The cat's in the cradle...

So, one week into fatherhood, and everyone seems to have survived the experience relatively unscathed. We've had our first visit from the grandparents, our first bath (and second one, for that matter),



our first walk around the neighborhood, and our first Jewish holiday. For even more photos and videos, you can always go to our flickr and youtube pages, respectively.

So, you ask, how is fatherhood? Honestly, it's great, and the only issue whatsoever has been the lack of sleep, which is slowly getting better itself. I realize that my wife is doing most of the hard work, just like she's been doing since the pregnancy began, but from my perspective, fatherhood is wonderful. The baby is adorable, she cries at times but not really that loudly yet, and she's just ridiculously adorable at times:



It's just a really rewarding experience, and I am more than happy to trade a few hours of sleep per night for it. That said, having family in to help out is probably a crucial element of my current sanity, since nothing really compares with years of accumulated experience. My mom couldn't stop laughing at how much I bought into the rules they drilled into us at the hospital, since I just didn't know which were critical and which were more along the lines of useful guidelines. I'm sure I'll get better at this, and I'm sure there will be more difficult times, but I have to say that while you can't inherently prepare for fatherhood, if you do try to prepare yourself, it's really great.

Most surprisingly useful item: Our battery-powered multi-event timer. My mom couldn't stop teasing me about measuring how long we took between feedings, diaper changes, and my wife's pain meds (tylenol, BTW!) , but honestly at this point I no longer trust my memory enough to remember what happened several hours ago at all times. This way, the baby doesn't go all day between diaper changes (she takes care of reminding us to feed her), and the wife doesn't have to go all afternoon without at least taking the edge off the discomfort. This is not to put down all the other things we got that we knew would be useful, just a note about the one whose importance we hadn't realized in advance. The runner up is the super-fuzzy Baby Elmo blanket (available at Kohl's), which Leila just adores.

Is fatherhood lonely? Maybe someday, but certainly not yet. It's busy certainly, especially given that I'm getting spectacularly inefficient at doing things, but the few moments I've had to myself the past week have been fine. In the end, there's now double the nuclear family members to spend time with, and that's fine with me.

We get it, you're tired...: Having just seen the movie The Lookout, I've noticed that fatigue over a few days seems to mimic the symptoms of a light-to-moderate traumatic brain injury. My attention span is significantly lower than normal, and sequencing out multi-step tasks has gotten to be a non-trivial issue. I see why they recommend that new parents try not to do too much. It's not just about exhaustion, it's also a matter of safety, in that undertaking complex tasks means that they might not be accomplished fully, and are best left untried. Thankfully, sleep seems to cure these problems, and I'm already feeling a bit more up to speed now tat Leila is coming much closer to sleeping through the night but for feeding breaks/diaper changes.

Is there an evolutionary reaction where babies are just so adorable that you have to protect and care for them? Yes.

What about when they cry? I suppose this will get much worse when her lungs develop, but for now, it's still too cute for words when Leila is upset, and since she generally stops before too long, usually because we alleviate the problem, it just doesn't upset us at all when she cries.

Parents vs. non-parents? We undertook this whole process well aware of what we were getting into, and I'd recommend that when possible. Babies are a ton of work, and she's only eight days old. If someone doesn't want to have kids, they have my full blessing. It's a completely valid choice, and I place no stock in the idea that we must always give in to our evolutionary drives. Still, since parenthood is built into our genes, I really don't have any respect for the position that the society has no responsibility for taking care of what parents voluntarily bring on themselves. Parenthood is tough, and society benefits by making things easier on people. The Family and Medical Leave act is only a bare minimum, in that it allows for 12 weeks of unpaid leave, forcing many people to go back to work while there children really still need fulltime care. Just like the young pay social security so that the elderly may lead happier lives, so should society ensure that children lead happier lives. It's not a responsibility to the parents, but to the children, who otherwise have no say in the matter. Frankly, it's a moral obligation, and I just can't think of a way to construct a counter-argument that wouldn't leave me speechless. Remember, be good to kids, because they are going to grow up and be in a position to decide our fate. Mutually assured destruction is no way to deal with generational issues. More soon, once I sleep some more...

PS- What about poop? Needless to say, she poops a lot. In the hospital, I got to watch her first poop live, commenting that it was the most bizarre combination of disgusting yet fascinating I had ever seen. Thankfully, baby poop doesn't smell if a baby's diet consists entirely of breast milk. Not even a bit. Because of this, diaper changes are really no worse than cleaning up any kind of liquid spill. Of all the issues that new parents have to deal with, diapers are far easier and more pleasant that I would have imagined. Honestly, the only thing is that diaper changes take a lot of time, as do feedings, baths, and everything else involving a baby. Nothing is fast, but most things aren't as bad as one might have otherwise thought, I suppose.

