5 Kids, 1 Wife..and 1 Grandchild

To avoid "burying the lede," as they say in the journalism trade, let's begin with the big news in our family these days: My daughter Chloe and her husband Michael are expecting their first baby and our first grandchild in mid-September.

Which means Terry is going to be a grandma, something at which she will be exceedingly good.

It also means I'm going to be a grandpa, a prospect that's certainly welcomed, but one to which I had given little thought to this point.

Chloe gave us the news several weeks ago, but until now we've had to keep quiet about it. It happened on a Thursday evening in early January when she and I were scheduled to attend a Cleveland Orchestra performance together. She came to our house an hour or so early to have dinner with us before the concert.

When she walked into the house, Terry jokingly said to her, "Do you have a present for me?" Chloe replied that, yes, actually she did.

The conversation turned in a different direction for a minute before the idea of Chloe's present came up again, and she told Terry, "It's actually for you and Dad both."

That was the moment I knew what was going on. Amazingly, though, Terry didn't. She almost always picks up on the sorts of cues I don't, but in this case, she didn't see what I was seeing.

Chloe then handed her a plastic test stick with a little digital screen that displayed one word.

"Pregnant."

The expected cheers and hugs followed, after which Chloe told us it was still very early and that only a couple of other people knew at that point. So we had to keep it under wraps until now, which we did.

Mom-to-be Chloe and grandpa-to-be (yikes) me

With Chloe having posted the news on Facebook a few days ago, and Terry having informed her extensive personal network, I guess the knowledge is as public as it's going to get.

Last fall I wrote a post here in which I said that while I was looking forward to having grandkids someday, I wasn't in any particular hurry. And that was true.

But now that the reality is here and Chloe seems to be progressing with no issues. I'm all in.

She isn't due until September 14, so we obviously have a way to go, but already I'm wondering what this little one will call Terry and me.

For my part, I have no real preference. "Grandpa" is fine, as is "Grampy.” As is just about anything, really.

We know many people our age who have multiple grandchildren, but we're only just now for the first time confronting the reality of what it means to be grandparents. It's exciting, humbling and a little scary, all at the same time.

Kind of like it was back in 1993 when we found out Terry was pregnant with Elissa.

So...here comes another life milestone, ready or not. Whatever lies ahead, I can't wait.

In every successful marriage there is a division of labor

(NOTE: This post originally appeared on the blog on December 26, 2011. I resurrect it now because I've been thinking about this topic lately, and also admittedly because there are just some days when fresh new material is hard to come by...)

Paul Reiser, one of my favorite comedians, wrote the best description I've ever read of the way household tasks are divvied up in a marriage.

In his book "Couplehood" – a great and funny read, by the way – Reiser explained there will always be tasks neither the husband nor the wife (nor the kids, for that matter) really want to handle. But there's always one of you who hates a given job more than the other, so generally speaking, it should be assigned to the person who hates it less.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

For example, I don't relish the thought of cleaning the cat litter boxes every morning. But ever since June 1993, when Terry became pregnant with Elissa, it has been my job. This is because cat waste poses a real health threat to pregnant woman, and especially with that first baby, you don't take any chances.

I think the disease is called toxoplasmosis, though I didn't look it up, and as far as I know it may not actually be a disease at all but rather a concept pregnant women made up to get out of doing stuff around the house.

Anyway, Terry will be having no more babies. Therefore, one could surmise that she is yet again a candidate to clean the litter boxes. But she doesn't, and that's fine with me. There are plenty of other things she does that I wouldn't want anything to do with, and I've been married long enough to know when to leave well enough alone.

For the record, the other jobs I usually take on in our house include lawn maintenance, cleaning the bathrooms, washing the kitchen floor, taking care of the dishes, general kitchen tidying, and some of the laundry. Being a stay-at-home mom, Terry has always done more than her share of unpleasant tasks while I'm at work, and that's not even taking into account the cooking (of which she does virtually 100%) and general pick-up duties she handles that would exhaust me if I had to do them every day.

I do remember one area in which we never did come to any sort of compromise, though. This was back in the days when we had babies in the house and one would wake up crying in the middle of the night.

