After six
months of caring for my little minion, I now have a greater appreciation for
parenting. Not just as a responsibility, but as an art form. So now, at six
months, here is what I have learned:
Who’s Ready For A Show?
Parenting,
all parenting, is just one huge stage production. Actually, it’s just a small
production where you don’t get paid for your work, the show is daily and never
ends, you are the only one performing (you may also have a significant other
that has the other lead role along side you), you are only performing for one
small person who will never remember what you did, you have no script, and you
have no understudy.
As soon as
you wake up (whether it be at 1:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., or you just never went to
sleep in the first place) you are putting on a show. You slap that smile on
your face, even if you can’t open your eyes, and greet your little one for the
twilight hours as if they had just woken up for Christmas. Every. Damn. Day.
You get
your high-pitched, squeaky, excited baby voice warmed up. You collect all the
toys and stuffed animals that you will use to entertain your minion. You get
all of the voices for each individual stuffed animal straight in your head,
because it would be a freaking nightmare if you got Winston the Dog’s deep
growly voice mixed up with the soft vibrato of Pinky the Frog. Your child may
not remember much, but they sure as hell know the voices of their stuffed
animals.
You spend
so much energy on a daily basis on your little one, that by when nap time rolls
around and you place your precious baby in their crib…wait, let’s face it, at
this stage there is no putting them in a crib for naps…You are holding that
energy devouring beast during nap time and wondering how you can possibly make
it another five minutes because you have been holding your pee for seven hours
now. But then, your little love bundle wakes up and needs to be changed, fed,
and has to play with her floor keyboard while you sing “Marry Had a Little
Lamb” along with the music or else she’s going to get pissed off and you won’t
get to pee for another two hours. And if you’re sitting there thinking, “That
was an oddly specific series of events Sworsky?” Guess what? It is specific
because that happened! On more than one occasion!
So if you
are getting ready to be a parent; warm that voice up, work on your smile, be
ready to have everything your new baby does be super exciting, and get an iron
bladder because you, my friend, are about to become the most underappreciated
actress/actor in history that no one will ever hear about.
Baby Talk Is For Everyone!
Now, I was
never under the impression that my little minion would come bounding into this
world ready to recite Shakespeare the moment I held her. But, I did not count
on my wife and me devolving into a bunch of babbling, sleep deprived baby
talkers either. I know every parent does this, and every parent knows that this
is borderline crazy behavior. The kind of behavior you don’t want your friends
to know you do otherwise you may not be friends any more.
I will be
sitting with my beautiful baby girl, and she will talk. By talk, I mean a
series of noises you would hear from the hot springs and mud pots in
Yellowstone, and ending in a big ol’ tongue raspberry that sounds like you just
came home from bean burrito night at your local Mexican restaurant. I’m a sane
individual, but after hearing my little minion “talk” to me, you know what I
do? I say the exact same thing she said to me, back to her.
That’s
right! I am now having fart noise conversations with my daughter because that
is how she communicates with me. And I with her. And that’s not even the worse
part. The worse is that I understand what she is saying. I have a “Daddy
Decoder” part of my brain that takes the noises from my child, processes them
into coherent phrases and sayings, and I respond to my daughter. Either with
the English language or with the fart language, depending on my mood, location,
and proximity to other grown adults.
So when my
minion says, “Ba ba, mmmmm PLAAAAAAA. Ba ba ba ba, pppppfffffffff. BA BA,
*tongue noise that sounds a lot like ripping ass*.” I take that to mean,
“Daddy, I would love to have a bottle and then some play time with the musical
turtle. Not the little land tortoise we have, but the blue sea turtle with the
colored panels that make the music. I love you and thank you!” That’s what I
think she says to me! Except I reply back with only “ba’s” and shorter fart
sounds to let her know that I understand her needs and we’re going to go and do
that stuff right now. I know this qualifies me for a diagnosis of Multiple
Personality Disorder, but it’s a parenting technique that goes away after a few
years…hopefully. Wait…yes…Winston tells me it goes away. Don’t ask who Winston
is…
Sleep Fighter
This is a
total new one to me. Six-month-olds should be sleeping around 14 hours a day.
