Amusing searches, Vol. 12

Here are more of the most amusing searches that brought people here recently, this time all dealing with parenting concerns.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and the search text links to the post at which the visitor arrived.)

• 10 yr old daughter likes to be naked (Toledo, OH) - You're in for a long couple of years, my friend. Good luck.

• I keep losing my patience with my 3 year old (Milton, Ontario) - That's because they're infuriating little bastards, just like you were when you were three. It's a charming part of our core to which we all return whenever we're feeling cranky, even in our golden years. You'll have your revenge!

• baby onesies that say my daddy is an obsessive bastard (Bradford, PA) - Hey... that hurts.

• help for the stay at home dad with the ungrateful wife (Palm Desert, CA) - I only wish I had some way of helping you, sir, but I've never been able to solve this particular problem for myself. Don't worry, though (face held dramatically in hand) I'll get along, somehow...

• I am at home and not busy (Kerava, Finland) - I am quite jealous and borderline homicidal.

• personal hygiene for kids (New Delhi, India) - I think it says it all that when you searched this term, it took you to a post about orangutans.

Working undercover as a scatterbrain

If you've been wondering for the past few months why I haven't been stopping by your blog anymore, fearing it was a devastating social rejection by the coolest person you know,* worry not. It wasn't, and what's more, you're not alone.

Yes, the now-two-and-a-half-month process of trying to buy a house out in the country has been sucking up my time as hard as... the now-two-and-a-half-month process of trying to buy a house out in the country.

To clarify, when I say "a house", I don't mean, "any house", I mean one specific house, for which we officially signed a contract over two months ago.

My life has been a long, tortuous series of ups and downs, brokers and insurers, negotiations and extensions, approvals and denials, and disclosures and contingencies. Did I forget to mention forced humility?

Yes, I sympathize with my invisible sisters, the stay-at-home moms sitting on the sidelines while The Wage Earners sign paperwork to buy themselves cool stuff like cars and houses, which they'll share with us only at their pleasure. Or, at least, that's how the lenders would have us all see it.

Doesn't rescuing many thousands of dollars a year of my wife's salary count as my income, for all intents and purposes? Or how about my dozens of dollars a month in blog-related revenue? Maybe I'll just let my friend Mr. Washington negotiate with these people for me, to smooth my path back to legitimacy in the eyes of society.

Hey, let me tell you, I can always spare a couple of ad clicks (a.k.a. a week's salary) for such a noble, self-interested cause.

Anyway, I offer this page as proof of my blogging-slacking-off claims. For my (surely) dozen or so stalkers out there: you're welcome.

And for the rest of you, please accept my awkward apologies, aw-shucks expression, and pathetic groveling for forgiveness. If, in the recent past or in the coming days, I don't seem to acknowledge some major change in your life, it's just because I probably didn't read or hear about it yet, but rest assured I feel far more guilty for that than you or your devoutly Catholic grandmother could ever try to make me.

Just fill me in on what I might have missed!

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* I mean me. You don't perceive it by any normal human senses or your logic-processing faculties, but I am in fact extremely cool. Kind of like discovering that light is a series of particles that move in waves, you have to totally adjust your perspective to see a brand-new, mind-bending reality. See how cool I am already?

Not to belabor a theme, but...

I was informed by my son's school calendar that apparently today is something called "Labor Day".

Not having been a part of the traditional work force for almost two years now, I'm not quite clear what this means beyond my having to entertain a five-year-old for one extra day this week.

Calling on all my powers of deduction and forensic etymology training, I can only assume that this day must have something to do with honoring the struggle and sacrifice of our nation's childbearers.

Care to share any entertaining stories about your (or your significant other's) own labor experience?*

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* Before you answer, keep in mind that my wife J-, rightfully portrayed here most times as an overworked saint and generally sympathetic figure, had such fast labors that she has since declared a handful of other things as more painful than childbirth. Begin hating her... now!

A conversation with D-: Precious moments

Because he just can't stop providing material, here's another (more groundbreaking than usual) recent conversation with my 5-year-old son D-:

D-: Why don't you get a Real job?

Me: As opposed to what?

