Son: Are T-Rexes carnivores?
Me: Yup, they only eat meat.
Son: Would they eat me?
Me: Yeah, they’d probably eat people if they were around.
Son: Well it’s a good thing we waited then.
Me: Huh? Waited for what?
Son: Waited for all the dinosaurs to die before people came along.
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Our one-year-old son cried for 45 minutes straight last night. It was a good night.
Here’s why:
Men, there is a mental roadblock you will have to get over in order to not be a slave to your children: Get over crying. “Crying it out” and “sleep training” are somewhat controversial topics in mommy circles, but I think it’s safe to say that for most dudes, a crying baby is a pain in the ass. It’s not a sign of neglect or abandonment.
To a mother, the sound of a baby crying is like a giant guilt-coated blade that pierces straight into their soul and tears their insides apart. But, for the more pragmatic of the sexes, it’s a logical, natural physiological response. Where woman see the Bat Signal indicating crisis that requires immediate response, most men just see another streetlight amidst hundreds that illuminate the path to the baby’s contentment.
So, here’s my advice: Day or night, let the kid cry for a bit and see what happens. Worst case, your wife gets mad at you and the baby gets a lung workout. It’s best to do it now, while their young and before they establish the pattern of “when I cry and get picked up.” As kids get older, they build up stamina, so they can go for longer and longer periods of tantrum. They also get manipulative and turn on the waterworks to get things from you. This isn’t good. We made this mistake with our older son and he didn’t sleep through the night until he was three years old. Seriously, what’s worse, a couple of bad nights or three years of interrupted sleep?
Also, learn to distinguish between the different types of cries. As a new parent, it might all sound the same to you, but I’ve honed my daddy ears to three different types of cries. Knowing which one your dealing with is especially important when you’re taking a “cry it out” approach.
Here’s another nugget; something that might work for you as they get older. When our older son was about two years old—once he was old enough to communicate in a reasonable manner—I started telling him that papa doesn’t understand crying (or whining). Straight up, I just pretended to have no idea what he was saying (or screaming) unless he stopped the dramatics and actually used a conversational tone. ”What’s that? Whaay waaa baaaa ba? You waaaannnnaaa mumunaaba? Look, I have no idea what you’re saying. You’ll have to use words and speak English son.” Of course, if he is hurt or actually sad, I don’t just ignore him, but it’s worked pretty well to curtail the random crying for no reason.
Author’s note: This post was originally written two months ago. Our son has since become a reasonably good sleeper that no longer cries through the night. Without wanting to jinx myself, knock-on-wood, sleep training does work.
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A recent CBC story about gentrification in a Berlin neighborhood was generally a dud because the reporter zeroed in on the Prenzlauerberg area of the city. A Canadian comparison would be writing about gentrification in Toronto’s Yorkville. A bit late.
However, a few insightful quotes at the end of the piece totally redeemed it. Read below…
“There are some bad vibrations here, especially … against moms like me. Young women who got their children when they liked to, got a good education, have a good background, are quite self-assured.… The Prenzlauer Berg mamas, the latte macchiato mamas, women who … really look after their children,” she said. “Those moms are young, good-looking, self-assured, well-educated and they do what they want, [so there’s] a kind of jealousy and some distrust people have against women who know what they want.”
Bingo! A great point and a rare nugget of insight in a tired and f#*ed-out discourse.
Anyway… implicit in the scene of the latte-sipping educated mom, is the fact that she’s not at “work.” Chances are she’s taken paid-maternity leave from a successful career and is devoting much needed attention to her child.
Maternity leave reminds me of something I learned about the bubonic plague while studying history in university.
In the 14th century, the plague swept west from Asia killing maybe 75 per cent of all people in its path. That included peasants, preachers, princesses, painters; basically everyone. Surely it was awful, but it did smash much of the existing class system that had suffocated innovation for centuries.
High-ranking people died, and lower-ranking people were socially elevated to take their place. Tradespeople were forced to train and hire randoms, instead of passing their skills down to (their otherwise fortunate) sons who had probably died.
It was a boom time for social mobility and innovation.
The path to any dream job begins by getting your foot in the door. Millennials are figuring this out the hard way as their door is being blockaded by fat and sassy baby boomers jealously guarding their bloated salaries, benefits and vacation time.
