I should have known that I would have the ability to breed a strange child. Maybe everybody feels this way about their infant or maybe it is just me. My daughter is already an odd ball. I love it.

Really, she was an odd ball from the first hour of life. After 16 hours of labor she was born and did not make a peep. Mothers and fathers anticipate hearing the first cry but mine let out a “Mehhhhhh” and that was it. From my spot on the bed I could see little arms and legs waving in the air as the nurse cleaned her up. “She’s very alert,” the nurse told Jimmy which I guess made up for her lack of crying.

In movies and in books a mother is handed her clean and scrubbed newborn and the child stops crying and gazes at the mother in recognition. My daughter took one look at my mug and screamed either in terror or in displeasure. Either way, I was a little insulted. Here I was waiting 9 months to meet the person who took pleasure in kicking my bladder ad nauseam, 16 hours of labor and anticipation and she doesn’t even like me. She did finally did calm down but spent the rest of the day looking like a grumpy, pissed off and puffy old man who would much rather be hugging my uterus then being hugged in my arms. I should’ve know. She passed her due date, I had to be induced twice and her heart rate kept dropping during the labor. When I asked the nurse why she just simply responded “Some babies just don’t agree with labor.” Mine also didn’t agree with the world outside the placenta.

For those who don’t have children but one day plan to, take heed of this warning: You can read as many books as you want, you can read articles by the expert, you can search online and research everything there is regarding infant and childcare and it will never, I mean NEVER, prepare you for the real thing. If I ever hear somebody say to me “All babies do is eat, shit, and sleep,” I will personally punch them in the head because this is so far from the truth it’s not even funny.

The first two days Sophia was home was fairly easy and non eventful and I thought to myself “I got this.” She slept well, she only really cried if she was hungry or being changed and the rest of the time she spent sleeping. I was tired but not exhausted. I would feed her and she would fall asleep and stay asleep. But then something triggered in her head, “Gotcha bitches.”

First she decided that she no longer like sleeping on her back. She also decided that being swaddled was for punks because she screamed when I did it, like I was torturing her. For a week I fought with this 7 lb bundle of flesh to get her to sleep on her back but no dice. For those who don’t have children, experts stress the “Back is Best” program to reduce SIDS. Obviously my child had not read these articles. After talking to many parents, it’s a wonder this program exists because I have not met a single parent who had success getting their child to sleep on their back. Finally, after talking to Jim’s cousin who is also a nurse, I put her on her stomach. Unfortunately, I was such a nervous wreck worrying that she would stop breathing that I couldn’t sleep myself. Every noise she made I would bolt out of bed and peer over the side of the bassinet to make sure she was okay. Another thing, babies are capable of being noisy sleepers and mine is not the exception. She grunts, sighs, twitches, moves, cries, and farts in her sleep. Sometimes all of these things at the same time. So I was sleep deprived fairly early on.

After that she decided that she liked the way 4am looked. At two weeks old she would not fully sleep until after that, at a time where there is nothing on television other than shitty movies and infomercials. We would rock her, sing to her, walk her around; nothing would work.

Then she decided that the bassinet was worthy of her body during nap times but not at night. Accidentally I fell asleep on the couch with her on my chest and we both slept very well. Because of this, I spend every night until she was a month old sleeping with her either sprawled on my chest or nestled in the crook of my arm while I slept propped up in bed.

At around five weeks her sleep schedule changed…again. Now she decided that the bassinet was obsolete and that she was going to sleep in bed with me…but not before two am. Jim and I tried everything we could for the course of almost three weeks to get this child to sleep. What would work one night would not work the next. If rocking her side to side worked one night, the next night she would scream. I literally would spend two hours walking her up and down my hallway or standing next to the kitchen sink with the water running for some white noise. She would fall asleep and I would put her down and she would wake up screaming and pissed off. So I would walk some more and then sit down with her nestled in my shoulder. Somehow, in her sleep she would sense that I wasn’t standing and would wake up screaming. We would put her in her swinging chair and she would sleep, the next night this was no good. Putting her in the car and driving her around at 1 am in the morning sometimes worked…and then one day it didn’t. Music would work one night, the next it wouldn’t. She was always one step ahead of us. She would smirk and I couldn’t help but wonder if she was thinking “dance, monkies, dance.”

