baby

Don’t talk politics. Do. Not. This old adage is more important than ever this year, with an election that started off bad and has gotten consistently worse.

I’m well aware that this should probably be the last thing on my mind as we get ready to deliver Baby Number Two in a few months, but it’s there. Yes, it’s mixed up in my brain with thoughts of getting the right crib and making sure that our organic crib mattress gets delivered on time, but it is a dominant thought, something that I’m legitimately worried about.

I wouldn’t say I’m the black sheep of the family, but I’m pretty sure my mom isn't surprised that some of the choices I’ve made in raising my son have been a little different from the way she did things. My mom gave us all she could. She stayed home to raise my sister and me for most of our childhood; she only returned to work to help put us through college.

I am at the bar, working on a piece about kids’ books, while my wife stays home to mind the baby. The lady next to me strikes up a conversation about this and that. Then she notices that I’m still casually clutching a copy of Guess How Much I Love You?

Full-fat dairy may be “healthier” for you than low-fat dairy. “May” be, as in, probably is, like with numbers and science and stuff.

“It will be long,” they told me. “It will likely be days after your due date,” they advised. “Everything will begin slowly with breaks between contractions,” they said. They lied.

Parenting a toddler is invigorating, exhausting, dirty, and intense. But since I want my daughter to have cousins (or at least pseudo-cousins) one day, I can’t always share the truth about my tiny tyrant on social media, for fear that my friends and siblings would never reproduce. And because, sometimes, you just want to project the image that you're calm, cool, and collected.

We’re trying to raise him with a lot of options and very few assumptions, but I won’t be mad at you if you call my kid “handsome little boy” or something. It’s fine. People have a hard time talking about babies without gendered labels. Even I have a hard time with it, and I’ve put a kind of ridiculous amount of energy into analyzing this stuff.

However, I do have one favor to ask. Please, for the love of everything that is good in this world, stop calling him “little man.”