Just an all too brief thanks to my two favorite mothers in the whole world. The one who birthed and nurtured me:

And the one who nurtures and birthed my wonderful son:

I’m forever humbled by the immense sacrifices you two have given, subsequently blessing me with an implausibly fortunate life.

Mom, now that I’m a parent, I finally understand the anguish I put you through during my late teens. Wow, all I can do is sincerely apologize! I’m sure Zin will re-pay the favor in 16 or 17 years time!

My beautiful wife and partner: I knew intuitively long ago that you’d be a wonderful mother to my future child(ren). To actually see that vision in practice on a daily basis is to live a dream.

Even though you don’t always feel like it: You. Are. An. Amazing. Mom.

Period. With all my heart and soul, I thank you for that.

Love,

D

Considering I’ve snapped literally thousands upon thousands of digital photos of my son since his birth, it dawned on me recently that nearly eight months into his life, I didn’t have even a single picture of his behind!

Even worse, I realized I probably didn’t really even know what his butt looked like! Now this might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not.

Literally, if you’d shown me a series of mug shots of the derrieres of five or six similarly-toned babies, I absolutely would not have been able to pick Zin’s posterior out of the lineup if my life depended on it. Looking back, I don’t think I’ve spent more than a combined 17 seconds looking at his cherubic (other) cheeks.

Now, you may be thinking, “Seriously? What kind of a negligent parent is this guy?” And, “Does he bathe his child?”

And my relatively respectful replies would be: “Actually I’m quite involved in my son’s life.” and “Yes I’ve done so dozens of times, and frankly I resent the accusation.”

In all fairness, my lack of familiarity with my boy’s tuchus shouldn’t be that surprising. After all, during bath time and any other brief occasions in which little Zin is naked before me, I’ve not exactly been eager to have him remain in that state — at least not with his poop chute facing anywhere near my direction.

Most other jumpy new parents who’ve been pooped upon will concur with me on this point. There are few things more terrifying than when your infant passes gas in his birthday suit while in this literally rear-facing position. This type of “Baby Bum Russian Roulette” can leave scars on a sleep-deprived daddy because you never know when there’s more than just air shooting out of that chamber at your face, hand, etc.!

Thankfully, at this point in his development, Zin has calmed down with the projectile peeing and pooping during his rare moments of exposure, so lately I’ve been less cautious. Plus, I’ve essentially no choice but to be exposed to more frequent views of my son’s bottom these days because his current favorite game appears to be spinning rapidly mid-diaper change a la “hungry crocodile death roll vs. wildebeest.” But a tad do I digress.

Like the rest of his body, the kid’s backside — precious as it is — has practically quadrupled in size since his birth. So that’s another reason you can’t blame me for not recognizing it since those early days of his life.

Excuses aside, when I took this photo below, I was astonished by the aesthetic length of his intergluteal cleft [which is the biomedical term for what most of us so crudely refer to as our “butt crack” — Now, don’t tell me you never learn anything from this blog] relative to the size of his baby body.

Proud papa that I was, finally gazing upon his ironically picturesque tush for essentially the first time, I thought to myself, “That there is an impressive vertical gluteal crease!”

Which had me wondering: “Are all babies’ buttocks like Zin’s? Is the typical infant intergluteal cleft similar to the human eyeball in newborns?”

That is, are we essentially born with the same size eyeballs and “fanny slots” that we carry with us throughout our lives? [Actually, the eyeball thing might be a myth, so I’ll have to check it out with Mommy Science PhD]. Either way, why hasn’t our pediatrician measured it to inform us under what percentile our child falls? I know I might be biased (see #2 at this blog post here), but I’m fairly certain Zin has an above average rump ratio.

Anyway, if this blog entry’s great biological inquiry inspires any undergraduate or graduate degree theses, please make sure you give the LIFEwithZin Blog a shout-out in the Acknowledgments! ;)

-DaddyDom @lifewithzin

*Note: Please do yourself a big, big favor. Do NOT, under any circumstances, make the mistake that I did during the composition of this blog post, which was to naively perform a Google images search on the term “intergluteal cleft,” looking for a biology textbook-style drawing slightly larger than this one at a “Yahoo Answers” post. You are not likely to be able to “un-see” the horrifying, visual barrage of thumbnail .jpeg’s from medical websites of this region of the body [the experience proves definitively to Daddy (Political)Science PhD that it doesn’t, in fact, always pay to fact-check]. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever hit the “Back” button faster than I just did on my browser, yet I don’t expect the resulting nightmares to end anytime soon. Ugh. If you don’t heed this advice, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Uh…how should I put this?

Not a good idea.

Ranging from the semi-pretentious, to the arguably excusable, back on out to the “eyes rolling back in the head”-caliber annoying, these are the scientifically proven, biologically inescapable “Top 5 Things You Basically Swore You Wouldn’t Say As a Parent (Before You Became One)”, which you’ve hypocritically in all likelihood uttered at least once within the first six or seven months of your first child’s birth.

#1 - “It’s hard to explain until you experience it…” — Okay, so this might indeed be true, whether your talking about the birth experience, the feeling of holding your child for the first time, etc. to a someone who has not yet had a child of their own. But then again, you might also just be cursed with an all-too-common inability to effectively express yourself in the language in which you claim to be fluent! ;)  Log on to thesaurus.com and/or pick up some decent fiction to beef up your ability to use metaphor and all those other fancy literary techniques.

