Wine Time

When you have kids you enter this alternate world. It’s a bit like war. Only vets actually know. Okay so ya that’s a bit extreme. And way too soon. It’s not quite the same. I mean at least war ends right (at some point)? The buildings can be rebuilt. Economies come back. Kids are for-fucking-ever man. Okay, so ya, still, not quite the same. I mean it’s kind of the same. But less violent. Sometimes.

Still, in this kid world, you start seeing and resonating with piles of Instagram “wine time” memes, diaper blow out jokes (which you don’t ever hear about the way you really, really should—not the way they really, really happen), snippets about tantrums, potty training, jokes about teenagers, pot, and you’ll for the life of you hear more than you ever wanted to, that “They grow up so fast”. But it’s rarely real. Like you don’t actually get into why the Mommy needs wine meme is a meme. And for some reason it always has to be funny. I mean everything’s better if it’s funny. Especially the hard shit. Even more so with kid shit. And actual shit. But the funny belies the reality. Like instagram. And aside from the funny, no one gets that deeply into why that little 3 second tiktok is a complete and totally accurate summation of existence. To the point where you just laugh and nod and say, “Yep, that’s it”. Then cry.

Enter a Mom on loop chugging a gigantic glass of wine. A glass so big it could only have been custom made. Something from one of those one-off knick-knack shops. A glass with so much room that “I could really use a gigantic glass of wine right now” fits etched on the side. It was likely gifted by another Mom. Yes it’s funny. Yes it’s real. Yes it’s a complete and totally accurate summation of her existence. And my existence. And every other parent’s.

But she’s not drinking it because it’s funny. Or because she’s trying to be funny. She NEEDS it. She HAS to have it. It returns some sense of sanity. It’s a break. It helps her forget. And in the meme you don’t see she’s covered in shit. And spit up. She stinks. She hasn’t showered in days. She hasn’t changed her clothes in days. Because she has no clothes. They’re either dirty, or don’t fit her anymore, or aren’t in style anymore, or are maternity wear which doesn’t fit but she continues to wear because nothing is clean. She hasn’t left the house in days. Two piles of laundry are sitting at her feet. Just out of the shot. And there’s another that’s even more annoying because it’s clean and has to be put away. Any makeup she’s wearing is accidental. Or maybe also just shit. And she still has a bunch of stuff to do before going to bed after said wine. Where she likely won’t sleep. Where she likely will be woken up, multiple times. At which point she’ll do it all over again, and wait, all day, for that meme again. Which means, in reality, she has a drinking problem.

Beer time Now picture that same Mom meme. But with a beer. A gigantic glass of beer. And a Dad. It’s the SAME. Maybe not entirely given the fact that while Mom and Dad equity is vastly improved and increasing, job sharing isn’t likely yet a 50-50 split on average. But it’s close. Or getting closer. And it doesn’t necessarily matter if roles are evenly split. The need for Mommy wine and Daddy beer time is real, for both parents. It’s a balm. It’s a crutch. It helps the day slide off a little easier after the kids are in bed. But since it’s more normalized (i.e. totally expected and supported by eons of movies and books and pop culture and actual examples) that guys will wear the same underwear (and anything) for X days in a row, not shower, not do laundry, not clean, and chug a glass of beer/wine at most any time of day, it comes off in a less tragic and more “Haha, typical dude” kind of way. But it isn’t. It’s just the same kind of essential medicine.

With my first child, it was pandemic. The curtain had just fallen. The world went dark. He was about 8 months old. Everyone was scrambling to figure it out. All the in-person service businesses were shuttered and fucked. It took less than a month for the breweries and wineries to offer delivery. Halle-fuckin-lluia. Why was this the first time anyone thought of beer delivery? Within a week I had my first order. It showed up on my doorstep within 24hrs. Two 2-4s and a 6-pack. I took pictures. I got a text notification. It was so exciting. It was a whole new world. I’d actually never been the type to buy 2-4s. It’s too much at once. And expensive. A 6, an 8, a 12. Then come back for more. But this was another level. It was a new time. Why not stock up? I can’t just go back to the brewery. Wait, I CAN’T go anywhere. It was a different life. A new way of thinking. It hadn’t happened before. Everyone was trying to sort it out at once. Stay at home? What? All day? Every day? And do what? Back to the 2-4s. I mean the TWO 2-4s. And a 6 pack. Enter a global drinking problem.

