How to Talk to Your Baby

I recently saw the Mark Wahlberg talks to animals clip on hulu. I thought it was hilarious. It got me thinking about how I talk to Braden. I have always believed that you should talk to your babies like they are adults. I know certain sounds and high pitch voices are supposed to be more pleasing to babies. That is OK with me. My problem is the way people use improper grammar with babies and how they make up sounds. Basically most people talk to babies like the baby is an idiot.


I think you should talk to the baby the way you want him to talk when he is able. We all know that you shouldn't curse around a young child because they repeat what they hear. If we know that then why do we continue to say things like "hims a big boy" to our children. We know they will repeat what we say so why do we intentionally tell them wrong. I think talking to your child like a real person helps develop their brain and enables them to learn faster and thus be smarter.

Now this theory is followed by almost no one. So it leads to people staring at me like I have 2 heads when I talk to Braden. I ask questions and hold one sided adult conversations although there is no chance of response. Basically I look very much like Andy Samberg's portrayal of Mark Wahlberg when I talk to Braden but I am going to keep doing it so just laugh away.

You Gotta See the Baby

If anyone out there is crazy enough to read this blog more than once you will probably notice that I am a huge Seinfeld fan. We will cover that topic another time, but today I want to use a certain Seinfeld moment to illustrate something about having a new baby. Basically some of Jerry's friends want him to come see their baby. Rather than try to explain it you can watch this clip. It starts bad but clears up after 5 seconds.




In another episode Jerry wonders if these people are having kids just to get people to come see them. If that was the case I promise you it would work. One of the hardest things about the first few weeks as a new dad is the visitors. Here you and your wife are trying to adjust to this new crying, pooping person in your house and all the while you are hosting a house party. We had so many people in our room right after the birth that I lost count. It was all a blur at that point but it did not stop. The next day our hospital room actually got so full that you could not fit another person inside. People started leaving because they were too crowded and uncomfortable. It was crazy.

When we got home the drill went on for nearly two weeks. My wife and I had absolutely zero time to ourselves. We had to postpone starting our life as a family in order to host a baby viewing gala every night. I know the Seinfeld clip takes place in TV land but why in the world would anyone want to insist on people coming to see the baby. I promise they will come anyway. A heavily fortified house surrounded by the national guard, ravenous pit bulls, and land mines could not keep people away from a new baby. I have found so many true comparisons to real life on Seinfeld but this one misses the mark for me. I would never be calling people and saying "You Gotta See the Baby!"

What is a Play Gym?

There is a product out there for babies called a play gym. On the surface this term appears to be oxymoronic. To me the gym is a lot more like work than play but I digress. What does your baby do with this product. Does it help him work out his biceps or is it a place to play games. As you can see I think the name could use some work but the product is great. The thing is a mat with bars overhead from which you can hang all manner of toys and noisemakers. Most play gyms are marked with some pretty high intensity colors that may look like they were designed by a mental patient but those colors are part of the magic. The combination of colors, hanging objects, and noisemakers make for a pretty cool place for your baby.


I first got ours out when the boy was several weeks old. By this time he was alert and looking around. I figured he got tired of looking at me, mom, and the various lights around the house. Right from the start he laid down in the play gym and was happy. He laid there for a half hour and smiled at the danglies. So being the great dad that I am I dug through his toys and found a few rattles to add to the collection. Our play gym has a lion that plays music and a few rattling things. The baby toy makers now make everything with hooks so all your toys are interchangeable. This is a great idea to help keep your baby's attention but sometimes I put so much stuff on the thing that the boy must think he is being surrounded. My wife correctly reminds me from time to time that I don't need to hang every toy we have from the multicolored bars and hooks.

Take if from me the play gym is not only for babies looking to do squat thrusts. They are a great place for your baby to play while you take a break. They are also a great place for you and the baby to play together. Now if I could just get past the negative connotations I get from the word gym. I think I will start calling ours the Amazing Technicolored Play Mat.

