Childhood Pleasures I Am Less Physically Capable Of Doing Now That I’m An Adult

It was sixty-five degrees today, so we took advantage of the warm weather and went to the park. My kids insisted on a twenty-minute session on the swings, which, by the way, can be an awesome shoulder and pectoral workout. Pushing each child with one arm for twenty minutes can work up a sweat. Not to mention the motivation children provide to keep at it. Every time I wanted to stop, G was there to say, “more daddy, keep pushing me.”

It’s strange how I see my kids doing something that I used to do as a child, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve done it. So when I see my kids doing kid stuff, and how much fun they have, I want to do it to.

I used to love the swings back in the day. Who didn’t? Unfortunately I don’t have the stomach for it anymore. Every time I go to the park, I try to ride the swings, and I always get nauseous after a couple of minutes. I’m sure I could condition myself to swing longer, but I don’t have that kind of time.

There are a few other things I’ve realized I can’t do, that I once could. Things like,

- Cartwheels; I never thought these took that much acrobatics, but when I try to do them now, they turn into this weird, half flip, half fall move.

- A four-foot span of monkey bars; I can Kung Fu grip your hand when I shake it, but a short distance of carrying my own weight is just too much for my silky smooth hands. Pull-ups have become equally as difficult.

- Spinning around in circles until I get so dizzy I can’t stand; Ok, I can still do this one, but like the swings, I used to be able to do that without the urge to puke.

I am, admittedly, out of shape. Though, I can still hold a twenty pound child for a couple of hours and play a game of basketball without dropping dead. Hey, come on, that’s impressive.

I like to think that my ability to do a cartwheel or spin around for no good reason will help me reconnect with my childhood and feel like a kid again. Instead, I feel like an old man. For now, watching my kids will have to be enough to feel like a kid again.

Out Of The Way!

Beep, beep, beep.

A few months ago when C turned one, I posted on all of the murderous and abusive encounters she’d survived involving her brother. I can now add an attempt at running her over to that list. Yes, he tried to back his truck up into his sister. This was more of a blatant disregard for his surroundings as well as my instructions against it, than an actual attempt at hurting her.

My wife saw this picture and questioned why I would even stand there to take it when he was trying to do that, but when I took this, he wasn’t actually moving and there’s a lot more space between them than the picture suggests. I may get flak for this picture from my wife, and I may be tempting fate here, but I say again that I haven’t had any emergency room visits involving my children.

That’s all I really have to say about this.

Week 5

Heading into week five of this year brings an end to the month, which will mean one month of daily posting for me. I’ve somehow managed to come up with something to share every day, so we’ll see if that continues into next month. For now, here’s my usual Sunday series of photos that, for whatever reason, didn’t make it onto the blog during the week, but are here for you now.

One Fish Two Fish . . .

I'm Flying!

Rain dance.

. . .

Kicking back.

Brushing Hair – And The Father-Daughter Relationship

I like to brush her hair, but sometimes the job is stolen from me.

My wife tells me that little girls like to have their hair brushed. I was surprised when I found out that was indeed true, at least with my daughter, because I had a sister growing up and don’t recall this fact about her. I played with my sister a lot when we were kids and not once did she ask me to brush her hair. Now that I have a daughter, I get to do it, though that job is sometimes stolen from me, as you can see. I always look forward to doing the brushing because . . . I don’t know, that seem like something dads can do with their daughters.

The father-daughter relationship is still relatively new to me and the only way to understand this relationship, I think, is if you have a child of the opposite sex. It’s different. I know what it’s like to be a little boy, and I know what my relationship with my father was like, and how I want my son’s relationship to be with me. I’d always wanted to have a girl because I knew that it would be different.

Playing with my son is a way to relive my childhood and also to live vicariously through him at the same time. Playing with my daughter, on the other hand, is a whole new set of experiences. I get to play make-up and have tea parties, and brush hair, and all that other girly stuff. I don’t get to do the girl play very often, just because C isn’t really old enough for most of it yet, which is why I so look forward to brushing her hair!

I’ve heard countless jokes about how girls are more expensive, more stressful, more dramatic, blah, blah, blah. Maybe that’s true; I did met a man who had six daughters, and while he looked stressed, he also looked happy. It’s a relationship like no other and I wish daughters upon all men everywhere because it’s a life-changing experience.

Animal Children

I was at gym class with C today, where the instructors were trying to herd children back to the activity they were doing as the kids were trying to escape, and for the first time, I noticed how much children are like animals. Or at least they’re treated that way. I’m not just talking about feeding and cleaning up after them, but our actual interactions with them.

I mean, think about it, we have to house train them, when they’re in groups they’re herded like sheep or cattle, and we attempt to communicate with them through a variation of commands and hand gestures.

