OT - Calling All Parents
Happy Friday MgoCommunity.
My wife and I welcomed our first child last week, a healthy boy, 6 lb, 11oz. He was due May 31, but he surprised us by showing up early. At 37, I am definitely savoring the experience in a way I'm not sure I was mature enough to appreciate in my 20s. I was hoping he would be born into a world where Michigan is the defending National Champs in basketball, but at least his first football game with dad will be watching Michigan/ND. If I knew how, I would post a picture. Can't believe I've been on here nearly 8 years and have no idea how to post a photo.
Also spending a lot of time at home with nothing to do. Anyone have any funny, inspiring, interesting stories about their children? Or something you want to brag about? Or any good advice? Or just anything worth reading in betweeen naps and food.
Congratulations. My best advice is to keep an eye on them 24/7 especially when they're babies and start to get mobile. Oddly enough, when the house goes silent you know your kid is doing something bad/dangerous. Make sure you have fun.
Oh, and don't drag your kid to a theater until they can sit through a full movie at home without crying. Then wait a few more months to be sure. I have no problem flipping out on parents that drag their infants into theaters when they start to cry.
1. Take a picture every month (with the number on a sticker or card) for a year or two to track the growth/development of your boy. Find a stuffed animal for scale to sit beside him. The pictures will be perfect for the scrapbook your wife will create for the first kid. By the time you have a third (if you do, that is) the pictures will be on your phone/camera only, but at least you'll have them.
2. Pay a real photographer for newborn photos within a couple of weeks. The baby will sleep all the time and you'll have some timeless keepsakes.
3. Pay attention to what mom eats when baby seems to be fussy from stomach aches, if she plans on breastfeeding, that is. (I recommend it) Triggers were different for all three of mine.
4. Think carefully about co-sleeping and understand the risks. A co-worker of mine lost a baby in their bed due to co-sleeping, even after taking precautions. I know there is a new study out that was published by NPR about how the risks are over-stated, but do your own research.
5. Take your boy outside, socialize him as much as possible, travel, and go out to dinner, even though it will often be challenging. You and your wife will learn how to go about life with your recent addition, and your son will be comfortable outside of the home.
Good luck, and congrats. Take it slow and enjoy the good times, laugh through the bad.
have said already, enjoy and savior all of it. As they grow each stage has ups and downs, but there is so much to do and enjoy with them as they grow. But, it really does go fast. It seems like yesterday I was walking her to school for her first day of Kindgarten and now she's a Senior in College.
Watch out for the ending of “The House at Pooh Corner”. It’s going to make you weep in front of your child. I say this as the jerk friend who buys this for every single friend who becomes a parent
My wife and I became parents at age 37 (we are the same age) with the adoption of a girl who was 15 months old in 1994. Our 2nd via adoption came to us 19 months later a boy of 13 months. Both came to us from China. Advice, spend more time with your children than the people you pay to spend time with them. Actively carve out time (Saturdays were our big days) and do anything with your child(ren) together. When you are out with them, you develop a building relationship showing them the world, we always said there were people to see, places to go and things to do. Mine are now 25 and 23 and our 25 year old just got married last November. We are all still close talking and face timing multiple times a week. Our 25 year old still turns to us for advice (as does her 25 year old Husband who also was adopted from China) and we happily give them options for consideration (that's advice from parents to 20 somethings). My 23 year old son is still at home finishing college and we still hang out all the time, this year is our 14th straight year with Football Season tickets at the Rosebowl for UCLA games. Taking the type of approach that we did has made our now adult children closer to us and it is so refreshing to be able to compare our relationship to others who did not adopt our approach. Think positive and forward. Being a Father has been the most rewarding Job (that's not a real job) I've ever had.
Congrats! You are doing the first things right. Taking time to be home is very important. Not as much for your kid, but for your wife. Get a couple songs to sing to calm your child. For my first it was Puff the Magic Dragon. Played/sang it early and often. When she was an infant she would go to sleep before we could get through all the verses. For the second I came up with our own song.
I'd love to meet you and the mgowife someday, XM. I imagine they get it from both sides. I was one of 12 children, all 12 college graduates. My four kids are now adults, and the youngest (a college sophomore) is the only one without a degree.
That said, there are more important things than typical "smarts". My husband has no post-high school education, but he taught my children how to weld, work on a car (or a tractor), harvest hay, butcher livestock, and so much more that I would never have been able to do. I think the advice to "be present in your child's life", and especially to spend more time with them than anyone you pay to do that job, is crucial.
s with so much in common. and yeah, as i'm sure you and mr. mahner emphasized, its time with the kids, not possessions or money, that is most valued. train them up in the way that they should go, and when they get older they will not depart from it.
my comment was meant for us parents, that our collective kids don't need an overly generous portion of material stuff which probably all of us are tempted to do from time to time, what they really need is time walking beside them doing the things of life. to put it another way, more is caught than taught and by that i mean that your kids pick up what they see you do way more than what they hear you do/say/tell them.
our kids have never experienced and have almost no concept of your quote here: private school, cool clothes, shopping, and hanging w rich friends
i do agree that those things are powerful influences but we have avoided such things altogether so hopefully our kids don't ever develop and appetite for them, or its less, or at least delayed. so far, so good, but time will tell. i have often said that wealth is a curse and that dovetails with your comment.
