Hello, There, Sailor!

How did I let a whole week go by without blogging? Because that was the week that my husband's ship was in U.S. ports.

Everything revolves around when I might get one of those precious phone calls from him. Depending on what kind of bridge watch he had or how many hours it had been since he had slept, the calls ranged from quick check-ins to lovely chats. My job is to be available and to keep my phone charged and nearby.

Most importantly, I let one of those calls go to voice mail so that he could record a message for Max. When I play the distinctive voice of his daddy to him, his eyes get very wide and he holds very still. It's one way we're trying to help his memories connect for when they are reunited.

We had very little advance warning before Dan went out to sea this time, but hopefully by the next cruise we will get around to my idea of video recording him reading children's books. Playing those videos for Max would make a very special bedtime routine indeed.

But now it's back to my routine. Which apparently will include bathing my husband's dog, Hippo. She is filthy.

New Media: Daddy Knows Worst

Home on maternity leave, I have been watching an inordinate amount of television and so have developed an excessive amount of opinions about it.

They can be boiled down to one sentiment: Generally, TV sucks. Shows suck, commercials suck, broadcast news really sucks. But it has become my primary connection to the outside world, so I probably suck by now too.

Most irritating is how commercials portray father figures as complete idiots. I suppose the target audience are the women who control the family purse strings, especially those who think they are superior to their husbands, and if a sales pitch confirms for them that suffering these morons can be assuaged by a certain product, then they're going to buy it.

The worst offender is the Oscar Mayer Selects cold cuts commercials. Daddy is played by Ben Weber, who always will be Skipper from "Sex and the City" for me but who tries to Facebook-friend the babysitter and drives a lawnmower inside a store in these ads.

He is a complete doofus. His wife clearly thinks so, as evidenced by her tone of "No" when he tries on a pair of skinny jeans, which makes saying "Yes" to these preservative-free meat scraps so much more poignant.

It's also clear that the only thing holding their marriage together is the sex, evidenced by a make-out session in the family van.

He has become the ultimate Oscar Mayer wiener.

When did this happen? When did we go from "Father Knows Best," which was perhaps a sexist overgeneralization, to "Father Was Hardly Smart Enough to Know Where to Put It to Make You in the First Place"? Methinks the pendulum has swungeth too far.

Fair Winds and Following Seas

Bye-bye, Daddy.

This afternoon, I stood on the curb outside the Toledo Express Airport and bid goodbye to my husband, Dan. His sea bag and briefcase at his feet, he held me and gave me the encouragement I would need to face the next few months on my own:

"You'll do a great job. Thanks for being such a good mom."

I cried the whole way home.

I am grateful that baby Max and I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with my parents and brother, hanging out at the farm and eating steak. But now it's nighttime, and Max is sleeping in his playpen, Gabe is with his dad, my dog Johnny is with my ex, and Hippo is passed out on the cool tile after her misadventures of letting herself out in the 100-degree heat while I was gone. I feel alone.

Luckily, HBO is running the entire miniseries of "John Adams," one of my favorites and a great way to reflect on the nation's birthday. And I'm trying very hard to resist a binge-eating urge. (I'm full of steak and corn and melon anyway.)

I've spent many long months with Dan away at sea before, so I know the loneliness will come and go. I know that just one conjuring of his image in my mind or, more profoundly, a whiff of his shirts in his closet will make me smile one minute and weep the next. I know that I will grow accustomed to not hearing from him and then shoot to the moon with happiness when his ringtone jingles my phone if he happens to hit a domestic port at a reasonable hour.

But this is the first time he has ever been away when we've had a baby. I was willing myself to hold it together, but my knees went weak when he kissed Max, rubbed his chubby little arm and told him to be a good boy for me while he was gone.

Lots of parents, especially those deployed in the military, spend long stretches away from their children. Each time is hard at any age, but perhaps especially so during these rapid stages of babyhood. We all will manage as best as we can.

I will do most of the crying, I'm sure.

Should Baby Boys Have Only Baby Girlfriends?

When I saw my friends' announcement on Facebook that their son had finally made his debut in the world, the thoughts that zipped through my head went something like this:

"Oh neat, he was born two weeks after Max. Dan and I were born two weeks apart too. Maybe he and Max will find each other someday like we did."

I was startled by these thoughts. I think somewhere behind them were imaginations that had this couple stayed in the area and not moved away, our sons likely would have grown up together as church friends.

But my brain quite innocently went to comparing their happenstance of being born two weeks apart to the same time frame between me and the person I love most.

I have decided that it is normal to have an innocent thought about your son finding companionship or love or romance or whatever with the progeny of good and decent friends, regardless of the biological sex. We do it readily enough between baby boys and baby girls.

