Laid-Off Dad

The balls of summer

It’s Friday night, the sultriest of the year so far. The rain can’t make up its mind, and the air feels close and torpid. An appropriate feel for the onset of Memorial Day Weekend, when the summer season kicks off and the city becomes blessedly empty. The sticky weather is an ominous portent for the next three months: Summer is here, and Robert's school wraps up on Wednesday. Pray for us.

Luckily, the brothers like to spend hours on end tormenting each other. One of Robert's favorite hobbies is cutting TwoBert's feet out from under him while he "tweener toddles" around the room. TwoBert is eager to take a few steps on his own, but he still prefers to swing from his parents' clothing. This is a welcome change from the depilation, but since my shorts don't fit as well since the weight loss I spend lots of time with my pants at half-mast. (Or, for that matter, my mast at half-pants.)

The funny thing is that TwoBert's desire to stand is less motivated by walking than by the propulsion of objects. If he finds a ball near the couch, for example, he’ll pull himself up just so he can kick it a few feet. (The ball, not the couch.) In the park, he swats his little soccer ball and scuttles off after it. And this obsession doesn't stop at the spherical: Last week my wife watched him conjure a game of floor hockey with a toy hammer and a baby carrot. If he can hit a curve ball, I’ll be on Easy Street.

Speaking of which, Robert and I ripped a page out of the book of father/son bonding rites and went to our first baseball game together, at Yankee Stadium. As a Red Sox fan, I was ambivalent about taking the boy into the belly of the Evil Empire--especially since it was Cap Day, and every kid got a lid with the Yankee "NY" on the front and another odious corporate logo on the back. The idea of him wearing the thing gave me pause, but the alternative was a wicked sunburn and a gateway to skin cancer. I weighed the options measuredly--Yankee cap, or melanoma?--before I came to my senses.

We sat in my favorite spot—upper deck, just inside the fair pole in left field. This is clearly the best vantage point, because it's the crow's nest--the best view of everything. You can see right away whether a fly ball is a homer or an out. Besides, observing baseball from afar fuels the grandeur of the game. When you're detached from the action, you see 18 men playing America's Pastime. Up close, all you see is a bunch of millionaires dribbling tobacco and adjusting their goolies.

Robert built up his excitement all week, and on the subway ride he worked himself into a full-bore fervor ... which evaporated after about 15 minutes in the stands. He had a hard time understanding why the green dots wanted to score a run, and why the white dots wanted to stop them. He was hot, he was thirsty, he had to pee. I spent about $400 on lunch for two, and that bought me almost five innings until Robert had finally had enough. We were home in time for the last out.

They say that one of the true joys of parenthood is rediscovering life through the uncomplicated eyes of a child. And that’s mostly true, although parents should be advised that the bat swings both ways: The mundane can seem utterly new and wonderful, but it can also be magnified into unbearable tedium. I suppose that can be a good thing; I gave his cap to Goodwill, and so far he hasn't missed it.

Honey, we're pickling our brains

Remember when Kentucky Fried Chicken started calling itself "KFC" in order to downplay the whole "fried" thing? Back when fried was about as appealing a food treatment as breaded with cat litter? It looks like the idea has caught on with TLC (né The Learning Channel), which looks to be distancing itself from "learning" in favor of "ripping off BBC shows."

If you're in the mood for a purely wretched televisual experience, have I got the show for you: Honey, We're Killing the Kids (which, predictably, debuted here).  The title alone is pure gold. Grabs you by the collar and stuffs a dead fish in your mouth. And if you can't commit to the full hour, all you really need to see is the first 10 minutes--when it delivers not one but two signature hooks.

The first is the visual, when two parents who routinely feed their kids Froot Loops 'n' Syrup for breakfast get an idea of what their kids will look like at 40. They watch a brief CGI video, in which each child slowly morphs into a scowling, blotchy troll before their parents' horrified eyes.

The host, who leads a life blissfully unfettered by charisma, gives the dire warning that their children will die hapless, helpless, hairless, homeless and clueless--and about 10 years too soon. Then comes the second hook: the Money Phrase, punctuated by an Unnecessary Zoom. "You Are ... Killing Your Kids." If you TiVo it, you can pinpoint the exact moment when the mother shits her pants.

