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The Pinnacle of Fatherhood
Triple D
This past weekend I had the honor of escorting our beautiful daughter to the annual Stepfordville Daddy-Daughter Dance, or Triple D as I like to call it. This is a first for both of us. And with she in her old flower girl dress and Me in my only suit, we head out for a night out under the Stepfordville lights. Just a Dad and his Daughter…
In Stepfordville, few things are bigger than the Daddy Daughter Dance. (The only thing bigger is the
chow time
annual luxury import vehicle giveaway…that’s the only way I can explain how everyone here drives one…maybe this is my year to win…) And due to the unrealistically large number of children in Stepfordville, the Triple D cannot simply exist as a single event held in an evening. In fact, there are so many little girls in Stepfordville that the Triple D must be divvied up like chow time in prison. Each age group (or cell block) gets a 1.5hr time slot for which to hold their dance.
We decide to surprise M and get her a pretty corsage to wear to the dance. This, of course, is met with indifference, if not disgust. (Perhaps we should not have opted for the corsage tattoo) After a quick guilt trip, she relents, and agrees to wear the flower…but ONLY until we get into the dance…So, donned with our pretty flower and a scowl, we are off to the Triple D! (After 400 photos…thank you, Mommy)
M’s Corsage Tat
If I can describe the dance in one word, it would be, “Crowd”…or “Lines”…It starts before we even leave our vehicle with waiting in line to pay for parking. Once we have parked and make our way into the Stepfordville Conference Center and we find ourselves in line yet again. This time the line is to take photos, which, like the parking, cost money. Oh well, you gotta pay to play, right?
20 or so minutes into our allotted chow time…err, dance time, we finally make our way into the main hall. As you might suspect, we find ourselves in line for a third…and final time. This line is for refreshments. (Wow, we actually do get some chow! … the prison similarities are starting to pile up…Is that guy wearing an orange jumpsuit??) We load up our paper plates with tiny finger sandwiches, semi-fresh fruit, and stale cookies. This feast is not to be outdone by the airplane-sized servings of soda poured straight from the 2-liter bottle! Oh well, we ain’t here for the grub. Let’s dance!
Let’s Dance!
We hit the floor with some fellow daddy-daughter cohorts and the dancing commences. As we approach the dance floor, a sea of suited-up middle-aged dads parts to allow us entry. These dads are busting some moves! I see the sprinkler, the running man, the cabbage patch, and even the robot. If not for the little girls, I would swear I am at an insurance seminar mixer! As they say, “When in Rome…” so I start working my magic on the floor with M. Soon, she is dancing in a group of her schoolmates and I find myself moonwalking alone. Now I know how Farmer Ted felt when Sammy left him on the dance floor in Sixteen Candles…awkward.
Who wouldn’t dance with these dads
The rest of the dance continues in this manner except that the other “single” dads and myself make our way to the sidelines to watch our little girls having a blast…without us. It is at this point that I am thankful that the Triple D is so short. There is only so much small talk and little girl screams this man can take. (The loudest of the screams came when What Does the Fox Say comes on…I am still deaf in my left ear)
Before we know it, the time limit is up on our fairy tale evening and the DJ is ushering us out the door in order to prepare the mess hall for the next cell block. We take our girlies out for dinner and rather than cut our losses and call it an evening, we decide it will be a good idea to take them to Main Event (a mega-super-center containing bowling, laser tag, video games…and beer).
Main Event is anything but an event. As soon as the game cards are loaded up with dad’s cash, our girls are gone… So we do what any other man would do in this situation, we get beers and follow them around while they play games. If they were older, this would be equivalent to holding purses and coats while they shop. At least the beer is cold.
It takes roughly 1 1/2 hours for us to collect the girls and exit the mega-supercenter-gameapalooza-bar. The girls guzzle down the candy that they purchased with their winning game tickets on the way home while the dads ride in a silent, slightly beer-tinted reflection.
As I tuck my sweet baby girl in and looks up at me with those heart-melting baby blues and she whispers, “Best night ever” and then flashes an ear-to-ear grin (at which point she looks like a jack-o-lantern due to all of the missing teeth she has…or doesn’t have). It is at this point that I come to a harsh realization.
I have reached the pinnacle of fatherhood. Soon, this little angel will hate me. She will not snuggle with me while we watch cartoons. She will not throw her arms around me and ask me to pick her up. She will probably not even talk to me…She will grow up.
