At some point after I married and before I had a child, my competitive juices disappeared. I used to chase down every tennis ball, even the ones easily lobbed over my gigantic 5'8" stature when I tried to approach the net. I used to run a mile in under 8 minutes. Then I convinced myself that walk-running was still quality exercise. I chose tennis partners that were at least in their 40s, and I started growing man boobs.

My son Matthew changed that. My competitive juices returned, as I aimed to make Matthew the best child ever. I did this all for the sake of the children, which by the way is the most popular cliched phrase used by politicians aside from "You're sure this won't be traced back to me?"

Parenting has become the new cutthroat sport, even moreso than Ultimate Fighting. Joe Rogan should start broadcasting from Gymborees in the greater Chicago area. I'm serious. There might not be as much blood, but there's plenty more saliva and other bodily fluids.

What I'm getting at is that parents think their kid is the best, and everyone else's kid is, well, OK. Cute, even. But certainly not as much as their child. This mindset starts early, weeks after the baby exits the womb. One of our first doctor's appointments went kind of like this:

Doctor: He's very alert. That's good.

Me: Yes, we know. We already sent his Mensa application in the mail.

Doctor: He has good mobility in his legs.

Me: Michael Phelps ain't got nothing on this kid, except when it comes to killer bong hits.

Doctor: He looks to be a healthy weight and height.

Me: Shall we slather him in oil, dress him in a toga and start calling him Zeus?

The comparisons start soon after. My son smiled at me at four weeks! (Are you sure he didn't just have some gas?) Then the subject goes to and hinders on mobility. Parents state proudly that their child rolled over on their stomach all by themselves last week, not realizing that newborn calves start walking as soon as they drop out of their mother, so big freaking deal.

Then the children start crawling, and it's a question of if they crawl as fast as the other child, or if they're crawling on their hands and knees, which is wayyy more advanced than Army crawling. If your son or daughter misses these milestones by a couple weeks, you're bound to hear the following: "Oh, every child has their own schedule. All in due time." That statement is accompanied by sad, pitying looks from the parents of children who walked at 9 months and apparently learned trigonometry during television commercials for Dora the Explorer.

If you think this competition ends with personal accomplishments, you’re sorely mistaken. Clothes is the next battle arena. Some parents apparently think it’s worth spending $75 for a pair of shoes that their kid will outgrow in 15 days. And then on to the toys. Oh, the toys! You know what the big toy is now for kids Matthew’s age? It’s called a sand-and-water table. You put sand on one side, and water on the other, and the kids can stand there, create mud, and throw it at each other. Sounds great! Though I have a secret about sand-and-water tables. I know the best one you could ever have, in fact. It’s called North Beach. Check it out.

Of course, all these parents are missing something. Sure, your one-year-old might have walked early, and my one-year-old might be able to go up AND down the stairs. But they all have one thing in common, at least at the moment: They still crap themselves. So go ahead and think about how athletic and intelligent your child is while you change his diaper and breathe through your mouth. Go ahead and do it, for the sake of the children.

Before Matthew was born, my wife and I decided that we were going to raise him Catholic. Though I would like to tell you that we chose that religion for him because we believe it to be the only true religion, the real reason is that we're both Catholics. We haven't exactly been keeping up on the Koran or the Qu'ran or its various other spellings, and by not keeping up, we mean we have never read it. We also aren't familiar with whatever text the Buddhists and the rest of all those other religions study and whatnot. Hell, we're not even that familiar with the Bible. We don’t have to be – we’re Catholics.

That's beside the point. As good Catholics, it is our sworn duty to raise Matthew right, and by right, we mean raise him so that he knows he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, but if he goes to church once a week then all his sins will be forgiven at confession. Except Catholics don't really go to confession regularly anymore anyway. So I guess our philosophy with Matthew should be that he can do whatever he wants, and as long as he eats an unleavened wafer every Sunday, it's all good. If it's yeasty at all, though, forget it.

I tease, and I shouldn't, because Christianity is often a punching bag for the media. Our intention is to raise Matthew to be good and charitable, and despite the many failings of the Catholic Church, it has done a lot of good in this world.