Filling in for someone on maternity leave is probably the closest thing we have to the plague advancing a career. An employer gets to test drive you for 6-12 months, you get to make an impression and connections, and it pays better than a dreaded internship.
The problem at the moment is the boomers clogging the workforce have already had their kids, and they had so few of them, that the cohort that should be knee-deep in diapers is the smallest in half-a-century. Worse still, is that those stuck behind boomers have delayed their families because they can’t afford to start one without a decent job.
But buck up Millennials… as you can see from this graph the demographics are slowly shifting in your favour and it’s only a matter of time before your fertile career-lucky peers start having kids and you get your dream job for at least 6-12 months. It’s a win-win situation and nobody will have to die a gurgling pustule-covered death.
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Teething sucks. It stimulates excess saliva, so expect a lot of drooling, as well as vomiting, diarrhea, maybe some fevers, and general malaise. It just looks painful. Think Wolverine before he got the cool metal implant thingies that his claws come out through – just bone tearing through flesh, only with teething it’s in slow mo. Shniiiickk… sshhhnnniiiiick.
It actually takes a lot longer than you might think too. The worst of it goes on for about a year but continues with molars and canines for another year or more. It’s less of an event, as in “oh, my baby is teething,” and more of something that flares up from time to time and you just deal with, like a bum knee, or allergies, or Herpes. Because it goes on for so long, it’s a good out for parent’s with generally fussy kids: Anytime the baby’s crying, oh, sorry, she’s teething. Baby threw up on the carpet, sorry teething. Baby doesn’t want to play, yup teething again. Won’t sleep, won’t feed, won’t play fetch - teething.
Here’s some strategies to help cope:
Chew toys. No, they’re not dogs, but they will dig soft rubbery things they can chomp down on. The ever-popular Sophie the Giraffe and Chan Pie Gnon are best sellers, but in my opinion, they’re more squeeky toys than effective chew toys. Instead, go for something a bit harder that they can hold an gnaw on for a while. There’s a thing called a Raspberry Teether that both our kids really liked. 
We also have a weird fleshy pink thing with little gum ticklers on it that our son loves - it looks like a naughty toy that the kid found in mommy’s private drawer, but I have no idea what that one’s actually called or where we bought it.
Frozen rags. If you’re one of those granola, anti-plastic, anti-drug, homeopathic parents, then this is for you. Wet a clean (organic cotton) rag, put it in a Ziplock bag, and toss it in the freezer for a bit. Then let your baby chew on it. They’ll get cold water all over themselves, but if they’re teething, they’re probably drooling all over the place anyways.
Real fruit popsicles and the Nuby Nibbler. Teething comes at a time when babies are getting ready to eat real food, which means that you can give them actual soothing things to consume, like popsicles. There’s also this cool contraption out there called a Nuby Nibbler, which is essentially a bit of mesh that you put fruit into so the kid can chew on an piece of apple or banana or whatever without swallowing a big chunk and choking. Both our kids loved it.
Orajel. It’s gel, so it’s a bit tricky to spread it around on the gums while your baby it trying to take a bite out of your finger. Careful with this one.
Nelsons Teetha Teething Granules. We got this homeopathic remedy from my family in the U.K. so I don’t even know if they sell it in Canada/U.S., but it works pretty well. It’s like Fun Dip candy, but for teething.
Advil. The 8-hour stuff. Drug ‘em up before bed and at least get a good night’s sleep from time to time.
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I read this story in the National Post last night. Trend of couples not having children just plain selfish.
Feel free to let this editorial spark a debate on whether having kids is selfish or not. That’s why it was written, and that’s exactly what happened when the link was posted on Facebook.
I don’t care about that debate. (Actually, my feelings are that people who raise their kids to be selfish are the selfish ones).
I don’t care because I was too freaked out by this final seemingly tacked-on sentence at the end of the piece.
“And what will become of those trim, fit and fat-free-yogurt loving folks when decrepitude inevitably creeps in; when they age, as we all inevitably do, and the children they chose not to have aren’t around to look after them?”
Wait…I’m trim! I like yoghurt!! I’m becoming inevitably decrepit!!!
I literally started sweating after reading that. I had never seriously considered this. My caveman survival mechanisms kicked-in and my mind started racing around the question of who will take care of me if I don’t have kids?
