Dad Is Fat

by Jim Gaffigan

Whenever I hear that a restaurant is “not kid-friendly,” I always think, “That place must be awesome! Let’s get a sitter.”

You joke about it. That’s how you deal. If parents don’t like being a parent, they don’t talk about being a parent. They are absent.

Failing and laughing at your own shortcomings are the hallmarks of a sane parent.

I used to have a lot of faith in humanity before the advent of the website “comment” section.

During the delivery, you feel like one of those NASA engineers sitting in front of some panel of switches and buttons watching the space shuttle take off. This is your baby, but today you are just the engineer in a short-sleeve dress shirt with a pocket protector and 1970s government-issued glasses helplessly watching the defining moment of the thing that you helped create.

When pregnant women have cravings, it’s “adorable” and when they put on twenty or thirty pounds in nine months, it’s “healthy.” Yet when I have cravings and put on thirty pounds, I’m considered a “fat tub of turds.” I’m not sure, but I believe this is sexism.

Babies are the worst roommates. They’re unemployed. They don’t pay rent. They keep insane hours. Their hygiene is horrible. If you had a roommate that did any of the things babies do, you’d ask them to move out.

Changing a diaper in the middle of the night is a unique skill. It’s like The Hurt Locker, but much more dangerous …

Occasionally, a dog will be presented as some training method for having a baby.

This is a little like testing the waters of being a vegetarian by having lettuce on your burger.

Mothers need to talk, and fathers need to escape. I think this is why women of my mother’s generation would go to ladies’ luncheons.

What amazes me is that once they actually learn to walk, they are immediately trying to get away. You just say, “Time for a bath!” and they scoot away like they have an escape car outside.

Once your baby starts to walk you’ll realize why cribs are designed like prisons from the early 1900s.

All the geniuses at the Fisher-Price laboratories have yet to develop something as fun for a toddler as a ninety-nine-cent roll of toilet paper.

The interesting thing that happens when walking around with a baby strapped in front of you at adult eye level is the baby acts like he thinks he is the one walking around and you are just this weirdo strapped to his back.

Toddlers also love to tell you secrets, especially when you are wearing a white shirt and they’ve been eating chocolate.

Nursery schools and bars at 2 a.m. are the only places where it is completely normal if someone just spontaneously throws up on the floor … and just like a toddler, the bar patron wakes up the next day not remembering or caring how they behaved.

It is crucial that you withhold as much information as you can about this fun future event until thirty seconds before you arrive. Or ten seconds, depending on your question tolerance.

Personally, I think that the concept of an old white guy with a beard in a red coat coming down a chimney in the middle of the night or a fairy with a tooth fetish sliding things under my pillow while I sleep would be way freakier, but no, for kids it’s monsters.

Little kids are the only sober human beings for the past fifty years to enjoy a parade.

I want my children to be exposed to social, economic, and cultural diversity. I like it when my five-year-old asks me if a woman in a burka on the subway is a ninja.

If there is an electronic media device turned on anywhere in the vicinity, you must turn it off in order for your children’s brains to process that you are speaking to them.

If only all human interactions were as easy as they are for kids.

If the conversation gets too serious and we start talking about an election, religion, or soy milk, it can get really weird.

Don’t ever go to a museum on a rainy Saturday. It’s like when the Walking Dead took over Atlanta.

Toddler soccer is like watching a political discussion on cable news. It starts off serious and ends in embarrassment for all involved.

I had to pay to see my six-year-old twirl around the stage for five minutes dancing a routine she learned in a class I paid for her to attend.

When I first moved to New York City, I remember hearing stories of little children bringing guns to elementary school. Thankfully this trend is over, but it has been replaced by little children bringing far more dangerous weapons to school, such as the peanut butter sandwich.

I realize a nut allergy is no joke, but I can’t think of one child growing up that had a nut allergy. Now they are more common than Velcro sneakers. Today it seems every other child has a nut allergy. Sometimes I think, “Why don’t they just open a school for children without nut allergies?” I’m all for small class size.