Neither of us is particularly proud of this, but we both now admit to often pretending to be asleep, hoping that would prompt the other person to get out of bed, fetch the tot, change his or her diaper, and either restore order or prep them for breastfeeding time.

That last point is key. Terry breastfed all of the kids. This is a job, again as Paul Reiser so deftly points out, that only female persons are equipped to handle. To me, this is one of God's greatest design inspirations.

In all fairness, then, it should have been me who got up, changed the diaper and brought the baby downstairs, since in all cases it was Terry who did the subsequent feeding while I fell back asleep in approximately 7 seconds.

In my defense, I DID usually have to get up for work the next morning, and I milked (haha!) that excuse relentlessly to the point that, in the end, while I bet I attended to the babies more often than Terry, it wasn't by much...maybe a 55-45 split.

If I were a good person, I would bring this to a close by offering some sort of inspiration and advice to young married couples or those thinking about marriage. But I am not, so let me just say that if you're going to do the pretend-to-be-asleep thing, don't let your spouse catch you opening one eye to see if they're awake. Then you're busted and your whole night is ruined.

You're welcome.

Years later, I still find myself doing The Baby Bounce

A couple of months ago we attended one of several graduation parties on our summer calendar. After polishing off the obligatory plate of grad party chicken and potato salad, I offered to hold a young mother's baby so she could sit down and eat in peace.

I have been on both sides of this equation. There was a time when our greatest desire was for someone at a family get-together to walk up and offer to hold whichever small/infant child we had at the time.

Having two hands available for eating is a treat only parents of young ones can truly appreciate.

I walked around the party chatting up various guests while holding the baby, who was getting tired and was thus a little fussy. Immediately, without even thinking about it, I went into Bounce Mode.

Moms and dads know what I'm talking about. You start bouncing up and down lightly on your toes in an attempt to lull the little one to sleep.

I had probably been bouncing for 5 or 10 minutes before I even realized I was doing it.

I'm not sure I did it well (he never did go to sleep while I was holding him), but I can tell you there was a time when I was a master of the Bounce. Back when Terry was having biennial babies, I could be counted on to put them to sleep almost every time no matter how unhappy they were.

I always said it was because I was so boring they just couldn't keep their eyes open. But I think it had something to do with the consistent rhythm of my bouncing. I just had the knack for it.

Nowadays I'm out of practice, naturally, but it was good to see that vestige of early fatherhood rising subconsciously to the surface.

It will come in handy when we have grandchildren.

Or maybe my retirement gig will be hiring myself out to frazzled young parents to have a moment to themselves while I gently bounce their babies to Dreamland.

I could make a fortune.

The magic of a newborn baby

Last week I mentioned how I couldn't imagine having another baby in the house at our age (Terry and I are both 51).

Not only is it a scary thought, right now it's also pretty much physically impossible. My urologist made sure of that nearly 15 years ago, and while I don't exactly know at which stage of the process Terry currently is, it's clear her reproductive organs are also hanging up the "closed" sign.

But I will say this: The experience of finding out my wife was pregnant, waiting for the birth, picking out names, watching the kids come into the world, and bringing brand new babies home is one I'll always cherish. The word I've always used for it is "magical."

Magical is how it felt when Elissa, our oldest, was a baby. We hadn't even been married two years when she was born, so everything was new and fresh and exciting. Those months when I watched her all day before going to work at night were some of the best of my life. I loved it.

I loved when all of my kids were newborns (and I love them just as much now, it should be noted).

Newborns are miracles. It's cliche, but it's true. I used to stare at our kids and think about what they would sound like when they started talking, what kind of personality they would develop, what kind of students they would be in school, who they might choose to marry, what they wanted to be and do in life, etc.

Still, two things should be acknowledged here:

1. Those newborn years also are exhausting years. Even if they sleep through the night, babies take up most of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy you can muster.
2. I can only speak to this whole thing from the father's point of view. I am not the one, it must be said, who ever had to be pregnant, actually give birth, and nurse these children. I imagine all that might cause one to be a little more jaded about the experience.

Regardless, babies are cool. I don't want another one, but I like remembering the times when they were around.

I cannot imagine having another baby in the house

There are, on record, men who have become fathers at insanely advanced ages.

