Diary of a Third Time Dad

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First of all, you have to choose whether to pull it down over his head, or pull it up over his feet. I opted for the head. I seemed to remember doing it head first with Alex 5 years ago. Well, after about five minutes of struggling, I managed to get the outfit over his head and situated on his body, with his legs in the leg holes. I should have gone feet first.

I'm glad Cheryl was in the shower, and couldn't hear Joshua's protests of "Who the heck is dressing me!"

Now come the snaps. This is the part that should come with directions. Or perhaps they should be color coded so you know which snap goes with which. Or perhaps men just have no business trying to dress an infant.

Now, normally I do not enjoy going clothes shopping. What guy does? But something magical happens when you are carrying a cute little baby around. Suddenly, every woman in the store was all over us (well, him anyway), holding up outfits to see how he would look, trying hats on him, saying how adorable my baby was.

Rule number two - if you hear something in baby's diaper area while he is sleeping, don't assume it's poop and wake baby up to change him.

My wife forgot to remind me about rule number two. After walking around for about an hour, and finally getting him to sleep, I heard what I thought was him filling his diaper. Dang.

So I laid him down and unsnapped his pants. He of course woke up. And, you guessed it, his diaper was clean.

Well, this morning was different. Cheryl related to me, "Joshua nursed for a while, then he spat up all over himself and the bed. I changed his clothes, laid towels over the bed, and nursed him some more. Then he pooped in his diaper and leaked all over. I got back up and changed him again. Then he finally nursed back to sleep. We were up for over an hour."

Andrew has picked up that we don't let Joshua cry for more than a few seconds without attending to him. So whenever Joshua is lying by himself, and he lets out even the slightest little noise, Andrew moves to comfort him. If the baby continues to fuss, Andrew asks for help. And if we don't move fast enough, Andrew lets us know.

We don't even have to teach Andrew how to be a parent. He already is naturally intuitive and sensitive.

Take the time to model good parenting to your older children. It will pay off for them in the future.

Don't get me wrong; my wife works hard to run our house. But she is not superwoman. Well, she IS- just without the ability to fly. But the baby comes first, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

This week, however, things REALLY piled up. And I wasn't as much help as I could have been (to no one's surprise). Today, Cheryl finally said ENOUGH. She called my mom, Martha, and asked for help. My mom graciously responded to the plea.

I have offered to hire a housekeeper to come in twice a week and do the dirty work. But Cheryl is very particular, as are many women, I suppose. She wants things cleaned a particular way, without disrupting her "system" of paper piles. She wants to do it herself, but can never get a long enough break from Joshua.

So when I came home from work today, I found Cheryl hard at work cleaning the floors, and my mom walking around with sleeping Joshua in the sling.

It occurred to me that this whole time Cheryl didn't need a housekeeper. SHE NEEDED A BABYKEEPER to come over and just hold the baby for a bit.

Offer to be a babykeeper for a friend of family member as often as possible. I am sure they will appreciate it as much as Cheryl and I have.