One thing that really triggered my curmudgeonly tendencies during the lead up to the birth of our first child was a burgeoning awareness of the baby industrial complex. I watched as a corner of our 500 square-foot apartment filled with boxes covered in photos of smiling, chubby babies who were only smiling and chubby because their parents had the good sense to register for the "Gymini Super Deluxe Light and Music" or the "Safety 1st Comfy Bath Center." Who names these things? They sound like the kinds of places Hong Kong businessmen go to unwind after long days of being Hong Kong businessmen. If it were up to me, there would have only been one box in the corner, and it would have been this box:
My wife does not lack that peculiar gene native to both her sex and her profligatory Gaelic ancestry, the gene that creates enjoyment in the exchange of hard-earned money for overpackaged gewgaws that one doesn't really need. We had a baby monitor in an apartment where it was physically impossible to be more than seven feet away from a baby, for chrissake. She bought a bouncy seat and a swing. She's a helpless slingaholic: having purchased and wrapped herself in dozens of different fabric babycarriers over the years, German tourists take pictures of her, thinking Christo has something to do with her. During the leadup to Juniper's birth, there was a lot of conflict over what we thought we needed. Wipe warmers? I'd ask. Really? I didn't believe there actually was such a thing. Are we as a nation really at the point where the asses of our infants cannot tolerate the cold touch of an unwarmed pre-moistened disposable wipe? I wonder if anyone's ever studied the relationship between infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa and the lack of warm pre-moistened disposable wipes. Get on it, scientists.

Over time, on every occasion that my wife suggested a trip to the baby store because there was something that just might make our parenting experience .000027% easier, I would cough and grumble "Sacajawea." It's well known that the Shoshone maiden adorning our most-recent failed dollar coin led Lewis and Clark from North Dakota to the Pacific Ocean, but it's often forgotten that she started on that journey just a few weeks after giving birth to the child of a Gallic fur trader. Believe it or not, that baby, Jean-Baptiste, made it all the way to Oregon's coast and back without a single ear thermometer or Breathe Easy Sleep Positioner! Sacajawea brought her baby on a journey of many thousands of miles without a "travel system." She just stuck him in a papoose and led a band of lusty legionnaires through the wilderness. And don't even get me started about childproofing. How do you childproof the entire Louisiana Purchase?

The Sacajawea Theory, in short, is that all newborn babies really need is boobs. Everything else is just marketing.

Repeatedly annoying my wife with this theory in the early days of Juniper's life really seems to have paid off. Before we left San Francisco, she sold the stroller and the swing and the bouncy seat and all kinds of other crap to a Chinese guy who talked her down to $20 from $100. Before Gram was born, we didn't buy anything. No crib, no changing table, no crap. She did buy some mind-bogglingly expensive cloth diapers, but I approved because it meant we would never have to drive out to the suburbs for diapers again (a sound fiscal decision: with my wife, any trip to Target for $24 worth of diapers inevitably ends up costing us at least $150). But as this second kid gets bigger, I'm having to rely on the Sacajawea Theory more and more with each passing day.

She'll see some cute little toy on one of those newfangled websites that focus on infant products and I'm all, "Sacajawea. . ."

"Well, get off your ass then and whittle him a rattle or something, will ya?"

She starts grumbling about needing a dresser for Gram's tiny clothes. "But Sacajawea. . ." I start.

"Sacajawea wasn't married to a tightwad who comes home from the thrift store with twenty early 1980s Garanimals mix-and-match separates every week."

The UPS guy comes to the door and she tries to play it off like he has the wrong address, hiding the box containing the new sling she's ordered. "Sacajawea. . ." I scold.

"This one's made out of buckskin and sewn together with sinew and a bone needle, if it makes you feel any better."

"It does."

And still, the UPS guy keeps coming. "This one's for Juniper," she tells me. "And shut up about Sacajawea. It's not like Lewis and Clark had a 3-year-old love child, too."

"Well, if they did, I can promise you she wouldn't have needed anything from the Mini Boden catalog."

. . .but not before I take this last shot:

Feel free to iron it on a onesie, print it out and plaster it all over Park Slope, or just call me an asshole. The truth is I don't really give a shit if people want to spend $850 on a stroller, I just like to needle them a bit and I wanted to make a graphic that replaced some Os with that symbol the Bugaboo people stole from that movie where Naomi Watts is a hot single mom who wears little shirts that show her nipples and the little wet girl is trying to crawl out of the television to kill her. At least three of my favorite parent bloggers are admitted bugaboo pushers, and they know I'm only doing this because it's Saturday and it's just so friggin' easy. Here were my other potential slogans:

"My Other $900 Vehicle is a 2000 Honda Accord"

"But it's got great resale value"

"I have to push my stroller through the snow to get to Whole Foods!"

"Shocks and Awe"

"You're just jealous, bitches"

In the end, "conspicuous consumption" had the most Os and the least verbiage. Got any other ideas?

