Pee Breaks Every Half Hour

Consider this a possible Last Will and Testament.

Tomorrow, I am taking an 8-hour trip with my pregnant wife.

Brooke is in a beach wedding on the shores of Lake Michigan in northern Michigan. A ritzy little town called Bay Harbor. Madonna has a home there.

Brooke committed to being a bridesmaid before she got pregnant. Morgan is a recent friend, but Brooke likes her a lot. So, despite being 8 months along, she really wants to go. As do I – northern Michigan in the summer on the beach is one of the most beautiful places in this country. But we are worried about any complications occurring, such as, I don’t know, maybe the baby coming early.

The doctors have begrudgingly said it is ok. They’d like us to stay here, but feel the trip is doable.

Brooke has mapped out every hospital along the way. I’m a little more nonchalant about it. As I have said before, I think I can probably deliver this baby on my own in the back seat of my Honda Pilot, so I am not so worried. But even if the amniotic fluid hits the fan, Ms. Nasty told us the average time between serious contractions and delivery is 18 to 20 hours. I could get her back here, take an eight-hour nap, grab some McDonald’s and still be in the delivery room to greet Sydney as she plops into the doctor’s hands.

My worries are more practical. My wife has gestational diabetes. What if she forgets her medicine? Or we have no way of refrigerating the insulin? What if she faints into the sand because her blood sugar is too low? She’s carrying a medicine ball of a belly….what if she can’t stand up for the ceremony? What do I wear to a beach wedding? What if the reception doesn’t have free alcohol?

Of course, my main concern is the 8 hours in the car each way. Pregnant women -- for good reason – are not the most pleasant people in the world. They can’t sit comfortably, they have hormones raging through their body, they can’t sleep at night and, in my wife’s case, they can’t eat anything. Now, throw in a 16-hour road trip that will require a bathroom break every half hour and you are sitting on a powder keg. Water breaking? Hell, I am more worried about my facial bones breaking from my wife’s right hook.

I’ve told you before, my wife is a saint. But I am not sure I can survive this. Lucky for me, I am a quiet, easy-going guy who goes with the flow and does everything he can to make his wife comfortable. If I was one of those Type A-husbands full of sarcasm who either gets easily frustrated or likes to make a joke out of everything, I might be in trouble.

Pray for me.

This Baby Business is Quite the Racket

My wife is a smart woman. Very smart.

When it came time to pick the stroller, she wanted me to come along. Now mind you, my wife took a friend with her when she did our wedding registry. She did the same when she registered for baby stuff.

She did this for two reasons. One, she knows I don’t give a damn. "Do you want knives with wooden handles or plastic handles?” Ah, just hand me one so I can plunge it into my heart and end the misery of wedding shopping.

Unless sporting equipment or big-screen televisions suddenly become appropriate wedding gifts, I don’t need to be there. I can live without having a say on the blender or punch bowl.

The second reason she didn’t take me is because she knew I would rain on her parade by telling her not to register for things we do not need. I am notorious for wearing, watching, listening to, sitting on and eating and drinking from something until it is absolutely not useful.

I have clothes from 1989 in my closet. I’ll be damned if I am going to throw away something that I can eventually wear if 1) it comes back in style and 2) I lose 100 pounds. My wife cringes every time she sees my colored jean shorts peaking out of the closet.

I have bed sheets from the 1970s. (Thanks, Mom!) They actually came in handy one Halloween when I dressed up like a Hare Krishna and wore the pale orange sheets.

I have pre-Jordan tennis shoes. Hell, they may be pre-Nike. I have a mammoth couch that I bought in 1994 that sits eight people comfortably...and my wife can’t stand it. I have 15 sets of dishware collected when others threw theirs out. I just tossed out my old VCR from 1988. I have plastic cups I got at beer parties during my days at Kent State.

The point is, unless something can’t be used anymore, I am going to keep using it and I won’t buy new until it breaks down.  So my wife knows if she takes me and tries to register for a can opener, I am going to point to the one I got at a garage sale the summer before going off to college and plead with her to take can opener off the registry. In other words, shopping with me is like sitting on a cold toilet seat. A miserable experience.

So, she took a friend for both the wedding and the baby shopping. We agreed whatever we registered for that was not purchased by someone else, we would purchase ourselves. Knowing this, I told her to only register for necessities and to be practical.

I don’t know if she followed my advice. She went, did her thing and I’ll see the results when I am forced to use something. I won’t even know the prices. Ignorance is bliss.

