Kyle Garret's Blog, page 6

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Daycare starts today and I am freaking out.

 And by "today," I mean Wednesday, the day this will be posted.

As I have been told by a great many people, we'll get through this.  Appleseed will go to daycare and he'll be okay and we'll be okay and that's the way these things work.  And I'm sure the aforementioned people are right.  This is a nigh universal experience.  People have been leaving their children with other people for hundreds of years.  This is a big part of being a parent, particularly a parent in the 21st century.  This is what we do now.

But that's a big part of what upsets me.

At some point over those first few weeks after Appleseed was born, I told Nicole that I felt like I was going to burst.  It wasn't the responsibility of taking care of him that was causing this, it was the scope of how much I loved him.  It was huge.  It was unlike anything I've ever experienced.  It practically incapacitated me, that's how intense it was.  There was Appleseed and there was Nicole and there was nothing else.

But I couldn't function that way.  I couldn't live life like that.  And eventually I went back to work, which meant that the feelings that had rendered me incapable of life outside of our home had lessened.  I knew this was going to happen from the start, and it bothered the hell out of me.  I didn't want that feeling to lessen.  I didn't want the outside world to tamp it down.

This is how I feel about taking Appleseed to daycare.  I don't want it to become normal.  I don't want it to
be another part of life, like going to work or drinking coffee or brushing my teeth.  I don't want the fact that I'm leaving my son with strangers (albeit licensed, qualified strangers) to become commonplace.  I don't want to be able to walk away so easily.

I'm sure all of the above comes from over thinking the situation and, to a certain extent, from living a life of repressed sensitivity.  The bigger problem is going to be the obvious one: I don't want to leave my kid at daycare.  I want to see him as much as I can and when I can't, I want him to be with his mom.  That doesn't seem unreasonable, does it?

To a certain extent, I feel guilty about this.  There's a part of me that truly believes I should have advanced far enough in my life where I'm now able to be at home with Appleseed, where I don't have to go to work five days a week just to pay the bills.  I could have avoided this.  I should have done more.

There are two things that are keeping me from losing it completely (three, if you count whiskey).

Why is that woman smiling??The first is that I'm going to work from home tomorrow, and the daycare is not far from our house.  I'm not going to be locked into set hours when I have to leave Appleseed and when I can pick him up.  I can even visit if I want, but that might be pouring salt into the wound.  But being close and having the freedom to go see him at the drop of a hat is making this all far less difficult. 

I'm not sure what I'm going to do on Thursday.

The second is that, as Nicole pointed out, this isn't permanent.  Appleseed going to daycare doesn't mean he'll always have to go daycare or always have to go to that daycare, although it seems like a perfectly fine place to abandon your only child.  There's time.  Maybe I can figure this out.  Maybe I can make this work.  There's a glimmer of hope.

Maybe I can find a way to not end up the way everyone says I will.  Maybe I can put off that acceptance just a bit longer.

I will be fine on Wednesday; the build-up is always worse for me.  Nicole will probably be wreck.

Forget what I said; I'm going to be at that daycare every hour.  I'm not ready to move to the next stage of parenting just yet.

The 5 Stages of Grief (about taking a nap)

[image error] Appleseed hates taking naps.

A kid Appleseed's age should sleep something like 14 hours a day.  Even if he miraculously sleeps 8 hours at night, he still needs to get six more hours in during the day.  He's not happy about that.

He doesn't want to sleep.  And, honestly, I don't know that I can blame him.  I know all babies are inquisitive about the world around them, but Appleseed strikes me as even more so.  He's incredibly thoughtful.  Combine that with his new found stranger danger, and we can already start to see his personality coming out.  He's got introverted parents, so I guess that makes sense.

Appleseed's protestations against taking a nap could easily be organized ala the 5 stages of grief.

Denial
We call them "meth eyes."  Appleseed's eyes themselves don't really get red, but the area around them does.  It's like his eyeballs are suddenly surrounded by inflamed tissue.  Even his eye brows get red.  It's crazy.  It's also a sure sign that he's tired.

Appleseed likes to talk.  He can't say anything yet, but he likes to try.  And listening to him is fantastic.  He's to the point where he's not just making noises, it actually sounds like he's trying to say something, he just lacks the words.