The Quest for Sleep

I have ventured off into my thoughts on video games and television and haven't shared anything about life with my son lately. One of the biggest adjustments for me was trying to function on a few hours of sleep every night. I have come up with some stages that I went through on my quest for sleep. Not unlike Frodo and Sam's quest to destroy the ring this quest is long and difficult and at times will seem impossible but it can be conquered. Here are the stages I went through.

1. What do we do?
2. Calmly trying to sleep
3. Desperately trying to sleep
4. Finding a rhythm
5. Your on your own

What do we do?

This is the stage you are in when you return from the hospital. Your friends have warned you that you won't get any sleep but that is all you know. What will happen? How will we share the responsibility? At our house we started with the boy sleeping in a cradle in our room. I suggest having the baby sleep in your room for some time at first. It is easier since you will be up fifty times a night to feed him. Also the new mom will undoubtedly wake up to check on the baby every time he makes a sound if she sleeps at all. New moms are crazy like that. We pretty much did everything as a team for a couple of weeks. My wife would change his diaper and I would go to the kitchen to make a bottle. This is a good strategy because it gives everyone confidence in handling the baby because there is always support. This is a terrible strategy because neither of you ever get a full nights sleep.



Calmly trying to sleep

After a few weeks of this you will be miserable. Once you have been in a mindless state for a fortnight you are ready to adjust your plan. We started by sharing the nights. One of us would stay up until the boy went to sleep which was usually around 2 o'clock. Then the other teammate would get up at the next feeding time. During all of this the baby is still eating ever 2-3 hours so you get no sleep during your shift. We would alternate shifts every night. When the boy would go to sleep we would ease back into our bedroom and put him in the cradle. This started one of the worst chapters of the entire quest for sleep saga. You would work forever to get him to sleep then as soon as he hit the mattress those big dark eyes would open and stare back at you. I know that your child's beautiful eyes can bring you a smile on the darkest of days. But at 3 am when he suddenly awakens and stares at you as if to say what's up you just want to jump screaming out of the window and run for the hills. During this sleepless chapter of our lives my wife and I continued to try and try every night until he would finally sleep in his cradle. We didn't want him forming bad habits about where he slept so most of our nights read like the back of a shampoo bottle. Rock to sleep, rinse, repeat. We would let him sleep in the swing or bouncy chair during the day but not at night. We were determined.

Desperately trying to sleep

This went on for a while and neither of us was getting any sleep. We finally decided to break up the shift work and just alternate nights. This way we could get a full nights sleep every other night. Still this hurt our family life. Whomever had the night off would go to bed early or fall asleep on the couch. Neither of us was ever in a good mood. You start to wonder if you will even survive this sleepless hell. One particularly difficult night I woke up to my boy screaming. I found my wife completely exhausted and frustrated. She was at her wits end. I took over the shift so she could go to bed. I stayed in the living room with the boy the rest of the night. I moved the pack and play into the living room and put him in. Then a miracle occurred. He slept. So for the next few nights we put the pack and play in the bedroom with us. Life was wonderful. The boy slept and we stayed in the bed together. Of course we got up a couple of times a night to feed him but that was OK. He was no longer waking up every time we laid him down. This only lasted a few days. All of a sudden he hated the pack and play so the quest for sleep shifted gears. My wife tried using the crib in his room. Apparently he liked this now. We put an air up mattress on the floor in his room and one of us slept there every night. This lasted about a week. Then he quit sleeping in his crib. At this point we had been through the cradle, the pack and play, and the crib. We were running out of places for the boy to sleep outside of a few cardboard boxes I had in the attic. We were desperate. This is where all the good intentions of following advice you read or you get from health care professionals goes out the window. We no longer gave a crap about forming bad habits or anything else. If we couldn't find a way to get some sleep there was going to be a homicide at our address. We gave in and started letting him sleep in the swing.



