Category: Marriage

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Marriage

That Heathen Family Down the Road (part 1 of 2)

Sistine Chapel As with so many things pre-kids, I’ve mentioned before that my wife and I don’t attend church as often as we used to before we had children. Did I also mention that I feel really bad about this? Or, at least I try to feel bad, but most of the time I just feel guilty. There is a difference.

I feel guilty because I know that if I don’t make an effort to introduce my children to God, when they get older, they’ll inevitably fall victim to whatever view of God society has most successfully been able to foist on them rather than coming to their own view of God after having been given as much data as possible from a variety of sources.

So, I want to take my children to church, but taking children to church on the weekend is work! After getting up at 5:30 am for five days during the week, on Saturdays and Sundays I just want to get up, enjoy some coffee, maybe sit outside on the porch for a while, and just generally not be rushed to do anything. And taking kids to church is anything but relaxing. It’s basically like taking them to another daycare at this age (my oldest is 3 and my youngest is 7 months), which we don’t like doing since they’re in daycare the rest of the week anyway. We’ve also tried reading Bible stories to our oldest son but right now, unless the story involves danger (“Daddy, did the lions eat Daniel?“) or I can read the story using some heavily accented speech, he’s just not interested. And I’m sorry, but three years old is a little too young be dropping the whole, “Jesus died so you could be saved” thing on him. So right now, I just don’t see that it’s a big deal.

Looking back though, I’ve realized that this drift from church started before the kids were born; they just make a good excuse for behavior that we were already leaning towards anyway.

When my wife and I first met, we were both going to church heavily. I had fairly recently come off of a bad break-up (involving a wedding ring) and had turned to the church for stability since I had no family local. My wife had recently moved to town after finishing her B.A. degree at the U. of Texas and was living with her family while she worked on her MBA. Her family was strict Catholic, but has since embraced the lighter side of church–the Pentecostals.

After we got married, we continued to attend church, but with less frequency. A large part of that I believe is because of the difference in Catholic churches that my wife was used to attending, versus what I was used to growing up under the Pentecostal label.

See, Catholic church rarely lasts more than an hour. Catholics long ago realized, “Hey, we’re all sinners. Let’s get together for an hour on the weekend, break some bread, drink some wine, and then go and sin no more. E- Pluribus Unum…I missed the bus, you missed the bus…”

Pentecostals (Baptists, Church of God, Assembly of God, etc.), on the other hand, still labor under the belief that most of us are perfect and that to remain in a state of perfection, we should meet on Wednesday night and also on Sundays, and attend a church service lasting a minimum of an hour and a half and involving several uncomfortable situations for both the body and the mind.

So while my wife and I both began to drift away from regular church attendance before we had children, I believe it was for different reasons.

In my case, I got a heavy dose of God as a child. Then, as I grew up, studied texts outside of the strict Biblical tombs the Catholic church deemed acceptable several hundred years ago, and was able to decide for myself what I believed in given all that I had seen and heard, I came up with my own beliefs, which still include the basics of what I learned as a child…only more tempered with what I consider a healthy dose of skepticism.

Growing up also opened my eyes to the world of the church. The church today, while certainly offering those who need it, a sanctuary and a place of refuge, is also a business. It’s a business with a CEO (the Pastor) a board of directors (the deacons and elders) and worker-bees (the flock) without whom the church could not and would not exist. And while I believe many (possibly most) churches start out with the best of intentions, I also believe that a great many of them become self-perpetuating businesses with the same desire to succeed as cam be found in any corporate boardroom.

Am I jaded? A bit. Skeptical of “the church” as a whole-absolutely. Do I want my children to endure what I went through as a child only to watch my own parent’s marriage fall apart despite all of the holiness and platitudes they espoused throughout the week in their everyday life-a resounding NO!

Whoa! Where’d that come from? We went from talking about the church, to delving into my personal past. Hmm, maybe we should explore this some more.

(After this commercial break…like tomorrow maybe).
Part 2 on it’s way.

Categories
Dad Blogs DIY Family Marriage

It’s My Christmas Present and I’m NOT Sharing It!

I took last Friday off to stay at home and pull old yucky wallpaper off as many rooms as I could get done in one day. I managed to remove the wallpaper in our main master bathroom common area and one of the sink/commode areas in the boys’ jack-n-jill bathroom setup. I also got a skimcoat on both to fix those massive gouges I put with my scraper and to replace any sheetrock paper that came off with the wallpaper.

An interesting note: where the steam from years and years of showering has reached the wallpaper, the wallpaper is much more resistant to removal efforts. It took me nearly as long to do the boys’ bathroom tiny area as it did to do the master bathroom area which is 5 times as large. Darn steam!

Anyway, now instead of mind-numbingly unnatractive wallpaper in our bathroom area, we have mind-numbingly stark white walls with no paint on them. And the real question is, how long is it going to take me to finish it all?
Which brings me to my blog topic for today. We’re not talking about just schlepping some paint up on the wall and calling it a day. Nossir! We’re talking about a full-scale, all-out assault on redecorating, which means:

  • new light fixtures (2)
  • new fan
  • new towel rack (beause OMG what was she thinking buying that crappy silver towel rack at Target that shows the four honking screws in the front and doesn’t match our gold fixtures? 
  • new paint for wall
  • new trim paint
    and of course…
  • new linens and such

All this adds up to mucho $$$ and even more time that I don’t generally have. And with fall coming up (any day now…hello?) I’ll want to be outside, not cooped up inside.