Some news

Look here!

I would argue that I'm a recovering Catholic, not a lapsed one.... but in truth I'm too apathetic to be recovering. I never really had a "bad" catholic experiences, never had a priest molest me, never had a nun try to break my knuckles, or anything of that nature. I pretty much just accepted the whole church thing as a bizarre accident of history, but then my Mom went to church primarily to watch babies.

In any case, I did have an interesting exchange recently that I felt was... thought provoking, for me at least. This all happened on myspace, and I won't name names....but it essentially went down like this:

One individual, an alum of VT, was complaining about how much attention the VT football season opener was focused on the tragic events of this past spring. Furthermore, they spent a great deal of time discussing the actions of one young man who put himself in harms way to barricade a door against the gunman. These actions apparently saved his life, and many others. That poster was upset because she felt the young man was simply trying to save his own ass:
here is the post:

So right now, I'm watching the VT vs. ECU game...and a few minutes ago, Erin Andrews (who's a stupid whore anyway) was interviewing a VT student who was wounded during the shootings back in April. She said to him, "You were one of the heroes who was wounded during your German class...and then you sacrificed yourself and barricaded the door. Thank you."

I'm sorry, but the people who were wounded and shot were not heroes. They were victims...of a tragic event...but that's it. And hearing this over and over and over again, while our soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan each day...does nothing more but make me resentful and hateful towards Virginia Tech and a lot of other people.

Heroes are the people who have CHOSEN to join our military...knowing full well that at any moment, they could be called to leave their families and loved ones for over a year...and spend that time in a combat zone...sleeping on the ground, avoiding IEDs, eating shit for dinner, etc. etc. etc.

They are the ones who have SACRIFICED their time and lives to save others -- even if they're not helping rid this country of terrorists and attacks, they ARE serving so that the rest of you don't have to. They're allowing YOU to go out to dinner...to sleep in a comfy bed...to go out to the bars for happy hour. Yet not once during this entire game has there been ANY mention of the sacrifices of our servicemen and women.

I love football, but I feel such hatred towards these people right now...because, win or lose, they get to go home to their loved ones and have a drink...while the rest of us are stuck here for months on end, waiting for those we love to come home to us. So don't fucking talk to me about the sacrifices other people are making...none of you has any clue about the true meaning of that word.

Umm.... okay. Now here was the response of my lovely wife to be:

I disagree with you here. This kid was just a college student (no basic training to prepare him to go into battle), yet he put himself on the line to barricade the door, allowing other kids to freak out and focus on saving their own hide... Not that others had a whole lot of options, but I do see a huge difference between those victims who sought to save their own lives by finding a better hiding spot or jumping out of windows or whatever and those heroes who put their own lives on the line to allow those others more time to save their own hides.

I think you're being pretty one sided here -- this kid did what you praise our soldiers for doing (put his life on the line to protect others), but without having had the chance to choose whether or not to sign up to go into a battle zone and without having special training to prepare him to react effectively in such a situation. How is that not a hero?

I agree that media coverage of the war has been pretty crappy. Most news outlets in the US are sickenly biased and hardly ever show any important news (unless you count Paris Hilton's latest zit as more important than the current death toll of US soldiers in Iraq). But I also think it's pretty asinine to suggest that someone has to join the military and leave their loved ones sitting at home for months or years to be worthy of being praised for doing something heroic.

Now to put things into context, the first poster is a cultural anthropologist, someone trained in cultural sensitivity.....in theory. The second is also a cultural anthropologist, one I'm quite fond of , disagreeing but trying to be respectful to her friend. Now the first poster has a boyfriend who is currently serving in Iraq. That individual posted this response:

That guy was obviously protecting his own ass. Heroes in the classroom..... we are all over here laughing at that situation. Ive never heard so much whining and bitching and "we are all hokies" bullshit in my life. People in africa have their entire village wiped out by rebels on a daily basis. There are constant terrorist attacks on those that live in Isreal, and we are supposed to call this guy a hero. Grow up people and get out of your bubble

Ok, now...this man is a soldier, in Iraq at the moment. I thought about it for a while and wrote the following response myself:

Well, what it comes down to is how one defines a hero. I would argue that someone who tries to keep his head together in a disaster and tries to help the people around him is a hero. The cops, firemen, and simple civilians running into the World Trade Center were heroes by any sane definition. People diving into the river and pulling an entire bus load of children out of the river in Minneapolis are heroes. Every last one of them. Soldiers defending their country are heroes. Its not a matter of being in a bubble, nor is it in any way a comment on any aspect of the trials and conditions of American Soldiers in Iraq, the people in Darfur just trying to survive, or anyone else.

