Kid Amnesiac

This is just getting ridiculous. Last night we did the tour at the Maternity Ward at Norton Suburban Hospital, and again we were quoted the “four out of five infant car seats are installed incorrectly” speech and told to arrange an inspection. We were handed a flier that had the exact same list of places to contact to arrange a car seat inspection that I had previously gotten off of carseat.org, and I resolved to set up an appointment first thing the next morning.

The first place I call, State Farm Service Center, shuffles me around to at least four different phone extensions before I get someone that tells me, “Man, I haven’t done that in years!” The second place I call, AAA Kentucky, goes straight to a phone message telling you it may be seven to ten days before they can even call you back to arrange an appointment. The next place I want to call, the Middletown Fire Department, doesn’t even have a phone number listed. Very Helpful. Kosair Children’s Hospital, more voicemail. [Sigh….]

This is just hilarious. And cool. Hilariously cool. Baby Rock Records has released Rockabye Baby: Lullabye Renditions of Radiohead, a CD featuring 11 Radiohead songs arranged as instrumentals featuring all the kinds of clunky and bonky instruments that one imagines babies would love (just think glockenspiel). The lullabye treatment actually works remarkably well for Radiohead songs, probably because so many of them sound like lullabyes to begin with. Well, okay — lullabyes with deeply disturbing lyrics. But all that’s gone on this record, leaving your youngster with delightful little melodies to nod off to. Dad can imagine the disturbing lyrics all on his own and Junior doesn’t ever have to know that he’s being spoon-fed disinformation by an increasingly corporate media training him to be the ideal young consumer in our hyperaccelerated, soon-to-be Blade Runner-esque distopia.

Check out the music samples on their web page and try not to smile.

Of course, they’ve also done a Coldplay lullabye record, but there’s really just nothing funny or cool about that at all.

Baby Whozit taps out mad props to Kaya and Kelley for the CD.

Jessica and I picked up an excercise ball a few days back for use as a “birthing ball” when she goes into labor. Our Lamaze instructor had reminded us repeatedly to get the correct size ball for the mom’s height, so we purchased the Small size, which is for people 5’0″ – 5’5″ tall. Great, right?

Of course not.

Small is probably the right size for a 5’2″ person doing yoga with an excercise ball, but it is definitely not the correct size for a 5’2″ woman trying to do labor positioning with one. I could tell the second I inflated it this afternoon — it looked like a kickball. Just to confirm that it was as bad as it seemed I had Jessica give it a spin. At least we got a few laughs out of it.

So I’m off to the sporting goods store sometime this week to do an exchange for a size Medium, and I’m 0 for 2 on the pregnancy chore score list.

So I installed the car seat today — job 1 of at least 46 that I need to get done in the next two or three weeks. Or at least I think I installed it. See, infant car seats are interesting. All the baby-on-the-way literature suggests that you couldn’t possibly be smart enough to install one of these suckers yourself, and that after you attempt your own half-assed installation you must then go to a Car Seat Inspection Center where a much manlier man than you will correct all of your baby-life-threatening mistakes. I always wondered why I should even bother with the first part if I was doomed to failure anyway — why not just take the seat straight to the Mr. Inspection Tough Guy and save myself the ritual humiliation?

Well, apparently having a baby on the way has made me less of a wuss. Or at least more embarassed to be such an obvious wuss. So I got out the car seat and all the appropriate documentation I could dig up and decided to see if I could possibly be manly enough to install an infant car seat into a 2000 Corolla.

After carefully going through the relevant portions of the Toyota owner’s manual and then skimming through the Graco car seat instruction booklet, it appeared that all I had to do was run a seat belt through a couple of slots and then fasten it on the other side. That’s it: seatbelt, slots. Go over both manuals again: seatbelt, slots. Read the enormous sticker on both sides of the car seat: seatbelt, slots. One seat belt, two slots. That’s it. And does the car seat feel secure? Of course not. It feels like it’s being held in place by a single seatbelt running through two slots on the back!

See, I knew it. Now I’ve done everything the instructions said, and the whole thing feels half-assed. Do I feel macho? No. Do I feel fatherly? Hell, no. I feel like I do every time I try to assemble anything — like a chump. So I’m off to the local Car Seat Inspection Center later this week, which promises to be oh-so-much fun.

In what now appears to be a boldly unoriginal move, Jessica and I have decided to join the baby bandwagon and are expecting our first child this October. The current due date is October 15, and so far all is going swimmingly. The prenatal tests have gone well, and the pregnancy itself has been very easy thus far.

Most of our family had given up on us, so our news was greeted with quite a bit of shock. The nieces are already planning to babysit (they “get paid extra if the baby is bad” according to Baby Whozit’s young cousin Olivia). My mother announced her plans to retire just as Jessica hit her second trimester. Jessica’s brother Steve is dying to add another boy to the family. My Aunt Barb will never forgive us if we don’t have a girl. And everyone has an opinion about the names we’ve been toying with.

More updates soon.