Here’s my godson in my tub:
For the first time in my life, I kind of almost regret not ever getting married and having kids, because this little one is so damned adorable. I’ve never met a more even tempered kid, although if I had a kid, it would probably be as much of a pain in the ass as I was as a baby. Mom always tells me I was the worst of the four kids- the pregnancy was worse, the labor was worse, I was an unholy terror for the first two years, and even my BM’s smelled worse than the other three kids.
The funniest thing about young Cole is that he is really at his prime in the AM. He got some good sleep, his belly is full, and he just spends the morning cooing and giggling and being wild-eyed at everything around him. He also has discovered he can make this unholy shrieking sound that Sarah and Ryan have dubbed the “Velociraptor.” He just does it out of joy, and you hear him making all these wild vocalizations.
I’m not a virgin to babies, but this seriously is the happiest kid I have ever seen. Still have not seen him cry in over 48 hours.
Valdivia
Looks adorable and so glad you’ve had such a wonderful weekend. I feel the same way about my godson. Best boy in the world :)
AxelFoley
Cole, you still got time to get married and have kids. It’s not like you’re 90 or something.
cathyx
I’m happy for you. My daughter was one of those big pains as a baby and young child, but it’s still worth every effort I put into it. She’s a great kid now at 14. And believe it or not, I can’t even remember how bad the labor pains were.
WaterGirl
@AxelFoley: Unless Cole got himself “fixed” at some point. Although I think at this point sometimes even that can be undone.
Fluke bucket
Good looking feller. Gorgeous eyes. Looks like an Indigo child :-)
cathyx
It sounds like you had as bad a birth story as I did. Mine was I was too stubborn to come out when labor started, I came out the next day. (Don’t mention that the doctor gave my mom too many pain meds to put off the labor, it was all my fault). Then I screamed for the first year of my life,(don’t mention that I was under weight and the doctor told my mom to give me solids too young and I had trouble digesting them and it gave me intestinal distress which was painful, it was just me wanting to be annoying). Yes, I love my birth story.
lamh35
@AxelFoley: Exactly Cole…look at Letterman, Larry King, Tony Randall (well he’s dead now right, so not so much him).
lamh35
I know exactly how ya feel Cole. As a 35 year old woman, who decided early that I didn’t really want any kids, it’s rare that I ever actually think about them (although my dad, my mom and any other older relation or friends with kids sure do ask me all the damn time) it’s ridiculous how often I imagine myself with them. It’s ususally right after I’ve spent time with my newest God daughter Maddy.
redshirt
My sister had a baby a year ago and she’s the most adorable thing ever. Totally changed my life AND gently nudged me back towards the “maybe reproduction is not bad” line. But futile!
Babies rule.
Donna
I’d remind you that young Cole is only there for a short time…if you had your own, it’d be 24/7/365, which is exactly why I never did it…
Joseph Nobles
“wild vocalizations” — Listen carefully. You’re hearing every sound a human vocal box can make; every sound in every language ever. After brains commit to a language or two, all the rest of the sounds go away.
karen
Why is it that baby boys have such long and gorgeous lashes?
raven
@Joseph Nobles: ah, fossilization
AnotherBruce
Cole, you’re 41 years of age, fer fucks sake, if you want to procreate, do it. It’s amazing what happens to people when they pass the 40 mark, they figure they’re old. Not so much, take care of yourself and exercise you have a lot of good years. Let’s say you’re 55 and you have a kid that’s 11. It’s not like you can’t throw a baseball to him. You have a bad image of yourself. Get over it.
Violet
He’s adorable. Thanks for all the photos.
I’m trying to figure out this picture. Is someone in the tub with him? Sort of looks like a freaky person with one long leg and one short leg. And multiple arms of various lengths.
Kane
The thought of getting married and having kids is sometimes better than getting married and having kids.
maven
two Coles in a tub….
Narcissus
Only thing is if you have a child Cole, and it comes into your bedroom some night and pukes up a vole, you fucked up somewhere.
Xecky Gilchrist
Cole looks like a winner, all right. For me it’s enough to have access to kids – e.g. the great-nephews, now that the nieces and nephews are more or less grown up – rather than make any myself.
IMO, it’s better to regret not getting married and starting a family that to regret getting married and starting a family.
Sawgrass Stan
Kids…. he sure looks like a happy guy; glad you’ve having a good time, too.
It’s always good to have a kid in your life, whether you’re the parent or not.
