People phone or e-mail me all the time about “going for a ride” with them.
Hey, going for a ride when ever is just not the reality of life right now.
On weekends I ride one of the two days. That’s it. I am on the road by 8am and I try really hard to get back home by 12:30pm so I can spend the rest of the day with Mrs. Smithers and little baby. Once the next little baby shows up riding on the weekends is probably going to go the way of the dodo for the rest of the year.
During the week I attend the Urthel ride on Tuesday nights and I am going to start riding at the velodrome on Thursday nights. The Urthel ride will also evaporate for me once we have the baby. The track will be on hold for a few weeks at least.
So if you really want to ride with me you are going to have to catch up with me during those scheduled outings.
I don’t really mind at all the lack of time spend on the bike. I guess I really don’t see it as time off the bike. It’s more like time with my family. There are plenty of opportunities to get exercise that don’t involve being out of the house for 4 hours. I am already working up my indoor trainer schedule for the summer, if you can believe that.
The most important thing that you find as a new parent is the need to re-balance your life once the baby arrives. I bristle at the idea of having to give anything up, I don’t think it’s necessary. What is necessary is to readjust your goals to synchronize with your new life. My goals are to be a good father and husband, and to remain fit and healthy. If I can squeeze a bike race in there once and a while then all the better, but I am not going to sacrifice the time that I look forward to and enjoy spending with my family in order to go down to Sogn Valley and get my ass handed to me.
Besides, Baby Smithers is really coming into his personality right now. I predict that he will be some kind of comedian or clown when he gets older. A clown that throws the occasional and inconsolable temper tantrum.
Baby Smithers walked into a plate glass window this evening.
We were at the Galleria and he was walking around the atrium and spied the Schmitt Music store. He saw the pianos and recognized them as we have a piano here at home that he likes to play, so he walked towards them not noticing the glass separating him from the objects of his desire.
Blamo.
He walked face first into the glass before I had a chance to stop him. Just like a bird that flies into a window he bounced back and collapsed spread eagle on the floor. He laid there for a second and then stood up and started to cry, more in shock than in pain I think. He was fine but was really PO’d that he could not touch the pianos as the store was closed.
We went back into the Barnes and Noble kids section and played with the Brio trains and he seemed to get over it pretty fast. He does have a knot on his forehead as a souvenir of his experience.
OK, so this parenting thing seems to be going along just fine.
Little Baby Smithers is now 15 months old and he and I are getting along great. I was worried before he showed up about whether I would be a good dad or if he would cry every time he laid eyes on me. But I seem to be able to make him laugh at the drop of a hat and he is always ready to come over and dole out some hugs my way.
I don’t have any urges to beat on him either, so I guess I am not going to turn out to be one of those crazy abusive dads who teach their kids to fear gown ups. Sometimes I make a mean face and tell him that I am going to give him a spanking. He just laughs at me and I laugh back. It’s hilarious.
Baby Smithers picked up an ear infection last week and has been on omoxicillian since last Friday. He has been on this anti-biotic in the past without much side effect. But this time has been really something special.
For the past 5 days he has woken up in the morning with savage diarrhea that had soaked through both his pajamas and his sleep sack. He does not seem to be particularly bothered by it as he has still been getting in his normal 12 hours of sleep each night. But each morning I unzip the sleep sack and am greeted by a full blown EPA Superfund site. Liquefied poo seeping out of his diaper, poo running down his legs and collecting in the feet of his pj’s, poo running up his abdomen and back, poo every place. It’s horrific. Plus it’s cold poo, so I know it’s been in there a good long time. He doesn’t care, he just sleeps right through it and makes no complaints once he’s awake. He just laughs at me while I try and clean him up.
He’s also required numerous outfit changes each day at his day care school. But none of it really seems to phase him in the slightest. He seems to be the most easy going little kid that I have ever seen. It’s great!
All of this absolutely terrifies me when I think about the little Baby Smithers yet to come. I can’t help but worry that little sister is going to sleep less than 3 hours a night and then complain about everything once awake.
A few years ago Mrs. Smithers was commuting back and forth between Minneapolis and Perm Russia. Perm is so much in the middle of no place that it is not even on the map and it was a 24 hour one way trip by air to get there.
Mrs. Smithers made this trip every couple of weeks and would stay over there for two weeks before returning home. It was an exhausting trip and she would spend the first four days home sleeping. Just about the time she would start to readjust to the time zone change and life would get back to normal she would have to get on a plane and head back over to Perm. It totally sucked ass for me, but at least I was at home. It was much harder for her being away from home that much in a foreign country despite her ability to speak the language.
Getting back home on time and on schedule has alway been important to Mrs. Smithers. Once she gets the notion in her head that she will be back home soon she gets extremely annoyed when any problem interrupts her plan. But flying from Perm to Moscow to Frankfurt to Chicago and then to Minneapolis, any small delay can cause a major problem.
