Category: Dad Blogs

Categories
Dad Blogs Family

Blue / Pink / Indifferent?

It’s amazing how quickly one can accept a situation and begin making plans for it, even if that situation goes against everything you’ve been planning up till that point in life.

My wife got up this morning and announced that she was terribly nauseous. Now, we’ve been pretty careful with the “relations” since our last son was born, but there might have been a time or two that our teenage years crept upon us and we excused off the hassle and just went with the moment.

With a “Do you think the drugstore is open yet?” she was out the door on a mission to get a pregnancy test. When she came home, she went straight upstairs and faster than I thought the test could return results, she comes back downstairs and says, “We’re not pregnant.”

Now, I know a lot of people think babies are God’s gift and so on and so forth, but gift or no, I am not prepared for another baby. I was feeling pretty confident she might be pregnant though based both on today’s little episode and a week or two of her feeling a tad on the puny side. In my head, even as I was lamenting, “Oh my LORD what’re we gonna do?” I was also planning out how long it would take me to finish off a couple of rooms in my basement so we could still have a guest room if we had to turn our current upstairs guest room into a nursery.

Thank goodness no such plans will be necessary.

Apparently, she only has a tummy bug as she has slept literally all day and thus far neither myself nor the boys have any symptoms (which is suspect considering everyone I know who’s had this, has also passed it to their entire household in a matter of hours). I’ve been careful to keep the boys generally away from her all day so if we’re lucky, it’ll stop with her. Of course, with the exception of my recent fishing trip, I just don’t throw up. Stomach bugs don’t affect me for some reason, so I’m not a good gauge of a bug’s possibilities.

At any rate, today’s over and now I can relax for a bit before my week begins.
And I can guaran-darn-tee that the next time the moment feels right, I’ll be puttin’ on my hat.

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Survival of the fittest!

My kids’ daycare has camera monitoring in all the classes, but the resolution is pretty bad so it’s difficult to tell who is whom. I’m pretty sure this is Aiden based solely on his socks.

Well, I made it through last night. The boys were good and we actually managed to get a decent meal in. I put Aiden down around 8:15 and Ethan about 8:40, leaving me to do all sorts of fun things, like clean up and brush my teeth and such. Of course, just as I was lying down to go to sleep (10:15’ish) Aiden woke up. So, fed him and crawled back in bed til about 2 a.m. when he woke up again.

If you read yesterday’s blog, you know I was gonna try some tough love and let him cry it out. Well, after 45 minutes, I gave up. At some point, you just have to say, “OK, he’s miserable, I’m miserable, how about some milky?” So, did that and crawled back in bed around 3:15 a.m.

Slept till 6:45 (wow!) Got out of bed and found Ethan sitting by his bedroom door and when he saw me, he ran up and said, “You slept a long time.” I only wish!

Anyway, got the boys off and now it’s work time. Hooray!

Categories
Dad Blogs DIY Life in these United States

Old MacDonald had a…container garden?

In my old neighborhood, nary a year went by that I didn’t fill up my 5-gallon bucket with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and sometimes strawberries and go around doling them out to my neighbors. Although I had a fairly small patch of land, two people don’t eat that much and I usually got a really good return. It was always funny watching neighbor’s expressions as they cracked the door open trying to ascertain who I was and what I wanted from them. Confusion changed to excitement (especially among the elderly) when they realized I wasn’t trying to get them to purchase overpriced wrapping paper or stale bars of chocolate for my high school prom.

But, we moved last fall and for many and various reasons, I didn’t do a garden this year. Primarily because (or at least this is the excuse I’m telling myself) I didn’t know how my sun pattern would fall in my yard and I needed to know this before planting. Also, the only flat area available to me currently is at the very back of my yard and I just wasn’t sure I wanted to trek down there daily for weeding and picking.

Since I haven’t not had fresh tomatoes in probably 6 years, I decided to put a couple of plants out in containers on my back porch, where I was reasonably sure they would receive sun. After all, I can’t keep houseplants back there because they get sunburned, so I figured it’d be just about right for my maters. I also used to grow my own plants from seeds, but it wasn’t worth the effort this year for two little old plants, so I purchased some “Better Boy” tomato plants from the local home store and put them in two large square plastic pots right on the back porch.

