What does it mean to be a dad?

That's a good question. I'm glad I asked myself.

Tonight, while folding three loads of laundry at the dining room table, I started thinking about dad-like things I had done this weekend. I was going to make it a Facebook status, but there were too many things.

It meant replacing the batteries in a hide-and-seek rabbit, changing a mushy diaper, buying fruit and milk and toys at the grocery.

It meant not buying all the toys, holding a baby girl with a boo-boo in my arms while she lay her head on my shoulder, it meant singing "Jump" by Patty Shukla on repeat while my daughter jumped on her bed, my bed and the guest bed.

It also meant singing the Barney theme song and "Amazing Grace" on demand for a demanding daughter, it meant sharing every meal with my toddler because it's just more fun to eat off Daddy's plate and it meant playing peek-a-boo while folding aforementioned laundry.

It meant falling asleep after baby's bed time because you're tired and you better believe the clock is ticking once she's down.

It meant waking from a dead sleep to a cry of 'Mommy!' at 5:30 a.m. It meant staying in bed until 6:44 a.m. while my family lay beside me. It meant cooking bacon and chocolate chip pancakes for two very appreciative girls.

It meant sneaking off for an hour of work and wishing I was with those girls. It meant coaxing and prompting a 19-month-old to say her own name (a mouthful for people decades older than her) and marveling at what sounded like said 19-month-old counting to nine (look, I know I heard six, seven, eight).

It meant trying to explain that no, we don't jump on the cat because it hurts the cat. It meant saying, for the 457th time, please crawl on the couch, don't run. It meant staying away from the computer until nap and bed times because otherwise it meant fighting a toddler who doesn't understand that computers aren't just for Patty Shukla videos.

It meant listening to my (pregnant) wife cry in the other room because she was so sad from the recent school shooting. It meant looking at the pictures of the children that died and seeing that they aren't much older than my daughter. It meant discussing what my wife, a teacher, would do if a school shooting occurred. It meant telling her, please, if something were to happen, protect yourself and my unborn baby.

It meant finally taking a minute to write to my daughter.

Name change

You know how sometimes you have a baby, name it at the last minute, then decide a few months later you want to change the name?

No? Well, I feel sheepish.

As you may have noticed, Coffee Fueled Ambition has now become Sappy Dad.

Reasons for the change are as follows:

1. This blog is no longer coffee-fueled, nor ambitious. Coffee doesn't even touch my sleep debt anymore, even though I installed the IV weeks ago. Ambition is for losers, you well-rested, overachieving losers.

2. Several folks have told me how I "really express myself" on this blog, so I decided to tap into the sappy. You'll be getting more sap than a maple tree spigot now. Plus Sarcastic Dad and Snarky Dad were already taken.

3. Since this blog is about being Dad-ish, I wanted the title to be more Dad-ish. You know, logic and whatnot.

There you go. Reasons for changing your baby's, er, blog's name.

Now, I wonder how much of a hassle it would be to change Emerson to Esmeralda without anyone noticing?

The good and the bad

Like I wrote in the last post, things do change. After five weeks of living it, here are my observations.

• You are more, and less, patient than you ever thought you could be. For example, you can change a diaper in a sleepy stupor while a baby squirms and screams at you. Or, you lose your cool and ask, expecting a reply, why the baby doesn’t realize you have to get up and work in the morning.

• You think about money, a lot. At least I do. Since Emerson was born, I’ve started taking my lunch to work. In my mind, I’m saving at least $100 a month that I can spend on her or her future. After a meal at our favorite sushi restaurant last night, Coury and I both remarked on how much money we just spent on one meal. Skipping that meal could go towards the college fund (that we are not going to tell our daughter about, so she’ll work hard to get some scholarships!).

• You realize how little sleep you need to function. Yep, I figured I would be tired. After a while though, it just seems normal to be this tired. I think one day I’ll look back and realize how tired I really am. The best part is that you just keep going, like a functioning zombie.

• Everything else falls away. My yard could be three feet tall, but it wouldn’t matter if my daughter needed me. The yard has gotten unruly a few times lately, and the house isn’t something you would see in a magazine, but my priority is being cared for.

