Twelve Thoughts About: Preparations
From Waking Up Daddy, Jason Roth's account of nine months of pregnancy and the insane first year of parenthood.
- Bringing new meaning to “babyproofing”: installed a hook on the liquor cabinet for hanging baby’s bathtub.
- Cleaning closets. Assembling crib. Rearranging den. Either I’m expecting a close encounter of the third kind or my wife is pregnant.
- We’re gonna need to babyproof the fridge. I don’t want that baby swiping my hot sauces.
- After months of hard work, we can now relax in the knowledge that our lives are fully prepared to be thrown into complete and utter disarray.
- A local preschool we visited holds an event called “Donuts with Dad!” And supposedly they teach and feed the kids and stuff.
- My main criterion for choosing a pediatrician: will I have access to the Dum-Dums?
- Having a baby forces you to clean and throw out lots of stuff you don’t need. Also important, precious stuff you were planning to keep forever.
- Babyproofing all the cleaning supplies would be easier if we did less cleaning. My wife fails to see the significance in this revelation.
- I saw a pathetic, exhausted, unshaven bum walking down the street with plastic bags in each hand and a baby in a sling. Me, next year.
- Ninety-mile-an-hour winds, massive flooding, wife seven months pregnant, and yet . . . the calm before the storm.
- I did three extra reps at the gym using Lamaze breathing techniques.
- I figure we will discover the most important thing to child-proof at the exact moment our child opens, breaks, falls over, or bangs their head on it.
