So Chloe and I have explained this elsewhere in some version or other, but we essentially adopted a newborn with no notice. We matched 9/10/19 with a birth mom who was due in mid-October. Planned a trip up to SD from OK to meet her briefly at the end of September and then have a few weeks to get things in order at home. Certainly not the same as having nine months to mentally and physically prepare, but 5-6 weeks is something anyways.
Drove to Omaha and stayed at my mom's one night, the plan for the next day was to drive to Pierre, have lunch with birth mom and agency rep, then turn around and stay in Sioux Falls that night. Back to Tulsa the next day. Two nights, three days of driving in service of a lunch at Perkins, but it was going to be worth it.
About 40 minutes out of Pierre on our way up, we get a call, birth mom had a OB appointment that morning and they'd decided they were going to induce that night. I don't remember what the reasoning was for the early exit, but it wasn't super-duper worrisome on its own. What was worrisome was suddenly being in SD with three days worth of warm weather clothing (extra day of clothes to be prepared, right?), the "small" vehicle, precisely zero baby stuff in hand, and an indefinite stay in South Dakota staring us in the face.
Between calling workplaces, calling soon-to-be grandparents, and rearranging hotel reservations on the fly (turns out some hunting season or other starts 10/1 in SD, and all the hotels in Pierre suddenly fill up to capacity), we had to come to terms with having no prep time at all. Also the Perkins was closed for remodeling so that was a bummer.
24 hours of waiting and bouncing between the hotel and hospital and watching Gameday in Lincoln for the first time in years and for some reason the Huskers didn't even play a game that night (cit.needed) and suddenly Chloe was texting me from the delivery room where she was holding our son.
Thence followed a couple more nights in Pierre and three weeks in Sioux Falls (it has a Target!) waiting for permission to leave the state without it being considered trafficking.
In the meantime, one of our neighbors had a spare key and had been checking our front patio for deliveries while we were gone. The good people of the internet sent us something like $5k worth of baby gear while we were gone. Filled the living room from top to bottom.
I don't know why I'm typing this all out aside from some mild attention-whoring I guess, but those three weeks stuck in a Hampton Inn "suite" with an actual factual newborn, trotting him down to the lobby to watch football on TV in a different room from time to time, exploring a bunch of touristy crap in Sioux Falls that I'd never have seen otherwise, just having him around 24-7 was the scariest, most stressful, most joyful time in my life. Kids are great.
People are like trees; every year a new ring of growth on the outside, but all the previous years are still there on the inside. We're just a little bit bigger and studier, with all the same branches and scars as the year before.
Whew. Terror is an interesting emotion at first meeting, isn't it? When my daughter was born they handed her to me and pushed me out of the room so they could concentrate on saving my wife's life (which they did). Spent the first half hour of my daughter's life terrified that we were doing this thing alone. Parenthood is good for creating new categories of fear.
That was yeah, I shouldn't have read that, not today. But thank you for sharing it. I think there is a need for pieces like this for Dads. We tend to get overlooked in the whole process sometimes.
Not to make a parenting article about trauma because now I totally identify with not wanting kids to age. My daughter is so friggin much fun right now I don't even want her to nap because I want her to hang out with me
Even your adult kids can be pretty cool. I spent most of last week driving two-thirds of the way across the country with my older one, and it was great.
i feel like parenting is full of little moments that prepare you for bigger moments later, and the missing your child as soon as you put them down for a nap and you're left with that "what do i do now?" thought definitely feels like a miniature empty nest test run.
CS Lewis wrote that of all human relationships, the love a parent is the most difficult love of all because it "is the only love which seeks its own abdication." I read that years ago but think about it all the time now.
Do you ever get out of the schizophrenia where you miss when they were younger, never want them to age, but can’t wait for the things you can do with them when they’re older?
Like, my daughter’s coming up on a year (thank you for the “it gets better”, it is needed), and I miss the cuddle bug stage, love her just now saying Dada, but can’t wait for her to be old enough that I can read her Harry Potter and do all the voices, and go to Disney, etc. Wanting three things that are aggressively at odds with one another quickly becomes an Austin Powers “Oh no, I’ve gone crosseyed” situation.
At four, when she slept through the night in her own bed, my daughter used to come in first thing and climb up to cuddle in bed. It was the best. She needs to be woken up a few months later, which is its own fun.