It's one of TV's most awful-yet-riveting hours, and I think it should apply to all parents at all times. As you may have read, TwoBert's hair has taken on something of a rooster-with-curly-mullet quality. So we asked the good people at HWKTK to use the same state-of-the-art technology to predict what TwoBert's hair, if left unchecked, will look like at age 40. They came up with this.

Scary stuff. There but for the grace of God go he.

Greystoke, Lord of the Drapes

I've got good news and bad news. And better news.

The good news: Robert got 12 hours of sleep last night--a welcome development, because all the excitement around the house lately (TwoBert's birthday parties, Mother's Day at our place, Grandma Jellyspoon's visit) had left him sleep-deprived and punchy as hell.

The bad news: He passed out on the couch at 5:30 last night.

He and I have an arrangement that if he's ever the first one up, he is to come to my side of the bed and whisper me awake, so that we can pad into the living room and Mama and TwoBert can stay asleep. Because this family needs a guy to fall on that grenade, and I am he. So I'm sorry if some of my out words order of are; most of the day has felt like I have sepia cataracts, thanks to the hamsters that are scratching at the insides of my eyeballs.

The better news is that TwoBert walked on Mother's Day, in full view of his mama and both of his grandmothers. He was cruising on a dining room chair, cackling like a jackal, when he just free-stood and wobbled over to the couch. And now, he has become our darling little ape boy, swinging from pant-leg to pant-leg like Tarzan on his vines.

My leg hairs eagerly await his bipodal autonomy.

Child Two: Year One

Dear TwoBert:

It's 4:35am, about 10 minutes after you crawled out of your co-sleeper and threw the full brunt of your 22 pounds at my right kidney. I'm now wide awake and typing, while you've somehow managed to fall back asleep in the bed next to me. And since your sleep can be interrupted by the sound of a caterpillar farting in Ecuador, I'm typing verrrry softly.

We've been bunkmates for a few weeks now, just you and me, because whenever Mama sleeps in here you wake up 2,000 times during the night and demand to "nur-nur." She doesn't much care to be gnawed on at all hours, and with her out on the couch you're much more likely to sleep all night. If you do wake up, you sense that the bar is closed and doze back off. Except for those special times like this morning, when you work up a full head of steam and play rhino against my lower back.

I have to hand it to you, though: chasing Mama from my bed is an excellent strategy. It definitely increases the chance that you'll always be the family's Darling Baby Who Can Do No Wrong, instead of a Neglected Middle Child Who Sets Fire To The Drapes On Thanksgiving Just For A Little Attention.

In truth, I can't complain much about the arrangement. Weekend mornings are my favorite times of the week, because you and I are usually the first ones up. When I awake I often find you sitting up, counting your fingers and experimenting with tongue-warbling. We usually have about a half hour together, when you regale me with singsong gibberish and I teach you how to lower yourself off the bed feet-first so you won't snap your neck. We wrestle a little, and I zerbit you under your chin, and you launch into your deep, hearty, machine-gun laugh that makes the whole bed shake.

You're a very happy kid. You like to laugh, and to show off your seven teeth--all of which have  enjoyed some time beneath my skin. Remember that afternoon, when I was lying on the couch in something of a funk, and Mama put you on my lap to cheer me up, and you lunged forth and bit me right in the crotch, about an inch from the ol' populator? You may have been furthering the Darling Baby agenda, but you also bestowed on me a remarkable moment of clarity.

You're also a beautiful child, and unlike your brother, who was bald as an eaglet until he was 2, you have lots of curly, strawberry-blond hair. It's a lovely color, though the shape is ... intriguing. You have a thick stripe of rooster-hair right down the middle of your scalp, and the curls behind your left ear hang down far lower than on your right, making you look like an asymmetric Hasid.

