Give and take

I do a lot of things now that I wasn't able to do as a child. I eat whatever cereal I want, for instance. When I was a kid, it was Rice Krispies or Cheerios, that's it. Now I eat Coco Krispies or Corn Pops, sometimes Honey Nut Cheerios if my body is a shrine that week. Yes, I went from a collar-down cereal eater to one with collar rebelliously up.

Once our daughter is old enough to know the good cereals from the healthy cereals, though, I suspect we'll become a Rice Krispies and Cheerios household again. Which causes me to panic a bit because, well, I'll have to hide my cereal. Hey, I don't want my daughter eating crap that turns milk purple. But I want to eat it still.

Can parents have their three pieces of cake and eat them too? Or do they modify their behavior to what they would consider acceptable for their child? I can imagine some things are easy and you don't really think about them. I don't think I'm outwardly hypocritical, so naturally I won't be chomping on the Chocula while the little one miserably slogs through her Horsie-O's. We'll slog miserably together--and bond.

Other things seem easier said than done. One hour of T.V. per day? My goodness, does that include video games? And what about the violent ones? Am I limited to Mario Party until she turns 17?

Julie and I have been talking about getting a T.V. for our bedroom. We're not sold on it yet because we've never been in bed and thought, "Hey, if only we could mindlessly click channels in search for entertainment." But when God of War 6 comes out for the PS4 and the munchkin's only in kindergarten, something will have to give.

But it's not like I'll ever be the dad holed up in his bedroom playing video games while his young child chops vegetables in the kitchen. So yeah. I guess for now we're at an impasse.

Odd

This evening Julie told me to talk to her stomach. Well, to the creature inside, but you know what I mean. The baby is at the point where her ears can detect sounds beyond her mother's heartbeat, and of course the experts speculate that classical music and the voices of the parents will increase chances of college scholarships later.

Well, I had a lot of difficulty taking myself seriously. It's not like she can understand English, so I could've read her the phone book and all that would have mattered is my silky, resonant voice.

But I said hey, told her my name and where I was born. Kinda felt idiotic, like I was talking to a phantom or something. Or like I was talking to a watermelon covered with skin.

My mom called today and offered Fiona as the name she was absolutely sure we had picked. Sorry, Mom. Fiona Apple ring a bell? Ever seen Shrek? Julie and I did have a moment of doubt last night because the name written out looked surreal, a bit foreign. And no, Mom, that's not a hint that it's a foreign name. Okay you got me, we're naming her Tokyo. It looked foreign, we decided, because it doesn't quite exist yet.

Which I suppose is the same reason it feels odd to talk to a stomach.

Tantrum

Recently I've read several parenting magazines cover to cover, and one trend persists. They're written for women. Everything is mom-this and mom-that, nothing about dad unless it's a woman writing in about her husband. One even has an article titled "Mommy's Having a Tantrum" and gives groundbreaking advice like "Breathe deeply" and "Go to your happy place."

Clearly these strategies are effective for women only and the writer couldn't have possibly geared it to all parents. After all, a magazine better suited to my gender might suggest "Toss the pigskin" or "Break things" instead of the undeniably womanish "Use words."

I suppose a parenting magazine for daddies wouldn't have enough subject matter. Articles like "Strategies to get that next promotion," "What to do when her cooking suffers," and "When will she sleep with me again?" along with ads for aftershave and bass fishing might sustain one issue, but then what? Child development? Snack recipes? Don't be silly. That's mommy stuff.

I know there are probably gender-neutral parenting magazines out there that I've missed. Truthfully, I haven't looked very hard. But then, should I have to?

Stoopid

The fetus literally sucks nutrients from the brain, does it not, which is surely what provoked a pregnant friend of mine to state, "I have the memory of a goldfish these days."

Now, what was I leading up to again? Oh yes: I think pregnancy sucks nutrients from the husband's brain as well. Baby sucks thinky power from daddy's head too. Bad baby, thirsty for brains. They're just like zombies, sucking your brain dry. Then they're born and they just suck your wallet dry.

See, that wasn't even a good joke, but it was all my (give me a second, the word will come...okay got it) brain would come up with. Julie's stomach has eaten my brain. When the stomach leaves for work, I become stupid.

Just ask Julie; she'll totally back me up on this.

Software

We bought the crib and the glide rocker yesterday--special ordered, actually, but both are picked and paid for. Now all we need is the baby.

We also need sheets and all that, but that's mainly Julie's job. Occasionally she summons me to the computer to give feedback on a pattern. Truthfully, I could not possibly care less. I nearly pulled a brain muscle yesterday trying to care less.

See, it's like this. Let's compare baby stuff to electronics and media. I care a great deal about cribs, chairs, and shelves--just like I care about televisions, computers, and consoles. I'm a hardware guy. Once I set it all up, though, watch whatever you want. Sheets? Good grief, if I cared about sheets, then I would have cleared my DVD stand long ago of Julie's festering Hugh Grant collection.

He's a stuttering fop! He has floppy hair! My goodness, Bridget, he is a saucy chappy indeed!

Just as Hugh Grant does not hurt the television, Julie could get sheets with cartoon dingos eating cartoon babies, and our crib wouldn't know the difference.

But regardless, I invent opinions that I think will complement hers, all the while fantasizing about the day when the crib actually arrives and I can haul it upstairs and assemble it.

Orange

We stayed at the Graves Hotel for our anniversary. At midnight, I called the front desk.

"My pregnant wife is craving an orange. Any ideas?"

"We'll bring one right up, sir."

Now that's a good hotel.

Hole

In two weeks we'll drive just past Chicago to where my relatives own a cabin on Lake Michigan. We'll spend the days on the beach and the evenings eating at a long table with my loud family. We'll sleep well, too...in our hotel room.

Julie mentioned this morning that one thing she's looking forward to is digging a big hole in the sand, positioning her towel over it, and lying on her stomach.

Truly, I've been on vacation since school ended in mid-June, and I don't necessarily need a vacation from vacation. I can't help but count the days, though, as this year will be the tenth in a row that we've taken this trip together. If you told me in 1999 that we'd still be coming back ten years later and that Julie would be pregnant, I probably would have had to sit down.

Now I can't wait to start each day by digging a hole.

Pictures

This morning Julie left me with the assignment of scanning our ultrasound pictures. Is it right to post those for the world to see? I mean, some are pretty racy. There's one, for instance, that the tech labeled "Mooning."

When a potential employer googles my daughter's name 25 years from now, I don't want her prenatal ass to pop up.

Plus, I don't want to be one of those parents who think their child is adorable and precious no matter what, even when she's eating food off a stranger's plate at Chili's. "I'm sure that nice man doesn't mind if you try his dessert, do you, nice man?" Doesn't posting ultrasound pictures naturally lead to the unhealthy worship of your own child?

"But she's so cute! Give her another bite, you heartless son of a--"

When she starts dating, it'll be a perfect opener when I meet the guy. "Come over here to the computer, young man. Oops, mind the gun rack. Have a seat and see the first picture of my daughter's skull ever taken."

Yes, I think this item on my to-do list will be prudently ignored.

Corny

The baby is the size of an ear of corn. The uterus is the size of a soccer ball. So picture an ear of corn curled up inside a soccer ball. Now picture all that inside my wife.

If it were me, I'd wake up every morning and say, "Well, I think I've done enough."

But today Julie worked for 11 hours.

Today I changed the lawnmower blade, mowed the lawn, scrubbed the shower, and washed some clothes. It took roughly two hours total. I also built a Lego ferry boat, which I bought with a recent blackjack windfall. Take a look:


Yeah, I'm pretty much the lamest person ever. And by lamest I really mean awesomest. Come to think of it, here's what else I've been up to this week:


I know, I know. This is grounds for divorce. It's a guilty pleasure.

If you ever suspect that Julie has me wrapped tightly around her finger, well you're probably right. Corn in a soccer ball trumps my summer off. Still, you cannot even imagine how much time I spend goofing around.

Buggy

Julie is scared of bees. Like, freaky scared. We had an adolescent mosquito in our bedroom, and Julie saw it peripherally. Anyone outside our house would have thought I had removed my head and bounce-passed it to her.

When I could hear again, she was saying "It's over there! It's over there!" I located it and killed it with laser beams from my eyeballs, then slapped it into the wall for good measure.

"You seriously thought we had a bee in here?"

"Well I didn't really see it, so I thought it could be one."

"And the sane course of action was to shatter it by screaming?"

"You did kill it, right?"

I showed her the guts on my hand.

Point being, folks, we're adding another one just like her to the household. And the first time little Danette sees a flying bug, she'll look to her parents for how to react. If I should happen to be in the other room, then the ridiculousness could perpetuate itself for generations.

Napkins

Julie and I are not civilized enough to place napkins on our laps when we eat at home. At restaurants, however, there seems a greater likelihood that we'll spill our food. We gesture wildly and talk with our mouths full. The dim lighting makes it harder to see what we're doing. Restaurant food is fattier and therefore slipperier. Plus, what else are you going to do with the napkin once you've exhausted the disappearing cup magic trick?

I have determined that pregnant women need bigger napkins. The stomach of a pregnant woman is quite convex, you see, and bobbled food tends to land on the stomach rather than the napkin. Depending on the food, sometimes it ricochets. Last night an entire dinner roll bounced off Julie's stomach and landed four tables over, in the pea soup of a fishing show host. And he threw it back.

Ha! Get it? He threw it back. Yeah, that was all a lie. The point remains that conventional napkins are insufficient. Either that or Julie needs to place it higher. Or get a bib. At any rate, there's a hole in the market and the one who fills it will be a millionaire. Or at least a hundredaire. Or in significant debt.

Hobby

We need to find Julie a hobby. She used to scrapbook, make earrings, and knit, but she's bored by those now that she's 85. I can't pawn off any of my hobbies on her. "Hey Julie, kill all these people on the PS3. Defeat these online strangers at Texas hold-em. Build this Lego firetruck. Practice your foosball skills. Write a blog about having a gorgeous man-meat husband." I'd suggest it, but I don't feel like being punched in the neck bone.

How many days this winter will she be able to take our daughter to the mall? It'll get old, won't it? I mean, when the money runs out?

So my new project is to find a hobby for my wife. Call or comment with suggestions.

Also, I must point out that the question, "Does this make me look fat?" becomes a lot more fun when the woman asking it has recently eaten a baby. It's a trap, I realize, but the trap is much more tempting to dive into.

"Does it make you look fat? My god, woman. It--absolutely does not. Nope. Wait, you're pregnant, right? Couldn't even tell." I'm no idiot.

Actually I am, because I say things like, "You should wear it with darker hose."

And she's like, "These are my legs, dumb-ass."

And I'm like, "No, darker TOES, darker toe...nail polish...that I will happily apply for you.

But anyway, preggy needs a hobby.


And by the way, if you read this on Monday, this is Julie's outfit. Do not tell her she needs darker hose.

Blood

One thing we're considering is saving the baby's umbilical cord blood. We want to give her every possible opportunity to play disgusting practical jokes on Halloween.

There are medical benefits, too, which I have researched mainly by watching an episode of Boston Legal in which a husband sues his ex-wife to give him their child's cord blood (he's sick and could be saved by it). She won't do it, and the lawyer correctly deduces that it's because the child isn't actually his. Shocker! But don't fear, because Denny and Alan still smoke cigars and break the fourth wall at the end of the episode.

(If you're like, "Ha, that's funny," then you watch too much T.V.)

But anyway, we'll do some more serious research before deciding. It's probably something we should be objective about, but is that even possible? The marketers have us right where they want us. "If there was a chance that you could save your child's life, would you?" Um, hmm.

In other news, I have a new name for the child, as yet undiscussed with Julie and therefore unvetoed: Batgirl.

BABOS

Before summer started, the three upstairs bedrooms functioned as follows. One was a guest bedroom, one was an office that we never used except for storage, and one was also for storage but in a more horrifyingly disorganized way.

