The Dude’s Guide to Surviving Your First Year of Parenthood

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 10^th time in a row you hear Buffalo Soldier is infinitely better than the 10^th 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.

We Hop To IHOP

He had a cold. I had an idea. After several days with a runny nose I decided to venture out with the Little Dude for a dinner of warm comfort food. I know it usually makes me feel better when I’m sick, but would it do the same for him?

Knowing what a picky eater he is, my options were limited. I’d heard that the local IHOP has a “kids eat free” deal if an adult eats. I hedged my bets that he’d eat, popped some precautionary Tums and headed to a place which apparently takes Dr. Seuss a bit too literally for my taste.

The sun was setting as we drove. I’d never been to this location before and wasn’t sure exactly where it was. Fortunately the neon-blue sign was so bright that it looked like a post-apocalyptic Smurf village, so I easily found my way as I pulled off the freeway. We grabbed a booth near the front and I tried to guess which method of distraction I would need to utilize first. Was it the crayons on the table? The books I brought? Telling him the menu was a picture book and he should try to figure out the story? (Spoiler Alert: when you get all the way to the end, someone joins Weight Watchers.)  

Since I hadn’t been to an IHOP in a very long time I figured I should look at the menu. Thanks to the new regulations that forces restaurants to list the caloric content of everything they serve, I figured I’d skip the tempting looking “Chicken and Waffles”.  And only partially because I don’t want to get a prescription for Lipitor this week.

I ordered the Little Dude some silver dollar pancakes and myself a salad, figuring it’d be hard for them to mess that up or figure out a way to deep-fry it. (It turns out I was wrong, but I’ll get to that.) I’m not generally a big entrée- salad orderer.  But after seeing that their chicken sandwiches contained almost as many calories as Shaquille O’Neal eats in a month, I could feel my arteries harden slightly just from perusing the menu  & went with the leafy stuff.

After just a few minutes, his plate of 5 mini-pancakes was delivered and the server told me my salad would be right up. The Little Dude’s eyes widened like Tim Tebow’s at a strip club as he looked excitedly at what lay in front of him. Though he has never so much as tasted a chicken nugget, French fry or bite of pizza he LOVES breakfast food. So much so that Mrs. Dude has become a pancake and waffle-making master. If there is ever an Iron Chef: Flapjack Edition, I’m going to sign her up.  

As he watched me slice his pancakes with eager eyes,  the Little Dude spotted something he’d never seen before across the table. In addition to the usual “brown” (maple) syrup, there was also “red” (strawberry), “blue” (blueberry) and “black” (boysenberry) varieties.  He quickly became fixated on the red one and begged me to use it, so I poured a little bit on a small piece for him as a sample. As the red lava hit his tongue, it was immediately rejected like a Kardashian by Harvard.  I doused the rest of his pancakes with his beloved brown syrup and watched him go to town. 

A few minutes later, I asked the server again where my salad was.  The restaurant was three-quarters empty and we were sitting parallel to the kitchen, which I could tell wasn’t busy as I watched the bored chefs juggling eggs.  I started to wonder if they had to dispatch someone to the nearest grocery store because they don’t usually stock vegetables at IHOP due to their infrequent use.  As the Little Dude polished off the last of his fluffy circles of Dr. Atkins’ mortal enemy, I finally received my bowl of greens, chicken and cheese.  A mere 25 minutes after ordering. It tasted exactly as you’d expect a Chicken Caesar Salad to taste at IHOP.  But as I wolfed it down, I saw the glazed look of a satiated toddler sitting across from me and knew that he had indeed been comforted. Mission accomplished.

Where do you go, or what do you eat, when you want comfort food?