Puzzling Posts: An admission of cluelessness

Preparing my child to be a teacher's nightmare

2012-02-14T12:51:00.001-05:00

One if the best things about being a parent is that as far as your child knows, everything you say is correct. So it doesn’t matter that someone like me got advice from my guidance counsellor mother that I might want to think about dropping maths and sciences from my educational pursuits.

But after answering my daughters question about why the sun always goes away at night with a not at all scientific “because the sun needs to get some sleep too,” I started wondering if she’d ever ask the question again so that she’d eventually learn, in earnest, why the sun sets in the evening.

Of course, she’d have to ask somebody other than me because I’d very likely give her another wrong answer even if it wasn’t the same one I’d already given.

I figure she’d end up asking this, and many other, question and get the right answer because I’ve never heard a grown-up who hadn’t been drinking seriously answer that the sun goes down at night because it has to go to sleep.

Three seconds later I had pieced it all together---kids learn stuff in school from teachers, Then it dawned on me that as a parent, I was making the teacher’s job awfully had by giving such bullshit answers to my kids.

I wonder how many different answers a kindergarten teacher gets to every question she or he has in their lesson plans.

“Who can tell me what comes after the number three?”

“My dad told be bologna sandwich.”

“My dad told me Christmas tree.”

“My dad told me four...teen.”

“What is wrong with your dads?”

I think adults very often take for granted that there will always be people to teach their children the right answer to basic questions.

And while I have no proof that they care at all (for all I know it might be the only thing that gets them through the day with twenty or more four year olds in their care), maybe we adults with kids should try and prepare our children a little bit better.

1. Hold specific story telling times. I still think there’s great value in making sure your kid know how to spin a yarn (or tell a lie if you want to say it like it is). But make sure they know story time is a time of make believe and that nothing discussed in story time should be used as fact.

Failing to do so is how I came to argue with my science teacher about the existence of dairy properties on the moon.

2. When you’re about to give an answer that would make sense in and Mad Lib but not in real life, don’t say it. Also, try not to think about it at all because then you’re going to think about how funny the Mad Lib is and laugh to yourself and your kid will think you’re a crazy person.

3. Every once in a while, mix it up and actually do some research on the question. Maybe as a 33 year old, you should know why water boils, or why zebras have stripes.

Truly, there are a myriad of ways to make sure your child doesn't show up for the first day of school sounding like someone who’s been reading books backwards their entire life. Why not try a few of them this summer as you get your kid ready to go back to school.

But do be sure to mix in the odd yarn or two, we do need to keep our teachers honest.

Oh lord, foot paint

2012-02-10T11:26:00.001-05:00

As a new little girl is welcomed to the family, my first daughter seems to be growing rapidly.

Here, she displays her first ever foot paint job. Next, she will be primping her hair for the Under the Sea fall dance.

Or, more likely, singing Nicki Minaj as she gets ready to head to a club...where I'll be waiting and watching for any guy or girl who tries to anything untoward her,

Like looking at her or buying her a drink.

I've heard foot paint is a gateway cosmetic and my wife (the enabler) and I have a discussion that needs to be had.

As a blog giveaway, if anyone wants to comment on this post, I'll gladly send them the remnants of the bottle of foot paint used in this instance.

What our daughter thinks of her new family

2012-02-08T22:28:00.001-05:00

We figured Leah was doing pretty good adjusting to life with a sibling.

She helps change Charlotte's diaper by informing us her sister has "got poo poo out," and plants kisses galore all over her face.

But then we saw her playing with her toy train set and noticed she had set up the train tracks rather ominously.

Now we're not so sure she's adjusting as hoped...

Hipster daughter

2012-02-07T12:15:00.001-05:00

The style education continues. Think it's going really well...

Oh the things you forget

2012-02-04T21:54:00.001-05:00

Not even a week ago, we welcomed a second little girl to our ~~growing~~ finished brood.

We figured this time around, things would be much easier. After all, we've been through this before and know that kids don't break as easily as we thought they did with our first one.

