Christmas came and went.


Geez, and I thought I was doing a good job savoring it.   Christmas music.  Baking cookies.  Gathering and wrapping presents.  It’s still just one day, though, and the part of the holiday that a lot of people look forward to is over before noon.

There were some very nice seasonal events, too many to list, actually.  I don’t mean to say that I didn’t have a lovely holiday.  It was just fast.  Really fast.

And it reminds me of the truest thing every parent has told me about raising a child.  It flies by!  Charlotte is closer to 21 months old than 20, and she walks and talks and has favorite toys and programs and movies.

I should use one of my favorite Christmas presents (a new camera!) to take pictures of some of my favorite of Charlotte’s presents (is that a sentence?).  She’s got a huge collection of Sesame Street figures (and the accessories) that she calls her “guys” after what I called them.  She sitting there playing with them now.

Now: winter.  And my century-old apartment is so drafty that the heat literally will not turn off.  Instead of the whole shebang turning on and off, the system stays on while the “auxiliary heat” comes on and off.  I shudder to think of our electric bill and environmental impact.  We console ourselves with the fact that we won’t be here next winter.

I just shit myself.


Well, not shit myself per se. But, well…

There I was, just a little while ago, recently home from a trip to Ikea with Charlotte’s grandparents. I was on the prowl for some caffeine. Remembered the Pepsi I didn’t finish in the diaper bag. I thought I heard kids running around in the empty apartment upstairs. Then I heard the little Chinese coin windchime we have, and I didn’t remember where it was hung (two months here, and there are still boxes and unhung curtains). Then I heard windows rattle. Then the whole building shook.

In the fraction of a second wherein my brain realized that everything at The Upland was shaking in its 100-year-old bricks and that I was standing in the living room feeling very out-of-control of the situation, I screamed, “Charlotte!” and ran to Charlotte’s room. She, of course, was tuckered out from Ikea (when she got a little boy to push her around in a little baby cart — seriously) and sound asleep — with her little but in the air. There was nothing around her crib that could fall on her.  And that was that.

I was left shaken up and shaking and very very glad that the massively over-loaded bookshelves were not towering over Charlotte at the time.

I looked for cracked walls and ceilings, but, well, this building has survived worse. I’m sure. Besides, not being a home owner means that cracked foundations (etc.) are not really my problem. We could just move (and we tend to do that a lot anyway).

The feeling that the earth is shaking and you can’t control which way this big old building might lurch was enough to make me shit myself, for sure. Luckly, 12 years of Catholic school (not counting two for grad school) teach you very excellent* bowel control.

*(How can something be very excellent?)

Be prepared to be amazed by people.


That said, you might be surprised at how awesome people can be. From my parents driving us to the hospital at one in the morning to birth the baby — and bringing us food at the hospital (Subway!) — to a stranger helping me unload my groceries onto the belt when I was obviously having some trouble with the baby strapped to me, people can be pretty amazing when you’re a new parent.

Along with all the “advice” you don’t want (“My mudder put wissy on ma teef, and Ohm Okay.”)*, you’ll get useful advice and hints from people from whom you expect it (your parents, your friends who are parents) and from people that might surprise you (a guy in line at the grocery store, a blogger). My great-aunt says that there are only two rules to raising a baby: don’t yell at them, and don’t give them booze. When your daughter ignores you and keeps getting into the cabinets and such, you appreciate the first of those rules.

While there are people who will still nearly run you and your yellow (!) stroller over with their SUVs, you’d be surprised by the people who will go out of their way to make way for you. Coming back from a long walk to Belvedere Square last month, a huge pickup truck with a huge trailer backed waywayway up to let us pass, when they really weren’t in a position to have to and were really barely in a position to be able to. For every jerk who doesn’t yield to you in the crosswalk, there’s another who will stop without needing to, nowhere near one.

Okay, so for every ten people who get on your ass and refuse to cut the new parents any slack, there’s one person who will forgive you for anything. But. Still. That’s one person who seems to understand.

Having a kid changes all of your relationships.  I know I have drifted a little from some people and gotten much closer to others.  Being parents can really bond two friends or cousins or siblings together.  We have friends (who are parents) who are incredibly supportive, even when that means just being available for a coffee and a walk.

