Advice for the First Time Parent

A local parenting website posted the question "What is your best advice for new parents?", and received the typical responses. Sleep when the baby sleeps. Enjoy them when they're little. They grow up so fast! But no one hit on the really important things, the things that, when you're pacing the living room at 3 a.m. with a screaming baby, you think "Why the hell didn't anyone tell me this?".

And since there are few things I like more than giving unsolicited advice (you may remember my Advice for the New Father), I'll add to the list.

1. No one thinks your baby is as special as you do. Really. He's cute, he's snuggly, he's shoots magical rainbow poo poos out of his butt. But don't get upset if your friends hide you on Facebook after your umpteenth "Junior had a big stinky!" status update.

2. Everyone is an expert. They all have an opinion on everything, from how you feed your baby to how you diaper them, to how to get them to sleep. Smile graciously, say "Thank you so much." and then go form your own opinion. Sometimes people are right, sometimes they're wrong. You'll figure it out.

3. Your mom doesn't remember as much as she thinks. When is the last time she took care of a baby? 25, 30 years ago? Our parents are great resources, and grandparents are such a special part of a child's life, but old people have bad memories. So when your mom starts saying stuff like "You potty trained at 5 months old!" and "You ate pureed hot wings out of your bottle!", see #2.

4. Things will never get back to normal. Because there's a new normal, and you'd better get used to it.

5. You can't spoil a baby. Period.

6. Leave the house, often, with and without your baby. Go on walks. Go to the store. Go visit a friend. Go to a playgroup (and when they're little, the playgroup is totally for you. Everyone there understands.)

7. Research everything, write down a detailed plan, then set it on fire, because it is completely useless. Just when you think you have it figured out, your kid will pull some Jedi mind trick bullshit and you'll have to rethink everything. This is true times a million with subsequent children.

8. Be kind to your partner. It's not easy for them, they don't know what they're doing any more than you do, and you're probably making them feel like a real dumbass. This seems to be especially true of mothers towards fathers, as our natural instincts kick in. As our natural instinct is to think that new fathers are dumbasses.

9.  This is as easy as parenting will ever get. The sleepless nights, body issues, no time for intimacy, postpartum emotions, nipples of fire, overwhelming dread for the future - this is a piece of cake. That's fucked, right?

10. Recognize that all the cliches are true. You used to roll your eyes when people said it's like walking around with your heart on the outside, and now you get all lumpy throated and croak out "It's true!". Resist the temptation to buy inspirational posters featuring kitties.

But mostly, chill out. You are going to screw up so bad, so many times. Everyone does. Our best hope as parents should be to raise children that are loved and cherished, kind and compassionate, thoughtful and considerate. No pressure, though.

Good luck to us all.

A Horse is a Horse, Of Course. Unless.

While cleaning up this morning, I picked Julia's plastic horse from up off the floor. It's your garden variety plastic horse, nothing special.

It doesn't move or whinny or light up or shoot realistic horse turds out of it's butt. It is so unremarkable, that I have never noticed one, very prominent, feature. Until I turned it over.

Yes, that is a wang. Based on my limited exposure to horse wangs, it is to scale:

I don't think Mr. Lincoln could have ever imagined his likeness being used in such a manner.

It reminded me of a trip to the Dallas Zoo when Katie was four or five. In the petting zoo, she stood with a horse - giving her best 'ta-da!' pose. But the picture comes across differently:

If you have plastic horses in your house, please go RIGHT NOW and check for weenies. I have to know if this is a widespread thing!

Brown Locker People

As we drove home this evening, I remarked on some teenage skateboarder dudes, hanging out in the strip mall parking lot (which seems to be the preferred hangout for skateboarder dudes since time immemorial). I noted that skateboarding never seems to go out of vogue, and I remember the group of them in our high school.

The Husband, who graduated from the same school several years ahead of me, says - "Ah, yes. Brown Locker People."

In our hippy-dippy, built in the 60s, Northern Californian high school, there were groups of lockers, arranged by color: Orange, Blue, and Brown. Regardless of your assigned locker color, you tended to migrate to where 'your people' hung out. Blue - freshmen, sophomores and nerds. Orange - jocks, princesses and upperclassmen. Brown - mods, artsy people, anyone engaging 'alternative' pursuits (including, apparently, skateboarding). People with asymmetrical haircuts.

