Clearly a Form of Squatting

I guess I should provide a report on our parenting experience.

My son is making his way through his second month on Earth. He is healthy and about as well-adjusted as a baby can be. Even the good ones scream a lot. He has put weight on faster than expected. This morning, we had to retire a romper that was supposed to last him several more weeks.

He has a funny toe that will need to be looked at, but he has no other problems, and he has never been sick. That’s a good thing, because his mother will surely flip out the first time mucus starts running out of that little nose.

He is still very strong for his age. He was the product of an induced labor because of his weight and his gigantic head, so he should be behind other babies, but handling him is like wrestling an alligator. From the time he was two or three weeks old, he has been able to lie on his stomach, push himself up with his arms, and hold his head up. He has never complained about being placed on his stomach, although his mother is afraid that if he goes more than 5 minutes, we’ll have to make a new baby.

We were having him checked out, and the doctor started hollering, “This is four months!” I had no idea what he meant. He’s Nigerian. It turned out he was talking about my son’s strength. He had lifted my son by his arms, and my son held his head up. The doctor was amazed. My son was a month old, and the doctor said he shouldn’t have been able to hold his head up until he hit four months. Which makes you wonder why the doctor did the test.

His legs are very strong. He has no problem holding himself and even jumping as long as I provide balance. When I hold him across my lap in a recliner, I have to make sure he doesn’t push against the arm with his feet and leap out onto the floor.

I don’t think he knows what his hands are, but he grabs things with them all the time.

We had to take the newborn pads out of his car seat, and he has been in second-stage diapers for a while now.

Mom says he gives off masculine energy. No argument there. You could look at this kid from a quarter mile and know he was a boy. He is rambunctious and vigorous. His voice sounds masculine. He thrashes around and punches and kicks his parents. He doesn’t cry when he gets hit in the head with a phone or banged against the inside of the utility sink. I don’t think the mental illnesses of homosexuality and gender confusion will be issues. Like my mother would have said, he’s as rough as a cob.

He has started smiling for the right reasons. We think. Experts say early smiles are based on gas or other disappointing causes, but he is coming up on the age when babies smile because they’re happy, and as usual, he is a little bit ahead. He likes to whine and holler when I change his diaper, so I play with him and bug him until he smiles, just to ruin the fun of being in a bad mood.

He has giggled occasionally for a week or two. That’s a relief. You get tired of a baby who has three modes: angry, hungry, and sleepy. When he engages, it makes you feel like you’re dealing with a person, not just an object that requires constant maintenance.

I don’t know how the parents of autistic kids survive without reinforcement from their children. Now that we’re getting some real feedback from our son, we realize how draining it was to do without it.

We’re learning how to cope with him. At first, every cry seemed important and was taken as an urgent call for help, and we didn’t know which cry meant what. Now we realize some of the crying is just plain stupid, so we’re not always supposed to jump up to help him. We are also better at figuring out whether he’s hungry or trying to poop. Those are the two main reasons he cries.

When he starts the poop cry, you don’t grab him and change his diaper. If you do that, he finishes pooping right after you put the new diaper on him, or maybe while you’re trying to stuff him into it. You let him wait until he shuts up. Then there’s a pretty good chance he’s finished.

Experts say babies aren’t suffering when they do the poop cry. Apparently it’s a way of building up pressure behind the poop to push it out. When he does the poop cry, as soon as the poop moves, he goes back to being cheerful and oblivious. Instantly. If he were in pain, he wouldn’t do that.

We haven’t figured out how to identify the tired cry, but then we’re not sure he ever gets tired. He routinely keeps us up until past 1 a.m. Right now, he is feeding as often as once an hour, so we don’t get a lot of windows during which we can put him to bed.

We found out that babies get a growth spurt at about 6 weeks, and when this happens, they may want to feed just about all the time. Of course, he got there a week or so early, and we didn’t know what was happening.

The hungry cry is pretty easy to spot, because he balls up his fists.

Boredom is something knew we’re going to have to figure out. I’m afraid this kid may be very, very smart. It could happen. His grandparents on my side were past the Mensa cutoff, I’m smarter than they were, and his mother is smart. I don’t know anything about my wife’s parents because they died young.

Leftism-tainted science tries to tell us any baby will be smart if given the right treatment, but it’s a huge lie. Genetics determine the child’s range of abilities, and you can’t move the high side by making him listen to Mozart. As for the low side, you could drop him on his head or raise him on a vegan diet that stunts brain growth.

People who aren’t smart very rarely have smart kids. I’m sure you can make a kid somewhat smarter or less smart by raising him in certain ways, but if Dad is a theoretical physicist and Mom is making advances in quantum computing, there is just about no possibility that Junior will not be very sharp, and if the parents are average, they aren’t likely to raise the next Archimedes.

If he’s really bright, it would explain some of the mystifying crying we’ve seen. I thought he was kind of like a potato with eyes, but I have learned that even at this age, babies want mental stimulation, and if he’s smart, he needs more of it.