Finding a rhythm

We are currently finding a rhythm that has restored order and peace to our home. The boy is sleeping in his swing every night. We are not even trying anything else. We will worry about that later. I haven't mentioned but through this ordeal he has started eating more and less often. Now the boy goes 4 hours between meals during the day and 5 or 6 hours at night. We take turns sleeping on the couch beside his swing. This has been going on for about 2-3 weeks. Lately the boy has been asleep by midnight. He will wake up and eat a little around 4 or 5. Then he sleeps until 8 or 9 before eating again. From where we have been this seems like heaven. Both of us are getting a pretty good nights sleep every night. All that remains is for us to one day again sleep in the same bed. I can't wait for that day but I will be satisfied with our new rhythm for now.



Your on your own

I assume this is the next step. We have not made it there so I might learn that there are a few detours still yet to take. This is the step where you put your baby in his crib in his room and go sleep in your bed in your room. My wife will have a really hard time with this. I am sure one day I will have to insist that she comes back to bed with me. We will worry about that when the boy starts rolling out of his swing. I figure that is a good time to put him back in the crib. I hope that goes relatively smoothly because I don't want to revisit any of Dante's 9 circles of hell.


The quest for sleep is a long and arduous road if you have a non sleeper. Some people will have babies that sleep all night right from the start. To these people I say get out of my face before I strike you. If you are currently on your own quest for sleep good luck and god speed.

Diaper Fear

Men are a tough and fearless bunch. We take great pride in being unmovable rocks. Men will climb the highest mountain braving the elements, dodging bears and snakes just to get a shot at a big buck. Some even climb the highest mountain just to say they did. We refuse to ever cry or even care about the sob stories we see on TV or hear from our wives. We are unmovable. When I was a kid my dad raised ducks. He used to reach into the wood duck boxes without a care in the world. I saw him pullout a snake and a screech owl with his bare hand and he just went on to the next box. This is the kind of thing that we do. All men grow up wanting to be tough like their Dad or John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. We are taught that showing fear is not an option and will get you evicted from the man club. However, there is one thing that strikes fear into the heart of every man across the globe......The Dirty Diaper!

When our son was born I obviously had no experience with the dirty diaper. I am sure that some men get experience from younger family members but not me. Actually if you see a man that has experience with a dirty diaper before he has his own child be wary. I am sure there are circumstances that could lead to such a situation but it just seems abnormal. I completely avoided the dirty diaper for about a week. I tried not to change any diapers to make sure that I didn't get a surprise. If you have never had a child I am here to tell you that the first few weeks are a highly stressful situation. There are people around all the time. The baby needs something every minute and you have to deal with this all on no sleep. Needless to say avoiding diaper changes led to a slight altercation with my wife so I promised to join in.

I changed some wet diapers and thought that was easy enough. It will help you get used to putting a diaper on a wiggling, crying, uncooperative person. It also allows you to get comfortable with your involvement in the genital region. I have a boy so I am OK. I would imagine that with a little girl this can be even more unnerving at first. Now I am feeling more comfortable and one early morning when I am alone with the boy he drops one on me. The first one was pretty small. There was no major smearing of poo up the legs or all over the bottom. This is a good thing. From there I just went on changing diapers dealing with the dirty ones as they came.

Eventually you will get one that is full and smeared everywhere. While you are trying to clean all the poo off of his entire body you will invariably get some on your hand. It will not be a pleasant experience. This yellow substance smells awful. It is like some foreign matter that only exists in a babies diaper and you certainly don't want it on your hand. As terrible as it seems I think when it happens you turn a corner. I thought to myself that the worst has happened. My son has pooped on me and I am going to live. After that dirty diapers become a part of your world just like baseball or a cold beer.

I am aware that the older generation of tough guys does not do dirty diapers. I am also aware that some of you have wives that will let you avoid the dirty diaper as well. To you I say congratulations. For those of you that are approaching this for the first time I suggest you help with the dirty diapers unless you want to wake up one night to see your wife leaning over you with a meat cleaver and a psychotic smile. It is not too bad and it goes along way towards peace in the home. Personally I find it hilarious that I was ever scared at all because now I am exponentially more afraid of snakes, bears, and Whoopi Goldberg than I am a dirty diaper..