I’m typing this right now with a napping toddler in my lap, so if mid-sentence I start waving my foot around to knock out the pins and needles, I hope you’ll understand.
That’s just one of the little adjustments you have to make when you become a parent, I suppose. It’s been a year since Alexandra was born, and it’s certainly been an adjustment. Without a doubt it’s the most amazing experience I’ve ever had, but there are a few things I’ve had to learn over the months. Some of this stuff we’ve discussed elsewhere on the forums, but I figured the one-year mark was a good point to try and pull some reflections together.
Sufferin’ Sleep Cycles!: I’ve definitely whined about this before, but one of the more frustrating elements of fatherhood has been the degree to which my already-fragile sleep cycle has been blown to bits. Since she was born, Alex hasn’t stuck to one sleep pattern for more than a week, and she has always slept less than every source we’ve consulted suggests she will. A few times we’ve been lucky and she’s settled into a 10 PM-to-6 AM pattern for a few days, but before long we’re jumping to 9 AM-to-3 PM or 1 PM-to-8 PM. Attempts to follow the old ‘sleep when the baby sleeps’ credo have met with limited success, because my body doesn’t snap around as easily as hers does, which means that when I do lay down, I often crash harder and longer than I want to. (That’s part of why I’m writing this now, while she sleeps. I’m hoping that if I can start forcing myself into a rhythm, I can get her to follow along. Even if it doesn’t work, I might get a little more work done.)
The problem is compounded somewhat because we’ve adopted a parenting style that Pattie says is called ‘attachment parenting,’ and which I call ‘carrying the kid everywhere.’ Alex has disliked her crib almost from the get-go. Her first night home, she kept us both up until 7 or 8 AM, howling whenever we put her in her bassinet. Things haven’t changed much in the last year, and we never were able to bring ourselves around to the ‘let her cry it out’ approach. I admit, there are times when I’ll put her in her crib out of frustration, but never for more than twenty minutes or so, by which point she’s only gotten warmed up as far as a crying jag goes. If you were to say we were spoiling the baby, at this point, I’m not sure I’d argue with you. But I think there are benefits. Alex is an enthusiastic, happy, outgoing kid. She smiles and waves at people, laughs and smiles a lot, and seems to have a lot of confidence as she’s exploring the apartment.
They Learn Fast: One thing that has amazed me is how quickly Alex has come to notice patterns and recognize things. I’ve mentioned this before, but she knows the sound of Pattie walking up the steps on her way home from work, and gets so excited when she hears it. She also has seemed to recognize music almost from day one. From an early age, she has registered a preference for up-tempo music, and her favorite lullabies appear to be Pete Yorn’s “Life on a Chain” and Joie Calio’s “Stupid Songs About Love.” She also recognizes television theme music. She loves the ‘Across the Stars’ video from my Attack of the Clones DVD, and waves her hands excitedly at the themes from Farscape, Babylon 5, and, um, Trading Spaces. (That one’s more from Pattie.)
She also recognizes much of the music from Sesame Street, which she’s started to watch in the last month or so. It’s clearly too early for her to be recognizing many of the concepts, and I’ve even seen a newspaper story where one of the show’s producers thinks that 2 is a good minimum age for watching the show. But she recognizes the music and the characters and seems to enjoy watching them. Of course, this has led Pattie and me to watch the show as well, which often induces nostalgia for when we watched the show. Many of the classic Muppet performers have left the show, leaving the characters in the hands of quite-capable replacements . . . but sometimes it still feels a little off. And of course there’s Elmo, the Muppet embodiment of some kind of generational dividing line. At least Alex has shown an equal fondness for Ernie.
Daddy on Board: Being a stay at home dad has its own challenges, as does being the gainfully employed mom. It’s just not the expected breakdown of roles, and it tends to throw people off. Usually it’s just a matter of the odd comment or two, which is no big deal. But sometimes I run across more concrete reminders that we just don’t seem to expect dads to be heavily involved in the early years of child-rearing. We got a few volumes of a well-known series of parenting books as gifts while we were expecting, and when I sat down to read them I quickly found myself putting them down. The books were completely written to the point of view of mothers, and just about the only mention of fathers was in the ‘If your husband wants to try and help you out for an afternoon, here’s how to keep him from screwing up too badly, given that he doesn’t know anything’ vein. Lest you think I’m being overly defensive, Pattie’s made the same comments. And, illustrative of how lucky both Alex and I are, she made sure to do something about it, getting me a copy of Armin Brott’s The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year. The book covers the different emotional issues that fathers tend to experience whether they’re stay-at-home dads or more traditional working dads. But it still includes enough general advice and information that Pattie has read the book herself a couple of times and found it helpful. It just feels to me like we need to be doing a better job of adjusting our expectations when it comes to parenting and gender roles.
Keep Those Hankies Handy: The last thing I’ve noticed is that parenthood has stripped away whatever sense of emotional restraint I might have had. I tend to get overcome with emotion a lot more easily these days than before Alex was born, and I was never all that restrained to begin with. But now, it’s almost comical how easily I can be moved to tears. I should have known this was coming – my mother tends to be the same way – but it’s hard to estimate the impact of a small person snuggling up to your shoulder and falling asleep until you experience it. And that’s worth all the missed sleep in the world.