Month: October 2007

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Dad Blogs Family

Take ye this bread and…try not to crunch too loudly

After nearly two months of church-skipping, I made a command decision this weekend and announced that we would be going to church. Now, I’m not thrilled with our current church, but it does have its “up” side. For one, it has an early service, which lets us get in and get out quickly. It also has a good childcare department and it’s the right size (not too small, not too big). And lastly, it’s uncomplicated. From the parking, to the quick-exit, I know where everything is; I know where I’m going; it’s just…comfortable, for lack of a better word.

My wife (hereafter to be known as “Career-mom”) doesn’t really like our church that much and holds onto the irrational belief that the perfect church is out there somewhere and all we have to do is visit enough of them to find it. She’s playing with statistics here. I, hating little more than being the new guy in a new church, try and avoid this as much as possible and I got lucky this week because the two churches she was interested in, didn’t appear to have much for the kids. So new scary church out…old comfortable church in. Yah me…I win!

Now, our oldest son doesn’t like going to the kids’ church, so after dropping off the baby, my wife brought him into the big church with us. To his credit, he did very well, only whispering overly-loud one or two times and certainly not reaching the volume that two children did about five pews ahead of us, which prompted one of the bouncers (AKA: elders of the church) to get up and politely ask them to take their child elsewhere.

But wouldn’t you know it…this Sunday was Communion Sunday. Unlike Catholics, we Pentecostals take communion at our pews. Consisting of little unleavened wafers (think tiny oyster crackers w/out salt) and an itty-bitty cup of juice, Communion for us is a complicated affair of holding onto your micro-wafer while simultaneously trying to pass the juice-laden tray to the next person without causing a complete disaster. My son was sitting next to Career-mom and I noted, quite amusedly, that she got sacraments for him too.

The whole sacrament distribution process takes about five minutes (we’re very efficient), and after everything was passed around and the Pastor had reverently recited the proper passage from the Bible about how the bread represented Jesus’ body and the juice his blood, we all partook…it was all very holy and quiet.

But just as I was putting my now-empty plastic cup of juice in the holder, my son looks over at Career-mom and me and says, “But I’m still hungry.”

You know you can’t get mad at that!

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Dad Blogs DIY Family

The Hills are Alive…with the smell of…beneficial nematodes…

I have crap all over my yard…literally. But it’s not what you think (or maybe it is).

My dad was the original tree hugger, only without the politics or the VW van (and the weed). He grew up in the North Carolina mountains and from the time I was able to talk, he would point out trees and tell me what kind they are, and how to tell them apart. Then, of course, we had a garden growing up where I got to learn the joys of kneeling under five-feet-tall okra stalks as ants dropped onto my naked back, and how picking cucumbers and squash in a short-sleeved shirt is a HUGE mistake (it stings!).

So, I’ve always felt a kinship to the earth, but I’ve never really been a conservationist. I wanted to be, but like so many of us, it just hasn’t been convenient. Well, our new neighborhood is part of a recycling program, so I’ve become a lot more “green” than I ever was before. Even if you’re not especially green-oriented, the peer pressure of seeing stacks of recyclables next to your neighbor’s driveway is enough to motivate you to rinse and recycle.

Taking it one step further, I’m trying to go eco-friendly in my yard too. We live on a slope with a nice little creek at the bottom of the hill, so anything I put on my lawn eventually ends up in the creek. So rather than use the highly effective, yet economically disastrous nitrogen-based synthetic fertilizers in my yard, I’m using human waste.

Not my own of course, but that of the good people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. See, the water treatment plant in Milwaukee also makes an organic fertilizer called “Milorganite” (Link complete with video goodness). This fertilizer is nothin’ but good old recycled and sterilized human waste. And it smells like it too.

The net benefit to nature is both in the runoff that won’t kill the fish, and in the fact that it actually promotes beneficial buggery in the soil, as opposed to killing off the beneficial buggery like synthetic fertilizer does.

The downside to this organic fertilizer includes the smell (ugh!), which supposedly fades in a few days, and in the fact that it takes a LOT more fertilizer per square foot, even though the price is similar.