A guy from India named Ramjit Raghav was reportedly 96 years old when his second son was born in 2012 (he died earlier this year at the age of 104).

In the Bible, it says that "after Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth."

500 years old.

I'm 51. And trust me when I say I'm done.

Not done being a father, you understand. That job never goes away. I just mean I'm not looking to be the father of a newborn ever again. I have been blessed to have that experience five times over, and I will be forever grateful. It is magical and amazing.

It is also a young man's game. God made it that way, and it's fine by me.

You have to have a lot of energy to parent a baby that's fresh out of the package. They require a whole lot of attention. And even the best sleepers among them still tend to be pretty needy around the clock.

There's also this: You expend a great deal of spiritual, emotional and mental energy on those little ones. You worry about them, you teach them things, you try to keep them safe. It's never-ending, and it's the greatest job in the world.

Still, it's a job probably best performed in your 20s and 30s. You have a little more energy then.

So am I ready for grandchildren, then? Eh, I suppose, but I'm in no hurry. I'm not opposed to the idea, and I do have a daughter who is married and would be in immediate contention for world's best mother. But let's take that as it comes.

Seriously, though, 500 years old? Even 96 years old? More power to you, brothers. This dad is content with his teenager and four 20-somethings.

10 things I really should understand a lot better than I do

(1) Plumbing (or wiring, or heating and cooling, or virtually any other semi-complex system within my house)

(2) The economy

(3) Why airplanes don't just fall out of the sky. You can explain aerodynamics, air lift, wing shape and everything to me as much as you want. I still don't see why every jetliner I've ever been on was able to stay aloft for more than four seconds.

(4) How to read Shakespeare. I've tried. Believe me, I've tried. But when I come up against "Against the which, a moiety competent / Was gaged by our king; which had return'd / To the inheritance of Fortinbras, / Had he been vanquisher," I pretty much dissolve into a puddle of ignorance.

(5) How a saxophone, an instrument I've played since 1979, actually works.

(6) Bridge, Hearts, Spades and about 47 other popular card games

(7) How a baby actually emerges from a woman. I've watched it happen live and in person several times. And yet I still think it was all done with mirrors or CGI or something. I know the size of a newborn baby. And I know the size of the orifice from which it supposedly passes. The two don't match up in any way at all. I don't care what geometry you use, THAT ain't fittin' through THAT. So I want to know how they actually do it.

(8) Why accents exist (I mean linguistic accents. Not, you know, rugs.)

(9) Cricket (Again, to clarify, the sport. Not the insect...though come to think of it, I know almost nothing about the bug, either.)

(10) How to juggle, do a backflip, or whistle through my fingers. These are all physical acts that utterly escape me.

Being the baby of the family

Today my brother Mark turns 58 years young. This Monday, my sister Debbie will hit the big 60-year milestone.

And if she were still with us, my sister Judi would be 62.

All of which makes me feel comparatively like a spring chicken at age 45.

(NOTE: I suddenly wondered where that phrase "spring chicken" came from, so of course I Googled it. If the Internet at large is to be believed – and honestly, when is that really ever a good idea? – it has something to do with the fact that in olden times they didn't have incubators and the like, so chicks couldn't be raised during the winter. Quoting from one site, "New England growers found that those [chicks] born in the spring brought premium prices in the summer market places. When these Yankee traders tried to pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest that the bird was 'no spring chicken.'" So there you go.)

Anyway, I have siblings who are a bit older than I am, so I grew up essentially an only child. Judi got married when I was 2, Mark got married and joined the Air Force round about the time I entered kindergarten, and Debbie was out of the house by the time I was 7.

The result is that while I'm the baby of the family chronologically, I grew up more like a one-and-done kid.

Of course, I was spoiled like the baby should be, as my siblings have always been quick to point out. My response is that Mom and Dad finally got themselves a perfect child on their fourth attempt, so naturally they would want to lavish gifts on that child.

But really, in my formative years, my siblings were more abstract than real.

Mark was stationed first in Greece and then in South Korea, so we only saw him a couple of times a year. Judi came over on the weekends, but it's not like I ever really lived with her. And Deb spent thousands of hours working and eventually running her salon, and to this day I see her only for my every-two-weeks haircut.

