Inoculations

by Phil

It is my hypothesis that the sole purpose of toddlers within world ecology is the harboring and continued existence of viruses. Sure, within human relationship they offer their parents all sorts of joy and blah blah blah. But within the world as a whole, they are essentially virus farms.

Simply, they are germ bags.

I say this now because my son has shared his virus harvest with me and we have both been intensely sick all week.

My son has had a rough week and a half. Last Tuesday, we took him into the doctor for his sixteen month check up where he received 4 vaccinations. He had a slight reaction to them, which led to grumpiness and fever for the next two days.

That led right into the cold that he picked up somewhere. The cold involves fevers, chills, and, on top of a runny nose, a general stuffiness. So while he can't breath out of his nose, he can at least produce lots of mucus from it to run down his chin.

If that wasn't bad enough, he's also teething right now. Some of his molars are breaking through, leading to a lot of discomfort and anger. And drooling.

So he's breathing through his mouth because of the stuffiness but there's the added bonus of copious drooling because of the teething.

So lovely.

And wouldn't you know it, this happens to be the week when he picks up on the fact that our faces have different parts, all of which have names that he needs to be told immediately. Not only does his face have all of these parts but so does Dads!

Little tiny hands going right from pointing at his own snotty-drooly-mouth-nose-area to comparing those same areas on my face! Oh, and yes, those are my eyes you're poking. Thank you for the inoculations.

I seem to be about 24 hours behind him in my symptoms. It's like watching some horrible, tiny version of my future self struggle through the day with no power to change course.

Is it any wonder that I woke up this morning feeling as those someone laid asphalt over my lungs during the night? This insane congestion has settled into my chest that is so physical in nature it's hard to believe. I've never had the opportunity to compare and contrast, to be able to tell that my left lung is much more phlegm-filled than my right. I'd like to thank my son for expanding my horizons in wholly new ways that I never could have anticipated.

At this point the two of us are just struggling through as miserable heaps of misery. I'm hoping we'll come out the other side by Monday. This is his first major cold. It's kind of heartbreaking to watch a toddler go through all of this at the same time with no real understanding of what's going on or ability to do anything about it.

Luckily I have married some sort of superhero that has sailed through this miasma of pain unscathed. I don't know how she has escaped this horrible fate but I wish her luck on her virus-free trip through this life.

Don't laugh at me. I was once like you.

Halloween Hipster

by Phil

Halloween!

One of the best parts of Halloween is all of the absurd baby costumes. When babies don't have any control over their lives or haven't yet developed a fear of looking ridiculous, they offer a blank canvas of potential. It's the perfect opportunity for later, teenage embarrassment when you pull out the photos to show their friends.

Last year, when our son was only about 4 months old, we didn't do too much. We did put him in a pumpkin for a few minutes. Don't worry, the pumpkin is lined so he didn't get all goupy.

We also had a little skeleton onesie that he wore on a few occasions, including the All Souls' Processional since we were living in Tucson at the time. (Side note, try to make it to Tucson for the All Souls' Processional at least once. It's an amazing event.)

Our son rolled over for the first time on the same day as last year's procession!

So this year we wanted to put him in an actual costume. We started out with a store-bought dragon that was super cute. We were having an indoor party, though, and we were worried that the padded costume would be too warm. It would have been fine if he were older and we were going trick-or-treating outside. But indoors, it was a no-go.

Shortly before Halloween, Richmond held it's annual Folk Music festival. We went and had a great time (I'll write a post about it soon). We noticed that there was a large number of hipsters hanging around the festival, which led her to wonder aloud how hipster parents dressed their toddlers. Do they try hard (while making it look like they didn't try at all) to make their toddlers tiny hipsters? And... boom! New costume idea.

We returned the warm dragon costume and set about putting way too much thought and work into making our son the most repellent hipster we could. We succeeded in the hipster part but failed at repellent bit. He was the most adorable snob ever.