• No matter where you are, you’d rather be hanging out with baby. I could be winning the Super Bowl and I’d rather be at home with baby. It’s amazing that people maintain their lives after having a child. Who wouldn’t want to be at home with such a cutie pie? The reality of providing for your family is a strong motivation, as well.

That’s all I’ve got right now. I’ve had several topics in mind in the last five weeks that have been forgotten, but I’m sure they’ll come to me.

The One-Handed Typist

It only took five weeks.

I'm holding a sleepy, yet squirmy, little bundle while trying for a new blog post.

We are all doing wonderfully.

As everyone said, everything changes. In ways you would expect, and not.

Poop isn't a big deal. Projectile vomit is old hat. Two hour stretches of sleep are embraced.

Blogs (and snapping photos), however, take a backseat to being a dad.

I'll put out more pictures and posts soon. Right now I've got my hands full with a special little girl.

May days

It may be a money pit, but we love it.


Today I did a very grown-up thing. I got a quote to up my homeowners’ insurance policy (Boring, I know. Hang in there for a minute).

The one we have is fine; it would cover the amount we paid for our house. The only problem is, they don’t make houses like they used to. It cost close to three times the amount we paid for our house to rebuild it.

Anyhow, the act of insurance shopping made me think about the very quick year we’ve spent in our house.

Over breakfast, where all the monumental conversations happen (grrrr…pass cereal…bleh…milk…coffee…must have…geh), I mentioned to Coury that it had almost been one year since our big purchase.

Being the sage she is (even with the pregnant brain!), she noted that our last three May’s have been big as life phases go.

Turns out, the ole pregnant brain sage is right.

Two May’s ago, we made a legal and spiritual commitment to be together (Trust me, the law has to be involved for me to commit. I moved over 10 times in two years once).

Last May, we bought the house we plan to spend the next 30 or more years dumping money into. In fact, we’ve already dumped a bunch of money into it.

This May (or possibly late April, we'll pretend it's May regardless), we’ll have our first child.

The guy that changes long-term goals on a daily basis made three monumental life decisions in three consecutive May’s. Peter Pan did, indeed, grow up.

Two of those life milestones caused me to lose sleep. Marrying Coury was not one of them.

The night before we signed the paperwork for the loan on our current house (we had a second house we were trying to sell at the time), I lay in bed and sweated.

How could we afford two houses at once? More importantly, how could we afford to let this house pass by?

I woke up worried several times that night. I was still uptight the next morning at signing time.

Somehow, though, we made it work.

This morning, I woke up 20 minutes before my alarm went off. Instead of slipping back to sleep, I realized that continuous rest was about to become ancient history.

It’s frightening, really. The silence of our big house is about to be interrupted, pierced by another human.

I daydream a lot about what the baby will look like, or how it will act, or how I will feel with no sleep.

Sometimes, I’ll daydream far into the future. Will Emerson be OK mentally and physically? Will I be resented for the things that I think are best for Emerson (Math is where it’s at, Dad. English majors are so 2008)? Does watching TV actually make me dumber (sorry, unrelated)?

Then I remember that my wife has awesome genes, and I hope that all of the amazing qualities that I see in her translate over to our first-born.

Like I said in a previous post, I have no idea what to expect.

The things I daydream about, terrifying or otherwise, indicate that next May we’ll still be very happy, celebrating Emerson’s first birthday.

Yep, we do it big May. One milestone at a time.

Nitpick

When my wife is at fault, or even if I perceive that she is, I am quick to let her know.

Why didn’t she pick her underwear off the chandelier (oh wait, that was me)? Why are all these dishes still in the sink after 13 days (duh, you again)? Who sprinkled all these ponytail holders about the house? (That last one is all hers.)

I tend to put blame on her even when I shouldn’t.

In our old house, we shared a bathroom. If it started getting messy, it was her fault.
For a while, we shared a bathroom in our new house. The same rules applied.

When I got tired of walking through hair spray clouds, I moved myself to the upstairs bathroom.

This, I thought, would be the key to keeping a clean restroom. No more wife to dirty up the place.

A few months have passed since.

Hers is straight, neat, and nothing in sight that would make a garbage man cringe.
Mine, however, looks like the inside of a diaper.