And now you're snoring away next to me, probably wondering why all those people were crowing over you at the playground. The thing is, Wednesday was your birthday, signifying that you've made it through your first year of humanhood. This is a big deal, not least because your mother and I have survived our first year as polyprogenics. We always knew we wanted Robert to have a sibling, but that was all theory. Putting that theory into effect, for a few reasons, scared the pants off us. But now it's a year later, and you're here, and my life is more full and more meaningful than I ever thought it could be. So thank you, little boy, for giving me yet another reason to scamper home as quickly as possible every night, and to look forward to waking up on weekends.

And most of all, thank you for not biting off my nuts.

The wisdom of Grandma Jellyspoon

If you're like me, you've come to the unavoidable conclusion that your one-year-old son--with his big, precious eyes, chubby cheeks, soft skin, and a loopy, semi-toothed smile that can light up a gymnasium--is officially, empirically adorable. You take him out to show him the world, and the world is drawn toward him to coo and genuflect.

Try as they might, they cannot resist the tractor beam of his glowing charisma and supple flesh. They fondle his legs, stroke his hair, caress his cheeks. This last affront is particulary troubling, because it places your son's perfect, searching mouth in range of dirty rabblefingers.

How do you keep strangers from mauling your baby? Do as my mother-in-law did: Just before you leave the house, smear your child's cheeks with a little jelly, and passersby will recoil from your messy kid like snakes from a mongoose.

I am stupider

It's Sunday, and at last a barnacle of an idea has adhered itself to my mental bulwark, which, thanks to several ventures beyond the Ordinary, has lately been taking on water. I began the week traveling, and then suddenly my wife and I turned into inveterate partyers. We've spent the last few nights pickling ourselves in alcohol, and it's unnerving. We find ourselves asking, "Who are we, and what have we done with us?"

I got back late on Wednesday, after the kids were asleep, and Thursday night we slicked back our hair and stepped out for a great evening--and a crappy night. Our usual sitter (for whom I would take several bullets, and possibly a blast from a BFG) was unavailable, so we left the boys with a friend's nanny, whom they know tangentially. This step even farther outside the lines of the standard bedtime routine was too much for Robert to process, so he wandered into our bedroom at 3:30am to make sure we 1) were where we should be and 2) had not been replaced by wax replicas.

He begged me--begged me!--to sleep with him in his bed for a "short time," and I, suffering from Daddy's Been Gone guilt, thought it was the least I could do. I had spent five minutes folding myself into his race car when he said "you should go back and sleep with your family." I might have been more taken aback had I not been so engulfed in predawn fog, but I did manage to tell him he was my family. And he said, "OK, but you said you would stay for a short time and it's been a long time already." A political way to tell his old man to hit the bricks.

So I unfolded myself and staggered back to my bed, where my wife and TwoBert had passed out in a perfect diagonal. TwoBert hasn't been sleeping well since his gums entered Round Two of the Teething Brigade, so I wasn't about to disturb their peace. That left me with the couch, and our deranged, elderly kitty who meows (make that maRRROOOOWWWs) at things that do not manifest themselves to human eyes.

Friday night my wife went out barhopping for her friend's birthday until 12:45, and I stayed in comforting TwoBert and his beleaguered gums. He desperately wanted to nurse, so I tried heating up some breastmilk for him. But he just chewed the nipple and spilled it all down his front, transforming him from a teething baby to a teething, sodden, smelly baby.

What, then, did I do with my Saturday night, when after a week of abuse I should have passed out on the couch at 9? I met up with some college buddies and bar-hopped until 4:30am, because 1) one friend was in town from Charlotte and was desperate for some night life, and 2) I am stupid.

And now that TwoBert is napping and I should be in there with him, sleeping off this hangover, I'm out here stupidly blogging instead. Because I like to pass that stupidity on to you.   

The result ...

... 23 pounds. But no word as to whether my nutty nemesis did anything drastic. So I won't claim victory, even though successfully divesting yourself of 10% of your body weight should be victory enough. To sum up:

• Operation Look Better Naked: Accomplished.
• Operation Pass Go And Collect $200: Pending.
• Operation Get So Buff As To Be Routinely Mistaken For Gay: Unlikely.