The first night proved to be exactly what we expected. While there wasn't a whole lot of sleep, there also wasn't the cold sweats we went through with Leah, wondering every second whether or not our child was still breathing.

So on day two, I expected more of the same, things might feel a little different because we were now looking after two little monsters but we wouldn't be surprised by anything.

Then, oh. my. god. The diapers.

How did I not remember how often a baby went poop in the first few days of life?

And how did I forget how damn expensive it is to buy newborn sized diapers? I don't understand why diaper companies go for the throat when manufacturing and selling newborn diapers. After two days of at home time with our child, we were already running low on the 32-pack of diapers we had for her. Which meant I was taking an early morning trip to the grocery store to buy more.

To save a little money in the per diaper department, I wanted to buy a lot more than 32 diapers. But, to my dismay, the 32 pack was the king can package.

Now I get that babies aren't meant to stay that small for very long, but still, they aren't expected to reach their birth weight until two or three weeks old and the average birth weight is less than eight pounds.

Newborn diaper sizes are for babies up to a little over eight pounds.

So, in the best case scenario if you've given birth to an average sized baby, you'll only have to use these newborn diapers for four or five months before you can mercifully move them into size one diapers without fearing the explosive poo leak.

What I rediscovered in the first couple of days with our new little one---these kids go through like 15 damn diapers a day, which is about a pack every two days. Which is about three and a half packs per week, which is about 17 packages over the course of the first month and a bit of life.

At $15 per pack, that's a crap-tonne of money in diapers.

And it puts you at ill ease when on day two you're already worrying about whether or not you can afford a second child.

"Will she even notice if we keep her in the same diaper for a few poos?" I ask. "I've read that a baby's senses aren't very well developed at this age."

"I can't tell if you're joking or not," Andrea replies, giving me one chance to get out of my stupid comment.

"Kind of, I guess," I retort, not taking the out. "Maybe I'm just thinking we could extend it for a couple of poops, not a few poops."

"Why did I want to have another kid with you?"

"Seriously though," I ignored her comment. "If I google it, I bet I'll find a culture in which prolonged dirty diaper wearing is considered good karma."

No reply meant I was wrong, and would continue to be for many years to come.

But in all honesty, aside from this one glaring point, we've had things at least as under control as we did with Leah, which may not mean a whole lot.

Here's to letting my two year old raising her one week old sister.

Starting a kid in organized activity classes

2012-01-27T10:49:00.002-05:00

My cute little girl is now two and a bit years old. At this age, her main occupation is doing funny things, like dancing. And here, for your pleasure is a video of her dancing...

Now, Leah is dancing a lot at this point in her life which has led me to wonder: when do you start encouraging a child's interests by putting them in organized classes, in this instance, a dance class?

Classes like this seem to be a pretty good thing---you get your kid around other children, you teach them a little bit of obedience (although I'm sure that's not the word they use), and you get them exercising instead of playing video games.

Those are all things I'd like to see Leah doing at some point, especially the obedience part (although that's probably not what I should call it either).

I'm going to try and break down our current situation and evaluate how close she is to classes using this short video.

1. The dancing

I think as far as dance moves go, the shoulder shrugging hip wiggle is fairly close to the beginner stages of dance routines. With that in mind, she's about as good at it as anyone I've ever seen. The way she keeps the sides of her body moving simultaneously proves that she's not just doing this move because it's easy, she's doing it because she can do it perfectly.

2. The doll

In the video, Leah sets Dora up to dance and then quite clearly smacks in the skull. You can hear her explain how "Dora fell" but, were she more honest, she could have said "Dora concussed with my hand."

What this means in terms of classes is that we'd have to be extra vigilant when Leah was paired up with a dance partner. By no means is delivering near fatal blows a show stopper, but the devious attempt to blame the fall on the doll is cause for some concern.

3. The crawl away

Perhaps most disconcerting part of the video is how quickly Leah crawls out of the picture post dance. What we see is about six seconds of dance concentration and then nine seconds of dance isn't important.

