I'm going to be a daddy!
Forum: water cooler
Topic: I'm going to be a daddy!
started by: Grim
Posted by Grim on Jan. 09 2006,07:29
Christmas morning my wife woke me up to inform me that we have a little bundle of joy on the way. That's right, I'm gonna be a daddy!So, if I've been a little preoccupied over the last few weeks and haven't been doing my part to contribute, you'll have to forgive me. My mind has been on other things.
Before any of you ask, yep, this is my first child. My wife is going to the doctor tomorrow afternoon to make sure everything is copacetic, and in (roughly) nine months, I'll probably be too distracted to participate in anything for awhile again.
Okay, that's all. You won't have to worry about being subjected to baby pictures until sometime late summer.
Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Jan. 09 2006,07:50
A Grimling? 
Look out world...
Posted by Grim on Jan. 09 2006,09:20
No shit, right?I'll be getting called into school when the kid's in kindergarten because she/he won't stop correcting the teacher.
Posted by roberts on Jan. 09 2006,22:37
Hi Grim,Glad to see you in the forums. Its been awhile.
Thanks for sharing such great news with us.
Wishing you, yours, and the one the way, all the best.
Robert
Posted by green on Jan. 10 2006,03:58
Congrats!!
Posted by cbagger01 on Jan. 10 2006,18:53
Congratulations!
Posted by Taino on Jan. 11 2006,01:52
Congrats.. 
Uh oh.. Diaper changes..
Posted by Grim on Jan. 11 2006,03:52
Nope, no diapers. I'm just gonna stick the kid's soiled ass in the toilet and flush until s/he's clean as a whistle.At least until my wife finds out and beats the living shit outta me.
Posted by clivesay on Jan. 11 2006,04:02
| Quote (Grim @ Jan. 10 2006,21:52) |
| Nope, no diapers. I'm just gonna stick the kid's soiled ass in the toilet and flush until s/he's clean as a whistle. At least until my wife finds out and beats the living shit outta me. |
Grim,
You'll be amazed what you get used to. My first biological children were twins 6 weeks premature. Feedings every three hours 24hrs a day. The first 5 months are only recalled in video and pictures. Our brains shut down. You'll become a semi pro diaper changer and baby swaddler in no time.
Chris
Posted by adraker on Jan. 11 2006,08:17
Twins....now theres a concept.As in the Brothers Grim(m).
The Grim Sisters doesn't have quite
the same ring to it.
Anyway, congrats to you and yours Grim.
Posted by clivesay on Jan. 11 2006,16:42
| Quote (adraker @ Jan. 11 2006,02:17) |
| Twins....now theres a concept. As in the Brothers Grim(m). The Grim Sisters doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Anyway, congrats to you and yours Grim. |
Ha! That would be great! Hey Grimm, sometimes one is able to hide in there for a long time.......
Chris
Posted by Grim on Jan. 11 2006,23:55
| Quote (clivesay @ Jan. 10 2006,21:02) |
| Grim, You'll be amazed what you get used to. My first biological children were twins 6 weeks premature. Feedings every three hours 24hrs a day. The first 5 months are only recalled in video and pictures. Our brains shut down. You'll become a semi pro diaper changer and baby swaddler in no time. Chris |
Chris,
Technically, I have a goddaughter. I say technically because I've lost touch with her momma and daddy since I got out of the navy.
I used to change Becca's diapers all the time. I've been puked on and pissed on but not yet shit on (though I hear it's great
). I'm not sweating the diaper changes, or not getting any sleep, or staying pissed off all the time. As people who are familiar with my "work" here in the forums, I'm like that all the time anyway.
Nah, the thing I'm worried about is, what if we have a little girl. I didn't have any sisters growing up, so I have NO idea how to treat a little girl. Sure, the diapers, the nightly feedings, I'm not worried about any of that. I'm worried about having a bunch of giggling girls around the house for sleepovers. First periods. Makeup. Boyfriends. You know, shit that I have NO IDEA how to handle.