I doubt the state will, considering how fast people are trying to get rid of it.
Maybe I’ll get a ward, like Robin was to Batman. Not really sure what I have to offer though — guitar lessons maybe?
Maybe I’ll befriend a young wannabe photographer who, “sees so much expression and wisdom in my face,” that they’ll just hang out with me till I die, so they have something ‘authentic’ to talk about at the launch of their exhibit.
I honestly can’t even think of jokes about this, it is frightening me so much.
At least I’ll have company.
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Urban dads of young children are so screwed for the Zombie Apocalypse. It’s true – we’re easy prey. We live in places that will be teeming with zombies, we’re weighed down by too much baggage, and we’re soft and ill-equipped with zombie-fighting skills from years of working desk jobs (unless, that is, zombies are somehow entranced by Power Point in the same way business executives are).
If that weren’t bad enough, there’s the single biggest reason parent’s of young kids would make for shitty teammates: young kids. They slow you down too much (violates Zombieland Rules #1 and #7 – “Cardio” and “Travel Light”). Also, kids cry and are hard to control, which would attract zombies and discourage others from joining your survival team. Honestly, I’ve given serious thought to how completely fucked we’d be if zombies attacked before the kids were old enough to fend for themselves. I think you’d want the kid to at least be old enough to be quiet when needed and run when needed. Ability to wield a weapon would also be an asset. Maybe a 6-year-old?
On the plus side, if society survives the Zombie Apocalypse, your seed will be used repopulate the Earth. Your kids would be future super-leaders like John Connor. Of course they’d grow up to be a bit messed up by today’s standards, but they would thankfully also never know a society where the class of people with the highest standard of living sat in cubicles staring at screens for eight hours a day and Hit Me Baby One More Time was one of the top selling singles of all time.
Sam and I were inspired by this zombie post by Jowita, “The best leader for a zombie-survival team? You, the new parent,” and realized that Dude Meets Dad is embarrassingly light on zombie survival tips for young dads. Also, while I’m flattered that Jowita thinks I would make a good teammate in an apocalyptic scenario, I feel grossly unprepared. So, in this joint effort, Sam and I are putting together…
To be used in conjunction with all other existing best practices for zombie survival.
GET A BABY BJORN: There’s no way you’re strollering your way through the Zombie Apocalypse. If your kids aren’t mobile, you’ll have to carry them, but remember, you’ll also need your arms to fight. Best bet – strap ‘em to you.
MacGUYVER YOUR BABY GEAR: Despite all the challenges you’ll face keeping you baby alive during the End of Days, you do have one advantage – baby gear! You know how to pack a diaper bag in a matter of minutes and all the stuff you have in there is likely to come in pretty handy. Baby monitors become zombie monitors. Bottles become containers for potable water. Diapers are useful after you shit your pants watching everything you once held dear slowly torn apart and demolished. It is also inevitable that at some point during the zombie infestation you’ll be trapped in a confined space surrounded by grabbing clutching zombies. As food runs low, your baby’s formula will come in handy as a compact nutritious source of food. Once that is gone… your lactating wife will realize it’s not just the zombies who will feast on the living.
STOCK UP ON BABY WIPES: Baby wipes are essential in pretty much all travel situations, but in particular, you’re going to want them in a world of infectious zombies and on-the-move diaper changes. When all the world’s plumbing goes to shit, baby wipes will also replace showers so you’ll be able to use them to barter for food and cigarettes (which you can then use to barter for other goods and services).
SURROUND YOURSELF WITH SINGLES: As the zombies bear down on you and your family, they should make valiant sacrifices to save your innocent children. See, My Shattered Pelvis vs. Your Baby’s Feelings.
ZOMBIE TRAINING FOR KIDS: You don’t want to be the parent with the kid that’s caught picking his nose when the zombies attack, or the parent that has to use their baby as a toss-able, edible diversion (like the cartoon-robber-tested strategy of tossing a fresh steak to angry guard dogs). Instead, teach your kid some survival skills. Develop a Survival Plan. Practice it. Send them to camp so they learn survival skills like archery, finding shelter, and how to light a fire. Teach them evasive maneuvers. Teach them what needs to be done in the event that you do something stupid (probably while trying to protect them) and turn zombie. The nice thing about kids is that they are quick learners, they’re resilient, and they have short memories, so once the initial shock has passed, they’ll likely cope better than you with a world full of zombies.
