Swing Into Action ...

According to Bible, God built the entire universe in less than seven days. By my count, five of them were spent assembling a baby swing.

The Graco® Lovin Hug Swing (Bermuda style) is cute, convenient and easy-to-carry—and was obviously designed by a woman who hated her husband. It comes in 4,000 pieces, most of which aren't pictured in the instruction manual. The booklet is the size of War and Peace and written in four different languages, not one of them being English. And, while there isn't a warning against it, I'm going to give you some very sound advice: Don't sit on the floor without looking first. Trust me, it can be very, very painful.

After several hours of studying the directions, I was finally able to complete step one. I opened the box. Laugh all you want, but that sucker had nearly 18 layers of tape keeping it shut. My wife suggested cutting through it with a knife, but after the CD Rack Assembly Incident of '01 that cost me close to a pint of blood, I think it'd be safer to burn the tape off with a lighter.

(Note: A little advice for future dads out there—don't throw the box away. You'll need something to punch much later in the process, and I found that cardboard is fairly soft on the fist.)

The next step is to pull the seat cover over this intricate web of metal rods and snap it into place. Simple enough, right? I'd like to see you delicately pull a banana peel over, say, the Batmobile, and seal it shut. And do it without Batman kicking your ass.

So, the next 45 minutes went something like this:

Pull.

Tug.

Curse.

Knock over beer.

Curse again.

Tug.

Stub toe on chair.

Curse some more.

Apologize to Steven, my 50-inch HDTV, for cursing—some of which, I promise you, were used in context.

Snap pieces into place, chug beer, throw chair out window.

Moments later, I began work on assembling the legs. This part was not nearly as easy as the seat cover. It came with four long curved polls, two straight rods, some brackety-things, a pile of screws and an Allen wrench. It also came with a bottle of Advil. After several hours of attaching, detaching, reattaching, kicking and smashing against the hardwood floor, Brittany came over to calm me down. I think it worked:

"Take a deep breath," she said.

You suck!

"See, it's simple. All you have to do is stick piece A into slot B."

I'll tell you where you can stick piece A …

"And voilà! The leg is together."

I hope you stub your toe.

I'd like to say that I was able to finish the project that night. I'd also like to say that Brittany let me find out the gender of the baby, but alas, neither of these was true. I did eventually get the swing together, and only had four pieces leftover. Not bad, by Klems' standards.

After conquering the swing, I finally had a chance to sit down and enjoy the moment. I was proud of myself. I usually leave projects unfinished, but I stuck by this one because I'll do anything for my child-to-be. It even brought a tear to my eye—not for sentimental reasons, but because Brittany handed me a box:

"Now put this bouncy seat together."

The Pregnancy Stupids …

Men and women have brains that function differently. I know, this isn't exactly late-breaking news, but it's still worth mentioning. After all, men look at that original statement and see, "Men and women have brains that function differently." Women look at that statement and read, "Men are stupid."

I've always been able to admire women and their ability to multitask. Sure, I can handle a few jobs simultaneously, like watch baseball and eating a bag of Doritos. But Brittany's able to do seven things at once, all while talking on the phone, listening to me and reading Entertainment Weekly.

Of course, this was before she came down with a bad case of the Pregnancy Stupids.

I'm not sure if you ever realized this, but every woman who bears a child loses 70% of her brain functionality. It's true. Through thorough scientific research (watching Brittany on more than one occasion), I've proved that woman have 10 multitasking slots that can be used for anything—from chores around the house to handling finances to driving while putting on makeup. When a woman becomes pregnant, seven of these slots become permanently filled with pregnancy thoughts and responsibilities. And, unfortunately, she'll never get them back.

Ever since Brittany became pregnant back in October, she's become messy. She's stopped cleaning up after herself. She spills food on her shirts and leave crumbs on the floor. If that's not enough, she'll watch television while completely ignoring everyone around her, including her spouse. The more I think about it, the more I realize that pregnancy has turned her into a smaller version of me.

This is really bad news.

I knew we had taken a turn for the worse a few weeks ago when I walked in the bedroom and she sat there, remote in hand, yelling uncontrollably.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"The TV won't turn off. I've been pressing the off button for 10 minutes and nothing. Zilch. Maybe the batteries are dead?"

I walked over to the bed. After a few minutes of examination, I realized the problem.

