Super-Exclusive We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So Swag

Yes, the blog has swag! Except that it’s so exclusive that I’m the only one that has it. While I would love to say that t-shirts are here, in reality, it’s a single, amazing t-shirt. For my birthday, my friend Teresa designed and hand screen-printed the most thoughtful gift I’ve received in a long time. She captured so many wonderful things: Max riding on a Wild Thing’s back, the bicycle with a kid’s trailer, and even a baby in the trailer! And the shirt is my favorite color. (Weirdly, it’s much brighter in person.) I was flabbergasted when I opened it.

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Astonishingly, it wasn’t the first time I was flabbergasted on this specific birthday. On the actual day of my birthday, I had to be into work a bit early for a conference call. Opening my door afterwards, I almost walked into crepe paper hanging down from it. Then I saw the same someone had brought in brownies and scones. While I was on my call, my friend Natalie had snuck around so quietly that I didn’t hear her at all! It reminded me of the other girls getting their lockers decorated for their birthdays in high school, except no one ever did that for me. So to have someone do it as an adult was terribly sweet and unexpected.

Feeling that support and love from my friends was actually one of the reasons I was so hopeful and confident in the post about my birthday. Especially in a time of big transitions, we’re so blessed to be surrounded by people who love us so much.

A Terrific Twosome

It is considered a universal truth that watching two toddlers means “you have your hands full.” At the least, it’s chaos; at the worst, a total and utter cluster. But despite the prevailing wisdom, we actually had a great time babysitting for our friends’ three and a half year old (Z) with our almost two year old.

We aren’t strangers to either taking care of our friends’ kids or Sprout hanging out with Z in particular. We did the babysitting kid-swap before, looking after another couple’s infant last year. Z has been over to our house a number of times, playing with Sprout while his dad Gamemasters (GMs) our gaming group. However, this was different from other times he had been over both because his parents weren’t present and we had to put him to bed. So we weren’t entirely sure what to expect.

The night started auspiciously, with Sprout and Z playing well together. I suggested going over to the park – Sprout’s utterly favorite place in the world – but Z was extremely keen on heading down to our basement. As his dad said, “That means you have good stuff.” Good to know our toy choices pass the muster of a three year old. They played with our toy kitchen – the build-your-own pizza is very popular – and the slide. It helped that Sprout is now talking enough for Z to actually have conduct a bit of conversation with him, instead of just talking at him.

While watching the boys play was enjoyable, dinner was where we really got the show. Chris made spaghetti Bolognese, which is just spaghetti with fancy meat sauce. Sprout shoved the pasta in his mouth as fast as he could move it from the plate to his little face. In contrast, Z proclaimed it, “The most delicious pasta ever” and then proceeded to eat very little. Instead, he launched into an extended semi-monologue on a variety of topics of great interest to a toddler. They ranged from the presence of honeybees in our yard to robots in his bedroom to squirrels (in general) to whether our toilet worked like the one in his parents’ house. (My answer: “Yes, it works the same, although we don’t have a little potty.”) Sometimes he covered all of those topics in the same breath. I’ve taught kindergarten and am a bit of a scatterbrain myself and I’ve never heard such a variety of topics covered in a half-hour. It was a hoot. We tried to follow as best we could, but sometimes we just let him bring us along for the ride.

The best part of our dinner-time conversation was completely incomprehensible to us. Z said something we couldn’t understand, garbled by pasta in his mouth and a lack of enunciation. Sprout didn’t seem to be paying attention up until this point, focusing on inhaling as much pasta as possible. But right then, he looked up and burst out laughing hysterically. Z then laughed loudly and made a funny noise, which set Sprout off laughing again. This entire time, Chris and I were just looking blankly at each other trying to figure out what was going on. Then we joined in the laughing because adorable toddlers laughing about nothing is too cute not to.