Last night was our tenth flight with Junebug in our arms, and over those ten flights we've learned a lot of tricks about flying that we'd like to share:

1. Never, never, never select two seats right next to each other on a three-seat-per-row aircraft. Always leave the middle seat empty. Those are the last ones that johnny-come-lately ticket buyers want. If the flight isn't full, there's a good chance the seat will stay empty. Also, don't be tempted by the seats at the front of the plane. If you choose them, you increase the possibility of having between you and your spouse a fat Chinese man who insists on keeping a large, mysterious box under the seat in front of him, requiring him to "borrow" the area under the seat in front of YOU to put HIS feet when he falls asleep. Always offer to let said fat Chinese man have the window seat if he'll take it. They always do.

The back of the plane is the best. No one behind you to hear the crying! Last night, we did the "empty seat in the middle" thing in the last row and it stayed open while the rest of the plane filled up. Funny how having one empty seat in your row can make you feel like a Raj in his palace compared to those stuffed three in a row like untouchables in a Calcutta slum.

If the plane is full, you're fucked.

2. Get on the plane last. Who are all those masochistic vultures hovering around the gate just waiting for their row to get called so they can get on the plane and sit in misery while the rest of us get on? Generally I find people in airports to be pretty logical with their selfishness, but this makes no sense. With a squirmy baby in tow, I don't get on the plane until they're about to drag my ass down the jetway.

3. There are times to respectfully acknowledge that no one else in the world gives a crap about how hard it is to juggle your parenting responsibilities and there are times to act like a totally self-righteous prick. Airports and airplanes are theaters of human misery, nothing more. No one is really happy. No one expects you to be anything but a selfish jerk, so why dissapoint them? Don't bother with politeness and courtesy, particularly if you are flying Southwest Airlines, which long ago instituted a "survival-of-the-fittest" approach for general boarding, meaning no seats are assigned and it's first come, first served (though three "classes" of passenger board one at a time, with your class assigned based on how early you checked in). A remarkable exception to Southwest's policy are people with "issues": the handicapped, the elderly, and PARENTS with small children. That's right: Parents get to board first. Do not hesitate to shove an old lady out of a way or walk faster down the jetway than the guy dragging his oxygen tank. Your goal is to get on that plane first to grab the bulkhead seats up front. Sit with an empty seat between you and your partner, and put the child in the middle seat as though it were an unaccompanied minor. Ignore the baby while it cries. Costumes may also be in order. Women should wear muslim head scarves if they really want to avoid sitting next to a pharmaceutical salesman from New Jersey. Get one for the baby, too, for effect. Breastfeeding, for some reason, makes a vast majority of the American populace uncomfortable. A woman in a burqa breastfeeding a baby will make EVERYONE uncomfortable. Men, dress as though you have nothing to do with the kid. Wear a Haggar suit with a soupstained tie and read USA Today, coughing loud wet coughs every time a new passenger emerges from the jetway. In a pinch, simply wearing a bowtie might work. No one wants to sit next to a guy wearing a bowtie.

Remember how when riding your elementary school bus, you would avoid making eye contact with the kid with the two gigantic hearing aids and the tick problem when he got on the bus and you had a empty seat next to you? Just pretend that everyone getting on the plane has two gigantic hearing aids and that tick problem.

4. There is no better sound than hearing the aircraft door shut with an empty seat between you and your partner holding the baby. Remove burqas and bowties, stretch out and enjoy yourself. We call this Dutch first class.

5. Make friends with the stewardess. Make sure she gets plenty of the face time with the baby before the plane takes off. If you order a beer, she may bring you an extra one later because the kid is so darn cute. And that brings us to getting drunk. We highly recommend it.

6. When your baby is screaming and there seems like nothing you can do and the guy who looks like Donald Rumsfeld in the next row is scowling and shaking his head, remember that half the people on the plane have probably gone through it themselves and the other half are probably fucking assholes anyway.

7. Be prepared for the pilot to drunkenly announce halfway through the flight that you just flew over the world's biggest ball of twine or those on the left side of the plane can look down and see what Canyonlands National Park looks like from 38,000 feet (rocks). This announcement will wake your child. There is nothing you can do. I always find it disconcerting, with all the aviation technology onboard that's supposed to keep us safe, how all the airlines keep the same P.A. system in their 737s that Arby's saw fit to replace in its drive-thru windows during the Nixon Administration.

8. If you have an irrational fear of flying (like me), don't show your baby the various charms and amulets you keep in your hands while chanting during take off and landing. She will want to chew them.

9. If the guy in front of you reclines his seat the whole way, let your baby stand on the tray table and play with his hair. That'll teach him.

10. Don't sweat it too much. Babies want to sleep just as much when they're circumnavigating the skies as they do in their cribs. Just figure out a creative way to get them to that place in limited space. If all else fails, breastfeeding combined with a scrupulous application of Rule #5 (above) works wonders.