Category: Fatherhood

Being a father and dad in America.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

My happy place doesn’t involve little people, grammas or blondes in lingerie

image I envy people with good children like I envy the obscenely rich and their crack-addict washboard abs. That is to say that, I would probably smoke crack (do you smoke it?) if it meant I could have abs like the stars. Which means, there’s little I probably wouldn’t do to have kids that minded me, that didn’t throw fits if they couldn’t watch Scooby Doo at 6 a.m.; that didn’t scream and wail in the car seat after an hour, and who didn’t sulk like I just tanned their hides with daddy’s narrow leather belt each time we tried to get them to go to church where we hope to both introduce them to other “Godlike” children and perhaps get a little Jesus in the process. I dunno, lofty goals perhaps.

It’s no secret that I feel that raising children is something best left for the likes of Mother Teresa, or perhaps even Gandhi (that is, if Gandhi hadn’t lived in abject poverty), who seem capable of meeting even the most vile of situations with an outward calm that–I personally believe–likely hid an inner desire to pick up a stick and beat the crap out of the other person. But they LOOKED calm and that’s what matters.

Anyway, CareerMom and I, until this past year, have been the only ones of her six other brothers and sisters who have reared boys. Everyone else–girls. And while yes, there was drama, there was never any of the problems we’ve lived through. For instance, remember the Infamous beach vacation of ’07 (Part 1 and Part 2), well, while everyone else was upstairs with their darling little girls having a grand old time, we were downstairs with two exhausted boys, including one baby who wouldn’t stay asleep for more than 15 minutes at a time–each time waking up and screaming at the top of his lungs.

The other siblings, and to a large part even both CareerMom and my parents, have never understood our reluctance to travel. They don’t live through the sleepless nights, the miserable car trips, etc., that we go through each time just to make someone else happy. (On a sidenote, I have since learned to not give a rat’s butt what anyone else wants. If I don’t want to go, I don’t go. CareerMom is optional. Life is too short to be miserable.)

This all changed with the birth of a boy to CareerMom’s  next oldest sister. She had a boy. And not just any boy..a HOSS of a boy. In the past year CareerMom and I have sat back and grinned as her sister has regaled the family with his latest exploits and most recently, when her family took a trip to South Carolina, I couldn’t wait to copy CareerMom on her sister’s FaceBook update that said,

“…just stopped at a random park in NC to give the kids a break from the car…we got to take a miniature train ride!”

This may seem minute to you, but I also happen to know that he’d been cranky in the car a good bit of the trip, so for them to stop…well, that’s just a little bit of Gold in my book!

Shall I apologize for finding solace in another’s misery? Should I feel bad that someone else is finally understanding–even if just a wee bit–what CareerMom and I have been trying to explain to others for five years? Maybe so, but I won’t!

And here in just two short months, we’ll have a little girl around the house and I PRAY, OH Dear Lord, I PRAY, that we get one of those darling little sleepers and not another personality like the last two. I’m not sure I can take another six months of colic!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

It’s feelin’ just a little bit like Office Space around here these days

When I was eight and playing pine-cone wars with my buds back in Lower Alabama (LA), I never would have dreamed that one day, I’d be doing what I do, or that I’d do some of the things that I’ve done in my life; like working in the DoD and…yeah, that’s pretty much it for the cool stuff.

But also, growing up, I never would have thought I’d end up married to a woman who works full time and we’d be putting our kids in a daycare to be raised by perfect strangers.

I’m not sure where I thought my life would take me, but I’m sure it wasn’t a house in the burbs of Atlanta and exotic family vacations to…the beach.

Looking back, it’s amazing how far off I’ve drifted from “The Plan.” Granted, I didn’t have much of a plan, but I had dreams man! I was gonna do things! I’m not sure what, but THINGS!

I had ambition too. Money…oh! I always wanted to make lots of money, but that was just Alex P. Keaton talking and truthfully, I never completely got that out of my system.