I only wish “chow time” lasted longer…
It’s Holiday Season Again: Christmas…Execution Style
I am proud (or embarrassed) to present the final installment of the Holiday Season Series. So sit back, drop your pants, tighten that belt around your neck one more notch and try not to lose conciousness before you “finish”.
Ah Christmas, the culmination of a long journey that is the holiday season. Complete with enough glitz and glam to impress even little bearded baby Jesus, who just happens to share a fake birthday with our favorite day to celebrate capitalism. It’s funny really when you take a step back and look at how we have bastardized what was once a holy day to many. Frankincense and Myrrh have been replaced with PS3 & iPad. Saint Nicholas is now a fat ass cookie-gobbling home invader, and the traditional nativity scene now comes with Yoda as the baby Jesus. But hey, at least we are winning the war on terror… Suck on that Bin Ladin! However, I admit that I, too am to blame for the capitalization of Christmas, but screw it, I like blinky lights and boxes wrapped with shiny paper just as much as the next guy, which brings us to Christmas and my family.
I have purposely waited 2 months to publish this entry because it has taken this long to recover. I still shutter at the mere thought of a Christmas tree. Once upon a time Christmas could quite possibly have been my most favorite time of year. My folks were blessed with the good fortune to be able to afford to buy my sister and me pretty much anything we asked for, and believe me, we asked for a lot. I think at one time I had enough G.I. Joe paraphernalia to invade a small country and my sister had a enough Barbie dolls to recreate Hugh Hefner’s wildest Playboy Mansion shindig…that is until we turned all of those plastic bitches into Pope-shredding Sinead O’Connor doppelgangers! It’s safe to say that my sis and I loved us some Christmas.
Fast forward from prepubescent, kung fu grip-enthusiast to 37 years old, married with kids. Now I am getting a glimpse behind the shimmering, happy happy-joy joy facade that is Christmas and I don’t like what I see. I used to look under the ole Christmas tree and I was instantly transformed into a present-hoarding Gollum, or Smeagolif you prefer…my precious…Now when I look under that same tree I see boxes wrapped in my money and an ever-worsening toy infestation problem in our home.
Looks more like my sister than me
I don’t know how my folks did it. It seems like my sis and I had a ton of toys and somehow my folks managed to keep the toys from taking over their home. I can’t walk through my house now without stepping on a Zooble (WTF is a Zooble??), or having to clear the furniture of stuffed animals and books just to sit down. In fact, we once had a guest room in our house that is now overrun with Elmo and his gang of Asian-made marauders. And this Christmas is no exception.
Christmas Eve: My House
Since Francine, our Elf on The Shelf, came to live with us a couple of years ago, we have ceased to travel for Christmas. The original thought of setting up the Santa crime scene was endearing…until we realized that “some assembly required” means that you will spend endless hours putting together toys that your kids will play with for about an hour on Christmas morning. Those same toys are never to be seen again once they are shuttled off to the confines of Elmo’s World…er the playroom. Still, with the dexterity of South American sweat shop workers we assemble toy after toy. We are about half-way through a handle of Crown when I notice that the decals are going on a bit crooked, but screw it, we are on a mission and we will not be delayed by drunken decal-ing! It is about midnight and I am putting the finishing touches on Lil B’s new basketball goal when in walks a groggy M. We just freeze like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar (who the hell has an actual cookie jar?). The wife suddenly breaks herself from the Crown-induced haze and shields M’s eyes from the harsh reality as she whisks her back to her bed.
Thank You Roofies Jr.
Amazingly, M has no recollection of waking up that night and is fully surprised on Christmas morning…thank you Rohypnol!- (When simply being an irresponsible parent just isn’t enough)
Christmas morning goes as expected, or at least my hangover-hazed memory tells me that it did. M walks into the room calm and collected. She makes her way through the maze of toys that “Santa” painstakingly set up and she is silently taking inventory. The first thing from her mouth is not, “YAY!” or screams of delight. No, M remembers exactly everything that she asked for and she is mentally scratching each item from the list as she makes her way around the tree. Upon completion of her rounds, she simply looks at us with a sad little face and says, ” I didn’t get the Zhu Zhu Palace”…(WTF is a Zhu Zhu??)
