Tag: parenting

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Blue / Pink / Indifferent?

It’s amazing how quickly one can accept a situation and begin making plans for it, even if that situation goes against everything you’ve been planning up till that point in life.

My wife got up this morning and announced that she was terribly nauseous. Now, we’ve been pretty careful with the “relations” since our last son was born, but there might have been a time or two that our teenage years crept upon us and we excused off the hassle and just went with the moment.

With a “Do you think the drugstore is open yet?” she was out the door on a mission to get a pregnancy test. When she came home, she went straight upstairs and faster than I thought the test could return results, she comes back downstairs and says, “We’re not pregnant.”

Now, I know a lot of people think babies are God’s gift and so on and so forth, but gift or no, I am not prepared for another baby. I was feeling pretty confident she might be pregnant though based both on today’s little episode and a week or two of her feeling a tad on the puny side. In my head, even as I was lamenting, “Oh my LORD what’re we gonna do?” I was also planning out how long it would take me to finish off a couple of rooms in my basement so we could still have a guest room if we had to turn our current upstairs guest room into a nursery.

Thank goodness no such plans will be necessary.

Apparently, she only has a tummy bug as she has slept literally all day and thus far neither myself nor the boys have any symptoms (which is suspect considering everyone I know who’s had this, has also passed it to their entire household in a matter of hours). I’ve been careful to keep the boys generally away from her all day so if we’re lucky, it’ll stop with her. Of course, with the exception of my recent fishing trip, I just don’t throw up. Stomach bugs don’t affect me for some reason, so I’m not a good gauge of a bug’s possibilities.

At any rate, today’s over and now I can relax for a bit before my week begins.
And I can guaran-darn-tee that the next time the moment feels right, I’ll be puttin’ on my hat.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Survival of the fittest!

My kids’ daycare has camera monitoring in all the classes, but the resolution is pretty bad so it’s difficult to tell who is whom. I’m pretty sure this is Aiden based solely on his socks.

Well, I made it through last night. The boys were good and we actually managed to get a decent meal in. I put Aiden down around 8:15 and Ethan about 8:40, leaving me to do all sorts of fun things, like clean up and brush my teeth and such. Of course, just as I was lying down to go to sleep (10:15’ish) Aiden woke up. So, fed him and crawled back in bed til about 2 a.m. when he woke up again.

If you read yesterday’s blog, you know I was gonna try some tough love and let him cry it out. Well, after 45 minutes, I gave up. At some point, you just have to say, “OK, he’s miserable, I’m miserable, how about some milky?” So, did that and crawled back in bed around 3:15 a.m.

Slept till 6:45 (wow!) Got out of bed and found Ethan sitting by his bedroom door and when he saw me, he ran up and said, “You slept a long time.” I only wish!

Anyway, got the boys off and now it’s work time. Hooray!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

In this corner, weighing in at a whopping, 32 lbs…

These days, saying “Boys will be boys” in a group of parents is liable to earn you a few raised eyebrows and possibly a mental scolding. Let’s face it, everyone is so litigiously politically correct that allowing children, especially boys, to work things out the old fashioned way is akin to burning them with cigarette butts, and just as likely to get you reported to your local children’s services group.

So, I find myself in a quandary regarding my oldest son. He’s three, and while he isn’t the smallest boy in his little daycare class, he’s by no means the biggest. There have been instances over the last few months where he’s been the target of some small amount of bullying (yes, even at the tender age of 3) and in most cases, he’s responded as society has taught us to respond–by doing nothing.

Dads, you’ll understand where I’m going with this, but for you moms, let me explain something for you. Boys WILL be boys. Boys WILL get in fights and boys WILL have to earn their place among each other. Groups of boys enjoy a pecking order that often has nothing to do with who is toughest, but has more to do with who is the most assertive. As a consequence, boys who are not necessarily assertive, often become targets. It’s a situation I happen to have a lot of experience in.