You’re raising them, but they’re raising you, too…
cathyx
@efgoldman: That’s a lovely birth story. My daughter’s is a nice one too. Easy labor, I just pushed her out in a couple of hours. She was difficult once she came home, but I don’t dwell on that in front of her.
WaterGirl
@Violet:
That’s two grownup arms, a grownup tummy in a blue bathing suit, one grownup leg, two baby arms and two baby legs. You can see just a smudge of the second grownup leg in the lower right hand corner of the photo.
Not as scary as it seems. :-)
redshirt
@AnotherBruce: It is sad to think though that the child (as an adult) will likely lose their parents at age 40.
More 18 year olds need to have babies. Lots of babies.
Caliph Garret
raven,
I’m really glad to see you here. I remember you from FDL. I left not long after you did. Hope you are doing well…
Corner Stone
Kids aren’t for everybody.
HEY YOU
Get married & be miserable like the rest of us. LOL
Corner Stone
@karen:
My now almost 8 year old son has beautiful long lashes, which I believe he got from my father.
I have to use the Max Factor products to floof mine up some.
Corner Stone
@redshirt: Gott im Himmel!
Boudica
From the pix, I think Cole is wide-eyed, not wild-eyed, and adorable.
THE
Exoskeletons plus 3D printers gives a little girl
some *magic arms that can grow with her.
*Clarke’s Third Law.
redshirt
@Corner Stone: Sorry, I don’t speak Swazi.
Violet
@redshirt: Why wait until 18? What’s wrong with 16? Or 14? What about 12?
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet: It’s Pamela Anderson.
Gin & Tonic
If this picture is so good, why do your pictures of the bathroom renovation suck so bad?
redshirt
@Violet: Good questions. Clearly, biology has prepared us to have babies at a far younger age than the law allows. Why does Obama hate babies? And who is he to tell us when we can give away our daughters for dowries of bourbon and MLB trading cards?
LanceThruster
My friend’s godchild was dubbed “Shreikala” for those same happy vocalizations and we were convinced she was viewing some sort of invisible circus that was sending her into such ecstacy.
Paddy
John- My mom was 37 when she had me (Dad 41), 45 when she had my little bro (Dad 50). Occasionally growing up we were aware that our folks were older (specially since we had two older sibs), but it never, EVER was a major player. And these days it seems to be commonplace.
You can do whatever you want, whenever you want it.
Corner Stone
@redshirt:
Dammit, I knew I should have swapped out my boy for a little baby girl before I left the hospital!
AkaDad
During the first year, my daughter didn’t just cry, she screamed. It was hell. After that, she became the best daughter ever until she turned 16. The last two years have been rough.
Parenting is fun.
Corner Stone
@Paddy: I don’t give a crap what anyone says, kids are a young man’s game and that’s just the way it is.
muddy
I was a late middle-age surprise to my parents. Their well planned post war family was mostly gone away already, my father said I was like having his own personal grandchild. He was 48. I had a completely different relationship with him than the others. I lost him when I was 35 I grew up without grandparents, they had already passed before I showed up. My siblings knew them. I’m glad my son was high school age and able to remember my father well. There are a lot of really long generations in my family, but I bucked the trend and had my son at 20. We kind of grew up together. I think we turned out okay. It’s weird sometimes because my siblings had such a different family than I did, altho all the players are the same, no steps.
But man, I had no idea about the 24/7 thing with a baby until he was actually there! Want to go to the store, sorry, baby is sleeping, no coffee for you! Have to carry 3 large paper bags up 3 flights of stairs and not leave the baby alone at either end…carry him up and down 3 times. aiee
redshirt
My parents were 18 and 17, respectively, when I was born. Which could have been terrible and maybe was, but here I am, and now I feel like a peer with my parents. Which has been a strange development over the last 10 years. I’ve enjoyed it immensely and have the best relationship with my parents I’ve ever had now. I hope/trust it will get better as we all get older.
muddy
@efgoldman: Yeah, mine was climbing out of the crib at 9 months. I had to leave the side down lest he injure himself. Fully mobile on 2 feet at 10 months. Real escape artist too. Once I had him in an umbrella stroller, turned away for a second and turned back to find him missing. Then I see him making off bent over with the stroller still strapped on his back, like a turtle.
gogol's wife
My father was 62 when I was born. He lost an “oldest father” contest to a guy who was 75.
Mnemosyne
@redshirt:
Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in life. My husband just lost his father to a brain tumor — his dad was 67, G is 41.