But I do know on one item – the stroller – she felt strongly I needed to be involved in the choosing. Once I saw the price, I knew why.  

If you asked pre-baby how much a good stroller would cost, I would say about $80. I don’t know why that price is in my head, but it seems reasonable to me.

You know what is not a good price for a stroller? $450!!!! But when my wife dragged me out to the baby store and I went through all the pros and cons of strollers with a kindly old gent they call “Mr. Stroller,” that is exactly the price of stroller we registered for.

My wife knows if she had come home and informed me she had just registered for a $450 stroller, World War III would have broken out. I bought my first car – a 1968 Dodge Monaco – for only $500! Yes, it was nearly 20 years old at the time, but it was big enough to fit 47 Sydneys comfortably, each with accompanying box of diapers.

Like I said, my wife was smart enough to know this was a purchase I needed to be in on personally.

Simply put, I had no idea. First, that is not even close to being a top-of-the-line price.  They had a stroller there that cost $1,200!!!!! I nearly had a heart attack and made Brooke a single mother when I saw that price tag.  I’m convinced it is just there to make people feel GOOD about buying a $450 stroller. I inquired of Mr. Stroller as to whom might be a typical purchaser of these plush buggies, and he said folks from New York City will occasionally pop down and buy one. Of course! You know Midwesterners are not that stupid.

What a racket this baby business is. I think I was in my 30s before someone clued me in that I was supposed to buy presents when my friends had babies. What the heck does a 35-year-old guy know about baby presents? They’ll get a Bengals T-shirt and like it. And while I am on the subject, what a racket the wedding business is. You have to take engagement photos AND wedding photos?

I predict eventually the human race will become extinct because people can no longer afford to marry and procreate.

So anyway, after I see that $450 is sort of the average price for a stroller, I am resigned to my fate. Mr. Stroller rolls through all the pros and cons – bottle holders! – and finally sells me on the fact this is actually a “travel system” and it turns into a car seat. So it is kind of a two-for-one deal. Right now, I am grasping for any solid reason to spend a car payment on something that can fit in one third of the trunk. I allow my wife to put it on the registry, but I feel extremely dirty when she does.

The good ending to this story is someone bought the stroller for us ---  thanks Mom and Dad Grover! -- and we will not have to buy it ourselves. But the moral of this story is that it is easier to sell someone on something if they do the research themselves.

Or maybe the moral is Mr. Stroller is making a killing on markups and the Ohio Attorney General should investigate his business practices.

Forget Sesame Street; Give Me Shark Week

Sydney is going to be the most safety-conscious girl in the free world. I would say the “entire” world but those communist countries are so secretive and I have no doubt they indoctrinate their children with a “the-world-is-out-to-get-me” attitude.

I have become addicted to the ID Channel. This is a channel that runs true crime 24-7. It is like NBC’s Dateline or CBS’ 48 Hours on steroids. There are tales of wicked wives, heinous husbands, diabolical daughters and sinister sons. Rich people are killing each other behind mansion walls, cons are talking about how “they almost got away with it,” wives are wondering who the hell they married and very nice respectable people are going missing just about every day.

Watch this channel for one day and you will be convinced every other person you pass on the street is O.J. Simpson or Casey Anthony.

As soon as Sydney is old enough to understand, she and I are going to set up camp in front of the television – I know, a REAL CHALLENGE for me -- and learn about all the evil people in the world. Elmo and Grover can wait. This is important stuff.

No one will ever spike my girl’s drink, lure her into a car, slowly poison her with arsenic while convincing her it is the flu, or, god forbid, force her to a “second” location. Ladies, always take your chances at the abduction point!

Most of the people in these shows are killed by someone they trusted. And in the craziest ways. One son got bad grades and quit going to college. Rather than tell his family, he let them believe he was doing well and they even went to dinner to celebrate his graduation. Dessert was waiting at home. He had hired someone to lie in wait and kill his family while they walked in the door.

Another wife slowly poisoned her husband over many months, convincing him he had the flu. I think I saw a light bulb go off over Brooke’s head while we were watching that. If I start to get stomach pain any time soon, you can bet I’ll order a blood test pronto.

One lady’s married boyfriend – whom she’d leant $90,000 -- convinced her they were going on a getaway to remote Canada and she should not bring her phone (because it wouldn’t work) or pack any clothes because he would buy her all new ones when they go there. Furthermore, he told her not to tell anyone where they were going and she was to hide from sight in the back of his truck until they got out on the road. Of course, she was never seen again.

