Summertime 2015 pt 1 : Are you (her) my mother?

It is a fact of life that when Dad takes the kids out or travels with the kids by himself  service people will look for the mother and refer questions to her and not the father.

A couple years ago in the summertime, myself and at that time one daughter and my brother and his wife went out with my Mother to a restaurant.  Of course the waitress asked my sister in law all questions pertaining to my daughter even though my daughter was sitting close to me and sister in law was sitting on the opposite side of the table next to my brother and it seemed obvious I was the father of my daughter.  But the waitress continued to ask my sister in law what my daughter would like, if she needed some coloring books if she was done with her food and basically everything.

It didn't bother me.  My sister in law was and is childless.  It was amusing.

Making my grand flight last week with both my daughters to visit my Mother, their Grandmother, I was sitting between my daughters in a four seat section on the plane.  On the end sat a woman who looked rather nice and pleasant but had nothing to do with our family.  Yet again the stewardess on the woman's side asked the lady all questions pertaining to my daughter who was sitting next to her.  Does she want ice in the apple juice, will she have the chicken or the pasta etc for some time.  To be fair the lady was sitting next to my daughter and could have been the mother, but something tells me even after the woman corrected her and told her, "I'm not with them," the stewardess still might have asked her questions pertaining to my daughter,  "does she need a blanket."

Again, it doesn't upset me, it is rather funny.  No reason to get upset or fume over it.  However, it is yet another example where service and the general working society will not credit or maybe not recognize that the Father is the caregiver of the family even at that instant.  A mother is always looked for.  Granted Stay at home Fathers, even fathers taking their kids out without a mother is still a percentage wise anomaly.  Luckily it is (usually) harmless.

ON THE OTHER SIDE... I DO OBJECT!
When I was preparing for my summer vacation with my girls a friend of mine recommended that I get a witnessed signed letter that my wife was aware of and allowed her children to travel without her across borders.  Anecdotal evidence said that I COULD be stopped and held up at a customs area and given problems that I was travelling by myself with my young children.  Worse case scenario that they could have held me off the flight and questioned me for a "very long time".

I have to first clear my friends name and say that while he has a tendency to cover risks where risks do not exist he was only telling me what he had read on several trip prep sites and even US customs web sites.  It was not his idea alone.  But to this I objected and resisted quite strongly.

Mainly, it got me fuming that, by his wording, the customs officials were quite wary of Dads with children.  Now why is that?  Yes I understand that "due to a rise in child abductions by Fathers" (probably starting with John Lennon and Yoko Ono who actually did abduct Yokos child) Fathers travelling alone with young kids are profiled and put on observation.  But this struck me as akin though not as nefarious, as racial profiling.  In other words, what are you doing travelling alone with (your) kids?  That is strange, that is atypical, you must be up to something, ARE YOU ABDUCTING THEM?  Please step over here sir for a full strip search and questioning.  And we will pump your stomach too just to make sure.

For sure Stay at Home Dads have to rise and resist this stereotyping profiling.

And it got me to thinking that what if the police or authorities carried this out to the Nth degree?  What if fathers walking down the street with their kids, picking them up from school, taking them to the park without Mom, were also profiled as possible abductors?  After all, why should a father cross a border to steal his kids?  He could be surreptitiously stealing them after school or bringing them to the park before he "stole" them.  Then what?  I can imagine the police stopping me while we sat eating ice cream cones on the side walk.  "Are those your kids sir?  Do you have papers for them?  What are you doing buying them ice cream without their Mother?"

And then you have to go through the shame and embarrassment that in fact you are the primary caregiver and you are taking your kids out for ice cream after school.  And the police will look at you as if a) you are a criminal or b) you are a loser with no job because what Father is the primary caregiver for his kid?  What is a primary caregiver they will ask.  Oh you mean your wife works and you don't?   Bahahahahahha, Loser. And you know you just can't expletive deletive an officer.

So, I say, stand tall Dads and lets stop this in the bud before we have to start running with our kids every time we see police cars. We have to be worried about cops pinning us to the sidewalk beating us a couple times with their baton and saying we have the right to remain silent.