D-: You know... (scrambling now) ...instead of just typing things for people and stuff. A Real Job like being a fireman or building things, or working in a factory or something. A job where you use your muscles to work hard and then you get stronger than you are now... you know? A Real Job like that.

Me: (blank look)

D-: ...Like how when I grow up, I'm going to work throwing dynamite at rocks (referring to an earlier conversation during our drive home from Maine). Something like that.

---

You may enjoy my previous D- conversations, (2YO daughter) M- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

I've got your Father's Day right here...

A belated Happy Father's Day to the approximately 3% of my readership who is both male and a father, and same to the husbands of 92% of the rest of you.

I spent my day sleeping in, using the computer (for a welcome change of pace), and playing outside with the kids, who are trying to see if it is scientifically possible to melt the paint off the walls out here in Maine with the sheer quivering force of their pent-up energy.

While that may sound all quaint on the surface, I want to know what it says about my performance as a father thus far that the most attractive games to my son involved, in however convoluted a way necessary, punching me wherever he could reach?

His 2-year-old sister swung happily on the swings for more than an hour, using the wind she generated to keep always just out of reach of the blackflies, but this lanky 5-year-old was very soon discontent with boring old swings, soccer, and basketball.

Some of the alternative games we tried were:

1) "How Dare You Steal the Ball, I Will Now Punch You in the Butt While Roaring to Get it Back,"

2) "I'll Pretend to Be the Squirrel From Ice Age Attacking a Large, Ferocious Predator as Foolishly as I Make Him Do in the Ice Age Videogame I Was Just Playing,"

3) And finally the even more convoluted, though tragically aborted, "The Basketball Court is Water, the Picnic Table is Land, and I'm a Fighter-Guy Fighting Dragons to Save People in a Way That You Somehow Know Involves You Being a Series of Dragons Who Are Foolish Enough to Just Stand Next to the Picnic Table While a Knight Works Them Over With Both Fists Until His Hands Hurt Too Much to NOT Move on to Short, Efficient Kicks Instead."

Oh, and, should you ever be put in a similar situation, be advised that catching and teasingly holding one, then a second, fist carefully aimed at your back may result in a frustrated, em-boy-sculated cry of, "Don't ever do that again! I want you to leave me alone for the rest of your life! ...if you're going to do that again."

Notice that even at five, he's perceptive enough to say "your life" instead of "my life". Nothing like a special day of recognition to remind one's parents of their sizable lead in the race towards death. Happy Father's Day again!

May you all live long enough to feel the next volley of anniversarial punches, always stronger than the last.

Developments at our house, Vol. 16

Here are some of the latest developments around here:

1. After 5 years of reading both the classic original stories and the cartoony Disney version of Winnie-the-Pooh, my son D- finally realized that the lead character's name is "poo".*

2. I was made aware that my current roommates are so tiny I can unknowingly smuggle one of their socks in my freshly-laundered underpants for at least several hours before noticing it.

3. It says a lot about my currently uncertain status in life that I get e-mails opening with lines like, "Congratulations, you're a 2009 Mother of the Year!" and including videos like this.

I think I need to go slather myself with motor oil and kill something that only seems not defenseless.

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* He was amused.

A robotic family portrait

Since I know that pictures have been few and far between for a long while, I thought I'd share with you all this intimate family portrait, with members represented according to my 2-year-old daughter M-'s remarkably consistent series of dramatic scenarios over the past several weeks:

Spoiling his long-held secret identity, I'll admit that the fellow on your left up there is my dad, whom the kids call Dado (DAH-doh) in the Irish custom. On the right, in an uncanny representation right down to the giant titanium claw hand, is my mom, whom the kids call Grammair, similar to the French title.

Now, the two in the middle are harder to pin down. The lady on the left was originally employed as my 5-year-old son D-, with the smallest (grown male) figure representing M- herself, but, I believe over D-'s one-time objection, at a certain point she began identifying herself instead as the (bipedal, clothed rat-) woman, with D- then played by that man a fraction of "M-'s" size.

I'm thinking that the size/power upgrade was a big reason why she didn't mind abruptly changing the conventions of her personal game to suit the whims of her bystander brother, who's as prone to ranting power-trips these days as she has always been to squeezing someone's face with her fingernails until they stop saying whatever it is she objects to, such as, "what [she] should do."

