The Goalposts got moved

Caps for Sale

I have written about my youngest daughters rejection of me here concerning clothes.  And then my test of patience with her HERE.  But in actuality I was getting better with her.  I truly was becoming more patient with her.  And maybe she was becoming "OK" with me.  I realized that she liked Mommy better but hey, I'm cool with that.  I know Mommy has to give her a bath or shower, I am cool with that too.  I think it was the test I had with my Mother in law.  She nearly broke me.  In fact my test of patience did not get a passing grade with her and I have only seen her once, at Christmas, in the last six months, though on my honor I am ready to do the garden thing again once the planting season starts in March. And.... well.... I will try my damnedest to um... um... oh yeah, be patient with my Mother in law.

So I am getting better all the time... at some things.  Look, me and the youngest did a 1000 piece Disney Mickey Mouse puzzle together.  Talk about bonding.    We took an exercise class the past two years where I had to exercise with her.  That should have made us the best of buds.

I thought the terrible twos, "I like one parent (Mommy) better than the other parent (Daddy)", would have finished by the time she was 4.

Sadly mistaken.

So what happens?  My youngest daughter moves the goalposts and makes it that much harder for me to stay patient with her.  Do you want to hear how she has further bloodied and battered my ego and patience skills?  This is where you say `yes` because I am going to tell you no matter what.

Before I wasn't allowed to dress or bathe her.  It was hell trying to brush her teeth.  Now, she dresses herself, and she is so proud of that that she comes running out after she is dressed and yells, "I'm dressed" to let the whole apartment building know.   Now she stands (relatively) still while I brush her teeth, twice a day!  We have moved on, which means now she cries about other things she doesn't like me doing.

 She knows darned well that her parents take turns taking each girl to school.  We  trade off,for instance I take one girl one day and then the other the next day.  She knows that.  But what does she do after her Mother has left taking her sister to school?  She sits there and cries in the hallway for ten minutes.  She cries the whole time she or I are trying to get her winter clothes on, which makes us late in leaving.  I hate getting to her pre school late, the teacher always yells at me.  And ITS NOT MY FAULT.

So after she has cried for Mommy for fifteen minutes, the only way to calm her down is to promise to carry her to pre school.  Its getting late so I have to carry her anyway to get her to school faster.  Its just down the street, up the hill and up the stairs.  Here below is the hill I have to carry her up on my shoulders.

                                              And then up the stairs to the school

Mother Theresa wouldn't have been so magnanimous to carry her.  I m her father so I have to.  Otherwise she would either just sit down on the street or we would be late and I would get scolded by the teacher.  I might as well die a martyr right now.

I m not a drinker like some other Fathers I know, instead I feel like crying the whole walk back home.  Luckily its downhill.  My patience is gone.   I lost it somewhere crossing the street.  I guess it got run over by a car,  or a mountain goat.  

And now she has a new game.  I am not allowed to touch her bed.  She screams for ten minutes in the evening if she sees that I made her bed in the morning.  So I have to leave it a mess, which is not in my nature to do.  Oh why couldn't she be simpler like her older sister.  The second Born's are always more hellish.

Now if I even go near her bed in the evening she starts hitting me.  She takes ten minutes to straighten it out after we turn out the lights.  One night she started screaming at me for what reason I don't know.  I was standing next to their bunk bed and singing to her older sister who sleeps on the top bunk.

 "What what what?  What I d do?"

  It turns out I was standing too close to her bunk and was upsetting the aura around her bed.  It caused her great mental anguish and she started hitting me in the legs.    

Excuse me while I just go kill myself right now.

Listened to this while writing

 

Father Today, not as much in the past year

 Today was the first "working day"  in a long time that I have picked up my kids from school and taken care of them in the evening.   I haven't done it since the Fall.  I guess it hasn't been soooo long.  But still I have to thank my wife for picking up the slack of Parent when I have had to sit at my job over and above what I was doing.

See, we try to trade off.  I have a couple days during the week when I am free from my business to pick them up and do whatever needs to be done.  We switch off.  Mostly I was doing two days in the working week with them.  That is why I call myself Daddy 40 per cent.  Because I was daddy two working days out of five.  40%.

There were times in earlier years when I was doing hundred per cent.   But I have to say that this last year, I haven't been as much of an at home Father.  Not through my own fault.  As I said, I had to deal more with my faltering business and my wife had more time to pick up the reins.  Though I am saddened by the fewer hours I was with my kids.  They always seem to latch on to me more and like me to a greater extent when I spend extra hours with them.  We are creating stronger bonds.

But I am very thankful for my wife.  I am thankful  that we have a better relationship and a good working relationship as well, that we both want to try to do the best for our kids.  So that if one person is being handicapped or has to do something else, the other tries to step in.

This last year I have been, sadly, Daddy 10 per cent, more like it.   I don't like it.  But as my Bio in Google states, I have a small business.  And in the last year, it just was not working out with sales and with the workers.  There were so many complications and business was worse again.  And as I have written in another place,  I am a Father, a small businessman, and trying to learn investing.  Sometimes it all works, sometimes it doesn't.  This last year, it was not working as well. 