I may not be the best person to make this comparison because I never really had a pet growing up, and I despise dogs, so I’ve only had a couple of cats in my lifetime. Still, I sometimes feel I’m treating my children like a dog or a cat. I sometimes have to coax them out of hiding places, I constantly find myself saying to my children, “come here, girl,” or, “good boy,” (sometimes accompanied by a pat on the head).

Someone must have noticed this and invented those child leashes I’ve seen other parents use. Even if I wanted to use one, my kids would figure out how to get out of them because they were smart enough to figure out how to open or get around our child safety gates, as well as virtually everything else we’ve tried to child-proof. I’m digressing a little.

The sad thing about this is that I think animals are far more obedient than children are. If you tell a dog to stay by you, he will. Sure he may need obedience school, but it doesn’t take years for a dog to learn how to listen.

I could offer G anything his little heart desires to stay by me while we’re out, and he’d only stick around long enough to retrieve his prize before running off with it. Pets are cleaner too. My friend’s dog is a cleaner eater than my children, and dogs don’t even have hands! This is why if you can’t take care of a pet, you really shouldn’t be having children.

But will someone tell me when I get to stop treating my children like they’re animals? My son certainly has the fine motor skills to eat a meal without getting it all over himself, it just doesn’t always happen. My daughter understands language enough to comprehend a command when it’s given to her, but sometimes she just gives me a sly smile instead of walking to me.

We are humans and while humans are in the Animal Kingdom, we’re not like other animals. Or, maybe we are and children have proven that. Either way, children have to be “raised,” which is just a euphemism for “trained.” I may add, “Child Trainer,” to my resume.

Affection And Animosity

It’s amazing how children can turn on you. One minute they’re happy, smiling, and nice to each other (i.e. above picture). Ten minutes later, they’re at each other’s throats so that someone ends up crying (i.e. picture below).

Luckily the crying picture was taken on a different day and for a different reason than sibling violence, but my point is that you never know when and where affection will turn to animosity. My siblings and I are quite a bit further apart in age than my own children, but I can’t recall us ever turning on each other at the drop of a dime.

I think as a dad, I’ve become hyper-aware of this kind of bipolar behavior and it makes me jumpy. If one child is crying and I happen to have my back turned, or am in another room, I’m quick to blame the  one who’s not crying. I’ve long thought that in parenting, it’s best to shoot first, ask questions later.

The happy picture above was taken this morning at breakfast. I don’t usually sit the kids next to each other for the very reason I just explained, and I’m always afraid that while I have my head in the refrigerator, G will manage to drag C out of her high chair by the head and drop her on the ground.

So this morning, after taking this picture and trusting that the children would remain kind to each other, I began cooking their eggs. Then I hear C crying, and I turn around to glare at G.

At this point there are three responses I can get: 1. An innocent look (usually meaning innocent, depending on how it’s conveyed), 2. A frightened look (usually meaning guilt), 3. Or an angry look (that one’s a toss-up). I got the innocent look and I realized that C was crying because she didn’t have food, and the girl gets impatient when she doesn’t have food in front of her.

I usually feel bad for my hasty judgement, and it’s made me question the shoot first, ask questions later approach. I spent some time today thinking about how often the non-crier has been guilty of making the crier cry, and it doesn’t seem to be that often. Kids can cry for all kinds of reasons all on their own, and there doesn’t have to be an identifiable cause.

By the way, I’ve always heard that parents can distinguish varying types of cries from their children. For the last year I’ve felt that to be not entirely true. I mean, I can tell the difference between an unhappy cry and a panicked cry, with the latter usually being something serious. But sometimes I can’t even tell which kid is crying, much less what they’re crying about. My ability to determine the difference between a tired cry and a scared cry is largely based on what time of day it is. If it’s nap time, it must be a tired cry. If it’s lunchtime, it’s a hungry cry.

Maybe that’s just another mom superpower that I don’t have, but just yesterday my wife couldn’t tell which kid was crying, so I don’t know.

My children have managed to make it this far into childhood together without any trips to the emergency room (cross my fingers), so maybe it’s time for me to relax. After all, they are just children.

Sleeping Super Powers And A Saintly Wife

So, today was drastically different from yesterday because of long naptimes and no meltdowns, due largely in part, to a good night’s rest. I think the happy face below illustrates what a glorious day today was compared to yesterday.

Today's the kind of day when you feel like opening a window, and saying, "hello world, good morning!"

I’ve thus far been blessed with relatively good sleepers for children. Though, I will admit that last night’s bedtime was just as difficult as the day had been, probably because I was not the one to put them to bed.