But what’s really bringing me down is my wife’s idea to pay for all this; “Seriously honey, this can be my Christmas present; I don’t really need anything.” And before I knew what I was saying, I responded with, “Mine too!”

Wait! What? Did I just say that out loud? What the F*? No, I don’t want my Christmas to consist of pretty red towels and hours upon hours of electrical work trying to figure out an outdated wiring code. I want clothes and…stuff!

So I’m kinda bummed about that. I mean, we did set ourselves a small gift limit to spend on each other so we will still be getting each other something, but still… What this at least does is free up money in my Christmas savings account to put directly towards the project. Hey, now we can afford the fan! Only 10 more things on the list to go!

Categories
Dad Blogs Fatherhood Marriage

Childhood Innocence

Thanks to the heat, we here in the South have been forced indoors in the afternoons. It’s too hot to ride bikes; it’s too hot to play ball; heck, it’s even too hot to go swimming in the pool! What’s a family of four to do?

Luckily, there are still some games around geared towards the young-ones. Interestingly, they are the same games we adults loved as a child–Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Hi-Ho! Cherry-O. All classics and all pretty much the only games on the market for the “under 5” crowd.

Obviously, we don’t still have our childhood board games lying around so we went off to our friendly neighborhood Target and purchased a few games to while away those long hot summer afternoon. As it turns out, Candyland has become my three-year-olds’s favorite game; so much so in fact that while the board itself is still in fine shape, the flimsy cards have become so over-handled that I can’t even put a proper poker shuffle on them anymore.

The funny thing about this game though, is how it’s evolved over the years. Take note:

Notice how in the old version of Candyland, the two kids are whitebread, blond crackers, and in the new, politically correct version, we have a cross-sample representation of ethnicities and genders.

Why am I not surprised? But anyway, my son loves this game, but more importantly, he loves to WIN! We’ve been very careful to explain to him that the game is random and anyone can win at any time, to which he responds, “But you can’t win every day.”

The truth is however, that by hook or by crook, he seems to win more than anyone, but it’s never enough. Should you get up from the game to go stir the pot of soup, or to put the fallen baby back up in a sitting position, he will sneakily look through the stack of cards for either the “lollipop” or “ice cream” cards, which move one near the end of the game and close to winning.

Another of his tactics is to skip a color. So, if he pulls a card with one red square, he’ll move two; if the card says two red squares, he’ll move three. He’s very sneaky. We’ve tried to explain to him that this is cheating and I’m particularly careful to ensure that he follows the rules, but I will admit to “fixing” it on the rare occasion where we adults have consistently won a game or two just so he gets the satisfaction of winning. And of course, he loves it.

But he’s coming around to losing with grace. Generally, it involves him saying, “Ok, let’s play again and I guess I’m gonna win.”Now if we can only teach him how to be a graceful winner, rather than cackling like a crow who just found a new shiny object, we’ll be in business.

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Marriage

Letter to the Medela breastpump manufacturer

Dear Medela,

I am writing to you to express my profound joy at never having to listen to the sound of your breast pumps again. After two children and nearly a year of my life watching my wife use your product, I am on my knees thanking the good Lord that we are done with your product and that I will never again be awakened to the sound of the in and out suction and whirring noise emanating from your pump that you have so cleverly disguised within a computer bag. In addition, here are a few other things I won’t miss about your pump:

  • Having to drag it EVERYWHERE we go; on vacation, to church, intermediate-length car rides, etc. You cannot imagine how awkward this annoying thing is…not to mention that in order to save time, my wife uses it whilst driving (to mine own horrid fascination). This is accomplished under the cover of a poncho-like drape that conceals what’s actually going on.
  • The inevitable delay of my wife coming to bed due to having to pump before doing so. This is especially troubling because of the timing involved. As my wife and I equally share responsibilities around the house, each of us ends up putting one of our children to bed, then one or both of us shower while the other putts around filling bottles with milk for daycare the next day, etc. However, when I’m ready to crawl into bed, my wife is not because she has to pump. Therefore, I turn on the TV and by the time she gets in bed, I’m into whatever it is I’m watching and “relations” subsequently suffer.
  • That additional cord in the car so that my wife can pump whilst traveling. Between my Sirius radio tuner, my radar detector, and the DVD player for the kids, the last thing I want is yet another darned cord plugged into the cigarette lighter socket powering the pump. Not only that, but you have apparently designed your car adapter to blow fuses every month and unless the wife tells the husband what’s going on, she assumes the entire apparatus is bad and spends another $14 on what is really a 25 cent fix. Shame on you!
  • Washing those darned tiny bottles. Nuff said!

In short Medela Inc., you have stolen enough of my joy for one lifetime–time that I will never be able to reclaim–and for this I bid you goodbye, farewall, arive derche and adios!

Sincerely,

A Happy Man