I love my kids, I just hate parenting
It’s Super Bowl Sunday and I’m about to start cooking drinking. Is tomorrow a holiday yet because let’s be serious! For today’s Zombie post, I was planning to resurrect an old one about why, even though I love watching it, I probably won’t let my kid play organized football. And then I realized that wouldRead more about Zombie Post: Are You Ready for Some Football… Posts?[…]
Having kids changes your outlook on tons of things, some big, some small. For the most part, it’s positive. Life becomes better and more interesting, things you’ve long taken for granted are suddenly seen in a new light; that’s exciting and fun.
But kids are pretty stupid. And while their innocence can be refreshing, their ignorance is simply astounding. So for every aspect of life you appreciate anew when you view it through the eyes of your developing child, there are thirty mundane things that you had been ignoring on purpose that are suddenly thrust back into your life. Soon you find yourself focusing on things you’d stopped wasting time thinking about long ago.
Having children both expands and corrupts every aspect of your life. Kids change your perspective, and suddenly things that shouldn’t be important are, and things you used to enjoy without a second thought become minefields.
I don’t know how to put this, but I’m kind of a big deal.
Not only are my tweets regularly featured in the Huffington Post’s weekly list of “Best Parenting Tweets” – follow me at @DadandBuried – but they occasionally publish my blog posts, in which I put forth my genius-level understanding of the intricacies of expert parenting.
This affiliation with such a popular, influential website gets my writing a lot more exposure, which is great, in theory. The HuffPo audience is not necessarily familiar with my blog.
And, judging by the comments they’re leaving on my posts, they hate me.
It’s not always easy keeping a three-year-old occupied. You need to mix things up a bit, and unfortunately that goes beyond sitting in a different booth at the sports bar every Sunday. When you’re away from home, finding a way to burn your kid’s energy so he’ll go to sleep early enough so you can enjoy your night keep your toddler entertained can be even harder. Especially when you’re traveling.
One of our go-tos is the local children’s museum. Most of the ones we’ve taken my son to are pretty hands on – almost more indoor playrooms than museums, which is fine, since I don’t think he’d really enjoy an exhibition on the Impressionists – but we’ve visited so many he’s almost as bored of them as we are.
Zoos are fun, but it’s winter and it’s cold, so when we were in Baltimore the weekend after Christmas, we decided to try the next best thing: the National Aquarium!
For some reason I occasionally catch the parody bug, like a younger, better-looking Weird Al.
Today, I happened upon the classic “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” poem, and decided to give it the old Dad and Buried spin.
It’s a bit of a lark, but after a weekend of traveling, shopping, family and general holiday stress, I’m in the mood for a lark. I hope you are too. But I don’t blame you if you’re not.
Merry Christmas!