While my wife is awesome in just about every possible way, I surpass her only in my ability to put the children to sleep. She finds this frustrating because she likes to be better than me at everything, but I honestly think it’s just because they like her more, so when she’s around, they don’t want to go to sleep. She is the fun one after all, while I’m mean, grumpy daddy.

Or, maybe it’s because when I’m around, they know I mean business. Oh, who am I kidding, that’s just me being delusional. For whatever reason, the kids respond to me better at bedtime, which I guess works out since I’m home with them all the time. Better sleeping babies means a better chance for the parents to get a good night’s sleep. That is, unless, your babies wake up in the middle of the night; and they all do at some point.

There’s only one major flaw in our bedtime system, and the breakdown occurs when I fall asleep. Unfortunately for my wife, I’m a heavy sleeper and she is not. When I first became a dad I couldn’t understand how so many parents were tormented by a baby who woke them up every few hours while my sweet bundle of joy basically slept through the night. I was blissfully ignorant of the fact that my child was no different than other people’s kids, until my wife started asking me how I couldn’t have heard the shrill newborn screams coming from our son, only feet away from me every night.

To perhaps better illustrate what a heavy sleeper I am, I will tell you a true story.

Shortly after I’d graduated from high school, when I could sleep in every day of the week, our house was broken into early one morning when we’d all normally be on our way to school and work. Now, I didn’t grow up in a terribly dangerous neighborhood, but our house got broken into a lot when I was growing up, so we weren’t new to the experience. What was different about this time, was the fact that I was still in the house sleeping when it occurred.

Imagine my surprise early one morning, when my dad comes bursting into my room, screaming something about the house being robbed, and how could I have not heard them come and go. At first I thought I was dreaming, then I thought he was joking until I saw him scrambling around the house looking for what might have been taken. In the forty-five minute period that my dad was absent from the house, the thieves managed to walk away with our brand new computer, and some other smaller stuff that I don’t really remember. They likely opened the door to my room, saw me sleeping there, and decided to leave. I didn’t hear a thing.

But surely I could hear a screaming baby two feet from my face at three in the morning? Not so. I’m basically useless once I’ve fallen into a deep sleep and there’s no shot at waking me up, no matter how long and intense the screams.

I’m sure I have some kind of sleeping disorder, but why would I investigate a sleeping disorder that allows me to sleep through anything? That’s like having a sleeping super-power. If I happen to die in my sleep because there was a fire, and I didn’t wake up, wouldn’t that be better than dying in a fire while I was trying to escape?

While I think the adverse effects of my heavy sleeping are debatable, it sometimes makes life difficult for my wife. Particularly, when the kids wake up in the middle of the night and she has to try and put them back to sleep.

I’m not proud of abandoning my wife when I go to sleep, and I’m concerned about the likely years of her life she’s losing with all the sleep deprivation she’s had the last few years, while I’ve had virtually no loss of sleep; but that’s just how it is. The woman is a saint for dealing with it.

 

 

Why Mothers Are The Best

Image via Wikipedia

Today I was having a really rough day. A day that involved dealing with a lot of crying, whining, complaining, outright defiance, and a little bit of me getting slapped by my son. Usually on days like today, my only solace is nap time, but today happened to be a bad nap day too, as it only lasted about half as long as it normally does.

I’ve had days like this before, but being a full time dad the last four months has started to take its toll. I now understand why men fought so hard for so many years to keep women out of the workplace and to stay home taking care of the children; because men aren’t cut out for this. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a misogynist who thinks a woman’s role is to stay barefoot and pregnant, but they’d be better at it than a man would.

We just don’t have the motherly qualities that are so important to be able to cope with the stresses that go along with raising children. Qualities like, intense patience, unparalleled empathy and kindness, and seemingly infinite physical endurance when it comes to dealing with children.

It’s not that men are incapable of patience, empathy and physical stamina, because we are. There just seems to be an exceedingly greater supply of these characteristics in mothers than there are in fathers. Here’s an example: a baby cries for a while, showing no signs of stopping, and his father may think, “what’s his problem?” while his mother will probably think, “what’s hurting my baby?”

My wife is pretty rad, so while she realized that I had a rough day, she also realized that it must have been rough on the kids too. I mean, while I had to deal with the crying, the kids had their reasons for crying in the first place; and wouldn’t you be burnt out from spending most of your day crying?

The irony of all this is that most men are babies. When we get sick, we want to be pampered and coddled, even if it is just a cough or mild headache. My wife could have the stomach flu and will still manage to find a way to take care of the kids. In fact, one time she did because we both had it and she was the better person.

So today, in my man-babyish state, I wanted to be pampered and coddled for the rough day I had. However, wisely, my wife chose to focus her attention on the children because that’s what mothers do best. After preparing dinner and recognizing a need for some special attention, she set up blankets and pillows outside on our deck for the kids to have dinner on.

