I'm a Hit in Romania

If you are one of the half dozen or so regular readers of this blog, you are probably wondering where I have been for the past month and a half. Certainly something exciting must be happening in the world of Sydney that I have neglected to tell you.

You would be wrong.

I don’t really like to write unless there is something funny to write about. Have you read some of these blogs where people just post braggy stuff about their kids every week? “Johnny got straight A’s this week.” “Millicent was chosen to be the lead in the school play this week.”  “Billy scored two goals in last night’s soccer game.”

Yawn.

I’d much rather read a blow-by-blow account of how Johnny tried to stuff a whole McDonald’s cheeseburger in his mouth at once and ended up puking in the back seat of the mini van. Or how Millicent got in a cat fight with the school bully and dad scolded her in the principal’s office, but high-fived her once they got in the car. Or how Billy scored two goals in a soccer game, but is so directionally clueless he scored them in the other team’s goals.

Those stories, I can laugh at.

Sydney has been quite the joy lately. At 17 months, she’s getting a touch of the Terrible Twos. We will have a melt down every now and then. But nothing major. Just regular kid stuff. Not really any blog stuff.

We have had some milestones. She can count to 20, with a little help. She has about half of the alphabet down. She had a nice first Christmas, where she delicately opened each gift with one hand and one hand only, thereby making Christmas morning a three-hour affair.

We had our first haircut this week. She wasn’t scared. She didn’t throw a tantrum. Cute, but boring.

It is nice that she now can communicate with us, even if it isn’t in words. She can call out for Daddy when Mommy is annoying her and vice versa. I can always count on a “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” when Sydney gets out of the bath tub because she hates when Brooke dries her off. She wants daddy to come to the rescue.

She smiles and laughs a lot, now. She likes to go to the park and swing and slide, shouting “Whee!” as she glides down. Her favorite show is Caillou and she will stop all playing when it comes on, sitting still and watching intently. She likes pizza, hot dogs, yogurt, cottage cheese and cheese and pretty much spits out everything else.

She’s been sick a couple of times, but recovered quickly. She seems to like child care and gets along with the other kids. She can climb a flight of stairs in record time, ensuring mommy and daddy have to be alert at all times. (I once put the gate down and then went to get her glass of milk that sat in the refrigerator. In the time it took me to retrieve it, she was nine steps up and daddy almost had a heart attack.)

None of this makes for real funny blog fodder.  

As I have said before in this blog, we have settled into parenthood. I am sure there will be upheaval in May when Baby Gregg 2 comes along, but, for now, our lives are blissfully unbloggable.

But I realize I have regular readers who may want me to check in every once in a while, so I will try to pick it up.

For the six of you.

(I actually just checked the stats.) I have more than 14,000 page views all time. While the majority of those views are in the U.S., I have nearly 700 from Russia, more than 400 in the United Kingdom and almost 200 in Romania.

Russia? Romania? Apparently my comedy plays well in the Eastern European bloc. I’m glad the Iron Curtain no longer exists.

I’m not sure how my blogging translates in any of the dozen or so foreign countries that have registered more than ten views on my blog. Perhaps I am viewed as an obnoxious father in France. Maybe I’m laugh-out-loud, Benny Hill funny in the UK. I have to believe I am a little scary to the Taiwanese.

But they are reading. So I need to be writing. Sydney needs to start doing more funny things. The pressure is on, child. You might as well learn to deal with it at a young age. Deliver.

Your Romanian fan base is waiting.

Sydney Will Someday Hate Me for This

I went a few miles out of my way the other night to buy diapers. We were parked in the parking lot of a super market when my wife said, “But I have a coupon for $4 off if we go to Walgreens.” So, we drove across town to save $4.

This is what parenthood does to you.

Remember who I am. If I am really, really hungry for Arby’s and the McDonald's is two miles closer, nine out of 10 times, I am hitting up the McDonald’s. Convenience is a hallmark of my lifestyle. Why do something yourself when you can pay someone else to do it? Trickle-down economics. My wife likes to say my middle name is “relaxation.”