Everybody has stories about "that chick's dad". I'll be that guy. Cleaning the shotgun when some little bastard comes over for a date. Sharpening swords. Whatever. I can see me doing that, but, whatever. I dunno.
I've been getting conflicting advice, but I think the idea that I'm gonna go with is sealing her in a barrell and feeding her through a knothole until she's thirty.
Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Jan. 12 2006,01:40
(can't find where I got that from, there's a whole series, something about "I love Darth"... or maybe it was "I hate Darth"...or...)
Posted by clivesay on Jan. 12 2006,02:18
| Quote (Grim @ Jan. 11 2006,17:55) |
| Nah, the thing I'm worried about is, what if we have a little girl. I didn't have any sisters growing up, so I have NO idea how to treat a little girl. |
Grim, that's an easy one. You'll be putty in her hands and she'll think you're the greatest guy in the world. I have 3 girls all together. They clash with you during the teenage years, as expected but now my 20yr old realizes I'm not near as dumb as she thought I was when she was 17 and 18yrs old.
Chris
Posted by AwPhuch on Jan. 12 2006,02:36
Whooo boy...just wait till the little ones get mobile and start getting into crap...If it gets reallly quiet...get up and find em..because they are doing something wrong...oh and be prepared to watch a disney movie no less than 20x in a week
have fun man...I know I am!
p.s. Pregnancy farts can peel paint!
Brian
AwPhuch
Posted by Grim on Jan. 15 2006,00:21
If I haven't thanked you guys for the support, consider this as thanks. I don't know if I'll be able to send out cigars when the time comes, but I'll see what I can do. ;)
Posted by clivesay on Jan. 15 2006,00:39
| Quote (Grim @ Jan. 14 2006,18:21) |
| If I haven't thanked you guys for the support, consider this as thanks. I don't know if I'll be able to send out cigars when the time comes, but I'll see what I can do. ;) |
Grim -
When the time comes, let me know and I'll send you a case of Barney videos. That's the best 'thank you' you could ever give me!
Chris
Posted by Grim on Jan. 17 2006,03:17
Ummm, hell no. There will be no Barney the purple theropod in my house. And before you even say it, yes, I've been told that I will have barney if my kid wants barney, but I will hold out as long as humanly possible (and then I'll PM you for your address ;)We've been downloa*COUGH* I mean, ahem, we've been aquiring old cartoons that you can't buy anywhere. Old looney tunes cartoons, the old Max Fleisher Superman cartoons, and I'm currently looking for old Woody Woodpecker cartoons. There's some other stuff that I've told family and friends they can get for birthdays, etc. "Battle of the Planets", old school "Transformers", "Blue Falcon/Dynomutt", any one of the recent three batman cartoons ("Batman", "Batman Beyond", "The Batman"), "Justice League", etc.
Out of all of the new cartoons they have on Cartoon Network, "Samurai Jack" was actually really good, and "Dexter's Laboratory" didn't suck. I hear they dropped Jack. Pretty much everything else aimed at kids on the channel sucks ass.
It seems that modern children's entertainment is completely devoid of any intellectual stimulation whatsoever. If you think Barney was bad, you should watch the Boo-Bahs. Conjunction Junction was pretty bad when I was a kid, but there's some Australian kids show that I can't sit in the room for 5 minutes before my ears begin to bleed.
SpongeBob SquareAss? What the is up with that show? I can feel my eyes glazing over and my brain shutting down in just a few minutes.
I'm tempted to just throw the ing TV out of the house, or cut the television half of the cable off. It seems that the only genuinely entertaining cartoons that are on the boob-tube nowadays are adult-oriented.
