Tag: children

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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 Marriage

On the bright side, I don’t have any gray hair anymore…(cuz I pulled it all out!)

boys jumping

Thoughts from this weekend with my two sons:

  • Any softening I have had about how this third child wouldn’t be THAT much bigger a deal, was completely blown out of the water after this weekend. There will be no–let me repeat, absolutely zero–“girls weekends away” when we have three kids. And CareerMom’s traveling schedule is going to seriously have to be re-evaluated, or else the in-laws are going to need to be proactively involved!
  • Give a kid a toy, and he’ll play for five minutes. Ignore a kid for five minutes and everything’s a toy.
  • Boxes of tissues hold infinite amounts of interest for toddlers.
  • Boys only learn by one method, the rod (aka: the switch). Asking nicely doesn’t work. Asking forcefully doesn’t work. Even yelling goes in one ear and out the other and only makes you–the parent–feel like a complete a-hole. Nope, spank ’em and move on.
  • When they wanna be sweet, they can melt your heart. The other 98% of the time, you just want to smash a pile of bricks with your forehead.
  • For anyone out there who may be saying to themselves, “Uh huh, it’s not so easy is it. Now you know what CareerMom had to go through two weeks ago” I submit the following facts:
    • Fact 1: She only had them one full day. The other days were “take ’em to daycare” days.
    • Fact 2: She had nice weather and could take them outside. I had severe thunderstorms and bitter cold.
    • Fact 3: When the going gets tough, the tough take them over to their mom’s house where there is a sister with a daughter to play with
  • I’ve completely run out of junk food-groups to feed them. I’ve done pizza, spaghetti, corn dogs (actually, I grabbed the “sausage dogs” by accident“), what is left?
  • Going and getting a band-aid every 30 minutes is driving me friggin’ nutz. And I’m not even the one getting them!
  • Honestly, I can’t keep up with the messes. Oh, and while vacuuming today, the vacuum belt broke.
  • After soooo looking forward to CareerMom’s returning at 6 p.m. and giving me a break, I checked online and discovered her flight is 1.5 hours late. Guess I get to put them to bed again.
  • CareerMom had better not come home horny! I’m in a “don’t touch me” mood!

I am NOT handling this well.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

P is for Pregnancy!

image It is neither my intention, or desire, to turn this blog into a 9-month “and today in our pregnancy we did so and so” novella; but, it IS inevitable that when you’re living and breathing it on a daily basis, that things occur to you that you just have to share with the wider world. So today I thought I’d be very topical and bring you the word “PREGNANCY” in all its glory:

P – is for Privacy. Privacy is something I’m about to lose when the new baby comes. See, our guest room, when not acting as a “Guest” room, acts as my own personal man-sanctuary. Here, safely ensconced behind two locked doors, I can do my bid-ness in peace…and pull a Costanza with a library book.

R – is for Recreation. I’m going to have to find a new form of recreation as the boys get older. Currently, my only form of non-gym related recreation is golf. Golf, even at a cheap place around here, costs you $50 by the time you’re done. Multiply that times three (four if the next baby is a boy) and that’s just untenable. Hiking is sounding like a good (read: cheap) alternative.

E – is for Energy. I think it’s very unfair for mother nature to so completely sap a woman’s energy for months prior to having a kid, only to suddenly give it all back to her in the form of “nesting” just before it’s born. I mean, it’s setting a completely unreal precedent! As if, once the baby’s here, you’ll be able to live on estrogen and adrenaline well enough to keep from falling over at every opportunity. Much more believable, would be to keep the mother (and father) awake for the last two months of the pregnancy, and to make them both allergic to showers, fine dining and television.

G – is for Gee. As CareerMom turned to me the other evening, after letting out a heartburn induced burp, “FOR REAL, no more. FOR REAL!” I turned to her and said, “Gee, I’m pretty sure I was pretty F’ing serious last time I said ‘No More’ too!”

N – is for Never. As in “never friggin’ again”

A – is for Answers. Maybe by the time the third one asks me why God made his or her best friend’s skin brown, I’ll have an answer that sounds both intelligent and believable at the same time.

N – is for Nosey. Kids are the nosiest people. Daddy, what do you have in your mouth? Daddy, what are you doing? Daddy, what are you and mommy talking about? Daddy, why are you hiding from me?”

C – Is for consistency. Which is the complete opposite of what you get when you’re pregnant. Last night it was in the low forties outside. We had the heater on and CareerMom had me turn the fan on in our bedroom because of her constantly changing body temp and hot flashes. Are you hungry? Are you nauseaus? Are you tired? Are you coming onto me? Are you crying? It never stops!

Y – is for Youth. Because even in this crazy, crazy world of babies, and not enough time or money, when you’re out at a restaurant, like last night, and your littlest one stands up in a chair with a mouth full of brown, wet OREO that looks like a snuff of Skoal in his lip, and he yells out at the top of his lungs “BYE BYE” while waving to the crowd…you have to just smile. I just hope I remember the good stuff and forget the frustrations.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

Hooked on Phonics, Worked for me!

readingMLI is coming up on five years old and is therefore, in pre-K. In addition to the twice-weekly Spanish classes (Spanish at 5 years old?), they are also learning how to read. Each night he comes home with this little sheet of words that he is working on and last week, he even came home with a rhyme that he read–something to the effect of, “Nan pats the cat. The Cat can pat Nan.” etc. It didn’t get much more difficult.

Thing is, they are learning to read by learning the sight of words. So, they learn that “STOP” reads “Stop.” They are not learning to sound the word out, “Sssss…ta…ta…ah…pa…pa…SssTaPa…STOP!”

We had a small debate over at CareerMom’s parent’s house the other night as to the appropriateness of this method of teaching. CareerMom’s mother is a teacher, and sitting around the table were several highly educated people, who each thought he or she knew better than the other which way of teaching a child to read was better.

It was my MIL who postulated that the child isn’t really learning to read this way; while one of her daughters (who went to a very expensive private university, then transferred out west to get a Masters in Music and who is now doing a Jr. level job at a pharma company), claimed, “Well, once you’re older, aren’t you reading by recognizing the words anyway?”

A good point to be sure, but I’m of the opinion that a child should learn to add manually before using a calculator. However, being the “outlaw” at the table, and one who understands the value of a free, home-cooked meal, I kept my mouth shut.

Last night while trying to come up with a low-key way to kill the last 30 minutes before the kid’s bedtime, I sat down with MLI and asked him to read me “Go Dog Go.” Doesn’t everyone know this book?

Well, he knew the first couple of pages…by heart. Once we got past his “sight words” vocabulary, it was a frustrating thing for him to sound the words out. This cemented my belief that learning to read by sight words is a waste of time! I mean, if a kid has a photographic memory, then fine. Eventually, the kid can read Webster’s and be good to go, but for the rest of us, we really need to learn how to figure things out on our own.

Unfortunately, patience does not run on my side of the family (Bio-mom excluded), and MLI quickly became frustrated with my attempts at helping him. And to my credit, I think I was very patient! (Yaah me!).  All in all, I’m not too worried about him reading or not reading right now. In Kindergarten, I was in the “Remedial Reading Group” until I figured it out and then I was into it like gangbusters. I still spend a substantial amount of money each year on books and I have no doubt that my kids will follow suit.

But, for you parents out there with school-age kids; what did you/do you have to do to help your kids read? And how did they learn? Did the “sight word” method work for you?