So to get me to drive from the parking lot of a grocery store across freaking town to save $4 on diapers? I never would have thought I’d see the day. But when you are going through diapers like they’re dollar bills at a strip club, you get desperate.

By the way, I probably haven’t been to a strip club in 15 years. I went to one in Windsor for a bachelor party, probably in the late ‘90s. I think I went to one in Atlanta about that time, too. I have lived in Cincinnati off and on for 17 years, and I don’t think I have ever been to a local club.

I’m not saying I haven’t had my share of adventures. In college, I swore I and a stripper in Florida had solid eye contact and she would soon be mine. We had a connection. It took my buddies dragging me out of the club and screaming at me that it was HER JOB to have eye contact with me before my wet dream fizzled.

In my 20s, at my first job where I worked a later shift, a few of us liked to relax after work with a jaunt or two to some of the fine gentleman’s establishments in Rockford, Ill. (“Fine gentleman’s establishments” seems like an oxymoron to me, like “jumbo shrimp.”)

But overall, I’m just not a strip club kind of guy. I don’t see the point in spending my hard-earned dollars on a woman whom I have zero chance of taking home that night. If I am going to be out and about, let it be at a regular club where I have at least a tiny shot at some action (this is pre-marriage, mind you). Wives and girlfriends should understand: the safest place for your man to be on a Saturday night is in a strip club. Those women want nothing to do with him except to discover the fastest way for his dollar bills to find a home in their G-strings.

But, I digress.

Our mountain of pre-baby diapers has become a molehill. I knew we would go through diapers, but I underestimated the rate….which means I underestimated the cost. I’m not a cheap guy, but I do like to spend money on things that are enjoyable. A fine dinner, a gangster movie, a trip to Vegas…shitty diapers are not on the list.

It seems like Sydney needs changed every couple of hours. Brooke likes to change her before every feeding, which is about every three hours. Sometimes, she needs changed in-between. I have to admit, I sometimes see that little blue line on the diaper and I turn her over quick before Brooke notices. If she is going to pee again soon, it might as well be in the same diaper. It saves me money and a little wetness can’t hurt, right?

I have self-diagnosed Sydney with Explosive Ass Disorder (EAD). Don’t bother looking it up in Webster’s or your New England Medical Journal. It’s a term I personally coined.

I believe this to be a hereditary disease, because the first time I ever encountered it was when my dad got a little older in life and was spending time at my sister’s. I happened to visit one day and my sister explained a “Holy-Crap-Mother-of-God-Hide-the-Women-and-Children” moment she had trying to clean up her bathroom after my dad’s bout with EAD.

Yeah, I went there.

I was afraid to even visit that bathroom after what came out of her mouth. I drove two towns over to my brother’s house just to take a whizz.

So grandpa passed on his EAD to my precious little child. First, she has enough gas to fuel a Sunoco station for a month. I don’t really have a reference point to compare her to other babies, but I estimate she farts at least 10 times an hour. Yes, she even farts in her sleep. That’s 240 farts a day!!!

Then, there are times when I am holding her and I can just tell she is going to the bathroom while she sits in my hands. There is a rumbling, then a sound like water gushing over Niagara Falls. That is what a liquid diet will do to you. Good lord, this child needs some roughage. If I am lucky, Brooke does not hear this and I can stealthily hand her over to play with her mama, who will no doubt discover the equivalent of a murder scene in her daughter’s pants shortly thereafter.

How much is my daughter going to hate me when she grows up and reads this?

So, my life of convenience and relaxation is now the equivalent of life on a chain gang. I used to sleep through the night. Now, I feed and change diapers. I used to nap on the weekends. Now I use them to catch up on everything I didn’t get done during the week. I used to watch my favorite TV shows. Now I spend all evening keeping her awake so she will sleep through the night. I used to buy whatever I needed, wherever I wanted. Now I drive across town to save $4.

Someday, very soon, she is going to smile when I pick her up. A few months after that, she’s going to call me “da-da.” A few years after that, she’ll squeeze my hand tight as she enters kindergarten for the first time. Later, there will be high school graduation, freshman year at college, calls about her world travels, the excitement of her first job and maybe even the chance to walk her down the aisle.

In other words, it will all be worth it someday.