Talking to your child

So the wife and I were discussing a few things about the baby and she said something that made me pause.  She said basically that I'm going to have to talk to our child about everything, boy or girl.  

Now that may not seem so bad, but once they start growing up it becomes awkward, especially if we're having a girl.  I mean, I can talk to our boy about anything, and probably will should we have one.  But with a girl, there are certain subjects that I would naturally defer to her mother.  I think we all know what I mean, but basically anything having to do with equipment I don't have.

Now one thing my wife pointed out to me is that it estranged her a bit from her father.  So, that is definatly one things I don't want.  I want to be close to my kids, and after some thought I want them to be comfortable enough with me to talk to me about anything.  So the conclusion I came to is my wife is right.  I will need to talk to my kids about anything.  

Thankfully, I won't need to bring up every subject, I can wait for them to come to me on the really awkward ones.  Sadly, the mildly awkward ones I will need to come to them if they do not come to me.  

Can it ever be clean enough?

So, with all the moving of furniture we're doing, we're currently cleaning out everything we can. We're talking deep cleaning the carpets and all. It has been tons of work, especially moving everything around to get the floor space to clean.

Now, with this being our first child, it's pretty easy to get carried away. We're definitely disproportionally optimistic compared to realistic. We want the best for everything and we haven't really figured out that line of diminishing returns. I'm sure we'll get there, but right now we haven't figured out just how clean clean enough is.

I am personally of the notion that was are overly clean and causing ourselves harm. This is especially true if you do it at a young age. I got this philosophy from George Carlin, but you can read about the science of it here.

So, with the nausea starting to subside, we're now dealing with a beast of another nature - heartburn. And it's not just mild heartburn every now and then. This is a pretty intense and fairly common heartburn.

So we're looking for good remedies for heartburn that are safe for pregnancy. We've heard papaya enzymes work and will try those, but what other things help?

On another note, the wife thinks she felt movement yesterday. She still makes fun of me because the day before she felt movement and I got all excited and tried to see if I could feel it. But then she clarified that it wasn't baby movement she was feeling.

So I really can't wait until the baby is moving. That is going to be nuts. That is when things will hit me again on how real this endeavor is, and that's both scary and exiting all at once. In fact I even dream about feeling the baby move now. I'm normally not a bid dreamer, but I've had tons of dreams about being both an awesome father and a big time failure. I think that covers the spectrum of my desires and my fears.

We're at 18 weeks or so now, only a couple of weeks until we go in for the big ultra sound and hopefully find out the gender. Then our real preparations can begin. Not this plain old cleaning that we're doing, which isn't exciting or fun, and just work.

Lack of fatherhood blogs

In doing my searches for like minded fathers and fathers to be, I found plenty of blogs, but not many of them are kept up. That is a bit disheartening. I'm pretty confidant I will keep this up, but I'm sure the others were also writing with the purpose of continued writing.

We shall see now, won't we? I also have not yet told my wife. I hope she approves, as this is for her and the child. Doing things for her always causes me a certain amount of anxiety as I like to make her happy. But I digress, as this isn't about her so much.

Well, it is a little about her as I discuss her pregnancy and whatnot. She is starting to show a bit and it's becoming uncomfortable for her. We ordered a maternity pillow for her. Hopefully that helps. If it doesn't, I'm sure you'll hear about it from me.

Since I haven't updated this for a bit

I know I claimed it would be running item, so maybe it's more of a jogging item, but here are a few more things that have changed since this whole endeavor has started:

4. I see movies and TV is a whole other light. I'm super sympathetic to parents and their plights. I saw Taken before getting pregnant and enjoyed it, and I watched it again recently and it kind of freaked me out thinking that in 18 or 19 years I might be dealing with similar issues. And I won't even be a badass to stop it.

5. My employment status is much more stressful now. I'm in no real danger of losing my job, but man does it feel more stressful in case I lose my job. I mean, I would live and so would my life, but uh, my baby don't make any money.

6. Our eating habits have changed. It's not that our diet has changed much, but where we go out to eat has changed. We're scoping out the more baby friendly joints and planning for the future.

7. I think about my father a whole lot more. My father died 11 years ago (when I was 19) and I've always thought about him plenty, but now I think about him more. I could really use his advice and guidance and picking his brain to find out what he went through becoming a father.

Losing My Office

So we live in a two bedroom townhouse. It's fine for two people. Like everyone we could use more space, but we aren't in a crucial space crunch. But with the baby on the way, it's now looking like my office will be occupied by a baby and baby themed equipment.

So now is the time we need to clear out that room and paint if need be. It's currently a pretty awesome "Incredible Hulk" green. Technically it's an "Appletini" green, but that sounds too girlie for me. But my wife has come up with some schemes to use the green and paint flowers on it so it looks like a field. We'll see how creative we really feel when / if we do paint.

Then it's finding a place for the 2 desks, 1 TV, and 1 bed in there. The bed might actually stay for a bit as someone may need to wake up a lot and breast feed. Either way, whatever stays and goes we will still probably move everything out to do some cleaning and painting.

So where does all that go? If we had a basement, that would be and easy answer. But since we don't, it's likely the family room will have a larger computer presence in it. That leads me to needing to figure out the cabling situation and probably moving some stuff to storage. Who knew that something so small would take up so much space?

Purchasing a crib

Every time my wife says she wants to talk about Cribs, I can't help but think of the stupid MTV show Cribs. With that said, crib shopping can be just as overwhelming as everything else involved with having a baby.

First, you want something safe. There are apparently a million ways a crib can kill a child, and every crib advertises new ways that it prevents new ways of dying. It's pretty crazy. The best thing to do is head on down to a big store that has a large inventory, as well as a varied inventory. You need to see the high end as well as the low end to see what you're paying for.

Low end cribs are typically not solid wood and a little shaky. Those are the floor models. I hear from people that when you assemble them yourself, they aren't nearly that bad. Probably a sales technique for the expensive stuff. The low end ones all seem ok, but probably won't last if you want to put a second kid in it.

On the high end we see multithousand dollar cribs of solid wood and grand design. Throw in the words "certified organic" and you can throw another 25% on top of it. You're long past the point of diminishing returns when looking at these types of cribs. It's just crazy how intricate some of these designs are. Clearly more for the parent than the child.

So the middle tier is where we pretty much reside. We aren't poor, but we definately aren't rich by any means. So with the middle tier, you can still get solid wood and sturdy design. You get non toxic and safe and complying to all the safety standards and whatnot. You can even get what I consider to be overly elaborate design. We've decided to go with the Netto CUB Sleeper. We ordered it yesterday and now I'm overly excited to get it.

This leads me to my next post... Losing my office