To explain the likely disappointing, for you, lack of my wife and I in this portrait, I get the sense M- herself is the Momma in her games, and I imagine I'm not usually given any inanimate representation because I represent myself so well in that state throughout her waking hours. I am omnipresent and omnisomnolent.*

But it's our (virtual) loss, I assure you. Because oh, what fun this crew has, day in, day out... almost as much fun as my wife J- had before she was formally introduced, trying to figure out one night after bedtime what in the world M- was talking about when she was crying for her to "go find M- and D-... I want you to bring me M- and D-!"

The answer J- would have given, had she been up to speed on the fast-changing world of Imagination Games that is our afternoons around here, is that M- and D- were not available that night because they were still unconscious inside a shoe under the coffee table after Dado shot them in the face with a giant web-missile while attempting to pass the sugar cubes at teatime.

You know, the usual disfunctional family hijinks. Plus robots.

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* Don't feel bad if you don't recognize that word, because I'm pretty sure I just built it right this moment, and I love it.

I am the hero I've been waiting for

Though he may be a whole 5 years old now, my son D- is more importantly a man in training, and following that storied tradition, he constantly asserts his superiority in every way over almost everything he looks at, hears of, or thinks of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

So I walk a fine line every time I'm challenged on strength, speed, intelligence, agility, or proficiency in many of the world's most inane activities.

I don't think it's healthy to completely disillusion and demoralize him, but I think it's equally unhealthy for me to set him up for any harder of a fall than he's already due when released into the wilds of full-time school next year.

I mean, a kid needs all the confidence, whether completely off base or not, that he can get in this world. So if he starts out thinking HE'S the strongest man in the world, instead of me, then that just gives him a leg up over all the other boys, right?

Here's a conversation snippet, issued out of the blue while walking through the library, from the kid who's told me (verbatim) more than once, "I know Everything. Not everything-everything, but I know Everything," just minutes before and after asking me entries in that day's long list of questions about how the world works at the most fundamental of levels:

D-: I'm even stronger than you.

Me: Yeah?

D-: I'm so strong, that if there was a robot, up in space, and I was up in space? One punch, and he'd be dead. If I punched a big robot one time, he'd be dead.

...I'm thinking that "leg up" just may land him upside down in a cafeteria garbage can one day. Maybe I should grab his ankles and wrists with one hand and hoist him helplessly into the air like a safari prize more often while I still can.

We all know this world is nothing if not humbling, and I've always found a steady diet much easier to take than the sudden compulsory feast days that are one's only alternative. So I suppose I'll have to take it upon myself to begin a campaign of careful destruction and reconstruction of his ego, via the most fun, ridiculously lopsided competitions I can think of.

And once he turns 10? Then, my friend, we move on to a crash course in Trash Talk 101 delivered by the one true master greater than Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Jordan, and your mom combined.*

---

* I mean me.

Book Review: Daddy Goes to Work

When perusing the children's section of the library, my 4-year-old son D- loves to pretend he's picking his books completely at random, while he's actually fulfilling his intricate agenda to provide us with as diverse and challenging an array of reading material as he possibly can.

I welcome the variety of viewpoints, subject matter, and age-appropriateness even if it invites many questions whose answers involve almost nothing related to his carefully established knowledge of the world or its people.

Along with the usual traumatizingly graphic or outdated tomes that make you wonder who's monitoring the children's catalog, this child, who has absolutely zero religious education of any kind, has added classics like the following to one sub-series of his larger work entitled Why Did They Let Me Pick The Books, Again?: The Best Eid Ever, Starlight and Candles: The Joys of the Sabbath, and K is for Kwanzaa.

He picked this latest one out one day while I was chasing his little sister M- back towards the kids' play area in the library. He later checked the books out himself at the self-checkout station, so I didn't see everything we'd borrowed till we got home.

I can't help but see his latest noteworthy choice as not only a heavy-handed and judgmental suggestion but an outright personal affront. It's called Daddy Goes to Work, by Jabari Asim.


This is the kind of unsubtle signal that only a small child or a complete asshole could so calmly provide to an unplanned stay-at-home father.

I'm thinking if he resigns from this tact, after the message seems to have flown right over my head, that I may find him digging through the shelves to find Daddy At Least Gets Off The Couch And Shaves Once In Awhile.

