What I've learned in the 1st year...

I can’t believe it, Logan is now almost a year old. February 23rd will be one year! It seems like I fell asleep one night and woke up 12 months later with this little person living with us. 2006 was a blur. You may remember that I made some fun observations after my first few months of being a new dad. Well now it’s been a year (almost) and I would like to add to that with some new observations.

Emily and I have seen and done so much this year and we didn’t even really leave our house. Logan has grown so much, so fast – but so have his mom and I. We are real parents! We are wiser, quicker and tireder. Yes I know tireder isn’t a word but I’m so tired that I don’t care. Here’s more stuff I’ve noticed since the last time I wrote them down:

- Watching a baby feed itself is like watching Muhammad Ali, after drinking five espressos, put lipstick on while riding a horse.

- People with dogs continue to say to me that having a baby is like having a puppy, just a little tougher. Those people are crazy crack-heads. Being a parent is nothing like having a dog! Puppies sleep often, don’t need to be held all day and you can train them to poop outside. I can’t leave a bowl of water in Logan’s crib and then leave for the day. I can’t put an electric collar on my son and then shock him when he crawls too far away. I can’t rub his nose in his own pee and yell “Noooooo!” at him or smack his bum with a rolled up newspaper. Also babies don’t chew your baseboards or your shoes nearly as often as puppies do. Other than the fact that they both look cute in little t-shirts, there is no comparison. Puppies are JV football. Babies are the NFL.

- You’d be surprised as to the places I’ve found Cheerios. There are thousands of them all over our house: in the kitchen drawers, crushed into the carpet, in my wallet, inside the DVD player, in the baby’s diaper, in my car, all over my office, in my underwear (don’t ask) and there are always rogue Cheerios in my bed. It’s like living in a bowl of cereal. Having them in my bed isn’t all bad though because at least I don’t have to get up for a snack in the middle of the night.

- My wife and I now eat on the same schedule as senior citizens. We have lunch at 10:30am so the baby can nap by noon and have dinner at 5pm so he can be in bed by 6:30pm. It’s like we’re old retirees. I do get to take advantage of the early bird specials but hate the fact that I have another thing in common with 90 year olds besides the aroma of moth balls, a love of the Lawrence Welk Show, an affinity for shuffleboard and the need to pee every 25 minutes.

- I’m not sure exactly what goes on at Gymboree and I don’t care. All I know is that it costs me $50 a week and gets my wife and kid out of the house for a couple of hours a day to “shake their sillies out” - so I’m not asking any questions.

- Baby’s first shots are hard to handle. Its gut wrenching. They gave him four consecutive shots in a row in both legs! Its 2007, you’d think the medical community could figure out how to combine all four into one super-shot so babies wouldn’t be in 4x the pain and go nuts 4x as long! But no, they pricked him again and again and again and again. After the first shot Logan was surprised, like something bit him and gave the “What the?” face. The second one he started crying and was like “Hey, that really hurts, please do not do that again.” The third one was “Okay, seriously, that really does not feel good! What is that? Now I’m pissed!” and made him cry so hard he couldn’t breathe. Then came number four which actually made my son curse. No lie, Logan said his first word that day at 7 months old. It was “MOTHERF***ER!!!” Or does that count as two words? Anyway, seeing him get his shots made me very uncomfortable and made Logan a potty mouth, but I guess it’s better than him getting polio right?

- Teething is no fun. The constant crying, the moaning, the nights awake, fevers and all that drooling. And that was just me! Our son Logan was even worse. And FYI, rubbing liquor on the baby’s gums does nothing but make him drunk and belligerent, trust me. The only thing worse than a teething baby is an alcoholic teething baby. And I refuse to drive him back and forth to all those meetings.

- Apparently baby fingernails grow at a very rapid rate and they end up scratching themselves often. The more we cut them the longer and faster they grow! Some days Logan looks like he got in a fight with a puma. He’s like Scarface. He gets scratches on his ears, cheeks, neck, nose and all over his arms. He scrapes the hell out of his mom and me as well. We took a family photo the other day and the photographer actually asked us if the three of us got jumped on the way in to his store. “No, it was not a gang of thugs”, I responded “just our 10 month old son who’d kicked our ass.”

