Babyhood (9780062098788) (16 page)

I
n addition to the countless hard surfaces that shout of potential danger, there is also the
water
factor. Water is a funny element. In a glass, water is your friend. It cools you down, wets your whistle—that kind of water isn't going to hurt anybody. But pile it up in a tub, it gets crazy. It gangs up with the other water, surrounds your baby, and just
dares you
to screw up. When bathing a young person, you can't turn your back on that water for an instant.

The compensation for this high-intensity nerve-fest, however, is that when it's all over, you get to look at a spanking-clean American.

And there's not much that can compare to a just-out-of-the-bath baby. Once you get past the last hurdle—getting them in a towel while they slither and squirm out of your arms like a robust salmon, you get to look at that face peeking through their terry cloth shrink-wrap and inhale this giggly, squeaky, rosy, shampoo-smelling baby.

I particularly enjoy a baby with perfectly combed wet hair. It gives him a look of confidence and savoir faire, as if he passed a mirror and said, “Hang on there, handsome.” And then whipped out a little pocket comb and styled his hair to look like a parakeet's head.

This is one of those times when you want to literally
eat the baby up
in several ravenous gulps. I was once holding my shiny-perfect, postbath son in my arms and started gumming his neck, trying hard to not ingest him entirely, and I noticed
he
was busy holding his favorite yellow ducky in his fist and gumming
that
for all he was worth. And suddenly I understood why babies put everything in their mouths: When you love something
so
much, there is no way you can properly convey the power of your affection short of devouring and consuming it wholly. It's an animal instinct that is triggered not by rage or hunger but only by a love that is limitless and beyond reason. (To buy into this theory, of course, you must ignore the fact that there is virtually nothing a baby
wouldn't
put in its mouth. But still, I think you know what I'm saying.)

B
abies. You just gotta kiss them. The funny thing is, for all the time I spend kissing my baby, I'm not even sure he particularly likes it. Or knows what it is. To an infant, a kiss is probably a vague sense of “This person likes me, certainly wishes me no harm,” combined with “Boy, he sure likes to stand close.”

Or maybe even, “I don't know why he's wasting his time with me when there is a perfectly good yellow ducky right here.”

Boy Meets Dog

F
or many years, our dog had a very cushy job. He lived in a nice house, had his own designated chair to sleep in, had not one but
two
doting, loving, grown-up humans who without fail (okay—
almost
without fail) made it their business to feed him, walk him, scratch him, buy chewy toys, and generally take care of his every need. In exchange, he had merely to look cute, be furry, periodically retrieve a tennis ball, and—and this is the important one—try really hard to not take a dump on the carpets. And even if he
did
besmirch an irreplaceable rug that used to belong to my grandmother's mother, he knew that after a few minutes of yelling on our part and some long-eyed, sorrowful looks on his part, everything would be forgiven and life would return to its rosy self. His position was secure; he was the Child of the House.

Boom!
Enter an actual child, and see how quickly that changes. Instantly, the hierarchy and social order of a dog's universe are irreparably and permanently thrown askew.

The moment we returned home carrying our newborn child, our dog became—for the first time in his life—a dog. He took a huge tumble down the evolutionary ladder. The days of trying to pass himself off as just-another-member-of-the-family-who-happens-to-be-able-to-lick-himself-into-a-pretzel were now over.

The poor thing should have seen it coming. The writing was on the walls. Month after month of deteriorating Quality Time. Walks overlooked. Treats distributed with less frequency and far less enthusiasm . . . Something was clearly amiss.

Some people I know actually tried to prepare their dog for the Big Day by bringing home baby clothes and baby toys for the dog to smell. The theory was that by breeding a sense of familiarity, the dog wouldn't be shocked by the infant's arrival and, more importantly, wouldn't attack it in the driveway. Now, while you certainly have to admire this kind of forethought, who's going to do that? You don't do it for any other guests that come by. You never say, “Brandy, next week the Gendlemans are coming for dinner, so just so you won't be thrown, here's a pair of their pants. These are actual slacks worn only yesterday by Mr. Gendleman. And for dessert, here's a pair of socks from the Mrs.”

Chances are, the dog will adjust. But keep in mind, though they can
sense
change, they can't always determine exactly what the change
is.
For example, when our son came home, the dog definitely knew something was up. All the attention that used to be his was now spent on the newcomer, which, as far as the dog could make out, was a nicely wrapped blanket. That's all he could see. A faint blue blur that was whisked past his head, handed from person to person with the utmost care, and never once placed below dog's-eye level. The only conclusion he could come to was, “Boy, they sure love that blanket . . . I've never seen anything like it . . . They're protecting that blanket with their lives . . . Hey, maybe there's something valuable inside the blanket . . . I bet it's wrapped around roast beef.”

When our child finally did emerge from the blanket, the dog used his standard approach to anything new: “Is it Foe, Friend, or Food?” The three F's into which everything in a dog's world can be categorized.

At first, the dog was cautious; perhaps this alien creature could harm him. He sniffed, prodded, and circled until information was gathered.

When he realized that Blanket Boy was no Foe, the clever pooch switched to his other primary instinct and stared at the baby with just one thought on his simple mind:

“Maybe I could eat him. He's soft and chubby and, if I'm not mistaken, currently sleeping.”

O
ne time, I was looking after my newborn child, who was sleeping blissfully in one of the seventy-three seating contraptions we now had, when from the corner of my eye I noticed the dog creeping slowly toward the baby, dragging himself by the elbows like an infantryman in a bad World War II movie. When he finally got there, his head hovering alarmingly close to my only child, I saw—or thought I saw—the dog's jaws open to reveal a flash of canine incisors, and I will tell you this: Though I'm not necessarily known for my speed and agility, if the Olympics had a “hurl-a-Labrador-across-a-living-room” event, I would've done very well. Even the dog was impressed. As he ricocheted off a cushy armchair, he looked at me as if to say, “I had no idea you could do that.”

