Marriage Illustrated with Crappy Pictures (12 page)

NAMING THE BABY PROBLEMS

One of the coolest things about having a child is that you get to name the child! All by yourself! Anything goes!

Unless you are married to or partnered with or otherwise on speaking terms with the other party responsible. Then, unfortunately, it is customary to allow them to have an opinion. Sigh.

And opinions he had. He nixed every name I suggested for one stupid reason or another.

Suggesting names became like a word association game. He always knew someone or it reminded him of a movie or a song or a street he once skinned his knee on when he was seven. Every name had something bad connected to it.

And sometimes his veto was just in the form of a rhyme.

Frustrated, I’d ask him to make some suggestions:

He was usually super-helpful.

WHO WILL THE BABY LOOK LIKE?

We spent hours daydreaming about what our first child would look like.

Will he have curly, light brown hair? Or straight black hair? We looked at baby photos of the two of us and tried to imagine.

When Crappy Boy was born, days of grueling labor and complications ended in a cesarean section. They quickly whisked him away to a warmer table.

Does he look more like me? Does he look more like Crappy Husband? I didn’t get to see!

He then went on to say that he looked like his brother and his great-grandfather too. Finally, a nurse pointed out that the baby in fact looked like him. Imagine!

(Now I’m told that both my kids look like a balance of both of us, but I know people are just being nice. I was merely a vessel for his genetic material. All of mine got tossed.)

TAKING CARE OF CRAPPY BABY

This is how I take care of Crappy Baby:

And I still get a ton of other stuff done.

This is how he manages to take care of Crappy Baby:

Was this because he was so completely enraptured that all his focus and attention were on the baby? Sometimes. Maybe. Nah. Babies are like paperweights for men. He’s not enraptured: He just can’t move. The presence of a baby in his arms makes him incapable of doing anything else.

WHAT I THINK HIS DAY IS LIKE AND WHAT HE THINKS MY DAY IS LIKE

Sometimes I get jealous when he goes to work. With other adults. He gets to have stimulating conversations!

It is probably like this:

And of course sometimes he gets jealous of me staying at home, “relaxing.” He thinks it is probably like this:

Really, we’re both off.

This is what it is really like for him at work:

And this is what it is really like for me at home:

But at least we have something to talk about when he gets home.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Kids ask a lot of questions. I would guess the most common one they ask is something like this: