As we prepare to add another Dude to our little family, there is one song that easily came to mind for this week's Rockin' Friday selection. Knowing Mrs. Dude has a scheduled C-Section coming up, Bob Marley's Three Little Birds really stuck with me this week after it popped up on my iPod a few days ago.
I was driving to a Dudes' Dinner with my Little Dude when that reggae beat started & Marley began to sing:
Don't worry about a thing
'cause every little thing
gonna be alright. . .
There's been a longstanding mystery about whether the song is actually about some birds that used to hang on Marley's doorstep or about his three female backup singers. Either way, as my family grows from three to four, I know what it means to me.
I recently shared my words of wisdom with you on how to survive your first pregnancy. So now that you have made it through the delivery and are home with your adorable bundle of sleep deprivation, you are probably wondering what happens next. I fully expected my Little Dude to be ready to play when we took him out of the box, so to speak, but I learned the hard way that that’s not how it really works. So I’ve put together a handy primer on what to expect after you are done expecting, or
The Dude’s Guide to Your First Year of Parenthood:
1)The first year is boring.Really boring. I’m not saying the kid isn’t amazing, because he* undoubtedly is. But if you’re expecting him to do tricks right away, like your puppy did when you brought him home, then you will be very disappointed. In fact, you shouldn’t expect much activity from him at all for at least 6 months. You know the saying “a watched pot never boils”? It’s sort of the same thing here but with less scalding water and many more unpleasant excretions.
2)Go to parks.You may feel depressed as you watch bigger kids running and playing on the swings and jungle gym while your little lump is just drooling on his Sophie, but the fresh air is good for him and soon enough he’ll be the one on the slide and you’ll be the experienced veteran who the other new parents will want to trade places with.
Me with 6 month old Little Dude and an empty playground.
3)Be flexible.As long as you feed, change and wash the baby on a semi-regular basis (each at least once a week), there’s a good chance he won’t break. Let him adjust to your schedule, not the other way around. If you assume he will sleep at the same exact time every day, you may get lucky. Or you may end up with a Gremlin who becomes evil after midnight.
4)Speaking of sleep, the baby needs a lot of it.Especially in the beginning. Who says it can’t occur while you are at a movie, restaurant, or roller derby? If you train the baby to only sleep at home in a quiet room where the temperature is exactly 72 degrees, then you will end up with cabin fever faster than an Eskimo in an avalanche.
5)Don’t lose your mind.Once the sleep deprivation kicks in, you won’t remember your middle name half the time, let alone when you last changed or fed the baby. Get an itzbeen**. Hit a button to start a timer reminding you exactly when you last changed his diaper (among other things) and you won’t have a baby sitting in more rancid liquid than a month-old matzah ball.
6)Read to your kid.You will be so sick of Goodnight Moon within a few weeks that you wish the two little kittens would attack the old lady that’s whispering hush just to make things interesting for a change, but it’s good for the baby to get both the bonding time with you and the vocabulary stimulation. You will start to think Dr. Seuss is really Dr. Kevorkian as you grow bored to tears reading Hop on Pop for the millionth time, but your little one will like it and one day be glad you suffered for him.
7)Play good music for your baby.If you think typical kids’ music is enjoyable, then maybe you should get checked out by Dr. Seuss. Or Dr. Kevorkian. There is a ton of great rock music that works very well for kids: The Beatles, Bob Marley and Phish just to name a few. Believe me, the 10th time in a row you hear Buffalo Soldier is infinitely better than the 10th consecutive round of Baby Beluga. (And check my “Rockin’ Friday” blog posts every week for a great song your kid will love. Guaranteed to please or your money back.)
8)There are a million milestones you’ll consider earth-shattering. Most really aren’t. First steps or first tooth, sure. First bite of asparagus? Not so much. Put things in perspective and focus on things that the kid will want to remember someday, not trivial things that will bore even the most biased grandparents.
First time in a Bumbo...who cares?!
9)Don’t make your friends hate you. I mean Facebook friends, of course. Sharing a few pictures here and there is one thing. Uploading 50 pictures three times a week will clog News Feeds and surely earn you a few well-deserved De-friendings.
10)TV won’t kill them. I’m not talking about a 12-hour Jersey Shore marathon. Lord knows that could turn an astrophysicist’s brain into Jell-o halfway through. But there is nothing wrong with a few minutes of screen time here and there if it’s something educational that might benefit them in the long run. And you in the short term if you need to take a shower for the first time in three days.
What advice would you give to first-time new parents?
*= I use “he” to refer to the child because that’s what I have. Also, I hate saying “he or she” repeatedly. This list applies to female infants, as well.
**= itzbeen didn’t pay me to say that, though I wouldn’t mind if they did. Or at least sent me a new itzbeen for Baby #2. Their product truly helped restore sanity in my house on a daily basis during the Little Dude’s first year.
When my wife was pregnant, one thing that several people told us we *had* to get was kid friendly music to play for our little one. Personally, I figured diapers and a car seat were more essential, but what did I know. Turns out I was right, but there is something to be said for good music too.
I’ve been big-time into music as long as I can remember. As the result of having a much older brother, I started listening to The Doors, Pink Floyd, Van Halen (the original/good version) and more when you could still count my age on one hand. I never had much use for pop music and still don’t. The same can now be said about so-called “kids’ music”.
I recently asked my Twitter and Facebook friends what music they play for their kids and the response was pretty surprising. More than half listed artists like Laurie Berkner, The Wiggles & Dan Zanes. Those are all pretty innocuous artists. And by innocuous I mean boring. It’s nothing personal. I’m sure they are nice people and obviously they are very successful, but after listening to their music a few times I wanted to rip my
ears off and freeze them so they wouldn’t be permanently scarred from the aural atrocities of those songs.
When the Little Dude was born I borrowed some kids’ CDs from the library as a test run before buying. For some reason, he couldn’t get into them either. And I was glad. I’ve heard a lot of parents complain about listening to their kids' favorite songs a million times. My sister has three daughters and even though they live across the country and I only see them a few times a year, I still know the words to Baby Beluga from listening to it dozens of times over the last decade.
My wife takes the Little Dude to a weekly Music Together class. I recently had the chance to attend one of the classes and while it was fine for an hour, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it week after week. At least not without a good set of industrial-grade earplugs.
Why not just play the Beatles real music?
Many people rave about the Rockabye Baby CDs. If you aren’t familiar, they make CDs utilizing music by classic artists like the Beatles and Rolling Stones, but played as lullabies. They also transform, in an intentionally ironic manner, artists like Metallica and Guns N Roses from headbanging thrashers into gentle nursery divas. We have a couple of these CDs and I find them excruciating to listen to. Again, they must be very popular because they keep making more, but I can’t handle an hour of harpsichords and glockenspiels even if they are playing “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
I’m not saying all kids’ music is bad, but if I’m going to listen to something repeatedly why wouldn’t I want it to be something more palatable? About a third of the people who responded to my survey said that they play The Beatles, Beach Boys or Bob Marley for their little Buffalo Soldiers. A few people surprised me by saying that they played bands like Foo Fighters or Death Cab for Cutie. I can’t stand those bands when my wife listens to them, so there’s no way I’m playing them for my kid.
A tiny number of respondents said that they don’t alter their musical choices for their kids. That’s the group I fit into. After experimenting with the previously mentioned CDs, I made the Little Dude his own playlist on my iPod. I whittled down my 12,000+ songs into about 800 that I thought he might like. Obviously he’s never told me he’s a big U2 or Police fan so I’ve used my judgment to select songs with bouncy rhythm, catchy lyrics and easily memorable choruses. Those are many of the same criteria as the typical kids’ music, but my music is something everyone in the car can enjoy. As long as “everyone” is just me and my Little Dude.
I’m starting a new feature called “Rockin’ Friday” here on the blog and today is the first day, so sit down and buckle your seatbelts. Every Friday I’m going to post a song that the Little Dude likes and a little info about it.
Today’s song is Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London”. I started working on this post around Halloween, shortly after this song came up in my iPod’s shuffle one day. I knew the Little Dude would like it because of the catchy piano rhythm and also the infamous chorus. When Warren sings “A-hoooooooooo, Werewolves of London…”, my Little Dude joins in and howls like Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf when he's surfing on top of Stiles' van. Sure the song mentions mutilating old ladies and drinking at Trader Vic’s, but I gloss over those lyrics while the Little Dude wails passionately in the back seat.
What songs or bands do you play for your kids? What do they like or dislike?
"His hair was perfect..."
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