When I was growing up, we moved from our house in-town to a fairly rural area around Mobile, AL. This meant I also moved to a new school and started 6th grade among kids whom I had no history with. There were no childhood friends with whom I could buddy up to for protection. No, I was on my own. For the first year at my new school, I trekked back and forth from class to class avoiding a certain group of boys. There was also a certain boy in my neighborhood that gave me problems, although to be fair, there was never any violence; just the threat of violence on a daily basis. One day at P.E., after taking verbal jabs from one boy for about 15 minutes, I managed to put him on the ground and convinced him that I probably wasn’t going to be a good target from then on. Ya know what happened after that? Most of my problems at school with other boys just went away. And while I wouldn’t say I was best buds with my previous nemesis’, we at least had an understanding. A similar thing happened a couple of years later with the boy in my neighborhood, and after that, he left me alone too.

Back to the original point: Armed with this knowledge, I’m having a hard time being politically correct when it comes to my son. A new boy has moved into his daycare class and apparently this new boy finds my son a fun person to pick on. Now, if my son pushes the boy back after being pushed himself, he gets fussed at by the teachers. As if maybe he was supposed to either just take the abuse, or go running to the teachers tattle-telling. Yesterday when I picked him up from daycare, I mentioned that maybe soon he’ll be moved up to the next class with his other friends who just moved up, to which my son responded, “Yeah, and then maybe Aiden (this new little troublemaker) won’t pick on me anymore.”

As a parent, and as a dad, this really bothers me. I know how being a target makes a young boy feel and I would spare my son that if I could. However, I also don’t want him to get into trouble and be labeled a troublemaker. So, I’m at an impasse as to what advice to give him. Maybe I just don’t give him any advice. Maybe I don’t say that I don’t want him starting fights and maybe I don’t say that he’ll get in trouble if he gets in a fight. Maybe I also leave out that if the other boy pushes him, he has my permission to return the favor. At least that way he has no preconceived notions about what will happen if he does haul off and smack this other boy.

My other thought is to call up the daycare director and tell her that if my son comes home one more time and tells me that he got pushed by this other boy, that I’m going to give him permission to do whatever he feels like doing and if they want to discipline him, fine, but I won’t be adding to it when he gets home.

Living in fear is not fun and I’m sorry, but sometimes boys have to be themselves and work things out the old fashioned way. Sometimes violence (limited violence) is necessary. Save the peace talks for the boardroom and let playground politics rule the day!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Knowing when ta fold em Part 2

Well, despite the craziness of the first couple of days of the vacation, the remaining two days were fairly uneventful. We didn’t get much sleep at night because both boys appeared to come down with a cold (which I now have). The wind and waves were almost unbearable down on the beach, so we spent most of our in-water time in the pool. The island wasn’t in a real touristy area, so off-island excursions were pretty much out of the question. In short…we were stuck in the house for the remainder of the week.

But here are some notables:

  • My wife’s youngest sister woke up to a roach crawling in her hair
  • My oldest son got tired of one of the other boys and his older sister taking his train and he pushed the boy and took his stuff back. (even while I was admonishing him, I was mentally patting him on the back)
  • There was no shortage of making fun of all the lazy people using the elevator to go up or down one flight of stairs
  • My wife’s oldest brother’s wife feels no qualms about breastfeeding in public. I, however, feel no qualms about getting up in the middle of a conversation with her and leaving the room when she starts it
  • I caught no more fish. In fact, the waves were so bad, I couldn’t even get out in the surf to cast adequately far
  • I put a shrimp in my bathing suit pocket whilst fishing. I forgot it was there and when we got home, I washed it and dried it. Stunk up the whole load.
  • Not once did my wife and I get to walk on the beach together
  • On Sunday, one of the in-laws lost his wedding ring within 5 minutes of getting in the ocean. His wife, subsequently lost her diamond engagement ring in the pool two days later. Is that weird or what? Speculation abounded about the whole thing, especially considering she put all of about 20 minutes search time into it, while others spent hours taking apart the pool filter, and looking around the perimeter of the pool in the sand.

Otherwise, the trip was fine 🙂 We decided to leave Wednesday afternoon around 4 p.m. and actually hit the road at 4:19. God must have felt pity on us, and he put the boys to sleep for nearly 5 hours of the trip home. I actually got to hold a conversation with my wife in the front seat of the car. A novelty that one!

Back at home, things are slowly settling back to normal. Our youngest is sleeping better again, although both boys still have snotty noses. All in all, it’s really good to be home. And I’ve already put my foot down and said that next year, our core family is going somewhere by ourselves. Then the next year, we may team up with one of her sibling’s families and do Disney. We’ll see.