Finally A Parent or A River Runs Through It.

It’s official. I’m finally a parent.

Yeah I had a kid before, Frank, but that wasn’t parenting. He was easy.

He ate everything in sight. He would reach over the bag of chips to grab broccoli. He’s eaten more vegetables by the age of 5 than I have my entire life. He’s polite to adults and most other kids. He says please and thank you. He sings to his sister when she whines or cries. Oh and he sleeps. He sleeps like a crazy bastard.

He no longer naps but when he did they would go from 2:30 to 6pm-ish. Yeah, almost 4hrs. He would get up for dinner and go back to bed around 8:00pm and sleep through till 8:30 or 9am. That’s not even the crazy part. When he started walking, he would take himself upstairs and put himself to nap. Not kidding. At first I would stop him to change his diaper and then send him on his way. After a while I just got used to the sight of him dragging ass up the stairs with Lenny/Lambie and listening for his door to shut.

For his first haircut at an actual haircut joint, he sat there and took it. He even followed Miss Courtney’s instructions. When we dropped him for his first day of pre-school, at the ripe old age of two, he never made a peep and never looked back. Been that way ever since.

That’s not parenting. That’s observing.

Frank was on auto-pilot

Frank’s sister is not on auto-pilot. She is always on a collision course with a mountain top somewhere. In the likely event of a cabin depressurization, complimentary oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling. Please affix your own oxygen mask before helping the person seated next to you.

Now I’m a parent. This kid is running my ass off. I have no ass. Although it may have rotated around to my gut. Regardless, I’m running morning, noon, and night with this one. And my complimentary oxygen mask has not dropped from the ceiling yet. Case in point below.

A River Runs Through It

Last week during the normal course of events it became apparent this child will require much more monitoring. Not necessarily in the helicopter dad mode, more of the NSA – Big Brother tracking her every move, mode.

Whilst folding the morning laundry in my room watching Return to Fat Camp: The Thinning, young Anne Marie played on her own in the bonus room. For whatever reason it felt a little too quiet. I shook that off, thinking I can at least fold these socks before I walk down there.

Always go with your first instinct.

This is what I found when I finally got those damn socks folded.

Didn’t van Gogh start out this way?

Yeah, so permeant marker, Sharpie brand to be exact. However, amongst the myriad of things I learned that day was this little gem. Nothing is permanent for moms. They know ways around stuff dudes haven’t even thought about yet. I’m not ashamed to admit my first thought was to call my sister-in-law Rachel. Well, my first thought really was oh sh*t! Tracy’s gonna kill me, I gotta get this off before she gets home!

My second thought was Rachel. No matter the strides made by stay at home dads, the natural instinct to call a mom you know will have an answer for you, proves that we SAHD’s have a long way to go. I knew Rachel would know what to do. And as usual she did. Alcohol wipes and soak in the bath if wipes don’t work. No go on the wipes, a bath it is. This is perfect, AM loves the bath so this should be easy.

So I do a quick mental check of the ole to do list. Lunch first and then bath looks to be the most efficient use of already wasted time. AM says she wants to wash her hands. Perfect. You can’t see it in the picture but her hands were covered as well. This will be like a little pre-soak before the bath and give me a few minutes to get lunch going before she starts busting my balls about being hungry.

Downstairs I go. AM appears and wants to eat. I listen closely for the sound of water running upstairs. I hear nothing and AM says she turned off the water. OK.

Anyone feeling a little twinge right now. Hold on to that.

We eat lunch and kibitz around a bit downstairs, change a big time dirty diaper, etc… After about 40 minutes I can now hear water running. But I can only hear it if I stand in the hall way near the door to the garage. No sinks are running downstairs. Standing at the bottom of the stairs I still can’t hear water running upstairs. But I’ll be damned if I can’t hear water running by the garage door. I pop it open and take a peek. If Frank was there at that moment he would have said something like, “Daddy, why is there a waterfall in the garage?” Indeed Frank, indeed.

Yep, a full blown Niagara class waterfall coming from the garage ceiling. I’m no plumber but I figure that has to be coming from a sink or tub upstairs. Up the stairs I go, taking four steps at a time. When I turned the corner from the top of the stairs my feet were under water. I’m still not sure how this happened but when I went into the hall bathroom the water was up to my ankles.