Now the guest bedroom is our bedroom, the formerly horrifying room is Julie's mega-closet, and the office is the nursery. I've also gutted the downstairs bedroom, which is now the guest bedroom, and I've painted part of the kitchen that needed it, gotten a security system installed, updated lighting in the kitchen and upstairs bathroom, and of course revolutionized our entertainment system and media storage. I've been busy.

Next up is crib, rocking chair, and changing table. The cribs we like are the ones that transform into a kiddie bed and then transform once more to an actual twin bed. Julie has exacting standards for rocking chairs, and I at least am entirely clueless about changing tables. But this weekend promises several BABOS dates, which stands for "Buy a bunch of stuff," a term we coined, believe it or not, in 2001.

But what I'm especially psyched about is the stroller. It's pimp, no?

Low point

With all the problems in the world, let me focus on one that at this moment is near and dear to my heart. Tulip, dumbest dog on the planet, will not poop. I hate her. I hate her. Add to it that she will bark her head off at 1:00 AM, suddenly ready.

"Dan, Tulip's barking," Julie will say groggily while shaking me. And I will gently encourage her to cover her ears with pillows, because this cannot be what my life has become. You get the sense at various points that it's all building to something, that your hard work and your devotion is leading you toward some fate.

Caterer to the 15-pound imbecile dog who forgot how to shit is not my fate.

God, I'm gonna be a great dad.

***Update ('cause I know you want one)***
Tulip slept through the night. Now she is eating pleasantly. Perhaps I, um, overreacted. If I ever get this frustrated by my own kid, especially before she can talk, I will write about it in a pink fuzzy Hello Kitty diary with a lock on it so she'll never know.

Impressionable

Our daughter can hear us now, which has not stopped Julie from cursing like a teacher in the break room.

"She can hear you."

"I earmuffed her for that one."

Also, if a fetus hears something scary like a dog bark, the baby is less likely to fear such sounds later on. Daisy and Tulip bark at squirrels, passersby, and anything else that moves outside, so our kid will be wrestling hyenas before she turns five.

And when a particularly savage hyena nearly nips off her finger, she'll have a rich vocabulary with which to express her frustration.

Over halfway there

Aaand she's getting pregnanter. She routinely gets comments at work about how she looks like a normal person but with a pregnant stomach. Like, her whole body hasn't ballooned or anything, which is pretty sweet.

And you know, pregnant women don't get much bigger in months six through nine, right?

The name we have chosen has survived the recent spurt of celebrity births. Sunday Rose, Knox, Vivienne--we're still safe. It's to the point where we talk about her using her name, so if Zach Braff or something suddenly steals it, I might freak.

I'll sic my gigantic dog on anyone who steals the name. So watch it.

Conversation in bed

"What do you want for breakfast tomorrow? Pannercakes?"

"Um, okay."

"You don't want pannercakes. We have pastries, but I haven't made them."

"Oh, you don't have to do that."

"So what do you think you'll want?"

"Well, I know myself and I know that I won't want pannercakes."

"What will you want?"

"Pastries."

Superhuman

I have a feeling our daughter is destined to inherit her mother's appetite for clothing. I'm okay with it. I'm coming to terms with it. I'm frightened. Hold me.

We are in the final stages of moving upstairs. This morning I hauled everything from Julie's closet to some racks in a room that will become her Carrie Bradshaw walk-in closet.

It's great because this is a room that I will eventually never enter. And my clothes fit nicely in our new bedroom, so yippee. Anyway, when she woke up, I eagerly showed her my handiwork. She was pleased, but then said, "Am I missing a jean jacket?"

"Holy mother of--"

"What?"

"You see those several hundred articles of clothing?"

"I want breakfast."

"Focus, preggo."

"Yes, it's a lot of clothes."

"Well, your jean jacket is literally the only thing that remains downstairs."

"So?"

"You glanced at everything you own and casually mentioned the one missing article. Anything else you want to tell me? Do you bend spoons?"

I shouldn't publicize this about her. I don't want Sylar showing up.

Pulp

Our house is in that horrible in-between state, where some rooms are ready for baby but at the expense of other rooms, which are basically destroyed. What we're discovering is that we have a lot of perfectly functional junk. If you want any, come on over.