We’ve pretty much decided against kids since I’m already 43, but even if we did have a really late baby, the women on both sides of my family are very long-lived, so I’ll probably live well into my 90s.
mai naem
My sister has two kids. She had the second one when she was 38. Ofcourse she loves my niece etc. but she strongly feels she should have had her earlier. She said you just don’t have the same energy when you get closer to fifty. I happen to be the youngest of a large family and my mom did say they were just plain tired by the time I got to grade school.
Corner Stone
@efgoldman:
What I found even better than that was the day I was sitting in the living room and my son walks in on his own. He had woken from his nap and climbed up and over his baby bed for the first time. I said, “Uh, how did you get here?” and he then proceeded to show me how he escaped his baby bed, ala Escape From New York, which I grabbed him about halfway through and said, “Yep, time for a big boy bed for you.”
Paddy
@Corner Stone:
My Dad did an incredible job. YMMV.
eemom
I have a college friend, age 50 (as I will be in 19 days), with 2 month old TRIPLETS.
muddy
@efgoldman: My sister used to tie my niece to a tree in the front yard while she did gardening. Gave her plenty of scope but nowhere near the street. The girl’s friends still give her shit about it, and those kids are near 40 now.
ETA: a long rope from the tree to the child’s waist, not just kid tied to the tree. ;-)
redshirt
@eemom: Wow. Someone should start a study on this situation immediately.
muddy
@eemom: My mind boggles.
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
I was apparently quite the child from hell — in retrospect, I was probably a fairly typical midrange ADHD kid, but in the 1970s, girls didn’t have ADHD, so I was the child from hell.
When I was a toddler, if I woke up before my parents, I would start wandering around the house, so they started putting a “child-proof” gate across my door at night.
I put “child-proof” in quotes because one of my earliest memories is of climbing up and over that gate, going downstairs, and putting some frozen Aunt Jemima French Toast in the toaster. What? I was hungry!
I think my parents had to put a lock on my door after that. I was probably about 3 years old at the time.
muddy
@Corner Stone: I used to work with a guy who said that his 2 year old was just going to have to learn to stay in the crib and like it, after he had discovered climbing out. I said, he’s going to hurt himself. But this (Ollie North loving) idiot was going to have discipline, dammit. So the kid broke his collar bone. That’ll show him. God that guy pissed me off.
One time I made teeny paper airplanes and directed them to land on his flattop hair from behind, it was especially delightful as we were drafting plans for aircraft carriers, and he now looked like one. Until he dropped his head and they all fell onto his desk. I said, I told you that Ollie North poster is going to rile me one day and I’ll do something. Really it was the collarbone that set me off.
hamletta
I felt this cosmic kick in my gut one night when I was 38, which was my personal upper limit for having kids. It felt like God saying, “You’re not ever going to have children. Are you OK with that?”
It was a physical sensation, completely unexpected; I was just walking across the parking lot.
Here I’d thought I was stopping off at HG Hill’s for groceries on the way home from work like I’d done a million times before.
My parents were really young. And they didn’t really like each other that much. My mom and I raised each other, and thanks to therapy, we’re pals.
There are advantages to both young and old parenting. I’d say the most important thing is to choose the person you want to have children with, because raising children is incredibly hard work, and you’ve gotta be a team.
My parents only got married because my mom got knocked up, and it made them both miserable.
Don’t do that.
muddy
@Mnemosyne: When my son was 2-1/2 I was wakened one morning by pounding on the front door. I open it, and to my surprise a neighbor is holding my kid. He has on a diaper and a teeshirt, it’s 40* out. She says, I didn’t think you knew he was out here!
And so he got his first grounding. A whole day, in his room. Brought meals up, enforced naptime etc, but had to stay in there all day. Imagine having to be stuck in a room full of toys all day. it’s wicked!
Then I installed a deadbolt on the front door that needs a key on both sides, and hung the key next to the door up where toddlers can’t reach. I said it was the new rule that he could not get up without getting me up (previously he could go down and watch cartoons). For a while I tricked him with the, “Just get under the covers and cuddle Mommy for a minute..ZZZ He got wise to that, and would rip my blanket off, and announce it was time to make the coffee.
By the time he was 8 he would start the coffee first, what a great son.
hamletta
P.S. — Dudes, I’m so pissed off that I stocked up on tampons in March, and I don’t need them anymore. (Imma be fiddy in February.)
Y’all dudes might not know, but those suckers are expensive.
Corner Stone
@Paddy: No doubt.
