Sitting up and Tasting the World

The Four-Pound Nugget Toss (with loud, barbaric grunt)

Jonah has ventured into territory I have never encountered:  Constipation.  I really didn’t know how to handle this, so I came up with a couple ideas.  I told Sunday that we could begin feeding him prunes.  Since Jonah hasn’t even had rice cereal yet, Sunday didn’t think prunes were a good idea.  My next idea was more of a “tactile approach.”  We could pick up Jonah and squeeze his gut. 

I was thinking toothpaste tube.

Sunday was thinking no. 

While we discussed ways of getting more poop out of Jonah, he worked on it himself.  We could tell he was working on a particularly gnarly nugget when a vein popped out on his forehead and a grunt came from his little chest like he was forcing a chunk of concrete through his small body.  It was sad.  And a little funny. 

I don’t know why, but Jonah’s constipation became a contest where Jonah didn’t know he could win or lose, but we kept score.  With every diaper change, we would ask, “Nugget?”  Exhilaration came with every “No nugget” response and every small dark smelly chunk in his diaper brought dejection.  I never thought I’d get excited over someone else’s bowel movement, but Jonah changed all that. 

As a remedy for his “nugget” problem, we put dark Karo syrup—a.k.a. molasses—in his bottle.  When that quit working, we gave him apple juice.  When that quits working, we’ll just have to knock the poop out of him.  (Just kidding).

The Extended Reaching Position

In this event, balance is required most, because Jonah attempts to reach toward things he shouldn’t touch.  Old magazines, books from the library, dirty underwear and used diapers are all things Jonah has reached for.   He also reaches for earrings, bras, toes, bugs, and little balls of dust.   Jonah finds his own toes and hands interesting things to reach for, but his hands are harder to grab.

The Reach and Taste

Like the Clean-and-Jerk in Olympic competition, the Reach and Taste of Jonah’s Olympics combines two very difficult moves into one fluid motion.  I don’t know why the extended reaching position transitions nicely into the “I think I’ll put it into my mouth now” thought.  In fact, I believe Jonah has put into his mouth the following items:  his feet, his hands, pens (2), a sock, the toe of my boot, his pacifier, his blanket, snoopy (stuffed animal), the corner of my Bible, a lemon, his bottle, chest hair (eeewwww….), and anything else he seems to want to taste. 

Jonah now views the world through his taste buds, and this stage, according to the world-famous child psychologist Dr. Piaget, lasts the rest of his life. 

How to Make Your Child Succeed

My Dad has a great theory for raising children that I hear few people say or even fewer practice:  kids should be kids.  My parents had little patience with those who believed that a child could “fall behind” other children if he wasn’t working on his third language by the first grade.  For Dad, children weren’t repository for the hopes of the overblown egos of their parents.   Surrounded by parents who coached and cajoled their children into a hyper-scheduled (and hyper-wearied) lifestyle, Dad let us be kids.

He refined his childrearing theory further with the backyard pitching, catching, throwing, fielding, kicking, punting, dribbling form of fatherhood.  We didn’t get all the fancy toys that required batteries or an electrical engineer to operate.   We weren’t allowed to play with anything that made us better in school or made us smarter.  For us, learning did not necessarily link to fun.  We were kids, so we thought fun and learning could, in fact, be mutually exclusive.  And our parents raised us this way.

I shall now list the toys we had when we were kids:

baseball (2)

sticks

glove, (1 per child)

dirt

football (1)

trees

soccer ball (1)

mud (just add water to dirt)

boxing gloves (1 pair, to be used among the three of us)

basketball (usually flat)

bicycles (1 per child)

At times, the sports equipment could get a little expensive, but my parents figured that they were getting the dirt, sticks, rocks and trees for free, so the least they could do was to fill in the gaps for the rest of that stuff.  Dad wanted us to be able to know how to play, and he wanted us to be able to play well.  Not so that we could become professional athletes, or even for us to be able to play in college.  None of us were remotely that good.  No, Dad wanted us to play well because playing, well, is FUN!  Just fun.  That’s it. 

