I love my kids, I just hate parenting
I’m not going to say my son’s a genius.
I’m going to type it: MY SON IS A GENIUS.
Let me be clear: at my son’s young age, there is a lot he doesn’t know. Hell, at my age, there’s a lot I don’t know. But while my son is still figuring out how to feed himself, he’s been picking up all sorts of other knowledge and skills at an incredible rate.
So I thought I’d start posting about the new things he can do. In list form!
It was almost exactly two years ago when I discovered I was going to be a father. My level of ignorance on the topic had me pretty nervous, but the nerves are natural. And kind of pointless. Because what I’ve learned after my first full year as a dad is that the key to being a good father is simply this: don’t be an asshole.
Seriously. If you’re already not an asshole, you can skip the rest of this (long) post because that’s all there is to it. Congratulations! Go forth and multiply.
However, I was an asshole. And I didn’t have much guidance when I became a dad. So I offer the following nine-item list (one for each month of pregnancy!) to all the assholes like me who need advice on getting through the nine or so months preceding the birth of the person who will most likely be your end (Oedipus!).
Read more about The Worry-Free Guide to Impending Fatherhood …
Earlier this week I wrote about the five baby-related items that made our first year as parents a little more bearable. These were all items in which our son had little say; because they were for us, not for him.
But now, as we get closer to Christmas, and our son gets closer to self-awareness, we have to take begin taking his “interests” into consideration.
Read more about The Anti-Christmas List: Five Gifts My Son Won’t Be Getting …
Having your first kid is not easy. Despite all the books and the advice, there’s really have no way of knowing what you’re getting into or what you’ll need to survive it all. Every parent gets a bunch of crap when they are having a kid, and a fair amount of it are things that they initially have no real idea what to do with – until they suddenly need to figure it out REAL QUICK.
It’s kind of like a computer game where you collect all sorts of random items you can’t fathom any use for, and then you get to a specific puzzle and it suddenly becomes clear that the only way to solve it is by using that jar of butt paste you somehow acquired way back when.
Having just survived an intercontinental trip with our 8-month-old baby, I am ready to share what I’ve learned. I’ve already discussed how well my son handled the trip and while I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t exactly easy, or quite as relaxing as previous baby-free vacations, it wasn’t nearly as bad as we’d been led to believe it might be.
Of course, I know that’s not what many of you want to hear, especially on this blog, so…I wrote the following list for you. Consider it your daily helping of schadenfreude.
Read more about To Ireland in a Handbasket: Tips for Traveling with a Baby, Schadenfreude Edition …