I don’t get to hang out with my brothers as much as usual, but they don’t seem to hold it against me.  Rather, one is gaga over Charlotte all the time, while the other has often been a comrade to relaxing with some much-needed fresh air and a beer (or two), even two weeks ago when we relaxed over Coronas and did some bitching.

I’m not going to lie and say that my parents (who probably read this blog!) aren’t often a source of frustration, and that I don’t know that I probably frustrate them as well.  This isn’t news to any new parent, and if your parents are automatically used to the idea of you as a parent yourself, well, that’s just bizarre, brother.  But my parents also always there for a trip to the store to get something we really need, to babysit when we have an important obligation, to chat, etc.  For as many times as we want to kill one another (Hi, guys!), we’re still a family.

I’m probably forgetting a lot of stuff and a lot of people.  But this has been a hell of a lot of blogging for one day, and my laptop feels like it’s about to melt.

*(“My mother put whiskey on my gums while I was teething, and I’m not completely stupid, not completely.”  Said by one very Hampdeny Hampdenite.)

[See also here.]

Be prepared to face the ridiculous in people.


[Continued from earlier.]

I wrote this Monday night but didn’t know if I should publish it.  But, well, why not?  Maybe it will help some new parents.  Maybe it will help people around new parents to chill the hell out.  Maybe it will help me after a year of being frustrated by people.  Maybe it’s just entertaining?

You might remember, around this time last year and last summer, that I was astounded by how people could still expect the same X/whatever from you after you become a parent as they did before. (I was even ashamed and guilty at my reactions to it all.) This ranged from passive-aggressive people being pissed that we weren’t in the mood for visitors the day we got home from the hospital, to a co-worker of mine who liked to bitch to me about not being happy with the salary she was being offered from the university I was exiting. This is annoying enough and, in some cases, infuriating. While some of the bile this instilled in me spilled over into my blog, too many people I know (and too many involved, frankly, at work and at home) read this damned thing for any fruitful venting. (Plus, I’m painfully unable to just let people be mad at me, especially if they’re only mad because they are being unreasonable.) If venting can be fruitful? I don’t know. Maybe it can be fruitful to you, to prospective/future/new parents, to know that, Nope, you are not crazy.

Becoming a parent changes people. It will change you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change everyone around you. This is a cause for/of conflict.

1) People will demand the same time, attention and consideration that you gave them before you became a parent and were responsible for another human being. People who like you to listen to them bitch about the same boat you’re in yourself will still want their hour a day at work for you to listen to them. Your boss will still get you to come in two weeks after your child is born, when you’re on leave, to do something it’s not your job to do. Groups to which you belong will chide you for your absence. People will demand that their feelings come not only before your feelings, but before you child altogether. No one seems to realize that you’re a finite person, with limited time, attention and energy – and that you’re sleeping for 2-4 hours a night to boot.

2) People will demand your child. I can’t count the number of times that someone has gotten mad at me, or mad at Mama, for not handing our kid over quickly enough; for being too tired for company; for taking our child back too quickly (whatever that means); for correcting people or saying, “No.” We all only have our children as children for a limited time, and the time wherein they like to spend time with their parents and to be held by them is even shorter. Still, people will demand it. Trust me.

3) The number of children people have or the recency of their childbearing seem to have, in my experience, absolutely no affect on how ridiculous they are going to be toward you. We have friends with a child not much older than Charlotte, which is to say, friends who are very recent parents. One of them came over to meet Charlotte while he/she was sick, when Charlotte was nine days old, got her sick and taken to the ER when she was less than two weeks old.  I’m not even making this up.  I was so furious that I shredded their Christmas card (not my proudest moment).

4) Barely anyone is going to cut you any slack.  I can’t say that enough.  Not your co-workers or boss[es]; not your friends; not your family; not your parents; not your grandparents. Hardly anyone. People have gotten mad at us for: not coming to X event because Charlotte was sick or fussy; reading too much; saying (even yelling, when we have to) that Charlotte can’t have something they want to give them because it’s dangerous; someone got insanely mad at me last summer for not remembering to do her/him a favor that I regularly performed. (Really?) Sure, some people might say that they understand that Mama had a difficult delivery and a lot of…strife with her side of the family and that post-baby depression was no stranger in this residence. Some people say that they understand that you worry, that you make mistakes. But there aren’t many people who are going to act like they understand and cut you any slack.