Stories for the newly hearing impaired

Well folks, it's Friday morning, which means it's time for me to grab my ear plugs and head down to the library for M-'s story time, where we all get to huddle on the outskirts of the crowd gathered in relative safety about 15 feet away from the (very nice) ringleader herself.

The first week, a few of the other 2-year-olds understandably plopped themselves down right up front when things started, but, being creatures who act on instinct at all times without care for others' feelings, they unsubtley hit the deck when the volume dial broke off at 11 and didn't let up.

It came right as I was wondering how they could take it while I was struggling all the way in the back of the tragically tiny room-- all three kids simultaneously threw themselves backwards (in that way little kids do) outside the blast radius of this woman's voice.

Every week since then, that radius has been marked out by a field 2-3 cushions deep, which this lady must lay out in the vain hope that she's offering plenty of room and comfort to that one special boy --half deaf in his one functioning ear-- who will drift in from one of the nearby parks, as foretold in the prophecy, beckoned to the library by the siren song of a children's book read at a volume that finally allows him to turn off his hearing aid.*

Lest you think she's just one of those rare perky people who's raring to go first thing every morning, I assure you she is far from it. Rather, I believe she simply has to keep shouting as loudly as possible in an effort to keep herself awake, or possibly not dead. Kind of like that stupid Jason Statham movie Crank.

I'm thinking of asking the police department if they might be able to rig up their speed-monitoring trailer to instead measure decibels, so I could drag it into the back of the room like a scoreboard. I might be able to make some side money** wagering on this...

Hopefully I can make enough to cover the ear surgeries.

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* And then ask her if she might speak just a little more softly.

** By side money, of course, I mean my only money.

One-item lists, Vol. 1

We all know I like me a good list post. Because my unfinished list-post backlog is reaching critical mass, I figured we could start the year off by purging some of these in one largely child-centric meta-list:*

Child-Themed Game Shows
1. Oatmeal or Vomit?

Reasons Child Services May Pay Us A Visit
1. My 4-year-old son D- says things like, "I'm holding my lip because you punched me there" after practically leaping into the way of my unrelated hand gesture.

Life Goals Met At 15 Months (note that M- is now 2 years old)
1. Find Out What Sand Tastes Like. If pleasant, chow down! Note to self: It was extremely pleasant.

My New Favorite Sites
1. This one.

Reasons I Love Hanging Out With Kids All Day**
1. Tossing out a line like, "Not by the cereal on your chinny-chin-chin!" while wiping off a toddler's chin at breakfast will cause the whole room to lose it for a good 2 minutes.

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* Note that publishing this post itself was delayed several weeks for reasons unknown even to me.

** Unfortunately, immersing oneself in this for too long can have a severely detrimental effect on one's ability to write blog posts that amuse adults, as well as one's ability to conduct a normal, polite conversation with other adults.

Now we get down to Real Problems

You know, while I may live right next to the city where our new president ended up settling, I can't say I fully identified with him personally until I saw this picture:

"Backstage at the rally, Obama tries to calm a young supporter whose brother had taken his pretzel goldfish."*

I didn't get to see an After picture for confirmation, but I imagine him using his Dramatic Speech voice to full effect and settling this dispute within minutes.

I have to wonder if he'd be willing to lend me his services now and then in extreme emergencies, if for no other reason than as payback for all those dozens of dollars I gave him.

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* I'm sure Pepperidge Farm would not be very happy to see their trademark genericized like this. I think we need to get out there and determine whether this was actually a Goldfish cracker or merely a regular cracker that happened to be vaguely fish shaped. If the latter, they get to start handing out lawsuits.

You know what you need to do

It may sound insincere, given my clear preference in this election, but I can honestly say that no matter who you're voting for, please make sure to do so today, if you haven't already.

If only everyone legally allowed would vote in every election (and then those votes were all recorded accurately before being faithfully tallied, of course), I think we'd stop being defined by the simmering dissatisfaction, constant infighting, and impotent rage coursing through this country.

If everyone just let their choices be known and then dealt with the consequences, we'd have so much more time for really important things instead of spending so much of it focusing on regrets and pointless analysis.