So how do you raise a child into the religion you've chosen for him? Well, right now I don't really know. All I know is that when we go to church (which is about twice a year), Matthew enjoys looking around at all the people and smiling at them because he's a nosy little kid. And it's kind of funny to see him grinning and swaying back and forth as if he's dancing while we're all singing songs and trying to be solemn and holy.

It's important if you have a young child to arrive early enough so you can secure a coveted seat on the end of the aisle. That way, when Matthew decides he's going to have a fit of laughing or crying or just plain yelling for no reason whatsoever, we can sweep him away outside. This is a job I choose. You see, normally Matthew starts getting bored about a half-hour into the Mass, which is just after the Bible readings and the homily, which are my favorite parts anyway.

Shortly after this, the Catholic Mass proceeds into a variety of rituals, of which only the Pope and three Italian nuns know the historical significance. It includes a lot of monk-like chants such as the Profession of Faith (which should just be one line: "Dear Lord, I'm here in church, so obviously I have faith."), the Our Father, and other songs based off the Letters of St. Paul to the Crustaceans (thanks Dad). This is when Matthew loses his patience. Sometimes he’ll cry out in boredom. Sometimes he’ll let out an inadvertent burp. Sometimes I just pretend he made the noise, or anticipate that he’s about to. This is when I leap into action, scooping Matthew in my arms and whispering to my wife, "He's being way too disturbing," to which my wife smiles and nods. She knows what's up.

And what’s up is a nice, lazy stroll for Matthew and me around the church grounds for the rest of Mass. Maybe we hang out in a grassy area of the church property or take a nap under an oak tree. Maybe we have a snack, and maybe that snack is leavened bread. Will the Lord forgive us? I think probably.

Recently my son Matthew turned 1, and we invited just about everyone we knew to celebrate the fact that we had survived this child for 365 full days, and look how healthy he is, and uninjured, and cute, too, and yes, we did that, so really you should be singing for us.

We sent out invitations more elaborate than some wedding invites, complete with a picture of Matthew at the playground, standing at the slide, smiling and waving at the camera.

It's a cropped picture. We decided not to get the whole view in there, because it would have involved an unflattering look of yours truly, with an unshaven face, ragged hair and bags under my eyes.

It was during a time in Matthew's life where he decided he no longer felt like sleeping through the night. He liked getting up around 2 or 3 in the morning, just to say hi to his folks. Oftentimes, he had a present for us. It's not the kind of present I would ever ask for, unless I was really into composting.

A child turning one is a monumental event, apparently so monumental that we had to buy Matthew a T-shirt with a big "1" on the front of it. I won't reveal how much it cost, because it might make you have to go Number 3 (Number 3, I just decided, is vomit).

Apparently, the number on the shirt stood for how many times it could go in the washer before the number started fading considerably. As in, after one wash, it looked like a semi-colon. Fortunately we were able to return it, get our money back, and then with that money buy a healthy stake in General Motors.

We had quite an extended invite list. It didn't start that way. At first we were just going to invite a few family members. Then we decided to invite more family members. Then we were inviting our neighbors, neighbors we hadn't yet met before inviting them to our son's birthday party so that they could celebrate the joys of turning one.

Before you knew it, I was at Walgreens and the guy next to me was buying the same kind of deodorant, and so I said, "Hey, want to come to my kid's birthday party?" We were planning on having the party at our house, but due to the invite list, moved the location to the high school auditorium.

My wife Bea had been planning this party for, I swear to God, at least six months. Every once in a while, she would come up with another idea for what she wanted to do.

"We should try to get that beanbag toss game from the church and have it on the front lawn."

"We need to try out cakes at So-and-So Place and So-and-So Place to decide what kind we're going to order for Matthew."

"At precisely 1:32, we will light the birthday candles and all the children, especially Matthew, will suddenly refuse to look at any cameras for the next 10 to 15 minutes."

The menu was complicated. My wife wanted to set up a prix fixe menu complete with hors d'ouevres, three different kinds of dips, five kinds of potato salad, eight kinds of other salads, and 15 artistic variations on cole slaw.

We ended up having burgers and dogs on the grill, with a half-full bottle of ketchup as the only condiment, and if you don't like it, then the door's over there. Just make sure you leave Matthew's gift by the fireplace. Thanks for coming.