I certainly don’t mean to say or to imply that having a kid makes you immune to guilt or responsibility. I remember other people who were flat-out jerks when they had kids, and we have both tried to avoid this kind of behavior as much as possible. (This post is negative enough without elaborating on all of that.) But sometimes we make mistakes. Slack-cutting or not, we make mistakes. We do.

Still. You’d think other parents would know this and cut you slack, when they remember their own mistakes. Still. One would hope? Rather, it seems like people with kids assume that the sleeplessness, the frustration and the anxiety that they [likely] encountered as new parents were all specific to their own experience. That is, almost everyone with kids seems to forget what it’s like to be new parents. They forget that you make mistakes, that you’re not sleeping, that you worry. And then they don’t forgive you for any of it.

5) No one’s going to give you credit for the things that you do manage to do for them. If you help someone at work while running on an hour and a half of sleep; spend your evening helping someone hunt something down; or remember something everyone else forgot, all people are going to recognize is the unreasonable demands you didn’t meet. I’d suspect that statement of being dramatically pessimistic, if it weren’t very dramatically proven to be true consistently and constantly. I missed one event last summer and was called “scum” [literally] for “blaming” my kid for why I wasn’t there. Not that one time.  One fucking time.

6) People love to forget that you are your child’s parents, that you are the boss. Oodles of people are going to do things without asking you (food/drink, obvious choking hazards, dangerous situations, etc.) that you will have to correct. You wind up not just watching your child; you have to watch everyone else, too. That doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. It’s not the world’s job to watch your kid. But when people get mad at you for it, that’s more than unreasonable.

7) People are going to expect things that you don’t owe them, and they’re going to get mad when they don’t get them.  They’re going to expect you to be super polite when you’re exhausted.  They’re going to expect that you consult them before you do something, or they’re going to expect you to leave them alone.  They’re going to expect your child whenever they want, for as long as they want. They’re going to expect that you tell them that, yes, in fact, your child likes them better because she reached for them.  It’s not that she’s social or likes new people.  She hates her parents.  In short, there are going to be people in your life who are going to have expectations of you which they are not going to share with you, and they are going to hold it against you when they don’t get what they want.  Maybe you’re already in this kind of situation.  In that case, it’s going to get worse.

Sure, you could say.  So what?  Ignore them.  That’s easier said than done, when people who are close to you keep getting mad at you for not meeting expectations that are not only unreasonable, but also secret for some reason.  Expecting people to read your mind and then getting mad when they don’t is ridiculous. Everyone knows this.  But everyone does it.  It’s very hard to be good parents when people get mad at you for little (and usually silly) things constantly, never tell you before or after you didn’t meet their requirements and then have the nerve to get mad about it. That’s putting one’s feelings not only ahead of yours as parents.  That’s putting one’s feelings before the baby.  I have done a bad job of dealing with it by giving in all the time.  I keep putting other people’s feelings on par with Charlotte because I don’t want to make the same mistakes I have seen other people make, regarding getting people mad at your kid because they’re mad at you.  But that’s it.  Not anymore.

8) People are going to get offended if you don’t share their values and opinions, no matter how half-assed or incorrect they are. If I had a dollar for every time that some “ignorant” Hampdenite got in Charlotte’s face with a cigarette to demand, “How ole?” I’d be a rich man. “How ole [sic] what? Me? The baby? How old do I think you’ll be when you die, from the looks of you?” DON’T SMOKE AROUND MY FUCKING KID! You don’t drive your kid around in a car (which is, statistically, way more dangerous than walking around with a carrier or a stroller)? People are going to get offended that you don’t share their drivemyassaroundeverywhere values. I think this is even worse if you’re hyper-educated. It’s common already for people, in my experience, to get downright hostile in their opinions about my opinions, values and practices. They seem to view my choices as judgments on their own decisions and to feel obligated to defend themselves against some bogyman value-estimates about their choices. I think (and I hope I’m not sounding too stuck up here) that some people get triple-threatened when others who are very well-educated value something very different that said person does. People have, even recently, gotten nasty with me about the type of food I eat, the amount of TV I don’t watch, my lack of a car and a house. This is almost always not just friendly joking around. This is bullshit, is what it is.