Psychopaths. Everywhere.

My motto has always been “Never trust anyone but your mother.” Sydney’s will be “Never trust anyone but your father.” I’m sure Brooke will be an awesome mother, but the smaller the circle of trust, the less chance for betrayal.

Little Carrie Jones from down the block wants you to come play? Well let’s punch little Carrie’s name  -- along with the names of her mom, dad and siblings -- into both Google and the County Clerk of Courts site to see if anything sinister comes up. You can never be too careful.

We won’t stop at the ID channel. Cheaters will be a regular on our DVR. I want my little girl to see every possible way her partner can cheat on her. He says he has to work late? Drop in at the office with a late-night snack. Always on the phone? Grab his phone when he is away and call every single person in his “recent calls” list to check their voice. He’s probably not above putting his latest girlfriend under the name “Frank.”

And don’t forget e-mail surveillance.

I may be the only person on earth who DVRs Cheaters, but I consider it a way of staying “real.” It keeps me in touch with my suspicious side. Nobody’s pulling anything over on me.

My wife hates this. Hmmm, I wonder why?

She also hates that I insist on locking the door as soon as I walk in, or locking the car door even if I am going to be gone for just 16 seconds. She really hates that I want the shades drawn at all times. Listen, I used to be reporter on the police beat. I can’t tell you how many times I read a police report that someone’s stereo or television or Sham Wow was “in plain sight, so the perpetrator broke in through the window and absconded with it.”

Sydney is going to get a good dose of real life in her formative years and she will be totally prepared for the evil that comes her way. She’ll never leave her drink unattended, always keep the shades drawn and run background checks on all her dates.  She’ll be the person everyone turns to for advice during a mass shooting or hostage situation.

But will it be enough? Can I cover all the bases? As I write this, a commercial for Shark Week just came on the TV. I think we’ll have to add that to our DVR list. She needs to know the bloody, gory consequence of swimming in the ocean too close to dawn or dusk.

I am the Professor of Nipple Confusion

We went to another child class this week. "Happiest Baby on the Block. "

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Three hours I’ll never get back.

The highlight of the class happens before it even starts. All the couples are waiting and this last couple scrambles in, searching for a seat. The wife is a pretty good-looking woman. The husband is a pretty ugly man. I mean really ugly.

I look at Brooke. I know she is thinking the same thing. She’s too respectful to say anything.

“That guy is doing pretty good for himself,” I whisper. “He probably makes good money.”

She retorts: “I bet a lot of people say that about you.”

Touche.

The woman teaching the class came off as kind of a New Age baby guru. She said she teaches a “hypno-birth” class. I assume that involves hypnotizing mom so the birth goes smoothly. I’d rather have an epidural.

She said this class would be based on treating the baby’s first three months like she was still in the womb. She said a year in the womb would be better than nine months for the baby and we, as parents, need to make sure she lives her life as closely as possible to what it was like in the womb.

O…K. Although, I CAN understand why the baby might like three more months in there. Every morning, I want three more hours of sleep. I imagine the feeling is similar.

She talked about different techniques for dealing with children, not putting your baby on a schedule, ALWAYS responding to your baby when she cries and that there is no possible way to “spoil” a baby.

Yeah, right.

She’s probably the kind of mom who allows her children to run around the restaurant screaming when people are trying to eat. Wouldn’t want to hurt their little feelings.

I remember reading the same thing about puppies. “They’re too young to understand, so don’t try to train them until they are a year old.” Well, at about six months, my Vegas decided to eat the baseboard while I was at work. When I got home, he got the whipping of his life. Guess what? No more baseboard eating.

To this day, eight years later, I can walk near that spot on the baseboard and say, “Did you do that?” and he will lower his head and sulk to a corner out of my eyesight. Too young? I don’t think so.

My plan is to have my child sleeping through the night at about three weeks, potty trained before she is 2 and enrolled in early college classes by 9.

But my wife believes the baby peas and carrots Miss New Age is dishing out. She insists we will respond EVERY time the baby cries. But she once insisted we’d always eat dinner on the dining room table – the same one that now serves as her scrapbooking center while I eat my meatloaf on the couch during another King of Queens re-run.

Miss New Age also said a baby is really supposed to cry only about 30 minutes a day.

Miss New Age also said a baby is really supposed to cry only about 30 minutes a day.

Miss New Age also said a baby is really supposed to cry only about 30 minutes a day.

Maybe if you say it enough it will actually come true.  