The culprit… well we all know who the culprit is, but the cause of the river running through my house was a plastic medicine cup placed perfectly over the drain in the sink. The reason I could not hear the water running was because a wash cloth had been stuffed or “gotten stuck” in the little overflow slit in the front of the sink and the faucet was under water.

Believe it or not the Sharpie covered face was now on the back burner. I’m in crisis management mode. This is one area where me being the stay at home parent is an advantage.

Once I got the water stopped, I’m hauling the mail to the garage to get my industrial shop vac. But I know the Vac can only get the surface water. It’s not strong enough to get the water out of the carpet. For that I’ll need my carpet shampooer. I’m not saying there aren’t moms who could get both of those big appliances up the stairs in one trip, but I gotta believe that’s a few trips for most moms. Engaging my big shoulders enhanced by baby muscles and I’m rolling up the stairs with a Sears & Roebuck vintage Craftsman, 5 gallon, 3hp, variable speed, shop vac, and a Hoover Deep Clean carpet shampoo type machine.

It took a while but I got the water all cleaned up. Even managed to re-org the cabinets and drawers under the sink, as they were all filled to the top with water. I’ve been meaning to do that anyway. The water in the garage poured through an already existing hole, so not much to do there but let it air dry. The Vac/shampooer combo worked to perfection on the hall carpet. Aside from the throw rugs in the bathroom needing to be washed and the hallway carpet being slightly damp, everything was back in order. Almost everything.

While all this was going on my Sharpie covered daughter was laying on her back in the dry part of the hall way with her feet on the stair banisters, singing about wanting to take a bath. Not kidding. So I still have to get her in the tub to de-sharpie-ize her and meet Tracy for an appointment in about an hour. Thankfully Rachel was right and after about 10 minutes it came off. Grammy showed up right after that and I was able to shower and make the appointment.

I figured it was OK to tell Tracy all of this when I met up with her since the water and the child were cleaned up. Wrong. The moral of that story is, don’t tell your spouse anything about the kids or house they wouldn’t have seen on their own.

As for the kid, well she strolled to her room to plot her next conquest. As you can see below, contrary to popular belief Emperor Palpatine is alive and well. Not a Star Wars fans – google it.

So this is what parenting is like.

Unclean! Unclean! – The scourge of adulthood Pinkeye.

May16

So yeah Pink Eye. I’ll be 47 in august and I’ve been felled by a condition 5 year olds get. Ironically I never got it as a 5 yr old. As a matter of fact I’ve never had Pink Eye. I don’t think any of my 7 brothers and sisters had Pink Eye as kids.

This has been a big eye opener. Yeah I went there.

No clue how I got it either. Neither kid had it when I got it. Thankfully no one else in the house got it from me; an unexplained miracle to this day. I do drop Frank off at that giant petri dish known as pre-school. I can’t imagine what manner of microbes are crawling around that joint.

Every day a new batch of bacteria delivered in the form of a snotty varmint wiping their noses on sleeves, touching door knobs, coughing into the air as to get the most effective germ spread pattern possible. The ultimate biological weapons packed in the deadliest of delivery systems – a kid. Surprised I haven’t gotten the Plague yet. But thanks to the anti-vaccine crowd I hear there is a good chance the Plague might make a comeback.

Anyway my eye started feeling weird last Friday afternoon. By dinner I could barely see out of it and by bedtime (12:00-1:00am for me) it was hard to keep open from the pain. We had eye drops left over from when Frank had pink eye a month before. So I bathed both eyes in that stuff. Worked too. By Sunday morning both eyes were glued shut. Here is what it looked like by Sunday afternoon.

WARNING! Graphic eye picture dead ahead!

Drops didn’t work dude.

That’s just nasty.

The pain was a little surprising. Anyone I talked to said it should itch but not hurt and that includes the doc I went to on Monday. Never got the itching part. But man it hurt. I did learn something. Telling kids not to touch their pink type infected eyes or not to scratch a rash is just about the dumbest thing we could say to our kids. From the jump I couldn’t keep from touching my eyes. It’s a wonder it only lasted 3 days the way I was pulling and poking and rubbing my eyes. I’m surprised my hands didn’t get infected. How in the world could I expect Frank or Anne Marie to posses that type of discipline? Crazy.