But it’s funny how time changes you isn’t it? The things that you thought were important to you then, are now just footnotes at the bottom of the page, “***Chris was going to do so and so, but then kids came along…”

For the most part, I don’t have regrets. I mean, I did things. Sure, maybe I didn’t travel the world, but knowing what I know now about hygiene and bathrooms in other countries, I’m not so sure it was a loss. But, there is one thing that has changed about me though and perhaps it’s the most surprising since it’s really the one thing that I could still have–the one thing that my life hasn’t thrown up a bar against–ambition!

Do you remember when you started your first REAL job? Do you remember being on the bottom of the totem pole and just grinding your teeth every day and thinking to yourself, “Just wait, one day I’ll be the boss, you just wait and see.” I had that once. I still do–sorta–but now it comes with conditions, such as:but it now comes with conditions. Such as:

  • I want to be the boss, AND still be able to walk away from work at the end of the day without having to spend hours upon hours checking e-mail in the wee hours of the night while my family sleeps
  • I want the money, but I don’t want to spend all my time in useless meetings talking about “high level overviews” and “program guidance.”
  • I want the vacation house and all the perks, but I don’t want to have to have an “office” at my vacation house so I can stay in touch with work

Basically, I want my cake, and of course I want to eat it. What else would you do with cake?

So I find myself at war with…myself…over work. As it is with most companies, at my job, I’m expected to constantly grow in my career. I’m supposed to WANT to get out and get involved in new things, which inevitably means adding more work onto my existing work load, which screws with my aforementioned “wants.” It’s expected that I want to climb the corporate ladder and I do; no really I do. I just don’t want all that other crap that comes with it.

To put it plainly, I’ve lost my ambition. Maybe that’s not quite right, I still have my ambition, but I don’t want all the strings that seem to come attached with it. Does that make sense?

Sometimes I look at my mom up in rural PA and think, “Dang, that’s the life. It’s simple and it’s beautiful up there, and she doesn’t have a care in the world (as she snorts loudly while reading this).”  But then, I realize that it too has its problems. Everyone’s life has its problems…we all just hide it behind happy faces and platitudes. Man, what a crappy way to go through life. I’m really working on this whole acceptance thing. Hey, don’t sugar coat it–I’m not getting any younger and the things that I dreamt of as a young man, are by and large never gonna happen if they haven’t happened yet, so I just need to suck it up and “accept” that things are the way they are and try to make the best of it.

(This sounds like a mid-life crisis I know.)

It can’t be just me right? Did you have a Plan? Have you accomplished it? If not, why? I’m curious how many people’s lives actually worked out the way they thought it would.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

Flawless Victory!

image If I had a gold brick for every time I have said, “Boy, I can’t wait until the boys are old enough to (insert the “to do” action here)”, I’d have enough gold bricks to at least build the P&P dogs a blinged out doghouse worthy of something from “Pimp my Crib.” But I’ve discovered something over the five years that I’ve had kids, during which time I have uttered the above phrase more times than I can count–“You never quite reach the point that you were hoping you’d reach.”

Nope; it doesn’t matter what you wished for…what you hoped your kids would one day be able to do…when that day comes, the reality is a sad, sad version of what you’d hoped.

Shall I explain?

Potty training — MLI developed chronic constipation at the age of 1.5 years. He’s been on low doses of Miralax since then. How many times I prayed that he’d normalize and be able to use the bathroom myself, I can’t tell you, but it was a lot. When he finally did become potty trained, it wasn’t quite the bar mitzvah I had envisioned. Rather than getting all jiggy with it, I discovered that I still had to wipe him. What a crock!

More?

Mobility — When MLE was born, I counted down the days to when he was old enough to run around with his brother so that the two of them could play together and MAYBE give CareerMom and me some peace and quiet for a few moments each day. He started walking on his own around 10 months. Today, he doesn’t walk anywhere–he runs–usually while holding one of his older brother’s toys while the two of them run screaming like banshees until one or both of them take a tumble and smack their heads up against something hard and wooden. So, not only do we not get any peace and quiet, but we also have to console each of them multiple times daily for boo-boos they got while doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing in the first place.

