It has now been a week since my child, Cordelia Krizsan Vogel, was born. She is now the personification of infant charm and beauty. And her head doesn\u2019t have that lumpy, fucked-up pear shape anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also has skills. Today, at the doctor\u2019s office, to everyone\u2019s amazement, she rolled over on her own. Many babies can\u2019t do that until they\u2019re two months old. And, every night, she can stay awake from midnight until 8 AM. I couldn\u2019t do that until college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How Evolution Fucks Up My Life<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our child spends several hours in the middle of the night screaming. Every night. I do not say this because it is in any way exceptional. It isn\u2019t. I just mention it for purposes of background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that I have a kid and talk to parents about it, I find that EVERYONE\u2019S kid does this. Why didn\u2019t anyone tell me? What was the big secret? And when I saw my friends\u2019 kids, why were they so quiet and adorable? And why is my kid only adorable when other people are around so that they go \u201cOh, what an adorable child.\u201d\u201d and it\u2019s hard not to say \u201cWant her? She\u2019s priced to move.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first I thought it was because she\u2019s just a little suck-up. I suspected she would end up the sort of kid who reminds teacher that she forgot to give homework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then I realized that it must be evolution. It makes sense. Babies being quiet when non-parents are around has two obvious selective advantages:<\/p>\n\n\n\n i. It makes people who haven\u2019t bred yet think that babies are actually (snicker) cute and (chuckle) nice, fooling them into breeding themselves. Thus the genome is spread. Suckers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ii. In caveman days, when we were much less restrained than we are now, it was a good idea to be quiet around a stranger, since, if you were noisy and annoying, it made it that much more likely that that particular stranger would squish you with a rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The squeaky wheel gets greased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Who Gets My Things When I Die?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Before Cordelia was born, my wife and I wrote a will. This is an amusing activity, and is highly recommended for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you write your will, you get to play the \u201cWho gets your kid?\u201d game. Here\u2019s how it works. The lawyer says \u201cWho gets your kid when you die?\u201d and you think hard and come up with an answer. Then the lawyer asks \u201cWho gets your kid if they die?\u201d And you answer. Then the lawyer asks \u201cWho gets your kid if THEY die?\u201d And you repeat this process until there is nobody left you can even bear the thought of giving your child to and you have to spend ten minutes wincing and pondering how your child\u2019s life would be spent with your funny uncle who believes that all of the body\u2019s ailments can be cured with magnets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, after 15 minutes of the game, I asked \u201cLook. Can\u2019t I just say, if it gets to this point, that all of my child\u2019s possessions will be stripped away and she must roam the Earth, friendless and alone, righting wrongs and fighting injustice, like Caine in Kung Fu?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It turns out, you can\u2019t put the words \u201crighting wrongs and fighting injustice\u201d in your will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, while filling out the will, I got to have this conversation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Me: \u201cWhat is this space for?\u201d I realized that this is not technically correct. There are other options. I could be buried at sea. Or I could be sold to that artists who soaks cadavers in hot liquid plastic until they are preserved as a statue. A shiny, sexy statue. Either would kick ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I didn\u2019t push the issue. If I have learned anything from my short time in this world, it is this: Don\u2019t get on your lawyer\u2019s shit list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Philosophical Aside<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When deciding whether to have children, I spent some time agonizing about whether I wanted to do so for a bad reason. Now, in the thick of the fight, I see the truth. There are no bad reasons to have children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For there to be bad reasons to have children, there have to be good reasons to have children, and I can see clearly now that there are no good reasons to have children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, that\u2019s not quite right. I can think of a bad reason to have children. You shouldn\u2019t have a child in order to dry it out and sell it as an aphrodisiac for Asian businessmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Short of that, though, it doesn\u2019t matter much either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Books Never Did Anyone A Damn Bit of Good<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a well known fact that reading is never good for anything for anyone for any reason. It\u2019s true. It\u2019s been proven by science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is extra-true for books on parenting. Right now, I can\u2019t give much advice to parents, but I can say this: Parenting books only exist to make you feel like shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every parenting book is 20% actual true stuff based on science (e.g. change its diaper when it pisses itself, don\u2019t shake the baby, don\u2019t let it play with plastic bags) and 80% completely unsupported axe-grinding on the part of the author (e.g. don\u2019t feed your child meat, don\u2019t use a pacifier, don\u2019t bind feet).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watch out for the author\u2019s own personal bitterness. In 500 pages of book, something will always slip through:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cInfants can have a wide variety of hair color, and those colors may not stay constant through their childhood. Contrary to popular myth, hair color has no bearing on a child\u2019s personality, even if she has red hair like MY BITCH EX-WIFE.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n My advice to you: Get several books. When you get confused, if all of the books tell you to do the same thing, believe it. If they tell you to do completely different things, someone (if not everyone) is talking out their ass. Do what you want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, if your personal cherished parenting ideas aren\u2019t covered in any of the books, you might want to rethink them. I have some very specific ideas about what would be best for my daughter\u2019s well-being, but I won\u2019t actually carry them out until I can find a book called \u201cYour Love Flows Uphill: An Enema Journey To Child Wellness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n How My Child\u2019s Mind Is Developing<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Being a new parent, I feel a great responsibility to delude myself into thinking that my two week old child is capable of actual thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Occasionally, she practices focusing her eyes, giving her a look that I can easily confuse with piercing intelligence. While struggling to control her facial muscles, she accidentally adopts expressions my mind interprets as smiles, or frowns, or looks of confusion. Sometimes I make faces and stick out my tongue at her, seeing if I can get her to imitate me, and, a short time later, she makes some random movement similar to what I did, making me to think she is copying me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on all of this, I can say that my child is possibly smart. Of course, based on such evidence, I could say exactly the same thing about a sufficiently active poodle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Brief, Tender Vignette<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A friend asked me if I \u201clove\u201d my child. I answered that I don\u2019t know yet. I haven\u2019t had time to feel much of anything, \u201clove\u201d or not. When I get a chance to take a breath, I\u2019ll figure it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, my daughter and I did have a moment the other night. It was late. She was in my lap, well into one of her all-night screaming and pinky-sucking sessions, when, just for a minute, she quieted down. She looked up. Her eyes focused on me. And her mouth twisted, for whatever reason, into a shape that looked a lot like a smile to her daddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I took her in my arms, lifted her, and held her close, overcome with a feeling of warmth, happiness, and optimism. At this point, my daughter spit a large globule of milk onto my chest, mixed with a good measure of mucus for texture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every moment I have which could be used as the punchline for a Baby Blues cartoon, a little bit of my soul shrivels up and dies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But do I love her? Well, I don\u2019t have what my wife refers to as \u201cfoo foo\u201d feelings. No warm fuzzies. But I strongly suspect, if necessary, I\u2019d get hit by a car for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if anyone wants to take her to Asia, powder her, and use her as rhino horn substitute, they\u2019ll have to pay me some SERIOUS folding money first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It has now been a week since my child, Cordelia Krizsan Vogel, was born. She is now the personification of infant charm and beauty. 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Lawyer: \u201cYou can specify what happens with your body after you die.\u201d
Me: \u201cSo I can choose \u2018Buried\u2019 or \u2018Cremated\u2019.\u201d
Lawyer: \u201cYes.\u201d
Me: \u201cCan I choose \u2019Boiled\u2019?\u201d
Lawyer: \u201cYes. But only if, afterwards, you are buried or cremated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n