Anyway, enough with the sappy melodrama. Just make sure, like me, that this won't be any of you today:

Tomorrow morning after the rally, of course, all my bets are off.

Revenge of the Leafs

Since I've been so lax in responding to comments (and visiting people's blogs) in the past few weeks (and possibly indefinitely), I thought that instead of adding a bunch of responses now that no one would see, I'd write a separate post acknowledging your comments on this recent post showcasing M-'s language development through the lens of a leaf assault.

First off, I'd appreciate it if you guys would keep the violence of this neglect-ridden incident hush-hush. That is, unless Child Protective Services would be willing to work out some kind of time-sharing arrangement in which they would take the kids away from us only on Friday or Saturday nights, and maybe a day or so during the week as needed.

As for M-'s seemingly accelerated development in certain areas, I have nothing to offer in the way of tips or tricks, as requested, except to say that you should apparently try to spend as much time on the computer as legally allowed; never plan anything voluntarily or arrive anywhere on time; only feed your children random, disturbing combinations of food ALWAYS outside of whatever society tells you should be a Meal Time; and be ready to fend off many, many hard plastic finger puppets, because my friends, There Will Be Poinkings.

The Unbearable Weightiness of Morning

In case the 80 of you are wondering why I didn't post yesterday, my Spongebob Band-Aid and I will tell you.

Wait, time out, let me kill the dramatic suspense and skip to the end-- I'm lazy and disorganized. But if you want to hear about the seed of a reason that I would give if pressed for an acceptable excuse instead of being fired from my own blog, continue reading.

Due to my wife's and my lack of practiced social skills and outgoing...ness, combined with our somewhat nomadic lifestyle during the past four years, our kids haven't gotten a chance to go to many* birthday parties. But yesterday, we had an honest-to-goodness party to attend, though given that we had to show up by 9:15am at the latest at a place on the Near North Side of Chicago where we'd never been, this event was most definitely playing against our strengths.

For those who don't live in a densely-populated metropolitan area like Chicago, or who don't have any children, or who are even remotely competent or organized, you may find the fact that this place being 12 miles away meant we had to set our alarms for 7 o'clock in the morning quite surprising. On the flip side of that coin, those of you who are morning people by choice or chance, such as having children who are in bed by 7 and up at 6 every day, may want to slap me. All I can say is our lifestyle and body clocks are what they are, and 7am is as early for me now that I get up at 8 as it was when I was getting up at noon in college. I am nothing if not hardcore, and this part of me will never die.

So we were staring down the barrel of 9am, though not for the first time, and I knew we had to be ready for this or it would never happen. To grind the story to a halt once again out of a compulsion to clarify something not suited for a footnote**, I had finally gotten into something of a rhythm of doing this parenting thing by this spring, just in time for J- to get out of work for the summer, and the combination of both of us being around to take turns on things and generally hang out a lot (to make up for all the lost time during the school year of 12-hour days) has almost totally killed my progress.*** Hence I had a not-so-well oiled machine to rely on for getting us out the door in the morning.

To combat this, I planned ahead the night before and picked out clothes for all four of us and laid them out in the hallway, I shaved... I even oiled the three-story firefighter pole I installed next to our back stairs.**** Even farther in advance, I had printed out the invitation we needed to show the people at the door of this place, along with a release voucher (there are few better indicators of good times to be had), and the directions to get there. The following is a schedule of how our morning actually played out. Keep in mind that this is considered a startling success for us:

7:00 - We are all sleeping soundly in our bedroom. (The heat has gotten too much in the past few days for even the kids' miracle window fan to overcome, so they are on the floor of our room to share our conditioned air.)
7:20 - J-'s alarm, somehow set for 7:20 instead of 7, goes off.
7:40 - J- actually wakes up, then wakes me up, and goes off to put waffles in the toaster and then shower.
7:41 - M- wakes up smiling and happy as usual.
7:41-7:50 - I lay there willing M- to spontaneously learn how to get out of her own bed, dress herself and her brother, and make breakfast.
7:50 - I finally lift her out of bed and set her on the floor, hoping she can finish waking up her brother in a way that will leave him not cranky.
7:50 - She immediately does as subconsciously ordered, by marching around the room pointing at D- shouting "D- sleepin'! D- sleepin'!!" before sitting on his pillow calling his name.
7:51 - I blink hard and then leap out of bed much like a pearl diver heading down for an especially deep patch of oysters.
7:52-8:10 - A blur of waffles, clothes, and whatever else makes time pass by faster than I think it does.
8:11-8:20 - ???
8:21-8:30 - Getting out the door-- normally a 45-second process, at the most, for a single person.
8:31-8:55 - Crawling steadily despite stop signs and other obstacles even in extremely light rush hour traffic, hoping some miracle would allow us to get there at 9 as suggested on the invitation.
8:56-9:00 - Hoping the GPS was horribly miscalculating its frighteningly accurate arrival estimate.
9:01-9:14 - Beating my head against the steering wheel and considering initiating a high-speed chase just to assure myself of a clear path and the ability to ignore all those sadistically timed traffic lights and (let the incredulity drip from your tongue as you read this) stop signs Chicago likes to put on major thoroughfares.
9:15 - Putting on a happy face to spite the Gods of City Driving, then dropping off J- and the kids to begin experiencing the super-awesome fun zone.
9:16-9:18 - Hoping my tired eyes would unswell-shut as I walked the couple of blocks from my parking space.

I know by now you must be dying to hear from me and Mr. Squarepants about the wild party itself, but you'll have to wait till Monday to hear more. Or, if you are reading this in The Future (dun, dun, dunnnnn!), you can just skip to the next post.


* "Many" being defined as more than one non-family party between them in their lives.

** Regular readers may be equally shocked to find that I have standards for footnotes, and that I would pass up an opportunity to include one. Well, all I can say is, check me out-- I managed after all, didn't I?

*** I've learned from this collapse, though, and I'll post about it next week.

**** See, J-, when I put it in there with all the true stuff, doesn't it sound not only plausible, but a good, safe idea???

Can't I be a Stay-At-Somewhere-More-Fun Dad?

The select few people older than 4 who I meet these days sometimes openly wonder what it's like to be a stay-at-home dad, often with either a sympathetic or subtly tortured look on their face.

I can promise you that certainly being one is much less remarkable now than it was decades ago, but that doesn't mean that nowadays, even in a place as diverse and culturally amorphous as the particular Chicago suburb where I live, you won't become a stare-worthy oddity akin to a dog walking down the street on two feet with a cat on a leash.

For example, the other day when we arrived at a park we’d never been to before (there are probably at least 20 parks of varying sizes within a half-mile of our house), two kids saw me approaching unchaperoned with the kids, and once we got to within 3 feet of them, the older girl asked her dad (while staring into my eyes, bewildered), “Is their Mommy at the doctor today, too??" In all fairness, what other possible explanation on Earth could there be for a man to accompany children to a park at 3:30 in the afternoon? Just go ahead and try to think of one, before you judge her... shame on you.

I’ve only hinted at this kind of thing here and there, but that’s because a) it’s been done many times before, and better, b) it doesn’t really bother me all that much, and c) it doesn’t come up as often for me as it does for others, because we don’t go out much during the day beyond the park, library, and my parents’ house (my dad is semi-retired and works mostly from home). That’s still enough, though, to generate a healthy inventory of stares, comments, and other encounters to make sure I know I am living a bizarre, unnatural life, and even that I only may or may not be providing any tangible benefit for my family or its well-being. And that I am merely lazy.

Actually, that very last part was just me projecting, because I got confused into thinking this was a confessional. Sorry, world.

So what does it feel like to be a man spending more than a few hours each evening with my children? (I’ve done that too, and will do it again, so I’m not bad-mouthing it.) Well, most days it feels an awful lot like moderate groin pain (moderate is an average of all days), because abusing groins is how children seem to amuse themselves. I think digging deeper into this area (no pun intended) may clue scientists into how we humans developed our traditionally rigid gender roles. Women have to be “fancy on the inside” (thanks, Mr. Rogers) as a measure of protection against our species’ sadistic and conveniently-heighted children.

That, or children are directed by women to help even the groin-pain score.