She speaks in a monotone voice – with little interruption -- for the whole three hours. She tells us there is no such thing as colic, but then hands out a sheet with “Reasons for Colic.” Go figure.

She says a child’s cry has been proven in studies to be similar to an electric shock for parents. Good thing I am old and hard of hearing. Good luck, Brooke.

She did have some information that I found interesting. Apparently, babies like to fart. She said some of those grunts and faces they make are just them having fun cutting the cheese. Or, they are simultaneously using their stomach and anus muscles – a difficult thing for them – as they learn to poop.

Finally, Miss New Age was roping the dads into the conversation.

She did tell us that the babies actually taste and grow to like the foods the mom eats because it flows to them in the breastfeeding process. Moms have to beware of things like caffeine. I think Brooke had visions of kicking her Starbucks habit back into high gear, but those grand triple-cafe lattes will have to wait.

Good thing I am not doing the breastfeeding. Quarterly sales for the Cincinnati offices of Chipotle and Snappy Tomato Pizza would hit rock bottom if I had to cut out junk food. Or, I could just risk it and Sydney would develop an addiction to cheeseburgers before she was out of size S diapers.

Do diapers come in S, M and L?

During the class, we learned about a Dr. Karp from UCLA and his method for calming crying babies. I can’t remember all the details, but it involved wrapping your kid up in a blanket like one of those mini-hot dog appetizers you get at a party. Miss New Age said this gave the baby the security it felt in the womb.

She showed a film of this Dr. Harvey Karp in action. I swear, this guy was a child whisperer. He would take these crying, screaming kids, wrap them tight in a blanket, hold them in his arm and whisper “shhhhhh” at them for a few seconds and they would grow as happy and content as Paris Hilton in a Prada store.

This guy was amazing. But I couldn’t help wondering if this was like one of those advertisements where they show you a huge, juicy burger with colorful garnishes but when you show up to eat it you find a dry burger, about half the size, with wilted lettuce. How many babies DID NOT stop crying and never made the movie?

The class also dealt with things like nipple confusion and sleep deprivation, which Miss New Age accurately pointed out is a form of torture in many countries.

She’s really selling this whole parenthood thing.

Nipple confusion is the ONE THING I knew more about than Brooke going into this pregnancy. I had read a sliver of information on it in some humor book on pregnancy. Turns out the book was not that humorous, but it gave me a leg up on Brooke when it came to the complexity of various nipples.  

Don’t think I don’t lord this over her whenever I can.

Brooke: “Honey, we’ll have to introduce food to Sydney slowly and one at a time so we can determine food allergies.”

Me: “Sure honey, but the real key is that we don’t get her confused about your nipple, the bottle and the pacifier. This could cause her to not feed properly and she will slowly starve to death without us knowing it. Good thing I am around to tell you these things or our baby would never make it out of diapers.”

Brooke is never amused when I do this. Nor does she really appreciate my knowledge of nipple confusion.

In the end, this was another one of those classes I am not sure had great value. I think I am going to sink and swim on my own when it comes to this baby thing. Good thing I am a couch potato. Everything I really need to know about babies I am pretty sure I learned watching TV.

My Wife Says My Posts Are Too Long

It is supposed to be a scorcher today. Hottest day of the year. The Heat Index in Cincinnati is supposed to hit 110 degrees. Quite a stretch of heat we're having.

I'm sure glad I'm not pregnant.

Babies: Pooping Black Tar and Vomiting with the Force of a Firehose

More confessions: I’m afraid about many things when it comes to having this baby.

I admit it. I’m scared.

I’ll save the biggest thing that scares me until later. You’ll have to read until the end for that confession.

For now, let’s talk about sleepless nights, poopy diapers, projectile vomiting and accidentally killing my baby.

I’ll start with the obvious. I’m 45 years old. I don’t have a lot of energy. I need every second of sleep possible.

I’ve always been a light sleeper. I get about two hours of solid sleep, then I toss and turn for the rest of the night. If my dog so much as farts, it wakes me up.

Speaking of dogs, they contribute to my lack of sleep. The dog I raised, Vegas, is a handsome German Shepherd who is well-trained and will sleep silently in his bed until noon if I tell him to.

The dog Brooke raised, Murphy, is a Weimaraner who. …well, let’s just say Murphy is special. I’m being sincere here. Brooke is a special education teacher and she tells me about the kids in her class. One will suck on things to calm himself. Another will get so excited he runs around in circles. Many require constant touch.