I know ballet dancers have to train 25 hours a day and they aren't allowed to crawl away. Mind you, I'm only suggesting Leah take a 45 minute class where her shoulder shrug move may be the most advanced.

Still, who knows how many shiny things they have in the dance room. In this instance was it a bug that drew Leah's attention? Was it a piece of dust? Was it an imaginary something or other?

We don't have enough proof to know that it wasn't a warg or a hammerhead shark, both things that if I saw in my living room, I'd think to crawl over to so I don't think we can base our decision on the crawl away alone.

So what do I think? Well, I'd like to get Leah out of the house for longer periods of time so I say she's ready. We'll see what kind of obedience they can hammer in to her and then take it from there. Next up? Sports I'm hoping.

Meeting a new human...as a two year old

2012-01-25T08:55:00.004-05:00

"I have always wanted to act ever since I was a little girl. I would put a blanket under my shirt and pretend that I was pregnant. Then, I would go through childbirth." Dakota Fanning

For nearly nine months now, we've been preparing our soon to not be only child for the arrival of our soon to be second child. We feel as though we've pretty much done what we can. We've bought her books about being an older sister, we've allowed her to break the news of her sisters name to everyone who asks and we've got her involved in the decorating of her sister's room, mainly through art projects.

Leah's masterpiece which she lovingly placed on the garbage can in her sister's room.

But even though she knows her sisters name and knows that this child is somewhere in mommy's belly, I can't help but think that she doesn't exactly get what's about to hit her.

The signs:

When we ask her where her sister is she walks over to Andrea and points to the appropriate place but then goes on to make a grab at Andrea's stomach and proceeds to walk around with Tarlkks in her hand (that's the name I'm giving this child until she's born or until you can ask Leah her name). No matter how hard we try to explain that Tarlkks is actually in mommy's belly still and not in Leah's hand, she's insistent that we're the mistaken ones.
She kicks Andrea in the stomach. Which could only mean that she's really into jiu jitsu right now, or more likely means she's not willing to give up her sole ownership of her parents but we're taking it as her not really understanding what exactly is living in mommy. Maybe she's seen Alien and is protecting humanity.
She's 2. Some of the things she does include: sleeping with a schmoosh, eating fake cake off the cat's back and wearing diapers. How could we realistically expect her to know what it means to 'have a baby.' We might as well be asking her for proof that the 196-algorithm does not terminate when applied to the number 196.

So now that we're weeks away we're going to just have to wait and see how it goes. In all likelihood Leah won't be too impressed with a little human that doesn't do anything but poop and cry (although how that differs too much from her dad, I'm not too sure).

A very important thank you

2012-01-14T13:38:00.001-05:00

Andrea is now on maternity leave for the next 10 months which means we're in the home stretch of the wait for the arrival of our second child.

With Andrea being at home, we had to make a decision on what we were going to do with Leah, who had been in daycare for the past eight or so months.

The decision really was made for us. No matter how much Leah loved going to daycare, or how much we loved her going to daycare, or how great our daycare provided had been during those eight months, with no top up on Andrea's salary, we could not financially afford to have Andrea at home and Leah in daycare at the same time.

So Leah is to stay home with her mom for as long as Andrea stays home. Having a mother as a babysitter is about the best situation you can have, but it doesn't always feel that way.

It felt terrible to pick up Leah on her last day with her goodbye Leah card in hand. It felt terrible to know that if I just made more money we'd be able to keep her from saying goodbye to all the little girls for good.

But making tough decisions is what being a parent is all about. And I guess liking your daycare provider this much is a good problem to have. There's no doubt that once our next girl is born, we'll bring them both by to see our favourite little girl sitter because we want to see her as much as we want Leah to see her little friends.

I won't pretend that I'm not writing this post for any reason other than therapy. I've been slightly emotional at the thought of her not being in daycare any longer and figure writing out the reasons for doing so will make me feel better about it.

