My dinner keeps getting cold. She always needs something just as we’ve finished cooking.
She's tired but she won't sleep, she's hungry but she won't eat.
There is absolutely no routine, which means there is zero semblance of even the illusion of control in my life.
The permanence of all this has flattened me completely.
I am strung out and clueless. If you’re one of the billion and one people who has either authored a book about parenting or would like to recommend a book about parenting and you seem even faintly confident in the words inside, be nice. You could probably sell me a football stadium full of snake oil right now. Oh, you’ve got answers? Here, take my credit card.
Just yesterday, I got everything out and made myself a quick PB&J for breakfast, only to realize as I was taking the final bite of the sandwich that I had completely omitted the peanut butter. The day before that, I walked into a public restroom, looked in the mirror, and saw that the left side of my hoodie was covered in dry milk. Wait, no, that’s not milk. I mean, it is milk. But it’s also spit-up.
After I published this bit, a friend emailed me and said, "I struggle not to be that dad sometimes." He added a frowny face at the end :(
Well I don’t know, man. If you think you’re failing in some way that the rest of us aren’t, maybe go ahead and turn that frown upside down, because I’m pretty stumped on how anyone in these shoes could not struggle with that.
A little story: a year or two ago, before having a child was more than a thing we’d get to eventually, I observed two parents struggle for an hour to get their baby to go down, only to go back into their room and wake her up 45 minutes later so they could give him a bath. I was bewildered. All that crying was miserable. All that not-crying was so peaceful. Plus it was a baby. How dirty could it be? Let the kid sleep. They explained that 7:30 bath time meant 7:30 bath time because routine was healthy for baby. I wasn’t convinced. I didn’t have to be a parent. I just knew they were being silly. I probably rolled my eyes.
Mea culpa. Today, I stand before you terrified that the wind will blow the wrong way and send our evening into a tailspin that turns a 10:00 pm bedtime into 1:30 am real fast, and it won’t change the fact that she’ll want to eat again at 3 either way. I don’t have anything particular to say about scheduling and how strict is too strict. I’m just looking back at the certainty I carried in that moment and really feeling an old favorite from the Bible: before a great fall goes great pride.
That grocery store piece my friend was replying to wasn’t the first time I wrote about a parent in action and shared my thoughts on how they might be impacting their child, and it probably won’t be the last. Parenting is what’s alive in my life now, and I think contemplating how we treat our kids and why that matters is part of how we’ll get to the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible.
But my god, whatever it is I say on the matter, take it with a grain of salt. The practical side of this whole operation can turn the theoretical into a big, fat joke in a real hurry.
Don’t get me wrong: there is so much goodness in all of this. This whole thing is amazing. It's rewarding. It's mind-blowing. It's motivating (she broke me out of a months-long writing slump, for example). There is freedom in being a platform for another being’s existence. I love it and I'm grateful for it and it's so cool to watch her grow and change each day even if at the same time I can’t stop praying that time will somehow slow down. Also, doing this whole thing with a partner you love, even when you don't love anyone or anything because 3 am is here now and everyone is awake and this is all getting ridiculous, is wonderful too. And even when I lose sight of all that, because it is very easy to lose sight of all that, I’m rarely far from the levity of when, in the middle of a wee-hours feeding when I’m at my wit’s end, she starts absolutely ripping ass as loudly as a grown adult.
10/10. 5 Stars. Would recommend.
But many things can be true at once, and one of my life’s indisputatbles is that right now, I am living in Uniquely Challenging Times.
I wrote the above about two months into this wild ride. We’re almost at three and a half now, and what they say about everything changing so much all the time is true, which means that life is astonishingly different from how it was the week before Christmas. I wanted to publish it because another thing people keep telling me is that you end up forgetting just about everything from Year 1, and they’re probably right, and that makes me sad.
So we'll said. Love it all and something you will one day share with that little peanut and laugh about the challenges and joys of parenthood 🥰
Dude, this is so normal. The motto of the parent of a 2 month old baby is "At least I'm lying down with my eyes closed." It changes so fast. Listen to Darius Rucker "It won't be this way for long." Read Nighttime Parenting by Dr. Sears. You are going to blink your eyes and she'll be rolling her eyes at you for wanting a hug as you drop her off for the first day of 8th grade.
I remember when my kids were tiny and they'd be crying in the supermarket or fighting at the playground and some little old lady would come up to me, clutch my arm, and say, "Cherish these times." I seriously would want to punch her in the face, or at least say, "You f-ing cherish these times, lady, because I'm going nuts." But now I AM that old lady. You will not believe how fast the time goes.