Tag: children

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A Boy's Life Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

I Don’t Care for Today’s Reimagined Superfriends!

SuperFriends

I have discovered something (else) too late in life that I wish I had figured out sooner: Never, and I mean NEVER, tell your kids about something you really liked as a child and that you still sort of hold near and dear to your heart because they will latch onto it like it is their own and you will hear of it to no end until you are just so sick of it, that you wish you’d never even heard of it.

What am I talking about? Spider-Man…that’s what I’m talking about.

It all started innocuously enough. Some kid in my oldest son’s class was already into Spider-Man and my son was only mildly interested until one day I was briefly watching (I only get to watch things briefly at my house because the instant I sit down to watch anything, my attention is diverted by one of the boys) Spider-Man the movie—the one with the Green Goblin–came on television and my son came downstairs and quietly sat down beside me to watch. Well, I wasn’t sure I wanted him watching it, so as he sat there with me, I didn’t really respond to his questions of, “Who’s that?” and “Why is that man hitting Spider-Man?” with any gusto.

So now, since I didn’t respond correctly, the Green Goblin has become “The Green Guy.” And then sometime later, my son saw Spider-Man 3 with the black suited, mean Spider-Man who has big teeth and a long tongue and now he has become “The Tongue Guy.” So now we have “Red Spider-Man” to differentiate between the black one, “The Green Guy” and “The Tongue Guy.”

Oh and did I tell you that he wanted to be Spider-Man for Halloween, which earned him one silky feeling Spider-Man suit which he cannot stand to be without. From the moment he gets up in the morning to the moment he gets home from Daycare in the evening he wants to wear it. And I can’t blame him. If I’d had a silky outfit when I was a kid, I might have worn it too…but I digress.

So now, all I ever hear is, “Daddy, I’m going to be Red Spider-Man and you be The Tongue Guy” and we’re gonna get the bad guys.”

Now honestly, I’m all about playing with my kids and all, but there’s something about having my favorite superheroes reduced to blasé naming conventions that grates me and quite frankly, I’m tired of Spider-Man and his ilk.

But stupid me, in an effort to move his interests along, I introduced him to another of my childhood favorites, “The SuperFriends.”  So far, it’s been tolerable, but that’s only because we’ve not yet exhausted all of the television episodes that still exist on Nickelodeon. But it’s coming. I know it is!

And not even Superman and his boundless powers, combined with Green Lantern’s power ring will be able to stop my son’s childhood enthusiasm from ruining that for me too! And I thought I HAD grown up!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Parenting Philosophies

Universal Laws

I think most parents come into parenting with a “Parenting Philosophy.” It is probably a mix of things that their parents did with them, as well as some personal observation tweaks on parenting skills they have gleamed by watching the successes and failures of other parents.

I am no different. My parenting philosophy goes something like this:

  • I am your father first, and your best friend second (or maybe 5th or 6th after your real friends and your mother)
  • I ate vegetables and so can you. If you don’t eat them tonight, when you get hungry enough, you WILL eat them
  • After the approximate age of 3, you’re old enough to clean up most of your own messes and get your own toys and blankets from wherever in the house you’ve left them. I’m not your maid
  • When you’ve tuned out my threats of taking away your favorite toys, a spanking usually will do the trick
  • Just because we have kids, it doesn’t mean the house should look like a pigsty
  •  You can entertain yourself sometimes
  • anything else that I make up along the way

The problem with a philosophy, is that it’s just that—a philosophy. A philosophy is “a system of principles for guidance in practical affairs” (thank you Dictionary.com). The quick among you will see the fallacy at work here—the fact that a philosophy comprises principles. And what is a principle exactly, but a, “personal or specific basis of conduct  or management.”

Plainly put, a philosophy consists of a bunch of generally unproven beliefs. Which means then, that a philosophy is not proven and therefore seldom holds true in the real world.

Take last night. I met CareerMom and the boys out for dinner at the local binge-n’-purge. Things went well for the first 20 minutes as our oldest contented himself with coloring the little menu thingy and our youngest donned a bib and commenced to eat pretty much whatever we put in front of him. But then all that wore off and we were left with, “I’m ready to go home” whining from our oldest and, “Hey, let’s see how many times I can make mommy and daddy pick this up off the floor” from our youngest.

Once dinner was over, I volunteered to take our youngest home while CareerMom and my oldest went shopping for a last-minute Christmas gift for her Administrative Assistant at work who had made a point of telling CareerMom as she walked out the door that, “I have a Christmas gift for you tomorrow.”

When we got home, I put our youngest on the floor with some plastic containers to play while I washed up bottles and generally cleaned up. Well, he didn’t like that and he decided to cry.

Now, I had two choices here. I could A) Stand by my philosophies and let him entertain himself (or continue to cry) while I cleaned, or I could B) Pick him up, leave the mess and keep him happy.

Have I mentioned I’m stubborn? Well, I am so I stuck by my philosophy and treated myself to pretty much a nonstop 40-minute cry-fest because once he got started, nothing would stop him. It finally got close enough to bedtime, so I bathed him, put his jammies on and put him to bed.

God Bless the quietness!