My wife is also the baby of her family, and her experience there was much more traditional, as she's much closer in age to her siblings. In old family pictures, she's always the small, shy one, never far from her mother and seemingly rarely smiling.

I'm not sure if that is (or should be) the typical last-child experience. Usually, youngest kids are pretty happy people, in part because, as we said, they're spoiled. And in part because their parents are exhausted by years of child-rearing, so they tend to have fewer rules and relatively few constraints. Life is good for us young'uns!

This is all my twisted way of saying happy birthday today to my big bro Mark and the same to my big sis Deb in a few days. You guys, while perhaps not as perfect as your youngest sibling, still deserve to have a great day.

Which it will be when I call you to sing "Happy Birthday." What birthday is complete without hearing from The Spoiled One in your family?

First-time parents: Trust me, you've got this

(NOTE: Following is something I originally posted on June 11, 2012. It was titled "The Numbing Realization That No Parent Really Has Any Idea What They're Doing," and it got a nice response. Probably because it expresses fears and feelings that most rookie parents experience. I changed the headline a bit this time around, but the sentiment remains the same. I hope you like it.)

Howie Mandel said something once that still resonates with me.

This was when Howie was doing stand-up comedy back in the mid-80s. And he still had hair. And he wasn't so OCD about people touching him. And he used to stretch a surgical glove over his head and blow it up with his nose, which I still find hilarious because I'm an extremely simple man who will laugh at almost anything.

Anyway, Howie and his wife had just had their first child. He said that sometimes he would stop in the middle of what he was doing and say to himself, "I'm someone's dad." The point being that he was just a big goofball and someone in authority had clearly messed up if he, Howie Mandel, was allowed to be the father of a tiny human being.

I'm willing to bet there's not a parent alive who has not felt something similar. You can read all the books you want. You can babysit all the kids you want. You can take all the classes you want. But when you bring that baby home from the hospital for the first time and there are no longer any nurses around to take the little rugrat away whenever you feel the least bit sleepy,that's when reality sets in.

It starts as a low-grade panic somewhere deep in your stomach. And then it gets worse as you realize this is actually happening, and that YOU are the one who is ultimately responsible for the well-being of this impossibly small creature.

And you think to yourself, "This isn't good. I am not in the least bit qualified for this job. I am a Grade A screw-up who can barely remember to change the filter in my fish tank, and suddenly I have to feed, dress and otherwise oversee the upbringing of another person? No, this is not good..."

I remember when Terry and I brought Elissa home from the hospital. We were both dead tired (she more so than me, for reasons that should be obvious). Elissa was sleeping peacefully, as I recall, but when we unloaded everything from the car and laid her down in her little bassinet, we realized we had no idea what to do next. Not a clue.

I think we just sort of sat and stared at each other for a minute. Then we turned on the TV. Whenever Elissa made any sort of noise, we both jumped up and checked on her to see what was wrong.

That night, our first as parents in our own home, was terrible. Elissa continued making the sort of small, ultimately inconsequential noises that newborns do. And every time she did, one or both of us would jerk our heads up and wonder if we needed to go and get her.

By the next morning, we were wrecks. Tired, disheveled and most of all crushingly disheartened at the prospect of spending the next several hundred nights doing the same thing.

But somehow we got through. Night by night we survived. We developed a little routine where I would get up first whenever Elissa awoke, change her diaper, and bring her to Terry for breastfeeding.

Slowly but surely, things got easier. We managed to keep Elissa alive long enough for Chloe to be born. And then Jared. And then Melanie. And finally Jack. And somewhere along the way we learned what it meant to be parents. We're still learning, in fact.

I hope Howie eventually did, too.

Should you have another child? Here's my advice.

No.

Haha, just kidding! Sort of!

So I have five children, all of whom are wonderful and a joy and a constant source of pride and all of that, and all of whom also occasionally frustrate me to the brink of homicide.

Right? You parents know what I'm talking about. Most of the time they're awesome. One of the best things that ever happened to you. Other times you want to strangle them.

That's the dichotomy of parenting: Deep, intense love intermingled with periodic criminal rage.

