Dad's Eye View

One of the ladies from Karen’s moms group has twin boys who turned 1 this past week. Karen dragged me to the party because that’s what we do now I guess. Anybody who knows me is well aware that I don’t do well around big groups of people I don’t know. Frankly, it stresses me out. I don’t remember faces or names or even whether or not I’ve met somebody before. I’m generally pretty poor at all things social. It takes me a few times before I start to recognize people and then a few more times to get their names. Longer if there’s weeks or months in-between.

When we arrived, I was pretty jazzed that they had a keg for the adults. It’s sort of a crutch for me in these social situations. While I’m holding a drink, I’m “doing” something and therefore don’t feel so exposed as the weird guy in the corner freaking out by himself. Though, I did discover that holding a baby makes things much easier. It makes for much easier conversation because we all know it’s all about the baby. People actually approach you to comment on how, obviously, adorable your baby is. But alas, you can only hold a 17ish pound baby for so long.

Of course, the first thing that came to mind when I found out about the keg was that I just HAD to get a picture of Courtney doing a keg stand. I mean, how many opportunities am I going to have to see that. Wait. Don’t answer that. I’ll continue to live in my blissful ignorance for at least a few more years. Anyway, so there were are having our first white trash moment of the day. At least it was in the other room away from the bulk of the people so we only made a lasting impression on a few folks.

I was also quite happy to see they had a whole room sectioned off for the babies to play. So I made my way over there with the baby to have something to “do” so I’m not that guy still. The play area has a large throw carpet, much like the one at the daycare we toured way back in the day when we still contemplated such a thing. The rule at the daycare is no shoes on the carpet, so I figured there was something similar to that here, but nobody else seemed to be adhering to it so maybe not. At any rate, I was wearing flip-flops, so I quickly arrived at the problem of trying to decide if wearing my nasty flip-flops was better than my bare (rather clean IMHO) feet. Which is more socially acceptable? I dunno. I went with bare and put my flip-flops in the corner.

At some point we moved back into the food room where the keg was. I presume it started with a refill and it quickly turning into food stuffing. One of the cool couples I met was in there eating and I was enjoying our conversation. They have a 7-month-old girl who was getting tired. The dad was trying to keep her entertained by swinging her back and forth. She clearly loved it and we chatted about how Courtney loves that, too. Us dads were pretty proud of our little “adrenaline junkies.”

It wasn’t long before I felt I had to demonstrate that Courtney does indeed like to be swung around. (Though it was long enough for the room dynamics to shift some) So I started swinging her back and forth and she was having a grand time. Then all of a sudden some guy (who I never did meet) goes “Okay, that’s making me nervous. I have to leave the room.” At first I thought he was just messing with me, but no, he was dead serious. He left the room. So much for winning friends and influencing people. It’s probably worth noting that I’m extremely careful when it comes to swinging Courtney and in no way is she in any sort of danger. But his reaction made me really think about it to make sure I was still confident about my position on it (which I am, BTW).

A few minutes later I heard a mother ask her kid (6 or 7?) where her shoes were. She did it in a way that was like “you know it’s rude to go around people’s houses without shoes.” Right at that moment I realized that I was standing there barefoot. I had been walking around barefoot for at least the past hour as if I lived there. Like I said, my social skills are somewhat lacking.

But in spite of my lacking social skills, we managed to meet some great people and actually have a fair bit of fun. I just hope I didn’t ruin any future moms group activities for Karen, assuming she gets more invites.

Now on to other matters… Today when I got home from work I could tell that Courtney is so much more confident in her standing. All evening she kept standing up wherever she was. She used to not stand unless there was something at arms-length to hold onto. Now it doesn’t matter where she is. At one point she was distracted by something across the room and she almost took a step toward it. So once again I sit here after saying it months ago, that she’s going to walk any minute! Karen’s Dad gets here on Thursday. It’d be a nice surprise for him (and us) to be here for that big first step.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 at 8:13 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.