——-

Of course, I’d be guilty of being as blind and mean and ridiculous myself if I didn’t recognize the good things people do to/for new parents. But, well, that’s another post. This is long enough already. I’ll get on the other, lest I be accused of being too negative.  The other post will self-publish in a few hours.

Be prepared to watch your whole world shift.


I suppose that, in the grander context, I’m still a very very new parent. My adventure is just beginning. But, on the other hand, I’ve certainly had more experience changing diapers, getting a very…spirited baby to eat her food and operating on two hours of sleep than non-parents, expecting parents and even newer parents. Besides, it’s not like a million people read this blog and that I really feel acutely accountable for what’s on here sometimes. (“If you don’t like it, don’t read it,” I always say. Complaining about my complaining, being negative about my negativity, after these seven years, is like complaining that a pencil blog is about pencils or that I am hairy. Besides, negatively cathartic bitching is the first step to corrective action, in my mind.)

So, my own short and poorly written and incomplete and probably pretty inaccurate articles for new and expecting parents commences.

First: BE PREPARED TO WATCH YOUR WHOLE WORLD SHIFT.

I mean it. For one, in happens instantly. For another thing, it happens, which is to say, I felt like I watched it happen, like something deeply engrained enough in my me that I can’t control it or will it changed my entire worldview and priorities in a matter of seconds.

My wife has been my partner for my entire adult life and was the most important thing to me in the universe until 5:16am, April 16, 2010, when my daughter was born. I realized it when the team of doctors was — literally — sewing her up and putting everything back together (read the birth story here). There I was, blood all over the floor, my wife too drugged up to feel it and both of us too delirious to realize what was going on. Charlotte was getting weighed and measured after the team gave her to her hysterical mother.  After that, when the nurses took Charlotte, I ignored my wife, largely. I hovered over the table until they gave Charlotte to me.

Then I walked over to the less busy part of the room, carrying my tiny daughter, where no one paid much attention to us, since they were fixing up Mama. We talked (I talked) and looked at one another. We bonded right away.

Then I realized that my wife was in bad shape when one doctor asked another, “Wait. Is that a vein?” It’s not that I didn’t care. It’s not that I wasn’t concerned. But with everyone hovering over and working on Mama, I was alone with Charlotte. She was all that mattered then and there. And I felt that my wife, though the most awesome woman in the world, was — for lack of a better phrase — second to my daughter on my list of values/priorities/cares. It switched while I didn’t even notice, in a bright room full of blood, scrubs and sleeplessness, while the sun came up over Baltimore.

This, of course, has extended into every other part of my life. Other people, even family members. Work. Volunteerism/service. Creative endeavors. Cycling. Reading. Everything. Charlotte is not only the most important being in my life. She’s also SO important that she occupies the importance of many entities. Rather than, say, #1 on my hierarchy of loves, she occupies at least #1-#20. This kind of tectonic shift, while “natural” me, has sufficed to piss a lot of people off, even other parents. No one wants to feel like you’re too concerned with other things to have the time/energy/patience for them. That’s another post, though.

I can’t believe that this kid is a year old.


This has been a hell of a year, in ways both good and bad. Good because, well, look at her. Bad because people don’t stop being assholes when your baby is born, I’ve found.  (See part 1 and part 2.)

I think I’ve developed a list of unexpected assholery and ways of dealing with [some of] it over the last year, which is fodder for some longish blog posts.  Maybe I’ll get to some today during Charlotte’s nap, now that I’ve gotten my PHP updated and the look I like back.

All these random effects of parenthood.


Boy, the patience you find!  Despite being chronically sleep-deprived, you find more patience for other people’s demands.  Whether it’s demanding your time or attention, not cutting you any slack (despite being parents oneself), or insisting that one’s feelings are more important that yours or even your child, we get to encounter lots of people who test our patience all the time.  My favorite?  A smoked-out Hampdenite with three teeth and a cigarette in hand who stops you on the street to demand, “How old?”  That’s barely an intelligible question.  I almost responded, “I’m 31.  How old are you?” once, but, like I said: patience.