But at a certain point it becomes these whale-like noises that are a surefire indicator that he's sleepy

Take meth eyes, add in whale noises, then figure out how long it's been since he last slept, and it's not hard to know when Appleseed needs to sleep.  It's obvious to everyone but him.  Actually, it's probably obvious to him, too, he just doesn't care.  He wants to stay up.  Tired?  I'm not tired.  Why would you think that?

I hope he never plays poker.

Anger
Oh, sweet fancy Moses, the anger.

I get static in my ears from Appleseed's screaming, it is that loud.  It's also freaky as hell because I honestly think I'm hurting him somehow.  Maybe I messed up the swaddle, even though none of him is really swaddled anymore these days.  Am I holding him too tight?  Does he need to burp?  He must
be in real pain!

No, he's just pissed off.  And he knows when we're going to try to get him to sleep.  He knows as soon as we carry him anywhere near the nursery.  And he starts the boil.

Bargaining
Okay, how about if I stop crying and just lie here in your arms for a while, will that make you happy?  Is that good enough?  I'll be quiet and wide awake and that should be enough, right?

Depression
This is when the bizarre noises kick in.  He sounds like a drunk bird or a raccoon that's taken one too many sleeping pills.  He'll often make these noises with his eyes closed, too, just to set me up.

The main problem is that the noises are hilarious, so I inevitably start laughing, which, of course, startles him and we're back to square one.

This is the stage when I know I'm actually making some progress.  His Anger and Bargaining stages are unpredictable in length, but the Depression stage usually means the home stretch is in sight.

Acceptance
Okay, daddy, I'll take a nap...for 25 minutes, even though it just took you 50 minutes to get me to fall sleep.

Mr. Mom

As you are reading this, I'm probably freaking out.

This is set to be published the morning of 7/9, which just so happens to be the day that Nicole goes back to work, and my first day as Mr. Mom.

I will fully admit that this scares the heck out of me. 

I've spoken at length about Nicole's anatomical advantage when it comes to appeasing Appleseed.  But beyond that obvious trump card, there's the simple fact that Nicole has spent months staying at home, taking care of him.  She knows this whole thing inside and out.  And while it's not like I haven't spent a lot of time taking care of our son, I've yet to spend a full day doing it alone.

The timing is just about perfect, and by perfect I mean really, really bad.  Appleseed has decided to be really fussy about taking a bottle.  I fought for half an hour to feed him just two ounces yesterday.  Eventually, I had to walk him around for a while just to get him to settle down.  I tried to feed him again and he started getting fussy again, so I decided to turn on the Indians game.

Yes, I know, TV is bad for babies.  But a) baseball isn't full of quick edits, which are supposedly the worst and b) I just needed him to chill out, and then the plan was to turn it off and try feeding him again.

While he was watching the Indians lose, I decided to try giving him the bottle again.  He took it.  He didn't even register me giving it to him, he just took it.  Drank the rest of it.  I got more.  He drank that, all the while watching baseball.

Clearly, that's not a pattern that can hold.  But I guess it's nice to have that as a fallback, given my anatomical inadequacies.

Appleseed is also not a fan of sleeping these days.  I think I once suggested that the amount of time
spent trying to get him to sleep is roughly double the amount of time he actually sleeps.  It seems like lately that ratio pushes towards 3:1.  Granted, it's the same for Nicole as it is for me, so I'm not any more of a disadvantage than she is.  But I am going to have to perform this song and dance more in a single day than I've ever done before.  I'm going to blow through my back of tricks before it's noon.

But I think I'll be okay with all of that.  I'm sure I'll need to step away and take a deep breath every now and again, but what could be more worthwhile than taking care of Appleseed?  Nothing.  It's the most important thing I'll ever do.

The hard part, I think, will be when I'm trying to get other things done.  The hard part will be when I'm trying to do dishes and he wakes up after ten minutes.  It's going to be hard when I want to make some reasonably healthy food and he starts crying.  I don't want to see my diet go to hell because I'm just eating whatever I can, whenever I can.

I realize that I'm going in naive, but despite everything I've typed above, I can't help but think about how great it's going to be to spend so much time with my son.  I know it will be taxing, but I'm trading a day at the office for a day with Appleseed.  I'm getting a day of him making crazy noises, him smiling and giggling, him trying to eat his own feet.  I'm trading the relative peace and quiet of work for the insanity of being a stay at home dad.  There are no tedious, mind numbing two hour meetings.  There will be frustrating, chaotic hour long feedings.