"The batteries aren't dead. You're hitting the stop button for the VCR."

So, as I lay there in the guest bedroom, I began to contemplate how these Pregnancy Stupids were going to affect our home life. It's bad enough we had one lazy mooch in the house, now we had two. Throw in the baby who was living in my wife's uterus rent free, and you have three.

The Pregnancy Stupids aren't strictly for those with X chromosomes. Males can suffer from it too. It's true. Very rarely do I do anything stupid (stop laughing), but this week I really topped myself. I went to lunch with two very lucky coworkers, Robin (scrapbooker and pop culture extraordinaire) and Maria (my fun-loving work wife—don't worry, Brittany is cool with it). We took my car, a first for 2007, mainly because most don't like the mixed scent of softball and White Castles. As we returned to the office, we were in deep conversation and on the verge of solving world peace when I stepped out my Honda Civic, locking and shut the door. My work wife, who's always looking out for my best interest, turns to me and says, "Aren't you going to turn off your car?"

There I was, standing on the outside of my car, staring at my keys still jingling from the ignition. It took several seconds for me to put two and two together (hey, I'm an English guy, not a Mathematician). The second it hit me, I saw both Robin and Maria shut their doors. The whole thing happened in seconds, but felt like a slow motion montage in a movie—click, click.

"NO!!!!!!!"

In my 12 years of driving, I had never locked my keys in my car. On Wednesday, I did it with the motor running.

A few phone calls to Progressive Roadside assistance and 35 minutes later, I had my keys in hand. I'd like to say I was embarrassed, but, honestly, I wasn't. If I do stupid things and make silly mistakes in life all because I'm saving my best decisions for parenting, I'm OK with it. I'd rather save my wisdom and guidance for BK3, raising her (or him) to be independent, self-reliant and, essentially, not to need me. If I have to suffer through a few speed bumps along the way (and $7.64 in wasted gas), then so be it.

At least I know how to turn off the TV.

Back to School …

Last weekend started off great. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. The air was crisp and delightful. And I completely ignored all of it to watch our newly installed cable. I spent exactly three years, six months and four days with nothing but (gasp) network television and, somehow, lived to tell this story. Might as well have tied animal hide around my waist, stuck a club in my hand and called me a caveman.

I had planned to spend all day Saturday sitting on the couch, unshowered in my Homer boxers, flipping from station to station, pretending to watch the History channel but actually watching VH1's Celebrity Fit Club. (Forget about Cinco De Mayo—Marcia Brady is trying to lose some weight and needs my help!) I had been dreaming about this day ever since I placed the call to Time Warner. Then Brittany, like any loving and caring wife, ripped the dream out from under my nose by reminding me that we already had exciting plans: Birthing Class.

Now I've taken several classes in my life—economics, calculus, figure skating—and not one of them scared me as much as Birthing Class. For starters, none of them required my attendance on a Saturday morning, nor did their syllabi include such lectures as "Proper Nutrition for Newborns" or "How Babies Are Born—The Video." The class was an all-day event and cost us 100 smackaroos. For those of you unfamiliar, that's a lot of smackaroos!

We showed up at the hospital at the unreasonable hour of "before noon" and made our way to the classroom. There were 15 other couples joining us on the journey, and each one looked exactly the same: hair in a ponytail and pregnant for the wives, unshaven and "Oh- My- God- Is- That- Doctor- In- That- Poster- On- The- Wall- Going- To- Cut- Off- The- Tip- Of- That- Baby's- Penis" facial expression for the husbands. Each husband (including me) was carrying two pillows and a blanket—the required materials for the class. At first I thought they were for comfort, but upon further review I realized that their real purpose was for smothering the first woman who asked, "Can you repeat that part about the enema?"

During the first hour and a half of Birthing Class, a registered dietician explained the importance of finding good deals on diapers, knowing the difference in bottle nipples and how not-breastfeeding your child will make him Kevin Federline-stupid. This news terrified me, so I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and took my first note of the class:

Brittany shall breastfeed until the kid is 20.

Next came The Video. It started off kind of slow with the dad-to-be sitting on a sofa, timing his wife's contractions. The next 25 minutes of the video were equally dull—call doctor, arrive at hospital, sit in room while mom-to-be writhes in pain. In fact, it was super boring. I'm no director, but if it was my video I'd change the setting to a cab or an airplane or a hockey game and have the wife screaming something silly like, "Are these leather seats waterproof?" Then, instead of reaching the hospital she'd somehow get trapped in an elevator with her husband who passes out and an incompetent teenager who rises to the occasion and delivers the baby.