Or every morning we will have to go to the authorities with our wives and get our "papers" signed that yes our wives know and accept that we are with the kids without her.  And every time we hear sirens we have to fish around for our papers and get them ready to present.

I DID NOT get that paper with a witness signature that my wife knew I was travelling with our kids across the border.  And I was all ready to give them a piece of my mind, Harry, if anyone asked me or questioned me on this topic.  YES, I am travelling very far with my kids without their mother.  Yes in fact I will be on vacation with my kids for several weeks without their Mother and will be taking care of them, hopefully teaching them how to swim this summer, reading to them every night and being the sole brunt of their "Dad, I am bored"  "I don't like this food" complaints.  You want to make something of it?  Mr. Borderguard?  Huh huh?

No one questioned me about it.  No one gave a damn really.  Shucks.  I was ready.

Here is the message from U.S. customs and Border Protection>

Children - Child traveling with one parent or someone who is not a parent or legal guardian or a group

If a child (under the age of 18) is traveling with only one parent or someone who is not a parent or legal guardian, what paperwork should the adult have to indicate permission or legal authority to have that child in their care?

Due to the increasing incidents of child abductions in disputed custody cases and as possible victims of child pornography, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) strongly recommends that unless the child is accompanied by both parents, the adult have a note from the child's other parent (or, in the case of a child traveling with grandparents, uncles or aunts, sisters or brothers, friends, or in groups*, a note signed by both parents) stating "I acknowledge that my wife/husband/etc. is traveling out of the country with my son/daughter/group. He/She/They has/have my permission to do so." See our Q&A parental consent

.https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/268/~/children---child-traveling-with-one-parent-or-someone-who-is-not-a-parent-or

Oh, it does include Mothers that they should get the paper too.  Uh.  OK. That's fair.

Dept: Sentimental. Where have they all gone?

Another post I have been thinking about for a long time because it confronts me every day.  

Let me say first off that I am not a pack rat.  I have seen pictures of the stacks rats pack and I can`t believe it. It makes me itchy on the skin because in fact I can`t stand messes.  I would love to have as bare a house as possible (besides for my music collection of course)  That would make me feel better.  

Pack rats are ....  eyow.  All that junk lying around.  

No, my problem is that I am a sentimentalist.  Everything means something to me. Some memory, some feeling is triggered by looking at anything of memento.  A vinyl record, a ticket stub, a child's game, a sock, all stir memories and events in my life.  My problem is my long term memory is lucid and very open to me.  I flow in and out of periods of my life pretty easily in my thinking.  These little pieces of tangible memory are like portals to a past which is readily relivable and retrievable in my daily life in the present.  

(On the other hand, I have a terrible short term memory.  My wife often gives me a verbal beating because I don't remember what she said to me yesterday about where we are going today or what food I should have bought today.   This is a problem too.  A big problem)

My first topic in the sentimental department is rather unoriginal and banal, well aren`t they all?  But everyone has a joke about this.  SOCKS.  The missing socks department.

Where have they all gone?  

The washing machine ate them.  The goblins of the night take certain socks away just to mess with you.  I have heard there is a special place in heaven where socks are and when you die all your missing socks are found and paired back up.  Actually, I just made that up.  In fact that only gets me depressed, that these socks will be alone and unpaired perhaps the remainder of my life and only paired back up in the after life.  See, I told you I was sentimental.   

When we moved from one apartment to another nearly two years ago from this writing, I put all the single socks in a bag and brought them to the new apartment.  The thing is, I am not sure if I have ever unpacked that bag and maybe I have the matches waiting in a pile for me to find that bag now and put them together.  My short term memory lost track after we moved if I really did this. Or not. 

Currently unmatched

The point is, I keep a little box of the single socks in the girls room. After each laundry we go through the box and see if the laundry produced any pairs that weren't pairs


before.  It is a kind of ritual.  In fact each laundry does produce some pairs, but of course the opposite occurs at the same rate.  So there is a continual in and out of single socks in the box waiting for their significant others.  

New batch of singles after laundry.  Peppa pig a loser this time

Some have had to wait a long time.  One year we left some at Grandmas cottage from summer vacation time.  We retrieved them a year later and matched them up when we got back to the home apartment.  Thankfully my Mother had kept them for us.  