Clothes are piled up and overflowing out of the hamper. Toothpaste film coats the sink bowl like flour. The tile floor resembles the inside of a dirt floor shanty.

One day, while on a field trip to the wife’s bathroom, I realized who was actually the neater spouse. (Note: it was not me.)

While I’m a nitpicker, Coury keeps her mouth shut and I’m none the wiser.

I’m pretty sure I could mop our carpet with straight bleach for months and she wouldn’t say a word. She would just smile, shake her pretty head, and walk over the bleached out, sopping wet, mildewy carpet.

Sometimes, though, she slips. Take today for instance.

Since early in my wife’s pregnancy, I’ve asked her if she’s OK about 3.5 million times a day. Every moan, grunt or waddle is noticed and inquired about. Every ailment is followed up minutes later with another, ‘Is everything OK?’

With the possibility of labor looming, I’ve gone into super alert mode. Inquiries have gone up 300 percent in the last two weeks.

To my wife’s credit, she’s never acknowledged that it bugged her.

Today, I joked that once she had the baby, I would no longer ask her 500 times a minute if she were OK. The constant alert would be dropped and transferred to the new house guest.

She laughed a little too hard, in a way that let me know it had been grating on her. She elaborated a little, expressing a few thoughts that probably aren’t appropriate here.

So I promised to stop.

Water broke? Nary a word or acknowledgement. Feels like the baby is punching your cervix? Sorry, I’ve used up all my ‘are you OK’s?’ The baby sat on your bladder and caused you to pee your pants as we sat in church? I’m pretending not to notice.

Wait, I gotta go. I think I heard my wife mumble under her breath.

Ode.

She turned down Jesus to raise a family. That's confidence, folks.


One Christmas, I took the cheapskate route and gave my wife (then girlfriend) my version of the story of us. The following is the last installment of that body of work.


I hope I’m good at raising kids one day, you said out of nowhere.

Who knows what spawned the thought? Maybe memories from a few hours earlier when you were playing with your three-year-old niece.

There is no doubt you’ll be a good mother. Absolutely. No. Doubt.

I’ve never met a child who didn’t grin unbearably after a little attention from you. Not a single one.

You teach your niece with ease. You laugh with her, fit in with her, relate to her with grace. Absolute grace.

Though you have career ambitions and energy to give to other people’s children, you say you were born to be a mother. Not in a way that suggests you have no other talents, in a way that suggests it will be your ultimate talent. Your masterpiece.

I’m looking forward to watching you and helping you raise children if we are so lucky. It’s always been one of the deal makers for me: I can picture you as a mother to my children, as by my side when I’m 90-years-old. You’ll make a great buddy at the senior center, no doubt.

And as your grandmother brought you great sadness when she died, you will do the same for your grandchildren, nieces and nephews. You are one of those people. You’re a favorite to many, including me.

Just like I suspect your Mama Jo did, I think you want it to be like that. You know how to be the favorite for those you really favor. You know the quick way in and you endure. If you like someone, they’re gonna be all right.

You love hard. You give hard. You feel hard.

You are soaked in life and especially love. You may possibly be love’s number one fan, its biggest advocate in the face of cynicism.

Besides all those great things, you make people better.

They laugh. They loosen up. They love.

It’s simple but it wasn’t like that before I met you. Sometimes it takes someone showing you how to be shamelessly silly.

So my kids, should they ever come to be, are lucky. They don’t even know it yet, but they’re so far ahead of other kids that it’s unfair.

They will have a mother who is a one-of-a-kind friend, stern but fair, smart but doesn’t put on heirs (ever), the best teacher I’ve ever met, a strong role model with a clear idea of what’s right and wrong, and one of the funniest, most fun to be around people you will ever meet.

She speaks her mind yet doesn’t offend. She communicates yet gives space.

If she loves you, she will stick up for you. She constantly defends her 20-pound, balding house cat from my creative insults. Her love ignores aesthetics. She holds him tight, calls for him when he’s not near, and endures all his fatness and shedding.

To answer your out-of-the-blue question about parenting, absolutely yes. If you aren’t a good mother, there are no good mothers.