Month: July 2008

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Uptight American parents

pool Our gym has an outdoor pool. It’s one of those beach entry affairs whereas it gradually slopes down towards a moderately deep four feet at its maximum depth. The reason for this is so that young ones can play in the water without their parents having to hold them the entire time (while being mauled to death by the growing finger and toenails of their excited child!).

I took the boys there yesterday after CareerMom got home. She worked out while I frolicked in the pool. At first, it was innocent enough; MLE was hesitant at first and so I held him as MLI floated around in the deeper section. But soon, MLE got a bit more brave and decided that stepping off the side into the deeper section was waaay more fun than being held by daddy.

So I let him.

And, after disregarding my admonishments to “Sit on your booty and slide in,” which he completely understands, I started letting him fall in and go underwater. The first couple of times when I pulled him back up, he gasped for air and his eyes went all wide and he looked at me as if to say, “What the hell? You ALWAYS catch me!”

Now, in a moment like this, I think it’s natural for a parent to look around to gauge the reaction of other parents…you know…just to see. It’s also natural for a parent to automatically try and push the blame back on the child, and so I said, “Uh huh, see. I told you to sit on your booty,” and I said it in a loud enough voice so that the trophy mom with the two kids and the killer abs who was giving me the evil eye heard me over the din of the waterfall thingy.

Interestingly, it’s the WASP parents who seem the most uptight about this sort of thing. While we’re all fawning over our child’s every laugh, and giving hugs whenever our child stubs his toe, your average minority mom is stretched out on the lounger grabbing some rays while her four kids of all ages are having a good old time playing by themselves.

Part of me wants to say, “Hey, what if your kids were drowning over there?”

And the other part of me wants to say, “Good for you! I mean, there ARE 20-year old stud lifeguards at all four corners of the pool. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Anyway, after the first couple of dunkings, MLE decided that stepping off the deep end and going underwater was about the coolest thing he’d ever done before and anyway…daddy will always be there to pull him out.

Yep my little man, I always will be. Have fun!

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Reason #23 why I couldn’t be a stay-at-home-dad

I could never be a stay at home dad for a variety of reasons, but the primary reason is boredom. I’d either be constantly ignoring my kids because I couldn’t stand one more second of playing Thomas the Tank or teaching over their shoulder how to play a video game, or I’d be buying them a new toy every other day just so I could keep myself happy.

For instance, even though there’s generally nobody here at the house all day, either myself or CareerMom ALWAYS make the boys’ beds up before we leave. Now, MLI has a number of pillows on his bed, and since one of my all-time least favorite things to do from a chores perspective(right behind putting laundry away and unloading the dishwasher), is making beds, I always try and mix up the pillow arrangement.

It’s my own personal pillow challenge each time I do it.

For instance, here’s one arrangement:

IMG_2315

and here’s another:

IMG_2316

As you can see, gravity defiance and lateral similarity is prized above good looks.

I read a blog yesterday whereas the wife was complaining a bit about how anal her husband was. I had a hard time relating…

Can you imagine how insane the house would be if I were here all day?
I mean, I might start bobby pinning together socks with the boys’ names on them so I could tell them apart when CareerMom buys them matching socks, something that, for the life of me, I can’t figure out.

Maybe I would actually put all the big forks in one slot in the silverware divider, and all the small forks in another. Spoons too.

I could vacuum the carpet so that all of the vacuum marks are equidistant from one another, and all grained in one direction.

Heck, I might even go around, every day, with a bottle of Windex and a paper towel and get off (heh heh, I said “Get off!”) all the toothpaste spray marks from the mirrors.

I don’t know…haven’t given it too much thought.

But suffice it to say that I’m way to uptight to be a SAHD, so to you guys out there who do it, my hat is off to you. Oh, and you moms too I guess (KIDDING!)

Speaking of hats! Oh man, I could build a hat rack and hang it in the closet and then we could put all of our hats up there in order from…

Categories
Dad Blogs Family

That fool on the elliptical, might be you

Compass OK seriously! This getting old crap is bringing me down! What now? What now you ask? Well, I’ll tell you “What now…”

For a 35 year old father of two, I think I do pretty good.

