Notes from baby jail

Mirriam Webster defines recidivism as “a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior.”

Nicolas Cage called it “a bonehead word” in Raising Arizona.

I just call it having another baby.

People say it’s easier the second time around. People say it’s like riding a bike (albeit a bike covered in spit-up). People say if you have one, you might as well have two! People say a lot of things. Here’s what’s really going on with this new family of four:

• I forgot how utterly boring newborns are. You take them to a party, they sleep. Out to dinner, sleep. Watch a movie, sleep. People come over to dote, which is fun. But after a few hours, they give you that refund-wanting look like, ‘So, uh, is she gonna do something, or should we just go home and stare at our decorative fireplace?’
• I’m happy to report my swaddling skills are back to competition level after just three or four sub-par wraps. I even swaddled my wife, which was awesome, until the baby got hungry.
• It has come to my attention this week that at any given moment of any given day, someone in this house is sleeping. We’re trying to teach our kids the importance of laziness before they start getting too ambitious.
• My wife is eating her placenta, one encapsulated nugget at a time. This is really blurring the lines of her vegetarianism.
• For the first week, my wife kept referring to Peanut as ‘him.’ But it may have just been the narcotics talking.
• We are a family of four. I like even numbers, so I am okay with this. But the number of kids now equals the number of adults, so we can’t have another one for fear of a coup.
• We say things now like, “Can you watch the KIDS (plural) for while I take a shower?” That’s weird. The showering part, I mean.
• We can’t recline in either front seat in the car now. This makes low-riding down Main Street particularly challenging.
• I have a daughter. This has given me serious pause to wonder…why is it spelled that way, seriously?