Note number 2: Get car seats waterproofed.

Skip ahead to the actual birth. Her legs are behind her head, her gown is wide open and her fun zone has a baby's head exploding out of it. It wasn't the most pleasant thing to watch, but wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. If that's all it takes to have a baby, Brittany and I will be fine.

Moments later, everything changed.

I had survived breastfeeding talk. I had survived the birth. I had even survived the body odor of the guy sitting next to me. But then, the camera flashed back and this big bloody blob fell out of the mom.

"Did that woman's brain just fall out of her vagina?"

"It's her placenta," Brittany says. "It unites the fetus and the uterus and it's natural for it to fall out after birth."

With this little piece of information, I got up, went into the bathroom, threw up, washed my face, threw up again and tried to escape through the window. Unfortunately this must be a common reaction of husbands because there were breath mints on the sink counter and bars on the windows.

After that visual I don't remember much about the rest of the day. In fact, I spent most of my nights this week huddled in the corner of our bedroom, shaking and mumbling in incoherent sentence fragments, trying to get that image out of my head. It wasn't until I sat down to write this column that I finally snapped out of my funk and came to terms with the birthing process. Sure, it won't be easy to see my wife in so much pain, nor will it be easy for me to watch her push out a baby (among other things). But I want to be there for her and for the baby because, no matter how disgusting it seems, the end result is worth it.

Or, if I'm really lucky, I'll just pass out.

Everybody Loves Brian …

After reading nearly seven books on parenting, two on baby names and a weekly newsletter devoted to everything pregnancy, I can safely say that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Sure, I know better than to name the kid Saddam or let him drink alcohol before he's smart enough to get a fake ID, but I'm not sure I know what to do in the ever-important emergency situation.

And I mean REAL emergency situations.

Any doctor can tell you what to do if you child is running a fever, but he can't save you from leaving the pumpkin seat on top of the car—with the child in it! He can tell you how to properly bandage up a scraped knee, but can't tell you how to cover up the incident (grocery cart race) that caused the scraped knee. And, don't even think about asking him what to do if you leave the kid at the casino.

Seriously, what do we pay doctors for, anyway?

That's why I've decided to turn to the experts in this field: TV Dads. While I know this may sound a bit unorthodox, it's not as absurd as you'd think. "Everybody Loves Raymond," "According to Jim," "Homer"—these guys wrote the book on parenting for the real emergencies that fathers face. So I started studying them all in-depth, learning the ways of the absent-minded father. I took notes. I highlighted those notes. I sniffed the highlighter for several minutes.

Wow, I really am going to make a great dad.

Brittany wasn't nearly as convinced, so she asked if she could put me through a rigorous quiz. I agreed because 1) I like quizzes and 2) I had no idea what "rigorous" meant. We decided that she would present me with three tough scenarios to put my TV Dad skills to the test. How did I fare? I'll let you judge for yourself:

Scenario #1: You're enjoying a pleasant afternoon with your child, lounging around the house, doodling in a Spider-man coloring book. You turn your head for two seconds (OK, more like the entire 5th inning) and, when you look back, your child has conveniently shoved a red crayon up his nose. What do you do?

Answer: This is no time to panic. Take another crayon, say the green one, and stick it up the other nostril. Grab two straws and shove them up your nostrils. When your wife returns, tell her that the two of you were pretending to be walruses. This will not only come off as cute, but also will score you bonus points as it will make for an excellent Christmas card.

Scenario #2: Your buddy Roger buys your little girl a permanent marker as a joke. The joke will obviously wear off when your wife, who is taking a nap, eventually wakes up with a wall full of squiggly lines—and a mustache. What do you do?

Answer: Find every empty beer can in the house and strategically place them all around your sleeping wife. If you have to, chug a few cold ones to make sure you have enough. Draw a mustache on yourself then place the marker in her hand. When all the pieces are in place, fake a police siren to wake her up. When she gets up and asks you what happened, just shake your head in disgust and tell her that you can forgive her for drawing on the walls, but it'll take awhile for you to get over her "Mustache Party." [Also, remember this when Roger becomes a parent: "Hey kids, who wants a bucket of paint?"]