No, no, of course it wasn't like that. We had stuffed mushrooms, rice salad, potato salad, regular salad, burgers, turkey burgers, hot dogs, and God knows what else. I can't remember everything, but it was all delicious.

Meanwhile, the kids at the birthday party ate string cheese and Cheerios and sat around making constipated-looking faces at each other while they crapped in their diapers.

Yes, it would be nice to think that when you throw your one-year-old a birthday party, that the party is for them. But in reality, Matthew would be plenty happy with a handful of kids his age, half a banana, his sippy cup, a few tennis balls and a couple toy trucks.

The rest of our guests, however, were very impressed.

It’s hard to know what to feed your kid. Well, I shouldn’t say that. When they’re really young, you can just stick a boob in their face, and they’re good to go. But once they get to be about 4 months old, every parent is faced with the question about what to feed their kid.

For us, nutrition is on par with proper sleep as two major priorities for Matthew’s health. It’s safe to say that we don’t want Matthew’s favorite vegetables to be French fries and high fructose corn syrup.

At the same time, we don’t want to be too over the top. Once Matthew gets older, we want him to be able to go to birthday parties and eat cake and ice cream without us worrying about whether the chocolate in the frosting is made from single-origin Ecuadorean cacao beans, or whether the cream used for the ice cream came from cows that were milked with velvet gloves and sung sweet lullabies. We don’t want Matthew to be the one kid in the corner wearing hemp clothing, smelling like B.O. and patchouli, drinking wheatgrass and playing hacky sack by himself.

But we want him to eat right which, in this day and age, means reading the ingredient list like it was the fine print on your subprime mortgage. Even food marketed for the sub-1-year-old demographic oftentimes has a lot of junk in it. Our basic rule is that if one of the ingredients is something we can’t pronounce (such as ioplolycarbonite bisulfuphate, and no, that’s not a real ingredient, I don’t think) then we go ahead and pass on feeding it to him.

On the plus side, this has led us to eat healthier ourselves. When Bea or I cook up a batch of zucchini or pasta for Matthew, we make extra for us. It beats having spoonfuls of peanut butter and jelly straight from the jar for dinner. Kind of. Though I must admit, this healthy food habit hasn’t eliminated my occasional need for PB&J straight from the jar. And by “occasional need,” I mean once or twice a day. And when Matthew gets a little older, every once in a while I’ll tell him to dump the wheatgrass in the sink, put away the hacky sack, and join me at the kitchen table for some PB&J, straight from the jar.

I don't remember the first time my wife and I talked about kids, but it was long before we got married. It definitely wasn't on the first date, because if she did that, I'm not sure there would have been a second date. First dates are for shallow niceties like what television shows you watch. Unless you met each other beforehand on eHarmony, I guess.

So my wife and I agreed a while ago that we would like three kids. Our eight-month-old Matthew is the first. Then we'll try to have a second in the next year or so. And then maybe after that we might try adopting, mainly because that's what all the celebrities are doing, and they're the coolest.

But it's good we talked about it early in our relationship. What would happen if I decided I just wanted to raise an only child, some boy or girl genius who would be lonely and way too mature for his age because all he did was hang out with adults? And what if my wife decided that she wanted to have a set of octuplets, after already having six kids under the age of 7?

Yes, yes. That's where I'm going with this. Nadya Suleman, the woman from Los Angeles who recently did just that. Six apparently wasn't enough, so Suleman decided to have eight more. It's unclear whether she used fertility drugs or in vitro fertilization, but either way, she now has the ability to field an entire football team with immediate blood relatives.

Now Suleman is a single mother. Her decisions are her own, and I'm not going to judge her. If she wanted her placenta to look like the back of a desktop PC, all the power to her (power, ha ha). She's just lucky her delivery doctor wasn't looking for the USB outlet to plug in his Webcam.

But that is neither here nor there, and yes, it's true that I was just looking for a good spot to insert the phrase "neither here nor there." The bottom line is that if you're not married, or you're newly married, or hell, you've been married a couple years but don't have kids yet, it might be a good idea to discuss with your significant other how many kids you want to have. That way you won't be so aghast when your partner's AOL search logs come up with searches for "Clomid," "how to have octuplets," and finally, "Human Chorionic Gonadotropin," which I just looked up.