Play was neither a step for another level, nor was it a method of teaching a transcendent lesson about existence.  We didn’t think that football “built character” or baseball was a “teambuilding exercise.”  It didn’t occur to us that we could learn something about humanity at the same time we were getting dirty or sweaty or both.  We played because we were kids and we wanted to play, not because our moral fiber was strengthened through dedication to sport.

It was fun.  In fact, the funnest parts were when Dad himself, in full teacher/coach mode, almost got his head taken off by a line drive, or an errant throw, or a misguided punt.  He taught us how to play, but he had fun, too.  Even when the fun was dangerous.

Dad can tell you the times when he came closest to death as a father.  Mostly, these near-death moments came when one of us would suddenly catch on to a game that we’d been trying for a week or so.  For example, Dad taught us all to throw, catch and hit a baseball.  We all had similar training to hit a baseball:  bend at the knee, swing level, keep your eye on the ball. 

My older brother and I were decent hitters, especially before curve balls and large, hairy high school pitching.  We got the basics of hitting down pretty well.  But we weren’t naturally good.  My younger brother, however, showed that, while he could bend at the knee, swing level, and keep his eye on the ball, he also had an extra step to his hitting that my older brother and I didn’t have:  quick wrists.

In baseball terminology, having quick wrists means that the batter can wait a split second or two longer than one who does not have “quick wrists.”  Waiting longer allows the batter to determine what kind of pitch is thrown as well as whether the pitch is “hittable” or not. 

Since Luke had “quick wrists,” Dad often thought that the pitches he had thrown were not going to be hit by Luke.  And then, WHACK! Luke would swing around on a pitch from Dad and send the ball screaming back at him, throat level.  

In fact, Dad incorporated protectionary measures in his pitching wind-up, especially when he pitched to Luke.  He would kick up his leg, step toward the plate, fling his arm toward the hitter and release the ball.  As Dad released, his glove hand would fly up toward his head, covering his face, while his throwing hand would come down, covering his private area.  (Yes, there were many times where we would slowly creep away from the backyard, leaving Dad in a balled-up heap on the ground, weeping softly.) 

Although we had hours and hours and hours of playtime, kicking and throwing and hitting, none of those skills help me with fatherhood.  No, the greatest skill Dad ever taught any of us is the skill of doing nothing productive.   For a self-professed workaholic, Dad believed that a kid should have plenty of time to do nothing, sitting around, scratching his belly, belching, picking his nose, and giggling.   (Maybe not all at the same time, but you get the point.)

For children to be able to do this, parents needed to have control, too.  Our lives as children were not scheduled to the hilt with French lessons, tuba practice, four athletic teams, late-night tutoring or any other activity that Mom and Dad thought would help us “succeed.”  

 

 

Puking is Funny

While Jonah’s cuteness has been well established by the rabbinic standard of two or more witnesses, he has developed a couple bad habits that I would like to discuss:  dribbling and shooting.

The Great Ring of Wetness:          Dribbling

We have now transitioned from having a relatively neat child to having a child who explodes something from his noggin from time to time.  Some people call it drool or spit (my personal favorite is slobber), but I have noticed that, whatever it is called, it creates a large ring of wetness, beginning at his shoulder blades, rising over his massive deltoid muscles, extending down the front of his chest, making his nipples and belly button constantly wet.  My boy can’t keep dry at either end, God bless him.

We have resorted to having a 24-hour bib on him, changing it once every fifteen minutes or so.  It’s wild.  For a person who only ingests 25-30 ounces of liquid per day, he certainly drools a lot.  His dirty clothes hamper is so heavy with drool on some days that I have hired large Scandinavian men named Magnus to come and help me carry it into the laundry room.  He simply can’t stop.  He’s a little droolery store.  I catch him down at the drool hall with his no-count, drool-hall friends.  

This new wetness has also created a dilemma:  which end do we dry out first?   It’s tough trying to decide which part of his anatomy we should wipe:  the one that we have to look at, or the one that he is most concerned with.  Most days, it’s a toss up.  The other question is usually more pressing:  with what shall I dry him?  Here is a short list of the items I have used to dry off Jonah’s face:

bib

burp rag

onesie

extra outfit in the diaper bag

my shirt (I was wearing it at the time.)

