Casey had missed Mother’s Day, as Jeremy had not yet been born. Father’s Day then fell within a week after his birth, so I was the first to reap the benefits of a parent’s holiday: a card in the mail from my parents, a card at breakfast from my son (courtesy of my wife), and an endless visit from my in-laws which resulted in a wasteland of Chinese food containers all over the apartment. But now, a week later, Casey is returning to work on Monday, and I have been laid off. My role as house-husband cannot be denied. I have sent her away on a weekend of maternal rest and recovery, as a prelude to her impending role as breadwinner and mine as primary care-giver. She has given me a crash course in child-rearing prior to her departure, and I did pay close attention, but now, as I wake up alone with the baby for the second day in a row, I realize how little I actually absorbed from her lectures, and that everything I know about babies I learned yesterday during my day-long trial-by-fire.

I know that at this moment, I should go directly to my wailing son, but there are two needs which take greater precedence: covering my nakedness, and relieving my bladder. The nakedness issue is confusing, and I dread the impending time when I will have to face it more clearly. At present, Jeremy is allowed to see my complete anatomy in the bathroom only. No more roaming about the apartment in the nude at random, like in the good old days when Casey and I had finally bought blinds for all of the windows and we reveled daily in our newfound freedom. Now, I must put on a pair of boxer shorts before making an appearance at Jeremy’s cribside.

And then the second need, the bladder relief, which I have learned to attend to prior to answering all but the most dire of cries, because I might not have another opportunity for an hour or more. I dash past his room and confirm with a glance that he is merely lonely and miserable. No pool of blood, no curtains on fire, so I proceed into the bathroom, calling out his name cheerfully as I try to speed my business along. He takes no comfort in my calls, but this is no surprise. My shouts of encouragement from in front of the toilet usually make him bawl even harder, as though I am cruelly tantalizing him with my not-quite presence.

When I arrive at the crib, I naively expect that he will reach up to me. Instead, he points to the wall nearby and says, “There?”, which he pronounces as, “They-uh?” This is a morning ritual which brings an end to all sobs, even before being picked up. It is the greeting of the donkey-headed peg board. I lift him into my arms, and take him to the donkey, which he swats enthusiastically until it seems that its spring-loaded head must surely be ready to fall off. When all are satisfied, we proceed to the diaper table, where we have a mercifully uneventful diaper change.

Now the young man is ready to face the day. I place him on his feet, and await his instruction. Predictably, he marches directly to the dining area and points at his high chair. “They-uh?” I swiftly place him, strap him in, and start my coffee, all before he notices that a full minute has passed and he still hasn’t eaten. Breakfast, I decide, will be peaches or pears. I offer him the choice between the two, but his selection is indeterminate. I choose for him: “Pears. They rhyme with bears. Grrr.” He smiles at this as usual, but I am increasingly doubtful that he can appreciate the verse.

After a seven-minute battle, in which he swallows slightly more than half of the Stage 3 Bartlett Pears and spreads the remainder on himself, the high chair, and the wall, we move to the television. Saturday morning cartoons have become violent and bizarre since my days in front of the box. Or so it seems to me now. Wile E. Coyote’s phoenix-dives into the craggy valleys, Tom’s flattened head at the hands of Jerry and a conveniently-placed iron, Foghorn Leghorn’s foot-high contusions from his run-ins with Bugs Bunny – these were somehow harmless and hilarious. Now, Spiderman has become a dark and sinister world of shadows, and the Merrie Melodies are nowhere in sight. In fact, cartoons are hard to come by at all, but the “Saved By The Bell” drunk driving episode is available more than once in the course of the morning. Thirteen-month-old Jeremy studies its message periodically, whenever the laugh track is loud enough to pull his attention from his plastic tool kit.

When I can’t take any more of Screech, I flip to the Discovery channel. There is a deeply moving story of a panda and her experience of giving birth in captivity. I expect that Jeremy will be enthralled, based on his deep appreciation of “Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?” (the follow-up to “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” and “Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?”). But Jeremy ignores the television completely and plays with his toys, presenting them to me one by one for inspection as I sit on the sofa writing. He eventually become irritated by the attention I am giving to my notepad, and he pulls at it, trying to take it away. I tell him, “Daddy is a writer, so don’t take his pad. He could become David Sedaris of stay-at-home-dads, if you don’t take away his pad. And then we’ll be rich and famous.”

I look at the clock. It is now 7:42a. Thirty-four minutes have passed since I was awakened by Jeremy’s cries. Casey is returning on Sunday at noon. That makes twenty-eight hours and nineteen minutes to go. Ah, yes.