But I’m at an impasse here because I don’t think he “learned” anything, which is really the whole point of sticking to your philosophy when things go south. So I’m not sure I won anything here and I’m sure that the next time the situation arises, it’ll play out similarly.

The only question that remains is, “How strong is my resolve?” I don’t know the answer to that, but what I do know for sure is that I will be tested; Oh yes, I will be tested still.

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Dad Blogs Family Marriage

Things you’d say if you could to the ones that you love

I’m a sucker for a good sappy movie. Not the chick-flick kind where Hugh Grant plays some poor sot whose girlfriend dumped him and then comes running back. No, the kinds of movies I fall for are the ones that tug at the familial heartstrings. For instance, the movie Jerry McGuire always brings me to tears at the end. I know it’s the butt of many “you complete me” jokes, but there were some really great performances in that movie, once you quite seeing Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch in the back of your head.

Another one that I am a sucker for, is “The Family Man,” with Nicolas Cage and Téa Leoni. If you haven’t seen it (and shame on you), it’s about a successful financial whiz (Cage) who is given a “glimpse” of what life could have been like had he not moved to Europe and become a wealthy banker, and instead stayed home and married his college sweetheart (Leoni). In this glimpse, he lives in a typical suburban rancher with his two kids. He’s a moderately successful tire company executive and his wife is a pro-bono lawyer. By the end of the movie, he’s acclimated to his new life and when it comes time for him to resume his old life as a wealthy playboy, he doesn’t want to go back. Back in his real life, he meets Leoni at the airport and convinces her to stay and talk to him about “what might have been” and they spend the night in the hotel coffee shop reminiscing and catching up.

The obvious point here is that we never know what life would be like had we made different choices. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve made a lot of choices in my life that have dramatically affected the way it’s turned out. For one, I joined the military instead of going to college first, no doubt changing the direction of my career. Another big decision of mine was leaving a girl I was engaged to (OK, she actually broke off the engagement first, but we kept seeing each other until I finally walked away). And of course the big one all of us married couples made, is the decision to get married. In this regard, I’ve often wondered about the big “what if.”

What if I’d never gotten married? What if I didn’t have these children that I complain about so much? This is where the movie “The Family Man” comes in. In it I see the possibilities of my life. Not that I would be even remotely as successful as Cage is in the movie, but I wonder where I would be and more importantly, if I’d be happy.

But then even as I watch it, I remember CareerMom and my first date. I remember how much I couldn’t wait to see her again. I remember the times that I’ve been sick or in the hospital and she’s been there to take care of me when none of my family could be bothered. Then I remember our children. I remember how, just when I didn’t think I could take any more crying or dirty diapers, my son looked up at me and smiled and snuggled his head against my chest. I remember how when he fell down the stairs under my watchful eye, I moved faster than any human could possibly move under his own power (actually beating him down the stairs), catching him just as his head would have hit the wood floor and I remember how, panicked, I held and rocked him until he stopped crying.

I remember all of these things and I realize that this is my glimpse. My real life is the life I used to dream of before I had it. Sure, I didn’t have a few of the facts down, like the lack of sleep or how my free time would suffer, but overall it’s just as I dreamt it.

And I wouldn’t trade it for all the Quan in the world.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Beach Trip Deja vu

So my son and I are here on the outskirts of the country’s most popular destination spot—Pigeon Forge, TN. The house is a huge, three-level affair perched precariously (I’m seriously here) on the side of a mountain. The grade is so steep in fact, that halfway below the bottom floor of each house, and the ground, which falls off dramatically, is a catwalk for maintenance people to use to get to the electrical closet located in what might generously be called a basement.

At any rate, the original plan was for my family to spend the night at my mom’s house a mere 20 miles away, but since it’s only my oldest son and I, my mom made such a fuss about our staying for the night that we did. However, this meant that we got last dibs on sleeping arrangements. In this case, last dibs included the top floor, loft area consisting of two twin beds in a “we’ve been married for 15 years and no longer want to be sleeping in the same room” kind of set up. Also sharing this loft is my aunt, and my niece, and then over a half wall is a bedroom where my cousin and her husband are sleeping. So basically, there are six of us sleeping in a loft together.

Normally, this wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that the house is made of all wood. I mean, there isn’t a stick of sheetrock anywhere. The walls are wood, the floor is wood and the ceilings are wood. What this amounts to is one giant cavernous noise funnel up to the top floor where we are all sleeping. Last night, when one of us turned over in our noisy bed, the rest of us heard it and were similarly disturbed.

Tonight, despite any arguments to the contrary, my son and I are making the twisty, turny trip over the mountain to my mom’s house where I will sleep in a queen bed, as will my son. We will walk around the house in near-nudity since we won’t have to worry about offending aunts and/or cousins, and we will not worry about snoring or tooting in our sleep, lest we offend those who might be offended.

And then tomorrow morning, we may or may not come back—perhaps opting to rather say goodbye via telephone and loiter around Townsend, TN checking out the Apple Barn and the little train museum. And then, hopefully having worn out my son, I’ll strap him in the car and we’ll hit the road on the way home.

Or, I might freeze my butt off in Gatlinburg tonight looking at the lights cuz I was too stupid to bring a coat. We’ll see.