DADWAGON

So I came across these lovely little baby sketches at the Awl this morning by Amy Jean Porter, whom I’ve never heard of, but who has apparently just had a second child and has access to some art materials. Please go take a look and then click back and read the rest of the post (don’t you just love instructions with your Internets?)

Now, I have nothing against this sort of art. Pretty is fine by me. Even the rather sappy-while-still-deadpan statements accompanying the drawings don’t upset me much, even though I’m not really a sentimental sort (I kick puppies). What struck me about them was how little emotion I’ve been feeling at the prospect of second child. I’ve been very happy with my girlfriend who is getting more pleasingly pregnant by the day; I’ve plotted and schemed and predicted about the impact on my son of the Upcoming; but the feeling stuff hasn’t happened yet, and I have a theory for why: I’ve done this already.

Four years of parenting has made me decidedly less sentimental about the entire process–confident, fearful, full of anticipation, yes, sentimental, not so much. The most pressing idea in my mind these days is that I get a chance to do things over, and do them right his time (fully aware that I will commit a whole new round of mistakes).

The first child is such an overwhelming experience. The lack of sleep, the change in the patterns and goals of your life, all the nonstop hullaballoo. Then, at some point, the baby stops being a baby and becomes a kid, you stop being you and become Dad, the college savings accounts get opened, and vacation becomes something you do with your mother to get some free fricking babysitting. You don’t step back and think much, or at least I don’t. And in fact, I must admit I didn’t do much stepping back and thinking with JP when he was young, either, mostly because I was too tired and busy.

Ah, sweet, sweet, unexamined life.

From some guy who writes for some paper comes this harrowing tale of semi-public transportation along the South American highways—what happens when, in a shared minivan, a little boy says, “Mommy, I’m going to throw up.”

Mom groggily tried to roll down the half-open window, but rolled it up instead. In the nick of time, she got it right, stuck her son’s head out the window, and he did his thing. The only problem was, he was ill-positioned and the wind brought a thin mist back through the window.

I was sure the driver would stop the car; in fact, I thought he would have stopped it when he first heard the kid. But he didn’t cringe, or even say an “Is everyone O.K.?” let alone stop the car. The mom didn’t apologize to him for the coat of vomit now on the side of the car, or to me for the light spritz on my cheek and shoulder.

So it goes. I think we’ve all been that traveler, that child, and even that Mom (so to speak).

Sweep the leg, so goes the line. But it’s only funny if you’re talking about The Karate Kid (the original, not the execrable remake), or if you’re talking about what a dick someone else or someone else’s child is being. But when it’s almost 10 p.m. and you turn on the baby monitor for the first time in weeks and overhear your sweet beatified daughter dropping a Cobra Kai verbal beatdown on her hapless, pudgy little brother lying in bed across the room from her, then it’s less funny and more a feeling like: Wait, can a 4-year-old girl be a dickhead? Not that I would call her that, but her conversation, let’s say, was one that an actual dickhead might enjoy having.

A snippet:

Dalia: “Don’t tell me you know more than me.”

Nico: [Unintelligible]

Dalia: ” Do you know how to do a pushup? Do you?!”

Nico: “No.”

Dalia: “Well, then, you don’t know more than me. I am not the baby here, you are the baby.”

Nico: “No.”

Dalia: “I know how to do a pushup. You go down, lift up, and then make a scary face.”

Nico: [Unintelligible]

Dalia: “Does this face I’m making scare you, Nico?! Does it?”

There you have it: all our bright dreams for this sensitive and whip-smart young woman, and the moment I turn off the lights, all she really wants to do is intimidate a 2-year-old. Sigh.