HARMLESS GUMS: If your baby does happen to turn zombie on you, at least you don’t have to brain it right away. Now, this would be sad, and you don’t want to go all Governor on your fellow survivors (see Walking Dead comics, issue #43), but if it came down to it, no teeth means the young one can’t really bite you and spread the infection. Plus, at a glance. your zombie baby could pass as a regular baby (see Zombie vs. Baby). In this worst case scenario, you don’t have to worry about keeping your zombie baby safe or alive. Basically you can just keep it in bag or a box until you die, or a cure comes along.
GET THE HELL OUT OF THE CITY (just avoid Hwy 400 – it’ll be a mess): The best way to survive as an urban dad is to stop being urban. I was just talking to Dude Meets Dad’s tech expert Stu about how if the Zombie Apocalypse came to Toronto, the safest place to be would be on a ferry to the Islands – the ferries are mobile, they’re sheltered, they have washrooms, and they’re even equipped with axes – multiple, big, solid, red axes!. Maybe we could even colonize Centre Island. But, more likely, we’d be able to take our kids on the antique carousel and give them one last hoorah to remember before stocking up on funnel cakes, stealing some boats from the marina, and heading up the St. Lawrence to somewhere with a better gun-to-zombie ratio, like New Brunswick (3rd in per-capita firearm ownership, after the Territories and Alberta – Ontario is dead last).
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Have you ever heard of a Derecho? Neither had I until recently. It is basically a nightmare come to life in the form of a weather event. It’s also one of many reasons I am reconsidering ever becoming a dad.
A Derecho (see photos on right) is more or less a giant arc shaped tornado-cane that barrels across a landmass. Instead of touching down occasionally — like a giant destructive bingo-dabber — it sweeps through towns and cities like a sky-borne tsunami and destroys everything in its path. This summer, spurred by the freakishly hot weather, a Derecho crashed through the American mid-east killing 23 people and leaving 1.4 million people without power. Or… as a newscaster covering the story put it, “leaving millions without air-conditioning.”
As we speak farmers and commodity traders are bracing themselves for the worst crop yields in a half-century. At this moment food prices are spiking as fast as the record setting temperatures across North America. In fact the past 12 months have been the hottest on record — EVER. If that doesn’t scare you there was also this recent storm in New York.
I work all day with geographers and scientists who study climate change. These men and women are so far beyond studying the “if” and “how” climate change is happening, they have moved on to the grim work of determining how society will adapt when things get really bad. They measure things like how Canada’s food and water supply will hold out after a massive influx of refugees from the U.S. and they try and calculate where 100 million Bangladeshi’s will go when that country is swallowed by the ocean.
A conversation with the Chair of the University of Waterloo Geography left me particularly frightened.
“If you’re into the whole having kids and grandkids thing… I dunno,” he said laughing. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere in the Midwest. Northern California might be okay. Alberta is in trouble, but they have the oil sands money, so they’ll be fine until maybe 2060. [Waterloo ON,] isn’t a bad place to live, but basically everything west and south of Winnipeg is fucked.”
…gulp.
A child born today might live to see 2100 (or maybe not if they are too starved to dodge Derechos). Their Ontario is going to look a lot more like Virginia, Virginia is going to look a lot more like Mexico and Mexico is going to look a lot more like Mad Max.
This is what the scientists are saying. And they are usually right – these are people who got us to the moon! I don’t want my kids to be fighting for survival against Mad Max, not with my family history of knee problems.
As the video states, Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives. Or their lives…
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I saw this article in my Twitter feed this morning and it actually made me angry:
Beyond the fact that it’s posted on Fox News, the article optimizes the exact kind of consumerist crap you see every year at this time. I take particular offense with the intro/tag line:
“This Father’s Day, show your guy how much your children love and appreciate him with a gift that truly fits his lifestyle. Check out these 10 great new finds because let’s face it, dad doesn’t need another tie.”
