Babysitters Club

"Do you think that's enough?" Belle asked.

She was eye-level with our kitchen counter, looking at a Pyrex measuring cup with vodka in the bottom.

"Sure," I replied, totally not sure if she had half-a-shot or three in front of her.

She poured another splash in the Pyrex and then dumped the alcohol into a Yeti tumbler filled with orange juice. 

We were a little out of practice when it came to pre-gaming but we had an excuse: three kids under 8 and a pandemic. Now, for the first time in three years, we were going to a concert. Even more monumental, we were awaiting the arrival of a babysitter watching the kids who wasn't a grandparent.

Growing up, I remember being excited when my parents would go out on a Saturday night, leaving my brother and I with a babysitter. We would eat pizza, play games, watch TV, maybe stay up until 8:30. I couldn't believe my parents would miss out on such a good time! Who wants to eat dinner after 7 p.m., I thought, or dress up in fancy clothes for fun? 

Pre-coronavirus - and pre-three kids -  Belle and I would have the grandparents babysit every once in a while so we could go out to dinner. The oldest kids were younger and, in some cases still nursing, so we might have left the house after their dinner so all grandma and grandpa would have to do was get them ready for bed. 

Once we were out, however, I understood why my parents - why any parents - valued a good, reliable babysitter. We might have checked the crib monitor once or twice. And the conversation, despite our parents' admonishments, occasionally turned to the kids. But to be able to travel without a diaper bag or buckling someone into a car seat, to eat a meal without getting up 20 times for one reason or another, to have someone clean up the table after you: all parents need a break, even if it's just for a few hours.

COVID and having an infant obviously limited our ability to go out. We would sometimes have grandparents come over during a weekend day for a spell, because nothing says "romance" like a trip to the Verizon store to get new iPhones. 

So I was excited about going to the concert but felt a pinch of anxiety. Bedtime is such a highly calibrated dance, and explaining the routines to someone new felt like trying to make someone an expert on quantum mechanics in an hour. Plus, it had been a busy week and were going on vacation two days later; a night home packing and going to bed at a decent hour sounded pretty good. Speaking of sleep, there's also that cruel math after a night out - you get less shut-eye while the kids still get up at the same (early) time.

But excuses are like diaper pails: they both stink. So the kids got late-afternoon showers and baths and we had an early-evening pizza dinner, reminding them for the 478th time that we would not be around for bedtime. Belle's aunt has watched the kids before and she arrived guns blazing, the "guns" in this case belated birthday gifts for the oldest kids and another toy for our youngest. The kids immediately forgot about us, and we were on our way.

The concert was a lot of fun, even if by around 10 p.m. I might have looked at my watched and yawned. We checked the baby monitor once to see our youngest passed out on her bed. Belle's aunt told us, when we got home, that our youngest went to sleep early, while our older kids stayed up a little later. The kids were great, she said, and she offered to babysit again whenever we wanted her to. 

After a stress-free night out, in a post-concert glow, we might have asked if she were available tomorrow. But we thanked her and agreed we would take her up on her offer at some point in the future. 

Hopefully, by then, we'll have a shot glass.

Potty talk

Loyal readers of this space (hi, Mom!) might remember I wrote last time about a milestone in child-rearing and the word "poopybutt." Today, I write about another milestone in child-rearing that involves poop on butts.

That's right: After eight years, Belle and I have changed our last dirty diaper.

Thank you, Molly Matthews, for all of your help.

We had been dreaming about this moment but it happened so suddenly. Our youngest had shown interest in using the bathroom but we hadn't yet mustered the energy to begin full-on potty training. And then her daycare told us its latest "Potty-Training Boot Camp" was approaching and she would be a good candidate. 

At the conclusion of the one-week program, we were told, she would wake up from her Friday nap and have a diaper retirement party. From that point on, we were only to put her in a diaper for a nap or at bedtime. I'm pretty sure it wasn't coincidental that this particular Friday was the one before Memorial Day weekend, giving her extra time to work out the kinks at home. Still, daycare had us at "we'll potty-train her." 

The concept of changing diapers did not faze me prior to having children, although I was worried about getting peed/pooped on. But then my oldest had that meconium diaper in the hospital and I quickly became an expert, even if I still got peed on occasionally.

Like most parents, we've changed diapers in the backs (and fronts) of cars, in restaurants, in public bathrooms up and down the East Coast, at parks and playgrounds. We've struggled to keep the kids still as we wiped them and doused clothes in OxyClean after a blowout. We've wondered how someone so little, so cute, could produce something so heinous in their pants. I've emptied our diaper pail thousands of times, the smell that wafts up as the trash bag wriggles free from the bin permanently etched in my nostrils.  

