AlternaDad - Being Cool Parents

I guess part of the trouble with this concept is you have to be cool to begin with, and I'm not sure that Melanie and I qualify :) Maybe another word would fit better: active, urban, something like that. I mean, certainly there are things about us that parallel the story in AlternaDad.

In the book, while Regina is pregnant they move to Austin (no secret about my love-affair for Austin). They move there after Neal spends several days there for 'work' during SXSW. They find a cool little house near downtown, and are convinced that Austin is the coolest/hip-est little punk rock town going. Then they begin going to their 'birthing classes', and find out exactly what Melanie and I found out during our most recent trip to Austin.

"For six consecutive Tuesdays, we drove north up I-35 to a doctor's office in a strip mall that looked like it had been built about the time I was going through puberty. I questioned my original assessment of Austin. Up the highway, there aren't any weird punk rock clubs. It's all Rudy Fazuli's and the Container Store. People in the northern suburbs experience SXSW no more directly than the do Carnival in Montevideo."

It's easy to do whatever everyone else does in anywhere America, even in Austin which has a tremendous reputation for being 'cool'. I want to avoid my life shifting to 'generic' because I have a baby. I want to spend lots and lots and lots of time with my child, and be the best dad ever. I just want to do it without ending up generic. Not sure why but it is important to me.

But from the book there are some easy ways to have the little bit of cool mixed in and I hope that Melanie and I can do that same. They talk about decorating their sons room with a 'cowboy' theme. Now that's pretty common, but they did it by adding in some posters from the Hatch Show Print Shop in Nasvhille, including an old KY state fair poster, a carnival scene depicting a 'freaks' tent, and a poster of Johnny Cash. Nothing amazing, but a little 'cool' in the everyday.

Finally, there is still 'doing' cool stuff. In the book, when Regina is 7 months pregnant (or as they put it, "just before she descended into the not-being-able-to-move phase of pregnancy") they went to an acoustic Beck concert. It's stuff like that (thanks to the smoking ban in Ohio) that you still want to do. I want to make sure this isn't the last time we go to SXSW, and I want to take our baby with us. Sure we'd have to change the hours a bit, and not stay out late. We'd also have to avoid the really loud shows and pick more acoustic gatherings, but it should still happen.

AlternaDad - Baby Showers

So, the idea of a 'couples' wedding shower was something I put my foot down on. I figure sure, it's 'our' wedding, but that doesn't mean you have to torture your husband. In reality, I've been to several couples wedding showers since then, and what it boils down to is that you're invited, but the women there don't really want you there. They are going to play there games, and chat and whatever else, and the role of the men there is to make sure not to get in the way or screw anything up.... so why invite them, I say Play golf.

So, baby showers are perhaps a little bit less offensive. It is our baby. And having a baby means doing a whole lot that you otherwise wouldn't enjoy. It's a lot of cleaning up poop, and being spit on. But it's all worth it. Still, the 'shower' is still female centric, and it's really about toting over pregnant mom. Not that it's a bad thing, but I don't really understand why they want Dad there.

Anyway, from Neal Pollack's book he relays a story about a wedding shower he went to thrown by his wife's family.

"She opened her presents, which were pretty normal: Baby monitors, onesies..... . I overreacted to each one, burying my face in my hands, or raising my arms to the sky, subtly indicating to everyone that I found the gifts tacky.... The church ladies were not amused".

I hope I don't come across as unappreciative of the things that can/will be given to Melanie and I. It's not that at all. What I am trying to say is that, I won't be impressed. I am not impressed with 'stuff' in my own life, I'm not going to do a cartwheel over a new shirt. So it seems to me that showing now emotion is a bad idea, showing overexaggerated emotion is a bad idea, so why not make it easier on everyone involved and let the guys go play golf?