The other day at my OBGYN office, a nurse was admiring how handsome Max is and told me that there had been a mini burst of girls born and that she would be happy to serve as matchmaker and secure him a little girlfriend.

I smiled politely, but all I could think about was how willing we all are to sexualize our children at an early age as long as it is in a heterosexual way.

I wonder if that same nurse ever would dare to say something to me like, "Oh, there was another handsome baby boy who was in here yesterday. I should arrange a meeting between you and his mom so that you can get them betrothed -- in the few states that allow that sort of thing."

I believe that whatever bent his sexuality will take, Max has it right now. There's no way to tell, but there are ways to let it develop naturally. We did this with his big brother, and he is all about ogling the ladies right now. In fact, it would be better for someone to come up and offer to match-make for my teenager.

If Max and my friends' little boy ever do find each other, I hope they do indeed note how close they are in age and find some joy in that. Whatever other connections they discover will be up to them.

Help a Mama Out

Life continues to go well here in newborn land, although I had hoped to blog more often. It's not that I couldn't find the time. I just often spend it doing something else.

I always had planned to extend an invitation for guest bloggers, so please don't feel like it's just a desperate, unshowered, overtired mommy begging for others to do her work. No, not at all.

I will keep posting, but it will be good to publish someone else's thoughts when I've suddenly realized what feels like one long day actually has been four in a row and Mommy Remix is getting a touch stale. In journo land, this is what we call having a well, from which we dip when it's a slow news day.

Please send your submissions to me via email at rckleiboemer@gmail.com and I will happily put them in the lineup.

You can write a full-length post or just a paragraph. Send pictures if you'd like. You have my full permission to be as snarky and foul-mouthed as I have been to this point, but no worse.

Topics could include:

• Your own family story
• What you do/did or don't/didn't enjoy about pregnancy
• Adventures in fertility, or disappointments and challenges 
• Why you don't want to have a baby
• What you can't stand about how parents raise their kids
• Thoughts on co-sleeping, nursing in public, crying it out, cloth diapers, etc.
• Hilarity of traveling with children
• How you keep your marriage and adult relationships going
• Public policy regarding education or health care
• What you like or don't like about your OBGYN or pediatrician
• Tips and warnings for new parents
• The best baby shower game or birthday party theme
• How you're raising your kids to deal with their peers
• To give or not to give an allowance
• Methods of discipline
• What phrase of your parents you swore you'd never repeat but did

For the record, Gabe often hears, "What the hell's the matter with you?" The more I say it, the more I like it.

And this post took me more than three hours to write, interrupted by two nursing sessions and one pee blowout that soaked both Max and me to the point of complete outfit changing.

The Shock of New Parenthood

Realizations come like the dawn to new parents,
but not until reality zaps them like an electric fence.

There are some things in life you just can know intellectually, and others you must experience first.

Growing up on the farm, my father told me repeatedly that the electric fence surrounding the pastures would poke me if I made bodily contact with it. I conceptually understood what he was saying, but I had no way of knowing that the "poke" was -- at once a zap in my fingertip and a sickening thud in the middle of my abdomen -- until I actually touched the damn thing.

Similarly, knowing what kind of parent you will be is not really possible until you actually touch the live wire.

Even though I might be a different kind of parent to a different kind of baby, I generally know what to expect. Not much is going to shock me this time around.

I "know" there will be sleepless nights and unshowered days; crying jags (the baby's and mine); and wild vacillations between unbearable love and unbearable exasperation. I know about walking around with the odoriferous mix of lavender-scented lotion and milk spit-up always clinging to every article of clothing you own. I know how much of a change it will be to bend every adult thought, moment and hope around the demands of a tiny little person who cares not that you once had a career and a sex life.

I know how to encourage the various stages of physical, mental and emotional development, and how a toddler will totally have his own way of doing all of that despite my best efforts. I know that I prefer to give him real food over processed junk, medical terminology over goofy labels for body parts, PBS over Cartoon Network.

I know he'll grow like a weed and get filthy anyway, so most of his wardrobe will come from thrift shops. I know he'll be equally curious about his mommy's makeup and his daddy's shaving cream and that it won't freak me out if he comes out of the bathroom with eye shadow on his chin and foam on his arms. I know to organize his room and play areas into "centers" just like a preschool does, making it that much easier for him to learn early how to pick up his own toys.

I know that school is his job, and that I'm not spending my valuable time doing his homework. I know that sports or band or chess club are his activities and his chance to have a life apart from me, and that I'm not spending my valuable time sitting in a lawn chair watching his practices. I know that he will be expected to mind his manners, help out at the farm, go to worship, and be nice to every person and creature he meets.