Well, Murphy has a blanket he sucks to calm himself. And, he runs around like he is crazy every time you walk in the door. I could be gone 13 seconds to pick up the mail from the mailbox and when I get back he acts like I have been gone for three months. And don’t try to sit without him touching you. I have a wrap-around couch that could probably sit eight people. Yet, when I sit on it and the whole rest of the couch is empty, Murphy will attach himself to my hip.

What are the chances a special education teacher would end up with a special education dog? I call it divine intervention. Murphy needed an angel.

Anyway, Murphy likes to get up about 3:30 a.m. It used to be 5, then it was 4:30, then 4 and now 3:30 a.m. He wants to go out and, more importantly to him, he wants to eat.

Now Brooke can sleep through an ACDC concert. Seriously, someone could walk in and murder me while I am lying next to her and she wouldn’t even stir. So, when Murphy starts prancing around at 3:30 a.m., I have two options: tell him to go back to sleep or get up with him.

Neither works for me. If I tell him to go back to sleep, he basically wakes up every 15 minutes thereafter to see if he can rouse me. Since I am such a light sleeper, this means I never really get back to sleep. If I get up with him and let him out, I am then awake and can’t go back to sleep. It is a no-win situation.

I tell you all this because, who in my household do you think is going to get up with a crying baby? Me, or Miss Rip Van Winkle? I realize she will have to breastfeed, but believe me, if it’s not feeding time, she will be as unconscious as a hibernating bear.

Man is not meant to go on four hours of sleep a day. Especially 45-year-old men. I usually catch up on my sleep with weekend naps. I hope Sydney likes to nap.

Poopy diapers scare me, too. I don’t have a weak stomach. I once sat through an entire autopsy. I saw people get stabbed and shot during my days on the cop beat. I pick up Vegas and Special Ed poop every weekend.

But I read a book that said baby poop is like BLACK TAR for the first few weeks. Apparently, the amniotic fluid has that effect on excrement. Seeing something like that coming out of my sweet, innocent little daughter is going to scar me for life. Throw in projectile vomiting and I am going to feel like I am father to Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

I’ve heard the stories. You’re dressed for work, ready to head out the door and you pick up your little princess only to have her leak some noxious gel-like substance out of her diaper or spew the entire contents of her stomach on to your head with the force of a fire hose.

Oh joy.

Also, my wife has instilled the fear of Marilyn Manson in me over wiping my daughter correctly. Wipe down, not up! Make a mistake and you might kill your daughter!

That gets me to my fear of somehow doing something stupid that results in my daughter’s early demise.  Let’s say I survive the sleepless nights, Black Tar diapers and geyser-like eruptions.  How do I avoid accidentally killing her? What if I drop her? Sit on her? Drive over her?

What if Special Ed mistakes my swaddling daughter for the blanket he sucks on to calm himself?

This is a dangerous world. I am a clumsy guy. I am worried about not holding her head up right or feeding her food that chokes her or forgetting her in the backseat of my car while I’m involved in a 28-hour poker game.

I’m scared about being a dad.

But one thing scares me more than anything. I am 45 years old. That’s old to start this journey. My biggest fear is that somehow I will depart this world when my daughter is still young. I don’t want to put her through that. I don’t want an 8-year-old or 10-year-old or 12-year-old little Sydney to grow up without her daddy.

I want to finish this adventure and see her through to adulthood. I want to make sure she’s ok to stand on her own. I want to hold her hand until I know she’s got life figured out.

If I get to see her graduate college, travel the world, find the love of her life and have children…well, that’s gravy. But all I am really asking the good Lord for is the chance to be daddy to my little girl until she’s old enough not to need me anymore.

Who is eating for two?

Let me start out by saying this: I have gained more weight than my wife during this pregnancy.

She takes great pride in that. But really, isn’t that sort of like Carrot Top celebrating beating Russell Brand in a weightlifting contest? No one is really surprised.

The reasons are two-fold. One, I love to eat. In any nine months, I am going to gain a lot of weight anyway. Why would this period of time be any different?

Two, she has gestational diabetes. She can’t eat carbs!

Believe me, I am not celebrating my wife having GD. It sucks. She has to give herself a shot each night. She has bruises all over her thigh. I couldn’t do it. I am a wimp around needles. I leave the room when she does it.

As tough as that is, her diet may be tougher. What are pregnant women supposed to do? They are supposed to gain weight. It is healthy for the baby. But if you can’t eat carbs, how do you gain weight? It is quite the dilemma. Sometimes she is in tears after eating something that barely has any carbs and then seeing her blood sugar spike to dangerous levels.