New mothers also never tell you that a newborn, as much as you love them, sorta make you want to drink. Hence I started drinking a glass of wine every night.

It was all worth it though, when one morning I woke up and my daughter was awake and giving me a real smile, not her gassy smile, but a smile of recognition. “Hey, I’m happy to see you.” It melted my heart and made me completely forget the night before when I was doing my 50^th lap around my apartment and thinking that come tomorrow, I was going to look up tubal ligation surgery on the internet.

One day this all magically stopped. She one day dropped off around midnight. The next day she was asleep by 11pm. A few days later she was asleep by 10pm. Granted, she now refuses to sleep in her bassinet and spends naps sleeping on the couch with a blanket spread out and a pillow around her to prevent her from rolling and spends nights sleeping besides me but at least I get to sleep and she is happy.

She’s a goofy kid and everyday she is doing something that makes me crack up and say “What the hell are you doing?” She gives me a running commentary every morning in her baby babble, about what I have no idea but she always sounds very matter of fact and whatever it is sounds pressing. She gives her opinion and punctuates her statements with waving arms and kicking legs and when she is done she kind of grunts. She sounds a lot like Jim’s grandfather, a tough-as-nails man.

As Jim likes to say, she has no couth. Upon meeting now people who always insist on holding her, she normally greats them by farting on them. Not a cute, little one fit for somebody as adorable as she is but one that is loud and long. She looks the person in the eye as she does this and then will smile as if to say “what are you going to do about it? I’m only a baby, sucka.” She does this to every single new person she meets, often causing the person to say “is that healthy?” Yes, it is. It means she’s has the ability to expellee gas therefore, colic is not something I have had to deal with. I like her method, it sort of breaks the ice, much like a really interesting piece of furniture or coffee table book, only smellier.

A few days ago Jim was holding her and I leaned in to give her chubby cheek a kissed and it was met by her staring daggers into me. She loves to be snuggled but only on her terms, which means if I am in the mood to cuddle and she isn’t it’s often met with extreme resistance and dirty looks. She can get really serious sometimes and will furrow her eyebrows and look at you from underneath them like she is challenging you to a fight. If her eyebrows are raised it means “what, huh? What’s going on?” and a Billy Idol lip curl, while cute, means she is pooping. When she just trains her eyes on you and starts to wiggle, she is anticipating a conversation and for a two month old she is quite the conversationalist; when she wants to be. We are at her beck and call, not the other way around. Just like she never sleeps when I want to, she won’t wake up if I want her to either. If I want to play and she doesn’t then we don’t and if I am not talkative and she is well, I better just suck it up and start talking because she will protest loudly or growl (yes, my infant will growl at you) if I don’t.

She is learning how to fly. I think. I was holding her against my shoulder a few days ago when she suddenly bent back a little, spread her arms out on her sides and picked her head up, wide eyed and bobbley. She looked like she was ready to take off on flight. I am not sure where she wants to fly to but where ever it is I am going.

While frustrating and while I would not recommend it to just anyone, I love being a mother. I love watching her do new things, I love talking with her, I love taking naps with her and waking up to her peeking at me with one eye (her hawk eye) and smiling, I love giving her baths and wrestling with her because her new thing is trying to roll over when she is in the tub. Everyday she is learning or doing something new and with that I am getting to know her better. I know that she doesn’t care for classical music and is more likely to fall asleep listening to Drop Kick Murphys, I know that she prefers the monkey that came with her play-mat, I know that she likes her pink blanket better than her other blankets, I know she likes being around other people and I know that she starts hitting herself in the head she is ready for bed (I told you she was an oddball).

I don’t really look forward to a lot in life but I look forward to helping her grow into herself, helping her discover the type of person that she is. I fast forward in my mind and wonder who she will be, what kind of achievements I will one day be able to beam at and while I do have to force myself to take her one day at a time and love the person she is today, I can’t wait to love the person she will be tomorrow.