Handling the two of them gave me a little preview of what it may be like if we have a second child. As an only and socially awkward child, I never had those “look at each other and start laughing for no reason” moments that you have spontaneously with other kids around your age. It was so joyful to see Z and Sprout share that, completely separate from whatever the adults were doing. While Sprout would be the older sibling in a potential future situation, I could see him sharing that kind of resonance with a brother or sister. Even if he never has a sibling, I hope he continues to have friends like Z that he can have those moments with.

In the end, everything went smoothly, even bedtime. While I can’t imagine that would always be true with two toddlers – it’s certainly not been with a single one – it was a relief to see that it’s at least occasionally possible.

We Do Still Want to Hang Out With You – Seriously

A lot of people without kids complain that when their friends become parents that they never see them anymore. They stop accepting invitations and don’t invite them to their own events. But before Sprout was born, I was determined that Chris and I were not going to be those people. Even though many of our friends live on the other side of the city, we still wanted to see them.

While we aren’t perfect, I think we’ve been pretty good at following through on that commitment. This weekend, we actually spent time with our friends on both Saturday and Sunday. So to all of the folks who keep turning down invitations, I say that you don’t have to be Those Parents.

In fact, here are a few solutions to the most common challenges I’ve heard. While these won’t work for everyone, I think they could help a few new parents spend a little more time with their friends.

“You don’t want to come – it’s going to be a lot of kids.”
Possibly, but you never know unless you ask! If someone doesn’t want to attend an event, they will politely respond “no” or ignore the invitation altogether. Personally, I like inviting all of my friends – with and without kids – to parties at our house. For Sprout’s first birthday party, we rented space at a local park, which worked out very well for both the adults and kids. As he gets older, his parties will focus on his friends, but you can still have all-ages Halloween parties, Christmas celebrations or summer BBQs. For his party, I think one thing that helped was that we encouraged people to donate to the Homeless Children’s Playtime Project instead of bringing gifts. That way, my non-parent friends didn’t have to figure out what to buy for a one-year-old, folks on tight budgets didn’t feel obliged, people who wanted to could contribute, and we didn’t end up with a ton of extra toys.

“People without kids don’t want to hear me talk about my kids.”
Then don’t – it doesn’t always seem like it, but there are other conversational topics in the world! Even if you’re a stay at home parent, you can talk about pop culture, the news, politics or other hobbies. Also, I’ve found that our friends don’t mind us talking about Sprout, just as long as we’re respectful. We try not to dominate the conversation, listen to people tell stories about their own lives (including their pets), don’t imply that our lives are soooo much harder than their, and don’t make them feel bad about not having kids. In fact, our friends have had a lot of questions, either because they do want kids in the future or are just curious. But avoid talking about your kid’s poop. No one wants to hear about toileting habits – unless it’s a hysterically funny story.

“Babysitters are really expensive.”
They totally are – which is why we’ve avoided finding one so far. Now, a lot of this is due to having a supportive social circle and family, but some of it’s just flexibility. Whenever either set of our parents visit or we visit them, we ask if they can watch Sprout for the evening. While we’ve spent most of these nights on dates, we could have also used them to set up time with kid-less friends. More recently, we did a “child swap” with friends of ours that also have a baby. We took their kid for an afternoon so they could go out and a few weeks later, they took Sprout. But you don’t necessarily need friends or family to provide childcare. If you’re part of a couple, you can actually switch off between the two of you. When one of our friends sends an invitation to an evening party, we take turns as to who gets to go and who stays home. As we had a four year long distance relationship and years of opposite schedules, we’re both comfortable going to events by ourselves. It’s nicer to go to things together, but it’s better to go alone than not at all!

“Nap times are so restrictive.”
We’ve managed to phase out the morning nap, but we know well the dangers of screwing with naptime. But if your friends without kids are willing to be flexible, it’s possible to plan around them, especially on weekends. In particular, we’ve found late brunches and lunches to work well. If your kid is bad at restaurants, places with sidewalk seating tend to be more forgiving when it comes to being noisy and dropping food on the ground. While a lot of folks go to dinner too late for us, barbecues that we can attend after his afternoon nap are great. If you’re willing to host something at your own house, you can really expand the possibilities. In theory, you can put the baby down for his afternoon nap right before people come over, allowing you a couple of adult-only hours. Of course, this doesn’t always go as planned. I hosted a gaming session where I was GMing (game-mastering) and inevitably Sprout decided that was the day he didn’t want to take an afternoon nap.

