Tag: toddlers

A New Set Of Tireds

Just before she lay down her beautiful head to sleep the other night, my wife took the water glass from next to my laptop (I was working on a presentation for the next day around 9:15 that night), sipped from it, and said…

“I’m f***ing tired.  The house is always dirty, I’m being disrespected, I hate this house, if I’m not here cleaning I’m off doing a bunch of other stuff just to keep the boys busy or in school, and I’m sick of it.” 

So, what did I do to respond?  What COULD I do?
She was done for the day. She had gotten up pretty early to go workout, raced home to get our kids in the car for preschool and general out-of-house tasks (what non-stay-at-home parents call Life or Work), and they were going a bit nuts the rest of the day.  I got an earful when I got home from the kids, after a long day and meeting with a local entertainment comedy talent mastermind.  Kids will wear you out.  They will grind on you and they will break you down and they are unreasonable under the age of 5 or 19 and will just beat on your brain walls and sometimes you want to tell them to shut their damn mouths and go the fuck to sleep because you are a grown up, sex has been had, you’ve thrown an angry punch, and paid taxes but not enough to really help this flailing society you want to build a wall around to protect them, so go to sleep.

But you cannot do that.  I cannot.  I’m an adult. I’m nearly 40. I have embraced and accepted all facets of Parenting, which is a much more advanced form of caregiving, and shouldn’t ever be equated to having a pet. [ed. note; Equating child-rearing to pet care is on the same shelf as equating an compound femoral fracture to a sprained finger.  It’s minimizing to do so, and you should really not do it, or I will punt your dog right down the frozen aisle of this Trader Joe’s it’s not even supposed to be in.]  Because I’m an adult.

And no, you cannot flip out on your kids at the ages of 4 and nearly 2. You look like a complete asshole, first, because the kids don’t fully fathom the rage and the cause.  You only scare them, you don’t teach them.  And it’s much much much more frustrating than you’d think it may be to tell a kid for the 5th time who knows what you’re saying to put.
on.
the.
monkey.
underwear.  Then they cry, and it’s like…

“Why are YOU crying? You did this to yourself! 5 times I’ve asked you to put your monkey underbips on and you keep trying to put your bobo on the gorilla pillow!  Put your monkey underpants on, don’t put your business on the monkey!”

As adults, we’re supposed to be in control of things.  I’m not. I control very little.  I control myself, usually (except I’m a bit of a choc-o-holic, GUILTY!), but sometimes I just have to ask somebody at a grocery store “What’s going on here?” I know what’s going on. They are blind to anything else around them, dead-stopped in the aisle, looking at their phone. I promise you, ma’am, you are NOT about to get a prescient message that has the PowerBall numbers.  I can’t always control what happens to me, but I can control whether or not I tell somebody their head is in their ass.

So here’s what I did the other night.
I wrote a note to my wife and left it up on the monitor for her to see in the morning.
This is what it read:

  1. I have a great marriage to a man who loves me and works hard to provide for our family.  He doesn’t gamble or drink or tattoo or buy cars and shit we don’t need.
  2. I have 2 great sons who are young and sometimes they are just little kids who don’t know any better while trying to be funny.
  3. I get tired and that’s OK
  4. My house is a house, not a hut, not on fire, and not a pit in a shitty jungle.
  5. I woke up today healthy.  This is a good start.
  6. My sons woke up today healthy and with food in their house.  This is a good start.
  7. My sons have two parents who love them even if my sons don’t know it yet.
  8. We will be in a new, better-sized house soon and we’ll do it the right way so that we don’t destroy our family financially.
  9. I am a great mom and wife who does what she can to make every day matter to my family.  
  10. For all of these things, I am grateful.

Here’s what I did NOT do, after she made her statement of frustration and walked away with my glass of water while I worked on my presentation…

“Hey hon?  Hon?
Could I get that water back?”

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Eat It

There’s no way I should be hiding all of the truth from people if this is going to be a readable blog, right?  Who wants to read regurgitated horse-S from a guy who sorta speaks his mind if it’s probably not going to bother people?  Truth is, if you’re bothered then I said something that hit a part of you that you’re likely not happy about. You’ll stop reading or you’ll hate me and come back out of spite.  Or you’ll agree and we can say “OK, let’s go forward.”  It’s not my intent to offend anybody – that’s just a bonus.

So about these homo’s getting married…  KIDDING, loosen up.  Every adult should be allowed to enter a legally-recognized civil union and you can call it whatever you want, as long as we’re treated equally and allowed, on our own accord, to screw it up on a case-by-case basis.

It’s my intent to share whatever I can from my personal perspectives on life, parenting, health, and work in hopes it will connect with whomever reads this, and will keep them coming back, and they’ll tell their friends.  Hopefully it will be entertaining, either from a comedy or mildly dramatic view.  But overall it’s unfair to ask for anybody’s time if this is boring and repetitive and another boring “DadBlog.”  I’ve read a few and thought how truly boring the dad’s come across, and wonder if they’re coming off like that to get laid at blogger conferences or if they really are that wussified.  I have plenty of Compromise DNA in me, but a few entries on a few other DadBlogs almost made an “innie” out of my scrotum.

