Savvy Daddy Blog

by silly_sad_machine

It's Thanksgiving in our part of the world, and for me it marks the first time in my life I've ever felt like an official adult - a man.

I'm 29, and for the last nine years I couldn't call myself a real adult. It just didn't make sense. I felt too much like I was still that kid in high school or that guy in college. In no way did I conform to any of the traits that I observed in the "adult" men in my life; I didn't own land or cattle, I didn't have any kids, I never balanced a checkbook or paid any taxes, and I didn't fall asleep in front of the warm glow of the Weather Channel. Hell, I still played video games and listened to groovecore. I was still in a band. I still played D&D with my friends.

Some things have certainly changed in the last few years, though. I graduated college, for one, and tossed myself into the workforce. Got a taste of Corporate America, got paid an embarrassingly low wage, became a statistic - you know the story. I started dating my little sister's best friend, as well (at my sister's behest), and found out my soul mate was not some stranger I had yet to meet but a girl from my past who had grown to become a woman. We got married in a fairly large ceremony that the two of us planned, and we moved to a new city to begin our life together.

But there are three things that have changed in my life that make me feel like a real man this Thanksgiving. And while you gnaw on your turkey leg or sit bloated and beached in your easy chair, I offer you these things that I am thankful for.

• I am a father - Last July my wife gave me the greatest gift I've ever received, aside from our marriage: my daughter. Everyone says having a child changes your life, but becoming a father is no overnight transition. It's taken the better part of my daughter's 16 months for me to discover what it means to be a father (I think I've boiled it down to abject devotion, unexplainable worry and beaming pride) but I know I'll spend the rest of her life refining that understanding. Regardless, I am thankful for this: last Thanksgiving I was a husband with a baby, and this Thanksgiving I am a father.

• I am a homeowner - About four years ago my grandmother made me the sole heir of my family's ancestral homestead. A plot of land and a smattering of houses in the rolling hills of the Midwest, the inheritance is the product of 50 years of work by my grandparents, great-grandparents and a collection of grand and great-grand aunts and uncles. My grandmother passed away a few years ago, and after an extended occupancy by some extended family, "the Hill" finally came under my control. In August my wife, daughter and I moved in, and I am this Thanksgiving thankful for my warm fireplace, the foresight and hard work of my elders, and for the fact that my daughter is growing up in the same house that I did.

• I am a part of the majority - This is by far one of the most prominent reasons that I now feel like a man. During my teens and early 20s, I wasn't involved in politics or national affairs primarily because I didn't feel like anyone cared about me. The government was a place where old people made sure that America catered to other old people. Even in 2004, after decades of presidential administrations run by aging white men, the DNC offered John Kerry ... another aging white man. But this election, however, has proven to me that we are not a nation of scared Baby Boomers or angry fire-and-brimstone senior citizens. We are a country of Blackberry users, a country of first-person-shooters, MySpace friends and Starbucks Wi-Fi users. Generation X has taken the reins of our culture, and for that I am most certainly thankful.

By Phil Stott

So it turns out that my kid's a nightmare. Well, at least in comparison to my brother-in-law's almost-eleven-month-old daughter anyway. A month younger than Maeve, she also happens to be an exceptionally docile creature.

I met her for the first time last Thursday when my wife's brother, and his wife, came out to New York to visit us. Despite having waited in the rain at a train station for at least five minutes following a 30-minute train ride from the airport and a five-hour flight from Phoenix, she didn't melt down when I arrived to pick them up. Maeve? Not so much-not a big fan of strangers, she takes a long time to warm up to new people, especially men.

The next step was the car ride home. Maeve is at the stage where we pretty much drive around with the same song on repeat in order to keep her calm (Coldplay's Viva La Vida, since you ask-she seems to like the intro). On good days, she'll fall asleep, or play with something long enough to forget that she hates her car seat. On bad days, you don't even want to know. But Maeve's cousin? Smiled as she was put in the seat, babbled a bit, fell asleep until we got home, didn't even cry when we woke her up taking her inside. No music required.

