slide2Yesterday was Father’s Day in Australia. I’d love to report that it was a paragon of parenthood, a day spent in a gauzy sepia tone image of fatherhood.

But it wasn’t. It was blustery and wet, rendering us home bound for most of the day. It was filled with crying children and and irritable adults and losing football teams. And sleep deprivation. God, the sleep deprivation. At some point in the last couple of years, I managed to forget what life with a new baby is like, managed to block out the disrupted nights and that particular timbre of a newborn’s cries that just beats on your eardrum like a mallet.

And at some point yesterday, I realized that I’m just not sure about this new fellow – this Not Max.

Maybe it is the lack of sleep talking. Maybe it is because he is the second child and the novelty has warn off. Maybe its because I can’t settle him when he gets upset. I’m beginning to think that he doesn’t like me. I don’t know what it is, but I’m struggling to connect.

Don’t get me wrong, it is not that I don’t like him. Just that I haven’t bonded yet. With Boy Z, I was instantly charmed. Sucked in. He was our first and everything was new and magical. Boy Z was quiet and sleepy where Not Max is disgruntled and lets you know about it. Of course a few weeks later, Boy Z became colicky and thus made our lives hell for months. Maybe we’re just getting the hard stuff at the front end this time.

harry1And I hate change. I like to get to a point where things are working reasonably well and just stick with it. Change is just as likely to be for the worse as it is for the better in my experience. We were just getting things working as a family of three, getting set in our ways and running on all cylinders. All of a sudden, the routine that I fought so hard to establish is shot.

I struggled with this through most of Father’s Day and collapsed into bed bothered and bewildered by my apparent lack of adoration for my new baby son and resigned to another night of interrupted sleep.

Something started to thaw in the wee hours of the morning. After he woke up screaming at for the nineteen millionth time, I dragged my ass out of bed to give Dr. O’C a break. I did what I did with Boy Z when he was going through this stage – staggered downstairs, lit the fire and turned on the TV. I found an American baseball game on our sports channel – Rockies v. Dbacks – and lay down with Not Max on my chest. And he settled for a while. Eyes open, darting about with the bright colors of a ballgame being played on the other side of the world. I remembered moments like these with Boy Z. During the colicky months, I would be up with him three or four times a week. I watched The Sopranos on DVD while he grumbled and cacked on my chest. I got through most of the series before he was five months old. I didn’t like being up at 4 in the morning, but those times are still precious for me today. Dads don’t have much influence with newborns and the late night/early morning sessions with New Jersey’s mafioso stand out as the time when I began to have an influence in my first son’s life.

I think I’m going to need a new TV series to watch with my second son.

MP3: Frank Turner “Father’s Day”

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British punk folker Frank Turner is one of Blighty’s most talented artists who, inexplicably, is still flying underneath the radar. Check out his debut “Sleep is for the Week” from Frank Turner - Sleep Is for the Week. Turner’s third full length is out today. I’ve only had a chance to listen to “Poetry of the Deed” once, but from what I’ve heard so far it is outstanding. It will be available on Frank Turner tomorrow or on CD from XtraMile.

 
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