Sunday’s shirt (She was wearing it at the time.)

paper towel

napkin

pillow from couch

stuffed animal

couch

dog down the street

carpet

front door mat (says, “WELCOME”)

I am certain that he’ll dry up one of these days, but I hope it’s before we sign him up for junior high. 

What Kind of Puke?:          He shoots

Now this is the part of the job I was expecting for quite some time:  puking.  For some reason, the drooling and the puking have come in the same month.  I don’t know if this is some conspiracy between the washer/dryer companies and the laundry detergent manufacturers, but we’ve been cleaning some clothes like you wouldn’t believe.

Anyway, with the puking come different kinds of puke, which I will describe for you now.

#1  Open mouth, let the formula drain. 

This produces by far the largest volume of vomit per episode.  This is where Jonah looks you straight in the eye, opens his mouth as wide as he possibly can, and allows the formula to escape his body, through his mouth.   This method of vomiting can be particularly dangerous for the person who foolishly thinks that, with every opening of Jonah’s mouth, he invites a quick snuggle or even a kiss.  Many a woman at church hath been bathed in the putrid waters of used soy formula with this mistake. 

#2  The phantom vomit.

This vomit is unusual, especially for the parent who prides himself on watching every move his child makes.  For some reason, Jonah will be playing, clean as a whistle and look up with vomit caked all over his face.  Additionally, this vomit seems to have been applied to his face with a trowel.  It’s got a thick consistency.  It’s like dry grits, without the butter. 

#3  The payback vomit.

I believe this special brand of vomit allows Jonah to become a type of “Angel of Justice” for the Lord.  This vomit occurs when a sinner holds Jonah for more than a minute or two.  Jonah senses the dark side of whomever is holding him and then he launches his own, personal brand of righteousness.  Using vomit, the sinner receives Jonah’s baptism of holiness.  This is a more public vomit, usually requiring us to apologize for our son.  But we know the real reason Jonah pukes on people:  he loves the sinner, unconditionally.   

#4  The shotgun vomit.

This is the fun vomit, the knockout punch.  It’s the vomit that keeps the crowds coming, time after time.  It can be preceded by a belch or a cough, but the best “shotgun vomits” are the ones that sneak up on you.  It looks like someone had pumped up Jonah—like a BB gun—to his highest pressure and then BOOM! his head snaps back with the force of the vomit.  This is the kind, where, afterward, Jonah tries to keep both his eyes in the same orbit while maintaining a sense of balance.  (it also seems to be the kind where he enjoys the most intense post-vomit bliss)

His vomiting and drooling have required us to become more alert to his surroundings, making sure he doesn’t drool or puke on anything expensive.  (Since we don’t own anything expensive, we’re usually worried about other people’s stuff).  We’re also having fun with it, too.  In our house, puking is funny.

AAAAHHHHH, Breakfast!

Jonah has developed a firm sense of timing.  Although we have not been a family of late sleepers, our son has tolled the death knell on all slumber past 6:30am.  It doesn’t matter if we put him to bed at 7pm or 11pm, my boy is up and at ‘em at 6:30.  It’s like I’m living with a very small drill sergeant who happens to sleep in a crib and poop his pants.  I don’t know who taught him to do this, but when I get up, he is grunting and wiggling around, ready to wake us up.

I usually get up with him to give him his first feeding.  I have become so accustomed to this habit that I would gladly wrestle a ticked-off mountain lion to keep this privilege. 

Our time is the early time

If I delay in picking him up out of the crib, his exhalations become progressively louder.  He doesn’t coo.  It’s more like the sound someone makes on a commercial when they’ve just drunk a cold drink with sweat rolling down the sides of the glass. 

“AAAHHH!” is the only way I can write it in letters. 

He does that over and over.  “AAAAHHHH!!!”  Then he’ll roll over and start gnawing on his fists.  Then again.  “AAAAHHH!!!”  Then he’ll grab his little feet.  Again.  “AAAAHHHH!”   and on and on, louder and louder.

By the time I get in there, our apartment sounds like we have a large group of people sampling ice-cold beverages in the baby’s room.  