Hero is a very subjective term. The fact that at least some of the people at VT put themselves in the line of fire to help save people does earn them the label of being a hero. Yes situations in Iraq an Afghanistan forces many people to be heroes, because they are nations in turmoil. No, the kid in question has not, as far as I know, joined the military. So what. Maybe on a scale of heroism he isn't the greatest hero mankind has ever seen. So what.

A hero might be a Palestinian woman trying to get food to her children through a Lebanese blockade, an Israeli soldier throwing themselves over a child to protect her from a car bomb. But at least in a small way, the ambulance drivers who drive into blinding snowstorms to help save lives are also heroes.

This in no way denigrates our soldiers, like you, who have volunteered to serve our country over seas in a time of conflict. If nothing else it raises the bar and shows the true selfless spirit of the American Soldiers, that they choose to put themselves into harms way.

The world is filled with heroes of all sorts. I for one am glad of that. This is not living in a bubble, it is seeing the range of good that the human spirit can attain, if for no other reason than to balance the evil.

That being said, the media has not done a good job informing Americans of the true range of information of the War. But I feel that is a completely different discussion.

Now there hasn't been any kind of reply to my post, I don't think there will be. Now I was trying very hard to be respectful, but the question remains, how do you approach a discussion like this? This exchange bothered me. It bothered me that someone would find the label of someone reacting, and probably saving many lives, not in the least his own, to be insulting. Why would this be? I have not seen any kind of social backlash to recent veterans simply commentary on the war. I realize I am not a soldier,but is this becoming one of those untouchable things? When did calling someone a hero cast doubt on soldiers in the field?

For all my problems with Bush, the administration, the excuses used to promote the war, the conduct of the war, and etc. none of this has anything to do with the men and women in our armed forces. Failure in Iraq will be due to the failure to create a stable government, not because our forces were unsuccessful. The problem I see is the inability to see context. Maybe as an anthropologist I've spent too much time in my own little world but how hard is it to see that perspective is an important thing, to see that one man's hero may not be another's. I question the presumption that there is only one path to take in order to be a hero.
--Alex

Have you ever been to American wedding? Where is the vodka, where's marinated herring?

First of all, welcome to our new co-blogger. For those who know both, this is my friend Alex, not my wife's friend Alex. I have no idea what he'll write about, but I'm sure we'll find out. Though he's not a Russian Jew, I will note that he is a pretty much a lapsed Catholic, so he fits in with my lapsed Reform Judaism (which is almost exactly the same in many ways as observant Reform Judaism), and dkon's lapsed Marxism-Leninism.

Anyway, onto tonight's topic: weddings, and what they can teach us about my current predicament, er, um ... current familial situation. I'll start by attacking that favorite chestnut often repeated at weddings: "This is the happiest day of my life". No, sorry, it really isn't. The honeymoon might be, since you are finally done dealing with caterers, seating charts, complicated rituals, and a variety of prayers to intercede between family members on both sides who need to be separated...but the wedding is simply not the happiest moment in your life. This whole expression came about, as best I can tell, because it used to represent the first time one was allowed to have sex without being persecuted. Thankfully, such persecution is now on the way out, and as a result, weddings are really not the huge turning point in one's life that they used to be. Don't get me wrong, I actually had a great time at my wedding, as pictures will indicate, but I have to admit that the biggest change between before and after had much more to do with the flight to Cancun than the ring on my finger. I was pretty much committed to the relationship well before the marriage, and couldn't quite get used to the term "my wife" for a couple years afterward. For all the symbolism we would like to attach to it, in the end the wedding itself is a ceremonial rite of passage whose impact is primarily symbolic, rather than substantive. Society as a whole would be better if people would realize this, to say nothing of the benefit of forever eradicating the phrase "sanctity of marriage", especially when said by those who treated it as less than sacred, double super-especially, when that person had the New York City emergency management headquarters placed in a building known to be a terrorist target apparently so he could use it as a love nest for his mistress.