When our oldest was potty training, she used a miniature, plastic toilet with a bag at the bottom. We would alternate reading two books while she sat, one an interactive Elmo story where you finally learn that, despite appearances, Elmo does, in fact, wear underwear. The other is titled "Big Girls Use the Potty," featuring a child named Molly Matthews. Before opening "Big Girls" for the first time, I was very confused how a book illustrating a girl using the bathroom did not end up on some school district's banned list. Turns out Molly's stuffed animal "uses" the potty.

Since then, I can't begin to estimate how many times I've sat on a bathroom floor to read those books, how many times I applauded and cheered a bowel movement as if my child won an Oscar, nor how many M&Ms we've given our kids after a mission accomplished.

Our son received an ultimatum when he was almost two-and-a-half: Either your diapers or your pacifier has to go. He kept on sucking and pretty much trained himself in less than a week. To this day, however, I still have to remind him regularly to watch where he's aiming while peeing. At least, living with three ladies, he learned at a young age to put the seat down. He's also discovered the joy and freedom of outdoor urination, and would rather go behind a tree in the backyard than trudge the whole 20 feet inside to the bathroom.

For our older kids, we were with them the entire time they potty trained. For our youngest, all we really knew was she had circle time daily with the other children potty training. "Use potty, get a cookie," she told us each night that week when we asked how training was going. When she came home that Friday, we looked at each other as if to say, "I guess we're really doing this?" We decided she would wear a diaper over her underwear in the car but otherwise followed daycare's instructions. 

There were multiple accidents that first weekend, of course. We went through five pairs of underwear on Saturday alone thanks to a juice box and lots of running around during a barbecue. But after that first weekend, she's really taken to it, even waking up most mornings with a dry diaper. 

We still have to ask her occasionally if she needs to use the bathroom but more often than not she tells us. The sly smile that crosses her face when she hears the tinkle in the bowl always makes me smile. One night, when she had to go No. 2 twice in a half-hour, she informed me very excitedly during her second trip, "I found more poop."

Our diaper shelf in the garage only has a box of nighttime diapers left and the diaper pail sits mostly empty in her room.

I'm not going to miss the diapers, just the little kids that wore them.

Crib Notes

Two-year-olds rarely say things that totally change your world. My daughter, for example, has learned to say "poopy butt" thanks to her brother. But one day recently, she woke up and informed Belle that "my bed is too high."

Her "bed" was a crib and her declaration marked the end of an era: eight years, five sheets, three kids, two mattress covers, thousands of nights of Belle and I standing over the crib's front railing, sometimes rubbing backs, many times just pleading with a baby to JUST GO TO SLEEP.

I built the crib in the spring of 2015, trying to make myself useful in Belle's third trimester before our oldest arrived. Each time we put a newborn in the crib for the first time, the baby looked like a raft in the ocean. And each time, it was hard to believe that one day, not too far away, they would look like a yacht in a backyard swimming pool.

I assumed parenting would be a day-to-day adventure filled with highs and lows. What I was less prepared for was the night-to-night roller coaster. The morning I'm writing this sentence, for example, my almost-5-year-old son came to our room twice between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. so I could tuck him back in after he went to the bathroom.

To be fair, all of our kids were pretty good sleepers when we first put them into the crib. When other parents asked how any of the babies were sleeping, I always felt a little bad saying they slept 10 hours straight, especially if the other parents described being up all night with their children. But there is no better feeling as a parent of a baby than waking up in the morning slightly confused after a night of uninterrupted sleep and realizing your child did not wake up once. (What I wouldn't give for a night like that today.)

After experimenting with a bassinet with our eldest upon returning from the hospital, we put our other kids in the crib as soon as we came home. I have spent seemingly half my life on a nursery room floor, waiting to help with a diaper change or teeth brushing before a baby was put in or returned to the crib. There is no look as precious as a baby in a milk coma, a punim that recharges you as a parent and melts away any frustration from the day.

Eventually, and unfortunately, all babies hit a sleep regression. For our eldest daughter, it was when she would no longer be swaddled for bedtime. I do remember at least one night where I drove her around in her car seat until she passed out, then brought the car seat into our room. She would require back rubs or someone to sit in her room until she fell asleep; good luck trying to tiptoe out if she were still awake.

We got her a toddler bed for a change of scenery but she refused to use it. She did use a sleeping mat, so long as I was lying next to her, starting around age 2. Almost every night, I would spend at least 30 minutes in her room, until she would fall asleep. And, almost every night, she would come into our room to sleep in our bed. Belle and I knew we shouldn't have let her but, when it was 2 a.m. and we were already sleep-deprived, we just hoped she would grow out of this stage quickly. We didn't expect it would take almost three years.

