YEEEESSSS!!!!! I have been waiting for SO LONG to get another Baby Daddy story. I know what you may be thinking, "Where has this motherfucker gone? Has he up and left his family?" The answer is no. Quite the opposite, in fact; I have been focusing more on them.
But with all of this, the reality is that home life has settled down. The biggest bit of news was that my son started talking. We don't know what the fuck he is saying, but he won't stop telling us. We think he may be speaking Chinese? That would make more sense than English, with how much interaction he spends with my wife on the daily.
With that said, we had something
new happen! We recently had some friends over, and they brought their daughter - Felicia. Now Felicia is not her real name, so don't try to find her. What makes me happy is that Felicia is 12 months old -- just two months younger than my kid. What also makes me happy is that they started to interact.
Now I love to watch human interaction. And watching to toddlers is the best, because it is unfiltered. While they were playing, Felicia would often stick her hand out to grab my son's hair. Now I did not have a terrible issue with this, so long as she was gentle; in all but one situation, she was. While Felicia was trying to interact with my kid, her parents were fretting over her being too aggressive with it. At one point, her father leaned in to explain that she cannot be aggressive or a bully. It just so happens that he did this as she was swinging her arm, and smacked him in the face.
Again, with all of this, I was fairly neutral. My kid was doing alright, and Felicia was doing alright. The biggest issue was with the grown-ups. Everytime Felicia would reach out, they would yell "no". My kid is not accustomed to people yelling, and would start looking to see if he was the one in trouble. The adults would all look very serious, and my kid would cry. I was the only one who wasn't serious, so he would then run to hug me.
Now at one point, my kid was pretty damn happy. He was being held my my wife, and he and I were alternating laughs. He does this thing where he gives a guttural cackle/laugh, and then waits for it to be reciprocated. He and I were going back and forth a bit, and then briefly stopped. During that pause, Felicia tripped and fell. My son then chose that exact moment to start laughing again. That's right, my son was getting hit in the face, waited for Felicia to fall and cry, and then started laughing again! We chalked it up to be that it was just awkward timing, but I suspect he actually enjoyed the humor/vengeance.
Those friends eventually left, and we went back to our normal routine. It was interesting to see how differently they were raising Felicia, compared to how we raise our kid. They seemed very analytical and somewhat like you'd expect from Chinese parents. Conversely, we are raising our kid with a hybrid of the Chinese and American system. We let our son watch educational television. We let him run and play and explore everything. We feed him as much as we can, while trying to keep it healthy. And we focus on making sure he is happy.
That is not to say that our friends are not trying to keep their little girl happy. It is simply to say that we have a very different approach to it all. I cannot speak for my wife, but I know that I seem a bit more relaxed around our kid. I am strict when it is necessary, but otherwise I let him go. I guess we'll see what happens when he grows up.
Moral of the Story: Different parents have different approaches, and my son may have a new friend. Also, my son laughed at someone after they fell. That's what you get for grabbing his hair, bitch. Sorry about that bitch part. That was too much. But still, that's what you get.
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