I know I don't know everything, but I know I've tested, failed and succeeded enough to be confident about parenting. I've had plenty of advice and criticism, thank you very much (sincerely, some of it was helpful). I got this.

My husband? He has yet to be zapped.

Gabe was fully cooked once that egg ever came to live with him, so his role has been more like what he assumes as an officer with any new able-bodied seaman that comes his way, teaching adult tasks by example. When Gabe blundered through the sliding screen door, Dan just got his tools and talked Gabe through the repairs. The next time Gabe knocked the door off its track, he muttered a curse under his breath, got the tools and fixed it himself, without even been told to do so. Ta-da!

Dan shared with me that during one of his recent sea cruises, he spent many a long watch wondering what kind of parent he would be to our baby. He said he felt much better when he realized that I already was a good parent and that he just had to be the one following my example this time.

That was a really nice compliment, and frankly a good plan, but he will need to find his own way too.

He will have to face that moment when he discovers his son is painting his lawn mower with mayonnaise, and put to the test all of his preconceived notions about discipline as a teaching method and not a punitive method, and somehow find the strength not to drop-kick that kid to the moon like he will really, really, really want to.

He will have to find an answer when his naked son toddles up to him and asks, "Daddy, when I do this to my penis, why does it do that?"

If he ever responds with, "Ask your mother," I will remind him that I don't mow and I don't have those parts. Totally his area.

He will have to change diapers, read aloud stories, and scrape pureed squash off the baby's face and back into his mouth, over and over and over. He will have to bandage boo-boos and attend parent-teacher conferences. He'll know that thud in the gut when he sits up all night long, praying that the fever leaves the most precious grip on his heart he has ever known.

He may have other challenges, too, like figuring out how to parent when he is away for months at a time on his ship.

I know he'll be just fine. Once he gets poked for real.

Code 10-10: Officer Needs Help

One of the sexiest things a woman can hear is her partner telling her children, "Hey, listen to your mother."

When my husband says this, I get momentarily distracted from whatever harping is causing my teenager's eyes to roll. I have to pause a moment and give a prayer of gratitude for what we all need:

Backup.

In the newsroom, we sometimes hear a dispatcher on the scanner asking if police need more units wherever they are responding. Co-parenting is a lot like this. Someone with impressive authority, quick response time, and serious weaponry is truly appreciated when a situation gets overwhelming.

Tangling with teenagers is not for the weak. Mine happens to stand more than a foot taller than me too, so eye-to-eye confrontations work only when he cooperates.

I usually hold my own with him quite well. He trends on the obedient side of the spectrum anyway. Yet he is still a child, and I am still a parent, and there are days when recalibration is needed.

Sometimes I'm off my game, or sometimes that kid simply loses his mind and thinks he can grumble or guff his way out of it. Either way, it becomes quickly evident that we are both in need of a rescue, me from floundering and him from himself.

Enter the other adult, and the power balance shifts with a heavy thud.

"Listen to your mother" is code for "Shut your mouth." It means the child has crossed a boundary, and the mother's partner isn't going to stand for it a moment longer. It means, "I don't care if she's cranky or wrong or irrational, I'm on her side, period. You have several years yet to figure out how you're truly going to become an independent person who is responsible for himself, but only one more second to realize that you are going to listen to the entire rant, nod your head, apologize, and then perform whatever rectifying behavior she wishes."

Depending on the sharpness of the tone, it also can mean that the child is about to raise the stakes -- and lose. The co-parent is signaling that while it may have taken that long to exhaust one parent's patience, the other one's fuse is shorter. The child has forfeited whatever reasonable and commensurate consequence the first parent was trying to mete out and is about to incur some serious wrath, not only for what he did in the first place but also for bringing distress to a beloved partner.

The phrase could just mean, "Good grief, I can't stand the sound of her high-pitched ragging anymore either, so just say yes and get it over with so I can watch TV in peace, please."

It's all good, as far as I'm concerned. It satisfies what I need in that moment, which is some help.

This is why single parenting can be challenging. Single mothers are not less successful at mothering than married ones. In fact, it may be the contrary because they have to try that much harder to keep it all together.

What's really missing in their parenting experiences is the other cop standing just behind them, badge gleaming and hand lightly resting on a holster. The confidence, the validation, the mere assistance of "Listen to your mother" is an advantage partnered parents have.

What my son doesn't know is that when he leaves the room after a conversation has been wrapped up by the utterance of, "Hey, listen to your mother," the gleaming-eyed shrew that was his angry mom suddenly melts into a love-struck, doe-eyed wife who smothers her husband with kisses.

It's truly a magical phrase.