Corner Stone
@hamletta: And you see, if you had chosen to stock up on feminine pads you could at least have saved them to use as an emergency patch for gun shot or stab wounds.
Nature. She’s one heartless biatch.
Mnemosyne
@muddy:
I don’t think I ever managed to get outside by myself, though I’ll have to ask my dad. I was the second child, so they may have already taken those kinds of precautions by the time I came along. (Plus I was never fond of the cold, so going outside in 40-degree weather would not have been a temptation to me, much less the kind of cold we got in Chicago.)
My parents just didn’t expect me to figure out how to circumvent their security precautions.
Corner Stone
@muddy:
Beyond your quirky family sayings, you can be downright terrifying when riled up!
muddy
Terrifying? A half dozen inch long paper airplanes, pish tosh.
Another one I did to a guy in a different firm, was due to his fingernail biting. When he tried to pick a template up, it was all this pick, pick, pluck, for multiple times, then he’d *finally* slide it off the edge of the desk. It bugged me, because after the millionth time, could he just learn to slide if off in the first place. Gods!
So one day when he went to lunch, I used rubber cement to glue his templates down, and it was really long while before he realized that he was not the culprit.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@hamletta: A homeless or domestic violence shelter would be grateful for such a donation.
Corner Stone
@muddy:
Man! Remind me not to make you angry!
This reminds me of a saying we have in my family. When the tiny airplanes are buzzing all about, and you just can’t avoid them any longer, we say you have become the John C. Stennis of the house. Or Senate, as he was actually a US Senator. But that’s less about the saying and more about the actual man. So it’s probably not appropriate to point out the discordant note at this point regarding the differential between the imaginary saying and the actual man who later had an aircraft carrier named after him.
Wazmo
This.
eemom
@hamletta:
weeelll, don’t be so sure. Thought I was done too but……
less just say mother nature’s a crafty old bitch at this age.
cay
Please don’t have a kid. Tunch, Lily, and Rosie will die in isolation.
Corner Stone
@cay: Pretty sure the pets are gonna be just fine.
suzanne
The only thing I long for wistfully now that I have kids is my size six self. WTF is this fat roll on my stomach?! GOD. The boobs are awesome, though.
Everyone keeps asking us if we’re done, or if we’ll go for 3 someday. Right now, the two girls feels like enough. But I remember that the first one felt like enough, until all of a sudden I wanted another. They’re seven years apart, and that interval feels good, so I’ll start thinking about whether or not to have #3 in five years or so. I’ll be 37, but whatever.
Cathie from Canada
Having children has been the most wonderful, awful, terrifying, gratifying, aggravating, enriching experience in our lives.
41 isn’t too old — I was 32 when I had our daughter, 35 our son. We didn’t have as much energy, but we had more money so it evened out.
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne: Piker. You stayed in the house. My parents would get phone calls from neighbors when I would wander around at 4 or 5 am.
asiangrrlMN
Such a fat, happy baby, Cole. What a doll-face.
Now, how about a picture of Tunchie?
Just wanted to throw my two cents in about having kids. I realized at age 22 that I didn’t have to have them, that I never wanted to have them, and it’s the only decision I’ve ever made in my life that didn’t cause me a moment’s discomfort. Well, personal discomfort, that is. It caused people around me LOTS of discomfort.
I love being child-free. Love. It. Best decision I ever made.
suzanne
@asiangrrlMN: I have never figured out why so many people seem to feel personally invested in other people having kids. I have child free friends, and I don’t give a shit whether or not they have them (unless they want them and can’t have them, but that’s another bollawax). Seriously. Whatever.
Yutsano
@asiangrrlMN: You and me both. Funny thing is the NYD and I already had a kid conversation. Which kinda sucks cause we both agree no way in God’s green earth, but I personally think he’d make an awesome dad.
Latest conspiracy: getting him in a cowboy hat. He’s such a fucking city boy. :)
TS
@efgoldman:
My story is almost identical except it was Monday thru Wednesday 30 years ago & I did have the section. I remember when the Doc arrived for the latter – I screamed why didn’t you do this yesterday.
My kid was a dream until she turned 14 – then she became an adolescent.
Anne Laurie
Penalty of being the first-born. By the time the interlopers showed up, some of the novelty had worn off. On the other hand, you probably have a well-stocked baby album, including professional studio pics taken for every major holiday and develpmental landmark, while your youngest sib has the day-of-birth hospital snapshots plus a handful of use-up-the-roll random shots… or s/he would have, if your mom ever finds the shoe box where she set them aside.
