New Daddy Chronicles, Part II: Now the Baby is Home – Year One

(Note: In the most epic example ever of something that could not be more fitting, Part I of this New Daddy series: “Here Comes the Baby” was originally published in May…OF 2015!!!!!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA! So, now my baby is like, 2. She smokes cigarettes and curses and I think she’s dating someone named Danny. From what I can tell, he’s a Latin King. Anyway, let’s pretend you’re reading this a year in the past or whatever. VERY MYSTICAL, I KNOW. But here it is. What happens in like, the first year of the baby’s life.)

So you get the baby home, and ALL you want to do is sleep for a thousand years, but holy shit, that’s not happening because this is a BABY and you need to keep that little fucker ALIVE, friend. And people might laugh at that, but it is a very real concern for new parents: how do I not cause the death of this screaming little meat-log.

Here’s how it mostly shook out.

Month One:

The baby is a helpless sack of bones, and for the most part, it just sleeps and shits and screams and then sleeps and shits and screams some more. Sometimes, it does all three at once, which is a hat-trick of nature’s wonderment.

The baby cannot do any tricks or entertain you in any way, so at this point, it is not unlike having a very soft, fleshy clock-radio.

Month Two:

NOW WE’RE COOKING! Just kidding, the baby is still helpless and uninteresting. Oh sure, it opens its eyes more, and smiles and farts in its sleep, but it is still nothing more than a breathing, defecating Christmas ham.

Month Three:

Jesus Christ, why won’t this baby learn any tricks? And no, kid, I don’t consider violently shitting so hard that you routinely destroy your outfit to be a “trick.” That’s called a nauseating nuisance. THIS BABY RUINED SO MANY ADORABLE OUTFITS. AND SHE DOESN’T EVEN SEEM TO CARE. Ugh.

Month Four:

The pediatrician tells us we need to work on “tummy-time” to strengthen the baby’s “neck.” Apparently it is NOT normal for the baby’s head to flop around like a cooked spaghetti noodle. She hates tummy-time, though, and I hate being an asshole, so I’ll probably just end up investing in a Fisher Price neck brace. Baby also started daycare this month, and it took her approximately three hours of being around the other kids to get her first cold. (By my count, she had close to 1,000 in the first year. Oh, and hoof and mouth disease. And an ear infection. And jaundice? I don’t know. This kid was/is sick ALL the fucking time.)

Month Five:

She smiles a lot, which is the fucking BEST. She also loses her shit when you make a wolf-howling noise, and that is hilarious. She rolls from stomach to back now, and then back again. I guess that’s a thing to get excited about.

Month Six:

She can eat things other than formula now, which is great. The baby loves al pastor tacos with extra hot sauce and chips with guac!!! She’s also much better at holding her head up like a normal human being, and she can sit, kind of.

If I harbored any thoughts about leaving the kid at a fire station, that window has closed… not only because I think it’s illegal at this point, but also because she’s starting to grow on me now, for sure.

Month Seven:

Now she’s actually getting fun. She makes really strange faces when she gets excited—picture an insane snake getting its belly tickled—and she can totally and completely sit up on her own without toppling over like an idiot. Her palate is expanding too, and now she is really into Italian/Creole fusion. (Haha, just kidding, she eats like, boiled sweet potatoes and shit.)

Month Eight:

I don’t think it’s normal for a baby to have a disposition this cheerful, so I routinely check her dresser for any drugs she might have stashed after acquiring them from an older kid at daycare. Also in the eight month, I thought she was teaching herself yoga by doing something that very closely resembled downward dog while on the floor, but it turns out that she was just shitting.

Month Nine:

She’s a proficient crawler now, so her new thing is “pulling myself into a standing position” which means we have to lower the crib and also cancel most of what we knew to be regular life. (What I mean is, if she can pull herself into a standing position, she can SURELY turn on the stove, and she will in order to make Spaghetti-O’s after drinking all night, and she’ll forget she did it, and the next thing I know my house will be a pile of smoldering ash.)

She’s also really into bubbles now. According to my baby, bubbles are the pinnacle of entertainment and happiness.

Month Ten:

The tenth month is pretty close to the ninth, only now we always try to put sunglasses on her which she fucking HATES. (She looks so cute, though!) We try to reinforce it by exclaiming, “OH! WHO’S THAT MOVIE STAR???” when she has them on, and then when she (almost immediately) rips them off, we offer a disappointed, “oh.” She doesn’t get it.

Month Eleven:

Well, now she can take steps and she says “duh-DAH!” and she says “BOB!” instead of “mom,” and she eats almost real people food, and sometimes she actually gets sassy, and the other day I asked what sound a puppy makes and she said “ARR! ARR! ARR!” and that is CLEARLY a fucking sea lion noise, but I only (lightly) verbally chastised her for her blatant stupidity. (Just kidding—that actually made me sad typing that. She’s brilliant.) She’s pretty much a real human person by month eleven, and it’s astonishing.

Month Twelve:

She’s a real person now. A violent, angry, bitter, rapturously joyful, giggling, laughing, screaming, psychotic person now.

With a perpetually runny nose.