In the end, I'll smile at Appleseed and he'll smile back.  He might even giggle.

And I'll make it through the day.

Free Music Monday: The Shins!

It's that time of the week, people!  Time for some free music!

This week it's the digital download for "Oh, Inverted World" by The Shins!  There's a little song called "New Slang" that a few of you might have heard.

It also happens to be filled with a ton of other great songs.  And it could be yours!  For free!

All you have to do is like my Facebook page and send me a message saying you want this album.  I only have one of these codes, so it's first come, first serve.

And, hey, even if you won the free music download last week, you can win it again this week.  I'm all for someone putting the work in to get all these great records for free.

So like, send, download, and enjoy a fantastic album.  And come back next week for another free download!

Baby Slang

This picture choice will make sense in a minuteI have used the word "shart" more in the last four months than in the rest of my life combined.

For the uninitiated, the Urban Dictionary describes "shart" like this:
a small, unintended defecation that occurs when one relaxes the anal sphincter to fart
Yes, I know, it's charming, but it's also what Appleseed does on a fairly regular basis.  I'm not sure if he's ever pooped without sharting.  I think the two go hand and hand for him.  Oh, and I suppose I've also used the word "poop" and all of its variations a lot more recently.

This is the lexicon of having a baby.  Not only do you use words you've never used before, you start to make up terms for things.

Like volcano.

Appleseed isn't always done emptying his bowels after he sharts.  Sometimes he likes to wait and release the rest of it while we're changing his diaper.  Not unlike a lava, more poop flows out.  In the beginning, it ended up on the changing table, but we're careful enough now to always have a diaper underneath him.  So, yeah: volcano.

But one time there was a little extra behind the lava, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Having a boy means periodically we will exclaim "fire in the hole!"  I attached this particular phrase for the times when Appleseed has an "airborne accident," as the baby app we use calls it.  Why "fire in the hole" when a) it's the opposite of fire and b) it's coming out of a hole, not in a hole, I don't know.  I just said it one day and it stuck.

One day, when Appleseed was probably only nine or ten weeks old, he sharted.  I carried him to the nursery, put him on the changing table, and took off his diaper.


"Fire in the hole!"


He peed everywhere.  It got on the carpet, that's how much he peed.


I removed his poopy diaper and began cleaning everything up.  And then he volcanoed.  I'd yet to put a new
diaper beneath him, so it ran down onto the changing table.


I picked him up by the ankles so I could wipe his butt and lower back clean.


He volcanoed again.  But this time, he had something extra behind it.  This was a shart, a shart that occurred as I was lifting his butt into the air.


And that is how we ended up with baby poop on the walls in the nursery.


I lost it.  I laughed so hard that I nearly fell down on to the pee soaked carpet.  I was practically in tears I was laughing so hard.


The changing table is actually the site of a great many slang occurrences.  On a fairly regular basis, Appleseed will flex all of his muscles, turning himself into a human board.  I think it was Nicole's brother who referred to him as a plank when he did this.  So, naturally, what he does is now referred to as "planking."


His planking has taken on a new element over the last week or so as he's started trying to roll over.  He does this by thrusting his hips forward and to the side.  We call it "Elvising."


This is just the tip of the iceberg, really.  Baby slang is great because it's specific to the family, even if it's dealing with universal occurrences.  I'm sure everyone has a term for when their kid continues to poop while he or she is on the changing table.  

I'm envisioning references to oil fields.

Free Music Monday: The National!

I'm giving away some free music!  Every Monday for the next few months, I'll be giving away codes for digital copies of albums.  Don't worry, it's all on the up and up -- no illegal downloading or sharing going on here.

Basically, I've been building up my vinyl collection and pretty much everything I've bought is something I already own in digital form.  But these records all come with codes for digital copies.  So I'm going to pass these codes on to you!

First up: "Boxer" by The National!

Here's the Metacritic page where you can read about how awesome this record is.  It's one of my favorite albums to listen to while I write.

How can you get this gem from me, for free?  Easy!  All you need to do is go like my Facebook page, then send me a message saying you want the free album!  I only have one code, so it's first come, first serve.

That's it!  You are mere moments away from owning a modern classic.

Days, Weeks, Months

On Wednesday, Appleseed turns 3 months old.