I mean, I'm sure I'll succumb to letting my kids watching something that I detest because I know I'll love my kids. Prime example--I watched He-Man all the time when I was a kid. My brother downloaded an episode of He-Man not too long ago and was laughing his ass off when he told me I had to come over and watch it. He-Man was so gay I couldn't even believe it. I asked my Dad, "Hey pop, that show was so gay, why did you ever let me watch it?" and he said basically the same thing you've said...you let your kids watch whatever as long as it's not damaging because they like it and because you love your kids.
Still, If I'm living in denial, I'm holding out as long as possible... ;)
Posted by Grim on Jan. 30 2006,21:51
Baby's First Picture
Well, there he/she is. According to the sonogram, we're about 9 weeks and 5 days along and the projected financial forecast indicates that the kid is gonna cost roughly the GNP of a small third-world country.I realize that everything is measured in weeks with pregnancy, but I still want to say three months. Of course, when the kid is born, everything is measured in months. "What size diapers do we need?", "I dunno, these say 15 months, can you keep 'em in the same diaper for that long?"
According to baby doctors, I'm roughly 365 months, which is probably how my mom still marks my age, but that's a totally different story. I've noticed that all new parents tend to get sucked into this unnatural method for marking time. "Our boy is 18 months old, how old is yours?", "13,392 hours", y'know, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
I think this is gonna cause me to start marking time and other measurements in all manners of inconvienient ways. Furlongs per fortnight, kilometers per bushel, volume per cubit, milliwatts per gummi bear, calories per pelvic thrust--no wait--that last one might actually be usefull.
Posted by clivesay on Jan. 30 2006,23:37
Grim, I can tell that following you through the beginnings of fatherhood is going to be better than anything I could watch on TV.
Thanks for sharing.
Chris
Posted by doobit on Jan. 31 2006,03:11
That's way cool to see. I agree with hold out on the Barney thing as long as possible. Stay away from Wiggles too. Get'm hooked on TechTV.
Posted by muskrat on Feb. 02 2006,17:39
Consider yourself Blessed, My wife and I had one chance, the little fellow misscarried, since then we have not been able to succed again.So even through all the rough of it, you and your's is very blessed!
But, I still count my blessings, after all we both make very good uncle and aunt!
And just think, no sleepless nights, no GNP of a thrid world country debt, and we get to spool the hell out of them and send them home!
Posted by newOldUser on Feb. 03 2006,00:27
Congrats.It wont change your life much... ha, ha, ha, HA, HA, HA,
, snicker, snicker, snort, cough, wink, nudge. And people think that Linux comes with little documentation. Wow! Don't expect an Operators Manual when you bring this toy home.
One day you'll be saying something to your kid and you'll think "I sound just like my father". It's an interesting moment.
-Good luck
Posted by Grim on Feb. 03 2006,04:00
| Quote (newOldUser @ Feb. 02 2006,17:27) |
| Congrats. It wont change your life much... ha, ha, ha, HA, HA, HA, , snicker, snicker, snort, cough, wink, nudge. |
It already has, and I haven't even gotten to the fun parts yet. | Quote (newOldUser @ Feb. 02 2006,17:27) |
| One day you'll be saying something to your kid and you'll think "I sound just like my father". It's an interesting moment. |
And it wasn't because he let me get away with anything, just the opposite, but he did make sure that I understood that the things he taught me was to prepare me to live life on my own.
I still look to my Pop for advice and talk to him about all sorts of stuff. If nothing else, I realize even more today the sacrifices he made for me and my brother growing up and he did it all without a complaint, without getting upset, cool as a cucumber all the time.
I was thinking about all the stuff I did growing up, the camping trips, basketball/soccer/volleyball practice/games, all of the stuff we did throughout the week, and he worked about 60 hrs a week most of the time. I brought this up to him and asked him, "How'd you do it?" He just grinned and said, "made it look easy, didn't I."
Ain't that the in' truth.
Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on Feb. 03 2006,04:15
| Quote (doobit @ Jan. 30 2006,22:11) |
| Stay away from Wiggles too. |
Yeah, because your kid will end up sounding Australian. Apparently. According to "concerned parents" in the US...