To say that my yield was less than expected, would be an understatement. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the National Gardening Association called me and kicked me out of their ranks. For one thing, I believe that I put too much natural compost in there right off the bat because within a week of planting them, they were showing signs of burning (too much fertilizer). Also, despite having a single hole in the bottom for drainage, both containers stayed very wet, despite a perpetual drought (until the last two weeks).

At any rate, I got one little ol’ tomato out of it, and it definitely looks more like a Roma tomato than a Better Boy, but whatever. Next year, I’m gonna suck it up and walk down the hill and plant an actual garden. Cuz…this is ridiculous.

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

In this corner, weighing in at a whopping, 32 lbs…

These days, saying “Boys will be boys” in a group of parents is liable to earn you a few raised eyebrows and possibly a mental scolding. Let’s face it, everyone is so litigiously politically correct that allowing children, especially boys, to work things out the old fashioned way is akin to burning them with cigarette butts, and just as likely to get you reported to your local children’s services group.

So, I find myself in a quandary regarding my oldest son. He’s three, and while he isn’t the smallest boy in his little daycare class, he’s by no means the biggest. There have been instances over the last few months where he’s been the target of some small amount of bullying (yes, even at the tender age of 3) and in most cases, he’s responded as society has taught us to respond–by doing nothing.

Dads, you’ll understand where I’m going with this, but for you moms, let me explain something for you. Boys WILL be boys. Boys WILL get in fights and boys WILL have to earn their place among each other. Groups of boys enjoy a pecking order that often has nothing to do with who is toughest, but has more to do with who is the most assertive. As a consequence, boys who are not necessarily assertive, often become targets. It’s a situation I happen to have a lot of experience in.

When I was growing up, we moved from our house in-town to a fairly rural area around Mobile, AL. This meant I also moved to a new school and started 6th grade among kids whom I had no history with. There were no childhood friends with whom I could buddy up to for protection. No, I was on my own. For the first year at my new school, I trekked back and forth from class to class avoiding a certain group of boys. There was also a certain boy in my neighborhood that gave me problems, although to be fair, there was never any violence; just the threat of violence on a daily basis. One day at P.E., after taking verbal jabs from one boy for about 15 minutes, I managed to put him on the ground and convinced him that I probably wasn’t going to be a good target from then on. Ya know what happened after that? Most of my problems at school with other boys just went away. And while I wouldn’t say I was best buds with my previous nemesis’, we at least had an understanding. A similar thing happened a couple of years later with the boy in my neighborhood, and after that, he left me alone too.

Back to the original point: Armed with this knowledge, I’m having a hard time being politically correct when it comes to my son. A new boy has moved into his daycare class and apparently this new boy finds my son a fun person to pick on. Now, if my son pushes the boy back after being pushed himself, he gets fussed at by the teachers. As if maybe he was supposed to either just take the abuse, or go running to the teachers tattle-telling. Yesterday when I picked him up from daycare, I mentioned that maybe soon he’ll be moved up to the next class with his other friends who just moved up, to which my son responded, “Yeah, and then maybe Aiden (this new little troublemaker) won’t pick on me anymore.”

As a parent, and as a dad, this really bothers me. I know how being a target makes a young boy feel and I would spare my son that if I could. However, I also don’t want him to get into trouble and be labeled a troublemaker. So, I’m at an impasse as to what advice to give him. Maybe I just don’t give him any advice. Maybe I don’t say that I don’t want him starting fights and maybe I don’t say that he’ll get in trouble if he gets in a fight. Maybe I also leave out that if the other boy pushes him, he has my permission to return the favor. At least that way he has no preconceived notions about what will happen if he does haul off and smack this other boy.

My other thought is to call up the daycare director and tell her that if my son comes home one more time and tells me that he got pushed by this other boy, that I’m going to give him permission to do whatever he feels like doing and if they want to discipline him, fine, but I won’t be adding to it when he gets home.

Living in fear is not fun and I’m sorry, but sometimes boys have to be themselves and work things out the old fashioned way. Sometimes violence (limited violence) is necessary. Save the peace talks for the boardroom and let playground politics rule the day!