Up until now, we've mostly referred to his age by weeks.  I can remember being a kid and asking my mom at what point people stop referring to babies' ages by months.  I guess I'd just met a baby or something and the kid's mom said the kid was 19 months old or something.  My mom told me that most parents stop using months as the unit of measurement when the kid turns 2 years old.  That made some sense to me.  One year isn't a long enough time to diminish the impact of a month; even after 12 months, a 30 day period is still substantial.  But after 24 months?  Well, months are old hat by that point.

And that brings us to Appleseed's 3 month birthday.  He's already passed 12 weeks.  Accumulating a third month makes accumulating more weeks seem small.  Why count pennies when he has dollars?  And so, after Wednesday, he will be 3 months old.  When people ask, that will be the answer, no doubt broken out to 3 and a half and then four.

It all seems so very significant to me.  At the very least, 3 months is a developmental milestone.  But it's more than that.  Moving from weeks to months is the first real change in how time is measured for Appleseed.  Sure, there was a point where he was days old, but that was a whirlwind and didn't last long.  He's mostly been referred to as "x weeks old" -- his whole life, he's been talked about that way.  And now that's going to change.

It's also impossible for me to comprehend that our son was born 3 months ago.  Surely it was more like 3 years ago and also just yesterday.  Three months is obviously too long and not long enough.

Nicole has already started looking at pictures from months ago.  She's already lamenting how big Appleseed
has gotten.  It seems like every other mother we know says something about wishing babies could always stay at this age, which makes me think that these mothers have completely forgotten what it was like taking care of a baby this age.

I've become infinitely aware of time.  You don't appreciate the idea of living each moment to the fullest because it's the only time you will experience that, specific moment.  Then you have a kid and you realize he'll only be x weeks old one time in his entire life.  This is the only time he will ever turn 3 months old.  This is a unique moment.

And it's one which Appleseed couldn't care less about.  None of this means anything to him.  Eating means something to him.  Sleeping means something to him.  These days, his parents' faces mean something to him.  He doesn't care about time.

But time is moving.  I'm excited for Appleseed to get older, just as I think Nicole is worried.  I can't wait for him to become more interactive, to see his curiosity for the world grow.  I look forward to being able to offer him more than just affection, because he's maxing out on that on a daily basis.  This kid couldn't possibly be loved any more than he is.  I'd like to be able to offer him something else, too.

Happy 3 month birthday, Appleseed.  I have a feeling 6, 9, and 12 months will freak me out even more.

8 Things I Learned After 8 Weeks as a Parent

Yep, I'm doing it.  I'm using a classic link bait title.  People love numbered lists.  Who am I to deny the people what they want?

Technically speaking, you are reading this on Appleseed's 2 month birthday, so I've actually been a parent for a little longer than 8 weeks.  But a list of 2 wouldn't have been as entertaining.

8. I enjoy sleeping.  Heading into fatherhood, I was prepared to get very little sleep.  I have a long history of being sleep deprived and getting on just fine.  But a few years ago, I got help for my sleeping problems, and since then I've managed to get a relatively solid 7 hours a night.  Still, I figured going back was no problem.  I had this sleep deprivation thing down.  Just one problem: I like sleeping.  I had no idea how much I'd gotten used to it, gotten to enjoy it, until it was taken away from me again.

7. Showers are amazing.  I never appreciated them the way I should have.

6. One handed.  It used to freak me out when I saw someone carry a baby with one hand.  It was insanity.  How could anyone hold something so fragile, so precious with just one hand?  I would have extra arms attached to my body so I had more hands to hold my baby!  And yet, on a daily basis, I now hold my son with one hand.  I don't even think about it.  Most of the time, I do it because I need a hand free to do any number of other things.  Some of the times it's just nice to have the other hand free.

5. I am a dancing monkey.By Tina Burke

4. The golden hour(s).  Nicole and Appleseed usually go to bed between nine and ten.  After that, I'm on my own, and it's glorious.  It's not that I don't love being with my wife and son, but it's nice to have some time alone.  I don't even mind that I spend most of it cleaning up the house, since it's just nice to be able to go about my business without any distractions.  I've finally started using some of this time to edit my writing.  Someday I'll get to the point of actually writing, too.

