Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Raise a Family, and Other Manly Advice (2015)
PART IV
Fatherhood
19
Having Another Child (or Two)
After your first child has reached the point of sleeping through the night, but before he or she is actually potty-trained, you and your spouse may decide you want to do this all over again. Not that you need our permission, but good for you. In fact, great for you, because not only are fewer people in their twenties having kids, it’s even rarer to see them have a second or third child.
I kind of cheated in that I married into a family. It may have taken a few years to become a biological father, but I became “Dad” to my first two kids as soon as I said, “I do,” and I have no regrets. In fact, it’s too bad every parent can’t start out with a child or two that can sleep through the night, talk to you, actually use a restroom, dress themselves, and behave reasonably well in public. It might also help if the kids were as amusing, bright, and lovable as my kids were.
When our third child was born in 2000, I kind of figured that we were done having kids. We never definitively ruled that our baby-making days were over, but we certainly weren’t planning on another one. So when my wife approached me about having another baby in the summer of 2004, I wasn’t really gung-ho. I also wasn’t entirely opposed. I was a little concerned about my wife’s age, and with our daughter getting ready to start her senior year of high school it just seemed a little weird to be talking about having another baby.
Still, I really didn’t require much convincing. Yeah, I had my concerns, but I like kids. I liked being a dad. So we once again decided to make a baby, and once again, we were successful on the first try. Really successful, as it turned out.
We were excited to find out if we were having a boy or a girl, and the morning of the sonogram appointment I went with my wife to the doctor’s office, along with our four-year-old son (our older kids were in school, and likely would have thought it weird to go to their mom’s OBGYN appointment anyway). The doc came in, gelled up my wife’s belly, and soon we were looking at blobby images on the video monitor. Sonograms have come a long way in terms of clarity over the years, but I still had a hard time deciphering what I was seeing. It looked like there were two heads there on the monitor, but that couldn’t be right. After all, the doctor wasn’t saying anything about two babies.
And then, right on cue, he did.
“Most people would have said something by now,” he chuckled, “but since you haven’t, let me point out that here is Baby A’s head and here is Baby B’s head.”
I felt like I was going to vomit. My wife went pale. The silence was broken by our four-year-old happily exclaiming, “We’re having two babies?!” Yes, we were, and as it turns out we were totally blindsided by that fact. Okay, I was blindsided. My wife swears she knew something was different about this particular pregnancy, and there was a moment early on where she said she thought she shouldn’t be as big as she was that early on, but when a visit to the doctor turned up one heartbeat, I put the thought of twins completely out of my mind.*
Turns out if you’re only listening for one heartbeat that may be all that you hear.
It’s not that I wasn’t excited on some level. I was thrilled that both babies appeared to be healthy, and was really pleased to learn that we were having both a boy and a girl. I think I was just in shock for a while. It wasn’t the easiest pregnancy for my wife, either. She was on bed rest for the last several months, and as her due date approached we both waited with anticipation and fear of the unknown. Having an infant is tough, but we both knew we could do it. Having two, though, that was a new experience for both of us. We didn’t really know what to expect, other than it being a lot harder than having one child.**
For some reason, a lot of parents of twins call children who aren’t twins “singletons.” I find this weird, though it would be a great name for a Weezer album.
Well, the due date came and went, and once again we headed in to the hospital for labor to be induced. This time around things went much better, although once again the pain meds didn’t really do much for my wife. She went into labor right away, and less than four hours after we’d arrived at the hospital our son and daughter were born.
That last sentence makes it sound so easy, but then again I wasn’t the one expelling almost sixteen pounds of baby out of my body. I was the one standing by my wife’s head, holding her hand (actually, letting her squeeze my hand until I could feel my bones scraping together), and cheering her on while she pushed, breathed, cursed a bit, and pushed some more. My son, weighing seven pounds, six ounces, arrived first, with his eight-pound sister following five minutes later. My wife and I once again went through those tense moments as we waited for the nurses to announce that our kids were healthy and breathing, which thankfully was true for both of them. I picked up our son, gazed at this tiny little person swaddled in a blanket with eyes squinted shut against the bright light, and carried him over to my wife with an ear-to-ear grin on my face. A nurse handed me my daughter and I wrapped her in my arms, holding her up so that my wife could see her. We played “pass the baby” back and forth, each of us taking turns holding one, then the other, then both. My wife and I were laughing and crying, our eyes red and our cheeks sore from our smiles.
While I remember with exquisite clarity that morning in the hospital room when I first laid eyes on my youngest son and daughter, I honestly don’t remember much about the following six months. The twins went through a period where they had trouble sleeping, as all babies do, but none of our old tricks—rocking, singing, walking around with them in our arms—worked. We had to be more creative: like putting them in their car seats and placing them on top of a running clothes dryer. The vibrations would lull them to sleep most of the time, but it also meant there were many nights when I’d sit in our laundry room in a small chair in front of the dryer, a hand on each car seat, fitfully dozing while my family slept upstairs.