I don't think Leah is the one who's going notice the changes. We'll still make sure she hangs out with other little kids and that she teaches her own little sister all the tings that she learned in her time at daycare.

I just really want to say thank you personally to our better than ever expected daycare provider and more generally to all daycare providers who teach little girls to play in the sand and run through sprinklers and feed them when they're sick and laugh with them when they sing.

In our case, finding the right person helped our little girl grow into a better person every day.

Why do mommy and daddy hide Christmas presents in spots that are so easy to find?

2011-12-22T13:40:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid I made it a mission to seek out and play with every toy that was coming my way well before opening it up on Christmas morning.

This meant some early morning and some late nights spent creeping around the house peering into every nook and cranny. And if my parents ever left the house at the same time, even for five minutes, it meant open season on everything.

I found my fair share of gifts and they kept their fair share hidden. Now that I’m a parent of young kids, I obviously need to start using my gift hunting day information even better.

“Daddy, why do you guys make it so easy to find our Christmas gifts?” Leah asked one morning over a bowl of cereal. Having been a stellar gift hunter in my own childhood, she had captured my full attention.

“What do you mean sweetie? How do you even know that’s we’ve bought Christmas gifts for you guys yet?”

“You don’t have to pretend dad. I went into your closet and moved around some of your clothes and found some presents in there. They’re my size and there’s also some my sisters size. It doesn’t take a rocket doctor to know that these are for me.”

“You mean rocket scientist, not rocket doctor,” I was mad and wanted to correct her on something.

“Whatever, you guys obviously aren’t one of them either if you’re leaving stuff out practically in the open.”

“It wasn’t in the open! It was in our closet. You’re not supposed to go in there so it should have been the perfect hiding place.”

“Dad, it’s Christmas season, all the rules you guys tell us about not going here and not going there don’t apply to this time of year. We’re kids so we’re allowed to snoop wherever we want.”

She was right of course and I had nobody to blame for my stupid hiding spots but myself.

“Ok, I can get on board with that. But I want you to make me one promise.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s when I tell you to do or not to do something and you don’t do it because you said you would or wouldn’t.”

“Stop being so weird daddy, I know what the word promise means. What’s the promise you want me to make though?”

“I want you to promise, and you need to make your sister promise too, that you’ll give me one day to re-hide everything. I know you’ve found some stuff, but there’s more out there and I want to make sure you don’t find it. If you give me today to hide them, you’re allowed to sneak around. But don’t let me catch you sneaking or I’m going to return the gift.”

“I think that sounds like a good deal for both of us. I get the chance to look for presents, which I’m going to do no matter what you tell me, and you get a chance to move the gifts to better spots. Are you going to be moving the ones from under your bed?”

Son of a nutcracker! As she stood there blurting out all the gifts she had found already I felt profound shame. A closet? Under the bed? What kind of rookie present hider was I? It was unacceptable that I had let such an integral part of Christmas parenting go so badly. Although, to my relief, she did seem to be at least getting some joy out of watching my displeasure with myself. And wasn’t Christmas about making kids feel good?

“Yes I’m going to be moving them from there too. Are there any other spots you’ve already discovered or can I get on with my hiding?”

“You should probably move then ones you had in the basement. I may or may not have found those ones too.”

“Oh my god kid, how long have you been looking for these gifts? I need to know so I can start my hiding earlier next year.”

“I started sniffing around the beginning of September. That should give you lots of time to have things hidden.”

Holy lord, she was already ahead of any snooping timeline I had ever held.

“Thanks Leah, that’s very helpful to know. Could you please keep from encouraging your sister to do the same? I know when I was a kid it was easier to snoop with a few sets of eyes.”

This was a red herring. I was hoping she would get her sister involved because it would be much easier to catch a two year old in the act.

“Don’t worry daddy, I won’t. She’s too loud and too slow. I barely find anything when I use her to help. I just ask her to cry and then look while you and mommy were distracted making her not cry anymore.”

