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• New Parents are Blind

  We were looking over some old pictures of Elsie and I realized just how true that old saying is, "A face only a mother could love..."  It's not that Elsie wasn't lovable and cute in her early days, but it's really true that we parents are blind in our belief that our new little offspring is perfect.  Yes, they are perfect to us, but why can't we see that not everyone else is going to share our feelings?  Let's face it, most babies look pretty strange during that first month, but fortunately nature has provided us with some kind of filtered vision when our own children are concerned.  We're blissfully ignorant!   For instance, here's a picture I liked to show around when Elsie was about 1 month old.  Her head looks tiny and strange!  And on top of that I look like a doofus with that silly bow tie.  Blind!     Exhibit B:       That was Elsie, 4 months old.  That might not have been a very flattering angle, but anyway, you get my point.    But now, oh now, she's a cute lil' girl.  I'm not blind anymore, that's for sure.  Here she is playing with her new favorite toy, a cooking pot.  She can bang that thing around for hours.         Posted Nov 30 2007, 02:00 AM by artb with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: parent blogs, gay diaper, baby pictures

• Things I Swore I wouldn't Do Which I've Now Done Many Times

  1. Tell stories about my baby's bowel movements at social gatherings   2. Wear a baby bjorn in public   3. Clog my friends' inboxes with unsolicited pictures of my child   4. Talk like a wittle baby to my baby   5. Write a "parental blog"   6. Snort crystal methamphetamine off of Britney Spears' belly.   I believe that as I made each of those bold proclamations about my future parenthood, I also knew I might not keep them.  It's not so much that I lost my priciples once the baby arrived, it's just that I realized they weren't such important priciples to hold.  I do have huge respect for parents who buck the trends though, those who travel light and far from home with their children, those who eschew the masses of plastic toys, and those who work hard at maintaining friendships with non breeding single folk.  And that's what I think I was getting at when I swore I wouldn't do certain things.  That and trying to appear cool.         Recently some friends of our who are in a band parked their tourbus in front of our house.  They were in the middle of a cross country tour, rocking out in clubs across the land.  Part of me envied that rootless life, but another part was glad I wasn't sleeping on a bus the next night.          Before the show we were all eating dinner in a restaurant and some teenagers came up to tell Chad, the singer, how much they liked his music.  Someone said, "Quick, hide the baby."  But then his Chad's girlfriend Sybil proclaimed that rock bands with kids are cool, which they are.  And bands who tour with their kids are especially awesome.  I'm sure it's hard to do, but it gives the rest of us inspiration, and I bet those kids have a blast as well.  Rock on!       Posted Nov 16 2007, 02:35 PM by artb with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: baby travel, parent blogs, father daughter time, baby bjorns, bands touring with kids, crystal meth, Britney Spears

• Throwing Out The Baby

  I recently heard that phrase used on the radio in reference to some kind of mistake we were making over in Iraq - "throwing out the baby with the bathwater".  I hadn't really thought about that saying since becoming a parent.  Now I give my baby baths like the one pictured above, and I personally wouldn't make that mistake, tossing out the baby with the water, but I guess someone must have at some point or we wouldn't be hearing about it still.  What kind of dumbass would toss out the baby?   Anyway, it was a nice warm memorial day weekend here in Brooklyn and we hit the backyard for good times with the little girl.  The sunny days made for excellent diaper drying conditions and we enjoyed that too.  Look at those cloth diapers drying in the breeze!  That's killing two environmental birds with one stone, no electric dryer, and no plastic disposables.  Al Gore would be so proud!  We thought it would make for a snappy picture putting Elsie in the laundry basket like that, but then she puked up milk on our newly cleaned clothes and we didn't feel so smart about it after all.     I'd like to point out that Elsie's hair is not styled to look like that.  It's a natural mohawk, unlike certain celebrity babies we know of.  I would like to draw your attention though to Elsie's remarkable cousin Ida, pictured below, who has more head hair than I've ever seen on an infant, except maybe another certain celebrity baby.  Check out little Ida though, she was born with that mane!  Part of the reason we're moving to Portland this summer is  so that Elsie can be close to her cousin here.  We have this utopian parenting plan whereby four parents will care for two kids, and the two girl cousins will be the best of friends, skipping through the pretty northwestern forests together as we all relax under the reduced work load.  Will it work?  We'll keep you posted.    Ida's mother is Maggie's sister, and her father is my writer friend Peter Rock.  He's been keeping us all quite amused with his own blog for Ida in which some readers have been sending in pics of their own children, trying to beat her out for thickest hair on a newborn.  It can't be done!  I recommend that blog highly, though not as highly as his latest book of course, which is even better.  It is amazing to see how many parents, not just writer parents, have taken to blogging their kids daily lives these days.  Another one of Elsie's cousin's, we call him "D Hawk", has got a fine blog going of his own, and it's maintained by a doctor and a lawyer.  Here's a pic of young D Hawk and Elsie hanging out in Brooklyn together.  Yes, those are legwarmers on Elsie's legs, and they are not purely stylistic - they keep her legs warm!       While I'm at it with the blog mentioning, I'd like to point out some other fun parent/baby blogs I've run across.  I'll admit that sometimes peeking in on the parental lives of people I don't even know can be quite engrossing.  You can of course read the three fine Babble blogs found here, but there's so much more!  Check out Babble's Rebecca Woolf's "Girls Gone Child" .  On the sidebar she has this list of dozens of fun parent blogs you can evesdrop upon, plus she lives out in LA and is under thirty, so her blog is kind of like reading about an exciting single person's life, except she's got this cute kid named Archer.  My former basketball teammate Dan Shanoff recently started this blog called "Varsity Dad" which for sports fan moms and dads, basically discussing how to raise your kid as a true sports fan.  Did you even know such a site existed?  It does!  And hey, they may be competitors to old Babble.com but I recommend the wacky parenting discussions over at Offsprung too, it's a hoot.    Probably at some point I'll get tired of all these parental blogs and return to watching silly videos on the net like I used to before we had a kid, videos like the brilliant 5 seconds below, but for now I remain amused and interested in my friends baby tales.  Don't throw out that baby!       Posted May 28 2007, 11:28 PM by artb with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: parent blogs, baby hairstyles, cloth diapers, baby blogs