Tag: Roswell

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

The Harsh Realities of Life – Preparing Kids Early (Maybe Too Early)

Sometimes when you’re watching TV or a Disney movie, and there’s a really touching scene involving children and their parents—usually a culmination scene where a problem between the two parties is worked out—there is often a moment when the parent looks at the child (usually the father) and says, “Have I ever lied to you?” The child usually doesn’t respond because kids are smarter than we give them credit for and they have already rationalized, “I don’t know…have you?” but they know better than to say that out loud, so instead they externalize, “No daddy, you haven’t. I love you!” Then the music cues up, the credits roll and everyone lives happily ever after.

What a crock! Or, at least I hope so because if I’m being honest, I will never be able to utter that line to my oldest son. Does that make me a bad parent?

Let me explain:

If you have boys, then you know who Thomas the Tank Engine is. If you’re unfamiliar, he’s this lovable little blue train made up in the mind of one Reverand Awdry way back in the day. He made up the Thomas character for his sick son, but some marketing genius over in the U.K. figured out what a cool idea it was and it has now become a worldwide phenomenon. And to be sure, we’ve done our part at enlarging the influence of the franchise by purchasing at least $600 worth of Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise and associated tracks, a table, etc.

Every year, a full-sized Thomas train comes to Chattanooga, TN, about an hour and a half drive from here. The drive isn’t so bad really, it’s the time of year. It always comes in the summer and quite frankly, the last thing I want to do is spend three hours in a car with my kids, only to stand around in lines with five thousand other people to spend 20 whole minutes riding on a train. It just doesn’t hold appeal for me.

Instead, I took my son to a Thomas and Friends play this weekend at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Hall. At $27.50 a ticket, it was no deal, but I figured after skipping out on the real thing, it was worth it. The play was well done and there were three of his favorite trains in near-life size on the stage, so he had a lot of fun.

There was also a miniature train out in the lobby that you had to buy tickets for to ride. When we arrived, the line was too long to ride, so I told him we’d come out during intermission and ride it, only to discover that the owner of the said train didn’t want it to run during intermission. My son was pretty heartbroken; however, let me explain that just the day before, we had gone to Six Flags and he had ridden two trains, so personally, I didn’t see that this was a big deal.

Not one to miss much, my son said, “Well maybe after the show we can come ride it,” to which I simply responded with the non-committal parental catch-all, “Maybe.”

Our seats were situated in the balcony and I knew that by the time the show was over and we could get downstairs, every other like-minded parent would be ahead of us, so when the show was over, I rushed him downstairs before the train started up and said, “Oh look, the train isn’t running” and then I took him home.

That was bad…I know it was, but I didn’t want to stand in line for an hour to ride a train around in a circle no bigger than our living room….and he had just ridden a train the day before.

To his credit, he didn’t pitch a fit or anything. I was shocked and proud of him at the same time, because if there’s one thing I want my children to be prepared for in life…it’s disappointment. That’s kinda sick though isn’t it?

Hey, I never said I was a good parent.

Categories
Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Society

I’ve got an ice cream…and you can’t have one…

From the very same institution (or at least a branch of it) that brought us taxes and war, has come the longer school year. For the kids here in Georgia–and the metro Atlanta area to be more precise–this means that next week marks the beginning of yet another year of substandard education at the hands of underpaid mother-in-laws. It also, unfortunately, means that my commute to work next week may very well signal the end of time–Carmageddon if you will. Because this is when all those teachers, who are use to sleeping late and arising well past the “safe to gas up your car due to smog” time has passed, will once again grab their half-caf-espresso with a twist of lime and head out the door clogging up the already busy lanes.

Which brings me (finally) to today’s conversational topic-school. Georgia has never ranked very high in the national school rankings. In fact, in a recent 2007 ranking of public high schools in Newsweek magazine, good ol’ Georgia only had one entry in the top 300 in the nation. Now some will say “It’s just a southern thang,” but even that’s not accurate. In comparison, our border neighbors stacked up thusly in the top 300:

But statistics notwhithstanding, yuppy-snobs here like to brag about how smart their little whipper-snapper is compared to his or her peers. And it doesn’t just start in middle school or high school when the young Democrat starts taking liberal arts classes either. Nossir it starts much earlier.

Try Daycare! Oh yeah, daycare is all the rage too. Well first, you have to find the proper audience. Utter the sentence “My wife and I both work and we have our children in daycare,” in the wrong setting and at best you’ll get condescending looks, and at worst, people will go “Sixth Sense” (can you believe that movie is 8 years old?) on you and pretend like you don’t exist. But, in the right audience (i.e. dual income families with kids), if you utter the aforementioned death-cry, the ensuing “My daycare is better than your daycare” posturing can reach epic proportions.

And daycare is an interesting concept really, because unlike schools where children from generally one socio-economic area gather together and can revel in their similarities, daycare in a relative 10-square mile radius all cost the same and so the driving factor for what kinds of kids attend there is largely based on how convenient the facility is to one or both of the parent’s offices. So, you can, and often do, get kids of all economic levels, ethnicities, etc.

So it is at my kids’ daycare. My oldest son’s two best friends include a little girl a bit older than he, whose mom recently got divorced and now has to move away for a job she hates. His other best friend is a boy his age whose parents are very similar to us. We knew that he would soon be moving on to the next class in daycare because they’ve moved a bunch of new kids in his class and him and his buds are nearly the oldest ones there now. But what we found out yesterday is that instead of moving him to the next class, they are moving him and his friends to the next-next class. Hippity hoppity ho!

