Looking over some of my posts, I realize I may be falling to the same tactic that journalists use to spruce up an article and attract readership, namely, over dramatization, hyperbole, or just stressing the stressful parts. Reading over the daily news one would get the idea that there is nothing but problems and unresolvable chaos in the world. How is your life?
Its just not true. Sure we all got problems, even ongoing problems, even problems where we can`t see the light at the end of the tunnel. But look, we get up, we get on our clothes (or even stay in our pajamas as the case may be on some of my Daddy days), have some sort of nourishment or liquid in the morning and then go to work, whether that be to the city, to the office, or staying at home or taking care of the kids. (In fact taking care of the kids begins even before you start your day). Then we have our work day. Is the boss REALLY stressing you out so much and you are under heaps of pressure? I cant even imagine that current U.S. president Obama is under heaps of pressure during the whole day. I can imagine that for a good part of the day he sits quietly and calmly at his desk reading things over and thinking about them and making comments and thinking about how to resolve problems, and passing them on to someone else.
The point is, well, there are "scary" days. There are "Mission Impossible" days, for G s sake. Even going to the grocery store with your kids can be a Mission Impossible plot, theme music included. But for the most part, as long as we aren't living in a war zone, life is not a newspaper full of KILLING, DESTRUCTION, RELIGIOUS FANATICS, ECONOMIC CRISES, AHHHHHHHHH.
Potential fathers, lets not get scared off by what is a very emotionally rewarding, but not so rewarding on the pecuniary side, fulfilling job with some minor flare ups, loss of patience and perhaps the occasional "I CANT TAKE THIS, I NEED A DRINK" incidents. But that is true anywhere right?
So, listen. For instance this was what happened last Monday. For those easily bored, you better leave the room now. This is no detective novel coming up.
I have to admit I have not been pulling my weight recently on sharing morning duties. I have let my wife get up, boil the tea water, heat the milk up, get the clothes on, while I get up to cut the breakfast grapefruit. We used to do one person one day up early, the other person the next day up early, but that was when we had to get up before 7am, which is killer with my DNA. I meandered in to the kitchen at 8am and cut the grapefruit. Preschool starts by 9. We should get there sooner, but.... we don't. Next year regular school will start at 8. We ll manage it.... somehow.
At any rate, the Mother and one daughter gone, second younger daughter proceeded to work on a puzzle. She is really into them and this, needless to say, is very nice morning work. Problem is, she is getting so good at the puzzles we have that I don't have time to slip in a decent length shower anymore while she does one puzzle. So she wanders into the bathroom when I am rinsing off, "Daddy, I'm finished look at it." "yeah, I'm just about done, one minute" "Daddy look at it now", "Just one more minute", "Daddy look at it now". Funny how repetition of a sentence is very effective for making someone angry Or moving the butt into action. I guess it is the same with techno music. Either you get angry with it because it is so repetitive OR it moves your butt into action. Yeah, little kids are like techno music. I ll have to flesh that theory out some time. "One Minute", just enough rinsed off to let myself drip water all over the place and look at the puzzle. "Yep, excellent little girl. And you did that really fast, too fast". "I'm faster right?" "Yes you are faster".
If weather permits we amble outside to do something. Either a quick ride down the hill on her plastic motorcycle with me running next to her to make sure she doesn't hit a bump and go flying over the front (yes its happened already) or to the park. To the park today it is. It certainly is getting toward tipping point. This morning there were actually just as many men with their toddlers as women. In fact I would rather talk to the women than the men. I am afraid talking to men, it would just devolve into the same old macho posturing, if that is possible watching your two year old kid in the playground. It will happen. Sadly though I have to agree with a post from fellow Home Daddy Dustin from Baltimore (rats, I should tag that article here) who lamented the impossibility or creative genius it takes to talk to a women and not appear as if you want to pick her up. That really you just want to get in a few words here and there between pushes on the swing or helping your kid up the slide, about this and that and the other thing, small parenting talk. Not going to happen. Doesn't happen. So I will remain in my own shell talking to my two year old and even going down the big tube slide once or twice with her. This takes courage. I don't have enough courage to ride on the little merry go round bicycles, but my male ego is not damaged by going down the slide.
