JFG Nation, DAYS ago I posted this:

TOMORROW: #ApplePie @Oreo ? ? ? ? #applepieoreo #applepieoreos

A post shared by Eric Huang (@junkfoodguy) on Sep 5, 2017 at 7:09pm PDT

That was September 5. And then when “tomorrow” came – NO POST. And then another day went by. And then another. And then another. And then football Sunday came and went. As well as 9-11. And now I’m finally finishing this post numerous days late in the middle of the day. After having not posted about any junk food in over a week. Why? What happened, JFG? Well, if you’ve been following my Twitter, you’d know…

JFNation, I keep starting/stopping my next post, but the reason for the stopping/the subject of the post are the same: the JFBABY IS HERE!

— Eric Huang (@junkfoodguy) September 7, 2017

I’ve written about it enough, but I left the Nosh Show because of the major changes that were happening in my life. I moved houses – TWICE. That came with even more weeks of painting, home improvement, settling in. The day job – more commitment required. And of course, preparations for the JFBaby were in full swing. “But Eric, you kept posting!” Yeah, but I’m sure you realized how things tapered off. Dramatically, too – I posted, like, four times over the past three weeks. And I had one post where I just felt the need to explain why I’ve been MIA! During all this, this website turned six years old and I had my normal self-reflection moment.

I say all that to explain that I THOUGHT I knew how much time I’d need to do all the other things in my life. And, as its been proven, it wasn’t enough. Now, with the JFBaby HERE, well…let me just say…I STILL severely underestimated, uh, everything.

I know I’m not the first writer to become a parent, nor do I think I am experiencing anything unique, nor do I think what I’m experiencing is anything like what the JFGal is experiencing. While I understand the saying that all babies are different, it is actually reassuring to know that the trials and tribulations I have been feeling are shared by millions of parents. So, with that, I want to say this website is NOT changing into a dad blog, but I had to post about the two things I’ve learned along the way – the super obvious stuff that people told me, I heard but didn’t really hear, and now realize in startling fashion:

1. The cost of “baby stuff” is not what makes your wallet hurt.

When the JFGal was setting up the JFBaby registry, and people started buying us stuff, I remember keeping an imaginary ledger in my head, laughing maniacally as baby stuff started arriving. “BWAHAHAHA MORE! MOOOORRRREEEE!!!!!!” like I was some demented Scrooge McDuck, swimming through the spoils of the registry. After seeing how much baby things cost ($30 here, $30 there), I knew how things added up and cursed silently (and out loud) the billion-dollar-baby-product-machine. Baby toothbrushes for $8?? YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME.

Friends with kids told me, repeatedly, “Dude, that stuff is a drop in the bucket compared to child care costs.” Yeah yeah, I shrugged. KEEP BUYING ME $35 TOYS. But now that the kid is here and I’m looking at some day care and nanny postings and HOLY HELL IT’S LIKE PAYING RENT.

What the – I guess it makes sense that paying someone else to literally take care of your kid for eight hours is not a cheap endeavor. After all, you are trusting that person to not just chuck your kid into a bassinet and stream Narcos for eight hours. And I’m barely hanging on trying to figure out one kid; I can’t imagine working somewhere where my job is to keep 8-10 tiny kids alive. So, like teachers and nurses, they deserve every penny they earn. BUT THERE GOES MY DREAMS OF TURNING MY BASEMENT INTO A BUFFALO WILD WINGS.

2. Poopy diapers in the middle of the night is absolutely NOT the thing I should have been worried about.

Oh my god, this is the one I was MOST incorrect about. I think any adult, heading into parenthood, sees the cliche scenes in movies and TV and thinks, “Oh, man, dirty diapers! I’ll, uh, I’ll let my spouse take care of that.” “Poop? EWWWW GROSS.”  THAT, JFNation, turns out, is the thing I should have been LEAST worried about. Yeah, it’s annoying and sometimes a little gross. But after one week I’m a pro at this ish, and the initial WHOA went away pretty quickly because, well – the diaper change has to happen one way or the other. You either curl up and cry or Viking it all the way in. Plus, when the JFBaby lets one rip that sounds like a M5 Tactical Rifle going off, I have a little bit of pride. YOU GET THAT FROM PAPA!