Initially, I put the even-tempered performance down to the fact that she was tired from traveling and being on a plane (completely ignoring how Maeve reacts to tiredness), but over the course of the weekend the gulf in personalities showed up so often that it became difficult to ignore. When the two girls were playing together, it was Maeve who consistently stole her cousin's toys, and yelled whenever something was taken away from her. It seems like it was always Maeve who had to be told to be gentle, to give something back, to share (all fairly abstract concepts for a not-quite-one year old, I know, but you have to start somewhere, especially when your kid's the tyrant and the other's parents are right there).

Not to belabor the point, it was also Maeve who was responsible for my wife and I alternating shifts bolting food at the table and standing outside with the stroller and an arsenal of toys at a Manhattan tapas restaurant. Her cousin, aunt and uncle, meanwhile, got to enjoy its warmth and comfort in full (for the 20 minutes it took us to scarf the meal and chug the wine we'd ordered, that is), the way one can when a baby sits contentedly in a high chair. And did I mention that she's so quiet they can take her to the movies?

I have no idea if there's a reason behind the differences in behavior, or if it's just the vagaries of fortune. I've contemplated the idea that it's something to do with the difference between breast and bottle feeding (Maeve gets the former, her cousin the latter since she was four months old), but that seems an unlikely conclusion-not to mention a deeply unscientific one to reach off a population sample of two. I'm pretty sure that it's not a question of discipline at this age either. Maybe it's the difference in climate between Phoenix and New York, or just that being a New Yorker, however young, gives one what might be called an edge.

Whatever it is, I do know a couple of things for certain. First, no matter how she behaves from time to time, in this father's eyes no kid will ever be better than Maeve, more fun to be around, or more loved. And the second thing also happens to be the best bit of parenting advice I've come across to date in my short career: this too shall pass. That was the thought that crossed my mind as I drove away from the airport after dropping the relatives for their flight home. One that was followed, naturally, by the fervent hope that we'll get revenge in the well-behaved baby stakes. My fingers are already crossed for some retribution during the terrible twos!

by Tony Chen

I was getting ready to leave work this past Monday when I got a 5-word text message from my wife:

"poo poo in the potty"

After months of trying, then dropping it (no pun intended), and then bringing it up again with our little one, little Meme finally poo poo-ed in the potty this week at day care!   I can't tell you how much my heart was filled with pride.  It almost rivaled the day he started walking.  My co-workers must of thought I had lost it (again) as I just had to run out of my office and tell someone. "POO POO IN THE POTTY!"

The logical next thought, obviously:  did the day care teacher take a picture of it?

It's been an interesting journey to get to this point.  Potty training seems to be the topic that keeps going and going and going.  On our facebook page, folks talk about it incessantly.  Some Children's hospitals now offer "potty training school" for parents at their wits end.  Guess how many times "potty training" was googled last month?  368,000.   368,000!  I mean, that's almost as many searches that Brooke Burke gets.

My wife and I read all the tips - getting the right equipment, using rewards, scheduling potty breaks, etc.  My parents told me stories about how I was potty-trained in one day by my grandmother -- she was floored to see  your truly at 18 months, still in diapers.  Come on, the kids in China are trained by 6-12 months of age, right?  Apparently, all she did was strip my diaper off all day and lay some newspaper on the ground.  I went.  I saw it.  And I was potty trained.

When all is said and done, potty training is basically this: when they're ready, they're ready.  Yes, we could have done a lot of things (maybe even earlier than we thought) to get them ready.  And yes, it's hard to maintain consistency in our 2-days-per-week-in-day-care, 2-days-per-week-with-grandparents life, but potty training is not something to force, either.   We had seen more and more interest from him especially these last few weeks.  He'd pretend to go.  He'd look forward to the scheduled potty time.  He really wanted that reward lollipop.  The last straw was probably him seeing the kids at day care do it. 

Anyway, what a relief.  Now, let's see if we can get him to do it 2 days in a row.  Then 3.  Then a whole hectic week.  Then, it's onto bedwetting.