When I poke my head over the side of the crib, Jonah raises one eyebrow, and smiles.  If he could talk, I believe he would say, “Hey, it’s that guy again.  I like him.  He feeds me and wipes my bottom.”  Or, he would say, “Hey, welcome to Jonah’s playhouse.  It’s a whale of a good time.  I will be your entertainment for this morning.”  Or, he would say, “I’m cute.  I know it.  Haven’t even combed my hair or brushed my gums, but I know I’m cute.”

 
Then, the best part:  he starts laughing out loud. 

He has progressed in his humor from giggling or just cooing to straight-out laughter.  You know, the nyuk nyuk from the Three Stooges kind of laughter.  It’s awesome. 

In the morning, the coolest part is that it’s just us.  I know that he laughs like that throughout the day, but I like to think that his first laugh is for me.  That’s why I wouldn’t trade it.  There are plenty of people who love Jonah, and we love to show him off and share him with others.  But it’s great to have something special, even when he’s this young.   The morning is ours.

So, when he’s had a good laugh, I’ll pick him up and he grabs my shoulders and we go into the living room.  If he’s still sleepy, he’ll put his head on my shoulder, too.   He’s getting to the point now where he doesn’t like to be held nearly as much, so getting him when he’s still a little sleepy is important for this snuggly time.  If I try to hold him during the day, he flops like a marlin.

Then, in the calm of the morning, I do one of the cruelest things a father can ever do to a baby. I sit him up on the couch, put the bib on him, and hold the bottle in front of his face.  And he knows what it is.  His eyes get really big and his arms and legs pump like pistons.  But I don’t give it to him. 

I’m waiting for the best part:  his tongue moves in and out of his mouth, trying to imagine what that bottle would be like.  

Sometimes, I give him the bottle before he begins to cry too hard.  Man that’s mean!  But it’s fun, too.  Jonah sucks down that first bottle quicker than any other of the day, mostly because I “prime his hunger” with my cruelty. 

Stealing Hubcaps with Dad

Before it became fashionable, my Dad did something not many parents did:  he took each of his children to work with him.  As a college professor, Dad could choose to include his children in his working life more than, say, a sergeant in the army or a member of the S.W.A.T. team.  Although it took a little effort, keeping track of us and entertaining us, Dad thought it was important to show his kids—individually—what he did for a living. 

Each time he brought me to his work, he would introduce me and say to the class, “I bring my kids to work so they don’t think I steal hubcaps for a living.”  That statement, while succinct, reveals much more than my Dad’s anathema to stealing—plus, I don’t know if my Dad would be good at stealing hub caps.

Dad’s effort to include us into his work life produced in us the curiosity that kids who did not visit their parent’s work have.  Those days at the school gave us a hint of his world, introducing us to the passion in his life.  I grew up with some kids whose father was the silent monolith who came home and weighed down the couch for a few hours before he passed out. They “knew” their father, but they didn’t really understand what made him tick.  I’m not saying that a few visits to the school where he taught revealed the inner secrets of his soul, but I could see why he spent many of his waking hours there at the college.

I never lived through one of those days with Dad without seeing a different side of him.  At the college, he wasn’t the authoritarian parent, but the tour guide to the rest of his life.  I got to see him as a professor, a person in charge of teaching all these cool kids, and he was able to teach me a little about his world.  Those days showed me more about my Dad than weeks of living in our home with him.  He was excited about what he did, and his interactions with students showed us that he was capable of something else other than hauling in groceries from the car or mowing the lawn.   They respected him and he loved teaching them.

As with most boys, school itself was a jagged little pill we had to swallow daily.  Aside from recess and lunch, school wasn’t the best place in the world for a Towles boy.  Yet Dad’s excursion to school allowed us to see a different part of school that most kids couldn’t see until they started shopping for colleges to attend. 

To a 10-year-old kid, a college campus is like Disney World.  It’s familiar, but nothing like I’d ever seen.  College was school, but it didn’t seem like anyone did any studying.  These students were adults, but they looked like kids.  And every college student was cool.  Every single one.  And my Dad was the person who introduced me to all these cool college kids.

