The Many Surprises of Child-Rearing

There are many things we’ve had to quickly learn in the fire of parenting over the past five weeks (five weeks! It’s gone by so fast!). Of course, there are the usual aspects of parenting a newborn that everyone tells you are going to happen: you will get very little sleep and find out that it’s possible to function on 3-4hrs of sleep, your baby will be fussy any number of reasons and it will take some time to figure out how to soothe him, your bills will go up, your trash volume will go up, your laundry volume will go up, you’ll be amazed at how little you get done each day, and having a baby is very hard work while simultaneously very rewarding and chock-full of joyous moments. In other words, having a kid will simply turn your world upside down.

We have learned by first-hand experience all of these realities, and in that sense, being a parent really is like what everyone describes it. However, there are other things about being a parent that have taken us totally by surprised, aspects of having a child that everyone failed to mention until we joined the parenting club:

1. Those recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics about the manner your baby should sleep—i.e., on his back on a hard surface with nothing soft in his surroundings—is completely thrown out the window as soon as you actually have a child. In fact, we’ve discovered that pragmatism is the rule of the day for virtually every new parent we’ve talked to. You do whatever you can to get your kid to sleep. In fact, Emerson hates sleeping on his back. But, we have yet to revert to dipping his pacifier in whiskey.

2. Virtually overnight, I went from calling my wife, “Amber,” to “mom.” Craziness.

3. Anyone who tells you that a breastfed baby’s poop doesn’t smell is lying. It is still poop. Period.

4. You now have someone else to blame for burps and farts. Seriously, I think Emerson has us beat on these.

5. Whenever you’re at home, the baby is fussy and always wants to be held. Whenever you go out with friends, he’s a sweet little angel so no one believes you that he’s a diabolical maniac.

6. Whenever you want your spouse to do something, you now talk as if you are the baby. I.e., “Mom, will get dad a beer and make him a sandwich?”

7. Your laundry volume will go up: but it’s not because of your child’s clothes. It’s because he pees and pukes on all of your stuff! Indeed, your baby gets mad at you when he manages to pee in his own eye. More than once.

8. When he's ravenously hungry, he starts shaking his head vigorously back and forth like a dog with a chew toy so that it's nearly impossible to get the bottle/breast in his mouth. Not that I'm trying to get my breast in his mouth...but even on me he'll start rooting like a chicken frantically looking for a piece of corn.

9. Not every baby likes to be swaddled tightly with their arms down to their sides. In fact, Emerson will scream and fuss until he manages to wiggle his arms back out of the blanket.

10. When your baby makes the most hilarious faces (although, sometimes he just looks possessed) and performs the funniest antics, you will find yourself mesmerized by this great gift of cheap entertainment (which must be how you forget that you used to have a life).

We're Moving... to Pittsburgh!!

So the waiting is over. And this pretty well sums up how I feel.

After two months of waiting to receive letters from the Phd Programs I applied to, and over $500 spent in application fees and so forth, the results are finally in. And well, God nullified all possibilities for anxiety over making a decision of one school over another as I only got accepted into Duquesne. So, over the course of this summer, we will probably look for a house to purchase that's closer to our church or Duquesne.

I must say that my emotional response has been a bit conflicted over the past week. On the one hand, because of all the intangibles that we have here in Pittsburgh - supportive friends, a great church, Amber's employment contacts, a great assistantship/job that I love, a new addition to the family, and professors that I have gotten to know - which would have been lost had we moved elsewhere, it would have taken a lot for us to move. Thus, Amber and I had already concluded that we would probably wind up staying in Pittsburgh over a number of the other schools to which I had applied. But on the other hand, its just the principle of thing. In other words, to not get accepted anywhere else is a big blow to my ego. I would like to believe that I'm good enough to study at a highly reputable school (not that Duquesne is terrible, it's just not the best). I would like to get some affirmation for all the academic work that I've achieved over the less than two years.

But alas, things never turn out the same way as my visions of grandeur (which is most likely a good thing). What made it even more disappointing, I think, is that all my friends said that they didn't start getting acceptances until the beginning of March. Well, the first week of March came and went and I had only heard from a handful of schools. In fact, I didn't hear back from most of the schools until near the end of the month, which means that I must have been in the final pile of those applications under consideration.

Story of my life. I've always been in that strange, paradoxical place of not bad but not great. When I was a kid, I never made the "A" team in baseball, but then at the end of the year I always made the "B" level all-star team.

But, I guess there's no point in moping around about it either. This is where we've been placed for the next few years, and its not a bad place to be. And again, not having to deal with the anxiety of choosing a school and moving across country, particularly with a newborn in the house, is something I'm definitely thankful for. Now we can look forward to continuing our involvement with the church that we've grown to love, further building relationships, swerving around Pittsburgh potholes, and internalizing the beloved Pittsburgh accent...ok, maybe not the latter. To me, it's forever "Steelers" not "Stillers" and "downtown" not "duntun."