Opinion

The perils of parenting

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

For more than 10 months now, Nicole and I have been discovering the joys and pitfalls that come with parenting.

Monday taught us a big lesson for first-time parents in particular: overreaction.

On the whole, I have to say it's been pretty smooth sailing. While my life looks completely different than it did one year ago today, we've been pretty lucky with our little man. Only a few late nights. He's not much of a crier. Few illnesses. No hospital visits.

After Monday evening, you can scratch that one off the list.

Now, the overreaction didn't come in taking our little man to the emergency room. He had a high fever, and we didn't know what to do about it.

It turns out he has an ear infection, and he needs to be on amoxicillin for the next week.

After a couple of hours (and who knows how much of a wallet hit) we were back home, armed with eye droppers and something like three different kinds of medicine for him.

As we sat there at home, our sickly son still asleep against his mom's chest, we decided to change our Tuesday night plans. Late last week, Cole won tickets to Tuesday night's Reds game with the Cubs. For several days, we'd been excited. I try to make it to Cincinnati for a game every year, while Cole has not been to a Reds game in at least a decade and a half.

Priorities tend to be a little different with a sick baby, though.

So, no sooner had we finalized giving the tickets away then Miles made a miraculous recovery. For over two hours Monday night, he was all around the living room, visiting his various toys, talking up a storm and acting nothing like a baby who'd been in the hospital just a few hours earlier.

At about the same time, I think Nicole and I had our "What have we done?" moment. Little man was perfectly fine. There would be no problem with being a state away enjoying a big dose of America's Pastime.

Alas, it was too late. The tickets were in someone else's hands. We'll be waiting until later in the season to watch our first Reds game.

In the end, I know we did the right thing for our son's health, and I don't regret it for a second. I just wish we'd waited just a little longer to change our plans. Kids get sick fast. Kids get well fast. Changing your plans so quickly might be a bit impetuous.

And then there's this little bit that makes it even worse -- we gave the tickets to Cubs fans. The least we could have done was make sure our surrogates were cheering for the right side.

It could be way worse, though. This could have been a series with the Cardinals.