But if I back up a bit, it was this way, albeit a little more responsible, prior to Covid. Alcohol was already a big part of our lives. Beers after work, beers on weekends, craft brewery taprooms, flights, wine, and of course, drinks in the evenings. The pandemic surely gave us more time to drink, but it’s fair to say it amplified an existing situation. What did change our drinking for the heavier was having a newborn. Enter the wine/beer time. The whole no sleep, difficulty feeding, waking up at all hours thing doesn’t lend well to not drinking. We were high on having our first kid, in our first house, and delirious on adrenaline and zero sleep. Alcohol made almost everything better (mornings being the glaring exception). Once ‘demic arrived, the combo of difficult infant and being homebound because of a frightening global virus brought the drinking to a new level altogether. Enter the 2-4s yet again. 2-3 beers a night became more or less the baseline. It was fun. It was freeing. It was festive. Everyone was doing it. And Christ did we ever need the medicine. Alcohol gave us the escape we needed. A slice of humanity (I refuse to say “normalcy” for all the abuse and overuse that term got over 3-4 years of people complaining about not being able to see other people). A sliver of hope. A glow of possibility.

But the facts remained the same. We’d wake up, slightly hung, to all the same realities. Screaming kid. No sleep. Difficulty feeding. Stress. Fatigue. Laundry. Mess. Round and round. With our second kid, I dove headlong into teetotalling. I’d had enough of the hangovers. A small backstory snippet is that I always and forever got unfairly hungover. Sometimes from 1 drink, often from 2, always from more than two. It sucked. It was also not cool to be drinking while my pregnant wife sat next to me. The combo of the two gave way to picking up all the non-alcoholic beer options on the market. There are some good ones. And they’re increasing because Moms and Dads that love craft beer can’t drink anymore because of their f*#$ing kids.

The occasional person and maybe one or two of the parenting books will give you a tiny inkling of the reality behind the diaper. But nowhere, in my experience, do you get a low down, dirty, real-life, play by play assessment from real parents—especially those who don’t have nannies or grandparents or babysitters or others that do most of the actual parenting—or those who have kids that are so easy they raise themselves. Or from real parents, parenting real, difficult kids.

Before our first child, we tried to do what every new parent does. We bought all the books, talked to friends, read articles, did the prenatal course. I could tell you the best positions to relieve labour pain and encourage contractions with my eyes closed. Olive oil on the perineum is a thing. Dried fruit, coconut water, nuts: good for the long labour haul. But fuck if it did anything to actually prepare us for what happens after the kid comes out. Or for that matter if you get an epidural. None of that Doula shit is necessary when you’ve got the glory of high level, spinal tapped pain meds. Which means 60-80% of that prenatal course was unnecessary. Don’t bring scents. Don’t bring dried fruit. Don’t prepare motivational phrases. Don’t make a playlist. Don’t suggest zen breathing when she’s bearing down. Just don’t.

I had friends say “lean in”, change as many diapers as you can as the Dad, and our perennial favourite: “it gets better”. I never used the phrase “shoot me” before, much less once every other day.

Kids are miracles. For real. No joke. My wife and I on both sides have friends who either couldn’t have kids, or were too old and not in relationships or for other reasons weren’t able. We are thankful every day. But they are in equal part, if not more so, difficult, frustrating, incredibly challenging, soul questioning little maniacs. They push you, sometimes as part of growing, sometimes on fucking purpose, to the point where your body will not take another adrenaline spike or more sleeplessness. Where your mind will literally break in half if you have one more night of coughing. Kids are hands down the most gruelling, the most demanding, the most rigorous, bruising, visceral, crushing, and also rewarding thing I’ve done in my adult life. “Rewarding” comes in at a lower ratio compared to the other items on the list, which is why it’s last. But it’s there. It is there. There’s something about getting through a day. Or five years of days. And while I’m no hero or professional anything, I’ve done a few things that were hard that couldn’t hold a candle to having kids.

This blog is my attempt at conveying some of the realities of our lives with two kids up to the age of almost four and one and a half. I hope it ends up being the kind of thing that would have helped me before having my first kid. I hope it might be the only “baby blog” you’ll need, despite not really giving you any useful information, just a constant stream of difficult anecdotes and real life incidents that have made me want to cry more than ever before in my life. I hope it’s the type of resource that gives parents-to-be a real, yet funny and hopeful (underneath all the dread and fuuuuuck man Jesus Christ almighty stop fucking screaming please fuck, God help me) outlook on parenting.