Facebook Status’ For My Eight-Week-Old Son

The following is a list of Facebook status’ that my eight-week-old son would post if he had sorted out that typing thing.

1. Holding my pee until the next diaper change, hoping to get it on dad this time.  If I miss the old man, again, I hope to at least go higher on the wall than any previous shots
2. Balding (do they make infant Rogaine?)
3. Waiting for my parents to get some girls up into this place
4. First Tunisia, then Egypt, now Yemen and Bahrain are on the precipice.  What a crazy eight weeks!
5. Just farted on mom while she was eating.  LOVED the look on her face when she pushed her plate aside
6. Got a big one brewing, hope mom has plenty of diaper wipes
7. Getting sleepy
8. Pinching a loaf
9. Peeing
10. Eating
11. Staring at nothing
12. In daddy’s arms, crop dusting the room
13. Wishing dad would stop singing, I’m not even two months old and I know that guy is tone-deaf
14. Hungry
15. Looking so damn cute it should be illegal
16. Lamenting the fact that I’ll have to go my entire first Cardinal baseball season not knowing if Pujols will return

Homage to the Pacifier

I was recently attempting to change my son’s diaper while his arms and legs were flailing at the air as fast as he could make them go–he was seemingly trying to crawl through the air to escape the experience (why would an infant prefer caked dung on his bottom to a clean diaper?).  Then, like any parent of more than one day, I immediately plopped a pacifier in his mouth, rendering the child as pliant as a cult member’s mind.

This experience made me think hard about the pacifier.  How arrogant was the person who first dubbed this thing a pacifier, implying that all children can be soothed in all circumstances by simply putting a piece of plastic in their mouths?  The person seems to have it right, though.  I’ve yet to throw that magic piece of plastic a problem it couldn’t solve.  In fact, against all medical advice, I can see myself using the pacifier well into my son’s teen years.  I envision a scene like this taking place weekly in the Starkey house.

Setting: Father and Son sitting in the living room on a Friday night watching television.

Son: Dad, can I borrow the car?

Father: No

Son: You don’t love me!  You never loved me!  I hate you!

Father produces pacifier from breast pocket of his olive green t-shirt and places it in mouth of son.  Son immediately becomes demure, sits on couch next to father and rests his head on father’s shoulder.

End Scene

Now, I have to admit that I haven’t always shown the pacifier the respect it deserves.  In fact, I used to refer to it primarily as a “binky.”  That’s like calling Superman “Bob,” it’s just disrespectful.  I now only refer to it in extreme reverence; it is THE PACIFIER.  However, my binky transgression is nothing compared to the dishonor the British pay THE PACIFIER.  The ingrates actually call the thing a dummie.  What dummies!

If you are as much an admirer of THE PACIFIER as I am, you should know that there wasn’t always such universal love for THE PACIFIER.  As recently as 1926 the French Chamber of Deputies attempted to prohibit sale of THE PACIFIER, claiming it brought sexual pleasure to infants.  One German chap even made the leap to associate thumb sucking (and perhaps, then, pacifier sucking) to masturbation.  Sigmund Freud was apparently all on board with this theory.  The more I learn about Freud, the more I question the wisdom of Bill and Ted for including that dolt in their Excellent Adventure.

The Habits of A Highly Effective Eating Infant

A baby’s weight is expected to double between birth and five months.  My powerhouse eating preemie is on pace to accomplish this in about two months.  The medical professionals might say it has something to do with his special high-calorie formula, but in my arrogance, I’d like to think it’s really due to his exceptional eating and evacuation habits as well as my wife’s and my ability to read his cues.

How We Know When Our Boy Wants a Bottle in His Gob

1. The Ray Charles/Stevie Wonder - While held against a chest, he cranes his neck back, produces an odd smile, closes his eyes and bobs his head from left to right.
2. The Motorboat – Again held against a chest, he buries his head in said chest and rummages back and forth as quickly as he can.
3. The Chipmunk/Corn Cob – The same basic premise as the motorboat, but the back and forth is measured as he nibbles his way through the process.
4. The Baby Bird – Mouth open wide and staring straight up, like a little magpie awaiting a worm.
5. The Billy Goat – He’ll nibble on anything in his path; his bib, wrinkles in a shirt, his hand, my nipples…

How We Know our Boy is About to Make Room for More Food

1. The Bucking Bronco- This involves vigourous flailing of the legs and arms until something emerges from an orafice.
2. The Raging Bull- He holds his breath until his entire being is a shade of red that makes you sure he is so angry with you that he could rip your head off in an instant.  He farts and all becomes right with the world.
3. The Ski Jump- With his body completely stiff and angled forward, arms to his side and fists clenched, he strikes a pose that would cause a Nordic father to weep tears of pride into his vodka.

