Tag: single parenting

One more candy holiday down!

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, Family, Fatherhood, Life in these United States, MarriageLeave a comment

Easter 20094Are there any more candy holidays until Halloween? I pray not. MLE has shown exceptional acumen at being able to sniff out and unwrap foil-wrapped candy. It’s a vice his older brother never picked up, but is happily playing along with.

*sigh*

CareerMom leaves town again today for the whole week, but this time, things are going to be  bit different. For one, she’s not leaving over the weekend, so I get a break during the day while I’m working and the boys are at daycare. Secondly, she’s arranged for my SIL to come watch the kids two nights this week.

TWO NIGHTS! That’s like, more free time than I get when CareerMom is home (and she wonders why I don’t mind her traveling so much).

However, in what is hopefully not a portend of the week to come, this morning we woke to discover bulging paint in the ceiling over our bedroom armoire, which, when coupled with the pounding rain we’re getting today, could only mean one thing–water leak!

Luckily (if there’s a silver lining when it comes to water leaks), the water is dribbling down a pipe where apparently, it’s not sealed well on the roof. I was able to stuff towels down to stop the water from getting further into my sheetrock and I’m hoping the rain is merciful as the day goes on. Friday night we had some nasty storms come through and we had a brief bit of large hail. I’m wondering if we didn’t accumulate some damage this spring with all the bad weather. So, I’ll be calling Mr. Insurance this morning to see if they want to come out and take a look-see. I know a few of my neighbors have gotten new roofs because of the weather this year so who knows.

Leapfrogging to another topic — church. Being Easter and all, we kept the boys with us in church on Sunday rather than sticking them in children’s church, which incites screaming fits each time from MLE, and they were really good for about 35 minutes. Unfortunately, church is more like an hour and 15 minutes. By the hour mark, MLE had played peek-a-boo with everyone behind us; he’s crawled around on the floor, and even wandered out into the aisle where he watched in awe at the unfolding passion play on stage. MLI just sat, laughed at MLE and ate Cheerios. Luckily, we were in the balcony where you can get away with a lot more shenanigans. It WAS entertaining at least (moreso than the over-emoters playing Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter on stage. And dude! You can’t tell me that Jesus and Mary M. weren’t an item!)

I hope you and your family had a good Easter, or at least enjoyed the fine weather if you don’t celebrate the holiday!

On the bright side, I don’t have any gray hair anymore…(cuz I pulled it all out!)

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, Family, Fatherhood, Marriage8 Comments

boys jumping

Thoughts from this weekend with my two sons:

  • Any softening I have had about how this third child wouldn’t be THAT much bigger a deal, was completely blown out of the water after this weekend. There will be no–let me repeat, absolutely zero–“girls weekends away” when we have three kids. And CareerMom’s traveling schedule is going to seriously have to be re-evaluated, or else the in-laws are going to need to be proactively involved!
  • Give a kid a toy, and he’ll play for five minutes. Ignore a kid for five minutes and everything’s a toy.
  • Boxes of tissues hold infinite amounts of interest for toddlers.
  • Boys only learn by one method, the rod (aka: the switch). Asking nicely doesn’t work. Asking forcefully doesn’t work. Even yelling goes in one ear and out the other and only makes you–the parent–feel like a complete a-hole. Nope, spank ’em and move on.
  • When they wanna be sweet, they can melt your heart. The other 98% of the time, you just want to smash a pile of bricks with your forehead.
  • For anyone out there who may be saying to themselves, “Uh huh, it’s not so easy is it. Now you know what CareerMom had to go through two weeks ago” I submit the following facts:
    • Fact 1: She only had them one full day. The other days were “take ’em to daycare” days.
    • Fact 2: She had nice weather and could take them outside. I had severe thunderstorms and bitter cold.
    • Fact 3: When the going gets tough, the tough take them over to their mom’s house where there is a sister with a daughter to play with
  • I’ve completely run out of junk food-groups to feed them. I’ve done pizza, spaghetti, corn dogs (actually, I grabbed the “sausage dogs” by accident“), what is left?
  • Going and getting a band-aid every 30 minutes is driving me friggin’ nutz. And I’m not even the one getting them!
  • Honestly, I can’t keep up with the messes. Oh, and while vacuuming today, the vacuum belt broke.
  • After soooo looking forward to CareerMom’s returning at 6 p.m. and giving me a break, I checked online and discovered her flight is 1.5 hours late. Guess I get to put them to bed again.
  • CareerMom had better not come home horny! I’m in a “don’t touch me” mood!

I am NOT handling this well.

Craftiness is not one of my strengths

On By Chris SoutherIn Dad Blogs, Family, Fatherhood5 Comments

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?