn’t pop out a second later, she caught herself and shared that aforementioned nervous, apologetic smile. If we had been thinking ahead, we could probably have gotten parents of teenagers to pay us to visit their house and scare their children into abstinence.

However, that’s not the only change I’ve noticed. Chris and I know each other through the WWII reenacting community and two weekends ago we attended a living history event. Most of the guys there know that Lisa and I are expecting and generally conversation steered towards the topic of our imminent bundle of joy throughout the weekend. This was dramatically different from the reenactment I attended a month before our wedding where the highlight of marital conversation was: “Get out before seven years, after that alimony’s a bitch.” Nope, this time around guys who I have known for years, guys I have spent many hours, if not days, conversing with about guns, tanks, battles, helmets, bayonets, beer, and other manly stuff, suddenly got all googly-eyed and sentimental, whisked away to the birthdays of their own children.


But that’s not the strange part. The strange part is the consistency of their message, especially since it’s not just guys I know from reenacting. I’ve been hearing since our first announcement how “everything’s going to change” and, “It’s the best and hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” In the last few weeks I can add to that: “There’s no way to describe the experience of birth,” and “Sleep as much as you can now.” And I’m not just talking a few guys here and there, I’m talking about dozens. All saying the same things. With the same goofy smiles.

Now when that many different people who don’t know each other keep saying the same things, there are two possibilities. First, it’s a conspiracy to trick unsuspecting expectant fathers into pleasant expectation as some sort of twisted revenge for what other fathers did to them. Or second, there is something incredibly unique and transcendent about fatherhood that goes beyond differences and unites all men into one sacred brotherhood. Actually, that solves it. Just typing that out convinced me it has to be a conspiracy. Guess I’ll find out soon enough.

The Bachelor Lifestyle

Yesterday morning, at 0545, we got both kids out of bed and loaded them in the car. I drove the wife to the airport where she boarded a plane for San Francisco. She will return Thursday evening, so I had four days and three nights of hard fighting before I will be relieved. I'm used to dealing with the kids during the day without much help, but it is definitely nice knowing that in the event of screaming, blood loss, or general Daddy is going to snap emergency, the wife can run out of her office to save the day. When I take Lily upstairs for a nap, she can help with any potty needs or random injuries that might occur during a 3 year old being 3. This is the first time that I've had to handle the kids for more than 24 hours or so without any backup.

First thing when we woke them up in the morning, both kids gave me a look like, "Why are you waking me up, I was sleeping so well." I've seen that look before, from their Mother, when I'm leaving in the morning and I wake her up to tell her goodbye. I get the stink eye and yelled at. In the case of the kids, the stink eye was actually somewhat rewarding. Pretty sure I get to wake them up at least 300 more times between the hours of 1 AM and 6 AM for fun before the score is even.

Both were loaded into the care in their flame-retardant pajamas, so they'd be safe in the event of jet fuel explosion, and were very quiet on the way to the airport. Until Owen saw the planes and his quote was timeless. "WHHHOOOOOOOAAAAA!!!!" He came alive when he realized there were planes about. We've been to the airport overlook a lot to watch the planes take off and land, definitely one of his favorite activities, and here he was staring at them closer than ever before. Then he seemed to grasp that his Mommy was going to get into one of them and ACTUALLY GET TO FLY IN AN AIRPLANE!!!!!!!!

As we were leaving the airplane, he had tons of questions. "Where is Mommy going?" "Is she getting into an airplane?" "Can I get in an airplane?" "Can I go to Market Street, get Dungeness Crab from a street vendor, and see the Golden Gate?" Maybe that last one was me. I told him Mommy was going to San Francisco. Not to be one-upped, he announced he was going to North Carolina. Good job world traveler. Of course, he thinks he lives on North Carolina Street in the town of North Carolina, outside the city of North Carolina, in the United States of North Carolina. We're working on his address, but it's slow going.

Throughout the the last two days, he's been asking where Mommy is and needing her for everything. Including the screaming fit I twittered about yesterday when he wanted to show his balloon to Mommy. I've been trying to explain that Mommy is out of town at a very important work conference. Since his Mommy usually goes to work in her pajamas with bed head, he's just not getting this. So I've started to incorporate little facts about Mommy's business trip.

I told him that Mommy went to help Gru stop Vector during the moon heist. He's really into the minions from Despicable Me so that was pretty impressive. Mommy is helping Sir Topham Hatt eliminate confusion and delay on the Sodor Railway. I also explained that Mommy was helping Bob the Builder fix his small business software. Can we customize your import and create a new client field? YES WE CAN! At least I think I've heard some of those words from the wife when I pretend to pay attention to her talk about the day.

With all the rain yesterday, we generally spent most of our time knocking out videos and grocery shopping. The menu while the wife is gone includes pizza, macaroni and cheese with hot dogs, and peanut butter and jelly. I normally do all the cooking, but I'm going for things that take minimal time to prepare and include the maximum amount of gluten that the wife can't eat. Besides, he who turns his back on a 3 year old for more than 8 seconds will rue the day. While loading the car for various errands today and spending 3 minutes not paying full attention to him, he managed to find two crayons somewhere in the house. Normally, he couldn't give a flying stinky about coloring, but decided our couch needed some new orange and red lines. Of course crayon is the one thing I can;t get out of a microfiber couch. I like to be optimistic, so I'm glad he's finally into coloring...let me just burn these sharpies first.

Both kids have been in bed and asleep by about 7:10 so far. I'm thinking about setting alarms to wake them up at 3 AM so they'll be ready for bed time about 3 PM. It's never too early to start conditioning them for having kids of their own, right?