I think the hardest part of being a parent is just being in the moment, cause when it's hard it feels like it lasts forever and there are so many things to look forward too. But I promise, when you look back after a few years, it really will be the little things that you remember. Like how one time I tried to get my daughter at 2 to eat mushrooms by calling it meat, she took a small bite and with abject betrayal in her eyes looked at me and said "Not meat daddy, not meat" At almost 5 she loves that story, and gets me to tell it all the time. Especially like two nights ago when she was literally gnawing on a pork chop.
Oh sure, Scott. Do this to me the week after I came across an entire trove of old photos from the late 1990s when doing some cleaning. I had finally cured my dust problems, and then you have to go and do this.
Today is my daughter's second birthday (it gets better, but more complicated). I remember when I first laid eyes on her in the doctor's arm and as she was passed to get weighed and checked before she was placed in my arms. I don't think the terror set in until I was driving all of us home in sheets of driving rain down I-395 at rush hour. Perfect time for everything to hit: fatherhood, responsibility, the fact my wife almost died (another story for another day), my daughter's health issue (which is now better/fixed?, again another story on the greatness and terror of modern medicine), it's pouring rain and people want to go 8000mph. But we made it and 2 years later I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I take a lot of silly videos and pictures just so I can go back in the evenings and look at how far we've made it and remember those days when she was first walking, babbling, smiling, experiencing the world for the first time. It's still magical and that's the important thing I think, as long as it's magical to her Im good.
DC, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that 2 is not so terrible. The bad news is that three is the absolute most trying time (my kids are 5 & 8). So enjoy being able to lie to her and naps.... I miss long afternoon naps so much.
Also, my daughter (5) loves to watch a video of her big brother (who she called Gah-Gah and made everyone else too) singing "you are my sunshine" 3 days after she was born. As well as any other video or picture of her when she was little. So pay up for whatever plan to keep access to those.
She already loves to watch videos of herself so I'll be paying for Tim Cooks next space yacht for years to come. Not looking forward to missing out on the naps though, but my wife is doing a great job training me to go without already.
This is exactly, exactly the thing no one tells you about being a parent -- that you get to have a kind of "second childhood," or at least to see what it's like through different eyes. So, so true.
I mean this with the utmost respect, but "Damnit Scott!" I know that emotional hook is coming every time and every time I keep reading, pushing through all this extra moisture that appears in my eyes each time.
Well. Huh. This was an interesting one to read sitting next to my dad while I’m visiting (and seeing) him for the first time in 2 years. I don’t have kids, but the passage of time also seems to become a hostile force after your folks turn 65 or so. I find myself vacillating wildly between “we’re so lucky to have this time together” and, channelling Ziggy Marvin, “I’m going to die. You’re going to die.”
I should also probably add that I won’t be sending this one to my dad (he loved Giants in the Nighttime as much as I did) until I hit 30,000 feet on my way home because we don’t express emotion in person and the thought of looking him in the eye after he reads that fills me with dread. So I’m just over here in my feels while he drives us around doing errands, which seem to be the main thing we can all look forward to in our dotage.
We just wrapped up a week's visit with my parents, our first trip north in about four years. It was great to see my 12 year old getting up early to help his grandma make breakfast, our youngest curled up on her grandfather's lap, both desperately fighting against the heavy eyelids after a long day. Just wonderful. I soaked it all in, knowing that before long, the kids would be too old to enjoy such simple pleasures. They didn't know that these peaceful moments were treasured memories, they were just what one does on a lazy Thursday.
Well, everything was wrapped up, the car was packed for our trek to the airport, and after hugs and well wishes for safe travel, you know there had to be a fight over who opened the door and got to leave first. Mom intervened, and forbade children from the entryway, and I felt compelled to apologize to my dad for all the years I did the same with my sister.
I once sat there with my dad and said "how did you put up with [my brother and I]" he just smiled and said "you were fine." I secretly think he enjoys watching my kids fight and drive me insane.
So Chloe and I have explained this elsewhere in some version or other, but we essentially adopted a newborn with no notice. We matched 9/10/19 with a birth mom who was due in mid-October. Planned a trip up to SD from OK to meet her briefly at the end of September and then have a few weeks to get things in order at home. Certainly not the same as having nine months to mentally and physically prepare, but 5-6 weeks is something anyways.
Drove to Omaha and stayed at my mom's one night, the plan for the next day was to drive to Pierre, have lunch with birth mom and agency rep, then turn around and stay in Sioux Falls that night. Back to Tulsa the next day. Two nights, three days of driving in service of a lunch at Perkins, but it was going to be worth it.
