The Days Of Firsts

For the new parent, life is filled with various "firsts." There is the first smile, the first walk around the block, the first pamper blowout. The firsts are endless.

It's sort of like how annoying people in love can sometimes be — first dates, first kisses, flora flattened in reference books . . . the whole thing. Except with a kid, the mundane is pushed to the forefront like you wouldn't believe. I've already talked about first movies, first bottle returns and first opportunities to flee (not taken). Well, we added several more firsts this past week.

One big one: First plane trip. We were very excited about this and of course somewhat nervous. What if the plane tumbled out of the sky? This of course meant that we were experiencing another new first: First completely irrational fear of all-out tragedy; I think the only way to get over this one is to get the fuck out of your house — and your head. Easier said than done, but the more "risks" you take, the easier it is to gloss over the idea that anything is particularly risky. In this way, I'm looking forward to our first bungee jump, single-engine airplane ride and K2 ascent.

The only tricky thing about plane rides is to make sure a baby is feeding at takeoff and landing. It's just like when you chew gum: the jaw movement of nursing pops a child's ears. Taking off from JFK can be problematic when a plane is number 48 for takeoff or some such thing, which makes it tough to figure out when to start nursing. Fortunately we timed it right and Animal didn't seem to mind that he was hurtling through the air seven miles above the earth at 500 miles per hour.

Another thing: Changing an infant in an airplane bathroom is actually not as difficult as you might believe. Well, maybe you're a pro and you can fix an all-out blowout in a Greyhound bus without having to use a drop of Purell; I'm not that person. Yet. But I never realized there are changing tables above those dinky airplane vacuum toilets. I think we did OK; I still don't see any signs of E. coli or hepatitis, so I'm assuming "mission accomplished."

The only time anything was amiss was when Animal was shocked out of sleep by the cabin lights and PA after the plane came to a complete stop and began wailing. Still, we were proud when Jen heard someone a few rows back exclaim that he/she didn't even realize there was a baby sitting there.

While away, we had our first real sitdown meal; it went fine. We had our first taxi ride; no problem; I even took a picture of the driver's badge and medallion number so we could remember him.

And we had our first baseball game. That was pretty special to me and only gets more special the more I think about it. Not to get all Kevin Costner on you, but there's something about this. Yes, he was asleep for long stretches of the action and no, I don't think three-month-olds can fully comprehend the concept of a sacrifice fly, but it felt good to expose him to . . . a meaningless early season game? No, in my mind I'll keep it Kevin Costner. All of us sang "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" to him during the seventh inning stretch. Pretty big stuff, in my mind.

Did Uncle Goober make a "My First Game" sign? Did I hold that sign over our heads during every half inning? Was I jazzed to see us on the Jumbotron? Is Mom checking with the front office to see if they have a picture of the Jumbotron? Did I record the game to see if Fox showed us? Did I watch the entire game on double speed?

Suffice it to say, the answer to all of these questions is "yes." And yet, the coolest thing for me was holding Animal on my lap thinking that one day Jen would teach him to keep score, one day he'd see something extraordinary, one night he'd root for the other team to win just to get home, some day he might root for the Mets to spite us, maybe some day he'd go fetch beer for the two of us . . . stuff like that.

And we stayed for the whole game. It was a short game, mind you, and like I said, he was asleep for long stretches of time, but the feeling — to paraphrase Mark Grace — was pretty big league.

One thing we learned — and if you have an infant and are planning to travel, or have yet to have an infant and might still like to travel if you have one, this might be useful: An infant's internal clock doesn't really change like an adult's does. So that if you're traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast and your child normally starts to wind down at, say, 8 p.m., you can expect him or her to start to wind down around 5 p.m. or so. It's not scientific, but in the future we know not to plan to be out anytime past 5 or perhaps 6. (And if you don't have children, or haven't had them in quite some time and forgot, this is why you shouldn't feel dissed if you visit someone in the evening and their child who you haven't yet met is nowhere to be seen.)

Of course, the main reason we went out west was to see my grandmother, who at 94 going on 95 in a little over a week, has waited a long time to see this moment, her first great-grandchild.

Now intellectually you know that when it comes to raising a child, the goal is to nurture a decent, moral, thoughtful, independent member of society. But once you tell your parents that either you or your partner are pregnant a secondary reason quickly emerges. It's not that it's not about you — because it never was — but it's more that you are part of an unbroken line that continues on after even you shuffle off this blah-blah-blah.

A long time ago when we were teenagers we assumed that having children was some kind of "selfish" act. Maybe you still see it that way. If so, try to keep believing that when you deliver your newborn to your grandmother. It doesn't feel so selfish then.