There was an incredible find recently when I found a tiny baby Mickey Mouse sock which had been missing for two years.  Of course by the time I found it nobody fit those socks anymore.  But that was not the point. It was the principle of matching the missing socks which mattered.  Strangely though, we lost the same sock a couple weeks later and currently Mickey Mouse is a loner again.  

speak of the devil.  Found this match after writing this post

Yes, in fact, there are some socks which have been lost since baby hood.  I have them sitting in the box by themselves but I cant give up on them.  I wont throw them away because maybe they will be found, behind the washing machine, in the bag of single socks I brought from the other apartment or the bad goblins will have pity and return some of them.   

But I have to face the fact that many  will only be matched .... when and if I get to heaven.  Or they may have to wait even until after my daughters time.  Which means that when I am a Grand Father I ll wander into my daughters` room where my daughters wont be anymore, but the box of unmatched socks will still be there.  I ll look at the baby socks, the toddlers socks, the Hello Kitty sock, pink socks, white frilly socks, and the whole collection of socks which lost their mate each year and I will remember, the life and times of being a Father to my little girls who are grown big now and gone from the apartment. 

 

On the same wave length

I first had the idea for this post last Fall when I was walking my older daughter to school with the leaves on the ground all over.  We heard a truck around the corner from where we were and my daughter said, "Daddy, lets not go that way, I am afraid of the truck which is around the corner."   I said, "I know." and she asked me how I knew?

I knew because I was afraid of the same truck when I was small.  
"You are afraid because you think it is a monster," I said
"Yes," she said and looked up at me like I was psychic.  

We walked over to the other side of the street and turned the corner.  There was a street sweeper.  

When I was small I hated them, because they were like a monster.  They would come and grab you and sweep you up into its hold with the rest of the leaves and small garbage in the gutter of the street via its menacing rotating brush.  But when I was small they  

were much more scary with a big white unconventional square body which had a huge compartment for the refuse.  But you didn't stay in the compartment with the rubbish, you got swept up into another dimension, the garbage dimension.  Then you were gone.   

The one we averted was much smaller with a compact orange body.  But it made the same sound and had the same round circular, rotating brush.  Hence, still a monster.
  

But the point I wanted to make was it got me to thinking how many other similarities I had with my daughter and how many would become apparent through life.  I already knew about the ketchup/condiments connection.   As I wrote in a much earlier post, she loves ketchup.  She can put it on a lot of stuff from hot dogs to eggs to fish and chicken.  I don't use it so liberally these days ("es ist verboten" said my wife), but I know why and when my daughter will use it.  Of late she has discovered barbecue sauce.   Yeap, that one is on the agenda too.  Still to come:  mustard, mayonnaise and much later, probably after she is a teenager, vinegar and or balsamic vinegar which I only discovered ten years ago, but can`t eat a salad without it now.  And last but not least, really spicy sauces like Tabasco sauce.  I put that on my egg in place of the ketchup.  Yum.  

In my mind I started to extrapolate on the logic of the potential similarities.  Maybe I could really help her out in life.  "No, no, my little girl, you don't want to try that out,  trust me, there is no point" And, "You know, you should really take physics because if you don't you are really going to be sorry about it for the rest of your life.  Yes the rest of your life.  In fact I am going to demand that you take that physics course. You will thank me."  And the clincher "No, you don't want to start a relationship with that boy.  Don't even start it, no don't even go to the movies with him.  No, I'm telling you, it will end in tears.  How do I know?  Well, because I went out with the girl equivalent of him umpteen years ago and ... it ended in tears.   You remember that street cleaner you were afraid of when you were six years old because you thought it was a monster?  Well, its the same thing.  He will suck you up and spit you into the garbage dimension."    

Well,... I guess we have to learn some things ourselves.  And she will have to learn, often the hard way too.  Hopefully she will learn from her mistakes.  Often we don't.  I know that too.  Uh, don't ask how I know that.  