About 40 minutes out of Pierre on our way up, we get a call, birth mom had a OB appointment that morning and they'd decided they were going to induce that night. I don't remember what the reasoning was for the early exit, but it wasn't super-duper worrisome on its own. What was worrisome was suddenly being in SD with three days worth of warm weather clothing (extra day of clothes to be prepared, right?), the "small" vehicle, precisely zero baby stuff in hand, and an indefinite stay in South Dakota staring us in the face.
Between calling workplaces, calling soon-to-be grandparents, and rearranging hotel reservations on the fly (turns out some hunting season or other starts 10/1 in SD, and all the hotels in Pierre suddenly fill up to capacity), we had to come to terms with having no prep time at all. Also the Perkins was closed for remodeling so that was a bummer.
24 hours of waiting and bouncing between the hotel and hospital and watching Gameday in Lincoln for the first time in years and for some reason the Huskers didn't even play a game that night (cit.needed) and suddenly Chloe was texting me from the delivery room where she was holding our son.
Thence followed a couple more nights in Pierre and three weeks in Sioux Falls (it has a Target!) waiting for permission to leave the state without it being considered trafficking.
In the meantime, one of our neighbors had a spare key and had been checking our front patio for deliveries while we were gone. The good people of the internet sent us something like $5k worth of baby gear while we were gone. Filled the living room from top to bottom.
I don't know why I'm typing this all out aside from some mild attention-whoring I guess, but those three weeks stuck in a Hampton Inn "suite" with an actual factual newborn, trotting him down to the lobby to watch football on TV in a different room from time to time, exploring a bunch of touristy crap in Sioux Falls that I'd never have seen otherwise, just having him around 24-7 was the scariest, most stressful, most joyful time in my life. Kids are great.
Y'all are heroes. Seriously. It was good to hear from you, and give my best to Chloe.
Of course. We're still around on other platforms that some people refuse to join.
I think you underestimate my commitment to anti-social media.
People are like trees; every year a new ring of growth on the outside, but all the previous years are still there on the inside. We're just a little bit bigger and studier, with all the same branches and scars as the year before.
I love this.
Whew. Terror is an interesting emotion at first meeting, isn't it? When my daughter was born they handed her to me and pushed me out of the room so they could concentrate on saving my wife's life (which they did). Spent the first half hour of my daughter's life terrified that we were doing this thing alone. Parenthood is good for creating new categories of fear.
My god, I can't imagine that level of terror.
Also, that reminds me of this excellent piece by Dan Devine, which reduces me to a blubbering mess every time I read it: https://www.yourmandevine.com/post/126999817703/someone-will-explain-this-to-you
Thank goodness that story had a happy ending (spoilers, I know). I was very afraid to keep reading.
That was yeah, I shouldn't have read that, not today. But thank you for sharing it. I think there is a need for pieces like this for Dads. We tend to get overlooked in the whole process sometimes.
Lots of unprocessed trauma in the chat, I see. Y'all wanna go talk to some beer about this?
That's a whole lot. Couldn't finish it
Not to make a parenting article about trauma because now I totally identify with not wanting kids to age. My daughter is so friggin much fun right now I don't even want her to nap because I want her to hang out with me
Even your adult kids can be pretty cool. I spent most of last week driving two-thirds of the way across the country with my older one, and it was great.
My enjoyment in parenting directly correlates with baby's ability to interact, so I can see how adult kids will be fun
i feel like parenting is full of little moments that prepare you for bigger moments later, and the missing your child as soon as you put them down for a nap and you're left with that "what do i do now?" thought definitely feels like a miniature empty nest test run.
CS Lewis wrote that of all human relationships, the love a parent is the most difficult love of all because it "is the only love which seeks its own abdication." I read that years ago but think about it all the time now.
Man, you gotta stop doing this- everyone in the brewery is calling me the Crying Guy in the Lab.
Don't blame Scott for this. They called you that anyway.
"we've been calling you that since 2014"
"I thought you were saying the Trying Guy in the Lab! Because it's hard to work with me! (Because of the crying.)
I CAN’T HANDLE THIS TODAY, SCOTT
I have the exceedingly rare, “Kids Are at Daycare but I’m off of Work” day, and THIS is how I have to start it?!
Do you ever get out of the schizophrenia where you miss when they were younger, never want them to age, but can’t wait for the things you can do with them when they’re older?
Like, my daughter’s coming up on a year (thank you for the “it gets better”, it is needed), and I miss the cuddle bug stage, love her just now saying Dada, but can’t wait for her to be old enough that I can read her Harry Potter and do all the voices, and go to Disney, etc. Wanting three things that are aggressively at odds with one another quickly becomes an Austin Powers “Oh no, I’ve gone crosseyed” situation.