My three year old is already skipping “grades.” Well, not really but that’s how part of me wants to spin it to all my friends. In truth, the reason probably has less to do with intelligence and more to do with economics–the daycare needs to make some room in his current class and in the next class because they moved a bunch of other kids a couple of weeks ago, and since him and his two friends are well potty trained and probably the three best behaved, it makes sense that if you need to move some kids to a different, older class, then moving their little group makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong; my boy is smart, but I don’t think he’s a Mozart or an Einstein. And who wants their kid to be that smart, but socially inept anyway? Certainly not me. So, I’ll go on being proud of him for all the other reasons; he generally listens, he’s potty trained, he has a really gentle spirit, he loves his little brother and because in his eyes, daddy knows how to do just about anything.

Even if they wanted to put him in high school tomorrow and started calling him “Doogie Howser” I wouldn’t be any more proud of him than I already am.

Categories
Dad Blogs Fatherhood

Every little thing (s)he does is magic…

Our second baby boy is almost six months old this month (19th). He’s beautiful, a joy, all the proper adjectives a loving parent could wish for. But he’s not been the easiest baby we’ve known. Since his birth, we’ve survived nearly 14 weeks of colic, and all the fun that comes with. We’ve made it through his first two teeth coming in, the drool, the biting, the whining. Diaper rash, the sniffles, some puking…the works.

After six months of saying, “Nope, no more kids,” we finally started getting a bit of a reprieve. Lo, he started sleeping at night.

He’s been holding himself up for months so we felt pretty safe putting him on his tummy where slept like…well, a baby. Now he’s sitting up and playing on his own and if he could just coordinate the arm pushups with the legs pushes, he’d be crawling.

And that, my friends, is where our newest challenge comes from. See, he doesn’t like sleeping on his back, so when you lay him down in his crib at night, you have to put him on his tummy or he immediately wakes up. The last few nights, however, as soon as we put him down on his tummy, he tucks his legs under him and pushes his butt up in the air. Sometimes he’ll just stay like that, and heaven-forbid you try and straighten his legs out, because 9 out of 10 times, you’ll wake him up. Instead, you just cover him up and pray he sleeps.

For the last two nights, he’s awakened himself by rolling over during his sleep and since he doesn’t like sleeping on his back, he wakes up and cries. We go in, cuddle him quietly, give him a sip of bottle and down he goes…only to wake up again a couple of hours later. The last two nights, we’ve gotten up four times both nights. This can’t go on.

Last night, we even tried the beloved swing, which we don’t generally like to use, but which usually works for 5-6 hours. No dice. Every 1.5-3 hours he woke up. I know babies are a challenge, but my Lord, can’t a parent catch a break? This is particularly troublesome because my wife is traveling for four days next month, leaving lil’ ol me to answer the midnight calls. I’m considering earplugs and tough love. Cuz remember, I tried tough love by itself a month ago when my wife traveled and I didn’t have earplugs. After 45 mins, I gave in.

You know what we need, a “Baby Whisperer.” Is there a TV show for that on the Discovery Channel? (Holy Crap! There is!) Here

Categories
Dad Blogs Fatherhood Life in these United States

Staying Fit As You Age

Ever since I hit the big “p” (as in puberty), and all the way through high school, I was a tad on the chubby side. Even after I joined the Air Force, I was heavier until one day I’d just had enough of it. I don’t remember the epiphenous (is that a word?) moment, but I’d bet the bag of Keebler Soft Batch I was eating at the time that it had something to do with self-loathing. The next day I walked the 75 yards over to the Army health club on the base I had to live on and made friends with the civilian guy who worked there. Over the next year and a half, I went from 170 lbs of mostly water, bone and fat, to 155 lbs of water, bone and lean muscle mass.

I would like to take moment here and personally thank Cindy Crawford for putting out “Shape Your Body,” without which, my winter workouts (and my fantasies) would have suffered.

Over time though, my overexuberant quest for physical perfection left me with multiple ruptured discs in my back, leading to two back surgeries after I’d left the military (you never let military surgeons open you up unless you have a bullet lodged in you and you’re bleeding out on the table).

It’s been twelve years since I got out of the military and since then I’ve gotten married and now have two kids, which, if you’re married, then you know…if there’s one thing that will derail your health regiment, it’s marriage and kids. I also unfortunately have a metabolism that quickly adjusts to any attempt to kick-start it by going into “starvation mode” and storing everything I eat on the off chance I’ll fall off a boat in the Adriatic Sea and need the added warmth that only a spare tire will afford.

But even with all these excuses, I’ve been pretty consistent, only missing the gym due to surgeries, sinus infections and vacation. But lately, the toll is starting to get to me. There’s not much that doesn’t hurt, my back most of all. Sitting is especially joyful, and working in a cubicle farm is a particular kind of hell from which there is little reprieve.

So my question is, when is enough…enough? At only 34, there’s no way I can give up working out, but at the same time—in my mind—why bother working out at all if you’re not trying to make gains? Sure, I could go in there day after day and go through the motions like all the other zombies, but my heart wouldn’t be in it, and would I really be doing any good anyway?

If my wife knew how much pain I was in, she would berate me to no end with something to effect of, “I don’t want to be married to a 45 year old man who can hardly walk! You need to stop.” At the same time, she also knows I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I had to stop.

So what do you do? I guess it comes down to what’s most important to me. Do I live life with a zealous “carpe diem” attitude and all the pain it entails, or do I listen to my body and take up namaste yoga and accept the inevitable weight gain and mirror avoidance that’s sure to follow?

Is there a happy medium? If so, it’s going to require more than just a change of exercise routine; it’s going to require a mindset change and that’s perhaps the hardest exercise of all.