I guess I cant "cheat and kibitz" for her all the way through her life like telling her what to discard at a poker game.  But it must be fair game, it has to be part of parenting (I think it is in chapter 5 of "Parenting for Dummies") that we impart our general knowledge and experience to our offspring.  I mean we can`t have learned it all for naught.  I think it is sensible that we tell them in advance that if you mix drinking wine and beer you are going to end up anywhere and you wont know where except that it will be face down, and other such gems of wisdom.  

And I hope I am around to push her through and out of quickly a rather brutal period of mid life crisis which will entail static nothingness and very bad laziness and lethargy possibly extending upwards of five years.  If she experienced that phase I would certainly give her a good kick up the arse every day to keep her moving and progressing and DOING, otherwise, ... well its a long, sad story which I will spare you and I pray I can spare her too.  

Suffice to say, she WILL be taking the physics class in High School.  I have always regre,... I mean she will regret it if she doesn't.  I KNOW!  

A last message for Fathers:  Pay attention to the details of your children.  Revel in the similarities and smile when you see yourself in your children as if you were looking into a time machine mirror.  Play along.  Understand.  Remember what it was like.  It was only yesterday.  


A couple end notes:

http://www.discogs.com/Godflesh-Streetcleaner/release/73735
I will only add the link to the album by Godflesh called "Street Cleaner" as the cover might offend some people religiously and it is not my intention to offend in my posts, or at least warn first.  It is a very disturbing album also, but mostly from the instrumentation.  I dont even listen to the vocals or know what he is saying.  Anyway, when it came out (1989), it had a big effect on me.  

And here is the complete short video which goes with the picture of the street sweeper above.  It seems to be a home video.  It captures well the sheer monstrosity of the old Street Sweeper.  

http://www.ovguide.com/flemington-borough-police-department-9202a8c04000641f80000000074c9c1c

Etan Patz and the lasting effect on parents of today, including me.

     








  First there was news about the outcome of the Etan Patz murderer case against a Mr. Hernandez.

Now, if you don't know who Etan Patz is, you are lucky.  Because as the article stated, there is a difference in the US bringing up children pre and post Etan Patz' disappearance.  Here.

Pre disappearance, kids were much freer and were left at the playground without any parental supervision.  They could walk home or to school  after 6 years of age by themselves.  Parents let them be more independent.

Post disappearance, all those free range kids days, latchkey kids stopped.

I was at a high school reunion some years ago and for some reason the topic got on kids (now how did that happen?) and one friend, a woman, said, "its different these days.  We cant let our kids play in the parks by themselves."

The difference is that on May 25, 1979 Etan Patz was abducted on his way to school, BY A STRANGER.  His parents had let him walk the two blocks, TWO BLOCKS (its not very far) by himself to the bus stop and in that interval he was abducted and presumably murdered.  That was a game changer.  The perception that there are strangers out there who could take your children, and not for ransom money; it infected parents brains from that point on.  Regardless if the statistics show that most abductors will be a relative or someone we know.  It is perception that matters and the perception is that an abductor is more than likely to be a stranger.


What I wanted to get to talk about is that abduction not only affected the parents of that time, but it affected the children of that time who would become parents now.  Myself being one of those children turned parent today.  As a result there is a question in my head that I ask myself, "when will I let my older girl walk to school by herself?"  I recall, I was already walking to school by myself at least by the time I was 9 and maybe even 7 and my school was about the same distance from the house I grew up in as our flat is from my daughters school.  But I think for sure I will be walking her next year when she is 7 and after that we will see.  I worry about the busy streets just as much as an abduction.  I still don't think she pays attention when she crosses the street.  And some of the neighborhood she will walk through could be similar to that neighborhood which Etan Patz walked when he was abducted.

The result is that I will become more of a helicopter parent.  Will that be bad?  See my article on helicopter parents here.   Well, again, it depends how much and how long I will be a helicopter parent and does the risk outweigh the reward? In other words by being more helicopterish will I be harming my daughter more than the reward of my daughter being safe?  Maybe I am over reacting and it is a safe neighborhood.  Maybe I am over utopiaizing (no its not a word, I just made it up) that I can keep my children 100 per cent safe.  I can not.   Bad things can happen no matter what.  I can turn my head and something can happen.  But perception says that I can do a damn good job of keeping my children safe if I do more watching and hovering.    

