Teething

    My wife and I had a son on January 22, 2008.  We named him Grayson James and our world has never been the same.  Now he is 13 and a half months old, walking and getting around the house pretty well and very much developing into a healthy, if not a bit clumsy, little version of my wife and I.  When we decided to have kids we listened to everybody in our lives who already had kids (you know who you are) and invariably they all stated the same thing:  "Having a child will be the most amazing and rewarding experience of your life!"  What these people, many of them close family members, failed to tell us about was the rarely seen and obviously never spoken about "dark side" of having children.  I am here to let you in on a small slice of my own personal hell.  You see, my son is teething. 
    His molars are coming in hard and heavy, which makes him more than a tad disagreeable at times...  He manages to produce a sound, an almost indescribable sound.  Akin to the wail of a sack full of cats being struck with a large wooden mallet, as three ambulances pull up to the curb outside the house, while a room full of alarm clocks ring at once (if you can picture someone scratching their nails down a  chalk-board while imagining said noises please do), his cries pierce deeply into ones inner ear canal, virtually ensuring tinnitus or some other form of major hearing loss. 
Meanwhile, anyone within a two block radius of our house is trying to heave whatever is at hand through the nearest door or window. 
    Fortunately though experience I have come up with these three coping strategies

Option one: Bite down hard and cleanly thorugh your tongue while staring up towards where God should be if he existed (Note the blood trickling down your neck can be a bitch to clean up.). 

Option two: Start yelling random nasties at your spouse as loud as you can until you notice the blood running down her neck. Be sure to include as many vulgar and revolting put-downs that you can so that when you are cleaning up the blood after you have something to reflect on in anguish.

Option three:  Hold it all in, all the while trying not to push your son thorugh the nearest door or window,  hug your spouse close to you and know that eventually this too shall pass.

    I can't wait for the next most amazing and rewarding child rearing experience, potty training! 


Please note:  No spouses, children or cats were injured and / or verbally abused during the research for this writing.