Taking us to school with him was an individual time, where each one of us got to spend the entire day with Dad, beginning with the drive in to work.   With a boiling cauldron of pre-adolescent humanity greeting him at the house whenever he came home, you would think that one-on-one time would be an added tour of duty.  Yet Dad made it special.  On the way to school, he would put me to work.  Since I made him get there later than usual, he would let me help him on the drive to the college.  Dad would give me the list of students and make me call out their names while he prayed for each one.  I wasn’t there, flipping with the radio channels or asking ten thousand questions.  By the time we got through praying for the students, we were there on campus, ready for the day.  He would tell me which class we were visiting and what we were learning that day.  He would tell me where to sit and what page of the book the class was learning.  (I got to carry college books.  I was the man.) 

I was introduced to almost every student he had in the class.  Meeting all those people was terrific, but it wasn’t the best part.  The classes were great, but they weren’t the best part.  Missing school was a terrific idea, but that wasn’t what I looked forward to the most.  You know what I loved the most?  The food.  Yep, the cafeteria at the college where my Dad taught was awesome.  I could eat all I wanted to eat, and I actually wanted to eat all I could.  Unlike the food at my school, college food tasted good, and Dad and I would fill up on what college students actually ate:  waffles, cookies, and Pepsi.   

I am sure that those visits to the college were a great break for my teachers, but that wasn’t why my Dad brought me to school.  After those visits to the school, I not only knew more about my Dad’s work, I knew more about my Dad.  We spent one-on-one time and we found out about each other. 

As I am a parent now, I want those days with Jonah, where he can see what I’m doing at work and why I’m doing it.  I don’t want my son to go through life wondering where I go when I leave in the morning, and, more importantly, why I’m leaving to go to work.  I learned a lot about my Dad during those days at work.  I learned that my Dad is a shameless teacher, willing to be goofy to make a point.  I learned that he walks really fast from his office to the classroom, and he drinks coffee constantly.  I learned that he will eat almost anything.  Doesn’t sound like much, but to a ten-year-old boy, it was the Rosetta Stone of my Dad’s life. 

Most of the stuff I learned during those visits didn’t even involve conversation, but when we talked, it was important.  It was important for me as a boy to learn that men need to talk to each other … that Dads need alone time with sons … that men are not born, they’re raised.  He taught me that Dads talk to their kids because Dads care.   Those trips to the college taught me that Dads weren’t big silent monoliths who ignored their family.  He taught me that Dads were active.  Dads aren’t mysterious demi-gods who raise kids from on high.  My father is many things to me, but mysterious and aloof are not a part of those things.  I know Dad because he chose to hang out with me—a tough thing to do with a ten-year-old boy—and he talked to me.

Jonah's First Pictures

We’d been getting some slight pressure from some sectors of our family who shall remain nameless—Mom—to get a professionally-done photo of the kid.  To be honest, I really don’t like those pictures where the kid still looks more like an alien than a Towles.   So, our waiting was part planning and part we-don’t-have-time-to-do-this-in-between-feeding-clothing-sleeping-and-burping this little monster. 

As we were at home dressing for this event, Sunday asked me, “What should Jonah wear?”  It was a very important question, one that would impact how we would see the little guy for years to come.  Important question.  Wrong person asked.  I looked at Jonah and he usually smiled at me.  I didn’t mind if wore the overalls instead of the blue jeans.  It didn’t matter to me.  As a father, I did not care what the kid wears for most of these occasions.  On top of that, if I did make the choice, it would probably not look as good as if Sunday made the decision.

Fortunately, Sunday and I have the “if it doesn’t matter to me, then you make the decision” conversation.   This conversation says that if one of us does not care about the outcome of a situation, then the other person can make the decision on his/her own.  For instance, I usually don’t care what we eat for dinner.  My favorite food is “leftovers.”  Doesn’t matter, usually.  For Sunday, she actually has to have food that tastes good.  I require food in the correct abundance.  Thus, if we’re going out to eat, she’ll choose where we’ll go, as long as there is enough of it to fill me up. 

For our pictures, she made the call, and we left with jeans on, but different shirts. 

As we entered the picture place, I realized a few things:

One: the picture place looks like every other picture place on the planet.  From Tallahassee to Tel-Aviv, the same cheesy pictures on the wall, the same props and the same nasty carpet.  Never enough seats, and never any reading material. 