I immediately took him aside, apologized, and tried to explain the regulations inherent in our new Dog/Human Being contract. He seemed to understand. He at least knew enough to pretend to understand so as to win a free piece of cheese.

Shortly thereafter, he did indeed adjust. He finally made Friends with the baby. When he approached, he did so with respect and caution. He lapped at the baby with big, loving doggie licks. And when informed he couldn't lick the face, he restricted himself to arms and legs. (Or, as they appeared in his mind, “the drumsticks.”) He even took to sleeping under the crib, growling gentle warnings when anyone but us wandered too close to the boy. My wife and I beamed with pride as he began to tag along wherever we carried the baby, plopping himself down at every stop. We were thrilled to see the affection and concern he consistently displayed. However, when we noticed that at mealtimes he was not only predictably right alongside the high chair but actually brought his own knife and fork, we understood the truth: He was looking for food. After seeing the baby eat often enough, he knew that by simply being in the right place at the right time, he could score a nice array of fruits, vegetables, applesauce, and stray crackers. Between the stuff bouncing off the baby's face or dripping from his chin, and the fistfuls of goodies thrown down like sticky manna from heaven, our child had become essentially a Dog Buffet. An all-you-can-drop salad bar.

So even if the baby turned out not to be
actual
food, he at least was a generous dispenser of food. If not a food source, certainly a nice source of food.

And to a dog, that's really what friends are for.

Why Dads Aren't Moms

T
here was a period, when our son was still brand-new, when I walked around beaming with pride in my new role as father, but could also, on that very same day, totally forget that I had a kid at all.

I'd be in a casual conversation with someone and they'd say, “Do you have kids yourself?”

And I'd say, “Nope . . . No,
wait
—I do, I do . . . yes, we have a son. He's six weeks old, and I love him more than anything in the world. I forgot . . . Would you like to see a picture?”

My wife has no such memory lapses. There is never an instant when she is not thinking about, talking about, or in some way connected, on an organic, cellular level, to the child she so artfully bore. And it's beyond her comprehension that the child's
other
parent isn't the same way.

Time after time, I was confronted with evidence suggesting that, try though I might, I wasn't as naturally gifted a parent as my wife. We may both love our child with equal passion, but she was better at doing something about it. Still, I refused to accept defeat. I was determined to be the Best Parent Anyone Ever Heard Of. Or at least as good as her.

But it wasn't easy. This girl was good. For example, my son's mother can, at any point in the day, tell you precisely what he ate, how much, how recently, and how long it took him to eat it. I can't really do that.

Now, in partial defense of my gender, I think some of this innate talent is related to women's ability to breastfeed. It certainly helps to keep you connected to your child if your body parts swell up and ache whenever the kid is hungry. I suspect that if five minutes before my child was due for a sandwich, I got a persistent throbbing in my testicles, I'd be more on top of things, too.

T
o compensate for my lack of natural gift, I turned to Science. I bought an absurdly complicated watch for the express purpose of timing all child-related data. And for a few days, I was like NASA. I could give you readings accurate to several hundred decimal points as well as open up the trash compactor on
Apollo 12.
I started timing everything. I was hitting that start button so many times, I began to lose track of what it was I was timing. I'd hand the baby over to my wife and prepare for the briefing.

“Did he eat? How long has he been up? Does he need to be changed?”

I'd proudly check my watch.

“It just so happens that exactly three hours, thirty-eight minutes, and twelve-point-five seconds ago . . . um . . .
something
happened. I don't know exactly what. But it's been going on for quite some time, I'll tell you that.”

As this was not the first time I was unable to provide the information requested, my wife—the no-nonsense Headmistress of the School of Our Recent Child—paused, shook her head, and remarked, “You just don't get it, do you?”

Okay, first of all, let me tell you how much that particular sentence bugs me. From anyone.

“You just don't get it.”

They haven't yet invented a conversation stopper more offensive, more hostile, or more completely dismissive. And it's become quite popular. You hear it all over the place. At work, in social situations, in the midst of the most amiable discourse, a difference of opinion is discovered, and it all comes to a crashing halt with someone declaring that someone else “just doesn't get it.”

The implication is “I don't care enough to explain this any other way. And furthermore, it's my contention that you are literally impaired intellectually to the point that you do not get things that, to almost everyone else, are quite evident.”

It's all the more irritating coming from the one person you would think
likes
you; who would think that the two of you “get” the same things. Which is kind of why you're together in the first place.

And there's not even a decent comeback line for “You just don't get it.” What can you say?

“Oh, I get it. I just . . . I just . . . I just don't get it
right now.
”

Sensing that she had hit a frayed nerve, my wife softened.

“Maybe we're just different,” she said.

“Who?”

“You . . . me . . . men . . . women . . . maybe we're just different.”

Suddenly, I felt so relieved.

“Okay,” I thought. “Maybe that's it. Maybe she can do things that I can't, just like I can do some things maybe
she
can't . . . We may be different . . .”

I sure liked that better than “You just don't get it.”

And while I certainly wasn't going to stop trying to get better at this Dad thing, I felt liberated from having to master it by lunch.

Tough Love

I
n the beginning, whatever creative sleeping schedule your baby makes up, you accept. If they like to sleep in the morning and be up all night, fine. After all, they just arrived on the planet, their clocks are bound to be screwed up for a while.

But after a few months, for the sake of the child's development—not to mention your own sanity—you have to take matters into your own hands.