Category: Dad Blogs

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Marriage

When exactly can I tap the college fund?

karate Sometimes I feel we’ve gotten a handle on this whole “being a parent” thing, and other times, I feel completely inadequate. For instance, who knew that in order to get your child enrolled in a fall Soccer program, that you had to register in May? Who knew?

With t-ball over for the summer, and with MLI having completed his swimming lessons, CareerMom and I have been looking for something for him to do with the cooler months coming on, both for him to get some exercise, and to get us outta the house to enjoy the cool air. But, it seems we’ve missed the boat on most team sports.

But one of MLI’s good friends takes Karate–or some form of martial arts, I’m not sure which–and MLI has mentioned wanting to take it on several occasions. I took American style Karate when I was younger, so I’m all for it, but CareerMom has been hesitant.

I’ve always tried to be careful and not steer my kids in a particular direction. The last thing I want to be is that dad who is trying to re-live his glory days through his kids, so I generally will only mention something to him and then try to explain the pros and cons about it without actually endorsing it.

We have a Taekwondo studio for kids very near to the house, so we took him over there last night for a little intro session and he seemed to really like it. They took him in a little room and had him do some punches and some kicks and come on…what little boy wouldn’t think that’s cool! And while they’ve got him doing that, they’ve got you filling out a form that basically enrolls you. Now, I’m not stupid…I know what’s going on, so I don’t fully fill out everything until after the class and only after CareerMom and I had conferred and decided to enroll him for a month to see if his enthusiasm remains even after having to endure 30-minute sessions of doing what the Sensei tells him to do, which probably is not a bunch of fun kicks and punches to start.

The price is significantly higher than I expected, but then, we didn’t shop around either. With our schedules, convenience is highly prized and local businesses know it and therefore charge accordingly. But the whole time MLI was doing his thing, MLE was watching and soaking it all up. And I know what’s gonna happen; in a few years MLE is going to want to be doing whatever sport his brother is doing and if that does still happen to be martial arts…well, let’s just say it’s a good thing daddy has decided not to play golf for a while.

Current Scorecard tally:

Parenting duties: 5

Selfish desires: 0

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Dad Blogs DIY Family Marriage

The Things We Do for Blogs – New Paint Colors for the House

The funny thing about blogging is that once you start, everything that happens to you on a daily basis becomes fodder for a blog. Even stuff that you wouldn’t normally bore your friends with, suddenly becomes this…story that you can’t wait to share with people.

For instance:

I took off work on Friday to get some painting done around the house. CareerMom and I have been slowly covering the bare off-white walls in our house with some color, but we hadn’t come up with an overall color for the majority of the walls, until last week.

clair de luneWe picked a Behr paint color called “Clair de Lune,” which here looks really brown, but is actually in the yellow family. I’m sure it looks different on different monitors.

So everything was going well as I painted till I got to the stairwell. Thanks to high ceilings, I wasn’t able to reach about a 5 square foot section of wall that was above the stairs. I needed to get up close to the crown molding, so I couldn’t just use a roller with handle extensions, or else I’d have big swatches of yellow on the molding that I’d somehow have to figure out how to paint over. After considering my options, I concluded that there was no way around it; I was just going to have to “get up there” somehow.

I broke out my trusty ladder and put one leg on one step and then tried stacking a number of items on the next lower step so as to raise it up enough to support the other leg of the ladder. But, I could never come up with a tall enough combination of phone books and other items that offered the right mix of stabilization and height that would satisfy my fear of falling to my death, or at the very least, falling and breaking something I might need at a later date.

So, I finally gave up on the ladder idea and instead, low-teched a solution:

painting

Note that I have two paint roller extension handles screwed together and the pièce de résistance—a paint brush duct-taped to the handles.

VOILA!

Once I felt confident in leaning my full weight against the railing and settled my nerves enough to paint in a straight line, it all went like clockwork.

Now, what you may be asking yourself, and what I DID ask myself is, “Who does this? Who stops in the middle of something like painting a house, and sets up their tripod and their camera on a timer, and poses for a picture?”

Only a blogger my friends…only a blogger!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Craftiness is not one of my strengths

Before CareerMom left for the week, she did everything she could to make things easier for me in her absence. She told me I could go do whatever I wanted while she watched the boys this past weekend–an offer I only temporarily took advantage of. She made sure the boys had plenty of diapers and wipes and clean clothes stocked at daycare so I wasn’t trying to schlepp all that junk around in my truck (or forgetting it and having to drive the 9 miles back home for it). She even had me go ahead and print up pictures of the family for both the boys because they are each in a new class at daycare (MLI is in pre-k now) and their teachers wanted a picture from each child.

But things rarely go as one plans, and so it was as CareerMom dropped off MLE on Monday morning before she left that she found out the teacher had changed the “picture” request into a “poster” request.

A Poster huh?

That would mean like, crafty crap right? Yeah, um…I’m not really good at crafty crap.

Now, you could ping my mom, or any of my brothers or sisters and they would be able to help out with crafty crap, but not me. I have zero artistic ability, and even less creativity.

That said though, if you give me colors, I can match them. I’m even good at decorating, but don’t ask me to actually MAKE anything.

But, since it was up to me and the boys, I was determined to come up with something that wouldn’t make MLE look like he had the worst, uncaring parents in the world; so here’s what I came up with:

Craft Project 002

Now, as bad as it is, it’s not as crooked as it looks here. That’s just an illusion of the camera. You may be able to click on it and get a larger version.

I’m truly not fishing for compliments here, because though I know it’s not great, for me, it’s actually pretty good. So, I’m not half-disappointed in myself.

And the boys sure didn’t care. I let them both get in on the paint-handprint thing…and then MLE stepped in the green paint and before I could stop him, it was all over the kitchen floor.

CareerMom will undoubtedly want to redo the thing when she returns, but my lil work of art will at least get a few days of life in MLE’s class.

Does that count as 15 minutes of fame?

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Let the games begin (not the Olympics)

IMG_2330As I sat on the curb on Sunday, watching the boys run around–MLI on his big wheel and MLE chasing him with a soccer ball waiting on the right moment to throw it at a passing big brother, prompting yelps of glee and spinning around until he collapses–I pondered the summer and I couldn’t help but wish for a nice, cool breeze to lift my flagging summer spirits.

And then I saw this little leaf lying on the ground. Even in 87-degree temps (with 82% humidity) there’s always something to look forward to.

…which, brings me to the current state of affairs!

I just kissed CareerMom goodbye for her whirlwind trip to Colorado–business trip of course, but there are perks to it all (for her I mean).

Which means that I’m already planning my next move from a “What to do with the boys at night so they don’t drive me crazy beating up me, each other, and the furniture.”

So…now taking suggestions.

I have a coupon for cheap bowling, which I’m pretty sure I’m going to use. Then there’s always Chick-Fil-A again, and depending on what Tropical Storm Fay does, we may or may not be able to play outside Wednesday and/or Thursday evening, so further consideration will have to be given as the week progresses.

Any ideas?