Here, my dear, let me help you cut that.

The kids certainly seemed to enjoy it more than the usual dining room dinner and they calmed down a great deal because of it, although, she still put them to bed early. Then she told me to go to bed early because I had a bad attitude.

That is why mothers are the best; they know exactly what everyone needs.

I’m About To Drop Some Knowledge On You

I don’t know what the statistics are on this, but I’ve seen or heard of far too many people who sit their kids down in front of the t.v. for far too many hours of the day. I’m not knocking t.v. because there are a lot of good programs on t.v. these days for children that will help them develop thanks to the pioneering efforts of Sesame Street.

But this post isn’t so much about t.v. as it is about reading. That’s right, we all remember how to do it, and I’m not talking about reading your Facebook page, or Tweets, or even this blog. I’m talking about books.

When was the last time you picked up a book? If you can’t remember it’s been too long. Ok, ok, if you want to spend your time watching the boob tube that’s your business, but if you’re a parent and you can’t remember the last time you picked up a book to read to your child, then shame on you. You may be missing out on an opportunity to give your children a lifelong love of reading.

Like all good habits, it’s best to start reading to your kids early. Even if they’re newborns, do it just to get into the habit. You can get some reading done yourself and babies love the sound of their parents’ voices.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a good library near you, and your children are old enough, you can take them to storytime (most libraries should offer it). Library storytimes are a great way for children to interact with books and other children their age. But the greatest benefit is helping expose your children to the six early literacy skills that virtually all libraries try to employ during storytimes.

You may not have even realized there were six early literacy skills, but here they are:

- Print Awareness

- Print Motivation

- Letter Knowledge

- Vocabulary

- Narrative Skills

- Phonological Awareness

Some of these are self-explanatory. Obviously by reading books to your children, you’re exposing them to words, and therefore, vocabulary. Others, like Print Motivation, may not seem as direct. So I’m going to break them down for you.

Print Awareness is basically understanding what a book is. If you hand a book to a baby, they’re likely to eat it, throw it, step on it, wave it around, and maybe hold it. They do that primarily because they’re babies and that’s what they do with everything, but also because they don’t know that there’s anything special they’re supposed to do with it. When you take the time to sit down, open it up and read it, they will still try to eat it, but they will eventually understand what its purpose is and to follow along on the page with you.

Print Motivation is one skill that many adults lack, that is, liking and being interested in reading. Even if you read to your children, but don’t like it, they’ll pick up on it. Speeding through the story, reading with a monotone voice, or pausing in the middle of the story to text your homies, are all surefire ways to ensure your children will not enjoy reading. Children are so perceptive and can easily distinguish the difference between genuine interest and a lackluster effort. It’s so important to find children’s books that you like reading yourself because if you enjoy the story, you’ll read with enthusiasm and your kids will get excited about the story too. Also, once children understand what a book is, it’s a good idea to let them flip through the pages themselves to encourage this skill.

Pop-ups, flaps, and pull-outs are all great for Print Motivation.

You sound those words out baby girl!

Letter Knowledge comes into play as your child gets older and has had more familiarity with language where they can begin to understand that there are different letters and that they have specific sounds. ABC books are great for encouraging this, as is singing the alphabet. When your kids start speaking, you can point out that certain words they know begin with specific letters and emphasize the sound that goes with it.

Vocabulary, again, is self-explanatory. Your kids will learn words that they hear every day, but reading can expose them to words that they don’t always hear and will help them to learn what those words mean. You can even work on this one without books by speaking clearly and explaining words to your children that they are unfamiliar with, no matter what their age. If you “baby-talk” to your baby, you’re only retarding their linguistic development.

Narrative Skills help children to understand sequence. Think about it, even the most mundane day occurs in a sequence; you get up, you eat breakfast, you go to work/school, you eat lunch, etc. The first thing every parent wants to do to make their lives easier is to get their kids on a schedule, and by being exposed to narrative through reading, you’re only reinforcing the knowledge that things happen in a sequence.

Phonological Awareness is much like Letter Knowledge, only more advanced in that it involves understanding that words are created by varying sounds. Singing and rhyming are great for encouraging this skill, which is why books like those written by Dr. Seuss, are so valuable.

Sorry for the long post, but reading to my kids is something I really love doing and it’s so beneficial to their development, which is what all parents want for their kids. So if you want your kids to love books, put down the remote and pick up a book.

Week 4

Just the usual week ending post today. Here are some pictures that didn’t make it this week.

I'm too pretty.

Hmmm.

I'm out of food (sigh).

Yay! He's sharing.

My little football player making a tackle.

My favorite pic of the week.

R2D2 dance party!

R2 won that staring competition.