To add to our toy prison overcrowding problems, our kids just happen to have some of the best grandparents in the world. With the undying love of grandparents comes…you guessed it, boxes and boxes of toys arriving almost daily throughout the month of December. My neighbors must think that our house is acting as an overflow distribution center for FedEx. It got so “bad” this year that if there was no box on our porch when we went to check the mail, that my greedy kids thought something was wrong. The toy situation is so bad that we have to cull through the post unwrapping carnage and sneak as many of the toys away as we can to be hidden away and used for bribes during the coming year. (I highly suggest this if you have the room to hide more toys)
Despite the fact that we are prime candidates to make an appearance on Hoarders, this Christmas goes off with little incident. We are thankful and lucky to have such great grandparents and an Elf on the Shelf that knows how to regulate. I am starting to feel the stress of the holidays melt away as we edge ever closer to spring. In fact, I am already making a list of toys to get the kids next Christmas. Actually, my list is not toys, but rather a list of those to be executed. Three guesses as to what bearded, fat-bellied bastard is at the top of that list.
One Down...Now where is that damn Easter Bunny?
Innocence and Brutal Honesty
Tonight the Wife and I were slapped square in the face with some harsh reality…from our four-year-old. While battling through yet another meal of brow beating M to eat something, she decides to pull a Maverick/Goose fly by of the tower.
For those of you that don’t know M that well, she is the most loving little girl I have ever known. I know this sounds like proud-parent-syndrome, but I am not exaggerating. If there’s a chance for her to hug or kiss on Mom, Dad, or Lil B she is going to take it and she will run it into the ground. In fact, tonight she licked me on the cheek as if she were a friggin’ dog, er…cute little puppy. However, the over-licking and kissing are for another day.
So M is sitting at the table when she decides that, rather than take a bite of dinner, she will deploy her patented delay tactics and tell Mommy that she wants to give her a hug (one of multiple hugs deployed during any given meal). M drops her ordinance of hugs and then, instead of her typical reroute back to base (her chair), she decides that this mission is going to require the use of nuclear force.
Upon completion of the hug mission, M steps back from Mommy and drops this 5 megaton whopper, ” Mommy, do you have a baby in your tummy?” After what seemed like an eternity of silence and several awkward wordless exchanges between Mommy and Me, I burst into a hearty belly laugh. Meanwhile, Mommy is sitting at the table with fail-smile trying to figure out how to tell M that there is no baby in her tummy without letting on that this comment cut Mommy to the bone.
So Mommy tells M that there is, in fact no baby in her tummy as she fights back a wave of tears. I am over across the kitchen belly laughing when M says to me, “Daddy, do YOU have a baby in your tummy?” The laughing abruptly ends and Mommy and I enter a few moments of quite self-reflection while M awaits a response. “No, neither Daddy or Mommy have a baby in our tummy.” One would think that this would end the line of questioning and everyone would proceed with dinner. Not M. She disputes what we have told her and goes further to insist that Mommy does have a baby in her tummy. This goes over like a lead balloon.
After adamant refusal from Mommy, M finally relents and goes back to pretending to eat. The rest of the meal is a blur of sorts because both Mommy and I are locked away in the depths of our own self consciousness trying to assess the damage from the massive bombs that had just been dropped by our sweet, innocent daughter. Not to be insensitive, but I felt how the survivors of Hiroshima must have felt as they crawled out from the rubble to see that their entire existence had been wiped out. Fine, I am a overexaggerator. 
Regardless, the seemingly innocent questions from our daughter had obtrusively opened our eyes. Yes, Mommy and Daddy are severely out of shape…
Our evening ends with gentle hugs and kisses as the kids are tucked away in their beds (while internally struggling with issuing M a severe beating…we’ll show her little ass who’s out of shape!). Mommy straps on her trainers and knocks the dust off the ole treadmill while I retired to the pool with my awesome sixpack…of non-light beer. I can only assume that the next line of pregnancy questioning will be directed only at me…Cheers
Communication Breakdown
Hello friends!
Wow, a lot has happened since the last post. I apologize for not posting more, but let’s face facts…I am lazy.
B is growing like a weed and with that growth comes quite the healthy little appetite. You are all well aware of M’s eating issues, or lack of eating issues as I have ranted about them on multiple postings.
mmmm salmon
B seems to be quite the opposite of M in the eating department, which is refreshing. While M sticks to her strict diet of only chicken nuggets, B eats everything that he can get his chubby little paws on. He eats all things that M steers clear of including; hot sauce, veggies of all types, salad, most meats, and of course crayons.