Once again, doing the environmentally right thing, costs more money than doing the easy thing (electric cars, insulation, etc.) but it’s worth it right? Now, how to keep all the neighborhood dogs away from the yard until the smell dissipates is another thing entirely.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Movies and What I Expect Fathering to Be Like

House from "Father of the Bride"If there is one thing that the media have done for society, it’s create a sense of how things should be. Producers have become masters at creating scenes that indelibly imprint themselves in the minds of viewers and those scenes, in turn, become part of the sense of “how things should be.”

Sometimes these magical moments affect a large segment of the population, like those of us who recently (in the last 15 years) glommed onto the movie “A Christmas Story,” and who now see Christmas as a cherished time with the whole family gathered around the tree, a fire going, and turkey dinner for lunch (or maybe Duck); and of course there are gifts…lots of gifts.

Other times, these moments are much smaller, less impactful on the larger society, but just as powerful in the minds of the viewer. As a parent, I realize that there are things that I want to do with my kids that have nothing to do with my own self-realized goals, but are things that I’ve seen portrayed on television or the big screen and that seemed like wonderful things to do.

An example of this might be the father/daughter pre-marriage basketball game that Steve Martin shares with his soon-to-be-married daughter the night before her big day in the movie “Father of the Bride.” I don’t have daughters, but I would love to have a moment like that with my sons one day before they get married. I want to have that special of a bond with my children.

Last night I got to enjoy one of these moments, and in retrospect, it’s a silly one I know, but it’s something I’ve seen time and time again on television and movies and it always seemed so touching.

I got to carry my sleeping son to bed.

I know that may sound silly to a lot of people—commonplace even—but my oldest son is not a sleeper and it’s a very rare day that he falls asleep anywhere other than his bed. But last night as I was putting my youngest down to sleep (a 20-minute ordeal), I left my oldest in “mom and daddies bed” watching “Thomas the Tank Engine” and when I returned, I found him curled up fast asleep. I then picked him up and carried him to his bed where he didn’t even wake up. In that moment I realized that I was living out one of those moments in life that, while so simple, will be indelibly etched in my mind as a father. The idea that another human being can so willingly put him or herself in my care without a care of their own, is a precious thing to me.

I may ultimately suck at this dad stuff, but I’d like to think that based on this, I’ve done something right.

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Of butt-paste, yeast infections and other skin ailments

Parenting really is one big roller coaster isn’t it? The minute you get over one hill and you start coasting down it towards easier times, another whopping hill looms up before you forcing you to grab onto the handlebars and pray for all you’re worth.

Yesterday, as my sick wife languished at home in an attempt at sleeping off this nausea we’ve shared, daycare called and said our youngest was crying and generally unhappy. My wife, God bless her, went and brought him home. Other than not having slept since 7 a.m. (by then it was 11:30) he seemed fine.

However, last night as I tried to bathe him, he kept rolling up on one soft little butt cheek and a closer examination revealed some terrible chafing, which my wife had already been treating with some Butt Paste (Boudreaux’s brand I think). It was so painful for him, he couldn’t even sit, which might explain his crying so much at daycare.

Like any good parent, I immediately started running through my head what had changed that could have caused it and I came up with the following possibilities:

  • his antibiotic-induced diarrhea (love that word!)
  • new diapers

It occurred to me that we had just recently (as in the last two days) switched to Huggies from Pampers because the Pampers weren’t getting the job done at night. Our older son used Huggies with no problems, but it’s possible our youngest is allergic to them. So, we found an old pack of leftover Pampers and are trying them.

In the meantime, my MIL called and suggested it might be a Yeast Infection since he’s been on antiobiotics and his body can’t fight it off right now. So, there’s another suspect, which prompted an immediate late-night trip to the drug store for some Monistat or something (I offered to go, figuring it’d be less embarrassing for a guy to be buying it, but my wife insisted that she’d go).

His bottom didn’t seem as irritated this morning, so who knows. We’ll keep up this new diaper, anti-yeast infection/butt paste regimine for a few days and see if it works.