For instance, I staged an impromptu lawn sale this morning, placing a trunk, a desk and chair, and a dresser on the edge of our lawn with "Free" signs on them. As of this evening, only the desk remains. Yes, we had one vulture who was nice enough to take the desk's chair (which was pushed into the desk) but not the desk itself.

I also performed exploratory surgery on the front closet and extracted 15-20 games that we will never again play. We're talking Hungry Hungry Hippos, which was extremely fun the one and only time we played it. If I remember correctly, I successfully pushed my button the fastest, giving my hippo the most pronounced eating disorder.

Also in the mix are the Monsters' Incorporated version of Memory, three Scrabble sets (I'm keeping two), half a box of Jenga, and countless other gems.

And we're just scratching the surface. Luckily, Julie is calm and rational about the house in this in-between state.

Did you seriously believe that? Yeah, Julie's a mushroom-cloud layin' motherclucker, motherclucker. She's superfly TNT. She's the Guns of the Navarone.

My summer vacation

This is related only tangentially to having a pregnant wife, but it's about babies, so deal.

We have an outdoor fenced-in area for our dogs. I'd say dog-run, but that conjures the image of a cable between two trees and the dog tied to it, rabid and unloved, charging back and forth desperate for something to kill.

In the middle of our dog area is a small tree, and at the base of the tree is a nest of baby mice.

A nest of baby mice!

Tulip found it. I was like, what on earth are you so interested in over there? I shoved my hand into a poop bag--empty, people, empty!--and swished my now webbed fingers through the grass, expecting to find a dead junebug or something. And the ground moved.

I gasped in an extremely manly way, then retreated to the house for something to more effectively poke whatever it was.

I went back outside with an untwisted wire coat hanger--doubled back on itself on one end, so it wasn't sharp, sheesh. What do you think I am, Timmy the neighborhood animal torturer?

With the apparatus I was able to expose the nest enough to see the vermin inside. I think they were having sex, which is wrong in so many ways.

Julie was firm on not killing them. That's a pregnant woman for you: all babies are precious and special, even the ones who will invade your house this winter.

(I did not just compare our unborn to a mouse, even though ours will also invade our house this winter.)

So I called Wildlife Management Services this morning, expecting warm congratulations and possibly an award from PETA. Instead, I got Frank.

"You should leave it alone."

"That's fine and all, but my dogs most definitely will not leave it alone."

"Then the problem is your dogs, not the mice."

Women everywhere, someone, please, I beg you. Go out with Frank. I'll buy.

The solution finally presented itself in some spare temporary fencing I had in the garage. Now the babies have a nice mouse-run in the dog-run.

Tulip showed her displeasure by refusing to defecate in the vicinity, opting instead for the stone path adjacent to the house. And Daisy won't go at all.

Girly

I think I'm the girl in this relationship.

Check this out: Julie and I are approaching our five-year wedding anniversary on July 26th. I booked us a room at the nicest hotel in Minneapolis and dinner at their restaurant, which just got a four-star review in the Star Tribune. I know, I know. Best husband ever, blah blah blah. How tiring it is to constantly hear that.

Anyway, I'm also the best wife ever. Today Julie was like, "But our anniversary is a Wednesday. I have to work the next day."

"Um, Wednesday?"

"Yeah, the 23rd."

I'll refer you to the second paragraph where it says "wedding anniversary on July 26th."

"Seriously, dear? The 23rd?"

"Isn't it?"

Yeah, so she doesn't know when our anniversary is. Is it poor form to make a pregnant lady sleep on the couch? Maybe this'll get me a better present...I'm definitely going to use this to my advantage somehow.

Food

When it's breakfast time, lunch time, tea time, dinner time, snack time, or midnight snack time, Julie and I have a routine that you could set to the tune of any tango.

I'm in a black suit with a red rose in my mouth. She's in a red dress built for a woman who has recently swallowed a medium watermelon.

"What do you want to eat?" We're locked together; I move forward, she moves back, three steps, two to the side. One, two, three, tan-go.