It can`t be helped.  Unfortunately the abduction of Etan Patz in 1979 left a mark on myself and will affect the way I bring up my children. 

I don't like the word victim in this case, some people would say I am a silent victim of this case. However I was  "tattooed" by this event and I will act according to what I feel will be greater security and safety for my own children.  Some of that may be so called "helicoptering"

Perception is the reality.  More people are killed in car crashes than in plane crashes or by terrorist attacks.  But are people afraid to get into a car?  No.  There are more people scared to fly in a plane.  And you want to know how much the US government spends on preventing terrorist attacks, the budget of the Homeland Security?  No I didn't think you did.  It is one of those numbers that boggles.  But they still can not stop terrorist activity 100 per cent.  If they turn their heads even for a minute, a terrorist could attack.  Bad things happen in life.  You get the idea?  You get the parallel I am trying to draw?  If the national U.S. government is guided by perception and tries to stop terrorist attacks one hundred per cent (which it can`t), well, so I will try to keep my daughters 100 per cent safe and be guided by perception. 

Etan Patz was abducted by a stranger and the media coverage afterward and the government activity after that was immense including the beginning of pictures of missing kids on milk cartons.  I am not saying that was bad, but it did happen.  Therefore it is like this, for me too.   Rather safe than sorry, for that matter, killed.  Perception is the reality.

But permit me to end on a happy note:  I really enjoy walking my daughters to school.  I hope they wont mind if I walk them to school for many years.  It will leave me with such fond memories throughout my life.  Thus a silver lining to the very sad tale of Etan Patz.  I hope that makes him smile where ever he is.        

Stay at Home Dad?

 David Heitler-Klevans with his wife, Jenny, formed their band "Two of a Kind" in 1990.  It is a "kids" band with music written and performed for young audiences in mind.  This is the short story of what happened when the couple`s twins were born.  At the time both David and his wife had full time jobs to support them as well as playing shows and touring. 




By David Heitler-Klevans

I had been working as a music teacher in elementary schools for 5 years, and although I had enjoyed it for most of that time, I was starting to get burned out.  Not from the actual work with the kids, but from the work-place politics and dealing with rules I didn’t always understand or accept. 

Our identical twin sons, Ari and Jason, were born 8 weeks early at the end of January 1995.  Being premature, they had to spend their first 5 weeks of life in the hospital NICU (the Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit), hooked up to all sorts of wires and tubes.  Although this was a tough way for both parents and babies to start things off, I never really worried that they would be OK – I could tell when I looked in their eyes that “the lights were on and someone was home.”

My wife Jenny took one month of vacation time from her job while our sons were in the NICU.  When our boys finally did come home from the hospital, she had 3 months maternity leave, and she got help from both of our mothers.  I was an active co-parent, doing my share of diaper changes and on duty all night long, but since my wife was breastfeeding, there was a limit to how much I could do.

After my wife’s maternity leave ended, she went back to work part-time.  Again our mothers came through with help until my summer vacation.  I became a stay-at-home dad for the summer.  Little did I know… 

Even though I had been an involved father up to this point, Jenny had usually been there with me.  I was especially worried about what to do if both of my sons needed me urgently at the same time, to be comforted or changed or whatever.  They were so little and helpless, and there were 2 of them and only one of me.

However, I soon got into a rhythm.  There were all the obvious daily tasks of getting them dressed (often matching, but never identical outfits – Jenny found it amusing that I enjoyed coordinating their outfits!), giving them their bottles of pumped breast milk (“mom-sicles”!), changing their progressively messier diapers and giving them their nebulizer treatments (for their prematurity-based breathing needs).  My two favorite activities were reading them stories, one cuddling on each side of my lap in rapt attention, and walking them around the neighborhood in their twin stroller.  I got a lot of exercise strolling around our Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, singing them every song I could remember until they inevitably fell asleep.  I always panicked a bit when I had to leave one sleeping out on the sidewalk while I brought his brother up to their 2nd floor bedroom to lay him carefully in his crib, but nothing bad ever happened.  Luckily, our boys were always fairly easy to transfer from the car or stroller into the house without waking.