Scenario #3: The baby has dumped a load on the carpet because you (dad) were too busy using his diaper as a beer coozie. What do you do?

Answer: Quickly buy a dog, give it to your wife as a present when she gets home from work, and let her hug and kiss you for the generosity of finally giving her the dog she's been begging you to get for years. Moments later, pretend to notice the mess on the floor, scream at the dog, announce that you will not tolerate such behavior and immediately return it to the pet store.

I must have really aced that quiz, because when we finished Brittany was speechless. In fact, she even put a sticker on my shirt that said "I'm special." It was a really proud moment for me.

In retrospect, I'm not sure if shows like "Everybody Loves Raymond" offer the best parenting advice. The dad is always doing something stupid, and I don't want to be a stupid father. I want to raise the bar for dads everywhere. And I promise that I will.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got more highlighters to sniff.

My Growth Spurt ...

Most days all I ever think about are my wife, lunch and whether or not on-base percentage is a better indicator of talent than batting average. But today was different. Today I cleaned the bathtub. I’m not sure if it was the hard labor of scrubbing grout with a toothbrush or the three plus hours I spent in a small, enclosed room breathing in chemicals, but an idea crossed my brain that was never there before: I’m not a kid anymore.

Sure, after 27-plus years you’d think I’d take this news fairly well, but I didn’t. I’m used to being a kid. Hell, I’m good at it. There’s proof everywhere. At Thanksgiving, I’m the life of the party at the kids’ table. I like my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into triangles (not squares). Plus, I can’t pass up a good game of hide-and-go-seek. For example:

Brian: “What a slow day.”

Brittany: “Why don’t we clean the house?”

Brian hides.

Now I knew this day was coming—after all, I have a job, a house and, oh yeah, a wife. But none of those monumental moments forced me into adulthood. Having a baby forced me into adulthood. It made me consider things that I’ve never considered before, like does my car have a high safety-rating or do I live in a good school district or which nickname is cooler: Beefcake or Chunky Monkey? This vital information—while trivial just a few short months ago—now consumes my life.

So, the real question here is: How do I successfully transition into adulthood without losing the edge that’s made me popular in many, many goofball circles? Do I wear more ties? Eat more veggies? Stop basing all my important decisions on an up-or-down vote by my Reds bobblehead collection? These are hardly appealing options, so I developed a six-step program to help myself (and all eventual fathers) become an adult:

Step one: Get rid of the Homer Simpson slippers.

Step two: Learn to successfully set the alarm clock so you’re not late for work.

Step three: No, really, get rid of the Homer slippers.

Step four: Stop believing in such childish figures as the Dish Fairy, Laundry Claus and other cleaning mascots.*

Step five: If you don’t take off those Homer slippers and trash them, I’m going to wrestle you down, duct tape you to the floor and make you watch a continuous loop of “The View.”

Step six: Acceptance.

With this basic plan in place, I started my transition. I went through closets and got rid of old silly posters. I trashed all my CDs with explicit lyrics, including Eminem, 2 Live Crew and “Weird” Al Yankovic. There was only one thing left to do. As I stared Homer in the face and said my goodbyes, I started to get choked up. I could swear I saw him shed a tear (although there’s also the small possibility it may have been foot sweat). I just couldn’t throw out such a close friend.

Then it hit me harder than a Brittany elbow in the middle of the night. Just because I no longer can be childish doesn’t mean that I can’t be immature from time to time. Most men are. I know many of you think there’s no difference between the two, but there is and it’s distinct: Being immature is laughing at fart jokes; being childish is telling fart jokes.

With this realization, I decided Homer and his buddy (left-foot Homer) could stay. In fact, everything could stay. Growing up isn’t about giving up the past, it’s about rising to the challenge of the future. I’m not sure if I hit a growth spurt or if the chemical buzz was wearing off, but I knew I was going to be OK. Even if I’m not a kid anymore, it doesn’t mean I can’t still cut my PB&J sandwiches into triangles—it just means that I’ll have to plan ahead and cut enough triangles for my entire family.

And if you take one thing away from this column, let it be this: On-base percentage is a MUCH better indicator of baseball talent than batting average.

Footnote:
* I can’t take credit for “The Dish Fairy” nor “Laundry Claus,” as both were the brainchild of the Alex “The Authority Guru” Weber. But thanks, Al, for making them an important part of my life.