But the bigger issue is the shame. I learned long ago with Frank it doesn’t matter if you’re sick you still have to operate in public. Groceries must be bought, kids must be dropped off, errands must be run. We have a very active cul-de-sac, can’t avoid everybody, should I wear a sign? I don’t want infect the Sac kids and their parents but I don’t want to ignore them either.

The problem was my eyes looked hideous as you can see from the picture above. I’m much cooler looking with Pink Eye right? During the day it wasn’t too hard because I could just go the too cool for school rout and drop the shades to cover my unclean state. But at night it was tough.

Wanted to get a little mcReeses mcFlurry on the way home from the mcPodcast, well I had to look away from the dude at the window for fear he wouldn’t serve me. Then I realized he became more frightened I might stick up the joint, so I sped away.

Need to hit the Kroger on the way home from tee ball but now it’s dark, what to do? Do I stare people right in the eye and dare them to comment, shout Unclean! Unclean! if I see someone get within two kroger-meters of my position. Do I just look down in shame and avoid all eye contact what ever? It’s a quandary.

I went with the for shame eyes down method, if you were wondering. I really wanted to shout Unclean! just to see what happened.

My eyes are clear now and apparently I was only contagious the first 24 hours or so. But I was quite the social pariah there for a while.

Thankfully my long national nightmare is over.

Until the next snotty little beast infects me with something.

Parenting is great!

Diary of a SAHD: Year round Nativity Scene? Sure why not.

Apr28

So I guess we’re into this phase now. You know, the phase where your 4 year old asks questions you’re not smart enough to answer.

You wanna tell this face that he will die someday?

I’m not talking about why is the sky blue? Or if gravity is so strong how can I just yank grass out of the ground? Or my favorite, Why can’t we pass everybody on the road? No, those are easy. Basic physics and traffic laws gives us the answers to all of that.

I’m talking about questions from Frank about heaven, and dying, and when will he die, and how will God find him to take him to heaven when he dies. Again basic theology and some good ole gospel talk has the answers for the questions, but really offers nothing for the fear and uncertainty of a 4 year old child who just became aware of his mortality and is now afraid to die.

I will say this, I was worried Christmas was becoming this gift grab, with total emphasis on how much stuff he was getting. When we started to explain about, death, heaven and Jesus being the way to get there, he tossed out this grenade, “If Christmas is celebrating Jesus’ birth why don’t we leave the Manger up and celebrate that all the time?” Good question.

Well, because we have to decorate for Valentines day silly!

Haha. Wow that was a question I was not prepared for in the least. So he appears to be thinking about more than gifts and Santa at Christmas. I gotta believe he’s not the only kid who’s had that thought process. The problem: what’s the answer? Is there one? I mean a good one, not my flippant Valentine’s Day thing.

We kept Easter low key gospel wise because we chickened out. With all the death talk and questions about eternity we weren’t sure we wanted to restart that conversation by saying Jesus’s dad sent him here to kill him so we can live. Unfortunately that was the perfect opportunity to do it, but like I said we got skeert and we like our sleep too much. Did I mention all this life actualization comes in the wee hours of the morning?

Sunday brunch kids, embrace it. Great time to ask stuff like this. Who couldn’t field these questions over a plate of eggs and chicken nuggets at 11am? At 2am there are several synapses not firing, hell both of my eyes may not be open. That’s another, possibly tougher conversation than year round Nativity Scenes.

Time of day not withstanding, you would think it would be easy enough to say, well we just celebrate birthdays one day a year, like mommy and daddy and AM do. The problem is we put the Chritmas stuff up mid December and take it down New Year’s eve day. So the man made Christmas “season” turns out to be harder to explain than the actual human birth of Jesus.

After all of that the question remains and the answer just as elusive. Why don’t we celebrate the birth of the Savior of the world all the time? Be advised I’m assuming the people who read and follow here are smart enough to understand we are a family who believes but doesn’t require you to. If you don’t that’s great, but you still have something to add.

Having a different set of beliefs doesn’t shield you from your kid asking a question about heaven or God or Jesus. It just means we’ll probably answer those questions differently. That’s ok too. There is always something to be learned from parents as they relate to their kids about serious life and death questions regardless of philosophical approach.

Anyway, what’s the answer? Why not celebrate the birth of God’s son with a manger scene displayed year round? Would save me from having to drag it out every December, but my laziness can’t be the final answer.

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you dare.

You know the drill, answer in the comment section.