I was in way deeper than I’d ever be able to get out.

Question: Do you guys miss me when you go away alone?

2011-12-09T11:03:00.001-05:00

If you’re a married couple, when you start having kids, it’s easy to forget that at one point it was just the two of you in your house. It’s easy to remember that at one point you used to be able to drink and then get up later than 6 a.m. but it’s hard to remember that you started your life together as a couple, not a trio, quartet or all the other number things I don’t know the names of.

I think it’s important that you try to spend some time as just a couple, even when you do have kids. You build this time up slowly because not everyone has the benefit of excellent babysitters (parents) who can take children for prolonged periods of time whenever you need them to.

So first you leave the house together to get a carton of milk. You feel giddy at not having a kid to carry around but also profess to miss said kid terribly. Next, you step it up to go watch a movie. The movie will probably be bad because you’re going to complain about how uncomfortable movie chairs are more than you are going to pay attention to the acting. The first half goes well anyway—you have no crying baby after all, but by the second half, you start checking your cell phone to make sure it is indeed on vibrate. They’d call if anything went wrong, right?

Then you get to the point where you think you’re ready for the overnight trip. Provided you’re not pregnant at the time, you bring more booze than you have drunk over your lifetime. You pack sexy clothes, you book a nice hotel room and you make a reservation at the nicest restaurant your diaper heavy budget will allow. It’s going to be a hell of a rager you think to yourself. Then by 8 p.m. you’re longing for your plaid pyjamas and don’t think you can finish that second glass of wine you poured. You don’t miss your kid as much, but it does start to don on you that your life just might be a little different now than it was when you first got married.

Finally, you plan a multi-night trip. There’s no spontaneity because that doesn’t exist anymore. You plan for months one end and spend equal parts getting excited and worrying that something will go wrong while you’re away. Because of course, you’re the only one who can properly care for your kid, aren’t you? You’re not. Grandparents are probably best suited to take care of your kids because they raised you and are therefore familiar with all your weirdnesses that you passed on to your kid. The vacation is a blast but it’s only when you’re away from your kids and still acting like parents that you truly realize you’re a grown-up. And while you may not spend every minute of time away from them thinking of your kids, I promise you’ll miss them.

“Daddy, when you and mommy go away, do you miss me and my sister?” Leah asked just before one of our very limited time away from kids trips.

“Oh my god sweetie, you have no idea how much we miss you. From pretty much the minute we wave goodbye, to the minute we see you saying hello we miss you,” I tried to explain.

“Then why do you leave at all? If I knew I was going to miss something, I wouldn’t want to leave it.”

“So you wouldn’t want to go to a sleepover with any of your friends ever? Because doing that would be really fun, but you’d probably miss your family.”

Leah sat and thought for a minute, clearly confused by the conundrum as conundrums are wont to do.

“Well I obviously hadn’t thought of that. It would be awfully hard to pass up a sleepover because I was going to miss you guys. Because you never know how many sleepovers you’re going to be invited to in a lifetime. But I always get to see you guys. Not that I think that’s a bad thing, but I think I’d miss not going to a sleepover more than I’d miss you guys.”

“You don’t need to explain to me, I know how awesome sleepovers can be. So we are in kind of the same boat. We love you guys a billionty, but every now and then, it’s nice for mommy and daddy to have a little time together.”

“I guess I can understand that, even though I think my sleepover is probably a little more exciting than whatever you guys plan to do while you’re away.”

“Oh my goodness yes, we have nothing quite as grand as a sleepover party planned for while we’re away. We’re probably just going to drink coffee and walk around.”

“Daddy, that is so boring. I’m glad you didn’t ask us if we wanted to come because I would have had to have been rude and say no thank you, I’m not interested.”

“Does it sound a little too adulty?”

“No, just plain boring. Adults are allowed to have fun too, you know?”

“Thanks sweetie, we’ll keep that in mind for the next trip.”

Question: Why are cartoon character parents never around?