And that's not to mention what it does to your parents. I don't know if I've ever seen parents as purely joyful as when they find out they're becoming grandparents (except on 16 and Pregnant, that is). I believe the technical term is "apeshit." When Jen was pregnant I asked one of my parents' friends if he cared at all about his daughter now that he has grandchildren. "Of course not!" he laughed. I asked my parents if they felt similarly and they sort of shuffled their feet around and assured me that no, of course that wasn't the case. They wouldn't dare admit it, but of course they're lying. And that's OK. I don't mind that they're lying. That's part of the deal, and it's not even a bad one.

Into The Thicket Of Dreary Oranges

Back in February I mentioned the "fourth trimester" in the context of appreciating the grace period nature allows parents to get their shit together before the clock starts ticking. In short, in general, for the first three months babies' brains are sufficiently undeveloped to the point that you probably won't screw up anything too badly.

I don't believe in "intelligent design," and I don't even think I understand what that term means, but I love how brilliant anthropology is. Or at least how brilliant human physiology is, in the sense that it's great that human pelvises are small and that babies are born with underdeveloped brains which ends up giving us this grace period to figure out what is going on.

Sometimes when I talked about this idea it was in the context of conveying a faux modesty about how we weren't really doing anything that impressive by keeping Animal fed and diapered. The idea being, under three months no real parenting is happening — none of the heavy lifting like you see in tender moments in the final minutes of a sitcom, for example, or maybe The Road or whatever.

So anyway, for a while we had that to fall back on. And then the other day Animal reached the end of his "fourth trimester" when he turned three months. And now I'm scared.

What has changed? I was looking at pictures we've taken during the past three months, and he's definitely cuter. He smiles all the time now, and not just after urinating in his diaper. He responds very favorably when we say the word, "noodlehead," almost laughing.

Just the other day we had an unconfirmed report from Animal's grandparents that he grabbed his foot. I've never seen him do this. When we give him "tummy time" — that sadistic rite of passage in which babies are plopped down on their bellies and forced to lift their heads — he turns about 40 percent of the way onto his back. I am convinced he is mimicking me when I point with my index finger. I spend an inordinate amount of time point-point-pointing at Animal. Lately he has started to grab my finger. This will do.

Anyway, there are all manner of milestones that we think we've seen Animal reach, all of which are completely boring to anyone outside of about six relatives of ours. Well, except for one thing — those weird spit bubbles are apparently a developmental milestone, too. That was funny to us.

Speaking of saliva, Jen mentioned the other day that if she had one word to describe her life now, it would be "damp," what with all the spit, drool, pee and whatever else. The drool is really something. I mentioned "tummy time" before — and I know it's important for his head strength and whatever else — but what he's really good at during tummy time seems to be drooling. So much so that one of his latest nicknames is "Loord Drool."

Three months . . . wow! "Wow" happens to be one of the words I'm "teaching" Animal — for two reasons: One, it's fun, and two, I have this idea that he's watching my lips and learning how to speak, so it's good to have a variety of words/mouth movements. The latest project involves getting a jump on words that tend to be difficult to pronounce, so I spend time on tricky phrases. "A thicket of dreary oranges," for example, and old standbys like "perilously placed nuclearized wasps' nests."

Today Jen forwarded me this Charlie Brooker Guardian piece about him witnessing his wife's C-section. She thought it was nice. The other day I mentioned that our friend Emily said that it's a thing when you finally meet a baby smaller and younger than your own, this march of time that sneaks up on you. I haven't seen a younger baby than Animal, but I suppose this might count? He is three months you know.

Oh, and yes, we're keeping him. The hospital did have a great 90-day return policy, but now that that's passed, he is ours to keep.

We Took Our Child To The Hunger Games; I'm Pretty Sure He Loved It

Have you ever heard of those Mommy Movie specials where movie theaters set aside a showing for adults to take young babies to and no one really cares if the babies cry or if you change them on the floor or whatnot? Well, we went to one today!

First, I want to say how offended I am that they're generally referred to as "Mommy Movie" days or whatever, because what, daddies can't drag along their infant to see The Hunger Games, too?

I'm proud to report that Animal was very good during his first movie (and his first trip to Brooklyn, his first stroll around Manhattan and his first inter-borough subway ride — well, except at the end there when he cried incessantly and we couldn't figure out what the deal was, until we realized after we got home that he was probably just really overheated in an unnecessary jacket and crammed against us in the carrier).