The results-

You may notice a few details about his costume. The thick-rimmed glasses, the androgyny of the purple scarf and too, too tight jeans (which are actually jeggings from the girls' department), the floppy hat and stripped socks. 

The plaid shirt clashes with the purple scarf and the lime green deep-v t-shirt (see below) in a way that says, "I don't care." The hoody is properly redundant with the floppy hat.

The right leg of his jeans is rolled up to avoid catching the chain while riding his fixie.

We worked on wearing those glasses and a hat for a week before Halloween. He looks at them as  playthings, just like everything else in the world.

Waiting for the poetry jam to start. He's got some free verse he's going to drop on the unsuspecting crowd. His sun metaphors are completely deck.

And, of course, his messenger bag has a skull on it, as do his socks. The skulls don't match, sending the message that he just can't put in the effort. 

That's a candy bracelet in his right hand there. 

As the layers get peeled off, the costume keeps going! His deep-v is also a message tee, expressing his contempt for whatever it is you like because it's clearly not obscure enough. The tee reads "That Thing You Like is Dumb" There's no punctuation. Who has time for periods?

Fingerstache! (Don't worry, it's washable marker and came off immediately.)

This one is blurry but I had to include it because the expression is classic.

And, of course, we end on the chest (temporary) tattoo that includes wings and a message.

Yeah, we tried way too hard. The hipsters would look down upon us for putting in the effort. But we had a blast. By the time he reaches his teens this costume isn't going to make any sense to him at all but we can reassure him that he was very hip and with it for awhile there.

Today he's back in regular jeans and a Superman t-shirt. The him-of-yesterday scoffs in the general direction of the him-of-today.

Surviving October

Normally, October is the month I dread. That's because it's the time when Stacey (as part of her duties as co-director of an honors program on campus) heads to Europe with her class. Sometimes, it's for two weeks, sometimes, it's for the full month.

This year, it was the latter. So, I was on my own, with Brady, for a whole month. Without help from family.

But you know what? Surprisingly, it went really smooth for me this time.

I'm sure a lot of it was the fact that Brady is now seven, and therefore a lot easier to handle. But I also think that it just boiled down to self confidence. I just felt more able to handle things on my own. I even took having no help from family or friends as a badge of honor. I could do this, and not worry that I was going to somehow burn the house down, or cause economic calamity.

That's not to say I didn't hit my wall now and then. Truth be told, it can be really lonely, and sometimes just communicating with friend through the Internet isn't quite enough. I missed Stacey; she has been possibly the only person I feel I can talk to. She's certainly the only sustained company I have in this state (we have a lot of friends that are students at Utah State. The problem is, they eventually decide to graduate, and move on).

So it's hard, from a social standpoint. It's tough when you have no one to sit down and bullshit about random things with, or watch MST3K/Rifftrax with. I really had no one to hang out with. So in that regard, this period has tended to be really rough for me.

Having stuff to do helped keep me from going too stir crazy. In previous years, I would have my comics to work on, but I was between scripts this time. So, I had no work to occupy my mind. So, I put my focus on other things, like cleaning the house, or continuing on my weight loss journey (30 pounds as of today).

I also tried to spend a lot more quality time with Brady, which I found was a bit more difficult when she was younger. Now that she's seven, it felt a lot easier to go do things, work on homework together, or just hang out and watch episodes of Beakman's World ad nauseum.

So, despite the occasional mental/emotional roadblock, I survived the month. More importantly, I think I felt like for the first time, I really had a grasp at this whole "dad" thing. That probably sounds crazy considering that I've been one for over seven years now, but I don't know if I ever felt 100% comfortable. Like I wasn't sure if I really knew what I was doing. Like I needed to defer more to Stacey and others regarding what was the right thing to do.

This year? I knew what I was doing.

One last thing: I need to give a lot of props and admiration to all the single parents out there, or the families that have one parent away from home for a long stretch of time. While it's been doable, it was difficult to do this for a month. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like when you're truly on your own, raising a child. Whether it's for a month, a year, or an indefinite period of time, my hat goes off to you all.