The return.

I've determined to make this into a non-whiny blog (which may be difficult, given my propensity toward dramatics). Nonetheless.

Yesterday I walked out to find the 13-month-old Buddy standing on the kitchen table. He was just starting to stand up from the stinkbug position, looking around, and laughing maniacally. He has since tried it out several more times, so the chairs' new home is the top of the table.

He spent a hefty portion of today pushing the laundry basket around (upside down) and then climbing on top of it, laughing and laughing because he was so pleased with himself. The little stinker.

As of today, the signs he produces are

• baby
• food
• water
• milk
• car
• shoe
• ball (which he also says)
• duck
• hot (learned after touching the light bulb of a lit lamp--yikes)
• different
• more
• cracker
• hurt
• all done
• book
• baby

I think that's all. And I also think that's all for now.

The fear.

I'm afraid of a lot of things with regard to Baby Nonny. These fears come and go with a sort of ebbing and flowing, and I imagine a lot of them are common to other parents, but I don't know, since I only have my own experience to deal with...

I'm afraid inadvertantly raising Baby Nonny poorly, and in some terribly unexplainable and horrific way raising a son who is an abuser, a bully, a thief or worse, some kind of serial killer.

I'm afraid that because I lack normal social skills myself and am incapable of even maintaining a regular amount of conversation in my relationship with the Nonny Spouse, somehow I'll mess up Baby Nonny's social skills, leading to the above fears, or perhaps just rendering him autistic or generally emotionally dead to the world.

As an extention of another fear that I mentioned on annegb's blog I'm afraid of doing something silly or stupid and nonsensical and somehow my stupid act leading to Baby Nonny's untimely death. I think most parents must be afraid of that.

But, more than any of these fears, I think I'm most afraid of having to answer Baby Nonny if he asks why Grandma and Grandpa Nonny don't sleep in the same room anymore, or, perhaps even worse, the eventuality of his asking me why they don't live in the same house like his other set of grandparents.

I think it's because I don't know what the right answer is.

The masculinity.

So, truth be told, I'm not a very masculine man. In fact, I'm pretty much a sissy-boy. My parents encouraged me to play one sport (baseball) growing up, and they did so somewhat begrudgingly. I played for two seasons, in 3rd and 5th grade, and I managed to break my finger at the hands of one of my own teammates the second time, so as you can see, I was a pretty wimpy little kid. My parents also blessed me with a wonderfully diminuitive stature, so in addition to being a wimp, I'm puny.

This is fine. I don't have "small man syndrome" or whatever. Occasionally, I wish I was slightly taller, so that it wouldn't be so awkward when the Nonny Spouse rests her head on my shoulder, or so that I could reach things on those elusive top shelves in the kitchen, but generally, I don't mind being short and wimpy. It's a total non-issue. It's who I am, and I've honestly never regretted it.

The reason I'm making this non-issue an issue is because I've noticed recently 2 very distinctive things that I find incredibly unexpected.

The first is that I've found myself become increasingly protective of my "territory" over the last couple of years. Baby Nonny's birth has accelerated this process, and now I have become obsessive about protecting his and the Nonny Spouse's physical safety. Me. The weakling who can't bench press more than like 20 pounds. Like I'm even going to be able to stop anybody who really wants to get at my family. Nevertheless, at the slightest sign of potential bad-guyness (you know noises in the brush outside our apartment in an alleyway that's fallen into complete disuse, noises in the night that are probably perfectly par for the course in our new apartment but sound like there might be somebody rumaging around out in the kitchen) my fight or flight reflex turns on completely and I'm in fight mode. Flight is not an option. I must protect my family. Aaaarrrrrrrr! *rips off pieces of raw meat with his teeth*

The second is that I want Baby Nonny to "be a real man." It's funny, because I'm in no way shape or form, "a real man." I don't crave athletic competition. I'm a computer programmer by profession, and I like jazz music. I'm pretty much the proto-typical definition of "a girly man." And yet, I feel compelled to make sure that Baby Nonny grows up "a real man." If he falls down and bonks his head from a sitting up position? Great. It'll toughen him up. No, we can't dress him in that pink t-shirt, I'm sorry. I don't care what Aunt Helga will say, it's not manly enough. No, I won't stop throwing him around, he needs to get used to athletic activity. In fact, give me a couple more sports balls, please. We've got to teach this kid some fundamentals.

It's not that I don't like these parts of myself. It's just that, well, I didn't expect them to actually be a part of who I am. I'm the puny kid who always got picked last for any type of ball game and constantly came in from recess with a bloody nose because my face was at everybody else's elbow-level. I'm the kid who ran in the house and locked the door when the neighborhood bully (a year or two my junior) came running my way.

Who knew I'd be this masculine?

Not dead.

We're in the throes of moving here--I feel like our beautiful little basement apartment is having a bad case of the stomach flu and barfing us out. It's disgusting how much (needed) junk we have. I vow to set fire to my possessions before moving again. At first, I vowed never to move again, but living permanently in (a) a two-bedroom apartment in (b) Provo doesn't exactly fulfill my life goals. So I had to revise my oaths. Maybe I'll forget how much I despise moving before we have to do it again. Even better, maybe I can convince ANM to make the next move the last one. (This is the part where I close my eyes and dream about having a garage and a basement and many, many, many closets. Oh, it's too beautiful. I must return to the reality that is the maze of boxes surrounding me before I start to cry from the very thought of being settled.)

The Fathers' Lounge.