Must be something built into the human race, for people to test the patience of new parents and, thereby, strengthen it so that we have more patience for our children and our marital/relationship adventures, as we add “mother and “father” to our list of roles.  Maybe it keeps us a calm when our daughter pukes all over herself, highchair and floor or when she gets up when we’re going to bed and stays up until 2 a.m. (like last night!).

Empathy!  Parents gossip about one another, even new parents.  I’ve repeated the story about someone I know who loudly won’t give his/her kids candy or sweets but has given him/her both alcohol and caffeine in my presence.  I even thought some other people were crazy for bragging about their baby sleeping through the night at six weeks (holy shit!) when it was precisely because this kid was out with his/her parents until midnight regularly and that “sleeping through the night” to them meant that said baby would sleep from 1 a.m. when they got home until around 6 a.m. when they got up for work.

And this was before I was a parent!  I find myself empathizing with people whom I’ve judged and/or gossiped about because I know people are judging Mama and I, are analyzing our choices, etc.  I know because I can “tell” and because people people tell us and/or judge us to our freakin faces!  “You read too much,” is a nice one, complete with implied resentment over our massive [over] educations.  “That’s not what I did; I did X,” is another one, wherein you have to make people feel better because they made/make different choices than you did/do, even when your kids are close in age.  “You need a car,” is one I’m going to start peeing on people’s shoes over, along with, “What are you going to do when/if she wants to eat meat?”  “Sorry you feel guilty for the 7-passenger SUV; that’s your problem,” I feel like yelling.  And I want to shake people by the shoulders to force them to tell me the last time I forced vegetarianism on anyone who has a choice.

My point?  I find it easier to understand being on the receiving end of assholery these days.  And more patience.  But I wish people wouldn’t reiterate it all so damned much.

When your baby’s sick.


Charlotte’s been sick before. When she was eight days old, a friend came over with a cold and got her sick. Emergency room to check her breathing, and a lot of very extremely just filthy language out of me toward the person who got her sick (and who has a kid and should have known better). Charlotte got a nasty stomach bug over the holiday break. I picked her up one morning, and the front of her PJs were warm and damp, all over her chest and little belly.

It was poop.

Poor thing.

Charlotte’s had a fever before, but she’s never just had a day where she didn’t feel well without anything visible being wrong (aside from another fever). Yesterday, she wasn’t her playful self. She was too weak to practice walking. Her head was heavy and hot. She wanted to cuddle, to sit on my lap, put her head on my chest and chill.

Now. This child. Unless it’s bedtime or storytime, she doesn’t not like to sit still on a lap for long. This was strange behavior indeed.  Her fever wasn’t high enough to merit medicine or a visit to the doctor. Her stomach seemed fine. It was nothing big.

But there was also little I could do for her to make her feel better. I didn’t necessarily feel helpless so much as just bad. I felt badly for this usually bubbly and happy little kid who just plain felt like poop. All I could do was cuddle her, change her diaper and make sure she had enough to eat.

Her fever is lower today, and she’s interested in playing.  She also got up an hour earlier — in anticipation of changing the clocks this week?  Is my daughter that smart already?

Luckily, a coffeemaker with a timer showed up yesterday and got me out of bed earlier this morning.  It also could be the very thing that woke Charlotte up early.  She’s never heard a coffeemaker before.

Officially a Stay-At-Home Dad.


Yesterday was my first official full day as a stay-at-home dad. We went to the market, where Charlotte got upset in line and needed a snack. We played. We fought over meals because she’s in a week of not wanting to eat. We went to the park with our friends, getting large coffees en route. She napped while I cooked and did housework. We played.

I fell asleep on the couch after dinner.

It was a good day. But she just switched from talking to spirits (seriously) in her crib to yelling; so I’m off.

Here comes the 28th.

I have grown considerably tired of explaining what happens when my contract is up Monday. What’s so weird about a father leaving the workforce (at least full-time) to care for his daughter? And what do the three letters after my name have to do with it?

