Fatherhood the Blog - Week 7-8

             Super interesting things I've learned in the past week and a half of Fatherhood:

- My baby is the size of a thumb tip, and has organs, but is translucent and still really creepy looking. It is, as the book reads, "unmistakably human" but only in the way that the little gray men who crash landed at Roswell are unmistakably human. We share the same basic anatomical make up, I mean, more so than like a human and a sea slug, but we really don't look much alike at all. I can only reason that if the entire baby is 3/4" long, than it's itty bitty organs must be like size of a sprinkle (I had ice cream last night) and that's insane to think about.

"Phew, thanks Mom, that was a
close one!"

- Evidently people bring fabric covers from their home to put on high chairs in restaurants. I learned of this via an amazing argument with my darling little wife about whether or not we were going to use one of those with our child (can you guess which side I was on?). In my defense, for the first portion of the argument I didn't know these things really existed and thought we were debating the value a hypothetical object. My impeccable logic was, "Listen, we didn't have these things when we were little and we never got any diseases. That wasn't 60 years ago, people didn't use these like FIVE years ago. If they were necessary than mankind would have died out thousands of years ago. Besides, germs are good for our kid! I want to build a super child by building up an immunity to every sickness by being exposed to germs!" Margaret would give her reasons or something (like I was paying attention) and then say, "We are going to use one of those things!" and I'd say, "Okay, we'll see." just to be annoying and keep the argument going while we waited for our food to be brought to our table.

- Uteruses (uterii?) grow. You find out all sort of things from reading a baby book. Sometimes you even find out things that you didn't really need to know. For example, I now know which week the uterus goes from being the size of a tennis ball to the size of a softball. Look, I'm a guy, and not just a guy, but a young guy, and not just a young guy, but a young American guy - I'm supposed to be ignorant when it comes to innards that women have that I don't have. The only guy who ever knew a lot about uteruses who wasn't a doctor was Jack the Ripper, and that's because he was removing them from his victims! (but who are we kidding, every one knows that Jack the Ripper was the King's Royal Surgeon, and a freemason, and a vampire).



            I've been considering some really important things about the raising of my future child today. For one thing, I was thinking about how one day they'll be a teenager, and I'm really not interested in dealing what all that bullshit. Teenagers are so annoying, as I can attest, having been one just 7 years ago. Sometimes I look back on some random opinion I had when I was 16, and think, "How could I ever have legitimately thought that? And I really thought it too! I was so convinced and passionate about it, but now it seems dumb." There are some things you just can't learn without actually traveling the distance to learn them - it isn't so much knowledge that can be passed on or communicated, but a certain lens that grows over your eyes as you view the past through the filter of time. It isn't that you know a different set of facts now, it's just that you see things in a different way. So how, when I have my own equally headstrong teenager, can I communicate the lessons I've learned when I know they can't understand it? That all gets too heady for me so I quickly move on to other concerns, such as....

            At what age should I introduce my child to the movie E.T.? This is part of a bigger multi-part question, which is about what movies I want to introduce to my child, at what age for each movie, will I let my kid pick any movies that he/she watches, how can I keep them from playing the same movie over and over, etc. I've already begun putting together a list of movies, or several lists really. One is for toddler movies - basically movies my 4-year-old child will enjoy that won't drive me crazy, and includes all the Pixar movies, How to Train Your Dragon, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, The Iron Giant and more. The list that has me excited the most though, is the movies to shape my child's manhood, should it turn out to be a boy. I saw the Indiana Jones trilogy when I was 7 years old, and I loved it. It felt like something I shouldn't be allowed to watch, but something awesome and exciting and, in The Temple of Doom anyway, genuinely terrifying. Seven seems pretty young, but I want my son to see those movies when he's still young enough to be scared by them, not when he can just watch them with a detached critical eye, noticing how cheesy the special effects look now. When will I show him Star Wars, and will I even let him know the prequels exist? These are serious things to consider - what a boy obsesses upon informs much of who he will become. I can't control whatever my child eventually loves, but I can expose them to a limited selection and try to brainwash them subtly.

That's gotta hurt.

          As you can see there are many things to consider when partaking in the incredibly slow process of becoming a father, but I think it's pretty clear I have all my priorities in order.