But I digress. I bring this up not to insult marriage, but rather to point out that many of the supposed turning points in our lives are much less climactic than we are led to believe. Just so no one out there is disappointed in such things when it happens to them, I should point out, with some trepidation, that finding out that your wife is pregnant may very well fit into this category. Don't get me wrong, it was exciting, but it meant that my life would be changing a full nine months into the future. In the short term, S. didn't look pregnant for a long time, she didn't have any real morning sickness (thank the deity of your choice or the lack thereof), and it basically meant that she and I both scaled back our drinking from nearly never to never and even more nearly never, respectively. For months, we knew a child was growing within her, but literally every book, website, and nurse we consulted compared it to the fruit, vegetable, or legume that it most closely matched in size. It's difficult to picture how a grape, kiwi, or nectarine will really be changing your life, and this is months into the process.

If I may be allowed a moment of misplaced Judaic chauvinism, I think I understand rather well now why Jewish law declares the quickening, or the first moment when you feel the baby move, to be the beginning of life. I think S. felt her moving a few weeks before I could, but once you finally feel your future child moving, then the tangibility of their incipient personhood hits you. By now, we can actually feel legs, feet, the butt, and all other parts sticking out (very much like this, I'm disturbed to say), and it really does seem like a small person inside there (yes, I realize that this is indeed the case). You simply can't abstract away something that kicks your hand, or something that causes rather stunningly large protuberances and indentations on your wife's stomach.

For better or worse, it seems that while many rites of passage in life are symbolic, childbirth is very demonstrably not one of them. I doubt I'll be going so far as to call it miraculous (nor "wonderfully Darwinian" while among strangers), but it is one of those things that actually sets down a marker in life, like before and after your team wins the World series or something like that. It seems as if there might be a few of those on the way for us over the next few weeks, but more on that later.

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Now playing: Gogol Bordello - American Wedding
via FoxyTunes

Umm....

Hi.

This feeling of fakin' it. I still haven't shaken it.

Incipient fatherhood awaits me. Admittedly, I've had basically the entire year up to this point to get used to the idea (we found out about the peanut's existence on the day before New Year's, after all). It's not that I'm particularly nervous, nor feel wholly unprepared, having been through birthing classes (cleansing breath, soothing touch, and why vomiting should be viewed as a positive thing), breastfeeding classes (tickle, tickle, pop the kid on), fatherhood classes (when bathing, use a different surface for each eye to prevent the spread of infection, and NEVER SHAKE A BABY!!!!). I've built cribs, shelving units, rockers, and had the car seat installed. I've even continued my long-running dabbling with insomnia, just to be maximally prepared.

No, what surprises me, even to this day, is the extent to which I'm beginning to realize how much parents fake it. I'm 30 now, by which point in my parents life I was 5 and 6. Good Lord, but it's hard to imagine having done this six years ago. Seriously, it makes you wonder what they were thinking...and yet, I'd like to think I turned out ok. Not to say we'll be the best parents in the world, but somehow the species has actually managed this trick for many thousands of years, and our ancestors for hundreds of millions prior. Even cats, among the laziest creatures in the world, manage to raise kittens when not consuming pounce and napping. And yet, I suspect most of them faked it too, at least at first.

Suffice it to say, this is not a knock on any of the parents I know, including my own and my co-blogger. They seem to have done/be doing a fantastic job, even though I can't imagine they had any more preparation than we managed to get, nor more sleep than we're prepared not to get. That they managed to keep their sanity in just about all cases, and in many cases their hair as well, we'll just chalk up to one of the mysteries of life.

In the end, I've tried to figure out the whole parenthood thing, and I still can't escape the conclusion that babies are a lot like cats, but you have to monitor their poop more closely and they aren't anywhere near as good at cleaning themselves. Lest this worry you, remember that my cat is certifiably neurotic and occasionally possessed by minor demons, and then consider the likely fate of our children...

To conclude, my honest and sincere thanks to my parents, and to all parents everywhere. Somehow y'all manage to do a job that seems more complicated than any task one should ask of a person, with vastly insufficient technical documentation and instructions, and much too little respect for what you do from many of the rest of us. If I've ever shown anything other than the proper respect and admiration, I'm certainly about to get my comeuppance. If I did show the proper respect and admiration and all that, well, I was probably doing it to buy your sympathy so we could get you to babysit someday. I may be faking it, after all, but I'm sneaky like that. I learned it from my cat.

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Now playing: Simon & Garfunkel - Fakin' It
via FoxyTunes

Back online

Enough of the hiatus. Too many thoughts to not let them loose in the tubes of the world wide internetweb. In case I go on hiatus again, you can find much better content from Atrios and Talking Points Memo, but until then, you're stuck with me.

Please note, of course, that peanut-related content will continue at It's a Peanut, so you'll find links to parental-related stuff, like ridiculously catchy music videos, there.

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Now playing: Justin Roberts - Willy Was A Whale
via FoxyTunes