"cookoo, cookoo, cookoo"
Unlike M, who was practically speaking at birth, B has taken a bit longer to get going. These days, while M runs around quoting Macbeth, B is a little more like Colin Firth in The King’s Speech. Rather than stutter, B simply pummels us with a constant barrage of “juice, juice, juice” or “cookoo, cookoo, cookoo” (cookoo is cookie in B-speak). Oh he can say plenty of other things, but it’s those two words that haunt me while I sleep. He is also a tad bit spoiled and has thus mastered the ability to instantly produce an ear-piercing scream and tears the second that he does not get what he wants. In an effort to maintain at least some sanity, I have to walk around with a pump sprayer full of juice and I wear a sidearm that fires Nilla Wafers. Before B can even get through his speech, “juice, juice, juice, ju…” BAM! I have silenced him with rapid fire from my snack shooter and hosed him down with juice. Ahh…sweet silence…”cookoo, cookoo, cookoo”…where’s my shotgun…
In addition to being a “healthy” eater, B is quite the bully it seems. Although M has 6″ in height and 4″ in reach on B, he typically gets the best of her. I have noticed that he has a couple of solid go-to moves that M just can’t seem to defence. His most solid move is what I like to call the “Dozer”. The Dozer comes into play when B feels that M is getting more attention than him from Mom or Dad. I can see it about to happen every time. He gets this glazed over look in his eyes and they roll back in his head ever so slightly. At this point there is no stopping him, so I quickly detach M from whatever grip she has on me with a swift front kick, or a Heisman to the forehead and I sit back and watch B fully bulldoze M. It’s great. The dozing of M ends with her on the ground or when B has dozed her into a wall or a piece of furniture. The constant supply of cookoos and juice have given him some sort of super powers it seems. B’s other go-to move is the classic hair pull. If you thought Daniel-san was quick with those chopsticks, then you have not seen B in action. He can go from a lying down position to having a fist full of M’s golden locks in the blink of an eye. Unfortunately, I usually have to throw in the towel at this point because I can see that M is not going to get out of his thunder grip. On the other hand, it is nice to see them “playing” together. I can’t wait to teach B-san to sweep the leg.
We’re No Donner Party
In my last post (https://genericdad.com/2010/09/01/cant-we-all-just-get-well/ ) I teased a review of our first family trip to the mountains of New Mexico. 2 kids, 2 frazzled parents and a wagon full of belongings…
My family recently acquired a cabin in the Sierra Bonita mountains of New Mexico. Upon hearing this news we decided that we must get up there and check the place out immediately. The long Labor Day weekend provided just such an opportunity to embark on a most memorable journey.
Is that freedom Rock? TURN IT UP!
Based on previous expeditions, we knew that Lil B was not a good passenger and so we decided to hitch up our wagon and ride to Amarillo late Thursday night. The theory behind riding at night is simple. The kids are used to sleeping during this time and they tend to sleep much the same during travel. The first leg of the journey starts flawlessly. We hit our schedule to be on the trail by 7:00pm. The only significant event from this leg of the journey was the awesome Pink Floyd-like lightning show that we were treated to for two hours. The subsequent huge thunderstorm with high winds and torrential rains was not quite as entertaining. Regardless, we pressed on and made it to Amarillo in near record time.
Rocky Road
slight exaggeration
After a brief overnight stay in Amarillo, we hit the trail for leg two of our expedition. This leg of the journey was one of the more difficult to endure for several reasons. The first reason being that we had joined into and official wagon train with my family and being from a small town, they do not like to ride on major trails. This forces the wagon train off the beaten path so-to-speak. In fact, there was a portion of the this leg where the trail degraded from paving-to dirt-to-boulders. Yes, I said boulders…Imagine yourself trying to navigate an unfamiliar trail littered with boulders while the wagon that you are following kicks up so much dust that you cannot see the trail to avoid the larger boulders, so you inevitably hit all of them. Couple that with a one year-old screaming at the top of his lungs because he is being tossed around like my skid-stained undies in the dryer. Regardless, we pressed on and were eventually rewarded with the site of a beautiful log cabin…where our right rear tire immediately deflated due to the boulder gash it received on the way in.