3. My wife is unbelievable.  I mean, I knew that before, but she's taken it to another level.  The physical demands of being a mother are insane.  Add in recovering from child birth and crazy hormones and you have perhaps the most trying period in any one's life.  She doesn't think so, but she's been astounding.

2. It gets easier.  It's hard to even wrap my brain around how hard the first few weeks were.  Everyone tells you that it's hell, but, like with all things children, it's impossible to explain it to anyone.  You can't understand it unless you go through it.  But each week gets better, even if each week also feels like it's the worst.

1. I feel like I'm going to burst.  Not to be too melodramatic, but I have never felt this way before.  It's unlike anything I've ever experienced.  I love Appleseed so much and in such a unique way that it was almost too much for me.  I think I've just now been able to really function.

Let's face facts: this list should be longer.  It would take days for me to cover every little thing I've learned since Appleseed was born.  The truly crazy thing is that I've only scratched the surface of what I'll learn being a parent.

Inequality, Oppression, and My Son

I have been, since the day I was born, a middle class, straight, white male.  Okay, there may have been a bunch of years in there where I was staring up at middle class, but the bulk have my life has been lived in a position of privilege.  And I know it.  I'm not unaware of the advantages I've gotten in my life because of my gender, my orientation, the color of my skin, or the fact that I can afford to buy things.  I suppose it would be more accurate to say I'm aware of the fact that I've had fewer hurdles in my way.  Heck, even the fact that I'm tall and thin has helped.

There is (hopefully) a reasonable chance that the first part of my son's life will be spent in the middle class.  There's better chance that he will be straight (statistically speaking).  There's an even better chance that he'll always be male.  He will always be white.

I handles those demographics than I did.

There was a point in my life that if I ever heard a story about inequality or oppression, I would automatically doubt it.  My first response was to think that it wasn't true, that it had been overblown by the victimized party.  It's not as bad as they say, I would think.

My thinking was informed by my life.  Inequality wasn't my experience or even really the experience of anyone I knew, so those claiming such things must have ulterior motives.  They must want something.  This was the 80s, after all -- everyone wanted something.  It wasn't a decade known for its scruples.

I remember the exact moment when my thought process changed.

It was right after the Rodney King video came out.  I was in high school.  I was lying on the couch, watching a talk show.  I think it was either Oprah or Donahue -- I think it was the latter, but I'm not positive.  Anyway, it was the segment when people from the audience gave their two cents.  This relatively young, white couple stood up and gave the same pitch that every white person in America was giving: "We didn't see the whole tape."

Now, think about that.  Apparently, there was something in the world that Rodney King could have done
By Paulo Zerbatothat would have justified the beating he got, and it had been recorded, but no one was showing it to us.  Absolutely none of that makes any sense.  But we had to believe that the system worked.  We had to believe that this had been overblown by the victim.  It couldn't be this bad, could it?

As the couple finished talking, an elderly white woman next to them stood up.  She did an amazing thing.  She talked to them like they were naive children, but she managed to do it without sounding condescending.  She said to them something along the lines of "oh, you lovely people, you don't know what you're talking about.  These things happen every day.  It is this way.  I've been alive for a long, long time, and I know what I'm talking about."

And I knew she was right.

Up until that point, I had assumed the inequality and oppression weren't an issue, or at least not as big as they were portrayed.  After that moment, I flipped, and I came to assume that they were.  Better, I realized, to have my assumption proven wrong than to deny the problem even exists.

So what does all of this have to do with my now 7 week old son?

Well, there are still times when I have the gut reaction I had all those years ago.  The more "radical" an idea, the better the chances that my initial reaction will be against it.  More often than not in those cases, I hold my tongue and think it through.  But it still bothers me that the gut reaction is even there.

I hope my son doesn't have that problem.

I don't think he will.  He's growing up in a time when multi-culturalism is everywhere, and that's a good thing.  He's going to grow up in a cul-de-sac with a gay couple and an interracial couple.  He's going to grow up watching television that's more diverse, reading books about diverse characters, getting exposed to the things that I wouldn't learn until I was much older.

I hope he'll be aware that, even in the society he grows up in, he'll be judged by any number of things besides the quality of his character, and that more often than not, that judgment will work in his favor because of what he looks like.  I don't want him to feel bad about that, I just want him to be aware of it, so he can have at least a tiny bit of understanding.

I think a tiny bit of understanding can make all the difference.