“But I can’t bring my kids to a bar and adults don’t want to go to Chuck E Cheese!”
Unfortunately, they don’t make neighborhood bars like they used to. Back in the day, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather brought my mom and aunt to the local joint where all their friends hung out. In light of this loss, there are a lot of places that can meet the needs of both adults and kids. Besides the aforementioned outdoor dining, perhaps a friend wouldn’t mind hanging out at a park where the kids can play on the playground. Or you can go to the mall altogether and make a stop at the children’s area. While the summer is quickly fading, a lot of outdoor movie series show awesome family-friendly films, like Frozen and Star Wars. Local events can be perfect too – the local county fair or Renaissance Festival can be very entertaining for everyone.

Now, all of this is not to say that new parents should be solely responsible for maintaining the friendship. We ask for patience and understanding from our child-less friends. We may be a little later than usual, we may have odd stains on our clothes, we will have limited schedules, and we may sometimes need to leave to deal with a child-related disaster, whether medical or behavioral. But taking all of that into consideration, we do still want to be friends with you.

Why I Don’t (Really) Mind When You Compare Your Dog to My Kid

A lot of my friends have dogs that they adore and don’t have kids, either because they aren’t at the right point in their lives yet or they don’t want kids. So when I do have the chance to get together with my kid-free friends, my story about my kid is often followed by them with a story about their dog. And I’m totally cool with that. Seriously. (Even if I can snap after too many jokes about the similarities when I’m already stressed – apologies to my sister-in-law.)

Photograph of golden retriever close up.

Here’s why I’m fine with you comparing your dog to my kid:
1) You’re looking for a way to relate.
For people who don’t have kids, it’s hard to know how to respond to someone droning on about changing diapers and sleep issues. What happened to the person who backpacked through South America? But both dogs and kids provide a way to talk about the domestic issues in our lives without being a total dullard.

2) They both take a level of time and emotional investment that people who don’t have pets or kids don’t realize.
As much as I love dogs, I am definitely not interested in getting one. They simply require too much time, emotional energy and attention that I don’t have. Dogs (unlike cats) are very social animals who need a lot of interaction to thrive. While you obviously have a very different relationship with your dog than I do with my kid, I totally respect your level of commitment to them and desire to talk about them.

3) They both rely on us for everything – and get into trouble when they don’t.
Dog stories and toddler stories are remarkably similar. They too often end with something destroyed and / or eaten that really, really shouldn’t have been.

4) We both have to deal with poop entirely too often.
Especially because my husband and I cloth diaper our son. At least we don’t have to pick it up in the yard. But total poop solidarity.

5) They’re smarter than my kid – for now.
Taking problem solving, language and social understanding into account, the average dog is actually smarter as a two year old. My kid is just past one, so he has some catching up to do to your pooch.

6) Dogs really are cute.
If you tolerate my Facebook photos of my kid, I’ll totally tolerate those of your dog.

7) You do understand the difference; you aren’t dumb.
As John at the Ask Your Dad blog points out, anyone who has any social skills at all knows that a dog isn’t the same as a human child. My friends are all smart enough to understand the difference between species.

8) I respect the fact that you don’t have kids.
A lot of my friends don’t want to have kids and I completely respect that. I’m not going to pretend that your dog fulfills a baby-shaped hole in your life because you don’t have a baby-shaped hole. Chastising folks who want to tell a story about their pet after you tell a story about your kid says to them, “Only I have the right to tell a story about my home life because there is something inherently more worthy than my story about my kids than your story about your pet.” But there isn’t – we all have our individual lives and want to share them with each other. The fact that you have different experiences than me makes you interesting. Plus, we parents sometimes like talking about something other than kids – including dogs.

So what are your favorite dog or dog and kid stories?