Because nothing says, “I love you dad” like a monthly subscription of Pump Ups fitness supplements. Really? What the f*%# about a $79.99 “iGrill Bluetooth Meat Thermometer” (whatever the heck that is) suggests it “fits my lifestyle?” Did I burn the steaks last time? Do you feel like I need my food to communicate wirelessly with me at dinner time? Similarly, why would I need a “Sevansa Spa MAN Smooth Operator shave gift set” for $54.00? I already have a razor and it works just fine. In fact, I happen to use a classic double-edge safety razor and badger brush which suits my manly needs nicely and is way better than whatever crap you’re selling.
Please, I implore you not to waste money on this type of garbage this Father’s Day.
There’s a reason a tie is a classic gift – because most guy’s hate clothes shopping, but at the same time we’re picky. Historically (pre “business casual”) we tended to need ties and there is a pretty low bar for what constitutes an acceptable tie. Therefore, new tie = good gift. I get socks every year for Christmas and it’s great. You know why? Because I hate shopping for socks. So, the gift is less about the thing itself and more about mitigating a painful experience.
If you really feel compelled to spend money, here’s another way to go. Ask your man what he wants. Most guys aren’t big on surprises and tend to know exactly what they need/want. This year, my wife bought me a really nice new wallet. It was supposed to be for my birthday/Father’s Day, but I happened to get it early because my three-and-a-half year old got super-excited about it and couldn’t keep a secret. It’s an awesome gift and here’s why: a) I had dropped the hint that it was something I wanted, b) I really needed a new wallet because I’d had my last one for more than 15 years and it was literally falling apart at the seams (it was a gift from my late grandfather that was being held together by a few loose threads and years of loving care), and c) I would have felt guilty about spending the money if I was buying it for myself.
The truth is, fathers are low maintenance. My dad never wants anything for Father’s Day and neither do I really.
Ladies, if you’re reading this hoping to come away with some gift ideas for your man, here’s a short Father’s Day wish list that almost all dads will appreciate:
That is all.
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In 1987 a sensational thing happened in my humble hometown of Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario. Local twin babies Lisa and Michelle Blair were somehow selected to play the baby in the film Three Men and a Baby starring Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg and Ted Danson (and directed by Leonard Nimoy). The movie was a smash hit as the top grossing movie of the year narrowly beating out Fatal Attraction.
But why did they need twins to play one role? It’s the same reason Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were drafted to play the singular role of Michelle Tanner on Full House. California law required that child actors could only be “under the lights” of a film set for 20 minutes a day. The restriction exists because a child cannot reasonably express whether they want to appear in films or not. The law also protects children from potential Hollywood hazards like competitive pressure and stress. Having identical twins on set was a practical way to get 40 minutes of screen time a day for one role.
More than 20 years after Three Men and a Baby hit the screen, a new crop of child stars has exploded onto screens everywhere. I, and most people my age, are experiencing the babification of our Facebook news feeds. Slowly but surely status updates about getting drunk and barfing all over the place have evolved into updates about your kids barfing all over the place.
Most people with kids rarely even appear in photos on their pages anymore. Now it’s all pics of little Jessica curled up with the dog or videos of Jamie eating a lemon and freaking out.
From my vantage point this is a welcome improvement. Your baby photos and stories are unfiltered. Your kids are generally ego-free and their accomplishments are worth celebrating. First steps and first words are much more exciting than self-curated stories that make others feel not thin enough, not successful enough, not hiking in Bali enough. Like never before we get a window into the daily, shitty, snotty, adorable grind of raising a new person.
For a time, Facebook allowed parents to create separate pages for their progeny, but recently ended the practice by disabling the accounts of people posting on their baby’s behalf. For the time being parents must share their pages with their kids.
Not to spoil the fun, but maybe Hollywood prudence might be in order of social-media happy parents. Like the Blair twins, or Mary Kate and Ashley, your child has no reasonable way to express whether they want all of their shitty, snotty and adorable moments captured and handed to Zuckerberg et al. for eternity. And if Facebook’s timeline is any indication, eternity is where we are headed with this stuff.
I know, it’s not a big deal today but it is possible that your little child stars might not want that information public in the future. Maybe they grow up transgendered and don’t want public reminders of their previous gender. Maybe one day malevolent peers gain access to the pics and use it against them. Maybe somehow any one of the predators lurking online gains access to this information and manipulates or distributes it.
It’s a grim thought. But something to keep in mind when you upload photos of your young-ones when they are at their most vulnerable. We all know how child stars turn out.
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