I am not one of those parents whose mission is to create the next Leibniz. Those people are really misguided, perhaps because they’re not all that bright, themselves. They don’t know what it’s like to be truly, exceptionally bright, so they think intelligence is the answer to all of life’s problems. It’s not. A human being needs a relationship with the Holy Spirit, good habits, and a good personality in order to be a success, and by “success,” I mean a person who is saved and has a peaceful life of victory, love, and abundance.

I don’t mean a miserable, antisocial nerd who makes millions in tech, hangs out with incels and has no empathy. I certainly don’t mean a driven, spoiled athlete who throws up before every competition and can’t make himself believe Daddy loves him unless he wins trophies.

My wife wants our son to be a genius. Genius is lonely. It’s also not necessary. You can be a great surgeon or a good engineer without qualifying for Mensa. You can run an extremely profitable business you love without breaking into the top half of your high school class.

I would rather see my son go into business than a profession. College is the gateway to hell these days.

Genius makes it hard for you to find a mate. If you’re male and your IQ is 170, you’re going to be miserable with a 125 wife, and if you’re female, you’re going to need a 175+ husband unless you want to feel like your husband is your child.

Women need their husbands to be more intelligent than they are. They have a hard time dealing with men who can’t lead. They resent them. We’re not supposed to say this, but it’s true.

Math is merciless. If you’re in the 95th percentile, there aren’t many people in your dating pool.

If our son turns out to be really smart, I’ll teach him to cope with it. I’ll teach him he doesn’t always have to correct people. I’ll try to help him not to be snotty. I’ll tell him to be patient with others. I’ll keep telling him God will be distant from him unless he’s humble.

I’ll make sure he understands that brains and talents don’t make him more valuable than other people.

Anyway, we are doing a very poor job of occupying his mind, so I am going to work on it. He has a weird “baby gym” consisting of a colorful mat with hanging toys, a mirror, and an annoying keyboard he can play with his feet or his forehead, but he isn’t on it enough. I have been getting some other things. I am going to try to find things I can do with him, now that he is emerging from the potato stage. Eventually, we will find pursuits that will reduce his boredom.

He will start languages as early as possible, because they’re really easy for toddlers and babies. He will start music as soon as he is willing. Three isn’t too early. He will start reading at three or earlier. He will be introduced to math early. The other stuff…no one cares. You can learn history and so on when you’re 75. The abilities to learn languages, music, reading, and math drop off fast during childhood.

Here’s a great tip for coping with crying: get a set of Bluetooth earmuffs for shooting and connect them to your PC or TV. When the wife and baby make a racket, you will still be able to hear important things like The Lego Movie.

It works on wives whether you have kids or not, but you didn’t read that here.

Hygiene is getting easier. I insisted on getting a mesh seat and a sprayer for our utility sink, and they really help. At first, Mom was horrified by the idea of putting him in a utility sink, but now that she has changed about 3,000 poopy plastic burritos, she is all for it.

He got a little diaper rash, and she thought it was because I was scraping him with wipes. I learned that wipes don’t hurt babies, and I also learned you really need to dig in there and get everything out.

Poop bacteria turn pee into ammonia. Also, poo contains protease and lipase, two enzymes that eat flesh. Put it all together, and you get diaper rash. Scraping with wipes doesn’t cause rash. It prevents it.

A forceful stream of warm water is better than wipes. It cleans better, and it surely must feel better on irritated skin.

Our new policy is to hose him off late in the day so he will be cleaner during his longest time between changes. He likes the sprayer, so everyone is happy.

We have found that Vaseline is number one for the butt. We tried some expensive stuff, and he got worse. Now, I put on a glove, scoop out a generous portion of Vaseline, and pack it in there. Thank God for gloves.

I read that baking soda reduces the activity of ammonia and the enzymes. I don’t know if it’s true.

He no longer shrieks every time we change him, so we must be doing something right.

We got him a motorized swing. Everyone suggested it. These things move babies around and relax them. We got it for ourselves; let’s be honest. Anything that shuts him up is a blessing.

We stuck him in it, and he loved it. Went right to sleep. Then, of course, the world burst our bubble.

My wife read that you can’t let a baby sleep in a swing. What’s the purpose, then? I would really like to know. She also read that if he’s in a swing too long, he’ll get a flat spot on his head.

After listening to enough screaming, you start to ask yourself how much flatness is acceptable.

We could let him grow his hair long. Tell him he was born that way.

I have come to understand what’s wrong with baby swings. They’re too small. They need to make them big enough for parents. Put the baby in a broom closet and swing your way to relief.

An idea for a more enlightened age.

That’s about it. I guess talking will be the next major event. My mother said my sister spoke sentences at 6 months, so when I was merely very early, she thought I might be retarded. I don’t know what to expect from this one.

He better say nice things about his parents. We don’t have a broom closet, but I could build one.

Here’s a photo from earlier this month:

If you want good family photos, don’t pay a professional, learn about things like composition, and never EVER warn your wife or daughters before you shoot. Women ruin photos with their poses and preparation. Women have a range of about 5 trite poses you see over and over on the web, and unless you want your memories to look like Instagram, you need to shoot first and ask permission later.

Our son is unbelievably funny. We both enjoy him tremendously. I suppose things will be even better when he starts interacting more.