2011-12-06T10:54:00.001-05:00

As I’ve admitted before, we are a television family. We don’t have them in our kid’s rooms or anything but by no means do we significantly place restrictions on the amount of television watched. We tend to deal with TV watching on a case by case basis. If I’m talking to the girls and I have to repeat myself more than 18 times because they can’t take their eyes off the screen, then it’s time to act. Otherwise they get the green light to go. Sometime in the near future, I may have to readjust that number 18 to something a little lower.

So, with the television being on a few hours a day, and with kids getting the greatest say in what gets played, I do see my fair share of children’s programming. Some of these shows I’m lukewarm on, others I hate and others I actually like and consider them to be well written. I’m sure you think the same thing about some of these shows but I’m not going to mention my favourites because they’re probably the ones you hate and that would make you think I have bad taste.

There are similarities between shows though. And one of the glaring ones seems to be how often a main character wanders through whatever territory they live in without any parents. Even a kid can pick out such a major discrepancy with this and with real life.

“Dad, how come Dora doesn’t walk around with parents? Are monkeys that safe to be around?”

No, they’re not, I wanted to tell her. They’re incredibly spiteful little things that would love to eat Dora’s hair. But I couldn’t tell her that. I needed to walk the fine line between busting cartoons for being stupidly misleading and in no way indicative of real life and making sure Leah would still want to watch them even after realizing they were so fake.

“You bring up an interesting point my dear. You’re correct that when walking around in a forest filled with snakes and coyotes and frogs or sliding down volcanoes or traveling out of our atmosphere and close to stars, you’d be better off if you were sticking by your parents as opposed to your talking monkey friend, but luckily, you likely won’t find yourself in any of those situation too often in real life. The cartoon world you love to watch is just a pretend world—a really fun world but a pretend one.”

“So Dora doesn’t exist for real?” she asked with tears poking at the corner of her eyes even as she tried to hide them.

“Well she exists on the television and sometimes she travels from town to town and shows up in a big suit. And sometimes she probably ice skates in front of crowds. But the world you see her in is her real home and that’s not a word we live in.”

“Kind of like the Harry Potter world?”

“Very much like that world. Although who know, one day you might get an invitation to Hogwarts. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Well if I did, I’d want you guys to go with me. I think it’s good to have parents around.”

“I’m glad you think that way. If I were Dora’s parents, I’d want her to be walking around with at least some adult supervision. I don’t care that she lives in the world she does. I’m very happy to hear you say you also think it’s important for young people to walk around safe.”

“I guess when I think about it dad, there’s a lot of things that cartoon characters do that is weird. I know Dora puts on her helmet before she does a lot of things or buckles up her seatbelt, which is also very important, but Tico the squirrel is not a good driver. Boots and Dora tell him to go way faster than he should be when he’s driving around the side of a mountain.”

“I could not agree more. For the amount of time they do things to be safe, you’d hope they would stop being so reckless in certain situations.”

“Meh, I really like the show anyway. I’m probably going to keep watching it. I’ll just ask you guys when I feel like something I’m doing might not be safe. In our world, not the Dora world or the Harry Potter world. If I’m in those worlds, I might go ahead and be a little unsafe, just for the fun of it.”

“That’s a deal. In the world where you’re Leah the human, you stay safe. When you get to the world of Leah the cartoon character, we’ll give you a little bit of rope and let you do whatever you want.”

“Thanks Daddy.”

Question: Why do we listen to Christmas music all year long?

2011-11-23T11:56:00.001-05:00

Christmas time is the most wonderful time of the year. For us, that’s not open for debate. It just is. Our whole family walks around with smiles on their faces, too much food in their bellies, and eggnog at the corners of their mouths. The food tastes better, nobody cares that the roads are covered in snow, and adults are encouraged to watch cartoons with their kids.

There are, no doubt, many costs involved with Christmas and it does seem as though every year, the start of the Christmas season comes a little sooner.

