There's a little breakfast place near our house and every Sunday morning Skylar and I dress up our baby in cute clothes and walk to it with that day's newspaper so we can sit and read it over coffee and eggs and say things like "what is this world coming to." We don't know how it happened, and I know this sounds obvious, but West's birth truly did turn us into dads. Hot dads with great personalities and asses you could bounce a shopping cart off of, obviously.

It's my favorite weekly tradition, mostly because we get a lot of attention, and as you may be aware, I happen to love attention.

Before the baby came along, no one paid any mind to us in this cafe. We had to invent a whole new human for strangers to begin to care about us.

Now, we sit him up on our laps at the table, like he's our prized pig at the county fair, and all eyes turn to us for the remainder of the meal. We were already Mega A-List Celebrities before he came along, but now people treat us like that's true.

One of the biggest surprises for me about having a new baby is you have to go to the pediatrician every 31 hours so they can weigh your child and forget to mention he is the best patient they've ever had and the reason they became a doctor in the first place. At each of these appointments I ask a number of questions like "when can I show him Waiting For Guffman" and "am I pulling off the 'hot single mom trying to have it all' look?"

At a recent visit, we discussed when and how to introduce West to actual food. The pediatrician told us to pay attention to his cues—if he starts expressing more interest in what we're eating, that may be a good sign it's time to begin sharing certain foods with him. I told Skylar this is also good advice for when he is eating snacks in front of me. (I was ignored.)

That evening I mashed up an avocado and began feeding it to West. On the first bite he sort of rolled the mush around in his mouth, appearing somewhat confused. He got the hang of it on the second bite wherein he went cross eyed and started wildly kicking his feet like someone just gave him cocaine. Now, when he sees us eating he starts screaming at us until we funnel some of it into his mouth. This is truly my child.

We've discovered he loves dried mango, mashed banana, pureed potatoes, and yogurt. He reacted so enthusiastically to his first taste of ice cream that Iowa lost its statehood and a dairy farm exploded at random somewhere.

What really surprised us was recently during one of our Sunday morning breakfast trips when Skylar gave him a pickle and he chewed on it for a full hour like it was a Cuban cigar and his wife just had a baby in 1955 that he won't help raise. Nearly every person we've told since that West loves pickles has appeared baffled by this, including our pediatrician who found a polite way to say "you're kid is super weird."

Sunday was Mother's Day and according to a lot strangers on the internet who have blessed me with their opinions of my family, we have essentially abused our child by giving him two dads instead of a CHRISTIAN MOTHER AND ABSENTEE FATHER WHO SHOOTS GUNS AND GOES "GRUNT GRUNT SPIT" INSTEAD OF SAYING WORDS LIKE SOME HOMOSEXUAL FAGQUEER.

The point is, Mother's Day is an extremely hard time for West. In lieu of prayers, please send us money. And breast milk that comes from big boobs.

To take his mind off his lot in life, we brought West to our Sunday morning breakfast place.

Side note: we used to get brunch there around 10:00 back when we were childless Freedom Patriots who could do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. Now we are Men Who Are Awake Early so we instead arrive at exactly 7:30 AM every Sunday and stand in front of the doors waiting for a hungover employee who has every right to hate us to open the cafe for the day.

The biggest takeaway of our new early bird geriatric breakfast schedule is we are not alone in this. On Mother's Day at 7:30, there were three other couples with babies under 12 months standing out front waiting with us to be let in. It was like a rave for infants up in there. A quietly competitive one where we all said things to each other like "wow your baby is so cute" while thinking "but not as cute as mine."

Once we got seated Skylar did the thing he always does in all restaurants: begin to make a weird and complicated order. On this particular 7:30 in the morning occasion, he ordered a side salad, a tiny hamburger, one singular sausage, one singular piece of French toast, and a pickle.

The pickle was for West, but the rest of that nonsense was not. West spent the meal repeatedly sucking on a pickle and then tossing it to the ground, because that's what he does at home for our equally weird dogs who, it turns out, also love pickles.

We asked for replacement pickles, within reason, and considering the rest of Skylar's order and also just his general presence as a Delightfully Odd Man who has the energy of that Mickey Mouse gif where he's walking and whistling, the waitress didn't bat an eye at these requests.

This sort of changed, when, just as we were getting ready to leave, Skylar ordered a pickle "for the road" and this woman stared at him with a look on her face like she was wondering if she should stage an intervention.

It was at this point that I felt like she was entitled to clarification so I intervened and said, "this pickle is not for my husband. It's for the baby," and as I said it the heads of the rest of the TRADITIONAL AMERIKA FAMILIES turned to us, I'm sure each of them contemplating whether it was their responsibility to explain to us babies eat milk, not salt and vinegar.

As we walked out of the restaurant, new pickle acquired and being actively gnawed by a baby kicking his legs in delight, Skylar said to me, "did that woman think I was ordering all those pickles for myself? I would never do something that weird."

This man, who I once discovered was intentionally putting his jeans in our freezer for reasons I still don't understand.

This man, who this very morning performed the entirety of The Little Mermaid's catalogue, including dancing, for our infant.

This man, whom I have witnessed go grocery shopping wearing a Snuggie.

This man, who recently admitted to me when he was in high school he called a local rock radio station and requested they play the soundtrack for Lord of the Rings and then he stayed up until late in the night listening for them to never comply.

Well, he would never do something as weird as order extra pickles for himself.

He'd only do that for our poor motherless child.

~It Just Gets Stranger