The Good Sh*t

My apologies for not writing a post in awhile but it's because I haven't had anything to bitch about! My reasoning for creating this blog was to emphasize that people don't talk enough about the challenges and struggles of becoming a parent. That instead the perception is it's all cuddles, cute outfits, rainbows and fireworks. But early on the only fireworks you see are coming out your baby's butt. That's not true, but I like butt jokes.

Anyhow, I explained to some friends why I'd stopped writing and all told me to continue writing, even if it's good stuff about your kid. To which I said - who wants to read about how great and smooth someone else's baby is doing? That's all of Facebook! Plus, it's contradicting my intention of starting this blog in the first place! But then I realized, no - my intention is to keep it real about fatherhood/parenting and that obviously includes the good shit, too.

So here's the deal, at the risk of jinxing everything, baby life has gone really smoothly and it all coincides with the amount of sleep you and the baby get. When my lil guy got down to just one feeding in the middle of the night (a monumental step), I would get up with my wife to offer emotional support and change his diaper. (We were still exclusively breastfeeding, but if you're not, then it's obviously much easier for parents/caretakers to switch off for those midnight feedings.) Then I discovered one of the greatest inventions since eyeglasses: Pampers 12-hour diapers, which can seemingly absorb Lake Tahoe in your pants. This eliminated my need to change him in the middle of the night and a glorious return to uninterrupted sleep. These Pampers are more expensive, but so worth it. And that's coming from a frugal Asian.

Once your kid can the sleep the whole night? Oh man, it's such a watershed moment for parents you almost want to stay up til 9:30p to celebrate. Parenting is subjective and y'all should do whatever feels right for you, but we started sleep training our guy, which means if he started to cry and fuss in the middle of the night, we'd let him go before determining if we needed to get him. It does against your natural instinct to ignore a crying kid, but whatever - them kids is always crying about something.  Thankfully by this point, lil man would fuss for a few minutes then fall back asleep for the rest of the night. Sooner or later, if you're lucky, they don't even wake until morning. That's when you're gifted one of the best things in life: getting your kid out of bed and being greeted with your baby's big ass toothless smile because he/she's so happy to see you. That's the real good shit.