"What do we have?" I guide her to an open position and we move one, two, three, and I snap her back to me on tan-go.

"What do you want?" I spin her on her heels, dip her.

"What do we have?" Unable to pull her up from the dip, I slowly lower her to the floor.

It continues, her sitting, me standing and rubbing my lower back.

"We have ham and scalloped potatoes."
"Yucky."
"Pasta and salad."
"Bleh."
"Piz--"
"Don't say pizza."

And on and on. I don't know if it's true about all pregnant women, but Julie faces the daily conundrum of wanting food but not wanting any particular food. Scratch that: I face the conundrum.

Better are the days when I can get her to utter a food, a single food she feels like eating. "I want something with fish and green beans."

Now, it's important to note that our house does not contain fish or green beans. A general rule of thumb, I have learned, is that the demands she makes on Target List Day will be different from the demands at eating time. But that's okay, because I have programmed into my phone the numbers of every food delivery and carry-out location in the city.

But sometimes, sometimes she comes home in the middle of food preparation. "Ham and scalloped potatoes? Oh."

"Shh. Sit." I guide her to the couch, put in some awful chick movie like The Holiday or Maid in Manhattan. Moments later I set a plate on her lap.

"This actually looks really good." And I remember that she doesn't even know what she does and does not want. And that, ladies and gentlemen, that's pregnancy.

Postscript:

While typing this, Julie called me. I am picking her up in an hour, taking her to a doctor's appointment. "I have a favor to ask of you, besides the picking me up and taking me to the doctor favor."

"Okay."

"I wasn't really in the mood for the tuna sandwich and chips, so could you pick me up food on your way?"

"I am writing a blog post about this exact thing."

"Great..."

And I kid you not, it started again.

"What do you want?"

"What's easy for you?" One, two, phone tan-go.

"Nothing's easy. What do you want?"

"Um..."

We did finally work it out. And yes, I thanked her for the postscript.

Spit

Through some inspired detective work I discovered that the ingredient Guaifenesin (which my computer just red-squiggled) is safe for preggies with coughs. Other ingredients found in over-the-counter medicines are bad and can result in neighborhood pets disappearing once your child is born and learns to walk.

But Guaifenesin, Guai-frickin-fenesin, is so benign and ineffective that even a woman suffering from acute bodily fetus invasion can safely take a half-dosage every four hours for no more than 24 hours.

It's an expectorant, which is the medical term for when you expect your cough to go away but it doesn't. Actually, to expectorate is to spit, as we know from Beauty and the Beast ("In a spitting match nobody spits like Gaston/I'm especially good at ex-pec-tor-ating..."). So Julie will stop coughing and start spitting. Awesome.

I don't see a need to tell her that the only cough syrup at Walgreens that contained Guaifenesin and not 15 added baby-marring ingredients was the highly respected, sought-after Wal-Tussin brand. I will instead lie and tell her that the pharmacist described it as the cough syrup of the stars.

Cold

Julie was home-schooled for most of first grade. She became hideously bored in school because she could read fluently and the teacher insisted on simply holding up alphabet cards for kids to recite week after week.

That was the summer they decided to make Boo Radley come out.

Anyway, Julie and I slept not at all last night, due to her coughing. You know that cold you got in first grade? It was a doozy; you were a miserable phlegm factory. This cold, though, once you got over it, allowed your body to build immunity to countless other colds. Julie never got that cold, because she was at home learning multiplication tables while the other kiddies slogged through "C is for corn husk."

Consequently, she has that cold now, which I am immune to even though my multiplication skills are mediocre at best.

Last night and today her cough got so bad that she called the 24-hour nurse line. The solutions they offered are ones you might want to jot down. Drink fluids, rest, suck on (am I going too fast?) cough drops.

A cough is not harmful to the baby inside, so don't worry. It just sucks.

Kickin'

Here's my understanding of how it works. The egg can attach anywhere it wants to inside the uterus or whatever. Then the baby like hatches and digs its talons into the closest wall and perches there like a bat until it's born.

This is why you should never use Google for serious research. Little Timmy will fail sex education now because he'll find my blog and use it in his report.

