Break a Leg

 

Today I thought I'd actually put forth a minor effort (unlike last week) and get back to blogging for a change. It occurs to me that I'm the only FILF involved with Break A Leg, and as such might have some helpful insights into the mind of a father and family man that is also a world-famous internet celebrity.

Everyone must set priorities in life, even the incredibly wealthy and incredibly powerful, because we all share the same limitation: time. Time. Did I say that already? Yes, time. Damn, I keep saying it. I have a little bit of OCD I think, because sometimes I keep saying the same thing over and over until it sounds exactly right in my head.

Yes, time. The invisible thieving whore that steals not just one hour of sleep a year unless you live in Arizona or Hawaii, but also steals that most precious of commodities: time. Damn, I did it again.

So you know that feeling after you've oh, I don't know, read one of my blogs? Like you know you'll never have that 5 minutes back that felt like two hours? Right, that's what I'm trying to get at here. Time sometimes moves quickly and sometimes slowly, or we at least perceive it to speed up and slow down, but it never actually reverses and gives us a second chance at anything.

You know that other feeling in those microseconds after doing something incredibly stupid, so unbelievably idiotic that all you really need is less than a second to reverse it? Like the time you maybe stuck your tongue on a hot iron for no apparent reason at all, but even as you did it you were thinking "What in god's name am I doing?", but you just did it anyway because even though you hadn't done it quite yet your nerve impulses were already committed?

Well after having a child, those things don't happen that much. Children actually have the power to stop time in its tracks, yet still allow it to move at quadruple its normal rate. Take these examples:

• An infant crying for 4 hours straight.
• A toddler vomiting every 20 minutes for 8 hours.
• A two year-old in a race-car bed today, when only yesterday there was an infant in a bassinet.

Not only that, but they can also completely erase your memory, bad sci-fi  style. My wife and I cannot for the life of us remember what we did with our lives before our son was born, and that was only 2 1/2 years ago. We think food, movies, and perhaps even other people might have been involved, but nobody's too sure anymore. Our friends don't even seem to understand the question when we try to press them for information.

So to help you kids out that may someday be heading down this road, I put together a short list of time-management tips for the would-be parent. Take what you can and ignore the rest, every child is an individual and what works for me may not work for you:

1. Take lots of pictures, especially in those early months that you are prone to taking for granted. Twenty pictures per day for the first three months is par for the course, especially since all of your friends will want to look at each every photo.
2. Along that same line of thought, document every milestone. It’s so easy to forget! I read online that Gmail is a great tool for documenting those little things you may want to look up later, because it stores everything forever. Just create a mailing list with all of your friends and family and send out a daily log to each of them, that way you can just search the "Sent Items" folder when you're trying to remember when Junior first got a sip of Daddy's beer. If it's too hard to decide who to send the daily log to, just send it to your entire address book.
3. Grandparents are a great resource for advice, since they've probably been through all of this before. Leave a list of questions for them to answer while they're babysitting for you every Saturday night.
4. Television is not a great babysitter: it is a friend, mentor, and life coach. Introduce your little guy (or girl!) to all of the essentials early and often.

That's all for now! See you next week!