@karen:
Darwinian selection. The ones who didn’t inherit the ‘gorgeous lashes’ gene failed to survive their outraged parents’ reaction to that first right-in-the-face autonomic Mannikin Pis incident, after which the diaper-changer learns to use the diaper as a splash guard.
Anne Laurie
@suzanne:
As one of those happily child-free people who kept getting asked, even by people who knew me well enough to know that my genes shouldn’t be in the public pool, I think it’s genetic (or at least proto-cultural). Despite all the rewards, any little girl growing up in a world without reliable birth control had a pretty good idea of how much trouble babies are to raise. Without a steady drumbeat of “But you MUST breed, because EVERYONE wants you to do it!” from the rest of the tribe, too many young women just opted out of the program for their own convenience. The hunter-gatherer bands that let their daughters make their own decisions got out-bred by the bio-imperators.
SRW1
Here’s my godson in my tub:
So that is what this bathroom action you documented so tirelessly over the last week was all about: You didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of your godson.
SiubhanDuinne
@hamletta: Donate them to a women’s shelter.
SiubhanDuinne
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Ah, you beat me to the suggestion. By several hours.
One day I will learn to read ALL the comments before making any of my own.*
.
.
*(Not really.)
tjmn
When my son was 18-months-old, he would wink at older ladies in the food store aisle. They were incredulous.
Skepticat
I hate to break it to you, JC, but you have kids, three of them. And being a godparent or even an uncle is so much easier than being a full-time, fully responsible parent; you get all the good stuff and then can turn the child over when it’s fussy or you have things to do. I always knew that being a parent was not for me; I simply was born without maternal genes. Of course, I do have kids, but all my children have paws.
Aimai
Jeezus Christ cole you could get married to some nice fertile girl and keep the dogs and tunch as a ménage a quatre in the side. Treat the animal
rescue shelter as a dating service and get cracking. Forty is the new thirty.
madmommy
Madhubby and I married at 35 and 38. The big kid arrived shortly before my 36th birthday, the little guy when I was 38. We’re on the older end of the spectrum of parents at their school functions, but it doesn’t really bother me. Sometimes I wish I had started earlier, but then I wouldn’t have this particular crew. Madhubby just got an AARP card in the mail (he’ll be 50 at the end of the month) and the little guy asked “does this mean daddy is an oldster?” For a long time I thought that I wouldn’t have kids, but then I did. Sometimes people change their minds, sometimes circumstances change. My brother’s first (and only!) child was born when he was 42, so you’ve still got plenty of time, John, if that is what you want :)
schrodinger's cat
Now how about a picture of Tunch having a bath, better still make it a TunchCam
P.S. Keep band aids ready.
asiangrrlMN
@suzanne: My mom nagged me about it from the time I was 26 until roughly two years ago, but that’s understandable ‘coz she’s old-school. Other people said I would change my mind, got mad because they felt I was casting aspersions on their choices, and some were offended because I had no doubt about it. It wasn’t just that I wasn’t participating in the norm – I was ignoring it. I wasn’t rending my clothing about my decision. I didn’t apologize for it. I was giddy about it. That, apparently, was threatening to some people.
@Yutsano: Yeeeee-haw! Ride ’em, cowboy!
Caz
It’s never too late to get married, and you can still find a woman who’s willing and able to have children. So what’s holding you back?? If you put as much effort into finding a woman as you bashing conservatives, you’d have no problem getting married and having a family. Methinks you don’t want to put the effort into it and have to make the sacrifices. Don’t regret – go out and make it happen!
Caz
It’s never too late to get married, and you can still find a woman who’s willing and able to have children. So what’s holding you back?? If you put as much effort into finding a woman as you bashing conservatives, you’d have no problem getting married and having a family. Methinks you don’t want to put the effort into it and have to make the sacrifices. Don’t regret – go out and make it happen!
Caz
It’s never too late to get married, and you can still find a woman who’s willing and able to have children. So what’s holding you back?? If you put as much effort into finding a woman as you bashing conservatives, you’d have no problem getting married and having a family. Methinks you don’t want to put the effort into it and have to make the sacrifices. Don’t regret – go out and make it happen!
Patricia Kayden
@AxelFoley: That’s right. Alex Trebek was 50 when he married a 26 year old and had children.
http://www.zimbio.com/Alex+Trebek/articles/eW8uei_Qmab/Alex+Trebek+Wife+Jean+Currivan+Trebek+Pictures