As it turns out, there's lots of annoying things about being a parent that no one warns you about. Today, as with most days, my brain is enduring a low-grade attack from one of the more common child-annoyances: kid songs! Throughout the last several years, my brain has been filled with unending repetitions of things like:

- Nursery rhymes
- The theme song to Blues Clues
- Most songs by The Wiggles (fruit salad, anyone?)

Recently, my daughter has been enamored with the album "No" by They Might Be Giants. This album gets points for being by a band that I like, but it's still kids music and thus has the ability to lodge itself in my brain and NEVER LET GO! I submit as evidence, this snippet of the song, "In the Middle, In the Middle, In the Middle" (requires Windows Media Player)

Go ahead, click on it. Listen to it a few times. Let that puppy wedge itself deep inside the crevices of your brain.... There you go. Ahhhhhhhh. Welcome to my world.

Another thing about child-rearing that I wouldn't have guessed is how my sleeping patterns have changed. It's not so much that we get woken up on a regular basis (that part I kind of expected), it's that my sleep is generally more fitful even when the kid is sleeping well. I used to sleep like a baby (well, we know that's an urban legend) ...like....well, like the dead. Now, the slightest noise wakes me. "Wha! Huh! Is that the sound of the baby dying?!?! Oh, it was just the noise of my digital alarm clock ticking over to 3:00am...........WHAT WAS THAT? DID SOMEONE FALL OUT OF THE CRIB???? Oh...3:02". That's my new sleeping pattern. What it lacks in sleep-efficiency, it makes up for in excitement.

My final surprise about being a parent is how often my penis gets mocked. It's not the wife doing it (at least not in front of me), but rather my sweet little daughter. On the occasion where she sees me naked, she'll nearly always loudly exclaim, in a sing-songy voice, "I see your penis, I see your penis". This is usually accompanied by pointing and giggling. This behavior is somewhat annoying, but at least it only happens in the confines of the house. The other day, however, we were strolling through our neighborhood grocey store when my daughter suddenly and loudly broke out into poetry, "DADDY IS FROM VENUS! HE HAS A PENIS! DADDY IS FROM VENUS! HE HAS A PENIS!"

I wasn't quite sure how to respond. First off, she got the whole, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing wrong, but that seemed too complicated to explain to a four-year old. Secondly, although I want her to be comfortable with the human body, I'd sure appreciate it if she talked about something else.

The other grocery store patrons did a mediocre job of ignoring us.

On one final note, I'll do my best to have fewer crotch-n-penis themed posts next week.