I’ll spare you any gory examples, because no one wants to hear about such things... wait, I’m just getting word that people LOVE to hear about such things… news to me. Okay, well, I already mentioned one in #5 of this post, and of course there’s the usual kneeing, stepping, and standing that kids of all ages make sure to do when climbing onto laps, particularly whenever a computer might be a momentary rival for parental attention*.

A more specific event, or ever-whimsical series of events, as it were, involves M-'s new habit of getting my attention (even when I'm already looking at her) by reaching up and quickly grabbing fistfuls of my pants until she finds something good to rupture inside. You may say, "But Dan, this just means you need to stop laying around blogging, playing videogames, watching movies, refusing to feed your children, and all the other things you clearly spend your entire day doing!"

Well, I will say to that that while I do obviously blog each day, and I occasionally play videogames, I generally do the latter with my children (that makes me a good father, right?) and only very seldom. That’s why I talk about it so much-- I’m pining. But most importantly, I promise you that while I may spend time doing some unconventional things, I make up for it by dedicating almost no time at all to cleaning or general household upkeep. So the time spent playing with my children or taking them places ends up evening out. So there.

In closing, my points are as follows:

1) Most people are inherently suspicious of stay-at-home dads (I'm sick of that term).

2) If you're thinking of becoming a Male Homemaker (is that better?), I'm not going to lie to you-- prepare to be ridiculously emasculated on an almost-daily basis. It's a good exercise, by fire, in beginning to truly not care what other people think (in the good way). This has been a difficult experience for me, but definitely rewarding.

3) Being a stay-at-home dad is a lot easier if you're bad at it, but you have to resist that temptation and find a balance. At the same time that society's expectations can put a lot of pressure on you, it also conversely takes a lot off, so much so that your wife will become insanely jealous of the behaviors people tolerate from you that might be ruled child neglect if she engaged in them.

4) We rarely clean our house, so I don't know when our kids might have friends come over.

5) I really wish my kids would stop hitting me in the nuts.


* As an aside (I know it’s uncharacteristic), let me just put the word out to any kids reading this-- when you knee me in the groin, even when I’m sitting down and semi-protected, while you will definitely get my attention, you will not win my affection. The computer certainly has never done that to me, and notice how many blog posts I’ve written-- get the message? I should expect this from M-, but I'd think D- would at least have an inkling of the need to be more careful. Maybe I’ll just have to hold out for that sympathy until his friends gracefully descend from the antechamber, as it were.

Teach a man to fish...

As I sit here typing a blog post while D- happily vacuums, I'm starting to think that Cinderella's stepmother was onto something. Cindy just had a bad attitude-- she wasn't a team player. Let's all do our best to investigate and rewrite that history for the stepmother's sake-- just because Cinderella got to become queen doesn't mean we should all have only one side of the story.

I mean, what became of all those loyal talking animals of hers? I doubt she would let them cramp her style once she had some human friends (and slaves). I'm sure there's some horrible dirt to be dug here, worth at least one Lifetime Original Movie and a big fat check.

Anyway, welcome back from Tangent Land...

Now that D-'s got vacuuming down, I just need to teach M- better broom-handling skills, and then we can all move on to mopping, scrubbing, and dusting.

It's the least they can do after waking me up (in tag-team fashion) this morning at 5:45 (hence this scattershot, sub-par post). On the bright side, I got to say goodbye to J-, I suppose. Still, I have a headache in my temples that is certainly not being assuaged by the sound of a plastic hammer banging a scrap of wood-- D- has finished vacuuming and moved on to simple home repairs.

Hmmmm... maybe I could stop handing him "pretend nails" on demand for him to "make magic with this wood" and instead hand him my drill, level, real nails, and all these pictures I'm supposed to hang. On second thought, I don't want them all hung 4 feet off the floor, giving him a step stool wouldn't be safe, and if I felt like helping him, I'd probably be doing it myself in the first place.

I'm a bad, bad, lazy person. But whaddya gonna do?

The joy of caprice

As an antidote to yesterday's tirade, I will note that one plus of having a girl is that last season's pants become this season's capris, or at least they do when Daddy is in charge of her wardrobe. All you have to do is wait a couple extra months for them to cross the "I think she's grown out of those pants, sir" threshold into the "Oh my gosh, what adorable pants! I have to know where you got them!!" zone*.

