When Skylar went back to work and I transformed into Hot Single Mom during the day, I decided to begin planning daily adventures with Mr. Baby. Nothing dramatic, of course. Parenthood has already warped my perception of excitement. That happens when a baby smile that very well may just be because of gas can make your week.

By the way, Mr. Baby has only one joke right now and it's where you lay him on his back and then move his legs really quickly and yell in a high-pitched voice "RUNNING RUNNING RUNNING." It's honestly, in my opinion, not an even remotely funny joke, but it kills every time. Like, I can do it every fifteen seconds and he acts like it's the first thing that has ever happened—the pinnacle of comedy. So I don't question it. Because, look, I'll do anything for a laugh from an audience.

He has also started consistently smiling when he sees me. It takes him a few seconds to register my face, but I lean over him and lock eyes; he'll blink a few times and then get a huge grin. I made the mistake of showing this party trick to Skylar when he got home from work on Friday. When Skylar tried to repeat my performance, Mr. Baby gave him nothing, despite my stage momming in the background where I pantomimed a hyperbolic grin at Mr. Baby just out of view of Skylar.

"My child doesn't know me because I've abandoned him for capitalism," Skylar said, deflated.

In the days since, I've been showing Mr. Baby pictures of Skylar during the day and saying "babba," Skylar's chosen title as a father and no he will not pick a different one. I'm basically homeschooling my child at this point. I'm one hot prairie dress away from fully becoming a trad wife.

Also, in addition to referring to Skylar as "babba" as he demands, I've stopped jokingly calling him as "weekend dad!" at his stern request. It turns out, I have found the limit to Skylar's expansive and dark sense of humor and that limit is joking about his availability as a parent.

The point is, the smiles are my home's most valuable currency at the moment, and so I summon them with leg kicks and face tricks like a desperate farmer milking an exhausted cow.

And so, no. My perception of excitement is currently in flux, and not in the direction of my youth where I once slept on the street in Pisa Italy because I was pretty sure my couchsurfing host tried to roofie me.

When I say I like to take Mr. Baby on little adventures every day, I mean that we walk to the grocery store to buy salmon.

Skylar and I have a completely irrational belief, not supported by one scrap of data, that Mr. Baby hates being in his car seat. Why do we think this? I guess it's because we don't think we would be comfortable if we had to sit in his car seat. So we assume it must not be comfortable for him. I don't know why we don't apply this logic to other areas, like the food he eats, which smells like if you vomited cottage cheese into a dumpster on a hot day. He gobbles it up like it's crack. I still haven't gathered the courage to taste it myself even if it might help me better understand my child and his disgusting interests.

Because of our irrational belief about the car seat, this baby is now twelve weeks old (they grow up so fast!) and he has only been in a car five times. And one of those times was on the way home from the hospital, during which Skylar repeatedly shouted "I think he hates that uncomfortable car seat" as the baby slept in total peace and didn't move once.

So, instead of driving him places, we strap him to our bodies, zip him into our jacket, and wander town appearing fully pregnant. The back pain is tough but my skin looks radiant. Also people like to try to touch my belly.

Two weeks ago I had a meeting downtown, which is in the downtown part of my city. I don't live in the downtown part of my city. I live five miles that way [pointing a direction but not saying which direction in case there are ROBBERS reading this].

We love our neighborhood and can walk to basically any amenities we need. But usually if we have to go downtown, we must drive because we have historically held an irrational belief that it is impossible to get downtown from our house using public transportation. Yes, you are seeing a pattern. Our beliefs are irrational and they make our lives more inconvenient. But on the plus side, we worry and stress all the time.

What then happened as I tried to figure out how I was going to go to my meeting and take my baby was two competing irrational beliefs butted heads and I had to choose one so I decided to stay loyal to the belief about the car seat because that seemed more "put your child first" between the two.

And so, with the insurmountable barriers laid upon me, I went about navigating the public transportation system of my honestly-not-that-big-this-really-was-very-simple city.

The first thing I noticed about this process was every single person on the streetcar I boarded was required to stare at me. I realized this may have had something to do with the fact that I had dressed Mr. Baby in a bear hat with ears and that was the only part of him people could see as he was strapped to my chest so it looked like I was carrying a live animal with me on public transportation.

Once I adjusted his position to make clear this was a human baby and not a rabid pet, the staring turned into conversation. Everyone, and I mean everyone, felt the need to converse with me. I felt so popular and wondered why I spent all those years dressing promiscuously for public attention when I could have just had a baby and never slept again.

At one point, a young man boarded the train, beelined to me, and said without any further greeting, "I just wanted you to know you're doing a good job as a dad." And this felt very affirming, until he added, "looking at your face, I can tell you really needed someone to say that to you right now." Which, like, I thought I was doing and looking pretty well?

And, yes. I am aware that this anecdote has fully proven the whole "dads get credit for knowing their kid's name while moms are crucified for yawning one time" thing. The entire encounter had very "dad who calls watching his own kids 'babysitting'" energy. But don't blame me. I didn't create this society and all of its problems. I just profoundly benefit from it all day every day in nearly every way for the full length of my entire life.

Some people have male privilege. Some people have pretty privilege. What can I say? I got both.

Mr. Baby slept through the entire three-hour expedition. As it turned out, taking the trains was honestly more convenient than driving. I guess it is, after all, very easy to get to the downtown part of my city on public transportation? Now I'm going to start doing this all the time while thinking about how much better I am than all the selfish mouth-breathing drivers who I can't believe live that way. I would never.

We got home just in time to see Skylar pull into the driveway in his CAR (lame).

"Ok, that's that babba guy whose picture we studied," I told Mr. Baby just before Skylar came through the door. "No, he insists on 'babba.' I couldn't talk him out of it. Just make life easier for all of us and give him a smile like you know who he is."

Skylar floated to Mr. Baby before putting a single thing down, the way he always does when he returns home.

"Hi little man," he said, positioning his face directly in front of Mr. Baby. I watched Mr. Baby blink a few times, his head bobbing a bit, as I willed him to perform, like a showbiz parent who doesn't care about Hollywood's seedy underbelly or child labor laws as long as there's a paycheck on the other end.

Once focus had set in, Mr. Baby grinned at Skylar, and even made a high-pitched noise for good measure. We don't know what these sounds mean but we've decided they are compliments. "Thank you," Skylar said to Mr. Baby, clearly honored.

"What did you get up to today?" Skylar asked me as I handed Mr. Baby to him.

"We went downtown," I explained.

Skylar looked concerned. "You put him in the car seat?"

"No," I said.

"Then, how?" Skylar asked. "Public transportation doesn't even go downtown."

"Actually," I informed him, "it turns out, we were wrong about that. We were wrong about a lot of things."

That's how it goes, day after day. A baby handoff and a quick download to Skylar of all the new information I've discovered about parenthood in the last eight hours. It's the right thing to do, to share this knowledge, considering I have the time right now to gather it.

After all, you really do learn a lot when you become a Hot Single Mom.

~It Just Gets Stranger