No matter whether they are called a Preschool, a Nursery, or an Early Learning Center, they are either just a day care or a jail.

The preschool parent-teacher conference always feels like a game of “serial killer or not serial killer?” You either find out your child is dismembering dolls or not dismembering dolls.

the parent-teacher conference is always a strange experience. The conference is supposed to be all about the child, but somehow it ends up with you feeling like you are getting a report card on your parenting.

Attending a birthday party for a little kid can be pretty awkward, especially if you weren’t invited. Sometimes you aren’t invited, just your child is. These parties are called “drop-offs,” where you leave your children in the care of some frazzled strangers at a Build-A-Bear Workshop, and you walk off with just enough time to do nothing except be that creepy guy wandering around a mall with a diet Coke being tailed by a suspicious security guard until you have to pick up your face-painted, sugar-highed puddle of a child.

After coaxing your child into crafting something resembling a card and taping it onto that poorly wrapped, regifted present from their own birthday party, you rush the overexcited kid wearing their favorite outfit out the door, and you are on your way to the party. Then you realize that you forgot the regift, so you run back to get it, and now you are late and your kid is furious at you because they feel they have now missed “the funnest part.”

If you’ve never been to a Catholic Mass, don’t worry, it’s still going on, you still have time to catch it.

When you first have a baby, it seems like all your friends, siblings, and even sometimes strangers want to help. “Hey, if you ever need someone to babysit, let me know.” It actually appears as if everyone is begging to watch your kids. What a relief! It takes a village, right? A very short time later, you will realize that, in reality, no one wants to babysit or even help at all. They just want to say they offered. Offering is the kind gesture. Fine. Whatever. I don’t need your help anyway.

Choosing a babysitter that is not a family member is one of the real struggles of parenting. Who to hire? Are they attentive? Do they have a criminal record? Eventually you become more lax in your approach. “Do you have a pulse?

Sometimes all the training a babysitter needs is having been a good mother herself. I don’t care if some early childhood education grad student has taken twelve infant CPR classes, it will never replace the experience of a sitter who has raised her own well-adjusted children. No English is required for this position.

We finally got rid of the bunk beds when we started to be on a first-name basis with the receptionist at the ER.

Bedtime makes you realize how completely incapable you are of being in charge of another human being.

Every morning when I wake up, my first thought is, “When can I come back here?” It’s the carrot that keeps me motivated. Sometimes going to bed feels like the highlight of my day.

TV news is like kryptonite to children.

For me it’s always a little sad getting out of bed. Every morning after I get up, I always gaze longingly at my bed and lament, “You were wonderful last night. I didn’t want it to end. I can’t wait to see you again …”

I think morning means “speak louder” in little-kid language.

I like to think of naps as a nonverbal way of saying to life, “I quit. I’m sitting this part of the day out.”

A three-year-old with insomnia is very similar to a heroin addict going through withdrawal.

Have you ever noticed that the children’s menu is exactly the same as the bar menu? Burger, hot dog, pizza. If you put the children’s menu at the bar, people wouldn’t even notice. “Oh, cool. I can color in an airplane while I drink this beer and wait for my chicken strips.”

Being at a restaurant with small children is not the time or place to enforce the “eat all your broccoli first” rule unless you want everyone in the restaurant to hate you.

Most of the time, I feel like I’m eating with a tribe of Bedouins … except for the fact that Bedouins actually eat over their plates. Kids don’t bother to eat over their plates. It normally appears as if they are attempting to NOT eat over their plates.

The only surprising aspect of the spilled drink is the consistency of the little kid’s reaction to it: There is no reaction. They do nothing. They don’t attempt to clean it up with a napkin or curb the extent of the damage by picking up the cup. Nothing. They just watch the spill, fascinated as it splits into streams, channels, and tributaries, as if they are hoping for a salmon to jump out.