"I just love you so much. You're so wonderful and the best daughter anyone could ask for and...wait, did you just leave your granola bar wrapper on the floor again? YES, YOU DID. PICK IT UP. PICK IT UP NOW! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU NOT TO DO THAT? WHY ARE YOU SO BRAIN DAMAGED?!? PICK IT UP NOW! NOW! NOW!"

And so on.

Single-kid parents sometimes worry that they could never love a second child as much as they do their ever-so-perfect first one. Which is wrong. If you have a second child (or a third child, or a fourth child...), your capacity for love will grow proportionately. I don't know how it works, but it does.

So don't worry about that part of it. Worry about the bills. I know that's a Dad Thing to Say, but seriously, multiple kids means multiple expenses.

Like car insurance. If you have a toddler, the last thing on your mind is car insurance. But trust me, it will be an issue for you one day very soon.

Car insurance is expensive no matter who you are. But try getting coverage for a 16-year-old boy. Or an 18-year-old girl who has had a couple of accidents. Your premiums will have more digits than you even knew existed.

"Make the kids pay for the insurance themselves," you say. Which I would do if they didn't have to go to school and instead had 30-40 hours a week available to work and earn the requisite cash.

So there's that. And college. There's college. Presumably you'll want your children to pursue some form of post-secondary education. As you may have heard, college is a wee bit expensive.

As are clothes, food, housing, and everything else the law (for whatever reason) requires you to provide for your children.

You need to take that stuff into account.

Another important factor? Your age. People are different, and we all have different levels of energy. But as you may have figured out from your first kid or two, having a baby is exhausting. Doing it in your 20's or even your early to mid-30's is a whole lot different from doing it in your late 30's or 40's.

If you're pushing middle age – or if you're already there – you need to consider what having a baby will do to you. Even a baby that sleeps through the night the day you bring it home from the hospital. Babies in general sap a lot of energy from their parents. If you're cool with that, OK. I just want to make sure you're aware.

One last thing: If you decide to venture into large family territory, which I define as four kids or more, then understand that people will look at you funny. They'll assume you're Mormon or Evangelical or angling to get your own reality TV show or something. They'll say things to you like, "You know what causes that, right?" (NOTE: The correct reply to that is, "Yes, but look at me. My wife can't resist me, and if I'm being honest, neither can yours.")

As a father of what nowadays passes for a large family, I can tell you that you will become a borderline outcast from society. Few people will want to have you over their house for fear that your family will wreck the place, which they most likely will. They'll make assumptions about you and your motivations and the amount of time you're able to spend with your children.

Ignore them. You need to save your energy for walking around the house picking up discarded granola bar wrappers anyway.

What I miss and what I don't miss about having babies in the house

WHAT I MISS: The free food and drink they stock in a refrigerator at the hospital especially for dads. That was awesome.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: Gallons and gallons of breast milk (frozen and otherwise) in our own refrigerator at home.


WHAT I MISS: Laying down with a baby fast asleep on my shoulder.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: Laying down and wanting desperately to sleep with a baby on my shoulder that won't stop crying.


WHAT I MISS: Pooh Bear videos.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: Barney videos. (And let me just say that I was never really anti-Barney. But a person can only take so much...)


WHAT I MISS: The Diaper Genie. What an ingenious invention.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: The Diaper Genie when it was full and needed emptying. The smell inside of that thing was...debilitating. I think that's the word for it. One whiff and you were unable to do much of anything (including maintaining consciousness) for five full minutes.


WHAT I MISS: Freshly bathed babies.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: Actually bathing the babies.


WHAT I MISS: The excitement of pregnancy and the impending arrival of a new addition to the family, made even more exciting by the fact that I wasn't the one who had to carry the little demon around in my abdomen for 9+ months.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: Actually getting home with the baby and remembering that newborns are an insane amount of work.


WHAT I MISS: Setting up the playpen, knowing it was going to give you some hands-free time.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: Taking down the playpen, knowing that I would either have to lug it somewhere when we left the house or set it up again 15 minutes later because we were already tired of holding the baby again.


WHAT I MISS: First smiles, first laughs, first words, first steps.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: First projectile vomiting, first teething, first non-breast milk poo, first tantrum.


