July 12, 2012 at 9:31 pm , by Nick Shell

19 months.

Earlier this week I published a similarly named article about how my son looks nothing like me. And people agreed; as I have gathered from the comments.

There were some people who saw me in the shape of my son’s eyes, forehead, and potentially his nose.

Even though I felt the article was a stand-alone work, I now see the need for the sequel. Time to compare my son to his Mommy, this time around.

When people try to figure out who Jack looks like more, they by default choose my wife. I want to dissect that.

Granted, no one has ever said, “Your son looks just like your wife!”

At best, they say, “Your son sort of looks like your wife… a little bit.”

The fact that our biological son doesn’t really resemble either of us makes me think of the classic sitcom, Full House.

Sure, it was great. But it always bothered me that DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle shouldn’t have looked the way they did.

Danny Tanner was played by Jewish actor Bob Saget. And his unseen wife and the mother of his kids was a Greek-American; her extremely dark-featured brother Jesse Katsopolis made that evident.

Well, the Tanner kids sure came out vanilla.

And then to make matters worse, when Uncle Jesse and Aunt Becky had twin boys, Nicky and Alex, they were even more fair-complected and blonder than the Tanner girls.

The casting always bothered me on Full House because the kids didn’t look like they should have come from those parents.

But boy, am I one to talk.

If my wife and I were cast as parents in an 80′s sitcom, our son Jack wouldn’t be cast as our son. Unless the casting director was the same as the one for Full House.

So go ahead, help me see how Jack looks like my wife Jill.

I would have said they have similar eyes, but that was one of the few ways he resembles me, according to some.

Maybe their noses… from the front?

I agree that he will have my Italian nose when it’s all said and done.

(Though my wife is just as Italian as I am.)

When Jack was an infant, I said he reminded me of Jill’s dad, who passed away a few months after Jill and I got married 4 years ago.

Looking back through pictures from the weekend of our wedding, I found this picture of him. I still believe Jack resembles her dad; who was pretty much half-Norwegian and half-Irish.

So help me sort this out.

Does Jack look somewhat like his Mommy? And do you see the resemblance I see between my wife’s dad and Jack?

Oh, and I’ve been told several times that my wife and I could pass for brother and sister.

Even if we look alike, our son doesn’t.

 

July 9, 2012 at 7:53 pm , by Nick Shell

19 months.

“We’re home!” Jack said as we pulled into the parking lot of his daycare last Friday.

Sure, he doesn’t yet understand the difference between the words “home” and “here” yet, but what if it was a Freudian slip?

I put the pen to the paper, then used a calculator to check my less than awesome math skills. My number-crunching revealed to me that Jack is at daycare for 45 waking hours each week.

Contrast that to the 38 waking hours he’s home with Mommy and Dada.

We the parents have 7 less hours with our son each week than KinderCare. I’m letting that though settle in right now.

He’s been going to daycare for almost a year now and I’ve just never realized that paid professionals technically know our kid better than we do.

But like most parents, we don’t have a choice, financially.

On the positive side of it, we’re very aware of how confident, independent, and knowledgeable he is for his age.

It’s not up to us; he has to go to daycare.

But tomorrow I’ll get a taste of what it would be like to be a stay-at-home dad, or househusband: Jack had a fever of nearly 102 when I picked him up from KinderCare today.

However, on the car ride home and after dinner he was more hyper than ever. I don’t believe he’s actually sick.

So even if he’s perfectly healthy tomorrow, by policy of his daycare I can’t take him in. My wife has taken off more than her share of “sick days” from work on account of Jack having a fever. Now it’s my turn.

I will see what it’s like to actually take care of my own kid all day while my wife works. By today’s culture and standards, that’s hardly ironic. Yet still, I have little experience staying home with him all day when, technically, I should be out working.

The title of this reminds me of just how ridiculous it is that both of us parents have to work full-time to keep our own kid in daycare; where the daycare workers will spend more time with him than we do.

Ridiculous, yet normal.

We’re happily married but it feels like we have legal custody of our own child but with limited visitation rights.

 

June 27, 2012 at 9:52 pm , by Nick Shell

19 months.

One of the highlights of my day is always picking up Jack from daycare, because I know he will come running to me with a big smile on his face.

Then, he’ll cuddle up close to me like a koala bear as I hold him and collect his things before taking him out to the car.

With Jack, moments of cuddling like that are rare. It’s safe to proclaim, he’s just not a cuddly kind of kid.

I want to say that I wish he was. But that would be me being selfish.

Because he was designed to be an adventurer and an explorer, so it’s not in his nature to want to let me squeeze him like the Snuggles bear whenever I feel like it; which is actually quite often.

Jack wants to be led into swashbuckling missions. He wants to see the unknown. He wants to ride in the bottom storage part of the shopping cart at Whole Foods Market.

I have to let Jack be Jack, even if that means that at least for right now, I can’t just lay on the couch with him, being close and cuddly. Because that’s what I want.

So I accept that his love language is probably not physical touch.

Instead, I think Jack interprets love through quality time and acts of service.

That typically involves me exerting a lot of energy and burning a bunch of calories and not having much time to just chill out when I’m with him.

It’s not so much that I’m constantly having to entertain him; it’s that I’m constantly needing to engage him. Interestingly, the activities that best express my love to him in a way that he accepts as valid are the ones that most wear him out and cause him to need to take a nap.

Now I can understand even better why roughhousing with my son is so vitally important.