And we wonder why we waited so long to get pictures done…

Two: the person taking the picture NEVER looks like he/she should be working with the public.   The woman who took Jonah’s picture needed to slap on some deodorant and drag a comb through her hair.  A toothbrush would have also been a great idea, too.

Three: the posing suggestions always make me nervous.

The first thing the picture person, a.k.a. “nature girl” tells me to do is take off my shoes.  I thought she felt uncomfortable around people who regularly wore shoes.  (Remember, we lived in Kentucky).  Then, she had me stand up on the large box that we should have been sitting on for the picture.  I am wondering where she’s going with this, especially since she now has a great camera shot at my quadriceps. 

But then, the magic happened. 

She redeemed herself like no other.  She stood Jonah up in front of me and I held his hands way above his head.  He smiled, stuck out his tongue, and the woman took his picture.  Cutest thing you ever saw. 

There’s something you need to know about Jonah.  He is a personable little guy who likes to laugh and coo at people.  His most endearing habit, in my opinion, though, is his penchant for sticking out his tongue.  He smiles, toothless, with tongue protruding.  He screams, mouth agape, with tongue protruding.  He sleeps, lips pursed, with tongue protruding.  He’s like a lizard or something.  Every picture we took had him smiling with his tongue out.  It was a good time. 

I got out of there with my boy happy, my wife happy, and with my shoes on. 

Terror Nightmares and One Frozen Baby

Please note:  this week's blog talks about my son's out-sized ability to sleep.  If you're reading this, and your kids didn't sleep through the night until they were in the second grade, I'm giving you a trigger-warning for jealousy.  My kids (both of them) slept through the night around week 5ish. (ok, week 4).  

If you talk to anyone who’s been with Jonah for any length of time, you know that sleep is not his problem.  In fact, within a ten-minute buffer, we can pretty much tell when he’s “going down town.”  So, we had a slight scare this month when he started waking up in the middle of the night screaming.  

My younger brother, Luke, used to wake up in the middle of the night screaming.  For a seven-year-old kid, seeing his younger brother wake up screaming and not waking up is pretty frightening, and I haven’t forgotten those nights.  It was even worse because Luke didn’t say much, so his screaming was completely opposite the way he usually behaved.  On top of that, Luke used to sleepwalk and sleeptalk.  To be honest, those times were a little funnier than the terror dreams, mostly because he’d say stuff like, “I’m not gonna talk to that woman over there in the corner,” or “Where Am I?” 

For a little boy like me, it was better than TV.

So I began thinking…

My first thought:  He’s having terror nightmares like Luke used to have.  I was having visions of Jonah coming into our room in the middle of the night, screaming his head off or telling me strange, sleep-induced riddles.   While much entertainment can be had by Luke sleepwalking, I didn’t want to have to deal with Jonah in the middle of the night like that.

My second thought:  Maybe he’s hungry.  We all know that eating in the middle of the night runs in the family.  I still don’t think Dad sleeps through the night without eating a bowl of cereal.

My third thought:  If I stay still long enough, Sunday will get up and see what his problem is.  We’ve all done it.  Admit it.  The old “frozen man” routine works from time to time.  It’s a beautiful thing. 

We did crack the code, though.  As the summer began, we would turn off the air conditioning, leaving the apartment comfortable during the day.  At night, though, Sunday likes to administer some light snuggling and it gets a little hot under the covers, in a manner of speaking.  (Thinking of beach scenes or libraries will eliminate those visuals you’re getting right about now).  Well, we would turn on the AC so that Sunday and I wouldn’t be so hot at night.   

We didn’t realize that Jonah’s room was getting a little more AC than we were.  On top of that, we had the humidifier cranking in the room, too.  He was crying at night because he was cold.  My man was like Chilly Willy up in there.  He could have held glasses of ice tea in each hand, just to warm himself up.  I have never felt so bad for a kid.  We ended up dressing him in one of those pajama things that looks like a bag with arms in it.  Then, we put those mittens on his hands.  It’s rough when you gotta get Nanook of the North’s wardrobe to help your son sleep through the night.

On top of that, we really thought all that bragging about his sleep talent was catching up to us.  Big relief when we figured it out.