Morning and afternoon nap times were the only times of the day that I had to myself. Doing household chores and working on booking contacts for “Two of a Kind”, the children’s music duo that my wife and I had started five years earlier.  It was some sort of poetic justice that after naming ourselves Two of a Kind, we had produced identical twin sons!

As that summer progressed, we started looking for someone to hire to take care of our boys when I went back to my teaching job in the fall.  To say that I had mixed feelings about handing over our sons to a stranger is a huge understatement.  Every time I thought about it, I could feel the anxiety in my gut.  We finally found someone that we felt pretty good about, and I resigned myself to the idea, telling myself that this was just something I had to accept.  However, right near the end of the summer, the woman we had hired called to tell us that she couldn’t take the job after all.  All of my feelings of panic returned, and I just couldn’t face starting the search process all over again.  With my not-entirely-positive feelings about my teaching job, I realized that I was infinitely happier and more fulfilled taking care of my boys.  And what started out as just a summer turned into a full year with me as a stay-at-home dad.

Quitting my job and staying home with my twin sons for their first year was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.  Not that either the decision or the work of caring for infant twin boys was easy, but I am still so glad that I took that plunge.  I think it changed my life – and hopefully theirs as well – for the better.

Here is the family playing all together just recently for Two of a Kind's 25th anniversary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqkAu9rVZjo


(All pictures and you tube video used by permission of the author and owner)

I Neanderathal part 1

OK
I have to start this post now.  I keep saying I will, but don't.  Keep saying I have to do research, but don't.  So, go.  Lets start it.  Just jump right in and say it.

Men can not be good Fathers because they have such big egos!!  That is what I have to say.    

Destroy your ego.  Stomp on it.  Shut it down.  At least ignore it. 

In so doing, you will become a stronger Father and a happier one and one who will enjoy his kids more.  Because let me tell you what you have to do to earn Father of the year award, or even come close.

It is not good enough to just push your little one on the swing in the park.  You have to climb up with them and go down the slide.  You have to fit in those tube slides that scare the bejubbas out of me that I may not fit in them and get caught inside like Homer Simpson did on the tube water slide.  Not to mention that I am claustrophobic and it reminds me of being in a coffin.  I have to do it.  I did it.

 This slide is way bigger than the coffin tube slide
I was in.  This one I did, was great fun.  If  I hadn`t been the only adult going down it with 20 other kids waiting for me to go down. 





You have to ride on the other side of the see saw and bounce your kid going up and down.  In the process they will laugh so hard and tell you to keep going and keep doing it.  And you have to.   I did that one too, many times. 

You have to ride on those little bikes that go in a circle and look funny because you are way over sized for the thing, and pedal.  Your feet will hit the ground and your knees are uncomfortable, and inside your mind you are saying, "Oh jeez I must look like a maniac.  I feel like a fool," but you have to.    I did that one.... mm, once or twice, maybe three times when another adult was on with me.   

You have to get down in the sand box and dig big holes and put the sand in different forms of fish, frogs and trains and pack down the sand and say, "chary Mary hup" and dump the form out and say "Yeah" that it came out correct.  And you have to take a spoon and pretend to eat the sand when your child hands you the "cake" they just made and say, "MM, deeelicious cake".  And you have to sit on the edge of the sandbox or even in the sandbox and get along side your youngster and be there getting your hands and pants dirty.

But if you have a big ego, you just wont do that.  And.... you just wont qualify for Father of the year award.  And... you just wont even enjoy being a Father.

And it is all because you have a big ego and or an inferiority complex.   You are afraid of what people will think that you are doing these "weird" things, like... like playing around with your kids, digging around in the dirt and being a caring Father.

After my second girl was born, things were tough.  Its one thing to take one child to the park, but two? And one can`t barely walk and is still in the pram?  Then you are really looking like "A Mommy" in the put down pejorative sense.  You might as well admit that you don't have a money making job and your wife is the breadwinner of the family and swallow every bit of your big hard to chew down pride.  

