Dear Dave

Monday, 21 December 2009

Guest post by Chris Loprete

Dear Dave,

Well, that's another year almost over - another year of parental peril, another year of housedad adventures and another year of unsolicited parenting advice from me. Only Christmas and Hogmanay to go and we're safely into 2010. Phew!

Wonder what I'll write to you about next year, though? I must have covered almost everything by now. Our kids can't have many more tricks up their sleeves, can they?

Er... Don't answer that.

Anyway, thought you might be interested in this by Chris Loprete over at The Daddy's Den. He's a comedy writer for TV, not a stay-at-home parent, but it seems like he's picked up on the housedad experience a little:

Thanks. I got it.

Why is it that when women see a father alone with a baby, they immediately assume we don’t know what the hell we’re doing?

Now I don’t want to generalise here. I’m not talking about single women. In fact the single women tend to gravitate towards the daddies at the park or in other public places. Chicks LOOOOVE guys with babies. Babies and dogs. They say, “I want that.” Now of course we men are kidding ourselves because ‘that' is not specifically us, but rather a stable man who’s a good father, and the fantasy is fun. Anyway I’m probably already in trouble with my editor who happens to be my wife, so I’ll go on. No, I’m talking about the annoying mother who wants to give all kinds of unsolicited advice on how to raise your child. And rightly so. OBVIOUSLY I MUST need this unsolicited advice because my child’s mother is nowhere in sight. I therefore MUST be doing something wrong. And then, I imagine this “guardian angel” will go along her merry way and later at the dinner table tell her family how she saved a child’s life today.

Take this little encounter for example. It was a summer Saturday afternoon about two years ago. I was in my townhouse downstairs and my wife was upstairs with our infant son. I was watching a baseball game and cleaning. The cleaning part is not important to the story but I specifically remember doing it and I always like to remind my wife/blog editor that it does happen on rare occurrences. Anyway I could hear my son crying upstairs pretty loudly. He was probably getting his diaper changed - which to him has always been the baby equivalent to a root canal. There was a knock at the door. When I answered it I saw a woman who was walking her dog in front of our door. She asked, “Do you have a baby?”

“Why yes,” I said, waiting for the inevitable compliment. Something along the lines of, "I see you walking him. You have a lovely family," or, "Well, he’s obviously going to grow up to be a very good looking man." Why else would she take the time out of her dog walking to knock on our door?

This is why: She looked at me and said, “He’s crying upstairs.”

I paused to make sure I had heard her right. Then I said, “Yeah, my wife’s upstairs with him.”

She replied, “Oh, I heard the game on pretty loudly so I wasn’t sure you if could hear him.”

Yyyeeeeahhh. Handled, honey, but thanks. I’m sure the children of our housing complex are a lot safer with you roaming the sidewalks knocking on doors. Hey, hero, I think I hear a baby coughing a couple of houses down. Do you want to call child services or should I?

Or how ‘bout the woman on the beach later on that same summer? I was walking on the beach, my son safely strapped into the front loader on my chest. I felt good. First of all the Baby Bjorn completely covered my huge gut so I wasn’t nearly as self conscious as usual. And secondly, it was a beautiful day and I was walking with my new son at the place I’m always the happiest: the beach. So when I saw a woman walking toward me and eyeing both of us, I started to feel even better. I was sure she could sense the good energy coming off of me and, like I said, the baby was covering up my huge white shirtless girth, so I thought, 'Hey, I think she’s checking me out.'

So when she passed by and asked, “Does he have sunscreen on?” I was a bit nonplussed. First of all, I had practically bathed him in SPF 560 or whatever the strongest baby sun goop is nowadays. This kid could have crawled across the surface of the sun and come away with nothing but a nice base.

So I told her, “Uh…. yeah… plenty.”

She replied, “Oh. Cause his legs look a little red,” and passed by me never breaking her stride.

I immediately turned and shouted after her, “Yeah? Well they call his chubby legs and butt baby fat. They call yours cellulite!” ZING! That got her. Of course I didn’t actually say that but ooooh I wish I had.

And these brilliant pieces of parenting wisdom are not confined to just me when I’m alone. My wife has had to endure some slings and arrows of her own. It’s like divide and conquer. Once my wife and I are divided, they love to conquer. I don’t ever want to hear a sentence that starts with, “Y’know what WE do…” I don’t even like hearing it from our parents, but that I understand and tolerate because “parental interference” is in the grandparent’s code book. It’s a God given right. To tell you the truth as my wife and I get ready for baby #2, we’ve learned to tolerate buttinskys a little more. In fact I’m amazed how laid back we are about having another child and we’re only 3 months out. I guess we think of ourselves as old pros now. In fact it probably won’t be long before we’re handing out some advice of our own to other parents who obviously don’t have a clue what they’re doing. I’m sure they’ll thank us for it.

Pass out helpful pointers to anyone who's within earshot? Who'd do something like that?

Oh...

Ho, well. Thanks for reading for another year. Maybe in 2010 I'll let you in on my top tips for cleaning light switches safely or the three most important things to remember when pretending to listen to your kids while you're secretly playing Peggle on your iPod.

Then again, who knows what the New Year will bring? All the best.

Yours in a woman's world,

Ed.

PS If you like Chris' stuff, you should also check out his paternity leave experience and his scary Star Wars incident.

Labels: housedad