Because if you have too many kids early on, there won't be room to adopt, and all the celebrities will be disappointed in you.

Earlier today I saw a toddler -- 2 or 3 years old -- with a T-shirt on that said "Obama Rocks!" Odd, I thought. I wonder what that little kid thinks of universal health care. Or the war in the Middle East. Or the federal government's financial bailout.

The answer, of course, is that he has no idea about any of those issues. He might have some semi-coherent response regarding the issue of the right to drool. "Yeah!" he'd yell. He's probably in favor of high-fives (an issue where we all can find common ground). On the environmental front, he's likely indifferent. Disposable or washable diapers, it doesn't matter to him.

Why do people do this? Why do they use their children as fashion statements? You realize that you've just turned your kid into a car bumper, right? His body shouldn't be a whiteboard on which you espouse your political views. Wear your own Obama T-shirt if you want. You wouldn't put a "Vote McCain" T-shirt on your elderly parent with Alzheimer's, would you? I hope not.

Which brings me to the other class of kids' clothing. Also today I saw a two-year-old girl with a Johnny Cash T-shirt on. When I saw it, I immediately thought, "Wow, that girl's parents must be the coolest!" Listen, if you want to talk about Fugazi's place in the post-punk rock music scene, I'm up for it. You don't have to dress your kid in a "This is not a Fugazi onesie" onesie to show us how hip you are. The horn-rimmed glasses and Doc Maartens already told me everything I need to know.

And finally, the issue of kids' clothing with provocative sayings on them -- written across the backsides. I would be a happy person if I never again saw another 6-year-old wearing sweatpants that say "Juicy" across the butt. And people wonder why Chris Hansen has done so many installments of "To Catch a Predator."

Disclaimer: Included in this post is discussion of foreskin carving, head cheese and Charms blow pops. If you're sensitive to this kind of thing, please keep on reading. But be prepared to squirm.

If you have a son, there will come a time when you have a decision to make: What would you like your son's penis to look like, a rocket ship or a snake hiding inside a sock? These are questions that soon-to-be parents don't often think about ahead of time.

This is not an easy decision to make. On the one hand, you might not want anyone to slice into your son's genitalia like it's an episode of "Nip/Tuck." On the other hand, maybe you want your son to have a chance to date Nicole Ritchie, who apparently won't date uncircumcised men. Equally strong arguments, right? Err.

There are serious arguments in favor and against this tradition, which dates back to the Bible when God decreed that men should slice up their sons' penises, never cut hair from their temples, and stay away from pork due to an outbreak of trichinosis and lax regulation by the FDA.

Arguments against it include supposed loss of penile sensitivity, supposed loss of penile sensitivity, and most importantly, supposed loss of penile sensitivity. Arguments for it include religious doctrine, hygiene, and because you don't want your son to be laughed at in the locker room after gym class.

Doctors, nurses and medical personnel in general don't help in this regard. They say it's your decision, and of course it is. But in our case, we didn't really get any guidance as to which is the general medical opinion on the matter. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that it's medically unnecessary.

In the end, we decided to get our son Matthew circumcised. It was a difficult one. For me, the decision hinged on two stories, one from a friend of ours and one from my mother.

The friend told us of someone he knew that had not been circumcised at birth. When he turned about eight, he was having some hygiene issues. One thing about being uncircumcised is that you have to keep it clean in there. You've got to pull back the turtle's shell and scrub away, if you catch my drift. Otherwise you might unintentionally make some new kind of cheese that stinks worse than a top-of-the-line French fromage. But the thing is, when you're eight years old, shining the inside of your foreskin isn't exactly a priority. There are bullfrogs to catch, skateboard ramps to be conquered, and video games to be defeated.

Back to this person that our friend knew. Because of these hygiene issues, his parents asked him if he wanted to be circumcised. He said yes. And to this day, he still remembers the procedure. I'm not sure if this is true, but I picture him waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, moaning, his hands over his crotch like he's setting up a defensive wall for a free kick in a World Cup soccer match.