Incidentally, both of these statements are likely to be met with identical shrugs from me at library time. While I appreciate a cute outfit as much as the next guy, I'd much rather buy an array of identical futuristic jumpsuits for each kid, and never have to spend another 10 minutes tracking down something to dress each one in that won't get me A) in trouble or B) on some kind of watch list down at Child Services.

Consequently, J- and our female friends and relatives are in charge of all children's clothing purchases, and I am merely the middle manager who issues them on most days.

In my defense, I'll say that if they're good enough for Catholic (and gang-combatting) schools, the inevitable future, and most low-paid workplaces, uniforms are good enough for our kids and the rest of society. Three cheers for The Unitard of Tomorrow!


* I never got into the latter zone when D- was younger. Without fail, pants would somehow change from looking fine to making me look like a mental defective once I got him to daycare. This was especially an issue with overalls, due to their devious ability of the straps to allow the pant cuffs to hang down to the feet even when the crotch was somewhere around their knees. Am I really expected to notice this fine detail when I'm in a rush to get to work?**

** I still occasionally have this problem with M-, as no one yet makes capri-style overalls. Yet.

Note to self: Insert funny title later

Well, I'm coming up on 100 posts, and I feel like I'm slipping into a little lull as I've done about once a month so far. I'm then usually saved by a day or two where I write most of 7 posts or so all at once, so don't worry.

I think after I hit 100, I'll try switching to posting only 5 days a week, since it seems like most of you take the weekend off and just catch up on Monday, anyway. I'm sure it's best in the long run for my ability to keep chugging away at crafting these teardrops of genius I call blog posts. (Humor me, please.) I haven't yet had much tangible success in getting the kids to write their own entries, but I'll keep working at it.

I mean, wouldn't you rather hear it straight from the source why M- chooses to 1) snack on dust bunnies, 2) put shoes on her head while laughing maniacally, or 3) demand tributes of Rice Chex she doesn't want to eat? Or why D- 1) is obsessed with blankets and cloths, 2) doesn't allow anyone else to pretend about what he is pretending, or 3) doesn't understand how everyone else knows when he has to go to the bathroom before he seems to?

Anyway, I think you can expect roughly the same amount and quality (whatever that may be) of content, just distributed a little differently. If you happen to have some free time on an off day and curse my very name for not allowing you to procrastinate the way we all love, please do peruse my blogroll and other links on the right for some reliable entertainment. Then you can keep the dishes and chores at bay the same way we do around here!

To help this post qualify as such, here's a miniature Conversation with D-:

D-: (responding to my suggestion with a serious, patronizing face, burying his amusement) My books could not swim in the water and bite me like a fish.

Me: (unable to contain laughter at his demeanor) You make me laugh!

D-: Yes. I do. Write that in your bwog.

Ever the obedient servant, I've done as commanded.

Age is wasted on the elderly

I've decided that it's more fun to be a kid than an adult.

In the interests of full disclosure, I decided this long ago, even before I entered kindergarten. (I was no sucker, going to school before I actually had to...) My mom often tells of a day near my fourth birthday when she asked if I was excited to be turning four. I answered that no, I wasn't, because three was just fine.

I still stand by that answer. If anything, I probably believe in it even more strongly, having now followed up my experience of being a 3-year-old by spending every day for almost a year with a 3-year-old. This was purely for research, of course. I'll be packing him up and shipping him back to the dealer once he turns four.

Seriously though, after all this careful observation, I can tell you that for as much that has changed in the past 20 years, not much is truly different, at least where our nation's 3-year-olds are concerned. Big hobbies still include playing, running, shouting, spouting nonsense, and thinking of cute and unintentionally amusing things to say.

Meanwhile, old people just keep getting older and less fun. This is largely due to a preponderance of unfun activities presented to us as Necessary Parts of Being an Adult. Big hobbies include working, walking at a reasonable speed, muttering, worrying, accruing debt, and thinking things through.

I'd trade my Maturity, Knowledge, and Experience in a heartbeat to live the carefree life of a child, but I'm told it's too late to change teams. (Also, it hasn't worked out that well for Britney Spears.) At least I have some hope, though, because I've heard that one way to mitigate the effects of age is to spend more time with those not yet suffering its ravages, and I've got that base more than covered.