I never need to have issues about being PhDed and “home” — lots of other people do that for me.

Things that surprise me about parenthood, November edition.

1) How much sleep deprivation really affects everything you do.
2) How little you care about housework and your beard that really needs a trim.
3) How people feel somehow entitled to your kid, in a world where time is limited. This is certainly not limited to people I actually know, like the lady with dirty hands who felt the need to touch my daughter’s hand the day before she got sick this weekend or distant relatives who think I owe them to shake my baby on their lap while they otherwise ignore her.
4) On the other hand, how many people are afraid of babies or are afraid to even ask to hold her and even people who seem immune to babies. I’m thinking of an extended “family” member who went through a four-hour party without even acknowledging Charlotte’s existence, despite being alone with we two in a room several times and leaving a lot of comments on Facebook. Weird.
5) How little cleaning up someone else’s diarrhea really bothers you — which is to say, almost not at all.
6) The amount of coffee I can consume and still be alive.
7) How insensitive some people can be, going so far as to accuse you of “drama” or using your kid as an excuse for missing something. I like to think that I wasn’t this cold when I wasn’t a parent.
8) How incredibly loving some people can be, even complete strangers — like the lady that helped me unload my large cart at the store while I was holding Charlotte, just to be nice.
9) How little time I have for reading and how little I really care.
10) How some people take your parenting decisions and lifestyle as a personal affront against them if they did something different. Sorry we don’t have a car, plan to raise our daughter vegetarian, feed her formula, take her on the bus, read to her too much and encourage her to play roughly. We weren’t judging anyone when we did that, geez. I’ve been keeping the fact that we recently gave up on the green diapers largely to myself!
11) How much baby formula still grosses me out, but not poop.
12) How my daughter has my wife’s smile, her cheeks, her mouth, her legs, head, feet and, possibly, hair.
13) How making exact replicas of my hands and ears was ever possible.
14) How much of the affection I feel for Charlotte seems somehow reciprocated sometimes, like how she reaches for me, how she smiles when I come into a room — and how she screams when I leave (she’s even getting separation anxiety early!).
15) And, to round off my list with something completely positive: how much fun toy shopping still is!

Somewhat shameful beginning of fatherhood.


It’s no secret that I write more when I’m sad, mad or stressed out. It follows that those are the times that I blog more, too. But it does seem that all of my blogging and journal writing over the last five weeks or so is negative, even angry. I have been blissed out over being a father, over watching my wife become a mother and over cuddling, playing and walking with my adorable daughter.

But I’ve also spent a lot of time being really, genuinely, deeply pissed off. A shortened list:

1) People who put their issues over what is best for our child, even over what’s best for us as parents and as individuals. This started mere hours after Charlotte was born when someone thought their own issues were more important than, you know, the birth of a child. And our parenting instincts reared themselves in a flash, showing us both to be not only intensely protective of our daughter, but also violently so — if words and feelings can be violent in their own way (which I think is so).

2) People who feel entitled to our daughter. This includes demanding that we let whoever wants to hold her do so whenever and for as long as people want, despite not contributing to her welfare in any way (that is, people who just want to hold babies and think that they are entitled to it, like babies are fashion accessories to get your picture taken with and uploaded to Facebook); expecting that we not only arrange our schedule around when they demand a visit but also that we should arrange the needs and comfort of a newborn to their availability; people who, for some reason, think they deserve our time and attention when we have a newborn who actually does deserve it and need it.

3) People judging our parenting, whether they’ve done it before or not. This has ranged from two people exchanging “knowing” looks when we said that Charlotte does not like her formula heated up, to people telling us what to do, to people assuming they know our kid better than we do — even after spending five minutes with her. All kids are different, and it’s insulting to assume that anyone knows our kid better than we do. She likes some weird stuff, and some things that would drive a lot of kids crazy don’t bother her one lick. She’s also moving very quickly, in some ways, developmentally.

4) People not thinking. This includes being more rough than we like, blowing cigarette smoke, being too loud, coming to our home and getting our week-old daughter sick, etc. I’m sure this is a universal symptom of parenthood. But so is watching your child get sick, falling down, moving out — and knowing that you’ll miss a good chunk of his or her life because you’ll be dead. I don’t like those, either. Who does?