- I have more Raffi songs on my iPod then I do Bob Dylan songs. How sad is that? But now that I’ve listened to both artists I have to be honest, although Dylan’s lyrics are considered genius, it really doesn’t hold a candle to “Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring - banana phone. Ding dong ding dong ding dong ding - danana phone.” I’m telling you, Raffi is a music virtuoso. Dylan who?

- The lack of a good night’s sleep is still awful. People said to us, “you get used to it.” F those people! You do not get used it. My wife and I average 5 hours a night. Humans can’t live on 5 hours of sleep per night! It’s a scientific fact that humans need at least 8 hours and moreover parents need at least 21 hours of sleep per day. I’ll guess I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I am so looking forward to that.

- Babies have a lot of firsts. Some more memorable than others. Some of the good ones are the first smile, first tooth, first time they crawl or stand and their first word. But some not so good ones that they don’t tell you about are baby’s first diarrhea, first diarrhea in the high chair, first diarrhea in the bath and first diarrhea on your new slacks you got for Hanukkah. Other awful firsts include baby’s first temper tantrum in public, first fall off the changing table, first ingesting of non-edible mystery item, first 9 hour airplane flight and first vomit in dad’s mouth while playing Superman with his son.

- Speaking of airplanes…there was a scary movie not to long ago called “Snakes on a Plane” that didn’t do so well in the theaters. But I think a much scarier movie that would be a blockbuster at the box office should be called “Babies on a Plane”. Just a bunch of screaming, crying, smelly, bored, teething, ornery, ear-infected babies sitting in the middle seat in every row on a non-stop flight from LA to NY. Now that’s terror at 30,000 feet! And you could still have Samuel L. Jackson in it too, saying “Why are there so many mother f’ing babies on my mother f’ing plane?!?”

- Our son got a little virus, as many babies do, but what I didn’t know is that a baby’s fever can get to 105 degrees without being considered life threatening. It’s true! What kind of twisted madness is that? Babies are apparently like superheroes. When Logan had 104 degree fever not so long ago I freaked out and was all set to call 911 because to most humans that high fever would be deadly. But not mutants, I mean babies. Logan is like the “Human Torch”. My son can pretty much be in the Fantastic Four! How cool is that? FLAME ON!

- Whoever coined the phrase “to sleep like a baby” to describe a good night's rest is a friggin’ dumb-ass! Sleeping like a baby means you’re up every hour, cry for no reason throughout the night, pee and crap in your pants, toss and turn, scratch your face and wake up at 5:30am screaming. You know who sleeps like a baby? Drug addicts going through withdrawal, that’s who.

- It doesn’t matter how many bright, colorful, noisy, fun toys we buy this boy, he only wants to play with the TV remote control. I even gave him an old remote we don’t use but no, he wants the real one with 100 buttons that I don’t even know what they do. Now we have to watch “Deal or No Deal” letterboxed, black and white and in Spanish because this kid has pressed every button and messed up the remote beyond my ability to fix it. I don’t even like “Deal or No Deal”, in fact I hate it, it’s just that Logan pressed some button combo and now the only channel we get is NBC (in Spanish.)

- I think it’s so funny when a baby has a big booger in his nose, because there is no good way to get it out. Oh, you’ll try many different tactics but nothing works. You’ll try putting your finger up there but you’ll soon realize your finger is way too big for that little nostril. So you may even try his finger, which doesn’t work either – too much flailing. Then a tissue or wet washcloth but that just makes the baby angry and pushes the aforementioned booger even farther in. Q-tips? Straws? Chop-sticks? What do you do? There is no good answer. But I’ll tell you what worked for me. It’s a little secret that I discovered and although it’s frowned upon by child services, most pediatricians and my wife – it gets the job done. You know those cans of compressed air that people use to clean their computer keyboards? Use that. For some reason highly pressurized air shot directly into the nose from a close distance really seams to unclog a babies nasal passage. It can also be used for cleaning ears, drying their tush and styling their hair. Go figure.

- Apparently when a baby can stand while holding on to something own and begins walking along furniture, it’s called cruising. I didn’t know this. So imagine my surprise when Emily told me that our son had started cruising on his own. I was so happy. I figured he’d be at sea for at least a week or two and I would finally get a good night’s sleep! But it turns out that there is no ship, no ocean and no baby going anywhere. He’s simply hanging on to the coffee table now. Big deal.

