Fun Things To Do With A Baby

A number of my single friends have expressed confusion as to why a normal healthy couple would want to mess up the “status quo” of their lives by having a child.  Seeing as how Haven was our third attempt at creating the perfect infant, this seems to make me an authority on all progeny related questions.

In truth, I find very little use for newborns.  They eat.  They poop.  And if you’re lucky, they sleep.  Life is very boring until they start showing those first signs of personality.  Once that happens, you’re in for a whole boatload of fun.  Here are just a few examples of what’s in store for new parents:

Lip synching

Babies can hear sound just fine.  In fact, they can hear before they’re even born.  I used to regularly encourage the children to kick their mother while they were still in utero.  That’s definitely not something you can get away with when they’re two or three years old.  But just because the baby can hear sound doesn’t mean that they know where it’s coming from.  I enjoy putting Haven down on the floor, getting right over her, and lip synching to whatever is playing on the stereo.  She often lays there mesmerized.  Someday this will probably backfire and I’ll have to explain to her why I don’t actually have the vocal range of Loreena McKennitt, but until then it’ll be quite entertaining.

Magic Tricks

No matter your skill level with magical tricks, the baby makes a perfect audience.  Does your ‘slight-of-hand’ leave a little to be desired?  Not an issue!  A baby’s eyes can’t really track that fast, so you can generally make the object disappear the first time, every time, even if it takes you a couple of tries.  Under the right conditions, even an ill-trained amateur could make an elephant sized object vanish without a hitch.  The only drawback is that the infant is a very poor choice when audience participation is needed.  It’s best to steer away from all tricks that start out with ‘pick a card.’

Fishing for Babies

I saved this fun little game for last because there is an additional requirement to it.  The child has to be mobile enough to move across the floor by rolling, crawling, or some form of scooting.  The idea is to put the baby down on a clean floor and then ‘cast’ a toy out in front of them.  About the time they get to it, you reel the toy in a little bit and make the baby change course.  You would think the child would quickly give up and get mad, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  You can get at least a good twenty minutes of entertainment of leading the baby in a circle around the living room.  It’s also a great way to wear the child out before bedtime.

These are just a few of many ideas that make the baby a fun and entertaining addition to the family.  If I run across any more, I’ll make sure and post them.

She Who Rules The House

I forgot how completely a new baby takes over a household.  We had become so accustomed to bending the children to our will that it’s a little unsettling to be in the other seat.  Instead of running on a tight schedule, getting things done in a timely manner, we run on “baby time”.  That basically means things get accomplished when it is most convenient for the baby.

If you are thinking about having a child in the near future, here are some simple rules to help you get accustomed to “baby time”:

1)       The house is not awake until the baby is awake.  For those of us older than three weeks, that means talking in whispers and tip-toeing through darkened rooms at our own peril.  Normally, it’s a non-issue since we sleep every chance we get.  That’s also indirectly caused by the baby.

2)       If the baby is awake, the rest of the house will be shortly.  There’s a little bit of wiggle room here, depending on where your baby sleeps at and where your other children sleep.  Also, your baby’s temperament comes into play.  If you have a little angel that goos and coos as they greet the morning light, they’re less likely to wake others.  But, if your baby is like ours and screeches like a harpy from the moment she wakes up until the moment she’s fed, you can bet that it’s going to rouse a few sleepy heads.

3)       You will not be on time for anything.  Throw your scheduler out the window.  Don’t think it’s as easy as getting up a little earlier.  The baby has a handful of delay tactics to help her parents remember who’s really in charge of the time table:

a)       Hunger (i.e. You will feed me before we go anywhere, or I will scream the whole trip)

b)      Dirty Diaper (i.e. You will take me back out of this carseat and change me, or I will scream the whole trip)

c)       Spit-up (i.e. I don’t really care for the color of this outfit, therefore I will ruin it and you will change me)

4)       When baby takes a nap, noisy activities must cease.  Your daily work schedule is reordered on the basis of when the baby decides it’s time for a nap.  No vacuuming, lawnmowing, or sandblasting is allowed while the child is snoozing.  Even the older kids’ play activities are limited during this time.  No noisy games, WWE wrestling moves, or loud TV shows until little sister wakes up.

5)       Adult bedtime is correlated with the last feeding of the night.  It doesn’t matter if you want to go to sleep at 6 p.m., if the baby hasn’t hit her night schedule yet, there’s no point.  When you get the baby to lie still, close her eyes, and go to sleep, it’s finally alright to start getting ready for bed.  In my experience, this is about an hour after you would normally hit the sack.

6)       Once the baby is in bed, you will move about the house like a ninja.  During those first thirty minutes of sleep, every act of precaution must be taken to ensure that you don’t rouse her.  Even how you slip into bed changes, as you work to make as little noise as possible.  Every creak, thump, or pop runs the risk of starting the whole bedding down process over.

7)       You will sleep for however long the baby deems necessary.  It really doesn’t matter what time it is, or how tired, or sick, or grumpy you are, when the baby decides it’s time for a snack you will be woken up.  And if you retain any hope of getting back to sleep, you will take care of the baby’s needs.

These are a few of the basic rules of how “baby time” runs.  I hope its comprehensive enough to give you an idea of what to expect, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve left out a few details here or there.  I’m really quite tired and can’t be bothered to put much more effort into it.

Need More Sleep

I wholeheartedly believe there is a Divine Conspiracy afoot when it comes to issues and circumstances involving the birth of a child.  I think that God floods the brain with a memory erasing chemical that wipes out the pain and negative aspects of the whole process, so that years later you find yourself saying, “Yeah, we should have another kid.”  Were this not the case, I believe each couple would have one child, look at each other, and say, “We’re never doing that again!”

For the woman’s part, it’s not all that hard to see how much pain they experience up to and during the birth.  Why do you think they make those hospital doors out of 8 inch thick hardwood?  You could set off a hand grenade in the delivery room and never hear it out in the hallways!  I’ve been told that the pain experienced by a male passing a kidney stone is similar to that of a female giving birth.  I wouldn’t know if that’s true or not, because I’ve never done either.  What I will tell you, though, is that you’ll never see a male two years down the road say, “I think I’ll go out and get me another one of those kidney stones.  I haven’t had one of those in a while.”

The only logical solution here is that even though the pain is intense enough to measure on the richter scale, it is somehow blocked from making a permanent impression on the brain.  I don’t think it’s tied only to the birth or even to just the woman.  I believe it extends through the entire adjustment period and to both parents.

We’ve lost a lot of sleep.  My wife has lost more than I have (I’m legally bound to say that, or she’ll be all like “You don’t even know what it is to lose sleep!  You just get up and change the baby then go back to bed…”).  The sleep loss starts to have a sort of bipolar effect on you after a while.  You get tired enough, and you’ll swing between railing about the way the towels are folded, to uncontrollable giggling fits about silly words like ‘Hoboken’.  The longer the sleep deprivation goes on, the more severe the effects become.  Everything starts to get on your nerves, from how loud the kids are breathing to how the dog keeps eyeing your peanut butter sandwich.

Eventually, the child does sleep through the night, you get some good rest, and everyone starts to get adjusted to the new norm around the house.  Somehow, memories of those stressed and strained times just simply fade away.  You remember that it was rough, but none of the gory details about how rough it really was.

To be fair, there is an alternative to the whole “mind erasing” theory.  It would be that the rewards of a precious new little life so outweighs the struggles that they simply pale in comparison.  But that’s just silly.  A Divine Conspiracy is so much cooler to think about.