25 Mar

Dad and Buried Posted in discipline 2 comments

Good Cop/Bad Cop

I’m used to my son preferring my wife. I’m okay with it. It has its perks. Besides, young boys often favor their mothers. It’s biology.

It’s not like my kid and I aren’t close. Yesterday I pretended to eat his face and this morning he told me he doesn’t like it when I breathe. We’re buds!

But as we navigate the threenage wasteland, Mom and Buried and I often have to resort to some good cop/bad cop parenting, which is pretty typical. Unfortunately I’m usually the bad cop.

No wonder he likes Mommy better.

The Happiness Problem

My son turned three and half the other day. My wife threw him a little party.

Few things seem so obviously tailor-made for a Dad and Buried rant as the absurdity of half-birthdays. Unfortunately, when my wife got excited about Detective Munch’s mini-milestone, I found myself swept up in half-birthday fever myself, against my better judgment.

Despite my reservations – about spoiling the kid; about rewarding him for nothing; about the fact that his terrible threes haven’t exactly been his behavioral high-point so why the fuck should he get an extra made-up holiday right smack in the middle of it? – I helped celebrate it. Enthusiastically. We gave him a toy truck and a cupcake!

I think I’m part of the problem. I sang “Happy half-birthday” to him, for Christ’s sake.

Read more about The Happiness Problem …

18 Mar

Dad and Buried Posted in ECard No comments

Half-Birthdays Claim Another Victim

17 Mar

Dad and Buried Posted in Drinking 2 comments

The Winter Soldier

My family is the victim of poor planning.

Like everyone else, we participate in the standard holiday season that begins in November and ends in January.Unlike everyone else, we also have a few more holidays thrown into that fall/winter zone. And I.m not talking about All Saints’ Day or Pitchers and Catchers day.

My wife’s birthday is in early November. My son’s birthday is in mid-September and happens to land on the day before our wedding anniversary, and my own birthday hits just a week before that, although, let’s be honest, my birthday is meaningless. Throw in my wife’s beloved Halloween and the Hallmark hell of Valentine’s Day, and from September until mid-February my life is a calendar-choked spending spree of forced romance and legitimately meaningful milestones that leaves me both physically and financially spent.

Like I said, poor planning. And this long winter is just making it worse.

Dad of No Trades

This morning Detective Munch handed me an old iPod he’d been playing with and asked me to fix it. I told him I couldn’t, and he wanted to know why.

“You fix my trains!”
“Sometimes.”
“Why can’t you fix this?”

This doesn’t offend me; he’s only three. Plus, iPods aren’t exactly the easiest devices to dissect and MacGyver back to life. But “fixing” his trains mostly involves replacing the batteries, and the truth is he could ask me to fix almost anything and I’d be at a loss. I’m not a handy man.

A common male stereotype is that men can fix things. Kids expect dads to fix things. But – unless you count breakfast, which, don’t, because I can’t even make decent pancakes – I can’t fix shit.

Am I failing my son?

Dad and Buried

Good Cop/Bad Cop

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The Happiness Problem

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Half-Birthdays Claim Another Victim

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The Winter Soldier

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Dad of No Trades

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