Tag: kids

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Marriage

Playdate Follow Up

pit children Since so many people have asked (like 3!), I thought I’d offer a follow up post to my “family affair” playdate this past Sunday.

Let me start with a free form word/thought association as the 2 hour playdate carried out:

  • Man, steep hill. Hope I can get the car back down
  • Whoa, flat backyard. Nice
  • Hi, good to see you. Thanks for the invite
  • Hmm, house layout is similar to ours
  • Man, a Sunroom?
  • Man, two fireplaces?
  • Man, a finished basement?
  • Damn, nice bar!
  • Dude, that’s gotta be at least $3,000 in top shelf liquor!
  • Man, this is a really nice place. Makes ours feel kinds smallish
  • (lightbulb coming on in head) You sold your house in Vinings for $700K? No wonder you can afford all the work you’ve done on this place!
  • Where are the kids?
  • Sure, I’ll take a Corona!
  • No really, we can’t stay too long.
  • Of course you have a Wii already? Doesn’t everyone EXCEPT my kids?
  • Um, spoiled much?
  • You’re fifty? Dang!
  • I smell poopy diapers.
  • Best get going.
  • Thanks again.
  • I can’t see a damn thing backing down this hill. I hope I don’t hit her green designer Target lawn bags!

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. We had a good time, and cut the playdate at about 2 hours right when the dad was talking about lighting up the firepit outside. I’m not sure how they saw the evening playing out, but we left at 5 p.m. Any longer and we’d have been cutting into dinner and baths and such and to my knowledge, there was no invitation to dinner.

Maybe it’s just me, but do you ever get the feeling when you meet new people that you’re being sized up as a couple for a potential “swingers party” invitation? While I’m not interested (much), I would like to think that CareerMom and I would be at the top of any swinger’s party list because we’re just THAT good looking. Much like, I’m not gay, but I would probably get all offended if gay men didn’t think I was boyfriend material (does that make me gay?).

People are funny though. CareerMom and I were both taken aback by their house, and their stories of yearly “Adult Only” trips, because one of the first times we met the mom, she was complaining about her daughter wanting a jumpy thing at her birthday party and the mom was saying how she wasn’t going to spend $50 on it.

I guess it just comes down to priorities. If it made my kid happy, I’d forgo the vacation to Aruba so I could splurge on his birthday party.

Anyway, it was good to meet new folks and their son is definitely good friend material, so time well spent.

Hey, in case I don’t talk to any of you before Thursday, have a fantastic Thanksgiving!

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Dad Blogs Family

One of these days, I’ll just have to wipe my own hiney

MLIs potty station According to a survey by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (agriculture?), it now costs approximately $204,000 to raise a child in the U.S. That number is up about 15% from the same study in 1960.

However, I postulate that the data are off in certain areas and that if we adjusted today’s costs to compensate, the number would be sharply higher than 15%. What am I talking about? I’m talking about poop (of course!).

Like many kids (hopefully), neither of my boys like to get their hands messy. This is especially true for MLI, who, as I’ve blogged about previously, is borderline OCD with certain things. He doesn’t like to get paint on his hands. At dinner, if he gets a sauce on the side of his arm, he freaks out. Even water causes him grief until both CareerMom and I have assured him that “Honey, water dries.”

So it should come as no surprise that when it comes to poop, the whole potty thing is a veritable colonostic Hiroshima just waiting to happen!

The problem is compounded even more by the fact that he has a small…um…colon (or something), thereby making it difficult for him to poop. So, we have to keep him on a small dose of laxative. Therefore, when he does go, it’s often messier than usual. To help prevent potty time meltdowns due to the mess factor, and so that one of us didn’t have to stand there with a wet washcloth, a long time ago CareerMom bought a box of “Kandoo.” They are billed as “moist” wipes for kids, and I suspect, based on their price, that the goal is to get the kid hooked on them now, so that they will forever eschew dry T.P. in favor of the overpriced moist towelettes for the hiney!

(Secretly, I kinda like them too, and I once remember seeing a comment on “Year of the Chick’s” blog about how we men (unsanitary trolls that we are), should all use them.)

Anyway, the things cost a friggin’ arm and a leg. Even the generic store brand ones get expensive when the kid sits in there after pooping and uses twenty at a time. CareerMom and I, both knowing this is going on, try to get in there to prevent such widespread abuse of the moist towellete, but we are usually met with a shrieking, “NOOOOOOoooooo” and a door slammed on our toes.

If anyone has an alternative, I’m all ears. I mean, that $15 a month on moist towelettes (I said “moist” four times *snicker*) could be diverted to his college fund, or my HDTV fund or something REALLY important like that!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States

The truth about parenting

fall pumpkinsThere are axioms to parenting and raising children, no doubt more than I will ever remember. I’m reminded of them from time to time while raising my own kids, and while watching others.

