Blog Archives
National Debt Crisis Resolved
A quick note that I wanted to share with you all regarding a commercial that I recently saw on a channel that my 4-year-old frequents. Typically, I do not pay much attention to the crap that is on the television when M is watching. I make the mistake that many of you make in that I trust in the “children’s programming” format of the network with which my daughter is enthralled.
So, I am sitting there picking my nose or adjusting my junk as I often do in my spare time when my attention is brought to a commercial on the TV. View the commercial now and then rejoin my discussion below so that we are all on the same page:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyOD1C67J0
Now that you have witnessed at least some version equal to that which I saw. My question is simple; what are we teaching our children with games like this? I may be an idiot, but what I see in that commercial is that handling, playing with, and collecting feces is fun. Not even during the depression was playing with your own, let alone animal shit a fun thing to do. Fine, they added some happy colors to the fake dog shit so that it’s appealing to everyone and a good time is had by all…playing with faux shit. I can only assume that there is no realistic feces smell included. I don’t know about you all, but if I let my near 2-year-old watch that commercial, I would soon have a mound of randomly collected turds in my house.
What is a kid to learn from this game other than, “If I collect the most pieces of shit, I can win in life”? What about that game tells a child that feces is disgusting and carries bacteria and diseases? Nothing! Instead, they make shit seem colorful and fun. Hey kids, it’s okay to scoop up that turd from the yard. In fact, take a bite because we have colored it to look like a friggin’ candy cane. Plus, it’s worth 5 points! I can only imagine the repercussions involved on the first day of school when my kids show up with a cache of dog shit or worse acting like they own the joint. According to this game, shit is the new bling. “You like my new grill? Yeah, it’s thoroghbred horse shit, dawg. Fo reals”
This game is not the only source directing our kids to embrace poop. Mr. Hankey has been around for years and recently the Easter Bunny movie made it socially acceptable to eat rabbit shit. That movie alone has made me start systematically eliminating the rabbits from my yard. I feel like the Hitler of bunnies! Something has got to give…I think I will just keep my kids playing Chutes and Ladders or Candy Land …at least until I see them gnawing on the furniture.
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
Nuggets of Truth
Hello blogosphere!
I am sorry that this has become such a habit to have to apologize at the beginning of every post for not posting more frequently. Alas, I am busy at work, busy with the kiddos, and truthfully, I am quite possibly the laziest person that you know.
Regardless, on to the long-overdue update. Let’s start with M since you all know her a little better than Lil B. M is approaching the start of her 2nd year of Pre-K at the little Christian school. She has progressed nicely as far as curriculum is concerned. She is also making interesting strides in her social development. At the end of last year she was anointed “Most Friendly” by her teachers. We were proud of her for not being the thumb-sucker that sits in the corner and shits herself while not having the communication skills to let anyone know about it. However, we have recently been made aware that our daughter is the cause of much drama at the little Christian school. Apparently all of her classmates want to play with M and she has not exactly rolled out the welcome waggon to some of them. While we understand that someone known as “most friendly” might draw a crowd in the realm of the 4-year-old, we are not prepared to have other parents complain that our little baby is excluding her peers. The important thing here is what we do with this information. There are several ways to look at this situation. We could be happy that our daughter is the object of every post-toddler’s desire regardless of who she has to step on to reach the pinnacle of Pre-K stardom. Or, we could scold and punish her for not being nice to others and try to strain some sort of life lesson out of the situation. In the back of my mind I feel as if I am creating some kind of pre-pubescent sorority super-bitch…and I kind of like it. I mean, why should my little girl have to be scolded because some half-wit’s parents can’t handle that they have a child that is an undesirable playmate. Problem solved! M, continue on with your natural selection-style of making friends. I feel like Will Farrell in Old School as he takes a tranquilizer to the jugular, “Is this bad?
On to the main man who is going to carry on the Henderson name, Lil B. The last update I did probably had Lil B shitting in diapers and crying like a little bitch about every little thing. Well, I am unhappy to report that nothing has changed! As Lil B nears his 2nd birthday we find him in the throes of learning the english language. While he has a full grasp on conversation (in his mind), he is in that stage in which only us parents understand what the hell he is actually saying. It usually involves crying about a lost member of his entourage. You read correctly, B has an entourage. He has “Baby”, “Rabbit”, Giraffe”, and “Puppy”. When I say entourage, I mean it in every sense of the word. Lil B is NEVER seen without at least one of his trusted comrades. Although, I did notice that none of B’s boys were around when he decided to carpet bomb the kitchen.