Then, I had to leave the park and take them home.  Home was pretty close by, 10 minutes normal walk.  We didn't have a car, we didn't need one, living in the city.   But that meant that I had to walk the family home.  When I had to walk under this viaduct (pictured below) along this busy street with cars and buses streaming by while I pushed a big carriage with one baby in it and my other little girl rode on her little red motorcycle and everybody took a glimpse of me when they drove by and I felt like, yes, inferior product, then I knew that I had a problem.  I either had to hide out during the work hours and look like I was on my job break when I was being a "public" Father, or I had to at least ignore this ego I had, or better yet stomp on it and rip it up.

This is the viaduct we had to go through. Usually more cars.  

Guess which one I did?  
(to be continued)
    

Dept: practice what you preach. part 1

I was quite sad as I was walking away.  I had brought my older daughter to school.  She hadn't given me a goodbye kiss because I had yelled at her.  Fair enough.  I wouldn`t give me a kiss either if I had yelled at me. 

As happens to many son in laws, they have a run in, even a couple, even more than many, with their mother in laws.  Well of course.  I m not so good.  Her little girl could have done a lot better as far as a husband goes.  (I wonder if I will feel the same when that time comes for my girl to join hands with some one else.  Probably).  Anyway. And I am dirty.  I once lay down on the bed with my jeans on after I had been outside.  Crime!  And just recently she yelled at me for putting my shoes on while I sat on the floor.  On the dirty floor.  I didn't think it was so dirty.  Why didn't I sit on the chair there?  I really don't know.  I sat on the floor.  It was disgusting for her.  Was it really so disgusting?  I didn`t really see it that way.

The reason I had yelled at my daughter was because she had sneezed and then had blown her nose on her sleeve.  eayu.  "That's disgusting,"  I said.  "Not only is it disgusting, but its unhygienic.  It will stay on your sleeve.  Not healthy".  She ran off to her class without kissing me.

Then I was walking my other daughter to her pre school and suddenly stopped... oh boy, I am a silly goat.  I guess you saw it coming before I did, but of course I was being contradictory.  I thought it was disgusting when my daughter sneezed and wiped her nose with her sweater sleeve, but thought my mother in law was a bit batty that she thought I was disgusting sitting on the floor to put on my shoes.   Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, I get it. 

The problem is, I still won`t let my daughter blow her nose into her sleeve.  Isn't that disgusting of her to do that?  But I don't see anything wrong with sitting on the floor.  So I'm in a conundrum of contradictions.  You can help me out of this.  I cant solve it.

Some other exact cases where we yell at our children but then later in the day we do the same thing.

1.  Not allowed to eat food outside the kitchen.  I yell at my youngest daughter mercilessly for doing this.  "Look," I say,  "Who has to clean up your crumbs and they get all over."  Well she really is too small to clean with the brush yet.  But then in the evening after they have gone to bed, mm, I have occasionally eaten a bread with honey in my bed.  Well, you know.  I won`t let the crumbs get all over.  I will eat over the plate.  I will be responsible in the droppage of the crumb factor.  Besides I will have to clean it up myself.   

2.  "Don't lick the ketchup bottle around the lid."  You leave your germs there and again its unhygienic and may get other people sick if you have germs.  Yeah, well in the evening after they are asleep if I pour the ketchup I will lick off the leftover stuff around the lid.  Admittedly, I don't know why I do this.  I really don't.

3.  Drinking milk from the bottle.  I have to yell at both the girls for doing this.  You will leave your germs in the bottle and they will get into other peoples drink.  Later in the evening... you guessed it.  I take one or two gulps direct from the milk or juice bottle.  Yes, but, its such a waste to get out another glass and pour it and then have to wash the glass. I just want two gulps of milk and I will put it back.  I don't see why I have to go through all the trouble of, eh finding a glass, pouring, ugh and then wasting water cleaning the glass after just for two sips of milk.  Besides I never do it when I am sick.  I never see my germs in the milk.  I wouldn't do such a thing as leave my germs there, if I  even had any.   I know I don't.      

Still, I should really practice what I preach.  I guess I should try to be better.  Be a better parent.  Yes, I will!   From now on I will make a concerted effort to not be hypocritical.  Well at least with numbers 1-3.  There is no way I am going to give in to my mother-in-law and sit on the stool to put on my shoes.  No way.

Pictures coming some time.