But that is why I am thankful that it is the two of us, two parents.  Two parents always works much better than one.  I look at single moms and for the life of me, I don't know how they handle both a job which usually they MUST go to (I can usually fiddle around with the times or days I go to work) and also bringing up their kids.  I don't think this is good for anyone.  And statistics show that single parents are more likely to be under the "making ends meet"  or even in poverty.  That makes me sad. 

That is why I think it is more important these days to, and I am going to go off on a tangent maybe here,  1) have protected sex or rhythm method sex,  and 2) be with someone who you have tested and you want to be with.  Raising kids is difficult.  It can really strain the relations of the parents.  But breaking that relation damages everyone, probably most the kids.  And the aforementioned fact that it is just harder to bring up kids with just one parent.  Sadly many parents fall into poverty doing it.

So, I really recommend you stay away from raising kids until you have a partner that you want to raise the kids with.  And remember,  nobody is perfect.  You have problems and faults too.  You will have problems and stresses, but stay strong if you have kids.  If you are having problems in your relationship with your spouse, go to a marriage counselor.  Really, it isn't terrible, it can be necessary and the right step. 

I can not stress enough that two  happily married parents are so much better for everyone.

Here is a song I have been listening to a lot which fits into the topic.  Give it a listen, hope you like it
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDo0cCtUulE


1000 piece puzzle done

Let it Snow

Let it snow let it snow let it snow.

Last weekend the snow hit the pavement.  It seems it hit it all around the upper hemisphere of the globe.  (Oh wait, there is no upper and lower on a globe in space.  Oh wait, why do people always say "its gone south" meaning its hanging way low, hanging down?  Thoughts for someone else s blog).  I am quite far away from the path of what was called Superstorm Jonas.  And yet, we got a winter wonderland galore here.

Fathers of 100% down to 10%, it doesn't matter, now is your opportunity to shine.  Now is the time to be a Dad to your kids in conditions which were made for Dads since the first cave men came out of the caves and made carriers from animal hides and sticks to sled down the hills.  

Really, if you are a male who grew up in the northern Hemisphere where it snows, you know how to handle the powder snow (does it snow in the southern hemisphere too?  Really?).  And the first big snow of the year is always cause for celebration and makes it even easier to be with the kids.  The first one is the best.  You aren't tired of it yet, its new and fresh and beautiful and FUN.  Now is the time to take the old metal saucer, or the even older wooden sleigh with metal runners and hit the snow with the kids.

Sledding isn't like skiing or snowboarding.  It doesn't involve being good on the ankles, strong enough in the arms, or for you to balance yourself to try to get the hang of that ski lift rope.  Sledding needs no education.  You just get on the sled and push off down the hill.  And if it is getting a bit fast and scary, you just put your boots down into the snow, turn and wipe out onto the ground.  Simple as that.

I have to admit at this time that one of my scariest recent memories and it may be one of the scariest of my younger daughter`s if she remembered, but she doesn't, was of me sledding with her.  Well, at the time she was about 15 months old and for some reason my wife thought it was safe for all of us to go sledding..... down a mountain of Alps height and length.  Along the path in the map on the right, we started out in Southern Poland, went through the Czech Republic and ended in Slovakia... in about forty minutes.

This is the killer hill (pic courtesy Sankarska Draha)

My wife teamed up with my older daughter, 4 at the time, and I sat behind our littlest girl.  Needless to say, the trail was very steep and probably made for professional bobsledder trainers.  I pretty much went the whole way down with my boots full into the snow and even that didn't slow us down enough.  My wife and daughter were waiting for us at the bottom of the hill.  The bus which we were supposed to catch back to the hotel had left and we were a full twenty minutes later than everyone else.  "Where were you?"  my wife asked.  "What happened?"   What happened was that I was scared .h... less of going down a veritable several mile mountain faster than the 1 minute mile which is what we would have done if I hadn't had my boots down.  And scared of losing the life of my littlest daughter.  I really had no wish for my little little girl to lose her life even before it had really started, or to be maimed or paralyzed in any way.  Which is what would have happened if I hadn't put my boot down.... the whole length of the sledding trail.  I was scared freaky the whole way down.  Give me a couple years to get over it.  Its been three years and I still am not.

But this last weekend, we went to our nearby park which has "friendly" hill.  In fact I could be

"family friendly hill"  

fearless father.  I rode with my older daughter down to the very bottom of the hill consisting of three sections of the hill.  So if it had gotten out of hand we could have "booted it" in between section one and two.  But no, we did not!  We sailed over the sidewalk of section one to two and momentum kept going.  It wasn't too big to scare the bejeebers out of me.  And we kept going over sidewalk two into the third section of the hill where we gained the most speed and yelled at people to watch out and scared them and made them MOVE and bumped down onto the pavement at the very bottom and skidded to an easy standstill in the bushes at the very bottom laughing and adrenalized and wowing and oohing and reeking of the sheer joy the approximately twenty second trip had been.

So Fathers big and small, 10 per cent to 100 per cent, don't miss this opportunity.  Grab your sleds of all shapes and hit the hills with your kiddies AND BE A DAD.  You ll love it.  Um... a small word to the wise, just don't go down the super duper Alps or Rockies or Everest size hills.  Stick with your friendly sloping kiddy hills.   Have a good one.  

1000 picture puzzle update.  Just about there at the finish.