Now for the second story. My mother is a nurse, and told us of the many times elderly men would come into the hospital for the procedure. Because they had grown old, cleaning the foreskin was more and more difficult, and like the eight-year-old boys, it fell by the wayside. Just imagine a line of 80-something men at some health clinic, shuffling along, waiting to get circumcised. At a time when you should be living off your pension, catching a weekly bus from the senior center to the casino, and reading "Hagar the Horrible" for a good laugh every morning, you've instead got to head to the hospital to have your manhood hacked up. Ah, the golden years.

So let me give you an idea of what infant circumcision is like. You're in the hospital, or at least we were. When the time comes, the doctor comes in with a big, over-exaggerated smile on his/her face to take your baby away. Most people let their sons be taken into the other room without watching, but I wasn't having it. Bea and I felt that maybe, just maybe, my presence would help Matthew emotionally during it all.

My presence didn't mean squat.

They brought him in another room and laid him down. They removed his diaper. The nurse held his arms down. At this point, Matthew started giving a puzzled look, like, "What the hell are you doing to me now?" Then the doctor put Matthew's penis in a contraption that looked like a miniature version of the neck clamps that some African tribal women wear. Except it was my son's penis in there, the foreskin hanging loose.

The doctor then took a scalpel and started cutting the foreskin off like it was an arts and crafts project. Matthew's puzzled look morphed into outright screaming and crying.

At this point, the nurse dipped a pacifier into a little bowl of sugar water and gave it to Matthew. Surprisingly, Matthew didn't give a damn. My personal opinion: As long as you put a Charms blow pop in my mouth, you can jam my penis in a food processor. It's only logical, right?

There is blood. The doctor cleans it up. When she finishes, a little circular flap of foreskin is gone, and your son is still crying. He will continue to cry as the doctor puts ointment and gauze over his penis, as you wheel him back to your hospital room, and for the next few minutes as you try to console him while you (maybe) weep a little yourself.

But then he stops crying, and everything is, I guess, OK. With every diaper change over the next couple weeks, you have to change the gauze and put fresh ointment on your son's circumcised penis. Then your son is fine, and it's time to look up Nicole Ritchie's telephone number.

I have heard the sound of God laughing. It is the sound of my child jerking awake just as he is about to fall asleep. It is the Moro reflex.

The Moro reflex is a sign of a healthy baby. If your baby isn't displaying the Moro reflex regularly, it indicates a serious problem and/or disorder. Nonetheless, the fact that it's a sign of a healthy baby leaves me belting out crazy, overtired cackles. The Moro reflex is when an infant is startled or feels like he is falling, and it often happens just before he falls asleep, waking him back up in fear. Some experts say it is the only natural fear of humans. To which I ask: a fear for the infant, or the parents?

A description of this startle reflex I found online nailed it: The mom said it was like throwing out your arms and legs "as if you were riding a big ol' Harley" and that the infants resemble "mad little orchestra conductors getting after the second violins for missing a cue."

Here's a nice little video of the Moro reflex, which I have since renamed "The Chuckle of the Holy Spirit."

This, of course, is one of the reasons why I love and hate YouTube, all at the same time. Love it because I can link to it to give you an idea of what the Moro reflex is. Hate it because there are idiots out there purposely scaring the crap out of their little infants so they can capture it on video and post it online.

See, when you've had 15 hours of sleep in the past week, and you've got bags under your eyes and a huge greasy zit in the middle of your forehead, and you haven't had a chance to floss in three days, and you're starting to feel like an extra from the "Thriller" music video, when all of that happens, you'd just as well have your baby fall asleep when he's about to fall asleep. But just when it's about to happen, the Moro reflex rears its ugly head.

And this is about the time when Jesus giggles like a little schoolgirl.

"Oh ye of little faith," He might say. "Dost thou possess the strength to father children? I shall test thee."

The following thoughts then course through your head: Is this a test from high above, or just nature's cruel joke? When in the world will this Moro reflex stop? Did someone visit the county courthouse and legally change my name to Job?

Fortunately, I read online that the reflex subsides after four or five months. A month or so later, your baby starts to crawl. Ha ha, God, very funny.