No, the thing that has been the MOST difficult to get used to is: feeding the newborn every 2-3 hours. Now, I say this over a week in, and this schedule has gotten a lot more manageable. But I didn’t realize early on: Feeding the baby takes about 45 min. Then sometimes if the baby is fussy, then it takes 15-30 min to calm them down. Then you have to wake them up about 15 min before their feeding so you can rouse them to full attention to properly eat. So, every 2-3 hour block, you basically get one hour to sleep, eat, use the bathroom, whatever. GREAT GOOGLY MOOGLY do you know how little time that is? Especially if what you want is sleep???

I’m reminded by my friend who is also a new father of Pacific Rim:

It takes me about 5 mins to fall asleep – and I am SUPER disoriented when my alarm goes off, to begin the entire cycle over again, only to see I’ve slept only 35 mins. Good. Lord. Those first few days I felt like I was going to go mad. IS THIS THE REST OF MY LIFE UNTIL JFBABY IS 18 YEARS OLD???? The one hour I had to myself felt like I had a sword dangling over my head – one day, the light in the shower blew and I cussed up a storm. WELL, THAT’S NOT GETTING FIXED UNTIL NEXT WEEK.

That’s part of the reason this post took so long – I’ve been writing it in 10 min increments, and every time I came back to it, I realized half of the post was gibberish I had written at 3am. THIS IS THE NEW NORMAL.

Well, not really. Like I said, I’m not trying to compare my current life experience to what the JFGal is feeling, good or bad, and I’m certainly not trying to make out my kid experience as any more arduous than any other parent or any other parent blogger, for that matter. Life is great, and I have a lot to be thankful for. Including you guys for sticking with me! Woo. Let me review these Oreos and go back to sleep.

If you’re a parent and can relate to this stuff, let me know in the comments below. Or if you wanna discuss my FIRST PLACE BUFFALO BILLS, then talk about that below too.

Today’s junk food: Limited Edition Apple Pie Oreo!!

Hey, Apple Pie Oreos! These were new like a week ago, right? Just in time for Labor Da*….wait, that already happened? My word. What time is it?

DO THESE TASTE GOOD? Yes!

WHY OR WHY NOT? I still only like, not love, the graham cookie that Oreo uses. It’s good but I want MORE graham flavor – or basically, I want a graham cracker. Plus, do people make apple pies with graham cracker? I’m used to a more-shortening-heavy flour crust.

The creme inside is good – great apple flavor, with a nice fruity bite that resembles the way cooked apples tastes. It’s very sugary, mimicking the flavor of the gelatin-good that apple pies have. Although you expect the flavor to match the apple pie filling gooey texture, it’s paired with Oreo creme instead. Maybe that is why they, noticeably, made the creme inside this cookie SUPER GOOEY. Like, when I pulled apart the wafers, it stuck and stretched with the cookies – it didn’t maintain the more sugar-like disc that normal Oreos have.

Eaten together, though, the flavor of these Apple Pie Oreos is good. Really good. I can see where the Apple Pie flavor is, even though I want more shortening and butter flavor, like I’m used to. But for what it is, I think OReo did a fine job putting this flavor together. Not at the top of my list, but very very thumbs-up-worthy.

ANYTHING ELSE I SHOULD KNOW? Key Lime Pie. Apple Pie. Blueberry Pie. Mississippi Mud Pie. Oreo has discovered pies exist and are coming for all of them now. Good luck to you, America.

PURCHASED AT: Target, Rockville Pike, MD.

WHERE FOUND IN STORE? End cap, grocery aisles, facing AWAY from main footpath. Like, literally an end cap facing a back wall. WHAT THE HELL, TARGET?

COST? $2.50 on sale.

Sincerely,

The JFG