28 May

Dad and Buried Posted in discipline One comment

Party Pooper

Newsflash: Kids are stressful. They disrupt your life, and the lives of the people around them, even when they’re on their absolute best behavior. They are the ultimate party pooper.

That’s why we parents often prefer to hang out with other parents. Not only so we can bitch about the stress to someone who has had similar experiences, but because when there are other kids around, your kid has something to do rather than keep pulling your arm and causing you to spill your drink.

Also because your own kid’s bad behavior is less noticeable when he’s part of a team. There’s strength in numbers. For parents, numbers provide solidarity.

For our children, they provide camouflage.

The Parent Lapse

So we have this baby gate. No, we’re not embroiled in some shocking political controversy involving a baby (Babygate, coming soon to theaters near you!), it’s an actual gate for babies.

Like all baby gates, it’s used to prevent babies (and toddlers) from getting places they shouldn’t, particularly staircases (and the Oval Office!). Having exclusively lived in urban apartments, we haven’t had that much need for it, because an apartment with stairs is not an apartment we can afford. However, for the past few months, Detective Munch has been in Grandma and Pop-pop’s house, and Grandma and Pop-pop’s house has stairs. So the baby gate was put back to work.

Except not really. Because I never close it. Because I’m a terrible father.

Review and Giveaway: Dino Construction Company

If you ask my toddler to list his favorite things on earth, after he says Mommy and Frozen and “cracker parties” and Grandma and probably mutters a few gibberish words and mentions his lovey and then cries and screams for a little while and then maybe says some foods like bacon and pizza, I’ll bet he’ll finally announce that it’s “trains!”

But then, if you ask for his favorite things besides trains, he’ll say “baseball!” And after that, after you’ve spent a few more fruitless minutes trying to get him to respond the way you want him to respond so your stupid intro to your stupid blog post will fall into place, you’ll give up and grab a beer. And that’s when he’ll go off and play with his trucks and pretend he’s a dinosaur because he loves those things too even if he refused to cooperate.

In fact, he might even go play with his trucks and pretend to be a dinosaur at the same time, because now he can, with the Dino Construction Company!

02 May

Dad and Buried Posted in discipline 2 comments

School of Block

When I was a kid, The Karate Kid was one of my favorite movies. If I’m totally honest, it still is. I see it listed in the channel guide and there’s no way I’m not watching the tournament.

Growing up, I was so enamored with the uplifting tale of Daniel LaRusso’s war against the neo-Nazi community of Southern California that my parents thought I might want to take karate classes. And I would have, if I hadn’t been so terrified of landing in a Cobra Kai-type school with a Vietnam-traumatized sensei who would force me to be racist and do push-ups on my knuckles.

Come on, I was like eight years old. Which I thought was a little young for martial arts. Except almost 30 years later, my son is taking them, and he’s three.

The Most Interested Man in the World

One of the joys of being an adult is the ability to make your own decisions. To decide what you want to do, how you want to spend your time, and who you want to spend it with.

And then you have kids, and pretty much all of your autonomy goes out the window.

Thankfully, and startlingly, one of the side-effects of becoming a parent is that you change – you don’t have to change everything, not if you don’t want to, but you will inevitably change, at least a little. Your lifestyle will shift and your priorities will be re-ordered and, suddenly, the people you most want to spend your time with are your kids, and the things you want to do are what they want to do.

Most of the time.

Dad and Buried

Tag: learning

Party Pooper

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The Parent Lapse

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Review and Giveaway: Dino Construction Company

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School of Block

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The Most Interested Man in the World

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