As for The Hunger Games, it was fantastic. Really well done. When we read the book I thought that it would make a pretty good movie, and they totally pulled it off.

I gather (because Jen said) there's been some discussion about the casting. When we first heard about it, I was surprised about a couple of the choices. While reading the book I pictured Stanley Tucci as Cinna, sort of half-reprising his role in The Devil Wears Prada (maybe that reveals something about me), and I thought Woody Harrelson was strange — that character I thought of as a rotund dark-haired man for some reason. But Woody Harrelson was great, and Stanley Tucci was good, too. And Jennifer Lawrence was great — such a strong character and she fit it perfectly.

(A word about the bizarre reaction to Lenny Kravitz' character and the District 11 characters being black — huh? I don't get it. The casting was smart in the way that it slightly evoked race and class in what seemed like was supposed to be a post-racial world; District 12 seemed like West Virginia while District 11 was perhaps Detroit or something; it worked.)

What I love about the story is how pitch perfect a Young Adult story it is. That the teens strugglie against adults in this tyrannical world is so smart. It reminded me of Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War, except Hunger Games was so much more awesome. The strong female character was so fresh, too, especially against that totally fucked up horrible relationship model in those vampire books.

What I also love about the story is the role of the underdog. (One thing I don't love about the movie is how they inserted a scene spelling that out so explicitly.) The earnest and non-ironic main character comes from an impoverished place where they are almost starving. She's thrust into a world of colorful urbane characters with expressive facial hair and high-speed rail. You can't not root for her. This makes the film sort of like a cross between Rudy, The Warriors, Platoon and My Fair Lady (give or take a few of those, I suppose).

What I also love about the story is the insane dystopian world the story inhabits, where teens kill one another for the television viewing pleasure of adults. It gets your attention. There was an asinine piece on the PBS NewsHour last week about the film where Jeffrey Brown asks his guest about the violence:

Q: Now, you said action. Of course, there's also violence.

A: There is violence.

Q: So, I've been reading. And that seems to be a question, about the level of violence. I mean, at the heart of this is a contest for survival involving teens killing teens.

Now, what kind of discussion has that elicited?

A: Right.

I think, certainly, parents seem to be concerned about this. You do have to ask yourself as a parent, is this a movie you want to take a young child to? And I think most parents would probably say, there — there is a PG-13 rating, so that's out there for you already.

But these are difficult questions, and I think the one thing that comes through from the beginning of the book until the ending is that Katniss is the main character, giving herself up as a sacrifice to save her sister. So there is deep love there, and she's doing this for a reason, that it's not like a video game, where people are just shooting each other for fun. There's a real depth to her story.

Huh?

(An aside: Why do "serious" news programs love to have writers on? They kind of suck on television, which is probably why they're writing and not speaking in public to begin with. Is this some kind of fetish about "writing" and "the print media"? The whole thing is stupid.)

How about the point of the violence is to show how tyrannical a world they're living in? How about comparing it to the violence in a movie like Saving Private Ryan, which was to illustrate how horrible war was? How about noting that ABC decided to air the uncut version of Private Ryan because the violence was an essential part of the message of the film? And that NBC showed Schindler's List uncut for the same reason? But "she's doing this for a reason, that it's not like a video game, where people are just shooting each other for fun"? What the fuck? Figure it the fuck out.

So anyway, I get why young adults would like this Young Adult work. It's a great Young Adult work. What I don't totally get is why adults are so apeshit about it. Before you get all "upset" or whatever, I'm including myself in that.

I wonder if it, in part, has to do with the great black-white/good-evil simplicity of the story. I think it's a stretch, and simplistic, to look at world and political events this last decade and think that there's a tendency for our culture to crave good vs. evil storylines. I mean, I like that answer in the sense that it feels good to point to one thing and apply it to all of popular culture, but there's got to be something else going on.

Maybe adults harbor a latent desire to want to see the underdog prevail. Maybe they want to see good triumph over evil. Maybe there's nothing particularly "adolescent" about it. I think I still crave stories that focus on good underdogs triumphing over evil overdogs. Maybe I crave simplistic stories. Maybe that's why Blue Valentine left me so fucking cold.

Sitting there with Animal, it struck me that I think I want a daughter, if only so she could see a positive female character like the one in The Hunger Games.

One last thing — I kept hearing about this great soundtrack with all manner of wonderful bands. I only heard a few soundtracky songs during the credits. It turns out that only three of the songs on the soundtrack actually appear in the film itself. That is basically the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever heard of. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but isn't a soundtrack comprised of songs that you hear parts of in a film? I thought it was bad enough that television shows had soundtracks. This might actually be worse.