The tough part of the day is coming up, lunch time. Mommy left some homemade noodle vegetable soup to be heated up. The little boss took a look at it and said, "I'm not eating that, I want the soup from the grocery store". To hear a two year old say this is actually quite comical, but then again, I have to formulate plan b. This entails the trickery I don't like to do but all parents have to do. I put some spaghetti sauce or home made ketchup into Mommy's soup to make it look like the grocery brand she prefers, namely tomato soup. "Here it is little girl, grocery shop soup. I have it here." Little does she know,... "I don't like this Daddy, it has carrots in it". Rats. Plan C consists of getting out some of the few staples she does eat, a piece of ham, a piece of Parmesan cheese, and boil an egg. I give up too easily. I should really hook her up to an IV unit and tube feed her spinach soup and a green salad while she is in a strait jacket. But I guess I could be taken to jail for that. Though I'm not sure for which item, the strait jacket tube feeding or for feeding her spinach soup.
Today she ate all I put on her plate, but if she doesn't like something she reverts to the age old trick, "Daddy, I'm tired. I want to take a nap." Once she did that and she proceeded to putz around in her bed for two hours. I realized that I`d been had, made a cad of, manipulated, by a two year old no less. Somehow that has never damaged my ego. Like Groucho Marx says, "Why this is so easy even a 3 year old could do this. Chicolina go find me a three year old, I cant make heads or tales of this". In other words, these little guys are pretty smart. I think somewhere along the way in evolution the younger toddlers learned manipulation, the more apt they were to survive. Its like they know how to manipulate just like beavers naturally know how to chew trees down.
She is pretty good at the napping. I'm on the clock now. I`ve got two hours. Three if I am lucky and today I am lucky. I can practically do a whole days work while she is napping. After she wakes up, we slowly get dressed and then head off to pick up her sister at pre school. She would have swim class today, but I got out of taking her. She didn't want to go with me, she only wanted to go with Mommy. I wont argue. So instead we go back to the park. Repeat, rinse same as the morning, except now there are a lot more people both mothers and fathers. My friend shows up. He used to own a bar. He has tattoos up and down both arms and maybe a neck tattoo too. He is there with his 7 year old girl and his 2 year old boy. She is very well behaved and is very motherly (or fatherly) to her little brother.
"OK, girls, time to go. Its 6.15, we got to get home." We don't actually leave till 6.45. Home at 7.10 I was able to fend off buying potato chips in passing 4 small grocery shops with an amount of crying and whining only with promises that Mommy has a good supper at home. I hope this is the truth.
It was indeed the truth and dinner passes off without event. I think it was trout tonight. They both love fish. Yes in fact I do do some school exercises with the older girl before the dinner time and I will keep this up all throughout her school career, until she passes me in knowledge (I hope that wont be in the third grade, I'm hoping on at least managing till the fifth grade. She has already passed me in language skills though, but that is another story). I am not delinquent and care a great deal for her education.
Mommy is currently the favored parent for giving showers and preparing them for bedtime, so I retire for a bit with the computer. I do like reading the night time book, but even this duty has passed me by. However, I maintain my rock star status for holding their hand and telling them a story after the light is out. As written in an earlier post I have taken to creating new Popeye the Sailor episodes. Also now I have started a new series about little bear and his piano lessons. Despite the extreme kitsch of these stories, they are going over quite well.
And that's the day. No newspaper headlines, no hyperbole, no over dramatization, no guts, no blood, no glory. Its a long day and for some reason very tiring. It seems the less exercise you do, the more tired you are. Maybe it has to do with the inward stress exercise of carrying off parental responsibilities the WHOLE day from 7am till 9pm. What they say about the navy could also be said about daily parenting, "Its not just a job, its an adventure". Though its not the navy either.
I do reserve the right to resort back to hyperbole, poetic license, or uber stressful situations in some or even all future posts. Or to even change my mind that this was not a stressful day. Truth be told, maybe because we were outside so much on this day, it was a tad chilly for May weather, that my younger girl got a stomach virus and a temperature near the end of the week. I even had to leave work earlier one day to buy some medicines or SHE MIGHT HAVE DIED.
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