7. Parenting is Easy. JK
7
Parenting is Easy. JK
“Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”
-Joe Theismann
Dylan
“So, how many diapers do you think we need?” Alex asked, frowning at the screen of his phone as he scrolled through a grocery delivery app.
I shrugged. “She’s little. How many could she actually go through in a day?” I asked him, repeating my thoughts from earlier. “I mean, I only wear one pair of underwear a day.”
“Unless it’s game day,” Alex corrected me, not bothering to look up from the screen. “Also, you don’t routinely poop your pants.”
“Good point,” I conceded. “So, what? Three a day? I think that feels pretty average bathroom usage.”
Alex nodded thoughtfully. “That sounds good. Oh, here’s a huge box. It says it’s a size five. That probably means five hours, right?”
“Get that one,” I agreed, peering over his shoulder. “It has 120 in the box. That’ll last us for weeks and it’s the same brand as the ones she’s wearing now. I think she likes them. She hasn’t complained.”
Alex lifted an eyebrow at me. “I’m glad she’s not speaking to management about the service,” he said dryly.
I ignored him. “What else do we need?”
Alex scrolled on his phone. “We got everything on the list.”
I went through the list we’d found on a “How to be a new parent” website we’d found. I couldn’t believe babies needed so much, but I’d had Alex help me pick out one of everything they said we needed:
a crib
bibs
burp cloths
a mobile for the crib (we'd spent a long time finding a cool football themed one.)
some clothes (bodysuits and a team jersey of course.)
more formula (she kept drinking it and wanting more.)
diapers (they only seemed to last an hour, which must have been why they were labeled “1”. Hopefully the fives would last a little bit longer.)
a wipe warmer
a white noise machine
nipple cream (not sure why, but all the websites said to get it.)
lube (I was a little afraid of this one, but I purchased it.)
cabbage leaves (why a baby would need cabbage was beyond me, but I was obviously not trained in being a parent.)
a changing pad
baby monitor
baby shampoo
swaddle blankets
the worlds best car seat
and a partridge in a pear tree.
Looking at the total at the bottom of the screen made me a little nauseous. It was a lot and we hadn’t even bought any toys. No wonder people were always complaining about the price of kids. I was just glad I had a good money manager and several TV commercials making me crib-buying money.
“Okay, this should all be delivered in a couple of hours,” Alex said, hitting the buy button without pausing. Why should he? It wasn't his money. “You good? I need to go pick up some stuff for mi abuela before her big doctor’s appointment, but I can stay if you need me.”
I'd nearly forgotten that today was the doctor’s appointment day. I hoped that it was just a normal run of the mill “you're seventy-years-old” results and not a big scary one. Alex lived with his mom and his grandma, not because he couldn’t afford it, but because his grandma’s health wasn’t the best. He stayed with her to make sure she stayed healthy. His grandma was the strongest woman I'd ever met. She was the one that kept Alex’s family going. Without her as head matriarch, I wasn't sure the Castorena family would survive.
“No, man, I’ve got this,” I assured him. I re-positioned the baby in my arms. She’d had another bottle and gone right back to sleep in my arms like she thought I was the safest place in the whole world. That thought made me warm and fuzzy all the way to my toes. “Hey, your mom raised three kids. Could you ask her for tips?”
Alex hesitated. “You want parenting tips from my mom?”
“Well, she raised you,” I replied. “You seem to have turned out okay.”
He smiled at me. “That is because I am simply amazing. I'm sure she’ll say something like, ‘kids need to respect their elders’ and ‘don’t let them watch too much TV’ or some shit like that.”
“Right, because those are terrible things for people to do,” I said, walking over to the couch and settling down. I thought about putting the baby in her box, but I didn’t want to let her go. I loved her sleepy weight in my arms, and I knew if I put her in the box, I’d just stand there and watch her sleep. At least on the couch, I could put on some film and pretend to get work done.
“I'll ask her,” Alex said, sliding his phone into his back pocket. “I won’t tell her it’s you. It might be a good distraction if we need something to talk about.” He swallowed hard, his face going dark and worried at the same time. “I gotta go.”
“Good luck today,” I said as he headed to the door. “Let me know how it goes. If she needs anything...” I let the words trail off. I would always make sure that Alex’s family got what they needed. Alex was not only my employee, but also my best friend. What good was my million-dollar contract if I couldn’t help the people I cared about?
Alex gave me a quick nod before escaping the apartment to take his grandmother to the doctor. I settled in with the remote control, the baby sleeping peacefully in my arms.
This parenting thing was easy.
This parenting thing was stupid hard.
All the stuff had come, but the doorbell had woken up the baby. Since I didn’t have a good place to put her while all the delivery people piled baby gear into my entryway, I just stood there, holding a crying baby like an idiot. They gawked and the baby screamed. It was fun.
Nothing I did soothed her. She didn’t want to eat. I ruined three diapers trying to figure out how to change her. Natalie had made it look so easy, or maybe the baby just liked her better and didn’t try to squirm as much. As it was, I got pee all over the floor. Twice.