Tranquility
The next 48 hours are almost blissful enough to make one forget about the arduous journey that had just transpired, nor dwell on the one that lie ahead…almost. There is just something about being in the mountains that washes away all of my stress and my problems fade to the back of my mind. I don’t know if it’s a lack of oxygen due to the altitude, or maybe I am just at home in the mountains. I truly hope that I end up living in a mountainous location some day, but I digress. I got to take M fishing for the first time and it was a beating to say the least (could be an entire post of its own). However, she had fun with her cousin of similar age throwing rocks and catching crawfish. She also got to take her first (of many) ride on a 4-wheeler with her Grampy, which she loved. Lil B was happy just to have someone hold him and he even got to taste test many of the indigenous rocks. Grammy saved the day by bringing the girls their own new backpacks crammed with activities. They had a blast.
Paradise Lost
Of course we knew that the trip had to end, but as we were loading up the wagons I could not help but feel as though we had just gotten there. The third leg of our expedition got off to a rough start. We stopped no less than three times to let Cousin A tinkle, then we made the mistake of stopping for lunch in one of the desolate towns down the mountain. A long hour later we are back in the wagons and headed east to Amarillo. Just as we reach what has to be the absolute middle of nowhere, we see a sign “DWI Checkpoint Ahead”. WTF? That can’t be right, can it? As we top the next hill we are greeted to six NM state troopers at the intersection of state highway X and nowhere road Y. I am sure I was missing something, but there just didn’t seem to be enough traffic on the back roads of eastern NM to warrant a six-vehicle DWI checkpoint…thank God I only do heroin. After the mystery checkpoint we arrive in Amarillo for a brief overnight stay.
Wit’s End
The fourth and final leg of the journey was a blur because I had to find a happy place within. Somewhere between Vernon and Wichita Falls I am contemplating those skiddy drawers again. Only this time I am thinking of using them to gag my screaming son. Poor little guy is just not built for the road. On the bright side I think he may have a future in opera. At one point of the final leg my 3 year-old had to intervene and put a stop to bickering going on in the front seat. It is at this point that I check out for the rest of the way home. The wagon and horses were on cruise control…and so was I.
We Shall Return
We will be going back to NM for sure. However, our wagon training days are officially over. I love you, Southwest Airlines…and I love your free drink tickets.
Can’t We All Just Get…Well?
In order for you all to experience what it has been like at my house for the past couple of weeks, I need to take you on a cinematic trip down memory lane. Picture little Gordie LaChance sitting around the campfire regaling his pals with the “Barf-o-rama” story in the classic film, Stand By Me. “Lardass! Lardass, Lardass”, the crowd chants as David “Lardass” Hogan eats his way to victory in a pie-eating contest. Then it hits…the castor oil and raw egg make their comeback . “Slowly a sound started to build in Lardass’ stomach. A strange and scary sound like a log-truck coming at you at a hundred miles an hour. Suddenly, Lardass opened his mouth. And before Bill Travis knew it, he was covered with five pies worth of used blueberries. The women in the audience screamed. Bossman Bob Cormier took one look at Bill Travis and barfed on Principal Wiggins. Principal Wiggins barfed on the lumberjack that was sitting next to him. Mayor Grundy barfed on his wife’s tits. But when the smell hit the crowd, that’s when Lardass’ plan really started to work. Girlfriends barfed on boyfriends. Kids barfed on their parents. A fat lady barfed in her purse. The Donnelly-twins barfed on each other. And the women’s auxiliary barfed all over the Benevolent Order of Antelopes. And Lardass just sat back and enjoyed what he created. A complete and total Barf-A-Rama.”
Of course, this is a slight embellishment with regard to what has recently transpired in my house. We may not have had the Benevolent Order of Antelopes, but we had two toddlers and a mommy doing there best impressions of this classic movie scene. Part of me wishes that we had all concrete floors so that I could bring the hose in like they do at the zoo in the elephant cage. As it stands right now, I feel like I am constantly wading in vomit and feces remnants and it’s quite disgusting. I see little food items on the floor and I don’t know if they came from my toddlers dropping them, or projectile spewing them. I do know this: small trash cans make good barf buckets and baby diapers cannot hold back the full fury of an infant’s diarrhea bomb.
On a lighter note, I think that everyone is feeling much better. We rung in Lil B’s 1st birthday last weekend, and we are taking our first trip as a family unit this coming holiday weekend. We are headed to the mountains of New Mexico for some family time, fishing, and relaxation. I will post a mountain trip review upon our return…if we actually make it back. I encourage any of you to stop by our house and disinfect the dump while we are gone. I will understand if you have to chalk up a total loss and just set the place on fire. Until our return, I bid you all a happy Labor Day.