WHAT I MISS: Watching my wife turn into a superhero of organization and energy as she cared for first one, then two, then three, then four, then five kids while I went off to work every day and basically abandoned her.

WHAT I DON'T MISS: Watching my wife dissolve into a puddle of tears and exhaustion when she was pretty sure she couldn't do it anymore (NOTE: She always got through it anyway because, as mentioned above, she's a superhero.)

Thoughts on childbirth from someone who has never had to do it

I know several women who either recently have or very soon will be giving birth. This is extremely impressive to me. As I've mentioned before, I've had a front-row seat to this event five times, and the whole thing is mind-boggling.

I often say that the sheer physics of the process alone is puzzling. You can talk all you want about how a woman's hips widen and her body adapts in order to accommodate the exiting child, but it still doesn't change the basic fact of large-baby-passing-through-small-opening.

I don't get it. I really don't. I've seen it happen, but it seems like an elaborate magic trick or something. Like after the child emerges, David Copperfield should walk into the delivery room and explain how the whole thing was just an illusion and the baby was actually grown in a laboratory somewhere. That would be far more plausible than what really occurs in childbirth.

My wife had four conventional deliveries (as if there's anything "conventional" about it) and one Cesarean section. The C-section was with baby #5, and Terry still says she wished it would have come the normal way.

(NOTE: In that one paragraph alone, I referred to the commonly accepted method of delivery as "conventional" and "normal." I did this because I can't bring myself to type the V-initialed medical term for these sorts of births. I know it's no big deal and all, and we're (mostly) adults here, but my fingers just won't do it. I'm eating lunch as I write this, and typing that word would very likely ruin the experience for me. Just so you know.)

Anyway, the C-section was a real trip. We had planned to have Jack the, uh, regular way, but at some point during labor he decided to flip upside down, and the doctor pretty much said it was either a C-section or else the baby was going to stay in there forever. Terry opted for the C-section.

Once that decision was made, they whisked her away to do whatever it is they do to women who are about to undergo this procedure. A nurse came in and gave me a set of scrubs to change into, so I did that and then waited around for someone to come and get me so I could be there when my son came out.

This took a long time. Or at least it seemed like a long time. I waited and paced for something like 45 minutes, when I guess someone in the O.R. with Terry looked around and said, "Wait, is the dad here? Someone needs to go and get the dad." So someone came and retrieved the dad and I walked into the delivery room, where my wife was laid out helplessly on a table with a surgical curtain draped across her chest.

The curtain was there so that she didn't have to view all the messiness associated with an operation in which they cut you open and lift a child from your womb. I, on the other hand, had been in operating rooms several times during my years at the Cleveland Clinic, and I tend not to mind blood and gore. As they were working on her, Terry asked me to peek over the curtain and let her know what I saw. So I did.

"Organs and goo," is what I reported back. Because that's really all I saw. They had taken various bodily organs out of her abdominal cavity, as far as I could tell, and laid them off to the side like jigsaw puzzle pieces. I made a mental note to ask later if they remembered exactly how everything fit back in there, because I'm terrible at puzzles and would be of no help.

Anyway, after a few minutes they hoisted Jack out of his mother's belly and held him up to allow me to announce his gender to the room. We never found out the sex of any of our babies ahead of time, instead preferring the very cool surprise you get when you discover the answer at the moment of birth. But they held him up at a strange angle, and it took me several seconds to get a clear view of the goods. It was pretty clear he was a boy at that point, and as if to confirm the verdict, Jack peed all over his mother right then and there. I was so proud.

It may have been messy and required several stitches afterward, but the C-section was a far more enjoyable experience for me -- not that I obviously counted for much, but still -- than the four clearly-physically-impossible births had been. Watching my first four kids being born was a lot like being in a car accident: I was dazed and confused afterward, I wasn't quite sure what I had seen, and there was a heck of a mess that I was willing to pay someone else to clean up.

Because honestly, there's a lot going on when a child is born. They show you the video in biology class or Lamaze, but nothing at all can prepare you for the reality of it. Things came out of my wife that I didn't even know existed. Medical personnel whom I hadn't seen all day suddenly came out of nowhere to fulfill whatever small role they were assigned in the birth of my child. People started speaking in urgent tones, telling my wife to PUSH PUSH PUSH, though I'm quite sure she didn't need any prodding from them.

