Baby life and living overseas

I am a baby satellite. Everything that the little man wants he gets. Life with a newborn can be a stress. AL and I have shorter tempers (lack of sleep) and we snap at each other more. But at the same time he has brought us closer than ever before, because we are united in our goal of having a good and happy family. My mom is super excited. I've never seen her so excited and gushy. It's kind of weird. I see her now more than I ever have. It's a good and bad thing. It's kind of weird. I hate to say it, but when I hang out with my mom it's work. We can't just hang out and everyone be cool. My mom has to fret about something or be catered to for this and that.

So now I want to put lil B into a house. On two teachers' salaries living in the Bay Area, it's going to be a challenge. But I really want to have a yard for him to play in. I don't want him playing out in the streets. To come up with the money, AL and I have decided to teach abroad. We've always wanted to teach and live abroad and lil B is young enough that it wouldn't be that hard. I want to work in a place where I can learn to speak Spanish fluently. So Eastern Spain, Central or South America would be great. Depending on where we teach, I read that we could save $12,000 on one salary. With both of us teaching that's $24,000 a year. If we up to 4 years we could save $96,000. That's more than enough for a 20% down payment on a house within our price range. Plus I gotta get out of the US. I'm getting tired of this country. The healthcare debate is fuckin ridiculous to me. We have this HUGE military budget and soldiers all over the world, but we are cutting money to education and healthcare. Our priorities are whack! Just because we had lil B our insurance costs have tripled. This just ain't right. So we're probably looking at Fall 2011 to teach abroad. I feel like since I got married I'm really living more and having more adventures. We've traveled around the world, had the little one and will embark on more adventures. Who says that life stops once you have a baby?

It's been a while

It's been a while since I've blogged. What's happened to me since...I suppose the biggest news is that I've had a baby boy. On October 1st, 2009 my wife delivered a beautiful baby boy 7 pounds 15 ounces. It was a 40hr labor!!! I don't even want to do things that I like for 40 hours. Being the trooper that she is, she went 32 hours without an epidural! Ridiculous right? At the 32nd hour, she was just sleep deprived, in pain, and loopy. So we had a safe word (borrowed from kinky sex) that she would use to signify that she really wanted an epidural and it was time. That safe word was "mercy!" Good one huh.

It was an amazing experience and I actually got enough courage to look. You know...down there. That was the traumatic experience for me. After the delivery it was like something out of CSI. Blood, vomit, and other bodily fluids everywhere. Some shit had gone down! At one point during a contraction, AL actually bit my hand. It was hella primal. But the end result was the important one. We got our healthy baby boy.

I was so happy when he was born and I made a promise to him right there that I would do everything and anything to take care of him. Also, I promised I wouldn't let him sit in his pee or poo for very long if I knew he had soiled himself. I mean babies can't do anything. They are completely helpless. Their quality of life is completely dependent on what we do or don't do for them. I'm not trying to have my boy being a materialist, but that is a material thing where I will make sure he is well taken care of.

It's an interesting thing having a baby. It's powerful. It changed my life and it's not like I had to work at it. You just change because you want to be around your kid. When I'm at work I just can't wait to get home to my lil guy. I just want to hang out with the lil man. I've also planned to take Wednesdays off at work to just be able to hang out with my kid. While my family with AL has always been the most important thing for me, it has taken on a new meaning and power with the addition of the lil one. I mean AL is a grown ass self sufficient woman. I don't need to cater to her all the time. But the little one...he needs us. For everything. Priorities shift.

An interesting added benefit with having a baby is that its given me more leverage with students. They want to know about how we're doing and how hard it is and how I plan on raising him. Kids have very strong and powerful views about how you should raise a kid and what is right and wrong behavior. Having lil B, allows me to ask them what would be the right thing for me to do as a parent if lil B was in their position and what would be the right thing for lil B to do. Then I just transfer that to their situation. It's deep.

I also try to talk to kids as often as possible about how hard and expensive it is to have a kid. I talk to them about the lack of sleep and frustration of dealing with a crying child. I also tell them the story of when I was changing Lil B's diapers and wiping his shit covered ass. When I went around for the second wipe he shit into my hand. There I was staring at my shit covered hand and all I could think was "Goddam teenagers are assholes!" I know I was. Here parents are cleaning their shit and all they get back is attitude. So now I say to students don't shit in my hand and they get it. Here I am trying to take care of you, don't shit in my hand, cuz you ain't a baby.

babies...gotta love em!