Belly Button Babies

When considering where babies came from, I never believed anything as silly as Storks dropping laughing infants off on doorsteps in the middle of the night. Maybe if I had grown up in South Carolina or Florida, or maybe if the myth had been about seagulls, which growing up in Duluth had made me intimately familiar with, I would have bought into the common story.

However, through my own tike logic and hearing terms like "sleeping together" I did solidly believe that a little miniature baby crawled out of the dad's belly button, across the bed, into the mom's belly button, where it grew for awhile. What else would belly buttons be for? Of course, the little baby being so little, it took a solid nights sleep for the baby to make it all the way out of the papa belly button into the mama belly button. All while mama and papa slept soundly.

The question of why a baby wasn't formed every night mama and papa slept soundly never crossed my mind. I never wondered what the chances of a belly button baby completing the voyage actually were. It just happened.

Of course, sex-ed and society in general soon bombarded me with answers to that very question. As I learned the real basics of the seagulls and the bees, so was I soon convinced that even being in the same swimming pool with a girl created a good chance I was going to be a teen dad that never would go to college (not to mention the unfortunate uncurable condition I would acquire.)

I'm certainly not trying to claim that this idea was bad for me, or any hormonal teenager, to have. Teen logic without these scare tactics would have served nearly as well as tike logic in preventing an unwanted pregnancy.

It is interesting, though, when you really begin desiring and planning for a baby how perceptions change. It's hard to shed the implanted idea it will happen instantly. It is equally hard to hear all the sad stories of the couples that have trouble conceiving at all, let alone instantly...

I have heard that it is perfectly normal for a healthy couple to take up to a year to get pregnant. Well, for now PuddleMama and I try to balance patience and excitement. And I figure it won't hurt to jump in a swimming pool with her during the peak of her luteal phase or to make sure both our belly buttons are exposed before we fall asleep....

Make a Baby Button

Santa gave me a universal remote for Xmas. It's great- one button sets up my entire system to play the Wii, watch a blu-ray movie on the PS3, watch TV, or even raise or lower my window blinds.

You may wonder what this has to do with being a father. Well... Yesterday I created a "Make a Baby" activity. No it won't automagically complete games of patty-cake, but it will with a single button click turn on my receiver and turn it to channel 408- R&B Hits. Hot.

First Baby Picture

Although admittedly I am only an expert of failed blogs, I do know that all-text blogs become boring and forced bullet-pointed lists are not enough to effectively distract the reader from bad writing. Any blog worth its weight certainly contains pictures, so I have decided to provide the first baby photo:

Can you see PuddleBaby?! Quite a looker, egh?

'Roids (not the Barry Bonds kind)

Let this be the first official post (I'm certain of many) declaring my relief that my part in the biological aspects of having a baby are limited to a Roger Rabbit style game of patty-cake.

PuddleMama discovered in a conversation with a new mother-to-be this weekend how prominent that hemorrhoids can be during pregnancy. Luckily, this has not changed her mind about our games of patty-cake...

Just a Twinkle in PuddleDaddy's Eyes

The question has certainly come to mind whether starting a blog on being a father before PuddleMama is actually pregnant may be a bit premature. Of course, for the same reasons most pregnancies do not become common knowledge before the second trimester, I will not generally publicize this humble blog for awhile still. So anyone reading the blog who believes I was premature can be consoled by the fact the prematureness is no longer an issue.

Still, I feel I must justify such an early start. I could argue that it is late to begin such a blog. I certainly have already had many experiences in my life that could be argued were the start of my understanding of fatherhood (of course "blogging" did not exist when most of the following occurred, even the experiences I actually remember:)

• when I was born
• when I first said "dad"
• when I first thought my dad was superman
• when I first realized my dad wasn't superman
• when I realized my dad really was superman
• when I took my first sex-ed class
• when I first got PuddleDog
• when I first met PuddleMama
• when I proposed to PuddleMama
• when PuddleMama and I were married

Note, I did keep the list PG... Maybe I will revisit some of the above in future posts, for they already have shaped my idea of what being a father is, but I do understand its much like reading a how-to book on skiing without ever having actually skied.

So I decided to start my blog here:

• when PuddleMama and I decided we are ready to try for children

Now for the fun part! So today we did the first step any couple should accomplish to conceive a baby...... We plugged some data into http://www.ovulation-calendar.net/ (what did you think was the first step! As you can tell from my list, this blog is PG, considering the main audience will be my mama and PuddleMama's mama.)

Let me tell you, the results were spectacular, including adding what is I am sure to be the first of many new words to my vocabulary during this process- luteal phase. I will leave it up to the reader to Google the definition, as I have some work to do...

Birth of a Blog

The idea of a blog appeals to me greatly- sharing what's important with anyone who wants to fire up a browser and waste a few minutes. I love sharing what I write with others, and the idea someone smiles or laughs or even feels a twinge of sadness based on my writings makes me feel good. As my inspired use of adjectives has just proven, my prospects of becoming a published writer are less than bleak, but a blog provides an outlet for my desire to share.

Unfortunately, all of my past blogging attempts have failed in a pitiful blog-death after several uninteresting posts followed by several months of no posting whatsoever. There are several reasons for this, which can all be traced back to the fact I just have not written about what I care about the most. Books, movies, video-games, beer, my job, sports have all been subjects of previous blog-posts, and although they are all subjects I am interested in and get excited by, they are all also subjects that produce uninspired, liked it/disliked it, skip-over-entire-paragraphs-and-not-miss-anything blog entries.

When I try to blog on more personal subjects (think Dear Diary) I have always felt weird (again note my inspired use of adjectives) about sharing my inner most thoughts, especially with anonymous Internet browser. I hold back most of what would be interesting to read about, or at least delete it soon after posting. I am not sure if this is based on fear, humility, a lack of self confidence, or something else entirely. I do know I simply don't want to open up about many aspects of my private life on a blog, and I don't view this as something I would like to change.

So here I go in another, hopefully not doomed, attempt at a blog. But this time it is different! I am writing about something more personal and more important to me than I could possibly describe with my limited adjective-spewing abilities- becoming a father. Almost as important, I want to share the experience with everyone in the world, and I know at least a few people in that world who will actually be interested in reading.

An amazing and personal subject, a built-in audience, and over-used adjectives- a recipe for a successful blog if there ever was one.