Are My Babies Already Grown Up???
I fear that my baby girl may be growing up too fast. I first began to notice this a few months ago and the evidence continues to accumulate. I can trace this all back to the beginning of summer when we pulled M out of her regular daycare facility and enrolled her in private “insert religion here” school. Lower your eyebrows and wipe that sarcastic “Ooh La La” look off of your face and let me explain.
M's Open House brochure...something odd about it that I can't put my finger on...
M changed schools for a couple of reasons really. We were becoming more and more irritated that her original daycare kept putting her with the younger kids each afternoon in an effort to combine children. They do this so that they can release teachers as the parents trickle in throughout the day to pick up their spawn. M is also now in her Pre K years and we feel that she should be getting a head start on her education. These things considered, it was also less costly to send M to the private school with an actual educational curriculum than it was to keep her at the daycare where she played with two-year-olds and hand-me-down toys. So, you could say that we were motivated by finances as much as the desire for our daughter to get edumacated. If she’s not educated, how is she going to support me in my golden years?
Back to my theory on M’s recent maturity spurt. Since she started the private school, I have noticed my three-year-old daughter having in-depth conversations with her new friends about fashion, of all things. We sat at her recent open house and witnessed our toddler daughter having a conversation with her 4-year-old friend. Their conversation ranged from shoes; to what accessories each had on; to sharing a delicious snack. This is nuts…I have seen high school girls have this same conversation! Gone are the days of Dora and Wonder Pets. She is almost exclusive to DVD’s such as Toy Story and her crazy-ass Barbie movies. (Have you seen any of these? They are creepy)At this rate she will be animation free by Christmas! Her choice in bedtime stories had transitioned out of Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Fancy Nancy into all the Judy Blume she can get her grubby little paws on. I think I even caught her looking at the stock tickers in the Wall Street Journal the other day. To say the least, my baby is growing up, and way too fast…and I don’t like it one bit.
Where is my little snuggler? Where is the girl who wants Daddy to help her do everything? It used to be, “Daddy, will you snuggle me?” Now it’s more like, “Bio-Father, would you mind so much as to pass me the Grey Poupon? And while you are out running my errands, pick up my dry cleaning. I have an event with the girls from the club and I need my Minnie Mouse skort.”
Introducing Mr. Buttons Tyroome
I don’t even know where to start…
I am about to walk out onto the back patio last Saturday evening when my three-year-old daughter screams, “Daddy! Watch out for Mr. Buttons Tyroome!”
“Huh? Who is Mr. Button?”
“Mr. Buttons Tyroome! He watches over our patio.”
My wife and I exchange looks as if we have both just realized that our daughter is a certifiable nut job. I am starting to think that M might have a little schizophrenia. I knew it skipped a generation, but I had prayed that my kids would not be afflicted. Yet here I am having a conversation with my toddler about an imaginary overseer of our patio. Of course she may just have a vivid imagination…and no, there are no “diagnosed” schizoids in my family…(I do not speak for my wife’s family)
I inquire further about Mr. Buttons Tyroome and it turns out that he is a rather small (exact size not yet determined), orange little man. He has big ears and a big nose. He has no hair, but wears a hat to avoid sunburn. Apparently he also has keys to our house because today M told me that she saw him in our front yard and, “he used his key to come into our house.” She even went so far as to claim that I was with her, and that I saw him too while she hid behind my legs! This kid is nuts…Do they prescribe Lithium for toddlers?
I kid you not, these are actual conversations that I have had with my daughter over the past couple of days. I am thinking that I need to start digging into my in-law’s family mental illness history. I pray that these are the things that go along with having a child with a vivid imagination. Her mind is simply amazing.
Another example of M’s wild imagination and creativity is that she will pre-script conversations. This will happen mainly when we are playing. She will set up the entire scene. She will Tell Mommy and Daddy where to sit or stand; tell us what each person is going to do; and even feeds us our lines. And now I present Surprise Party by M. R. De Mille
SCENE 1, ACT 1
Mommy and Daddy sit on the sofa and hide. M enters the room.
Mommy and Daddy: “SURPRISE!”
M: “Oh, a surprise party for me?”
Mommy” ” yes, a surprise party all for you!”
Daddy ” We got you presents!”
M: “Presents? For Me? YAY!!”
