Parent's Pride

Today I'm going to explain why parents dote over their kids. Before I was sold down the river into parental slavery, I used avoid making eye contact with coworkers who had kids. When you're in management it's expected that you'll go cube to cube throughout the day making idle chit chat with your team. They call it being visible and accessible. I called it Russian Roulette.

"(Please don't talk to me about your kids today. Please don't talk to me about your kids today!)"
"Hey Ordale, here's a picture of my two month-old son touching his foot."
"..."
"He knew where his foot was. He's a genius."
"..."

I'm sure you've heard similar situations. Hell, if you found my blog through some lady at your job who claims to be married to me and keeps pictures of me on her desk (stalker), then I know you've heard similar stories. She probably goes around the office with a lyre singing ballads of my daughter's greatness. I promise you she's not crazy and here's why:

Objectively speaking...kids are kinda stupid at first. Now I know that offends some people, but that's because you're not thinking objectively. Your parental instincts and misguided sense of decency are causing you to be offended. Shake that off for a second. Remember when the baby was born and you had to put gloves on him? If you don't have kids you may not know what I'm talking about. Newborns sometimes go through sensory overload and involuntarily scratch and claw at their faces.

Now I'm not saying that there is a mental deficiency there. It's normal, it's natural, it's what new babies do. I get that. I'm just saying that right out of the gate you have to stop your child from turning himself into The Phantom of the Opera. And trying to stop them from maiming or killing themselves is a behavior that doesn't go away for years, but that's much later down the road. First...

They're boring as hell. You'll hear people tell you "They grow up so fast." That's hindsight talking. A year goes by fast, unless you're sitting in a prison cell. Then, it goes by reaaaally slow. I read the What to Expect book, but I must've skipped over some pages because I had it in my mind that my daughter would crawl around three months and start walking around six months. This wasn't me expecting to be advanced or anything, either. I just assumed that all babies operated on that timetable. My daughter was four months old before she could roll from her back to her stomach. So four months of my life were spent watching her stare at the ceiling and do the Stevie Wonder head movements side to side.

There is of course tummy time which is the inverse of what I mentioned above. Instead of the Stevie Wonder sway, you get the heroin addict head rock up and down. Occasionally they'll get your hopes up and pretend like they're gonna crawl to the toy that's a half inch out of their reach. Usually they reach and reach and then get distracted by the threads of carpet that their goldfish memory forgot they were laying on.

So yeah...go through all of this for a few months and you'll find yourself excited when the child finally does something that displays even the faintest sense of intelligence. I remember the day my daughter kicked off one of her socks while I was in the bathroom. You would've thought I missed the game winning Superbowl Hail Mary. I tried to recreate the moment a million times. "Okay, you were laying right here on the bassinet and the fan was oscillating to the right..."

Moments like that are the little bits of hope that keep you going. They let you know that the creature whose been living in your house and eating up your food will actually turn out to be a human. That's why parents are so excited when the most mundane events occur. Those moments are the equivalent of drowning and getting another full breath of air.

I got one today. She did everything from fall out in the store to throwing her shoes at me from the back of the car because I told her I forgot to bring a snack bag of potato chips. When we got home, I opened up the toy farm I bought earlier. She started playing and said:
"Cow! Yes, good job. This is cow! Mooooo!"
"Chicken! Yes, good job. Chicken bock, bock, bock!"
"Car (tractor) Vrooooom!"
Then she put the little man in the car and drove it into the barn.
"Close the door! (She closed it herself) Goodbye!"

It wasn't exactly a Mensa moment. I doubt they'll put up a statue in her honor because of it. But to me...After thinking about that same person laying in that same spot just a little over a year ago staring at the ceiling...My baby's a freaking genius!