Which brings me to what made me think of this whole topic–Video Games. Ah, the father-son Shangri-La, the video game years are. What dad doesn’t dream of spending hours with his son sitting in front of the Playstation, X-box or Wii, playing today’s hottest video games while mom goes out and does her own thing, not caring that her kids aren’t outside playing. I’ll admit…I couldn’t wait until MLI was old enough to play the Wii with me. Over the course of my lifetime I have owned a Commodore 64, a TI-99-4a, an Atari, a Playstation, Nintendo and now a Wii and I have spent literally hundreds of hours trying my best to beat games like “Zelda,” “Castlevania,” “Mortal Kombat” and the like.

Last year I bought a Wii for Christmas and since then, MLI has learned how to play, sort of. First, I picked up Mario Galaxy, but the topsty turvy, playing upside down while needing to jump to the right was just too much for a brain that was still developing, to say nothing of MLI. So then I picked up Lego Star Wars and again, at first I thought it was too much for him.  He was a brick at first, not being used to using both hands to do two different things; but, five-year-old brains are like sponges and he quickly picked it up. But there’s a problem; he doesn’t get the concept of a puzzle, or an adventure. He approaches a video game like a 16 year old boy approaches sex…something to be dispatched and conquered as quickly as possible. There’s no time to look around or to try to find all the little “treasures” embedded in the toy. No sir, it’s all about getting to the end as quickly as possible!

This annoys the ever-lovin’ crap outta me for a couple of reasons. For one, video games are expensive and blowing through them like he wants to, means that we go through a video game quicker than…well…again with the 16 year old male and sex, which also means he wants to buy a new one every month (and they ain’t cheap!). Secondly, I like to look around the game. I want to enjoy the experience and see what took a dozen developers the better part of two years to create. To me, that’s half the fun.

MLI couldn’t care less…that is…until he gets stuck and can’t figure out the puzzle that’s required before he’s allowed to move on in the game and then he suddenly wants daddy’s expertise. Pshaw!

So parents, take it from me–Wishes are like a box of chocolates…

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

If this van’s a rockin…

image There are few childhood things I lament the loss of more than the freedom to move around in the car. I grew up in the 70s when vans were all the rage. And these weren’t the vans like we have today–all captains chairs and entertainment systems–no, these vans had two captain’s chairs up front, perhaps one more row of them in the middle and then usually some kind of open area in the back.

I remember our custom shag-wagon like it was yesterday! It was a Chevy of course, and it was shaped much like the Scooby Doo mobile, except it had a beautiful ocean motif painted on the side. The whole van was done in blues and each side displayed an airbrushed image of a sailboat on a stormy sea. On the inside, there were two rows of captain’s chairs and then in the back was a raised shagging-platform–perfect for extracurricular activities–that was carpeted of course, where we kids used to sit and play games, read books and generally move around during trips. There was also a built-in cooler for drinks, but I remember that it never seemed to work right. As the times marched inexorably on, the vans became more refined–the back area giving away to a third bench row–but the general ability to move around unseen by prying eyes remained. The windows were darkened and had shutters or drapes on them and you could literally walk from the front to the back to grab a drink from the cooler, or just stretch your legs if dad refused to make a pit stop so he could “make up some time.”

What do kids do today on trips? They remain tightly fastened in their little car seats, safely protected from errant drivers and from generally being able to do anything else but stare out the windows and whine about being strapped into their seats. If they drop something…tough doo-doo because they’re so strapped in that they can’t bend over in to the floorboard to pick it up. Want to take a nap? Oh, I’m sorry–you’ll have to just lay your head over to the side and pray that you don’t get a crick in your neck from the odd motion.

Oh I know that car seats save lives and all, but crikey! When you’re doing 70mph (ok, maybe 80) on a lonely bit of highway in the middle of nowhere Georgia or Alabama, is there any harm in letting the little boogers waller around a bit? I say no!

What cracks me up though, is that now vehicles are going to need to get 35 MPG by 2016, which means cars will be what…smaller right? It’s probably a good time to invest in companies that make roof-top carriers for cars! I swear whoever it is running the bunch that develops these safety standards has obviously never taken a long trip with kids!