Where-to from there?  How about food!?  Shouldn’t try and ride the horse through highest waters just yet.

We’re having a renaissance of toddler eating habits in our house.  With 1 toddler and 1 nurser and everybody working full-time there’s only so much time and so many hands with-which to prepare food.  Many experts (I know they are because they wrote it on a website!) about toddler eating have said to give your kid what you’re eating, and they’ll come around to it.

Let/Make them try a lot of things.  They won’t starve unless you with-hold all food from them.  As parents WE dictate to the CHILD what’s available to eat.  It doesn’t have to be dungeon gruel and the last of the ox gristle.  But if we gave in to our son’s pouting about meals every time he hit a 7 on the Grumpometer, he’d have a steady diet of cookie-rabbits and juice.  While it would ensure zero hassle at meal time,  it would probably damage my oldest boy’s physical and emotional development.  He’d be on an unhealthy path via nutrition and constant catering to his whims.  The world doesn’t work like that, we don’t work like that, so neither will meal time.

In doing so we’ve had a few shortened lunches and dinners while baby carrots were left on the plate and cries came from the booster seat.  Sometimes a single floret of broccoli designated the entire table a war-zone.  Then eventually a few berries were eaten.  Then a lot more.  Then some brown rice with chopped vegetables became a staple.  And recently the baby carrots diminished by a few by the end of the meal.  He actually lived, acted, and slept very well in the aftermath of regularly having various foodstuffs on his plate.  We usually have a starring role for a nearly-natural chicken nugget trio, a yogurt-fruit smoothie, applesauce, whole-grain pancakes, and the like.  But as a dad who has fought the weight battle my whole life I want to get good nutrition habits into my son from early on.  I can’t do that if I don’t eat healthy.  I’m not perfect – I’ve had sensuous moments with brownies and slices of pizza that I still think of when I’m hungry – but at the very least I want my boys to try all kinds of food, see what they like, then mash it up into a paste and bake it into a cookie shape so they’ll eat it, stay thin, and have a perfect life.  The end.

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Having a Second Baby – A Preview

My wife’s about 11months pregnant right now, and we are beyond ready for this new baby to arrive. Even while our first one is off & on crying in his room instead of SLEEPING THE HELL OUT OF THE NIGHT, we’re pretty happy about the pending arrival. In the preceding months there have been a few discussions with other parents and friends about a 2nd baby. The best way to summarize these talks is “Mostly positive but it’s okay to shut your noisehole.” It’s amazing that some people believe simply having an opinion and a voice make either of them valid in everybody else’s world.

I have seen a lot of seemingly unsolicited voicing of the sentiment “WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP PROCREATING?!” and “I don’t want a baby ever, OMG, what would I do with all the random dick walking around my apartment?!” Hey, kids force you into a role you aren’t really ever ready for, but if your heart’s in the right place, you get ready pretty quickly. In the meantime, you realize that maybe all that dick isn’t in your best interest. Sucks to have your priorities, morals, and ideals shuffled for you. Life will do it if you don’t.

As for kids in restaurants, I feel really sorry for people who hate it when a kid saunters in and makes a little ruckus. Those poor folks think they have the right to a fancy, quiet dinner at Olive Garden! Hey, money-poor assholes, save up a few more bucks and eat elsewhere or head to the bar. The parents are doing the best we can to keep that kid under control, the good ones among us leave if the kid’s losing it, and it sucks ten times as much for us. So keep your stink-eye for your doctor when they say “Hey, how about a little less dick in your life?”

Sure, there are people who do NOT want kids. Some of them already have kids. Some of them don’t want the intrusion into their life of work, school, extended adolescence, I CANNOT FUCKING CONCENTRATE WHEN DANCING WITH THE STARS IS ON, promiscuity, drunken camping, and/or Crossfitting. Other people just don’t have the drive to procreate. Why can I still hear the judge’s scores, AND getting questions about what I’m doing? Leave me alone, I’m talking about how great our life is… faaaaawk…

So here’s the deal…
We’re parents. We parent. We are a family. We aren’t hobbyists when it comes to child-rearing. We’re sold on the idea of soccer practices, sports camps, play-dates, reading books to our kids 20 times a day, and major life prioritization. That’s for us to deal with. When I hear (from a few people) “Man, we think just the 1 kid is too much,” we already know that doing it well for just 1 kid – as there’s no real “Right” way – is hard enough. But we wanted another kid.
And our 2 kids will someday replace the scores of people who don’t want kids. Hell, they’ll replace US. And when the anti-kid folks grow old and diaper-filling, I will present to my kids a list of their names, and say “Yeah, they didn’t want to add to the generation that is now alive to help them in their final days.”

All I can hope is that we’ve taught them to do the right thing and stay out of other people’s business.

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