It is our own fault. See, Lil B had a gnarly diaper rash and we were trying to let that nasty thing air itself out. So one afternoon I get the kids home and decide that B’s bomber needs a little time outside of the diaper. I slap some shorts on him mainly because M is a little too fascinated with the difference in equipment between the two of them, if you know what I mean. The shorts are designed to avoid M screaming, “PENIS! PENIS!” while pointing and laughing at her nude little brother. That being said, B is going about his normal business of free-balling and following M around one afternoon and things are running quite swimmingly. They aren’t fighting, B isn’t tackling or pulling M’s hair and M isn’t using her height advantage to withhold coveted items from B. Basically, a nice little afternoon in my world. Meanwhile, as I half nap/half ignore the kids. Mommy comes into the kitchen and screeches. I am shaken from my slumber and run into the kitchen thinking that B has fallen on his head (again) or that he has kicked M’s ass again when I almost step in a trail of turds. If I were tracking small game it would not have been difficult to track Lil B from the string of nuggets that he had laid down across the kitchen floor. As I scrape up last night’s dinner reincarnate, I am reminded of one of the many reasons that we are now dog-free. I also made the tactical error in thinking that this was a one-time event. Two kids almost potty trained, and I recently got my first bathtub bombing from Lil B. To make matters worse, I was distracted by a heated game of Disc Driving on my iPhone while I let him play a bit in the tub. I am startled from my game by the garbled sounds of Lil B saying, “Poo Poo”. I give a half-ass glance in his direction and my mouth falls open. Sitting proudly coated in Mr. Bubble is Lil B. holding up a piece of shit the size of a cucumber. He is grinning ear-to-ear with the pride that he has finally connected the term of Poo Poo to its reality. I swipe the ex-dinner from his hand and pull my best fade-away into the toilet. Splash! Nothin’ but net, err…water. I know that B will grow out of his bombing phase, so I am not too worried. Plus, I get to work on my jump shot.
So, you all can see that I have two midgets in completely different stages of childhood. To add to this, I have both sexes to deal with and believe it or not, they are completely different in demeanor from birth. I am thankful for this challenge because I was beginning to get a little bored with being Superdad. Obviously, if you have read all of this you have lost time that you will never get back. Thank you for reading and watch out for those toddler land mines!
Living Vicariously Through My Kids
Not long ago I decide that I am going to live vicariously through my children. I am going to have them do all of the things that I did not get to do as a child. I know that most of you already assume that I am talking about sports. Don’t get me wrong, I will probably do what most fathers who participated in sports end up doing for their kids. I will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars sending my kids to sporting camps hosted by local pro athletes (who never actually show up at the camp). I will bribe referees, coaches, and teachers in order to assure the maximum playing time for my kids. Hell, I may even sabotage my children’s opponents. Anything for mention of my child in the local gazette, right? While I will, undoubtedly, do all of these things, there are other, more important things that my children need to experience…for me.
As a child, I always wanted to be trained in martial arts. I never got the chance because I was too busy stealing hood ornaments and pulling drive-by shootings with my paintball gun. Naturally, I want my children to experience the confidence and discipline that is taught through martial arts. My son is now almost 11 months old. I have been training him to become a baby ninja since he was about 6 months old. I am happy to report that he is progressing rather nicely. He even connected on a roundhouse kick to the skull of his three-year-old sister the other day. (assisted by me of course, as he cannot yet walk) It felt as if I were actually the one landing that sweet roundhouse to her petite, blonde noggin. I must say, if dealing out round-houses to one of my kids…using my other kid were a drug, I would be Pablo Escobar. This whole vicarious living concept is going to work out for me, I think.
I never got a tattoo as a young person. Naturally, I do not want my kids to miss their window like I did, so I got M inked. I didn’t want to take her to one of those trendy tattoo shops with their fancy artists and sterilized needles like all of the punk college kids. I found a homeless man the other day that had a sign that read, “Will Tattoo You For Food”, so I hired him. Turns out that he was not looking for food, so after a fifth of $7 whiskey he was ready to get started on my three-year-old daughter’s tat. We are pretty happy with the results and after a brief hospital stay and a bout of tetanus, the tattoo is healing nicely. What a gift for both M and Me!
I think that my children are going to grow up with the sense that they have lived life to the fullest. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s experience where I…er my kids get to go skydiving!