#2 - “Okay, so I might be biased, but isn’t s/he adorable?” — Might be biased? Might be?  Look, this one certainly isn’t any new parent’s fault. If Mother Nature didn’t equip them with a heavily biased “adorable meter”, untold scores of children would be abandoned at fire stations, the doorsteps of places of worship, and other no-questions-asked drop-off points, merely because the parents recoiled in horror during the child’s “ugly troll” phase. This period lasts longer for some kids than others, but they all have got one, and new parents don’t recognize it until months later when reviewing old photos from the initial weeks. Anyway, it’s just a handy survival mechanism to ensure we care for our young. Of course, I can write this now that Zin has turned out to be the cutest baby ever to grace the human race (not that I’m biased or anything).

#3 - “Before [insert child’s name] was born, I never …” — Okay, so I know it’s basically the title of this blog post, and it’s kinda similar to #1, but it’s worthy of highlighting in its own right. Especially when it’s followed by such phrases as “… liked infants” or “… could stand changing diapers” or “… truly appreciated life” or some other phrase almost perfectly designed — intentionally or not — to get under the skin of your all those child-hating, shallow, soul-less individuals who call themselves human beings, even though they have yet to join you in the ranks of sleepless zombies stressing 24/7 over a little mini-me.

#4 - “Lemme just show you one more video I took last weekend…” — Millions of dogs do it every day on command, but when I shot video of my kid first rolling over, I was as excited as if it was video evidence of human levitation. His first time eating solid foods? Prouder than if he’d just won Olympic gold. Friends and acquaintances I’ve run into on the street have been subjected to me sifting through a “Highlight” album of 800+ photos, trying to find the best ones. I’ve finally narrowed it down to about three dozen or so.

#5 - “I’m exhausted, but it’s totally worth it…” — Man, this one is tough. Hmmm. I mean, before Zin was born, I never thought I’d say this one, but I guess it’s just really hard to explain until you experience it. Yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. ;)

Zin turns six months old this week. And I have to say, I had never expected him to be so playful and active as he’s been.

For the first few days and weeks of virtually all babies, while all his or her systems are still developing and learning how to act in coordination with each other, he or she isn’t particularly playful or interactive. That’s a challenge for some parents — particularly if the kid screams incessantly and doesn’t eat well. That early stage was less of a problem for me than I expected because Zin turned out to be a relatively mellow kid, and during my manic “head over heels in love with my new son” stage, I just had fun with his subdued state (see for example, “Zin Absolutely Rocks Out to Depeche Mode”, shot when he was about 7 days old).

But that stage didn’t last too anyway, and he’s been gradually exploring his world and playing around. What follows is an unofficial list of some of his favorite activities. All these fun and games aren’t always enjoyable for Daddy and Mommy Science PhD, of course, but … ah, let me just stop frontin’. This list is largely just an excuse to post some pix of the l’il dude, and it’s been sitting unfinished in my “Drafts” box for weeks.

So, if you’re not into the photos on this blog, and prefer something with more wit, go back and look at a post like this instead (“The Top 10 Most Frightening and/or Bizarre Sounds a Newborn Makes from the Perspective of His Paranoid Poppa”). Here goes:

• His all-time favorite “game” occurs on a daily basis when dressing him on the changing table. He almost always tries to eat his own wrists while we stick his arms through the sleeves.
• Playing with or pulling on his momma’s hair
• Gleefully attacking stuffed animal toys with both hands and with gummy jaws of death
• Munching on burp cloths
• Munching on books
• Using Daddy or Mommy’s face as some sort of equivalent to a cat scratch pole. My lower lip has been pulled and twisted in ways I thought were only possible in my favorite Looney Tunes cartoons.
• Slobbering all over whatever body parts to which he can gain access
• Slobbering generally (I like to call the photo below the “drool goatee”) 
• And then there are the diaper games: this could be a sort of Olympics in and of themselves. Early on, his best event was “Urination for distance” (“pissing contest” just makes it sound so vulgar and trivial), though he was quite adept as well at “Urination for Saturation” while sitting on his parents’ laps.
• Seeing how many fingers he can stuff in his mouth without gagging himself
• Gnawing on toys and play sets
• Gnawing on his big toe (this involves some sort of baby yoga)

[Insert witty ending that wraps it all up … here]   ;)

“The Magical Flowchart of Breastfeeding” - PREVIOUS POST >

Lying on the ground next to my (almost) 6-month old son yesterday afternoon, I had to just marvel at the fact that all the nutrients that have fueled his amazing growth and  energy have come from his mother. If I had the time (and talent), I’d draw a flowchart to diagram how this magical, all-natural process works. So, imagine a 5-panel chart drawn in the style of some witty young art student, using the following:

1) Mommy Science PhD eats wholesome organic fruits and vegetables delivered to family’s door in a CSA (community-supported agriculture) box —> 2) her mammary glands produce sweet-tasting “Mother Nature’s Best” —> 3) six-month old guzzles insatiably as if his exhausted mother bosom was wearing an”All-U-Can-Drink” sign dangling across her chest —> 4) his under-developed yet dynamic digestive system helps convert the milk into energy he can use to —> 5) kick his unsuspecting father dead in the throat on a lovely afternoon.

The magic of mother nature at work!

Now why would I think about this magical process while gasping for air, you might ask?

It must be due to my relentlessly positive and utterly selfless approach to fatherhood. It’s a quality I hope will get me through those days in a few years’ time when he’s stepping across my face to remind me breakfast is overdue, and headbutting me in the groin to convey his need for my undivided attention.

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