And I wasn't even the one giving birth! I was just a clueless bystander. My wife, the star of this whole show until the moment the baby came out, displayed a quiet confidence and ability I had no idea she possessed until she gave birth the first time. I may have been freaking out, but she was pretty clearly in control. There was always this look on her face that said, "Seriously, don't worry, I've got this." And she did, too.

A lot of women like to say that men could never have babies. And I don't know that I fully agree. I mean, I could do it. If you put a growing baby inside of me, I would eventually find a way to pass the thing. But there's no way I would ever do it as well as Terry did. God just didn't give me the same capacity for this that He gave her, and as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.

It's not so much the actual birth that would throw me off. It's the nine months or so leading up to it. In addition to your body getting larger, there are all sorts of physical discomforts associated with pregnancy that would seriously wear me out. Especially in the summer. Two of our kids were born in August and September, which means Terry spent the last trimester of two pregnancies during the warm, humid summer months. Not good.

But she bore up well under the burden of it. I, on the other hand, would have whined about it 24 hours a day. Seriously, I would have complained constantly. One baby would have been enough for me. But she somehow made it through five. God bless her.

The father's long journey

On Tuesdays, Terry babysits a 2-year-old girl named Ava. Ava gets dropped off around 7 in the morning and doesn't leave until 5 or 5:30 in the afternoon, so we see a lot of her when she's here.

Like many 2-year-olds, Ava takes afternoon naps. I am insanely jealous of Ava for this. I would give almost anything (and I'm not kidding) for the privilege of taking afternoon naps. Or morning naps. Or just about any kind of nap to supplement the sleep I get at night.

Anyway, Ava takes naps. She does this in a playpen Terry keeps in our walk-in closet. She puts Ava down in there, turns on a fan for white noise, and usually has a few hours to herself after that. Ava is an expert sleeper, at least when she really wants to be.

A lot of times after Ava leaves, I'll come home from work and the playpen will still be set up in the closet. Often I'll just grumble about it and walk around the playpen as I take off my work clothes and put on whatever clothes are needed for that evening's activities.

But other times I'll stow the playpen away myself, thus taking at least one small thing off of Terry's seemingly endless to-do list. It's one of those Pack and Play models that folds up into a relatively compact 3-foot rectangle. We've had it since 1994, the year my oldest daughter was born. I have put up and taken down that playpen so many times in the ensuing 18 years, I'm pretty sure I could do it in my sleep (and I probably have done just that at some point when one of our kids or another was keeping us up nights).

I generally don't think anything of it, because this is a chore that literally takes all of 60 seconds to complete. But the other day I was taking down the playpen and it felt strange to me. Really strange. Like it belonged to someone else.

Never mind that this playpen is ours and always has been ours. Never mind that Terry is probably the only person who has lugged it around more than I have, or that all five of my kids have slept and/or played in it at some point in their lives. It just didn't feel like it had anything to do with me.

Nowadays, almost nothing related to my kids' babyhood feels connected to me. I come across an old baby toy and it seems like it's from someone else's life altogether. I feel so far removed from baby toys and bottles and playpens and strollers and pacifiers and diapers and the whole thing that it's hard to believe I helped raise five kids. You could almost convince me we didn't have any of them when they were babies, and that instead someone dropped each of them off at our house when they turned 6 years old.

I know that's not true, of course. There is photographic evidence that I have been, in fact, a father of newborns. And infants and toddlers, too. There are all sorts of pictures of me holding babies, burping babies, feeding babies, sleeping with babies on my chest, etc. And I remember it all. But still, there's this strange feeling that it happened to someone else years and years and years ago. I'm only 42. Why do I feel like this?

I guess it's because I'm inundated with Older Kid Experiences now: middle school, high school, driving lessons, college tours, etc. We still have little Jack tying us back to pre-adolescence, but as far as I can tell, it has been 100 years since he was born. It's all just so distant.

Since I've become aware of this strange feeling, I've been hoping my brain could make some sense of it. After all, I've been a father for less than 20 years. That's really not all that long, when you think about it. It's not like I'm an 80-year-old grandpa whose parenting years are far, far behind him. I'm still in the middle of this great test, and I'll continue being in the middle of it for many more years.

