Since becoming a father...

Since the day I became a father in April of 2008, I have noticed that there are three basic types of people in this world; the kind that already have kids, the kind that want kids, and the kind that despise kids.

You can tell if a person has kids when you tell them that your baby has colic. The look on their face shows the battle scars and lets you know that they feel your pain. If you say ‘colic’ to a non-parent, they are likely to give you a blank stare and say, “gee, that’s too bad”. When you say ‘colic’ to a parent, their face gets all scrunched up and they say something like “you poor miserable soul, is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all? We can watch baby for a while, or cook you a meal, or do the shopping. You name it and we are there for you! We can get through this together!”

Colic is basically a title that doctors have created to say your baby is going to scream her head off for three straight months, there is nothing we can do about it, and we have no idea why. As you can imagine, this is great news to a scared stiff new parent. Something like one out of every four babies goes through it. I think if they really want to solve the teen pregnancy problem in this country, make 14 year old girls watch my daughter overnight. They will stay as far away from the boys as they can!

I have also noticed that people get stupid around babies. They are all experts and know exactly what you are doing wrong, and they aren’t afraid to tell you. Unsolicited advice has been thrown at us from every angle, so much so that I sometimes cringe to even tell people about our daughter. People say stuff like, “My little Susie was never outside without a bonnet on her head”, or “You have to breast feed her until she graduates from college to get the best benefit from mother’s milk”. Idiots.

We have been greeted with some much needed and intelligent advice, though it has been far and few between. While I appreciate everyone's desire to help, I find myself wishing people would just keep their ideas to themselves unless asked for them. Maybe it just comes down to my favorite saying from Charles Swindoll which I shall paraphrase here: "Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it."

Right on Chuck! I guess I just need to take peoples advice with a grain of salt. Being a parent does not come with an instruction book; you just figure it out through trial and error. So far so good, so I guess I cannot complain. What is that old line from Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh? "I can't complain, but sometimes I still do. Life's been good to me so far..."