"You were a brown locker person." he says to me.
"I most certainly was NOT! I had an orange locker." I replied
"Maybe. But you are a totally a brown locker person."

Maybe.

Then I started thinking about all the qualities I try to instill in my kids, all the things that I tell Katie about peer pressure, and fitting in, and self confidence. Be your own person, don't let anyone tell you what to like, or who to like. Don't be afraid to be smart. Stick up for what you believe in.

If I think back to high school, and beyond, it's those Brown Locker People who seemed to understand those lessons better than anyone. They thumbed their noses at convention, and did things because they loved doing them, and hung out with people who's company they genuinely enjoyed. What a concept! And what a display of courage from kids at a time in their life when conformity is king, and the wrong shoe can be social suicide.

While I was friends with many of those people, I wasn't entirely one of them. Because I was too scared to be - too frightened of being myself at all costs.

It's a fear that follows most of us into adulthood. It propels us through job interviews, keeps us company during endless cocktail hours, and dictates conversation with coworkers, clients and now - as a stay at home mom - other parents. I find myself gauging the sustainability of my friendships by what I can get away with saying. When I lamented my lack of ethnic friends to my Hispanic friend Y-, and said I should put a personal ad in the paper (MWF seeks Non-White Person for token friendship), she nodded with understanding instead of looking at me like I was insane. That is a good friend. When I casually mentioned boob sweat to a newish friend today, she didn't act disgusted, she talked about her own sweat. There is definite potential there.

It's only now, at nearly 40, that I realize most of us are brown locker people. We're just too timid to say what's on our minds, for fear of what someone else will think of us. I mean, who's going to throw boob sweat out as a conversation starter, when 'what I did on my summer vacation' is so much safer?

Let your freak flag fly, friends.

When Being a Little Kid Sucks

Julia has been engaging in non-stop naughtiness for a couple of days now. Yesterday, as we were buckling up in the car to go on a fabulous, fun and exciting trip, she decided she was just going to DIE if she didn't get a drink. The in-laws are standing in the driveway, I have the baby buckled in, and the two big kids in the back seat and it's hot and we're going to lunch first and I don't want to get her a drink. I just want her to zip her trap and sit down and let us get on the road.

But instead, she completely lost her shit. Crying, blubbering, arching her back, yelling. And she is so unbelievably loud. She opens her mouth and emits a sound that is like a tornado siren, "BUT I-I-I-I-IIII'MMMMM SO-OH-OH-OH-OH THIIIIIIRRRRSSSSSTY!" and the next thing I know, I am yanking her out of the car and carrying her inside, where I sit her on the counter, hold her face with my hands and get nose to nose with her.

You are not being a nice girl! You have been naughty all day! You hit your cousin! You tripped your brother! You are yelling and being naughty! What is wrong with you?

She looks at me with big, wet eyes, face streaked with tears, hair plastered to her head and, between great, wracking sobs says "I am only four years old! I just do these things!"

Sigh.

There is something about Julia that pushes every button I have. Whether it's her tenacity (relentless), her volume (supersonic), her temper (ferocious), when she wants to get under my skin, she can do it with lightening speed. I have lost my temper with her a shameful number of times. I have yelled and threatened and been less the kind of parent I want to be with her than my other children. Simply put, she makes me crazy.

Then she looks at me with that angelic face and says something like "I am only four years old! I just do these things!" and I remember that she is this very small person, who - more than anything in the world - wants and needs my love. It is very humbling.

Four is the kind of hard that I have no memory of. Four is just old enough to know what you want, but too little to know how to get it most of the time. Four is too small to soldier on when you're tired or hungry. Four is a black hole, attention sucking vortex. Four has no voice modulation. Julia at four is stuck in the middle, and that's a tough spot to be in at any age. She's spent the past couple of weeks trying to assert her place with the visiting grandparents and cousin. She has plenty of competition for their attention and affection, and it's been hard work for a little kid.

Tonight, everyone else (minus the baby) is out of the house. Julia and I played Hullabaloo and ate pizza and she is waiting patiently for her brother to go to sleep. Then we'll watch a movie together and she'll sleep in our room, cuddling close to me in the big bed. Because she needs to know that, to me, there is no Julia in the middle. That she isn't stuck there, between being the big kid and being the baby. That she is as special and loved and cherished as her brother and sister, even if she spends more time in the corner than either of them combined. She is, after all, only four years old. She just does those things.