I love my kids, I just hate parenting
Sometimes watching sports and being a (good) parent is a tough combination. Especially when you’re a Dolphins fan.
I don’t have much to cheer for these days, but I do have plenty to cheer against (primarily the Patriots, Jets, and Bills). Unfortunately, there’s a five-year-old around most of the time, which makes talking smack about my rivals a lot harder.
But I think I may have found a solution. Thank God Detective Munch can’t read!
I spend a lot of time railing against the idea of parenting “experts”. But everyone needs some advice once in a while.
Pretty soon, I’m going to have a new child upon whom all my hopes and dreams will rest. In order to ensure things go smoothly, I got some advice from fellow members of the dad blogger community.
Then I mocked it.
Usually when I watch my son stumble around, I’m amazed at how little he can do. I mean, yeah, he’s only five-years-old, but it’s incredible to see all the basic, rudimentary human activities that he is unable to complete, or even truly comprehend.
I love my son, and lately his behavior has (slightly) improved and he’s being (slightly) less of an asshole so I’m (slightly) more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, in many cases, it’s not his no-can-do attitude so much as his no-can-do age.
With that in mind, I’ve tried to change my perspective and look at his deficiencies – like the inability to do two things at once, or to not get food in his hair, or to take a shower – as adorable and charming.
Recently, Target announced that they’d be doing away with gender-categorizations in their children’s sections. This made a lot of people happy and a lot of people angry.
I am torn between being baffled by the anger and totally understanding it. Not because I agree with it (most of the angry people seem to think Target has a nefarious agenda, which: CUCKOO!) but because I get where those people are coming from, at least on one level: human beings love labels.
Labels are comforting. Nothing scares us like stuff we don’t understand, and labels help us understand things.
My son is white. He is male. He is an American. He may be straight or gay, he may be religious or not, he may be liberal or conservative. But if I have my way, he’ll be none of those things.
He’ll just be a human being, like everyone else.
![[Guest Post] “Claire and the Beast” Giveaway](https://i0.wp.com/dadandburied.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/claire-and-the-beast.jpg?resize=500%2C233&ssl=1)
So I have this annoying friend.
He’s also ambitious and prolific. Which is what makes him so annoying. He’s constantly writing and drawing and illustrating and just generally striving, mostly in between mind-numbing meetings at his high-powered job. All that’s on top of living with two kids and what simply has to be a really understanding wife. Like, supernaturally understanding.
This Renaissance man’s name is Joel Bernard, and he recently completed one of his many projects! It’s a children’s book he wrote and illustrated himself. This endeavor took two years, and if the following post is to be believed, a fair amount of hand-wringing. But he did it, and he’s just now starting to put it out there into the world.
He’s written a guest post (he somehow doesn’t have a blog of his own) about this new book, why he wrote it, and why he’s so annoying and stuff. Check it out; not only is his post funny and probably meaningful (I haven’t actually read it), there’s a chance for you to win a signed, hardcover copy of his new book at the end!
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