Often, in the middle of Sacrament Meeting on a sunny and incredibly hot Sunday afternoon, it suddenly becomes my turn to extricate Baby Nonny from our place on the church bench because he's become too unruly for public consumption. This means I hustle a somewhere-between-whiny-and-screaming-his-head-off, relatively exhausted little boy out the back of the chapel, with an attempt to make as little impact on those worshiping around us as possible. I often make eye contact with several older members of our ward who are smiling knowingly at the cute scene and smile in return, knowing that they know what I'm going through, but feeling somehow that doesn't really ameliorate my situation at all. I gently back into the push-bar to open the rear doors, and slip through the little opening I've just created. It's at this point that the real trouble begins.

You see, when a wee lad needs a nap at church, there's not really anywhere a dad can take him. The first problem I confront on exiting the chapel is the foyer: usually it's filled with 2 or 3 sets of latecomers who are talking relatively loudly, or those who have exited the chapel before me, with kids who are also refusing to take their naps, and are being quite vocal about it. Not exactly a nice, quiet place. So, the foyer's out.

Next, I start to walk the halls. This is generally okay in between classes for about 30 seconds. After 30 seconds somebody will inevitably enter the hallway from a classroom, screaming to their friends (if they're under, say, 16) or approach me or someone else and talk loudly (if they're over, say, 25). Also not good for putting Baby Nonny down for a nap.

Before the blazing inferno of a summer was upon us, at this point, I would simply exit the building, and walk Baby Nonny to sleep outside, with the breeze blowing and the noise of a major thoroughfare in the background. It was a pretty good approximation of the white noise that the fan in his room produces, although the light situation really seemed to bother him. (That pesky sun and it's 29 septillion times the brightness of a 100 watt light bulb... Bah!)

Since we've been hitting scorchers above 100°F lately, I've been faced with my old problem again: where do I go to help my son calm down and take a nap? Now, I know, I know, there's really no such thing as a quiet place in the church. Not even the Mothers' Lounge is quiet, or so I'm told. So, I hunt in vain. The gym works okay, especially if walking is effective in lulling him to sleep. However, it also becomes problematic when little kids (and sometimes child-like adults) come stomping through in between classes or decide they want to play there. Plus, the gym is big, and I can't exactly claim the whole thing for me and my little boy.

So, the next best thing is usually the stage. When you pull the curtains on the stage, you drown out a significant portion of the noisy clod-hoppers in the gym. This is good. Also, for some strange reason, the stage in our church has an old leather wheelchair which is extremely good for rocking the baby to sleep. Unfortunately, there are little tiny three year-olds, with parents who have no respect for other people, who love to stomp through the stage when their church meetings end, which for some reason is approximately the same time Baby Nonny needs to nap.

So, today, I chose a new tactic: finding an unused classroom. I've tried this tactic before. It usually gives you at least a good 20 minutes of silence. The biggest problem with it is that in any relatively normal sized LDS chapel, all of the rooms are going to be used at some point during each hour. Meaning, that somebody's going to open the door and scream at the top of their lungs and then say, "Oh, sorry! I didn't think anyone was in here..." right before their class starts, causing Baby Nonny to wake up and start screaming back at them.

So... My beef is that there is no Fathers' Lounge. We need one: a place for dads to take their kids where there is peace and quiet, and there will be no disturbances. The Mothers' Lounge will be for feeding. The Fathers' Lounge will be for sleeping. It's about time, don't you think?

(P.S. High Priests will always be welcome to doze off in the Fathers' Lounge if the meetings become unbearably burdensome on their sleeping habits, but only if they promise not to snore.)

The hair. It's important, okay?

So. What was it? Four weeks ago? The baby started the hair pulling in an I-am-Tarzan-and-I-will-now-swing-through-the-forest-using-the-vines-that-are-your-hair kind of way. Inevitable, true. Awful, however, and absolutely not to be allowed. Can anyone stand to have their hair pulled? They must because I know long-haired women with babies. I, however, have had my hair in a ponytail for a month now in an attempt to keep my relationship with my own child pleasant. So far, it's worked quite well. Perks:

• Whenever I take my hair out of the ponytail, I'm pleasantly surprised by how long it is (I chopped it all off and donated it to Locks of Love right before Baby Nonny was born, so, in a way, it's kind of miraculous that I can even get it into a ponytail now. I digress.).
• It takes an amazing thirty seconds to get the ponytail in. Fabulous.
• I feel extraordinarily beautiful when I actually spend the ten minutes to dry my hair. Really, it's incredible. This is at least partially because I feel like a pinhead with a ponytail. Oh, well. It preserves my relationship with the baby.

That is all.

The questions.

Two quandaries:

1. ANM is about to start working from home. This is very exciting because it means that I will be able to take a shower every day. I can't think of anything better. Also, I imagine myself being all housewifey and making sandwiches or soup for us for lunch every day. I probably won't, but I do know where the aprons are should I need to become Donna Reed in the near future. Anyway: this is the quandary. I'm not sure how I'm going to refrain myself from bugging him while he's home. I mean, I like him (that's why I married him). I'm going to constantly be like, "hey! let's go the library!" or "you want to go swimming?" But he will be working. And I will have to leave him alone instead of talking to him or making him take care of the baby while I do whatever I want (which is really what I imagine work to be for him: doing whatever he wants). Curses. And yet: yay!
2. This is the real problem. We got in an accident over the weekend--a lame, stupid accident in which no one was hurt and the cars still functioned, although ours will now no longer pass inspection before the end of the month. And it's basically totalled. So we have to get a new car. And since now we're a real family with a child and all, the question is this: do we get a family car? Or a normal four-door? I really don't think I can do a mini-van at this point in my life. But a Subaru Outback wagon--maybe. Will we need such a big car in the near-enough future? I don't know. Or really: will the car last long enough to make it worth our while? Gambling. I suck at it.