- Buttoning all those damn buttons on baby clothes is a real pain in my neck. There are at least 25 buttons on every outfit my son owns. They snap around his neck and down his front and around his legs and up his back. Why does a baby’s outfit need so many damn buttons? Yes, some clothes have zippers but the overwhelming majority have those damn snaps and buttons everywhere and I can’t stand it. It takes me 20 minutes to change a diaper because I’m trying helplessly to fasten buttons together while my son is writhing and crying and kicking and flailing on the changing table. And of course they never line up and I end up buttoning his wrist to his ass. It’s a mess. I have one word for all you baby clothes manufacturers - Velcro.

- My son can do all the standard baby tricks now. People love to ooh and ahh about his “gifts” and his mother and grandmother love to go on about how “talented” he is? Are you kidding? I love my son more than life but he’s not that good. He needs practice. He’s like some two-bit lounge entertainer in the Pocono’s or something. Though his act is very cute, the word “talent” is a stretch. He can clap, give a high five, put his hands over his head in the touchdown sign, make a raspberry noise, throw a ball and bang on piano keys. Though I’m not calling Star Search any time soon I may get him an organ grinder and a little hat and vest and see if I can make a few coins on the street corner. Logan is no Sammy Davis Jr. just yet, but he is better than a capuchin monkey.

- (Parents will understand this one.) Who is this guy Zweiback that invented the baby toast? We Jews have made that stuff for ages - its call Mandel Bread. This Joe Zweiback guys comes along, stuffs some biscotti in a bag, slaps a baby picture on the box and sells it to new parents who don’t know any better for $4 a box? What a scam! By the way, you guys should try my new product called Adam’s Apples, its crushed apples smashed into a sauce that babies can eat. Adults can even eat it too with pork chops or potato pancakes. You can even put cinnamon on it and have it for dessert. It’s my very own recipe.

- If you dads out there haven’t made funny sounds or voices through the baby monitor to scare, annoy or amuse your wife then you are missing out on one of the joys of fatherhood. I’ve pretended I was God talking, ordered hamburgers, whispered her name repeatedly, made weird robot noises, acted like I was our son Logan talking to her and even farted and burped into that poor monitor. There is so much fun to be had and is limited only by your creativity. It’s also great when you want her to bring you something from downstairs and you don’t feel like getting up. Try it. You’ll like it.

- It seems that the word “buh” is the catch all word for babies - or at least our son. It’s like aloha or shalom and can mean lots of different things. For him it means food, bottle, ball, refrigerator, up, down, mirror, toy, sleep, bath and of course it also means buh. The problem is that we don’t know which of the aforementioned items he wants when he says buh. Sometimes I’ll give him a ball and he’ll really want to be picked up. So I pick him up and then he’ll say buh so I put him down but he really just wants the refrigerator. Then he’ll say buh again and I’ll get him some food but he simply meant buh that time. It’s very confusing. Learn a new word already babies!

- My wife loves to dress our boy up in cutesy outfits and/or themed wardrobes. So far he’s been a cowboy, sailor, lion, Indian, mouse, basketball player, a duck and much more. He’s even been a basketball playing duck sailor. She’s got him dressed like animals and Village People yet she still gets mad at me every time I dress him. She says the clothes I put him in “don’t match”, “aren’t cute” or “make him look like a homeless baby.” (Wouldn’t the proper term be cribless baby anyway?) I think blue sweat pants with yellow socks and a green choo-choo onesie top looks just fine. He’s a baby! He’s going to throw up on it anyway in 5 minutes. And when he goes out he doesn’t see anyone he knows. What difference does it make what he’s wearing? Hell, she’s got him wearing shoes most of the time and he can’t even walk! What does my wife know?

- Babies are like little sharks. They’ll put anything in their mouth, they never stop eating and are very attracted to small shiny objects. Our little shark boy has bitten into spoons, eaten carpet fibers, licks every window he comes in contact with, gnaws on the coffee table, chews napkins, magazines, clickers, cell phones and computer wires and has even been known to ingest license plates, harbor seals and even a car bumper or two. He’s our little Jaws. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

So that’s all for now. See how much I’ve learned? It’s been the greatest year of my life, exhausting and difficult, but amazing. Emily and I have been blessed by a smiling, fun, personable and loving boy who literally lights up a room when he crawls into it. He’s just the best. And as all my fellow parents know, it keeps getting better every day.

Someone once said, “Babies are such a nice way to start people.” It’s only been a year but I couldn’t agree more. Until next time…