How our Boy Makes Room for More Food

1. The School Yard Bully – He puts his head back, gazes into your eyes until you’re so taken by how adorable he is that you just have to lean down and give him a kiss.  As you near his face, he unleashes burp that curls your eye lashes.
2. The Hiroshima – A massive eruption of gas.
3. The Nagasaki – Follows the Hiroshima and is, disastrously, larger.
4. The Bikini Atoll – (http://www.bikiniatoll.com, for reference) Only a wasteland remains by the time he drops his legs at the completion of this explosion.

 Some Not-So-Proud Habits of The Boy

1. The Alka Seltzer – Formula bubbles from his mouth and continues for an uncomfortably long time.
2. The Exorcist – The formula issues forth from his mouth and nose so rapidly and violently that you aren’t sure if you should clean him or start praying for your soul.
3. The Vagrant – Sometimes, with an embarrassing amount of formula remaining in his bottle, he nods into sleep and can’t be awaken by any means.  With the bottle dangling from his lips, he looks like a bum in a warehouse doorway who couldn’t manage to get the 40 out if his mouth before passing out cold.

Things I’m Convinced My Child is Thinking While Defecating

My child recently turned five weeks old and was born six weeks premature.  Despite these statistics, I’m rather sure that I can already detect a preternatural intellect.  His genius is most on display when he is in the process of defecation.  The medical professionals will tell you that the wry smile or wide grin is a natural reaction to gas, but I know that he is barely containing his mirth at his own thoughts.  Here is a sampling of some of those thoughts:

• You know, if you let this sit much longer, you’re going to need a putty knife to scrape the mess off my back
• I bet you’ll never look at a chocolate milk shake the same ever again
• Don’t worry, papa, I just peed…ha! just kidding, I left a mountain of dung in this diaper
• I bet you’ll never look at chunky peanut butter the same ever again
• Daddy, I think I can use intestinal fortitude in a sentence.  Ready? here it goes: You will need intestinal fortitude to clean up what I just evacuated from my intestines.  You like it?
• Remember that throat punch I gave you while you were burping me yesterday?  That was because you waited too long to change me.  Do it again and I’ll show you another move I’ve been working on, it’s called “choking out.”
• Hahahahahahahaha…doodoo butter

Lullabies for the Lullaby Challenged

Staring at my alert child at 3:00 AM this morning, two things occurred to me: my little guy needed a gentle lullaby to help him sleep and I don’t know any lullabies.  I couldn’t let my lack of intimacy with the lullaby music genre impede my child’s sleep, so I made up a few ditties on the spot.  Below are the lyrics to my creations, along with suggestions for songs which could be, with the right tone, turned into a child pleasing song.  Please bare in mind that these songs are best reserved for children with no grasp whatsoever of the English language.  Also, I’ll use Seamus as the child’s name for all of my tunes, but you should insert your child’s name in its place.  If you named your child Seamus, I adore you.

Original Lullabies:

Monkey Eating a Pear (With no suggestion for a beat, just make up something soft)

Go to sleep my little Seamus, go to sleep and dream of a monkey eating a pear

But Monkeys don’t eat pears, Daddy, surely you know better

They could, Seamus, if they were someone’s pet

But they’d probably just eat peanuts while they stood at the corner grinding their organs

Daddy, is the monkey grinding his organ a euphemism

No it’s not, now please go to sleep and stop this interrogation

I will Daddy, to sleep I’ll go, but I’m pretty sure that you’re wrong about the dietary habits of monkeys

 

Daddy With a New Do (again, make up your own beat)

Sleep little Seamus, welcome the Sandman

Sleep little Seamus, go to the land of nod

You’ve been awake for a while, now it’s time for you to dream of daddy with a new hairstyle

The hair should be luscious and shiny, with no bald spots or flakes of grey

If his body becomes leaner and more muscular (perhaps with about 3% body fat), that will work also

Now close those beautiful eyes and pretend I’m beautiful too

 

Diaper Instructions (I’m hard at work on the lyrics, you sort the music)

Rock-a-bye Seamus, go to sleep

In your diaper, leave only pee

For I’ll change you when you awake

Please save those doodoo butter diapers for mommy, who’ll change you at three

 

Existing Songs Which Could Serve as Lullabies

• Enter Sandman by Metallica, sung with the unmistakable and beautiful melody of Frank Sinatra’s Love and Marriage
• Welcome to the Jungle by Guns-N-Roses, sung to the lovable tune of Bob Marley’s No Woman No cry
• No Sleep Till Brooklyn by the Beastie Boys, intoned to the melodious beat of Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings (sung in a soft voice, please)

A child a child, a child is born

I have a child.  He sleeps and eats and defecates and urinates.  I trust that one day he’ll do all sorts of fun things that will inspire me to fill up this page with amusing, but not trite, stories.  I fear, however, that a father’s joy will overshadow my judgment of what is amusing or entertaining to anyone not in a maternal or paternal relationship to the child.