Some of the truisms I’ve found include:

  • Snotty noses will run when gramma comes, driving her crazy until she has to reach out and wipe…and make a comment about it
  • Expensive toys are no match for cardboard boxes and plastic lids
  • A baby will have an “accident” at the least opportune time; usually coinciding with your having recently run out of diapers and/or wipes in your vehicle
  • Whatever food they LOVED last week, they will turn their nose up at this week
  • Whatever you have planned for the day–fuhgettaboutit! (ain’t that right Mike?)
  • If one child has a toy, the other wants it…at least until the other loses interest in it

There are more I’m sure.

Anyway, this weekend, despite the 90 degree temps, CareerMom and I got into a “fall” kinda mood. She broke out the bins of decorations, and I watched while switching off and on between playing with the boys, and rolling around on the carpet trying to stretch out my back.

My neighbor up the street always puts out a big yard display for fall and this year, I wanted to join in (read: compete for neighborly affections). I’ve been looking online for some outdoor pumpkins that light up and had been unsuccessful in the “sub-$50” range. But we have a store here called “Old Time Pottery.” It’s kinda like the Wal-Mart of crafty stores. So I scooped up MLI and we headed out for a shopping spree.

When you first walk in this store, you are assaulted with dozens of those recently popular blow up yard-art things (which I secretly crave, but know that CareerMom would cringe over) and MLI LOVED IT! He ran from one to another, his face all lit up with the possibilities! I hated to break the news to him that I’m not man enough to put one up in our yard and face CareerMom over it, so I just nodded my head and suggested that perhaps we “move along.”

They also have a huge selection of candles and such and one of mine and MLI’s favorite things to do is smell the candles.

And here is where I was reminded of yet another parenting truism:

  • If you put a kid around glass objects, something will get broken

As we popped the tops off of one candle after another, I heard a “smash!” and looked over at MLI holding the top of a candle while the rest of it lay in pieces at his feet on the concrete floor. The poor kid looked horrified and I was immediately reminded of how my first adopted mom would get incensed if I went outside and got dirty, usually resulting in, at best, a stern scolding.

I quickly went to him, grabbed the glass candle top from his hands and, while looking around, carefully used my shoe to scooch the broken glass under the display (hey, I didn’t want anyone to get hurt you know!). I told him it was OK, but that we had to be very careful.

What really got to me though was the look on his face…as if he thought I was going to immediately grab him and starting wailing on his bare bottom. I know exactly what he was feeling; I felt it many times (and experienced it in many forms) when I was his age.

Right then I vowed to never react that way to him. It’ll be tough the older he gets. Such as the first time he wrecks the car–when he starts disobeying and disrespecting my authority–when he gets his girlfriend…nevermind, you get the point.

Which reminded me of a parenting truism that I would do well to never forget:

  • Our children pattern themselves after us

I’m not perfect, but I’m doing my best.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Craftiness is not one of my strengths

Before CareerMom left for the week, she did everything she could to make things easier for me in her absence. She told me I could go do whatever I wanted while she watched the boys this past weekend–an offer I only temporarily took advantage of. She made sure the boys had plenty of diapers and wipes and clean clothes stocked at daycare so I wasn’t trying to schlepp all that junk around in my truck (or forgetting it and having to drive the 9 miles back home for it). She even had me go ahead and print up pictures of the family for both the boys because they are each in a new class at daycare (MLI is in pre-k now) and their teachers wanted a picture from each child.

But things rarely go as one plans, and so it was as CareerMom dropped off MLE on Monday morning before she left that she found out the teacher had changed the “picture” request into a “poster” request.

A Poster huh?

That would mean like, crafty crap right? Yeah, um…I’m not really good at crafty crap.

Now, you could ping my mom, or any of my brothers or sisters and they would be able to help out with crafty crap, but not me. I have zero artistic ability, and even less creativity.

That said though, if you give me colors, I can match them. I’m even good at decorating, but don’t ask me to actually MAKE anything.

But, since it was up to me and the boys, I was determined to come up with something that wouldn’t make MLE look like he had the worst, uncaring parents in the world; so here’s what I came up with:

Craft Project 002

Now, as bad as it is, it’s not as crooked as it looks here. That’s just an illusion of the camera. You may be able to click on it and get a larger version.

I’m truly not fishing for compliments here, because though I know it’s not great, for me, it’s actually pretty good. So, I’m not half-disappointed in myself.

And the boys sure didn’t care. I let them both get in on the paint-handprint thing…and then MLE stepped in the green paint and before I could stop him, it was all over the kitchen floor.

CareerMom will undoubtedly want to redo the thing when she returns, but my lil work of art will at least get a few days of life in MLE’s class.

Does that count as 15 minutes of fame?