Brooke can’t eat a lot to begin with, because she has a medicine ball resting on her stomach. So she has to snack all day. But now she can eat only meat, cheese and nuts. She has had more grilled chicken salads than Rachel Ray has made in her lifetime.

She craved fruit early on. Now that is a no-no because of the sugar.

The doctors say GD is just something that happens to some women and there is not much my wife could do about it. Hopefully, all will go well. But, in the end, she might be the only pregnant woman to ever lose weight during her pregnancy.

Eating healthy can do that to you. She was never one to pass up the hors d'œuvre plate pre-pregnancy. I think she was looking forward to nine months of carbohydrate bliss. Not so fast, sister!

I, on the other hand, can eat whatever I want. And that is pretty much what I have been doing for the past 45 years. I am a male Kirstie Alley.

Look, when we were young, food was a luxury in our house, not a given. I didn’t grow up in middle class America. I was looking up at middle class. Way up. If we had a pack of hot dogs and a box of macaroni and cheese, that was dinner.

Eight hot dogs come in a pack, right? Fastest one done gets seconds. Look out Kobyashi and Joey Chestnut, here I come!

I remember in sixth grade I had to keep a food journal. It coincided around either my brother or sister’s birthday and someone had bought us a huge cake, one of those sheet cakes. I had that for breakfast every morning, along with some Kool Aid. I wasn’t smart enough to note any different in my journal, so at some point my teacher pulls me aside and asks me whether I have enough food in the house. I wised up enough to give some kind of story that saved my mom from being reported to Children’s Services. 

Occasionally, when we hit rock bottom and really needed to stretch the paycheck, mom would cook a GIGANTIC pot of either potato soup or ham and bean soup. Picture a pot just a little smaller than a dumpster. We would eat nothing more than that for two weeks. I realize now what she was doing and love her for it. She did her best to provide for her kids and she was stretching what we had. But believe me, I grew to hate soup. I wouldn’t eat it in a restaurant until I got in my 40s. And you’ll never get me to touch potato or ham and bean.

So, when I got a chance to eat, I ATE. In my teens, I had a job as a traveling salesman, selling products made by the blind. Great gig. I was a helluva salesman. I could sell a comb to Vin Diesel. I could sell a snack to LeAnn Rimes. Made over $200 a week in the summer. No taxes. As a 13-year-old!

They would pick up the crew of teenagers in the morning, drive to town a few hours away, sell all day, then drive home when it got dark. I worked 14 hours a day, six days a week. But I had money. Paid for all my school clothes and anything else I needed.

And when you can afford to eat and are on the road and are a teen-ager, what do you eat? Fast food, baby.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner. With snacks in between. Believe me, we thought we were kings. Had no idea what we were doing to our bodies. I once bet Gerry Simons I could eat a cheeseburger in one bite. Pay up, Gerry…as soon as I am able to breathe again. And don’t get in the way of the Big Mac I am having for dessert.

My eating habits have followed me throughout my life. The foods you like when you are young, you like when you are old. Macaroni and cheese. Fried potatoes. Pizza. Burgers. Burritos. Wings. Show me a sports bar where I can have a plate of wings, some potato skins and six beers to wash it down and I’ll bring a blanket and pillow so I can get a good rest in between meals.

I have never been skinny, but only in the last ten years has it become ridiculous. In my 20s, I played basketball every day and softball three times a week.  I remained active in my early 30s, but somewhere around 35, I adopted a…sedentary lifestyle. That doesn’t go well with my eating habits.

Something’s gotta change. A diet is coming. A lifestyle change is coming. That’s what they call it, right? But it ain’t easy. Drug addicts and alcoholics who hop on the wagon never have to touch the stuff again. Try that with food. You gotta eat.

My wife says that breastfeeding can make women lose weight. Another point of proof that pregnancy is tougher on dads.

We always want our kids to have life better than us, right? Sydney may not ever get the chance to eat at McDonald’s. I’ll treat her like Marv Marinovich treated his son, Todd, while trying to make him a pro quarterback. That kid went to birthday parties and had to bring his own slice of HEALTHY cake.  Now, he’s a drug addict. Go figure.

Seriously, Sydney’s plate is going to be filled with broccoli and kale and carrots and other food only Nicole Richie could love. She won’t even know what a pizza looks like.

That way, when I eat all the food she can’t finish, at least it will be HEALTHY food.