Nightmares

Not too long ago, Zachary woke up in the middle of the night screaming. I ran into his room and said, "What's up Winston? You okay?" The look of fear on his face spoke volumes; You left me alone, in the dark. And I'm scared.

I scooped my boy up into my arms and he immediately fell back to sleep. But as I rocked my baby in the wee hours of the night, I began to wonder:

Can a baby have a nightmare?

After a brief philosophical discussion with my wife, I have settled on the conclusion that if you are old enough to experience life, then you are old enough to have nightmares about it.

"What," I pondered at my slumbering son "could you possibly have nightmares about?"

Before the thought was completed in my mind, I imagined Zachary looking up at me and saying,

Daddy?
Do you remember when I was 8 months old and I accidentally broke your camera lens?
Do you remember how you yelled?
I felt so bad for making you angry and I was sorry for what I did
But it didn't matter
You yelled anyway
You kept yelling and yelling and after a while it was as if you weren't even angry about the lens, but something else all together

Why don't you write about those memories Dad?
Where are the photos of those moments?

"Well son," I whisper sadly
you don't need pictures or stories to remember those times
Those are the ones that are always there with you
Waiting to come out,
from hiding under the bed
or peeking from behind the closet
Whenever you're alone
In the dark
And scared

The Art Of Parenting

The proceeding picture is one I took of Zachary shortly after he realized that I wasn’t going to let him eat the squashed bug he had just discovered on the floor. Unsurprisingly, he launched into a well-researched, beautifully constructed and brilliantly articulated, hissy fit.

That got me thinking; if little Winston here wasn’t the tender age of 9 months old, he’d probably be kicking the intellectual shit out of me right now and I’d eventually have to let him eat the damn bug.

The writing’s on the wall. I’m simply no match for this kid. I’m Doomed. Helpless. Hopeless. We’d both be a hell of a lot happier if he just always got what he wanted.

But as I was getting ready to pour myself a stiff drink and settle into the inevitable roll of “Deadbeat Dad”, I saw a peculiar book in my bookshelf.

“The Art of War” by Sun Tzu

“Ok” I thought, “It’s worth a try”.

I opened the book and started reading. 2 pages in, I was amused. 10 pages in, I was in awe.

The formula is simple. Just replace the word “enemy” with “child” and BAM! You have the single greatest Guide to Successful Parenting ever printed on paper or bamboo.

Chapter Summary:

1. Laying Plans: Evaluate your competitive strengths and weaknesses against your (child)


2. Conflict (Waging War): Making the winning play requires limiting the cost of conflict with your (child).


3. Strategic Attack: When engaged in a competitive situation with your (child), strength comes from unity, not size, of your forces


4. Tactical Dispositions: Defend existing positions established against your (child).


5. Energy: Use creativity and timing when engaged in a conflict with your (child).


6. Weak Points & Strong: Recognize opportunities that come from the relative weakness of your (child) in a given area.


7. Maneuvering: How to win confrontations of direct conflict when they are forced upon you by your (child).


8. Variation and Adaptability: Be flexible in your responses to your (child). Respond to shifting circumstances differently.


9. The (Child) on the March: Evaluate the intentions of your (child) in order to anticipate their maneuvers against you.


10. Choose The Terrain: Understand the (child’s) general areas of resistance.


11. The Nine Situations: Nine common situations in a competitive campaign and the specific focus you need to successfully navigate each of them.


12. The Fiery attack: The (child) may use the environment as a weapon and the appropriate responses to such attack.


13. The Use of Intelligence and Espionage: Develop inside contacts to acquire current information about the (child).

So there you have it. Raise a child, take over the world.

Piece of cake.

The Ball In Your Court

One night in late October, Zachary was wide awake about 2 hours past his bedtime. In his hyperactive deliriousness, Zachary began to act a little odd. As he sat on his bedroom floor in the wee hours of the night (i.e. 11pm), he began to play with his plastic snail. And by "play", I mean beat into submission.

As parents, Kacy and I were just baffled to watch this playtime unfold.

Had someone spiced the mashed banannas that evening? Was our sweet little baby developing ADHD so soon? No, as it turns out, he was simply warming up for the "real toy". The Baseball.

Conception and Misconceptions: Pregnancy, Birth, and Raising a Baby

This is Lesley. Please lower the bar. Okay then.

This week, Zachary turns 9 months old. Hence, he will now have spent about equal time in utero, and out of utero (this isn’t exactly true, because in pregnancy counting includes 2 weeks of ovulation, where Zachary was genetically only half the man he was to become).

But, close enough.

More to the point, I have now spent equal time in pregnancy and post partum. Prior to and during this whole experience, I had some definitive perceptions about what this pregnancy, birth, and being a mom would be like. Like any scientist, I collected sources, reviewed them for accuracy, and then formulated my own hypothesis or theory. My sources were plentiful: books, parents (including my own mom), movies, and childbirth classes, ect.

Some of these perceptions turned out to be true, and some, not true at all. Thus, this series will be to accurately evaluate (and in some cases debunk) those ideas that we unsuspecting new mothers hold as truth, and nothing but the truth (aka Factcheck.org).

Since Zachary does really take up all of my spare time. This will need to be done in a four or five part series.

#1: Hollywood’s depiction of morning sickness. (i.e. Knocked Up, Saved, Juno, ect.)

MYTH!!! All of those unlucky mothers out there who have gone through “morning” sickness KNOW what I am talking about. First, let’s talk about what Hollywood did get right: morning sickness is not limited to morning. Whoever cooked up that misnomer ought to be shot. Mostly because unsuspecting new pregnancies like me believe that names are meant to be accurate. If names were accurate, then morning sickness is really all-day-all-night-sickness. But, here is where Hollywood gets it wrong.

Scene from Knocked Up: A newly pregnant Kathryn Heigl is interviewing someone for TV. Suddenly she starts to feel a bit ill, and then she runs offstage spewing into a can.

Why this is scene grossly under prepares the newly pregnant mother for what is really to come. It implies that (1) nausea comes on suddenly, (2) the rest of the time you are fine and (3) you have the capacity to function beyond an infantile state.

Here is the reality. When you have morning sickness, you are nauseated ALL of the time. You don’t just suddenly think, Huh, I’m really not feeling so hot, maybe I’ll go vomit now. Nooooo. You've been hit with a 10-week case of Salmonella poisoning. You learn every curve and detail of your home toilet during this time, and probably the tiling patterns of your work bathroom too.

Second falsehood propagated on the silver screen: when your head is not in the nearest receptacle, life is fine and dandy and you are functioning like a normal person. HA! Do you function normally during a bout of food poisoning? Thought not. The best part of each day is after you’ve finished a round (yes, a round) of vomiting and you get that 10 minute recovery feeling where you actually think you might be able to eat something now….once your nose stops burning.

#2: The second trimester is the best part, you’ll glow.

Mostly true, except the glowing part. The second trimester IS the best of pregnancy, but saying that you’ll glow is really stretching it. I think that “glow” is mistaken for the look of complete relief that morning sickness is only occuring a couple hours per day. A more accurate depiction of the second trimester is this: Here is the stage with the LEAST amount of problems…

Here is a picture of me transitioning from the second to third trimester. That is a look of relief!

More to come...