Then, when I did finally figure out where the little fastening straps went and how tight they needed to be... she pooped. And I had to do it all over again, except this time, it was the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen, smelt, or touched. Because it got on my hand. I nearly threw up. I used up nearly an entire container of the baby wipes getting her, the floor, and my hand clean.
I was going to need more wipes sooner than I thought. That and an industrial strength steam cleaner.
And she still didn’t stop fussing. Sure, she’d stopped wailing once I’d fed her and gotten her in dry pants, but if I set her down or stopped moving around the apartment, she started to whine. If I didn’t start walking, her little eyes would well up with huge fat tears, her lower lip turning upside down as she looked at me like I’d betrayed her entire family and then kicked her puppy. She also had to be held a specific way. She wanted to be upright against my chest and would not accept anything else. My arms were getting tired, but I tried to tell myself it was just a new kind of weight training.
So I’d looped the couch three hundred and eleven times the past hour while telling my arms to just suck it up and hold her.
It also meant that I hadn’t been able to set any of her stuff up. I had everything I could possibly need to take care of her; a crib, changing table, bottles, and clothing. But I couldn’t use any of it because I couldn’t stop walking or set her down. The supplies to make my life easier sat there, mocking me, so close and yet so far. I felt more inadequate and dumb than I had in years. This was worse than high school math class.
Plus, now I had to pee.
I couldn’t do this any longer. I was going to break.
I pulled out the little slip of paper, squinting at it to figure out which numbers were her phone number, and which were some poor guy’s blood pressure. The slip of paper was somehow heavy in my fingers. I didn’t want to bother her. She was supposed to be sleeping. She’d worked a long shift and had looked like a zombie when she’d left. It had only been a few hours and I knew that I would hate to be woken up early by some dude who just couldn’t seem to figure out how to take care of a baby.
I imagined her waking up, her hair messy and sleep still in her eyes. She would be gorgeous in the morning, I decided. She would be gorgeous any time. Those scrubs didn’t hide her figure of curves and softness.
But I couldn’t afford to think about her like that right now. Having sexy thoughts about women and acting on them was what had gotten me into this situation. I needed to do something else.
I thought about calling Alex, not that he would be much help. He’d be just as confused as I was by all the baby stuff, but at least he knew how to use a hex wrench and could make the crib while I kept making the endless laps around the couch to keep the baby happy. I didn’t put his number on the screen. He was at the hospital with his grandma. I didn’t want to bother him. That route was blocked. Pick a different run pattern.
“It’s just a baby,” I told myself as she fussed and whimpered until I got her position just perfect again. “People do this all the time. Teenagers do this. Cavemen survived saber-tooth tigers chasing them while caring for a baby. I can do this.”
I didn’t believe myself.
The baby fussed again and I checked her diaper. I’d discovered that wet diapers felt squishy while the dry ones had a crackly feel to them. It wasn’t an exact science, but little girl had a squishy diaper. It was time to change it.
“I can do this,” I told myself. I felt like I should do my pregame hype routine. We were out of the pack of diapers Alex had brought home with the second purchase, so I opened the giant box of number 5 diapers.
And it was huge. There was no way it was going to fit on my little girl.
The “five” was a size, not a time frame. I was an idiot. For a moment, I was incredibly glad that Natalie wasn’t here to see me fail at this parenting thing yet again. I wanted to impress her and buying the wrong diapers for the second time today was just too much.
“Nothing but to do our best with what we’ve got,” I told my daughter, wrapping the giant diaper around her as tightly as I could make it go. The darn thing was nearly up to her armpits. She looked like a baby doing a terrible impression of Steve Urkel.
She fussed until I had her upright again and she reached out a tiny hand toward the TV. I turned to see what had caught her attention and it was an advertisement. Lots of flashy colors and fast movement. And then me. I wore my jersey as Marcus threw water balloons at me. I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to sell houses, but the company said it was giving record sales and they kept paying me.
The rest of the team flashed up on the screen. Something squeezed in my chest. Those were my friends. My family. Sure, some of them were complete assholes, but they had my back. When I was injured last season, they were there for me. They checked in on me. Even now, when I kept dropping passes like they burned my hands, they still showed up for me.
Would they show up for me with something like this?
I didn’t want to risk it. Coach told me to keep my nose clean and having a surprise baby was the exact opposite of that. It would leak. The press would find out and paint me in a bad light because that was the better angle to sell papers. “Deadbeat NFL Dad” was always in season.
I needed a different team to help me because I knew I couldn’t do this on my own. Tomorrow, I would have preseason practice and I didn’t think I could wear the baby to the pads practice.
I looked down at the scrap of paper again. I hadn’t set it down. Her handwriting was messy yet readable.
“You win games with the team you have, not the team you want,” I told myself. But I did want her. She was cute and smart and had a great laugh. I liked her, which was dangerous if I was going to ask her what I wanted to ask her.
But I didn’t have a choice.
So I picked up the phone and called her.
“This better be an emergency,” she answered the phone. I winced and tried not to think of how little sleep she’d had today.
I held the baby up to the phone. Her little screams echoed hard enough to cause feedback.
“Sleep is overrated anyway,” Natalie groaned. “I’ll be right there.”