Chasing him like I’m a lion, then gently tossing him on the random air mattress in our living room is the equivalent to snuggling with him. That’s how Jack sees it.

And perhaps my subconscious realization of that naturally makes me want to play rough with him in the first place.

It’s been no secret that Jack and my dad have always had a special bond.

Even when Jack was only a couple of months old, he always appreciated my dad carrying him around the house, showing him the insides of bedrooms and the pictures on the walls.

What is it about that special bond between grandfather and grandson? It’s not just their same first and last name.

I believe it has a whole lot to do with the fact my dad does a perfect love of expressing love to Jack in a way that Jack can best understand it.

Remember the whole water hose incident last weekend?

Prime example. Put Jack and his Papa together, and they’ll figure out something fun to do.

My son isn’t the Snuggles bear.

But I do think he might be Curious George.

May 29, 2012 at 10:18 pm , by Nick Shell

A year and a half.

Whenever I say or type the phrase “thank you,” I instantly assume I actually just said “f— you.”

To me, the words sound so similar.

It’s not that I’m a vulgar person. In fact, my constant suspicion of my subconscious has much more to do my preoccupation of not being vulgar.

My habit of questioning my automatic actions bleeds into my parenting abilities.

Each time after having just strapped my son into his car seat and starting the ignition, I run the following questions through my head before looking over my shoulder at him:

“Did I actually strap him in all the way? Is he crawling around right now on the floor of my car? Is he outside, behind the car? Will I back over him?”

I just don’t want to commit some huge crime on account of running on autopilot. It’s not that I question my abilities as a dad.

Instead, I question my most unguarded moments in the midst of my daily dad duties. One little slip-up can instantly morph into an avalanche; in regards to protecting the life of my child.

I don’t fear being a bad dad. I fear being a good dad who in one careless moment throws it all away.

What if I somehow accidently cause my son to lose an eye or allow him to choke to death on a piece of bread? What if he suffocates during the night, trapped under his blanket and I’m not there to stop it?

It’s not that I’m overcome by the fear of “what if’s?” but instead, like a good Boy Scout, I always want to be prepared to keep these things from happening.

I want to prevent these catastrophes like Desmond repeatedly saved the life of Charlie on Lost in season 3.

Taking this “2nd guessing concept” a step further in parenting, there are so many controversial topics when it comes to deciding what is right in raising a child.

Are you wrong or right for letting your child “cry it out?” Should you regret letting your child receive immunizations? Why are some parents against letting their toddlers drink juice?

After having made a decision for your child, do you second-guess it or are you proud to have done what is right for you as a parent?

There will always be something to question yourself on as a mom or dad. But it’s my goal to make the best-researched and most-educated decisions and then follow them through.

If I’m wrong for letting my son cry it out, we’ll find out eventually. As for now, I’m confident in how wrong or right I am in my decision.

I just don’t have the mental capacity to honestly worry about that, in particular. I’m too busy trying to make sure I only just said “thank you” and not its evil counterpart.

 

May 21, 2012 at 5:50 am , by Nick Shell

A year and a half.

I had never taken care of my son Jack overnight without my wife Jill being there.

It’s not something I was worried about; I knew I could handle Jill’s day and half business trip to Washington, DC.

Feeding him dinner, bathing him, putting him to bed, handling breakfast the next morning, packing all his stuff for daycare, then dinner and bedtime again.

That’s all I had to handle; in the midst of also picking up my wife’s goodies for Mother’s Day.

So in reality, how did it go? Did I manage it okay?

Uh, yeah. Actually, it was a little too easy.

I didn’t want to wife to know that, though. I didn’t want her to learn that I was able to get him to sleep earlier and quicker than normal. And that I was able to leave the house the next morning about 10 minutes earlier, too.

Not to mention, bath time was a breeze. Jack and I had a lot of fun squirting each other with his bath toys. Before we both knew it, he was sparkly clean and he was pleasantly eager to fall asleep.

This situation reminded me of an article my wife had read which explained that a child is often the most difficult and high maintenance with the parent who he or she was closest to in infancy. After this event, I could see that.

That’s not to say we didn’t both miss her very much. He definitely kept asking “Mama?” while she was gone.

But he seemed to understand as I would explain that Mommy would be back the next day.

I told Jill how I was looking forward to the look on his face when he woke up Saturday morning and saw that she was back. We both had high expectations.

At 6:23 AM on Saturday Jill and I woke up to Jack’s usual hilarious monologue consisting of animal sounds and calls for Elmo. Together, we snuck in his bedroom.

He was standing up, hanging on to the rail of his bed, with his diaper off and a puddle of pee on the carpet below. (That has never happened before!)

Jack was in a weird daze. He seemed apathetic to the fact that Mommy was back, despite my own proclamations of excitement for him.

We travelled to The Pfunky Griddle to have breakfast with Henry’s family and then to another of his toddler friend’s birthday parties.

It wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon that Jack warmed back up to her. I could tell it sort of hurt my wife’s feelings because he wasn’t acting happy that she was back. Actually, I was pretty bummed for her.

I certainly didn’t want to rub it in that things went so well while she was gone. So I did the only thing I knew to do: Let things work themselves out on their own.

By the next day, Jack was whining for Mommy again.

But something tells me that my son’s cold welcome back to Mommy isn’t so unique of an experience in the world of parenting. I bet there’s some psychology behind it that someone smarter than myself could explain; or at least someone else who can relate to this seemingly unusual story.

[Passes the mic to the audience.]