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 03 2006,04:54
If you want to THINK that you have a user manual, there is a good book out there called "What to expect when you are expecting" or something like that.It's better than nothin'
But in the end you will still look back and realize that at the time you had no F&&&in clue
Posted by Grim on Feb. 03 2006,16:07
"What to expect when you're expecting" was the first thing I went out and bought. Pretty good book, kind of depressing though. The first 1/3rd of the book tells you everything that can go wrong (i.e. miscarriage). Since my wife's over thirty, the risks were a little higher, but we're a couple of weeks away from the second trimester, so, we're not that worried.The good thing is that there's a bunch of women on both sides of my family who've been waiting for me and my wife to have a baby. My brother and I are the only boys to carry on the family name, so, the kid is going to be getting a lot of attention. And, hopefully, some good schwag. My mother-in-law has already volunteered to buy us the crib, but there's a growing list of stuff. Stroller, car seat, baby bath, playpen, changing table, baby monitor, diaper genie, baby gates, teething rings, bottles, nipples, diaper bag, and that's the (extremely) short list.
I'm thinking I can use the baby monitor as an excuse to pick up one of the wireless x-10 type cameras. When baby is older, that might come in handy in other projects.
Posted by AwPhuch on Feb. 04 2006,00:38
| Quote (Grim @ Feb. 03 2006,11:07) |
| "What to expect when you're expecting" was the first thing I went out and bought. Pretty good book, kind of depressing though. The first 1/3rd of the book tells you everything that can go wrong (i.e. miscarriage). Since my wife's over thirty, the risks were a little higher, but we're a couple of weeks away from the second trimester, so, we're not that worried. The good thing is that there's a bunch of women on both sides of my family who've been waiting for me and my wife to have a baby. My brother and I are the only boys to carry on the family name, so, the kid is going to be getting a lot of attention. And, hopefully, some good schwag. My mother-in-law has already volunteered to buy us the crib, but there's a growing list of stuff. Stroller, car seat, baby bath, playpen, changing table, baby monitor, diaper genie, baby gates, teething rings, bottles, nipples, diaper bag, and that's the (extremely) short list. I'm thinking I can use the baby monitor as an excuse to pick up one of the wireless x-10 type cameras. When baby is older, that might come in handy in other projects. |
Just make sure you put the reciever in the right room!
Brian
AwPhuch
Posted by cbagger01 on Feb. 04 2006,06:15
If you can get someone else to pay for it, go for it.But in practice, the audio ones are smaller and work better when you reach the point where baby is in his/her own bedroom (should really be called a cribroom). At night, you can turn on the (audio-only) baby monitor in your bedroom and still hear the snoring and any cries that you otherwise might not hear.
When you reach a comfort level where you KNOW that one of you will wake up if the baby really cries instead of the normal little noises in his/her sleep, you will discover the best feature of the baby monitor:
THE VOLUME KNOB.
The volume knob is a great thing. Finding the right volume setting is the secret to being able to get enough sleep to be a functional human being the next day while at the same time still get woken up for a real problem.
Also, when you get your baby monitor transmitter/receiver, don't let them sit in the box for the next 3 months.
Try them out.
Our first monitor was actually the higher-priced model, yet it suffered from an annoying 60Hz humming noise, similar to the sound a badly grounded public address system can make.
Lukily, it was still within the return period, so I swapped them out for the cheaper brand and the new one works like a charm.
Also, you can wear the small battery-powered audio-only receiver on your belt if you are doing garagework or yardwork or similar I-gotta-be-mobile jobs during the child's naptime.
And if you get to choose the crib style, make sure to avoid the stupid imported cribs from a certain European country that come with the drop-down side with metal sliding rails. Get the ones with plastic sliders. The last thing you want to hear is a metallic "Screeeech!!!" from the crib when you are holding your finally-just-fell-asleep-baby and you try to drop the side down with your one free hand.