My 15 dads

The first day of middle school, I wore a "Central Perk" T-shirt I got after taking the Warner Bros. studio tour in Hollywood. The first day of high school, I wore an orange-and-blue V-neck made of some sort of velour material from Structure. (I might have been wearing corduroy shorts, too, making me a stylish, walking fire hazard.)

Axezon.com

I thought about this as I stood in front of the beer fridges at my neighborhood liquor store, trying to decide which six-pack to bring to my first neighborhood dads' night. You're never too old to worry about making a good first impression.

When my wife and I bought our house, part of the appeal was the new neighborhood was turning over, with empty-nesters giving way to young families. We had a mutual connection with one of the young families, and the dad asked for my email so I could be included in the dad listserv.

Here's the thing: I didn't need any new friends. I have a close group of people that I actively keep in touch with and others from my past who pop in and out, the people whose social media posts might lead me to respond with a text message or phone call.

Most non-family, non-coworker guys I interact with these days have children in school with my kids. Children are natural icebreakers (and glass breakers and ceramic breakers, etc.), and I always enjoy chatting with dads at play dates, even if the conversations inevitably go off the rails:

Me: Hello, fellow dad.

Fellow dad: Greetings.

Me: Did you watch the big sporting event last night?

Fellow dad: AIDAN! That Lego is not food!

Part of me always wonders, as I'm deep into trading stories about baby poop, if the person I'm talking to and I would have been friends in high school or be interacting in any other social scenario if not for our children. Then I realize the answer doesn't matter. What matters is being a parent automatically puts you in a clique with other parents, with even the most casual of acquaintances becoming your support group. It takes a Facebook group to raise a child.

Which brings me back to my first night hanging with the neighborhood dads. Here was a group of total strangers that I would be meeting without the crutch of children. At the liquor store, I was debating between light beer and craft beer. I was worried a light beer would be silently frowned upon but a craft beer might seem snobbish.

I decided to split the difference and walked into a neighbor's house with Fat Tire in hand. I had met a few of the dads previously but only exchanged pleasantries. Now there were a dozen of us around a poker table. Whatever nerves or awkwardness I had went away as the cards continued to be dealt. Part of it might have been the fact that each dad brought his own six-pack but even without alcohol, all of the dads were welcoming and are nice guys.

That first poker night has led to happy hours and a fantasy football league and happy hours and a March Madness pool and happy hours and disc golf(!) and happy hours. I still can't tell you what some of these guys do for a living and don't know some of their children's names (although I could pick them out of a lineup). But if I need the name of a good mechanic in the area, I'd email the group before going to Google. There's always some dad talk when we get together but it's otherwise regular guy talk with friends, the best of both worlds.

Which leads me to the best email exchange I was part of all year, one that epitomizes a Dad Group. A dad sent out a missive one Sunday afternoon on the listserv with the subject line, "Looking for an Axe."

"Does anyone have an axe I could borrow?" he asked.

Less than two hours later came a reply.

"You can borrow mine," another dad said. "Let me know when you want to grab it."

No questions, no back-and-forth and I learned someone in my neighborhood owns an axe. It was a total guy conversation and a thing of beauty, like a velour shirt and corduroy shorts.

Who needs sleep?

When my wife and I tell people we have a 10-month-old son and 46-month-old daughter, the first reaction we get is confusion as people convert in their heads 46 months into years. The second reaction is a question that haunts all parents:

"How are they sleeping?"

The answer inevitably requires a paragraph where the questioner might have been expecting to hear a number. For me, the question also causes a bit of embarrassment, especially if the questioner also is a parent, because both of our kids, since early ages, were never up every two hours. Both, in fact, were sleeping through the night by the time they were three months.

If I'm talking to an up-every-two-hour parent, the conversation dynamic dramatically changes; it's as if I told the other person we have the same job but I make twice as much. I immediately try to soften the blow.

"It gets better," I'll say. "We got lucky."

I'm a believer that you can't judge others' parenting skills because you never know the full picture. (I try to remind myself of this as I'm judging others' parenting skills.) But I sincerely try to withhold all judgment when it comes to children and sleep. Because just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there is no wrong answer when it's 2 a.m. and your kid won't fall asleep.

(Note: What follows is my best recollection of various things related to my kids' sleeping. I was only half-awake when a lot of this happened, after all.)

We put both of our newborns in the cribs in their rooms almost as soon as we got home from the hospital. While our daughter quickly took to it, our son never quite seemed comfortable. But then early one morning, I took him out of his crib and lay with him on the floor for tummy time and noticed how calm he was and then how he was falling asleep.

("STOP RIGHT THERE!!" I hear some of you parents saying, knowing where this is going. "You might as well wrap the kid in crib bumpers if you let him sleep on his stomach!")

We quickly realized he would go down easier and sleep longer when he was on his stomach. So we got one of those crib monitors that tracks his breathing and we never looked back (ha!). Sure, he's got the rounded head of a baby twice his age, and the mobile we got for his crib is kind of a waste. But we're rarely up in the middle of the night anymore.

Unless our daughter comes into mom and dad's room, that is.

("STOP RIGHT THERE!!" I hear some of you parents saying, knowing where this is going. "Are you going to like it when she's 18 and crawling into your bed?")

For two years, our bed was the only one she would sleep in -- she decided a sleeping mat on her bedroom floor was more comfortable then her bed. My wife was concerned she would have back issues. I was more concerned with my own back issues because I would lay on the floor with her until she fell asleep.

There were nights I would spend almost an hour on the floor with her. My patience would be rewarded a few hours later, when she came into our room and wanted to come in our bed. We've co-slept with her in hotels and on vacation out of convenience and, in some ways, the earlier in the night she came into our bedroom, the more uninterrupted sleep we would get.

Her bed issues began in our old house, and we figured we could change her sleeping habits when we moved into our new house. We painted her new room pink, got her a mattress fit for a princess and covered it in unicorn sheets. We made everyone in the family talk up her new Big Girl Bed and put one of those guardrails on the side.

And that first night in the new house she excitedly climbed into her new bed and quickly fell asleep after I gave her a kiss goodnight. Just kidding! She refused to sleep in her bed for another year. Until one night, when I told her daddy could no longer sleep on the floor and I gave her two options: I'll sit in a chair while you are on the floor or I will lay in bed with you until you fall asleep.

I nearly passed out when she agreed to go to her bed. Today, I still need to lay with her but only for a few minutes most nights, and she loves her bed.

Years from now, we'll probably look back fondly on all of this. (My parents still remind me that I slept on the floor with my head in the hallway when I was a toddler.) Today, though, we take sleep one night at a time.

Or one morning at a time. As I write this, it's 6:30 a.m. and our son, who just nursed and should be asleep for at least the next 90 minutes, is wailing.

I just hope he doesn't wake up our daughter while she sleeps in our bed.