I exercise. Often hard!

I do handy things around the house.

I take vitamins.

I eat healthy.

My hair is still dark. From a distance.

And yet I still have this…this thing around my mid-section that won’t let go.

My weight has been a battle since I was a kid. I briefly beat it back in ’94 for about five years. That is, until I got married and we started having children. Somewhere along the way, cereal and stir fry for dinner was supplanted by Stouffer’s Lasagna, salmon with cheddar mashed potatoes, and thick steaks with grilled asparagus and corn fritters. Oh…no…those are three different dinners…not one big Shakespearean buffet!

Now granted, as I’ve admitted before, I suffer from a small case of body dysmorphic disorder, in which I think that I think that I look worse than I probably do. Or perhaps I’m fooling myself and I really DO look like I think I look and I’m using the “BDD” thing as an excuse to tell myself that I don’t really look as bad as I fear I do.

Truly, it boggles the mind.

After looking at those pictures of me in the river this weekend, I’m beginning to think the latter is true.

I also blame my work. Sitting on one’s hiney for eight a lot of hours a day doesn’t do much for the metabolism either, no matter how good you try to eat.

But here’s the rub: I AM getting older. At some point, I’m going to have to face the facts that no matter how hard I work, there’s a fine line between being healthy, and doing more than a body, at a given age, is capable of doing without breaking down. But when exactly is that? I mean, 35 is NOT old.

If 60 is the new 50, does that mean that 35 is the new 25? If so, I should look a helluva lot better than I do now!! And then if you sleep with a 25 year old, is it really like sleeping with a…nevermind.

Anyway, I’m just curious about others’ thoughts on this whole staying in shape as you get older thing. How do you measure your success (or failures) against your peers? Or do you?

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

What child is this

rock city “Daddy, how much more minutes will it be until we get to grammy’s?”

“A long time honey.”

“But, how many minutes?”

“It’ll be about 124 minutes.”

“But that’s a really long time. I wished we lived right here.”

Here, being the middle of nowhere, somewhere between a little town in Georgia and another little town in Tennessee, up Hwy 411. If you’ve ever watched HGTV’s 100-Mile Yard sale show, then you can pretty much picture what this 2-hour stretch of lonely road is like. In fact, they have their own yard sale Web site, aptly named the “Hwy 411 Yard Sale.” Check out the link. (I find it interesting that all of the Points of Interest mentioned, have nothing to do with sales, or yards).

We did finally make it to grammy’s luckily, and after retrieving a bottle of clorox and a scrubby thingy and scouring her in-law suite downstairs until all of the spiders and various fungi had disappeared, we had a great weekend! Honestly, I can’t even begin to relax until my surroundings are clean!

We swam in the river and played with critters–catching four turtles and three crawdads (crayfish for your northerners).  We explored Tuckaleechee caverns (which I HIGHLY recommend!) and I only had to carry MLI for 1/2 a mile…500 feet underground (I think the closer you are to the center of the earth, the heavier you are because of gravity or something). We rode bikes and watched DVD’s. We ate junk food and took very unflattering pictures of daddy’s belly in his swimsuit. All in all it was a really good weekend.

As I drove back, I reflected on how different MLI is away from his brother. At home he’s constantly competing for attention; however, away from MLE, he’s actually a pretty calm, well-spoken, fun person to be around. It was good spending time away from home where I could actually see what his personality is becoming, rather than the hollering, near-incoherent whirling dirvish he is around his brother and his friends. It’s amazing really, the difference.

I’m going to have to make it a point, as the boys both grow, to spend time alone with each of them, in addition to all the things we’ll do together. Because I honestly enjoyed this weekend alone with him, which is more than I can say for any “Family” adventure we’ve all done together.

Of course though, all good things come to an end and it wasn’t 15 minutes after getting home on Sunday that I remembered WHY we went away in the first place.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted…yeah, it was REALLY good!