Belle will never let me forget the time, when our son was home for his first night, she found me fast asleep next to our daughter while she was waiting for me to help with his bedtime. (NOTE: I originally started the preceding sentence as, "One night, soon after we brought our son home..." She read that and was angry at me for forgetting and also angry at me again for falling asleep.) When he was a few months old, I was on the floor in his nursery with him early one morning, trying to coax him back to sleep. I put him on his stomach and he passed out, and that was the day he became a stomach sleeper in his crib, a position everyone advises against. Thankfully, child protective services never came for us, and he slept well in the crib until we moved him to his "big boy" bed before our youngest was born.

By that point, our older children were pros at sleeping in their beds. Our biggest concern was making sure our youngest didn't wake them up with her crying for her middle-of-the-night feedings and they didn't wake her up in the morning as they moved around upstairs like a herd of elephants. When our youngest realized she could stand up in her crib in the morning, our older kids would enjoy climbing into her crib, leaving us wondering why they couldn't have been as enthusiastic being in there when they were her age.

The weekend after our youngest announced her bed was too high, she watched as a I took apart the crib and then was excited when we brought the toddler bed into her room. She put her stuffed animals and dolls on one end and gleefully flung herself on the mattress. Most nights, she lays down and, with a few back rubs, sleeps through the night. More recently, however, there have been nights where she needed a longer back rub and for me to sit with her until she falls asleep.

Part of me enjoys this quiet time, knowing this will be my last chance to do this and, in just a few years, the only time I'll be with my kids while they're sleeping is when I'm trying to drag them out of bed so they get ready for school. Watching your child fall asleep peacefully, feeling safe and secure because you are next to them, reminds you of the joy and fulfillment of being a parent.

But then you remember that, once you get downstairs, there are dishes to clean and toys to put away and probably a night of being awakened for some reason. And you can think only one thing: Poopy butt. 

Taken for a Ride at Disney World

Minnie Mouse and three of her fans.

When I was younger, I made two fashion-related promises to myself:

• I will never purchase all-white New Balance sneakers
• I will never be part of one of those families that wears matching shirts in Disney World

So I was surprised how not-mad I was to be wearing a T-shirt with The Beast in sunglasses and the word "Dad" below it, posing for a photo with the family first thing in the morning at the Magic Kingdom, with Cinderella's Castle behind us. Kids have a funny way of changing your perspective.

(Since you're wondering, Belle's shirt had Belle on it, natch; my older daughter's had Ariel; my younger daughter's had Minnie; and my son chose Darth Vader. Should he become a serial killer, we'll know where it came from.) 

We, along with my parents, spent two-and-a-half days at The Happiest Place on Earth Except for Your Bank Account. Let's get that out of the way: Disney is expensive, although I thought it was a bit excessive when Donald Duck grabbed my wallet during one of the 3-D shows.

Making it better (or worse) is all transactions at Disney can be done through an app or a wristband, so you don't feel like you're spending anything. Many dads (and they were all dads) wore shirts calling themselves "Human ATMs" or that had the word "broke" in the famous Disney font. You really can't put a price on happiness, I guess, until you see your next credit card statement.

Perhaps it wasn't surprising, then, that Disney shows a little mercy and allows Instacart deliveries to people staying on their properties. Belle took advantage of this to get snacks for the parks and to make quick in-room breakfasts each morning. I was skeptical -- there are few things I enjoy more than a hotel breakfast -- but, as usual, Belle was right. Because a day in a Disney park starts early and requires the planning of a high-risk military maneuver and the mental fortitude of a Navy SEAL.

My day started at 6 a.m., when I paid $18 per person via the app just for the right to attempt to jump the line for a given attraction at a given time. At 7 a.m., we had to pick our first "Lightning Lane" ride, and that time window would determine how we mapped out the rest of the day. The app also gives approximate wait times for all shows and rides in a park, and we tried to find attractions with lines no longer than 45 minutes. So, between the Lightning Lane RSVPs, monitoring wait times at other attractions and ordering food for pickup, I spent approximately 80% of my time in Disney with my head down, glued to my phone.

Another 15% of my time was spent waiting in line to take pictures with characters. But all of the kids went home happy: my oldest got photos with princesses; my youngest was overjoyed to see Mickey, Minnie and friends; and, my son, in what is probably a top-three moment of his life so far, met Darth Vader. If Ron DeSantis wants to make more Disney-related laws in Florida, he needs to ban adults without children waiting in line to take photos with the characters. I will grant an exemption to recently married or engaged couples so long as they are wearing T-shirts indicating their relationship status.