CK

Swimming Lessons

On March 31st, there was an incident. We went down to Greenville, SC for a family wedding and my parents are awesome and agreed to come down to keep an eye on their grandkids, as well as my nephew while we partied down. We set them up in a local hotel with an indoor pool and took care of the pizza during the wedding. While we were getting ready for the evening out, Owen went with his Nana and Papa to go swimming in the hotel pool. At one point, Nana told Owen to stay on the steps going into the pool while she took the 3 steps from the stairs to the door to let Papa into the pool area. When she turned around, 4 seconds later, Owen was gone. He was standing on the bottom of the pool in 3 and a half feet of water, waiting for someone to come fish him out.

This was totally Owen's fault for bad listening reasons, but it also firmly established something. He needed swimming lessons as soon as possible. We spend entirely too much time on the lake boating to have him not become an expert swimmer. Don't make me think of him stepping off a shelf in the lake and going under. When we got home from that weekend, he was enrolled in the next available swim class. My parents called us about 5 minutes after the registration and asked if we were going to get him swimming lessons and offered to pay for them. We graciously agreed to let them.

Last year, we tried to work with him a little bit in the various pool outings, but he loves to play with us too much. He doesn't want to put his head underwater and blow bubbles when he can splash around with Mom and Dad. We also have him in floats the whole time because we don't want to pluck a kid off the bottom every 15 seconds. Not to mention the fact that we really have no idea how to teach a kid to swim.

Swim class was really helpful and he finished his last class in the first series today. Not only did he pass the class, he aced everything including the Spiderman, Superman Arms, and the Spongebob. I'm not really sure what any of those things mean, but I sure am impressed my son can do stuff that those three can. I really wish that there was some sort of funny incident that allowed me to crack wise on his class, but the teachers were on top of them and all the kids did a really good job of bowing to the peer pressure of not sinking to the bottom and listening to the instructors. There was one time he leaned forward really far and almost toppled in, but a teacher noticed it and got him in line. My only complaint is that it was really focused on getting him comfortable with the pool and the basics of sticking your head under water without ingesting anything, but it didn't go too much further than that.

So we start level 2 of swim classes next Tuesday. As Owen will tell you "I don't want to sink anymore." I don't want you to either.

CK

Amendment One

Today is primary day here in North Carolina. We're picking people to run in the November elections, but we're also voting on a state constitutional amendment. Basically, if you vote for it, you're saying marriage is only between a man and a woman. If you vote against it, you are saying marriage is not legally defined as a man and woman. I am a member of a public speaking club and there are three topics you are supposed to avoid: sex, religion, and politics. I generally try to avoid these three topics within my blog as I want it dedicated to the goofy things that my children do and my observations as I live life with them. I've really been debating whether I wanted to comment on Amendment One or just ignore it since it touches on all three of the subjects that you're supposed to avoid in polite conversation. If you don't care what I think, please read no further since I have no illusions that I'll be changing any minds or making a difference with the few friends and family that might read my blog.

In this country, we tell our children to be themselves and we tell them that they can be anything they want. They can be an astronaut, they can be president, they can be a baseball player, or a movie star. We also tell them that if you work hard, you can achieve the American dream which is often defined as the white picket fence with 2.5 kids, the dog, and two cars in the garage. Now that I'm older, I'm as happy as I've ever been even though we're 0.5 kids short. I think we make up for it by having 2x the number of dogs specified. If my kids learn nothing else from me, the two things that I want them to learn is that working hard and taking responsibility for yourself is going to get you a long way in this world. If you do those two things, you probably can do anything you want to do. Chances are, my kids will not grow up to be an astronaut since NASA is being cut back, there's only a few people that will get to be president in their lifetime, and they're probably going to be too busy in Mensa and getting advanced degrees on full scholarship to have time to be movie stars. So realistically, they will probably grow up, get a job or start their own small business, and have the house, the 2.5 kids, dog, and 2 cars, right? Not necessarily if Amendment One passes, which is why I've decided to vote against it.

1. Marriage that is not between a man and a woman is already illegal in NC, so we're voting on a redundancy. In this economy, why are we wasting time and resources on something that has already "addressed" by the people voting for the amendment? Further, marriage is established in the church by God, so why is the government getting involved in a religious institution at all?

2. Why would I want to take anything off the table that might make my children happy? I love being married to a wonderful wife and it's a strong commitment that I have made publicly to love her unconditionally. It's weird and strange, but our relationship got much better and stronger after marriage. I will also love my kids unconditionally and my hope is that one day, they too will find a partner that will have the same respect and love for them that my wife and I have for each other. If one or both of my kids is/are gay, that hope isn't going to change.

3. I'm definitely in favor of less government involvement in just about all facets of personal lives. Between terrorism, unemployment rates, gas prices, utility prices, corruption in government, wild stock market swings, outsourcing of jobs, and the housing market it seems like we have a heck of a lot more stuff to worry about that affects much larger portions of the population before we get to gay marriage. Plus, I can't think of a time when I have said, "Thank goodness the government stepped in, everything is perfect now!"

It basically boils down to the fact that I'm concerned about me. I want my children to be happy and have as many options as possible open to them. I want to see the look on my son's face when his bride (or groom) walks into view. I want to escort my little girl down the aisle or across the sand of a beach or see her face light up. I really don't care. I want them to have grandkids I can spoil, whether they're biological or adopted. The Muppets have it right when they sang, "Life's a happy song when there's someone by your side to sing along."

If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married. If it one day becomes legal, don't attend gay marriages of your friends or family. But don't you dare tell my kids that they can't do something. Because they CAN do anything they want, like becoming the first gay astronaut president.

CK