2008 October archive at The Newborn Identity

Archive for October, 2008

Oct

Adult Halloween vs. Kid Halloween

By Mike 21 Comments

Categories: Daily Briefing

With Halloween coming up shortly I’ve found myself once again facing another example of how having a baby changes your life.

Before a baby Halloween meant going to a party full of fun Halloween themed drinks where you wear the weirdest/most offensive costume you can imagine while your significant other dresses in something outrageously sexy. Anyhoo…after a baby, for their sake, you have to dress in something totally benign like, oh, I don’t, the man in the moon or Alf or something.

So…before I totally forget the fun Halloweens of my carefree twenties I thought I’d run through some of them here:

COSTUME #1: A WOMAN…

Okay. This Halloween actually sucked. You see, in my early twenties I was talked into dressing as a woman by an ex-girlfriend. This sounded like a really easy costume initially as she already had a wig, and we only had to buy a cheapo dress at “Ross Dress For Less,” but upon getting to the party and seeing all the other guys strutting around in macho outfits like a soldier or O.J. Simpson I felt pretty lame. Making matters worse was the fact I was by far the ugliest girl at the party. Sigh.

I don’t have a photo of this disaster (thank God) but here is some azzhat dressed as a chick:

RATING FOR APPROPRIATNESS AS MADDIE’S DAD: 2/10

Two may be too high a grade. I don’t really know how I’d explain tranvestism to baby Maddie.

COSTUME #2: A PRIEST

The next time I dressed up for Halloween was with Heather. We were due to go to some big party somewhere (Halloween booze dims the memory) so we went to the local costume shop to find something to wear. We ended up with me dressed as a priest and Heather dressed as a sexy Catholic school girl. We had a great time, and Heather looked great, but again, I don’t know how I’d explain to Maddie my dressing as a priest.

MADDIE: “So you were making fun of priests? Of God?!?

ME: “No, well, sort of. No!”

Maddie cries.

RATING FOR APPROPRIATNESS AS MADDIE’S DAD: 3/10

Yeah, still not something I want to wear around my baby (and I would definitely have to explain the WAY drunk expression in the above photo), but still better than dressing as a lady…and still better than this other Catholic priest costume I saw out that year:

COSTUME #3: KEVIN FEDERLINE

When Heather lived in New York I flew out for Halloween and we went to some party in Time’s Square dressed as Britney Spears and Kevin Federline. We were both very skinny here. We got fat and happy when we were together again.

RATING FOR APPROPRIATNESS AS MADDIE’S DAD: 5/10

The main problem here would be explaining why we were dressing like white trash, and why I was holding a beer. STILL…it is way easier to explain than the previous two.

COSTUME #4: RON BURGANDY

I’m pretty sure this was my last adult costume I wore before Maddie. It, I think, was from 2006…you see we didn’t celebrate Halloween ‘07 as Heather was in the hospital. That is, unless, you consider Heather as being a patient for Halloween and me as being a worried dude. If you count those as costumes, then we were the best patient and worried dude ever. But I digress…the year before all that madness I was Ron Burgundy from the film “Anchorman,” and this costume, if I do say so myself, was pretty cool…

Nonetheless, explaining the ever present glass of Burgundy would be sort of hard to explain to my little girl.

RATING FOR APPROPRIATNESS AS MADDIE’S DAD: 6/10

So those are some of my pre-parent costumes. This year I will be wearing a costume that will receive a 10/10 rating of appropriatness as Maddie’s Dad. But you will have to wait for a future post to see what it is!

Oct

Changes

By Mike 22 Comments

Categories: Daily Briefing

The last few days have been pretty eventful, unfortunately not in a good way. Heather was let go from her job on Thursday. This, as you can imagine, has made things pretty stressful considering that Heather has been our family’s primary ”breadwinner” for the last year and a half or so. Making matters even worse is that Heather’s job supplied our family’s insurance which has been so incredibly important for Maddie’s well being.

When Heather was admitted to the hospital with premature rupture of the membranes a month before Maddie’s birth, it was this insurance that paid for her stay. Considering that Maddie was born eleven weeks premature, and that we were told many times in the days after her birth that she would likely die, this stay was likely a big reason Maddie survived. Every last minute the doctors and nurses were able to help Heather keep Maddie inside was crucial to her survival.

It was also this insurance that enabled Maddie to stay 68 days in the NICU where a whole other crew of amazing nurses and doctors worked their magic to help her get better.

Later, when Maddie was hospitaled for a couple long stretches with bronchialitis, this insurance paid for her time there.

It was also this insurance which has helped us shoulder the brunt of the cost of Maddie’s many medicines and doctor’s visits.

Now it is gone.

There are options, thankfully. There is Cobra insurance offered by the government in this type of sitution, and, despite being expensive, we will more than likely use it for Maddie. Another good thing is that for the last six weeks or so I have been doing copywriting work from home. The length of the copywriting gig is indefinite, nevertheless we’re hopeful it will continue for a good stretch as we try to figure out what we will do next.

One silver lining in all of this is that Heather will get to spend more time at home with Maddie. Heather’s maternity leave was used up when Maddie was in the NICU, so when Maddie finally came home Heather only had a few days with her before she had to go back to work. So, this will be the first time Heather will be able to spend longer than six consecutive days at home with Maddie. I look forward to seeing the two of them bond even more than they already have.

Looks like they already have started:

Oct

PUPPY VS. BABY!!!

By Mike 19 Comments

Categories: Basic Training

Seeing my nephews last week got me thinking about the days before Madeline, and how, back then, I really didn’t see the difference between being the parent of a baby or the owner of a puppy.

In my then child-less mind I totally thought Rigby was the equal of my nephew Spencer in every way. This, as you can imagine, greatly upset people.

You could, however, understand my line of thinking in a twisted way. Rigby and Spencer were born on the exact same day, December 4th, and both had bitches for mothers. (Just kidding, Monica! Zinger!) Since they were born on the same day, I was apt to compare Rigby to Spencer. As a result the following scenes happened way too many times:

SCENE #1

SISTER: “Guess what everyone? Spencer started crawling!”

ME: “Crawling? Phooey. Rigby has been able to walk since THE DAY SHE WAS BORN!!! She was probably crawling in the womb!”

SCENE #2

SISTER: “Guess what everyone! Some lady at the mall told me Spencer was the cutest baby she’s ever seen.”

ME: “Just one lady? When I took Rigby on a walk today I had eight people go apeshit over Rigby. EIGHT!”

SCENE #3

SISTER: “Isn’t Spencer’s outfit adorable!”

ME: “Adorable? No. Adorable is Rigby in a T-shirt that reads: “SCREW LASSIE! I’M THE WORLD’S COOLEST PUP!!! ”

SCENE #4

SISTER: “Spencer started holding things today! I handed him a block and he held it! Isn’t that amazing?”

ME: “Not really. Now if you threw that block and Spencer brought it back to you we could talk. ‘Cause Rigby? She does that. All the time!”

SCENE 5

SISTER: “Spencer cries SOOOO loud. On my God he wakes me up in the middle of the night out of a dead sleep with his crying!”

ME: “Yeah, I’ve heard him and he’s not that loud. Now when Rigby barks people in China wake up!!!”

Finally, after enough of this kind of talk my sister finally screamed, “CAN YOU PLEASE STOP COMPARING MY BABY TO YOUR FREAKING DOG?!?!?!?

At the time I was offended. Now that I have a child of my own, however, I realize comparing the developmental skills of a dog to a baby isn’t really cool.

But you know what?

Dog or not I’m still in awe of my amazing little pup.