I love animals. I love dogs and cats, because I’m not one of those psychos who thinks you can only appreciate one of the two and have to draw a line in the sand.
But I am not a fan of cat-sized dogs. When I get a dog (it’s gonna happen, honey!), I want a real dog. I’ve never seen the point of having one of those teacup things that you can carry around in your bag.
Of course, having lived with a toddler for the past year, I’m starting to see the point.
A few weeks back, after abandoning potty training due to the onset of trauma, Mom and Buried and I took a quick run to Target.
While there, we decided to buy some off-brand diapers to get us through the next few weeks, enough time for Detective Munch to emerge from his PTSD (Potty Traumatic Stress Disorder) and get back on the potty train.
The cheapo diapers turned out to not be the best idea, as they were cheapo for a reason: they leaked worse than Julian Assange.
Which got me thinking. Maybe I shouldn’t shortchange my son.
Everyone hates going to the dentist.
These days, my two-year-old’s bedtime routine is making me hate BEING the dentist.
I didn’t realize that teaching my kid how to be a normal person would be such hard work.
Everybody has that one friend for whom they’re constantly making excuses.
“He’s not normally like this” or “He’s cool once you get to know him” or “He’s got a weird sense of humor.”
After a while, though, it starts to become apparent that despite your friendship, that’s an awful lot of caveats. Maybe it’s time for the guy to start taking some of the blame for his own behavior.
Lately, that’s how I feel about my son.
I’ve never done this before.
I’ve never used my blog to promote a product. There just aren’t a lot of kids’ products I’m comfortable plugging.
But I got an opportunity to explore Storypanda’s interactive children’s stories for the iPad (soon to be offered for Android devices), and as someone who is sick to death of reading “Llama Llama Red Pajama” to my kid, I’m going to make an exception, just in time for Mother’s Day!
Translation: I dropped the ball on my present and this is an easy fix.
I remember when my son learned to say “No.” The moment haunts my dreams.
Much like the discovery of lying, when a child learns to say “no,” it’s another step on the road to having a teenager. Another step on the road from merely “keeping your offspring alive” to actually “raising a human being.” Another step on the road from having low blood pressure and a healthy head of hair to looking, and heart-attacking, like Roger Sterling.
As a new parent with grand ideas of how you’ll raise the perfect child and do everything right, you initially try to limit how often you say “no” in the hopes that your kid won’t pick up on its power and start wielding it himself. But he does. He certainly has in my house.
And now it’s no longer about avoiding no; it’s about reclaiming it. Because these days, the word is all his.
The other day, I was awakened by my son yelling from his crib. This is not unusual. I would say this happens every day. Every. Single. Day. But this day was a little bit different. Because instead of merely calling for mommy or daddy, he was screaming, “I got poop in my butt!”
That doesn’t happen every day, neither the yelling of it nor the reality of it. People don’t normally shit in their sleep, not even little kids. So it was a bit strange that he had.
Except he hadn’t: he was lying.
And so it begins.
As you may or may not know, I tweet a lot. Most of my tweets are at my son’s expense, some are at my expense, and a handful are at my wife’s expense, much to her chagrin. Some are true, some are pure fiction, and some – perhaps most – are true-ish.
Like this one, which is among my most retweeted:
“The fact that I just angrily yelled ‘You’re not the boss of me!’ at my two-year-old is a pretty clear indication that he definitely is.”
I don’t believe I’ve ever yelled that at my son; at least not out loud. But it’s 100% true, just the same.
This post isn’t about uplift, as I have none to offer. It’s not about expertise, as I’m no expert. I’m merely a normal parent, a relatively new one at that, and it’s at times like this that I most feel the weight of that responsibility.
I have a two-year-old son. He isn’t yet able to comprehend an event like yesterday’s bombings, let alone formulate questions about it, but seeing the footage would undoubtedly scare him (especially since he’s too young to understand whatever explanation we might offer for the event). Which makes watching the news nearly impossible.
As with most everything else, a complicated situation is complicated even further by my responsibilities as a father.
I love Boston. I attended Boston College and lingered in the city for another decade after graduation, in Brookline, Southie and the South End – not more than a ten-minute walk from where the bombs exploded. It’s a great town, home to many close friends and the setting of some of my favorite memories, a handful of which were actually made on Marathon Mondays, watching the race from the Pizzeria Uno on Boylston Street – shocking close to the finish line – keeping track of the Red Sox game while cheering on the runners. It’s truly a shame that this tragedy will now be associated with what has always been one of the best days of Spring in New England.
Even without a personal connection, tragedies like this used to be easier – somehow – before I had a child.
And so it begins.
To be honest, it probably should’ve started already, but Dad and Buried has been a little pee-shy, as in: I don’t want to help my son pee. I’ve been dreading this whole stage in my son’s development. Not because it signifies him getting older, but because I’m clueless. And it signifies him getting more inconvenient.
Now, with summer approaching, and a new preschool looming in the fall, it’s time: my son needs to be potty trained.
As the stay-at-home parent, it trickles down to me to fulfill this duty.
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