As all New Jersey residents know, especially those special personalities living in the central part of NJ, driving is considered more of a near-death experience then a leisurely activity.

This has happened to me a few times and it aggravates the shit out of me every time it happens, more so when I still had the Nissan then the car I currently have.

For those who don’t know me personally, I just need to give a little description of my old car. I had a 1994 Nissan Sentra for years. To give you an idea on what kind of car this was, the last year of it’s life I dubbed it the “Roach Coach” because like the cockroach, in the event of nuclear war I was pretty sure the only thing that would survive is the cockroach and my car. I watched this thing slowly start to fall apart over the years from the brakes seizing up to the bone shattering vibrating it would do if driven over 60 mph to bolts just randomly falling off the ceiling. The dashboard only lit up if my head lights were out which is ironic when you think that the only time I would have use for a lit up dash board is at night when I had to have my head lights on. It did not break right away which meant I had to start breaking a half a mile from where I had to stop. Also, if I needed a good thrill all I had to do was try and merge onto any busy road or highway, as my car did not switch gears right away. A few months before it completely bit the dust we discovered a hole in the floor of the back passenger seat.

For the record, this was not one of those hooptie wagons that looked good from the outside but was really a piece of shit. It looked as bad as it felt which was both a good and bad thing. I was embarrassed to be seen in it but it was also really easy to find in a parking lot. Very few other cars had duck tape holding up the side mirrors and that duct tape caught the sun light very well so I had a beacon of light to follow during the holidays when the parking lots were filled with SUV’s.

This car could not be described as cute, pretty, or nice. Sad is the first term that comes to mind. I am surprised that more people didn’t assume I was unemployed when they saw it. But hey, it got me from point A to point B…most of the time. So who was I to complain?

With all that being said there were many, many times when I would pull up to a light or enter onto the highway when some douchbag white kids with their sideway hats would decide, out of every car on the road, to race my Nissan. These dumb schmucks all pretty much drove the same kind of cars: foreign vehicles with a tacky body kit haphazardly slapped onto the back, tints with the air bubbles stuck permanently inside and some bozo decal across the back window. Like this was the way to soup up a car. Obviously these boys had seen the Fast and The Furious one too many times and figured if you don’t have the funds to actually put some sort of power into your car, at least make it look like you do.

I would pull up to a red light in this car that was constantly on the verge of turning into dust and the jackass to my left or right would catch my eye and then rev his car, which we all know as the universal sign of “Let’s race.” The light would turn green and Sir Sucks a Lot of Dick would speed away in a cloud of exhaust and within a second be out of my line of vision.

Did I fail to mention my car went 0 to 60 in two hours?

I was never angry that I was outraced by a car that worked the way a car should work but I could never understand what was the point of trying to race a car that obviously did nothing special other than sporadically shed of nuts and bolts as I was driving? Why didn’t that guy decide to race the BMW behind me or the Porsche that was too his left? Was I just that easy of a target? Did I help in make somebody feel better about themselves because their much newer car was able to beat something that was the equivalent of a rickshaw? This is like me, as an able bodied human with two very functional legs challenging a bed-ridden 80’s year old double amputee. I would feel better about myself, I would feel like I was lacking something important…like a personality.

Maybe these guys were compensating for something. Either being broke or having a small penis (which are the only two things guys will try and compensate for.)

My Nissan finally met it’s demise this past fall, ironically the day I was suppose to hand over the rest of my money and pick up my new car. My Nissan at some point had developed a conscience mind. It was towed and parked across the street from my house were, several weeks later, it mysteriously disappeared (it really did, Jim came home and asked me where the Nissan went and I had never even noticed it was gone in the first place.)

Nobody tries to race me anymore because my car looks like it has more of an ability to properly move without hurting anybody though my Dodge is nothing special and has it’s own problems that are unique to it.

So, if ever you pull up next to me at a light and see me pounding my fist against the dashboard, this is not a sign I want to race nor does it mean I am pissed off at you or any of the other drivers around me.

It means I am trying to get my speedometer and gas gauge to work.