Tag: parenting

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Beans Beans…Great for Your Heart!

I think we can all agree that no matter how old we get, or how mature we like to pretend ourselves to be, farts are funny! Come on, you want to tell me that if you’re sitting there in a crowded room, and it goes all quiet, if someone ripped one, you wouldn’t snort a big guffaw?

Well, maybe you’ll understand my predicament then. MLI is getting old enough now that when a toot comes out (of anyone), he doesn’t just accept that it’s a toot and move on without any reaction; no, he’s old enough now to rationalize that tooting in public isn’t normally done, which only makes it funny! Right? I mean, if it’s commonplace, then who cares?

Other than sex, is there anything as normal, yet so remarkably un-discussed as passing gas? And why not I wonder? Because it’s so gross? Probably.

A quick Internet search found that there are some people talking about it though. In fact, MythBusters did a show on the myth of “Do Girls Pass Gas?” (by the way, they DO) and there’s a pretty funny MySpace site called, “Coalition for Public Farting (CPF)” where they advocate making public flatulence more acceptable. So, it’s out there, but maybe still not mainstream.

Sometimes I hear married couples talk about it just as normally as might a couple of teenage boys, but I just can’t see myself ever being that comfortable around CareerMom. However, when she’s out of town, and it’s just us guys around the house, well, all’s fair in love and gas!

But, where then do you draw the line with a four year old? He’s old enough to know it’s funny, but is he old enough to quickly decide whether it’s ok to do right before he does it? I don’t think so. He also had constipation for the first few years of his life and we finally got it under control thanks to Miralax, but during that time, we read him books like “Everyone Poops”

and “The Gas We Pass”   , to try and get him to thiink about it as a normal function. Wouldn’t getting all uppity about it now be a little hypocritical of us?

Maybe this is one of those things (like discussing a woman’s age) that a person just has to learn for himself the hard way.  In fact, it’s probably a lot less embarrassing than asking a women if she’s pregnant, and finding out she’s not. Yeah, I made that mistake once.

Given that different cultures approach this topic differently, I’m curious how you folks handle this in your marriage/household. Do tell!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Ixnay on the iseaseday!

They (being the medical community) really shouldn’t give two very different diseases/conditions similar names. Really, it just causes panic and confusion.

MLE (My Little Extrovert = my youngest son) was all smiles and grinning last night as I lay in bed half-dead to the world from some temporary illness that rendered me incapable of doing anything but playing Unreal Tournament 2004 Online and reading my spy novels (it was a very odd and selective illness that I had). But, the minute we put him to bed, he started crying and such. This went on until about 11:45, after which he quieted down and slept the rest of the night.

This morning, he wasn’t his usual happy self upon waking and when CareerMom tried to leave him at daycare, he just fell apart. Knowing this wasn’t normal and suspecting he had a bit of a fever, she took him to the doctor where they proceeded to diagnose a fever, a bad ear infection and an ulcer that, “…you should keep an eye on in case he is g

I’m pretty ignorant regarding most of these conditions, so parlay that into a Google search term for the chronically lazy typer, and here’s what you get: “foot mouth disease”

foot-mouth-disease.jpg

Holy Crap! My kid’s gonna die!

But wait…it says, “not to be confused with hand, foot and mouth disease…”

A huge effin difference people of the medical community who name diseases! Gimme a friggin heart attack why dontcha?

So, worst-case scenario, he gets a bunch of little bumps on his hands, mouth and feet and we have to keep him home from daycare for a while. I mean, not the best scenario I could imagine, but certainly better than the alternative. I’m just sayin’, couldn’t they just call the bad one “livestock disease #453”?  Then, there would no confusing it with a common infant malady at all.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

The Baby Swing Dilemma

crossroad.jpgOnce again I find myself at a crossroads where my kids are concerned. On a side note, if you never saw the 80s movie “Crossroads” with Karate Kid’s Ralph Macchio, I highly recommend it.

Anyway, this crossroad decision involves whether or not to wean my oldest son away from the swing or not. With my first son, it was all about the swing. Swing at night, swing at naptime during the day, swing, swing, swing. With my youngest son, almost a year old now, he’s been actually very good about sleeping in his crib, only requiring the swing during the daytime and generally, any time we really just need him to calm down and rest.

This “calm down and rest” time also happens to occur every morning between 4:30 – 5:30 a.m. when we adults are still trying to squeeze a few extra minutes out of our slumber or trying to get ourselves ready for work unencumbered by a clamoring baby. However, I’m not immune to the fact that while this may work for now, sometime in the next additional pound or two, that puny Fisher-Price swing motor is going to go kaput like the two before it and we’ll be left hanging with a crying baby at 5:30 in the morning.

Personally, I’m a cold-turkey kind of person. When I set my mind to doing something, or stop doing something in this case, I just stop. I don’t dial it down gradually—nossir, I’m all about nipping it in the bud—and permanently!

CareerMom is not.

So unless I want to get into a mild argument with her over the swing, any attempts that I make to stop using it will be usurped by her at her earliest convenience. So I’m stuck over what to do. I guess like most things, you just cross that bridge when you get to it.

I also still have about 20 pairs of disposable earplugs if things get too bad.

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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!