So anyway, our baby is more toward the back of Julie than the front. That is why, the doctor told us, Julie hasn't felt the baby kicking.

But this morning, she did.

I'm not sure why, but I want to buy a megaphone and drive around the Twin Cities, screaming this news to everyone.

Secret (and no, it's not Victoria)

We think we've picked the name, but we're not telling anybody what it is. What'd happen, you see, is that everyone, especially you, would have all sorts of reactions to share with us.

"Oh, I knew a Mindi-Lou in high school. She's in jail now."

"Adele? That'll be perfect once she turns 85."

"Um, okay, but have you ever thought about [insert your name]?"

My mom calls me and says, "So, what was the name again?" She's pretty sure I'll slip.

"It's Broomhilda...dang it! You tricked me!"

Our biggest fear is that some celebrity couple will unwittingly steal our name. Brangelina, for instance. They're having twins, aren't they? I can just see the magazines now, with our name on the cover. We can't have everybody saying in November, "Oh, so you named her after little Portobello Pitt-Jolie?"

Or some natural disaster. "Blizzard Bertha is carving a swath through northern Iowa, burying entire silos."

I guess if anything like that happens, it's better if it's before the kid is born, so you can at least change your mind. "Katrina Rita, your behavior is out of control. Go to the time-out chair."

Still independent

Happy 4th, everyone!

Cereal freak

Today Julie and I ate cereal together for the first time in our entire relationship. Some things take years. Thank goodness we didn't dine this way earlier, or we might not have made it at all. The woman eats cereal in an entirely unacceptable manner.

First she pours the milk. First she pours the milk. First she pours the milk. My theory is that as a girl she got sent out to the cow each morning, cereal bowl in hand. After several Cheerios spillings under the precarious teat, she began to get her milk first.

Secondly, though, I should point out that the amount of milk she pours into the bowl is precisely what one would get from a single teat pull. When she pours the cereal atop it and eats, it's enough to wet her lips, no more. Meanwhile, I, a member of polite society, pour the cereal first and then pour enough milk so the top bits float.

And this is how my daughter will eat cereal. Her mommy will not pass down this tomfoolery.

With a capital P

Julie's new craving is basketballs. I continue to encourage her to chew them.

This picture causes my jaw to drop a bit. In everyday life, she doesn't look this pregnant. Perhaps this shirt is particularly unapologetic, or perhaps a lens is more honest than the naked eye.

Regardless, the point remains: DUDE.

I'm not going to post her face on a public site, but trust me, she is a mighty fine pregnant lady. I mean, that's my kid in there, so my perspective is automatically subjective. Backing up a bit, however, to a purely objective, superficial point of view, I still say she should adorn the cover of Cosmo Pregger.

On a completely unrelated note, check out the two-headed dog!

Stress

Before I was born, my mom made my dad get headphones so his loud music wouldn't disturb the baby. The earpieces were puffy and yellow, and I squeezed them to my head to listen to the Wizard of Oz and Pac Man on LP. I rocked, even then.

Now Julie is making a similar request, though loud music isn't my issue. Since currently I'm a teacher in July (the very, very best thing to be), my hours are flexible and my desire to watch movies and play video games occasionally intersects with her desire to sleep. Therefore, I need headphones for the T.V.

This would be easy if the receiver worked, but it's fried. All the sound for everything T.V.-related goes through the T.V.'s speakers, which aren't actually that bad, thank goodness. So to make a long story short (too late), I need a pair of hundred-dollar wireless headphones.

Or door #2: a red and white RCA cable plugged into the T.V. and connected to my headphones. Problem is, the stereo end of the RCA cable is male, and the stereo end of my headphones is male. I need a 3.5-mm stereo connector that is female on both ends. And the girl at Radio Shack thought she was giving me the right one (I thought so too), but it's wrong. Doesn't fit. So we're at an impasse.

I just thought you should know the biggest stress in my day; meanwhile, my wife is 21 weeks pregnant, still gets sick some mornings, and thinks she's getting a cold. Actually, that's the biggest stress in my day, too.