The worst is the effect it has on me as a father and as an overly-reflective person in general. I see unwelcome and unfounded criticisms and questioning of our parenting as a personal attack on my intelligence and worldly wisdom. I want to smack people who want us to arrange our child’s life around their schedule and availability and then get mad and passive-aggressive when we don’t (because we can’t). I walk around in the grocery store with our sweet little baby strapped on, plotting with my wife how to avoid situations that just make us mad, when I should be enjoying Charlotte, or, at least, getting the shopping over with so we can go play. I get mad when people do things I don’t like and don’t think are good for my daughter, and then I get mad at them for the fact that I don’t have the stones to set people straight unless I’m closely related to them. I get mad when people don’t respect our (really mine – everyone respects mothers’ “authority” more than fathers’ in my experience) position as The Boss[es] because we’re new parents, but I don’t really do anything about it other than get mad – and then I get mad about that.

But I have to get over it. Some of this is just a case of jerks who have found new ways to be bungholes and a general state of people being lazy and selfish (not that I’m immune, certainly). Some is just new. I’m sure that people are not going to stop judging and criticizing our parenting anytime soon, and we’re upset about it because it’s so new. Sheesh, wait until she grows up an unbaptized vegetarian riding the bus! We need and I need to assert our authority when people do things we don’t like or demand things they have no right to. People are always going to offer her things we don’t think are good for her, teach her things we want to teach her ourselves or don’t want her taught, bring things (smoke, judgments, sickness) around her despite our best efforts. I suppose that, if I want people to remember that we are in charge, they need to reminded it when they over-step themselves.

One thing we try to judge things by is what effect this or that will have on Charlotte. Someone is demanding our time. What have they done/will they do to benefit Charlotte?

My parents do a lot for us and a lot for Charlotte (Hi, Grandma!), and she already looks at them differently than she does other people. They have an open invitation to visit whenever they want, and I’m glad that they take us up on it regularly. On the other hand, someone who never expressed interest in Mama being pregnant, who never called or emailed or anything – well, we’re not going to break ourselves arranging our lives around a visit with people who don’t care about Charlotte but are just curious or bored. No one is entitled to Charlotte in any way, not even her parents. Someone demands our time as individuals (as opposed to as parents). That takes away from time with Charlotte, and I don’t know anyone I like that much. My patience is reserved for my child who can only express herself by crying and screaming and flailing her limbs.

When we relate everything back to Charlotte, the right course of action or thought is clear. What makes us better parents and what benefits Charlotte wins. Period. Her parents having the final say without being subject to constant judgment, without thoughtless people making demands on their time, without having grudges held against them because we don’t schedule our child’s life and needs around their free time – these are good for Charlotte. They win. Everything else is poo, and I know a lot more about poo since becoming a father.

Then I marvel that love can be the source of anger and frustration – and even hate – when it’s protective love for a child. It seems that loving my child intensely precludes loving certain people and things that are bad for her or bad for her parents in a way that affects her.

In the end, the being who makes all of this mean anything comes to the front again, and I just sit and stare at my daughter and feel like a sillybutt for letting myself get upset over such diddlypoop.

Using your wisdom?

Okay.  Now I know why my wife called me arrogant.

I think my father called me yesterday to ask about what to do about a situation.  My mother (Hi, Mom!) complimented my people-reading skills last weekend.  I am glad for all of this.  I shudder to think how many times (even recently) I’ve bugged the shit out of my parents, asking for advice, a perspective, an opinion.

My wife and I were talking this morning, and I said, “If people seek you out for practical advice in dealing with people, power-structures, their emotions, etc., does that make you a philosopher?  That is, if you seem to have wisdom that people want to use?”

I think I have excellent judgement.  But I think that I also seldom use it.  I don’t think that personal idiocy precludes being able to help other people.

Maybe I’m just, as I suspect, a good listener.  I think I’m entirely too young and too dumb for people to be coming to me expecting sage advice.  But listening is a good skill, especially with fatherhood on the very near horizon.

I forgot where I was going with this.  It’s raining again, and I need to get to work.