But that other 5% of my time in Disney, I had a blast going on rides and watching the kids have the trip of their lives. And that's the thing about going to Disney World: It's fun! The days are long (and we even were back in our rooms before dinner) and there is a lot of walking and navigating crowds. But somehow the excitement of a two-minute ride sustains you long enough until you get to the next attraction. (Parent tip: Rent or bring enough stroller seats for each child. We would not have survived without my parents bringing their umbrella stroller to go with the two-seater rental I schlepped in both parks.)

My concerns about our youngest having meltdowns never materialized, and when she was tired or there was a ride she couldn't go on, my parents would simply walk her around in the stroller. The kids' enthusiasm never waned, and they each had their favorite attractions while also at least pretending to enjoy what their siblings liked. (I'm specifically thinking of the second ride we took on It's a Small World for my youngest.) They already are talking about what they want to see and do during our next visit, and it will be fun to see how their love of Disney will change as they grow older.

By then, I'll probably be in a market for new shoes. And those New Balances sure do look comfortable.

Piercing My Heart

One day over the summer, Belle came home exasperated with our son. In the span of five hours, she reported, he mooned some of his fellow summer campers and had a urinalysis done during his 4-year-old checkup because he wanted to pee in a cup. (In his defense, before dropping trou he did warn his friends, "I'm going to show you my butt.")

I tried my best to convey my disappointment in him but, honestly, I could not have been prouder and felt like my work parenting him was complete.

Not my daughter's ear. (At least not yet.)

By contrast, I nearly choked on my cereal when my oldest daughter, during our breakfast together that morning, explained to me why she needed to wear a sports bra under a loose tank top, including lifting her 7-year-old arms to show me exactly where the undergarment provides coverage.

I thought about those moments recently after my daughter received a makeup set for Hanukkah and got her ears pierced within the span of 72 hours, during which my head was alternatively spinning and exploding. 

"But Danny," you are probably thinking, "it sounds like you have a double standard for what's acceptable for your daughter and what's acceptable for your son."

First of all, you said "butt." Second, as my oldest grows up I'm finally understanding why "dad flummoxed by his daughter" is a TV sitcom staple. What garners an eye roll from Belle can leave me reeling.

There are a few factors at play. I'm much more familiar with the trajectory of boys. I grew up with a brother, and three of my four closest cousins - who also grew up in the same neighborhood - are guys. Four of us recently had a FaceTime not to catch up but to re-watch the 1997 Royal Rumble. There were few pleasantries exchanged, just lots of laughter watching men in spandex try to throw each other out of a wrestling ring. During the call, our one female cousin popped on, said hello, shook her head at us and then signed off. I felt bad we didn't try to talk with her but then the 30-second countdown clock popped up on the screen, and I turned my attention to wondering who would be coming to the ring next.

Then there is the fact our oldest is, by definition, our firstborn. She made me a father and changed my world for the better in ways I still don't think I fully understand. The oldest also is, by definition, your test child, the one you experiment with different parenting and child-rearing techniques. I don't think we scarred her for life (maybe the therapist she hires when she's older will tell me otherwise), so maybe letting her get her ears pierced is the least we could do as a thank you.

Ultimately, to acknowledge her getting older is to concede she's no longer my little girl, that she is becoming her own beautiful young woman inside and out. In that way, she has really helped me appreciate the time I spend with my youngest, who I have finally admitted to myself will not be a 2-year-old forever. I'm a pushover for all of my kids, but my youngest uses me like the frosted tips booth at an early-2000s boy band convention. At least once a day the following scene plays out:

Daughter: I want something.

Me [Doing 275 other things at once]: No, not right now.

Daughter: [Stares blankly at me, waiting for me to see the error of my ways.] Yes.

Me: [Stares back at her, knowing it's only a matter of time before all she wants from me is money or a ride somewhere]: OK.

The only silver lining to being the father of a daughter is that I'm not the mother. Some of my oldest daughter's responses to me are starting to include more than my recommended daily allowance of sass. But she and Belle have the occasional argument where my daughter will whine and say "Mom" as if it has 35 O's in it. When I go to Girl Scouts with her, I see the individual and group dynamics of a bunch of 7-year-olds and I'm terrified to fast forward to the teenage years.

But that is still a few years away. Right now, she lets Belle clean her ear piercings several times a day and is talking about what earrings she wants to wear when she can take her first ones out. She is growing up, and I'm excited to see what's next.

Incidentally, I have not heard much about her makeup set. It's my youngest, instead, who spends most nights before bed playing with the pretend makeup set in her room. I'll give you one guess who she practices putting lipstick on.