FIN
This is just an example of one of M’s little “plays” , as we like to call them. However, now she is starting to think that she can script real life situations. As you all know, we have issues with getting the poor kid to eat dinner. With her recent screenwriting success, she decides that she can script tonight’s dinner after finding out that we are having food that she does not want. Please enjoy Dinner by M.R. De Mille.
ACT 1 SCENE 1
M: Eats ONLY a banana for dinner. NO TACOS, and NO BEANS
M: “Can I please be excused?”
Daddy: ” Of course you may be excused and you can go watch TV!”
FIN
I just sit there scratching my rapidly greying hair in amazement. What is this kid going to be like when she’s a conniving teenager? We are so screwed…
Little Trooper
One of the negatives to daycare is that your children often get sick…a lot. Most of the sickness occurs between infant age and roughly two years of age. I call this the sick zone. The payback on having your kids sick early is that by the time they hit school age, they have been in contact with most sickness out there and have developed a pretty strong immune system, as opposed to a child that has not been exposed to other children as much. We now have a 5 month old baby boy who is smack dab in the middle of life in the sick zone.
So about two weeks ago we start noticing some signs in our son’s daycare room about some of his “classmates” contracting RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus). For those of you that are not familiar with RSV, I will give you a link so that you may read up. In a nut shell, it is a respiratory virus that is the leading cause of pneumonia in children under the age of 1 year. RSV can be pretty bad stuff, especially for an infant. So we notice the sign at daycare that a child has come down with RSV, then another child, then another…At this point we are starting to prepare for the worse , which would be B would come down with RSV too. We are on high alert at home. If that child made one strange noise my wife was hovering like the black CIA helicopters. You know the one’s on TV that just appear out of nowhere at just the right moment. That is my wife. She could be in a deep sleep and that baby monitor will click the wrong way. You have never seen someone move so fast! It’s like tossing a happy meal and a 40 into a pack of wild homeless.
Despite our efforts, last Tuesday we notice the cough starting to set in and the sinuses starting to get stuffy. We go ahead and take him to the doctor on Wednesday morning hoping to catch whatever he has in its early stages. Of course, he gets diagnosed with RSV (this makes a total of 8 out of 16 babies at his daycare). On top of the RSV our little guy appeared to have a slight ear infection. So we get home Wednesday with his new medicine regiment, which is antibiotic twice a day for the ear infection and breathing treatments on the nebulizer every 4 hours. The Nebulizer has been a smart buy. We bought it when our daughter had gotten sick as a baby and have gotten much use out of it since then, including myself for a spell. If you have the choice in renting or buying, buy.
I stay home from work with B last Thursday and Friday and we stay holed up all weekend. My wife takes Monday off this week and B had oringinally been cleared to go back on Tuesday. Well, he didn’t seem like he was improving as they said that he should. Thus we took him back to the doctor Tuesday morning. The good news from that visit was that the RSV was starting to subside and his breathing sounded good. Don’t get me wrong, the child still has a horrible cough. I mean the little guy will get to coughing uncontrollably until he vomits, which starts the coughing all over again…it’s bad. I can’t help but think of the Exorcist when he projectiles…I know I am a bad parent…The bad news was that his slight ear infection has progressed into a pretty bad infection in both ears. We were sent home with a stronger antibiotic and instructed to continue on with breathing treatments. You would think we were in the clear, right?
Turns out that B is allergic to penicillin. He had a “mild” reaction to the antibiotic that left is little infant body covered from head to toe with hives! He looked like I had taken him out back, tied him to the fence and took target practice with a BB gun. Back to the doctor. Prescribed new antibiotic and Benadryl every 4 hours.
3:00 AM Wednesday morning: The hives have not only not gone away like they said that they would, they are worse! They look like they have just joined and his whole little body is just one swollen hive! Back to the doctor. Prescribed a steroid to combat the allergic reaction and another day at home. Yes, one of us has been at home with him for an entire week! In that week the poor child has ingested mild antibiotic, stronger antibiotic, non-allergy causing antibiotic, breathing treatments, a jug of Benadryl, and a jug of Tylenol, topped of with steroids! I am just waiting for the “roids” to kick in, and B stand up in his crib and rip his onesie open like the Hulk!
We will see how the little guy does today on his first day back at daycare. The one thing that I have gotten from this is B’s little way of saying, “thanks for taking care of me, Dad”. I am now sick…
RSV Link http://www.cdc.gov/rsv/
Generic Dad 