At four, when she slept through the night in her own bed, my daughter used to come in first thing and climb up to cuddle in bed. It was the best. She needs to be woken up a few months later, which is its own fun.
I think the hardest part of being a parent is just being in the moment, cause when it's hard it feels like it lasts forever and there are so many things to look forward too. But I promise, when you look back after a few years, it really will be the little things that you remember. Like how one time I tried to get my daughter at 2 to eat mushrooms by calling it meat, she took a small bite and with abject betrayal in her eyes looked at me and said "Not meat daddy, not meat" At almost 5 she loves that story, and gets me to tell it all the time. Especially like two nights ago when she was literally gnawing on a pork chop.
Scott, I am trying to work. God damn.
Scott, you are history's greatest monster.
I don’t think I’ve ever claimed not to be.
Oh sure, Scott. Do this to me the week after I came across an entire trove of old photos from the late 1990s when doing some cleaning. I had finally cured my dust problems, and then you have to go and do this.
Today is my daughter's second birthday (it gets better, but more complicated). I remember when I first laid eyes on her in the doctor's arm and as she was passed to get weighed and checked before she was placed in my arms. I don't think the terror set in until I was driving all of us home in sheets of driving rain down I-395 at rush hour. Perfect time for everything to hit: fatherhood, responsibility, the fact my wife almost died (another story for another day), my daughter's health issue (which is now better/fixed?, again another story on the greatness and terror of modern medicine), it's pouring rain and people want to go 8000mph. But we made it and 2 years later I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I take a lot of silly videos and pictures just so I can go back in the evenings and look at how far we've made it and remember those days when she was first walking, babbling, smiling, experiencing the world for the first time. It's still magical and that's the important thing I think, as long as it's magical to her Im good.
DC, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that 2 is not so terrible. The bad news is that three is the absolute most trying time (my kids are 5 & 8). So enjoy being able to lie to her and naps.... I miss long afternoon naps so much.
Also, my daughter (5) loves to watch a video of her big brother (who she called Gah-Gah and made everyone else too) singing "you are my sunshine" 3 days after she was born. As well as any other video or picture of her when she was little. So pay up for whatever plan to keep access to those.
She already loves to watch videos of herself so I'll be paying for Tim Cooks next space yacht for years to come. Not looking forward to missing out on the naps though, but my wife is doing a great job training me to go without already.
This is exactly, exactly the thing no one tells you about being a parent -- that you get to have a kind of "second childhood," or at least to see what it's like through different eyes. So, so true.
I mean this with the utmost respect, but "Damnit Scott!" I know that emotional hook is coming every time and every time I keep reading, pushing through all this extra moisture that appears in my eyes each time.
Well. Huh. This was an interesting one to read sitting next to my dad while I’m visiting (and seeing) him for the first time in 2 years. I don’t have kids, but the passage of time also seems to become a hostile force after your folks turn 65 or so. I find myself vacillating wildly between “we’re so lucky to have this time together” and, channelling Ziggy Marvin, “I’m going to die. You’re going to die.”
Middle age is stupid.
I should also probably add that I won’t be sending this one to my dad (he loved Giants in the Nighttime as much as I did) until I hit 30,000 feet on my way home because we don’t express emotion in person and the thought of looking him in the eye after he reads that fills me with dread. So I’m just over here in my feels while he drives us around doing errands, which seem to be the main thing we can all look forward to in our dotage.
We just wrapped up a week's visit with my parents, our first trip north in about four years. It was great to see my 12 year old getting up early to help his grandma make breakfast, our youngest curled up on her grandfather's lap, both desperately fighting against the heavy eyelids after a long day. Just wonderful. I soaked it all in, knowing that before long, the kids would be too old to enjoy such simple pleasures. They didn't know that these peaceful moments were treasured memories, they were just what one does on a lazy Thursday.
Well, everything was wrapped up, the car was packed for our trek to the airport, and after hugs and well wishes for safe travel, you know there had to be a fight over who opened the door and got to leave first. Mom intervened, and forbade children from the entryway, and I felt compelled to apologize to my dad for all the years I did the same with my sister.
I once sat there with my dad and said "how did you put up with [my brother and I]" he just smiled and said "you were fine." I secretly think he enjoys watching my kids fight and drive me insane.
But seriously, this was beautifully written and touching, and I don't even have kids.