That means they are only up for 10 hours a day. At least that’s what the
“experts” are saying. I don’t think my minion knows that small piece of
information that is so crucial to her well-being and development.
She will
scream (and not a pleasant scream, I mean a Banshee scream that would shatter a
grave stone), and kick, and flail, and arch her body to be stiff as a board,
and roll, and blow snot bubbles to resist sleeping after she has been awake for
three hours. She needs sleep at this point, but it’s the process of putting her
to sleep that is so detail specific.
To accomplish this precious nap
time my minion has to be sitting just right in a cradle like position with the
crook of my elbow placed directly at the base of her head giving her support
yet comfort, she needs to have her outside arm lightly pinned to her body while
her inside arm finds a nice little opening between my arm and body so it has
some freedom of movement but unable to flail, all the while we are giving her a
“top off” bottle to lull her to sleep with the heel of my bottle holding hand
gently pressed against her tummy to relive any gas related pains, and she needs
to have a light blanket wrapped around her up to her chin. You know, nothing
complicated. We’re just getting a nap in.
If any of those things are off by
even the slightest margin, we need to abandon ship and start all over again.
There has been one time in which none of this was working; no bottle, no
position, no song, nothing and I just decided to walk around with her in an
outward facing sit position. If you don’t know what that is, I’m completely
jealous of you because it means you don’t have this problem. As I’m walking,
her head starts to droop, then snap back up. Droop, and snap up. I slowly turn
her to face me, and I notice that she is drifting off to sleep in my arms.
Besides this being the cutest damn thing that has ever happened to me, it was
also frustrating. I had put so much effort into getting everything just right
for her to nap, and then she repays me by basically giving me the middle finger
and not sleeping in the little nest I made for her, but falling asleep in the
most uncomfortable position imaginable; sitting up in Daddy’s bony arms while basically
slumped over herself. She had fought sleep for so long that her body overruled
her brain. The next half hour of silence was, arguably, the sweetest I have
savored in six months.
Poop Is Now More Exciting Than Ever!
It’s hard
to imagine getting excited about someone other than yourself making a massive
deuce, I know, but my wife and I are giddy whenever our little minion fills her
little size two diapers. We are literally a poop cheerleading squad for our
little girl. We will put our minion on her changing table and cheer her on as
her bowels empty. 95% of the time it goes where we want, 5% of the time it goes
on my hand, the floor, or wall, but hey, Michael Jordan missed more than 50% of
his shots, so technically my daughter is an All-Star when it comes to hitting
the target. It’s just those few times when my little minion decides to get a
quick ab workout in, changing the angle of her poop cannon that things go awry.
Or when Dad gets a bit cocky and forgets to put a new diaper on as soon as the
dirty one has been removed. Several changing pad covers have suffered the
consequences of my inaction, as well as the carpet (twice), the wall (once),
and her crib (once, but the wife doesn’t know about that incident so it doesn’t
count).
I have learned that when you have
an infant that is now in control of your entire life, and it can only
communicate to you through random noises and bodily functions, that in order
for anyone in the house to get any sleep greater than a four hour stretch, that
small, roundish, squishy little living thing needs to have an eruption of poop
before 9:00 p.m. or you are going to be holding that little darling for a few
hours longer except now it is screaming, kicking, and is all-around
inconsolable. You begin to wonder if the application of your ketchup bottle
techniques that you have mastered over 30 years of life could be applied to a
similarly sized human being. Because no sleep will be had until that little
munchkin expels the waste product in its overloaded belly or has a massive
round of artillery sized farts that could possibly wake up the neighbors. See
why we get a bit excited by poop now? Poopy time leads to sleepy time! Which is
every parent’s favorite part of the day!
There are
still so many things that I was not able to mention that parent’s out there
have experienced. Trust me, my wife and I are experiencing them too. These are
just some of the highlights that I thought you would all appreciate. Now if you
excuse me, my minion is waking up and has not pooped all day…It could be a very
long night…
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