So it was, on one of her final trips back home, some kind of problem with the schedule forced her to fly from Frankfurt to New York instead of Chicago. The beauty of flying to Chicago is that there are so many more flight options to make the trip back to Minneapolis due to the close proximity. But New York? Not so many options. Sure enough, the flight from New York to Minneapolis was cancelled and she was forced to spend the evening in New York.
I remember the phone call. I was catching a movie with a friend of mine and the phone buzzed so I checked the caller ID, saw it was Mrs. Smithers and stepped out to the lobby to take the call. Mrs. Smithers was inconsolable. She desperately wanted to get back home and was furious that she was going to have to spend an evening in New York instead of getting home. I did my best to calm her down but she was still very upset when the call ended. Jet lagged, home sick and sad is no way to spend a night in New York but Mrs. Smithers had no choice.
It’s very easy, when you are frustrated and life has thrown you some inconvenient challenges, to withdraw into your shell and tell the world to eff-off. That’s sure what I would have done. But Mrs. Smithers is not like that. At some point she noticed that an older couple from some eastern European country were stuck in the same situation that she was in. Neither one of these two spoke any English of any kind and Mrs. Smithers’ Russian was only able to help her make very basic communication. Never-the-less and despite her state of exhaustion, she helped this couple get in contact with their family in the United States and then helped them get to the hotel, get checked in and helped them find their room. She also helped them get back to the airport and find their outgoing flight the next morning.
It may not sound like much to you, but it meant the world to that couple. I love that story because it perfectly encapsulates what I love about Mrs. Smithers. Even in challenging times she can be so caring and thoughtful. She easily puts aside her frustrations and problems to help someone who needs it. She is a wonderful mother to Baby Smithers and she is the best partner anyone could ever hope for.
Any co-pilot in the world would have been honored to fly with Charles Lindbergh, but he chose his wife Anne Morrow to fly with. Mrs. Smithers chose me to be her co-pilot and I am the luckiest guy in the world because of it.
It’s been swell. I had a good time and I appreciate the comments. And thanks to Smithers for working so hard in France and giving me this opportunity. I hear he’s real sore from his exertions.
Some unfinished business:
My dearest is going to NYC/Wash DC for the weekend. She’s doing the peace march. I can’t wait to see the look on my son’s face when we turn on the tube for mama on the march. I hope she contains her temper so we don’t tune in to see her rolling a couple riot police.
It’s very natural, when you have a little one around the house, to want to pick them up to comfort them when they are sad or to place them in a high chair or child seat. The commonly used method of carrying the child is to prop them up by the rump so their cute little face is at the same level as yours.
Humans are drawn to look each other in the eye and study facial expressions as a way to determine the mood and feeling of those that they are communicating with. Facial expression is a non-verbal way of stating a frame of mind. Little children know this instinctually and take advantage of this phenomenon whenever possible. The sole reason that little children seek to get their faces close to their parents is in order to infect them with what ever bacteria or virus du jour they happen to be carrying at that moment.
Typically the child will act like they have fallen down and hurt themselves, or pretend that they are hungry, or are otherwise just inconsolable in some way. The only apparent remedy for the child will be to pick them up and attempt to pacify them. Once the child is at face level they will continue the ruse and will cry and sob for a few more moments just to assure that the parent will not put them back down on the floor too quickly. Once the child is secure in the knowledge that they have the full attention of the parent, the child is then ready to strike.
The child may stop crying for a moment, make a cute face, or say something funny, all with the goal being to get the parent to open up their eyes wide in anticipation. The child may then start to begin to fuss again which will elicit a vocal response from the parent. The parent will also tip their head back a bit as they prepare to comfort the child. At this point the parent’s head is in the perfect position. At this point the child will turn, face the parent square on, and cough or sneeze directly into the parents face.
Thus the trap is sprung. The parent’s face, eyes wide, mouth open and nostrils exposed, is now perfectly positioned to accept the infection at the most receptive part of the body. The foolish parent, once again caught unaware by the clever and devious child, will attempt to wipe away the infectious material using hands that have already been in full contact with the child’s oral secretion, and probably some of the child’s much less glamorous emanations as well. This action, far from cleaning away the infectious material, all but guarantees that the infection will fully take hold.
The child will attempt to repeat this process for as often as they are held but, once the parent no longer shows signs of being willing to continue to be coughed or sneezed upon, the child will soon demand to be put back down on the floor.
A typical child will repeat this process a few hundred times during the day, taking full advantage of a beleaguered and overwhelmed parent. The very second that a parent shows any sign of distraction, the child will begin the process over again.
Infection takes root within the hour, signs of sickness show up with the next 24 hours.
The process continues until the child is too heavy to be picked up. At this point the child will attempt other tactics such as “accidentally” using the parents drinking glass, toothbrush or pillow. By the age of 13 the child will no longer be carrying these noxious bacteria and virus and are perfectly safe to be around. Unfortunately, it is usually by this age that the child will no longer have anything to do with the parent.
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