Big Daddy Paul

If that title doesn’t grab your attention, then I have no chance, eh? Malcolm has officially stopped taking naps. This is a significant event in a stay at home parent’s life as the nap is only part of the day that you can really get anything done. It also provides a rare luxury when a child is in the house: peace and quiet. Losing the nap, then, means that you are losing the only chunk of the day that you can call your own.  You are, officially, always on the clock with your child. Losing the nap is like losing your colon, forever tethering you to a stinky bag of gas and human waste. Well, maybe that’s a little strong, but losing the nap really is significant, and I hated to see it go.

There are, of course, many ways of dealing with the newfound loss of freedom. Our first line of defense is school. We had Malkie in school until 1 p.m., but when he stopped napping we arranged to have him stay until 3. This has worked out even better for me, since now I had the house to myself and my bevy of poker loving dogs during the week. Why poker loving dogs? Because dogs are actually not very good at playing poker. More money for me!

Semi-cool dude with groupie

I definitely consider this a work in progress. We have noticed a huge uptick in his tantrums and somewhat random violence. Some days, he is completely out of control and he has actually fallen asleep in his room while confined there for various transgressions. I am taking the patient approach and hope that he will grow into his new schedule. I kinda hope he does so quickly, because the grumpy act is getting old. Or, I need to get a longer tube for the bag.

I stared at the screen and could hardly believe it.  Malcolm’s fourth birthday party was last Sunday and a parent sent us a thank you email for inviting their kid.  In it, the parent commented,  “Especially noted was Malcolm’s gentle and gracious behavior.”  Wow, someone not related by blood thought Malcolm was well behaved.  I rubbed my eyes and double checked the sender to see if it was one of the guys in my dad’s group playing a prank on me.  It was not and the woman who sent the email didn’t look drunk at the birthday party. So, I took her at her word, and it made my day.  Actually, it kinda made my last four years.

Parenting is hard.  Really fucking hard. You start with a little piece of shit that is essentially useless, except if you find any utility in waking up in the middle of the night a couple of times.  Then, the baby starts to eat real food and you realize just how savagely disgusting another person’s poo is.  Shortly thereafter, boys develop a keen sense of agility, so that they are more efficiently able to bite, kick, scratch, punch and shove other kids.  Finally, your child learns to speak, just in time to learn how to say that he hates you and doesn’t want to be your friend anymore.

While all this is happening, you convince yourself that your kid is not that bad.  He says, “Please and thank you” most of the time.  He eats some broccoli every so often.  He can hit a baseball, and one time he told you that he loved you at the end of a very long and difficult day.  Parents are always trying to convince themselves that their kid is not a bad kid, and that there is a reason they should continue being parents.  When we do this, I know that we are essentially deluding ourselves and that we are raising a monster, but I don’t care.  You tell yourself what you need to hear to go on parenting.

One day, however, they are bound to do something that makes you very happy.  At his birthday party, Malcolm ran around a gymnastics studio with 20 or so of his favorite friends with a huge smile.  He looked like he was really enjoying himself, and did so for the entire party.  Later, we asked him what he liked best about the party and he said, “Everything!”  Needless to say, we were extremely excited to see him so happy, and even more excited that he had fun without being a complete asshole to his friends.  Then, when one of his friends’ mom emailed us to say that she saw it too, we were ecstatic.  To see that someone else thoght that our son was “gentle and gracious,” that this was not one of those times we had to invent reasons to love Malcolm, made us both really happy.  And for that, I would say it was a really happy birthday for all of us.

I was showing Malcolm some of his baby pictures the other day, and I realized that  we have some real humdingers from his first couple of months.  Anyone who is having second thoughts about having children, read on:

Newborn babies aren’t much fun.  They sleep most of the time, and even when they are “up” they do not provide much satisfaction.  Luckily, you aren’t getting much sleep, so you aren’t so fun yourself.

Most of the time, when a baby makes this face, they are about to throw up or take a shit (or both!)   Stay far away from the baby when the brow furrows.

Be careful about highlighting your baby.  Amy and I played a rousing game of “use a yellow highlighter to show which features belong to you.”    Actually, there is a name for when your baby turns this color, it is either jaundice or leprosy, I forget which.  I anticipate this will be the same look Malcolm gives me when I tell him he can’t have a pony when he is 12.

Babies cry. A lot.  Right before this was taken, I told Malcolm that he was probably not going to go to a very good college, and he completely freaked out.  I called him a baby and stormed out of the room.

Sometimes you do what you think is a good idea and your child looks at you like you are fucking insane.  I think this was the first time that Amy washed Malcolm’s testicles.

Eventually, your kid gets curious about the world, and things get much more enjoyable.  Even a walk to the park can become a whole new world of experiences. Malcolm and I are both nervous eaters, so it was no surprise that new experiences would lead to something getting chomped on.  Here, it was the Baby Bjorn.

I do not know what is going on here.  He looks like a cross between a rap star and an extra terrestrial. I think right after this picture was taken, he coughed up a puppy. Not sure why.

Eventually, you wade through the pile of puke and shit, and something like this happens.  Three months of sleepness nights and stressful days fade away, and you get the best five minutes you can ever remember happening.  Wait, that is overly sentimental.  Let’s try this again.  This is a picture of Malcolm sitting on the cat.  Better, much better.

Our neighbor kid has no one else to play with, so he has been coming over to our house this week in the afternoons. I like the arrangement, because the boys occupy themselves and it frees me up to get stuff done.  However, since his daddy (also a stay at home dad) remains home with the other child, I supervise the boys by myself.  (When I say supervise, I mean that in the sense that I situate myself somewhere in the house so that I can hear the cries when one of them brutalizes the other.)  It does bring up an issue though, and that is what the heck do you do with someone else’s kid?

I know every bullet in Malcolm’s arsenal. I know the look in his eye when he is about to do something drastic.  I know how he is going to react to various things when he is a) cranky, b) hungry and c) both.  Our neighbor kid? I know nothing.  He is like a little llama, I haven’t the faintest idea of what makes him tick. He chastises Malcolm for mistakes that Malkie made hours before.  He alternates between being irritated by and obsessed with what Malcolm is doing. He says that our apple juice tastes like it has tomatoes in it.  I have no idea how to arbitrate disputes between the two, as I don’t really understand what their arguments are about. I feel kinda useless.

For now, I treat Jack like he is a Japanese tourist who understands little english.  I speak V-E-R-Y L-O-U-D-L-Y and V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y to him and mutter things under my breath when he turns away.  I make up arbitrary rules and roll my eyes constantly.  I say things like, "well that may be the custom in your country, but we do things differently here."  I figure that at some point I will learn how to tame the llama, but for now, I struggle with my Japanese. 

P.S. I believe that this was the first time in the history of the English language that the last sentence has been uttered before.  Talk about originality!