I would add that perhaps the asterisk belongs next to the words "mid teens", and not next to the adage about time being more valuable than money. Perhaps teenagers from a divided family, for a few years, were enticed by the flash of affluence. But I imagine that even those very teens would have craved their parents' time when they were younger, and I'd like to see what they said and thought a few years later, when they reached adulthood. I've never met anyone from a wealthy background who looked back and said, "I'm so glad my parents gave me a bunch of stuff and didn't try to spend any time with me."
My son was a planned unassisted home birth. I delivered him and did all the after birth tests that I was capable of. Then we ate the placenta.
During their first year, each month on the date of their birth, MGoWife took about 3-4 minutes of video of them doing whatever they were doing - crawling/climbing/walking/gurgling/pointing/etc. When you look back 10-15-now, 25 years later, you won't believe the growth/changes that take place.during their first year.
There is one and only true standard for fathering.
Boudreaux Butt Paste
'nuff said
Triple Paste is the most superiorest. Nurses in the NICU turned us on to it. It's more expensive, but it's worth it.
(But it's admittedly not as much fun to say as Boudreaux's Butt Paste.)
We just seriously had a rash battle. I love Mgoblog! Lol!
Don't feel the need to take anyone/everyone else's advice. All of us were born with parenting instincts. You'll be amazed by how much comes naturally.
We now have four children, and I must say that they are a tremendous blessing. They’re also challenging, expensive, and stress-inducing. They are worth all of it though. Best wishes to you, and I hope you enjoy many wonderful sports memories with your son.
Make sure his first words are "GO BLUE!"
when Michigan scores a TD. I worry that my daughter may still be a little gunshy from me erupting at odd points in Michigan games; still hoping I didn't damage her hearing or psyche. Required her mother to bring her back from the terror several times before I learned NOT to watch games with her.
Just be there, in person, as much as you can. My four kids laugh about their dad always saying "together, together, together!", whenever one of us would suggest going off to do something solo. You can't re-make the memories, so be there, and pay attention.
My four are 26, 24, 22, and 19, and man it went by fast.
bond with your children and they with each other in a very special way. someday we'll be in the same boat. and i'm going to miss them bad.
i have told the kids that the farm is theirs, and i'll build them a house at a price nobody else can beat. hoping some of them come home. mama and i would help take care of the babies and start the next generation. who knows where they'll all end up, but i'm hopeful at least some of them will return to/near the nest, so to speak.
What a great offer! Too true about wanting them near. One of my daughters is spending two years in Hungary; thank God for technology that lets us see and talk to her! The rest are nearby, and the college sophomore is still living at home. But on those occasions when they all gather back in the living room for food and games, my heart overflows.
while meals are prepared and music is playing and kids are dancing and then one of the kids teaches themself how to play the song we dialed up on the computer, figuring it out on the piano, and then we call up the lyrics to that song, have the piano playing child play the song while we sing it. probably badly, but its still great.
memories like this are kind of like chasing smoke around in a room with a jar and a top, hoping to catch that smoke and put it in the jar. but you can't. maybe the next generation will live in the farm house and i'll build mama and i a little place over in one of the corners of the farm, who knows, but i sure hope they get to experience what mgowife and i have/are and that it is food for the soul like it is for us.
He was dead serious. We laughed so much about that. Enjoy the wonder of your son!
Sorry I'm late - not advice, something to read. "Adam" by Kurt Vonnegut:
https://learn.k20center.ou.edu/api/lessons/1c2bb46ffdf0fed14bcbaaaf4904…
My son turns 18 and graduates from high school next weekend. I also have a 15 year old daughter. I can't tell you how fulfilling it is raising kids. Not all the time, mind you. I actually said "Fu** You" to my son when he was around 15. I can't even remember why now, but I do know that teenagers love to push the old parental buttons. My advice is to stay as engaged as possible. My husband was great in the infant/toddler years, but when middle school and puberty hit, he retreated. He didn't really know how to talk to a moody teenager, and took everything personally, which left me doing most of the hard stuff. Turns out, his parents never talked to him about anything serious when he was a teenager, and he had no idea how to do it. But one commonality was baseball. My husband is a fanatic (and played a bit in high school) and my son is going to play next year at Denison. My husband never misses a game, and they can talk shop afterward. For a sports guy like my husband, it doesn't get any better.
As far as babies go, there is no real way to be prepared for the physical toll it takes on your body. We were older when we had our kids (I was 34 with my son and 37 with my daughter, my husband is two years older than me). Dang, we were tired! But we did a good job of trading off. A sense of humor is a must. Everything babies do, especially the gross stuff, is funny. When she was 3, my daughter threw up on a plane as we were landing. We were unprepared and the guy sitting next to her got it in the lap. He was really cool about it, but that will be a story I tell at her high school graduation.
Read whatever books they have to read in school. It will be great.
Don't give them anything unless they ask for it. When stuff just shows up they tend to not appreciate it.
Talk about dating and sex and marriage as completely as possible in age appropriate ways
Don't dare them to play hide and seek at the hardware store just to keep them busy and quiet. It may be embarassingly hard to find them.
1) Enjoy every moment.
2) Being a parent is like playing defense in basketball. As long as you're not hopelessly out of your league, you can be at least ok on defense as long as you hustle and put in the time and effort. Same with being a parent. Just hustle and put in the time and effort, and you'll be at least ok. Maybe even good or great. So don't worry about it, and see point 1).
You're about to embark on a wonderous journey. Forgive the cliche. Sometimes cliches just ring true.
Love them, respect their pace - whether it's solid food, potty training, calculus...
and even more important, cause yes parents love their kids.... LIKE who they are and let them know you like them always.