So I'm in San Jose, Calif. for a few days for work, staying at The Fairmont, which is a nice hotel. This morning I had to use their lobby restroom and noticed this picture attached to the handicapped stall:

First off, it has always seemed kind of weird to me that the forces-to-be decided that baby changing stations -- which basically consist of a fold-down piece of plastic from the wall -- should be made available inside bathroom stalls. Why not in the bathroom, but a little farther away from the toilet and all its various germs?

Now take a look at the picture. Maybe this is the universal symbol for a baby changing station, but to me, it doesn't look like this adult is about to change a diaper. It looks like he's about to strangle his child. Look, you can even see that the baby knows what's coming, as he has his feet up and bent as if he's going to try to kick mommy/daddy away because, like the rest of us, he doesn't like getting strangled.

By the way, I can't really think of a better picture to symbolize a baby changing station. Maybe the baby could be laying down flat with the parent behind him. I don't know. Just please get rid of this choking symbol.

I remember the good old days, when I used to think I knew what sleep deprivation was. Back then, sleep deprivation was cramming all night for a final, or going on a bender over the weekend. But here's the thing about that kind of sleep deprivation: You could always catch up the next night.

Nowadays, catching up on sleep means being able to take a cat nap for 45 minutes on a Saturday afternoon while my son Matthew plays with his feet in the crib. It's amazing how fast you can slip into REM sleep if you really need it (more on that later). So here are two stories of sleep deprivation, one each for my wife Bea and me.

Story 1: Where's Matthew?

It was about 11pm on a Saturday night, my wife and son asleep in bed. Matthew woke up and, don't you know it, he started crying. It's kind of odd. Whenever Matthew wakes up, he starts crying. I wonder when in the development of a human being this phenomenon stops. After all, if I began bawling every time I woke up in the morning, it's fair to say that Bea would give me some funny looks. She most certainly wouldn't offer up her boob every time like she does with Matthew. Am I jealous of my son in that regard? Perhaps.

I was in the other room and heard Bea pick up Matthew and take him to the living room area. But she forgot to shut off the Babysense, which is a sensor pad you put under your child's crib mattress to detect small movements. It's supposed to help prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and gives us some peace of mind when Matthew's asleep.

Anyway, when the Babysense senses no movement, an alarm goes off that basically sounds like Mariah Carey caught in a bear trap. Not the most pleasant of sounds, but hey, there's a reason why carbon monoxide detectors don't play Barry White music.

So Bea had taken Matthew out of the crib and out of the bedroom, and the alarm went off. So I went into the bedroom to shut off the Babysense. No problem. I went back the computer to see how the Red Sox were doing.

A few minutes later, Bea speaks up. She's still in the other room.

"Where's Matthew?" she asks.

Hmm, how to respond to a question like this. Let's see, you just picked him up and took him into the other room. If you can't find him, we're in trouble. I started worrying that Bea had lost our son in the same way people lose car keys. But just when I was about to say something, she chimed in.

"Oh nevermind," she said. "I'm holding him."

Um, what? I realized my error. Bea hadn't lost our son in the same way people lose car keys. She lost our son in the same way people lose their sunglasses, only to find out five minutes later that they're on top of their heads. At that point, I decided that it was time to give Bea a little break from Matthew.

Story 2: The windowsill

Here's my gem. Middle of the night, don't remember if it was during the week or not. Bea and I had been asleep for a whole 90 minutes or so when Matthew decides to play a little practical joke on us by, you guessed it, waking up and crying.

My sleep deprivation, however, had started to resist such efforts. Kind of. I ended up in this half-awake, half-asleep stage where I was still dreaming about something, but also somewhat aware of my real surroundings.

In this case, my dream had something to do with Bea planting some flowers in a window box out on our deck. So here's how it went:

Dream world: Bea is putting together flowers for the window boxes.

Real world: Regarding Matthew crying, Bea says to me, "Can you get Matthew?"

Dream and real world: Carrying on conversation in both universes, I say, "Just put him on the windowsill."

Real world: Bea says, "What?!?"

Real world: I wake up fully to the real world, realize what I said and how stupid it sounds, understand why I said it, and reply, "Yeah, I'll get him."