Haircuts and Selfishness (only one more post left…)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We were gone all day… to town.  Mom and I worked while Finn spent time with Babysitter.  Finn didn’t want us to leave this morning, more so than usual.  He’s fighting a little cold and we think that’s the issue.  Babysitter said he was fine after we left, until he saw us walking up to the door when we returned.  He erupted again.

Then to haircuts after lunch.  I’ve not seen Finn struggle and cry, outside of getting 15 pricks from a blood-drawing needle at the hospital, than he did getting his hair cut today.  I wondered if he thought his hospital experience would return.  Friend, who cuts all our hair and is the best stylist in town, navigated Finn well, pulling back the scissors every time Finn jolted his head and body.  And Friend said afterwards that some kids are three times that bad.  Wow, three times?  I couldn’t imagine anything worse than Finn’s struggle at that moment.

Mom and I also got a trim.  I’m cool again.

Presents have piled up for Finn the last few days.  These are the only packages we let him play with.  He climbs on the large box and pulls at the smaller envelopes.  Nothing has come open yet.  I re-stack them and he pulls them down again.

Finn has also learned to hand toys to the dogs.  Sometimes the ladies are a little rough when they take it and Finn pulls his hand back and holds it where, apparently, a tooth slides across his sensitive fingers.

Finn, today, stood.  I think he stood a few weeks back (I wrote about it).  But today I was walking him across the room and I stopped and pulled my hands away.  He stood upright and balanced for at least five full seconds.  Then he turned and grabbed my leg.  He laughed and kicked and danced, which makes me think that he knows that he stood, a true stand like a confident biped.  We tried it a few more times.

And Finn put himself to sleep tonight too.  He’s done this before, but we’re working harder at it.  For me, it isn’t the amount of time he cries in his crib; it’s the quality of the cry.  All needs met, he cried because of the crib itself.  And the cries slowed, like the gradual turning off of a faucet.  Twenty minutes later, silence.  Now, getting him to fall asleep on his own is one thing.  It’s not often yet, but it’s not miraculous either.  The next thing is a lengthy sleep.  How do you keep a kid from being hungry three hours after you put him down?  Mind you, he’s filled with milk and solid food at the point of putting him down.  If you have a tip, share it!  If you say to ignore his hunger, I’m reporting you.

Now here’s something else I’ve learned from Finn, though I risk sounding pompous.  I do not intend any pride in this, but an observation.  An encouragement really.

I’ve met many who said they did not realize how selfish they were till they had kids.  I’ve met others who say the same about their flexibility.  Kids put the strain and demand on you.  And if you are responsible parent, you bend.

I talked to Friend one day, before Finn came along, who confessed that his kids revealed his selfishness.  We had a long talk about it, trying to parse out and get to the bottom of what selfishness really is.

I think some people believe selfishness is when you don’t want to do something that you need to do or when you lack gladness in your work.  And that isn’t selfishness.  It can be inconvenience or shocking or whatever.  But that is not a character issue.  If someone asked you to pick up after their dog, you are not selfish to think, “That’s gross.”  You might not even be selfish to ignore the request.  However, you  might be selfish if you asked the same of someone else.

Selfishness is the attitude that others exist for you.  You design your own world.  That, I think, is closer to real selfishness, though I’m sure there are better definitions.

Here’s what I learned from Finn’s first year: that I’m not nearly as selfish as I expected to be.  It appears marriage worked out a lot of kinks long before the Fighting Finn came along.  And I’m glad for it.

Okay, not just marriage.  Having three corgis also helped.  Mom and I used to joke to people that our three corgis were practice for having children.  Some remarked soberly that those three corgis were about the equivalent of one child.  And, in some ways, I agree.  Lady Lucy as a pup taught me to get up in the middle of the night during her first six weeks at our house.   But I wizened up and crated her after that.  She could whimper and wet her crate all she wanted in the distant room with the doors closed and I could continue sleeping.  Not so with Finn.

But tending to the dogs, playing with them, watching their health, training their behavior… these all have overlap.  And the biggest overlap is the mindfulness, the presence, that these dogs are my responsibility, always.  Nothing happens at our house without taking the dog’s welfare into consideration.

I also learned than I’m flexible.  Sure, a new idea must sit on me a few minutes to sink in.  This bugs Mom who can shift gears faster than a cat on an ermine.  Sometimes Mom will ask me to do something and my first reaction is, “I’m in the middle of something else and I cannot steer that quickly.”  But I eventually steer, usually.  I’ve been accused of being inflexible by some in the past and I’ve taken it to heart… and learned that sometimes people say this to you because they want you to conform to their wishes.  But flexibility, I’ve found, is a strong point of mine.  Most of the time, I’m more concerned with the needs of Mom and Finn.  I ask Mom what she wants, where, how… before injecting my opinion.  This sometimes bugs her, but I do mean it.  I admit that sometimes I don’t care, which makes me seem virtuous when I’m not.

But I’m learning my limits.  And limits are not necessarily about selfishness or inflexibility.  Sometimes they are just about our capabilities. We can grow stronger, sometimes.  But knowing our limits is also a virtue.  When I get to a point that my eyes are hung at half-mast and my emotions beg for Mom to relieve me from Finnundation, that’s when I know I’m passed my limit.  That’s when I know I should have said an hour earlier, I lack endurance.

Mom and I are both getting better at that.

I’m sure year two, three, 10, 14, 17 will teach me more about my many flaws.  Don’t worry.  I’m anticipating it.   No need to comment, “Just wait until…”

Finn’s passport arrived yesterday.  Now he can explore the world.  He’s going with us to speak at Oxford in May.

Tonight at midnight, the curtain falls on being a first year dad.  Tomorrow a new chapter — a second year…

We made it.

Advertisement