The lack of sleep was, for me anyway, always the hardest part of having an infant. The benefits, however, more than make up for the low-grade exhaustion you might experience during the first few months. I was captivated by these two remarkable creatures, conceived together (or at least over the same weekend) and occupying the same space for nine months, but so different in so many different ways. At the time, I was working evenings, so I could spend my mornings and early afternoons with the babies, and I was fascinated by their emerging personalities. My daughter was a ham who loved to make people laugh, while my son was much more serious and would soak in the world through his dark blue eyes. One morning when the three of us were curled up on the couch together, an infant in each arm, it struck me that my kids were literally keeping my hands full. I didn’t mind a bit, though I was overjoyed when they started sleeping through the night.
With five kids now in the house, there was little free time to speak of. Priorities changed. I went an entire football season without knowing what the records were for my favorite teams, and most of my knowledge of current pop culture was replaced in my head with every line of dialogue from Little Einsteins. I couldn’t name a single song on the Billboard Top 10, but I could tell you the track listing for The Wiggles’ Hoop De Do! It’s a Wiggly Party without even looking at the CD case.
I realize that having five kids is something of an anomaly these days. The size of the U.S. family has been steadily shrinking for decades, and in 2010 the U.S. Census recorded an average of 2.58 people (not kids, but people) per household. At one point we had a household of seven, or nearly triple the size of the average American family, but since our oldest daughter and son have left the house we’re now down to a household of five. There are sacrifices that come with having a larger family. Every one of my kids knows what it’s like to share a room with a sibling, for instance. Taking five kids on vacation really narrows your options, because of logistics and cost. I’d love to be able to take family trips to far-off destinations, but seven plane tickets, hotels, meals, etc., add up quickly. When, after almost ten years of marriage, we took our first family vacation, we drove to North Carolina and rented a house near (not on) the beach for a week, eating most of our meals at “home” and staying away from the money-sucking activities like mini-golf and outlet malls. Heck, even going to the movies is a rare occasion in our family. It’s much cheaper to wait for the DVD to come out and buy some popcorn at the store.
Dance Fever
The sacrifices are nothing, however, in comparison with the rewards. The greatest thing about being a parent is helping your child grow up and become an independent individual. We encouraged our kids’ interests, even if we didn’t share them. I will admit that when my oldest daughter wanted to play the drums, I was less than enthused. But my father-in-law bought her a drum kit, and while I might have been willing to put my foot down about buying a set of drums, I wasn’t about to cross my wife, my daughter, and my father-in-law (who’s a pretty big guy and whose nickname is The Torch).*
This is true, though he got the nickname because of his welding abilities, not because he ever set any sons-in-law on fire.
Our kids’ curiosity led them to exploring guitar, painting, soccer, football, basketball, baseball, karate, Cub Scouts, swimming, and dance. When my youngest son was four, he asked if he could take ballet lessons. My wife and I had been thinking about getting him into gymnastics, but he was adamant. It was ballet he wanted, not tumbling.
I’m old enough to remember NFL running back Herschel Walker dancing with the Fort Worth Ballet. I saw dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov take on the KGB (with the help of Gregory Hines) in White Nights. I had no problem with my son wanting to take ballet. I just wasn’t sure why he’d become so interested in ballet. He couldn’t tell me why, he just was.
So, I signed him up for a class. We went on a Saturday morning, and throughout the hour he dutifully followed the instructor’s directions, but with a deep, dark scowl on his face. After the class was dismissed, he came stomping over to me and looked me in the face.
“This is not what I expected, Dad.”
“What did you expect?”
“Dancing!”
I explained that you had to train your body and learn the moves before you could dance, but he looked disgusted with the whole thing.
On our way home he stared out the window; suddenly his eyes brightened. “I know what I want to take,” he announced. “It’s not ballet.”
“No? What is it then?”
“Free form jazz dance!”
“Well, little dude, I don’t know that the Parks and Recreation Department offers a free form jazz dance class.” He looked heartbroken.
“But here’s the thing,” I added. “It’s free form, right? So, you don’t really need a class. You just need music.”
“Jazz music,” he interjected.
“Right, of course. Can’t have a free form jazz dance party without some jazz music. And as it happens, I’ve got some jazz music at home.”
And that is how the tradition of the Daddy Dance Party began in our house. After we got home, I explained to my wife that what our son really wanted to do was free form jazz dance instead of a structured ballet class. Then we fired up Miles Davis’s “Spanish Key” and my son and I started expressively dancing our way around our living room. Soon my wife joined in, along with our youngest daughter. Eventually even our older kids decided they weren’t too cool to dance, and for an hour or so we all goofily grooved to the music. Our kids quickly decided that Miles Davis wasn’t really their thing, but they did like Parliament Funkadelic and Deee-Lite.
I might not remember what I need to pick up at the grocery store or where I left my sunglasses, but that’s unimportant compared to memories of bopping along to “Groove Is in the Heart” while my four-year-old son attempts to do the Robot and his siblings cheer him on. My life is exponentially richer and more complete thanks to each and every one of my children, including the sweet moves I picked up from a little guy who just wanted to dance.
What Would Ward Cleaver Do?
He did it. Without a second child for Ward and June, there would have been no Theodore “Beaver” Cleaver, an incalculable loss for us all.