Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Leader!

Around 4:30 in the morning, I discovered that I had joined a cult.

I never really thought of myself as the kind of person that would end up in a cult, but here I am.

This isn't your run-of-the-mill cult though, oh no, this one is something special.

This, my friends, is the cult of parenting (A Living Colour B-Side if there ever was one.)

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to think of the best way to describe parenting to our friends that don't have children yet, and couldn't ever really put my finger on it. But when I spent a good deal of time thinking about it, this was really the only conclusion that made sense.
I broke it down to the following points.

1. You spend all of your time and money on your "leader."

This one makes a ton of sense. Gaby is 11 weeks old and I can't walk into any store without finding something for her. I'm sure within the next few weeks, I'll be walking by a head-shop on State St. and wonder to myself, "I bet I can find her a nice, pink colored bong?"

2. You talk to all of your friends and try to "convince" them how great it is to be a parent, even though you're broke and tired all of the time.

I touched upon this in an earlier article, but if you ask any new parent what it's like to have a baby, all you'll hear is about how great it is and how much fun they are, and do everything you can to convince other people that they need to have kids too. But when you're actually home with your baby, they rule over you with an iron-baby-fist. You're a willing slave to their every whim and you have to do everything you can to please them, every moment of each day. Oh, yeah... and you have to smile while you're doing it. Before you know it, you're changing a diaper and you're saying, "Thank you Ma'am. May I have another?"

3. You're forced into wearing a certain style of clothing

I can't remember the last time I saw new parents wearing nice clothes when they're taking care of their kids. If so, they're just asking for it. Most of the time you're wearing sweat pants and sneakers and praying that they "bless" your clothing that day.

4. Eventually they'll have you drinking lots and lots of Kool-Aid

All that's left for her is to start building up a stockpile of weapons or telling us about the designs for the spaceship that will take us away.

So if you see me walking down the road and mumbling, "Join us! Join Us!" Please just give me a dollar and keep on walking... and try to have kids very soon.

Learn the weave, then we'll talk

One of the things that I really wanted to be careful about when I had a child was to make sure that I didn't bore people with all of the details of the things that our daughter is doing.

One of my favorite comedians, David Cross, has a bit about how his friends go on and on about the little things that their child is doing, as if they are something amazing. (If you find his story about this, you'll get a bit of insight as to where the title of my blog came from.)

I can understand how some people fall into this trap though. My mother, for one, has already started talking to my sisters about how she thinks that Gaby is "advanced." Ok, just for the record, Gaby's almost 11 weeks old and about the only thing she can do (besides spit and poop) is to coo and move her legs very quickly. That's about it. But the fact that she "talks" when I "talk" back to her makes my mother think that she is some sort of prodigy. I love my mom, but seriously, Gaby can barely hold her head up half of the time. I'll start thinking that she's advanced when she walks over to the Nintendo, loads up Tecmo Super Bowl, hands me a controller, and proceeds to trounce my ass. I'll wait to pass my judgements on her "advanced" nature until then.

At this point though, I'm just happy that she's a cute kid. I half expected the baby from that Seinfeld episode that everyone can't stand to look at. Not that those looks would have come from her mother. Hell, I was a cute kid once, then apparently my parents let me drive the ugly car right into an ugly tree and didn't let me put on my ugly seatbelt. Now I look like "Jo-Jo, the monkey boy."

I almost thought she did something impressive the other day though. She was laying in her bassinet and was staring at her mobile. After a while, she swung her left arm and hit the mobile and made it move. When it stopped, she did it again. She repeated this a couple times. I was amazed by this. Hell, when I'm laying down flat on my back I can barely get myself out of bed without looking like some sort of flopping goldfish that fell out of it's bowl.

Of course she hasn't done it again since, but I have to say that I was impressed. More for the fact that she's teaching herself how to do so many things. It's truly an amazing thing to watch, seeing a child start to learn all of the things that you take for granted.

Now I just need to get a controller in her hands, because I have a feeling that she'll be taking me to school in no time. And I can't wait for that.

Is change good?

When I started writing at this site, I really wanted to focus on some funny things from the past that had happened to me and/or my family. After writing for a while though, I began to realize that sometimes I'm neglecting the funny things that are happening to myself and family on a daily basis. That being said, I didn't really want to just have little posts every day talking about how Sarah's farts made Gaby cry. Those stories would get their due recognition in time.

Over time though I have realized that some of these stort stories are every bit as good as the longer ones that I've been writing. Of course, all of my stories are crap. So the way I look at it, either I'm going to be telling you some old stories, or the boring minutia that happens in my everyday life.

Now you'll be getting the worst of both worlds, thanks to my hackneyed writing and the internet.

Lucky for you, huh?