But still, I feel...finished with part of it, I guess. Maybe this is God's way of telling me, "Good job, young man. (NOTE: To God, we're all young.) You got through this much of it just fine, like I said you would. Remember all those times you doubted whether you could take one more night of walking the floor with a crying baby? Those days at work when you wondered whether you would make ends meet? Those times when you questioned whether you were any good at being a dad? I know you still ask those questions. But I want you to realize how far you've come, and I want you to realize that you'll make it to the end.

"And most of all, I want you to continue relying on Me. I know sometimes you forget I'm there, and that's OK. For a little while, at least. I'll always be there to nudge you and remind you where your strength comes from. So just keep on going. You'll always be a parent, just like I will always be Your Father, and you still have a long way to go. But having come this far should tell you that you're in good hands."

Yeah, that's probably it.

Division of labor - marriage style

Paul Reiser, one of my favorite comedians and a guy who has sort of faded away in recent years, wrote the best description I've ever read of the way household tasks are divvied up in a marriage.

In his book "Couplehood" -- a great and funny read, I recommend it -- Reiser explained that there will always be tasks neither the husband nor the wife (nor the kids, for that matter) really want to handle. But there's also always one of you who hates a given job more than the other, so generally speaking, it should be assigned to the person who hates it less. This makes a lot of sense to me.

For example, as I've mentioned, I don't relish the thought of cleaning the cat litter boxes every morning. But ever since June 1993, when Terry became pregnant with Elissa, it has been my job. This is because cat waste poses a real health threat to pregnant woman, and especially with that first baby, you don't take any chances. I think the disease is called toxoplasmosis, though I didn't look it up and as far as I know, it may not actually be a disease but rather a concept pregnant women made up to get out of doing stuff around the house.

Five children later, Terry is no longer in danger of getting pregnant, thanks mostly to the fine work of Dr. Kurt Schneider, my de facto urologist and the guy who made me permanently sterile in one, swift 45-minute procedure. The man was good. At some point, I'll have to tell you about it because, really, I enjoyed the whole process. (Yes, I know that's weird. That's why it will make a good blog post.)

Anyway, Terry will be having no more babies, at least none fathered by me. Therefore, one could surmise that she is yet again a candidate to clean the litter boxes. But she doesn't, and that's fine with me. There are plenty of other things she does that I wouldn't want anything to do with, and I've been married long enough to know when to leave well enough alone.

For the record, the other jobs I usually (not always, but usually) take on in our house include lawn maintenance, cleaning the master bathroom, and washing the kitchen floor. Being a stay-at-home mom, Terry does more than her share of unpleasant tasks while I'm at work, and that's not even taking into account the cooking (of which she does virtually 100%), laundry and general pick-up duties she handles that would exhaust me if I had them every day.

I do remember one area in which we never did come to any sort of compromise, though. This was back in the days when we had babies in the house and one would wake up crying in the middle of the night. Neither of us is particularly proud of this, but we both now admit to faking not hearing the crying child and instead pretending to be asleep, hoping that would prompt the other person to get out of bed, fetch the tot, change his or her diaper, and either restore order or prep them for breastfeeding time.

That last point is key. Terry breastfed all of the kids. This is a job, again as Paul Reiser so deftly points out, that only female persons are equipped to handle. To me, this is one of God's greatest design inspirations. But in all fairness, it should have been me who got up, changed the diaper and brought the baby downstairs, since in all cases it was Terry who did the subsequent feeding while I fell back asleep in approximately 7 seconds.

In my defense, I DID have to get up for work the next morning, and I milked that excuse relentlessly to the point that, in the end, while I bet I got up and attended to the babies more often than Terry, it wasn't by much...maybe a 55-45 split.

If I were a good person and a skilled writer, I would bring this to a close by offering some sort of inspiration and advice to young married couples or those thinking about marriage. But I am neither, so let me just say that if you're going to do the pretend-to-be-asleep thing, don't let your spouse catch you opening one eye to see if they're awake. Then you're busted and your whole night is ruined. You're welcome.