And we like it that way. For the most part, we try to keep this to ourselves until the majority of people come on board once the Halloween decorations have come down. It’s easy to hide our irregularity from our co-workers and even our families, but it’s impossible to hide our Christmas affinity from our kids.

So it was no surprise when one May afternoon, Leah got back from playing with friends at daycare or school or whatever it is she does during the day and asked me why we watch Christmas movies and listen to Christmas music all year long.

“What brought that about?” I asked, knowing all it would take would be her mentioning that we do it. Surely that alone would be enough to illicit an “are your parents crazy?” kind of response.

“We were playing in the sand and I started to build a snowman. But it’s hard to build a snowman in the sand so I got really mad and kicked sand in someone’s face. Then they asked why I was even trying to build a snowman. Then I told them because frosty comes to life if you put a hat on his head. The she said but frosty only come out for Christmas. And I said I just watched Frosty last night. And she said I’m a weirdo for watching frosty in May. And I said Frosty is a great show to watch at any time of the year and that my parents love it. And she said we’re all weird. So are we all weird?”

It was a little more than I was expecting.

“Well, to be honest, we are a little weird. It’s not exactly normal for people to watch and listen to Christmas things all year long. But it is normal for people to want to do that. So what we’re really doing is making ourselves happy. Granted, we’re making ourselves happy by doing weird things, but that’s ok if you ask me. Let me ask you a question. Why do you like watching Christmas shows so much?”

“I don’t know,” Leah said immediately, but clearly was giving it some thought. “I think it’s because they make me feel happy. They’re all funny and they all have good things happen in them. Plus, we watch them as a family and I like spending time with you guys."

“So when you put it that way, it sounds like a pretty normal thing to do, doesn’t it?”

“Yes it does. So why don’t more people do that then?”

“Because there are probably other things that make them really happy. And it isn’t at all weird to do things as a family that make you happy.”

“No, I don’t think that’s weird either daddy.”

“So if people start asking you why you watch so much of it, you can just tell them that it makes your family happy. At the same time, it might be a good idea to stop trying to build snowmen out of sand. It’s never really easy to do.”

“I know, I just wanted to see if I could do it. I kind of wanted a walking, talking sand friend to walk around school with. I should have known it wasn’t going to work though?”

“Why’s that?”

“I didn’t have a hat for it to wear.”

Question: How come I can do the splits and you and mommy can’t?

2011-11-21T12:00:00.001-05:00

Getting old has its benefits. And it also has its drawbacks. I remember when I was younger, me and my two brothers all played hockey. I was really, really good but that’s not what this story is about.

I went to watch my youngest brother play hockey one day and it was impossible to ignore the positioning of the goalie on his team.

Now, the kids playing were probably six or seven years old—old enough to have fun playing, but not old enough to raise a puck off the ice. My brother’s goalie was obviously very astute and realized nobody could raise the puck. He was also familiar with his own body, and knew that he could do the splits, even with goalie pads on. So putting two plus two together, he’d get himself into the splits position and then pretty much just take a rest as the game went on, knowing no matter how many shots came his way, he was perfectly positioned to stop them all.

I’ll never forget watching that, mainly because I’ve never been able to do the splits although I did, for periods of time as a kid, try to flex myself into being able to do them. If I thought it was difficult then, it’s become downright impossible as I crawl closer to the 40 mark than the 3o mark. And having kids who seem way bendier than I ever was, only stresses that point.

“Daddy, can you make your body do this?” Leah asked once as she lay on the floor, sprawled in splits in front of the television.

“No Leah, my body has a hard time just sitting on a couch, so I most certainly cannot do that.”

“You should try anyway. I bet you can come close if you really try.”

“I bet I can’t.”

“You always tell me you can do anything you put your mind to.”

I hate being parented by a kid you’re parenting. Because now that she brought out one of the most used parenting lines, I had no choice but to at least try to do the splits. Not doing so would result in me losing at least 25 per cent of future arguments before they even got started.

What I should have really considered was that pulling my groin may not have been worth winning those 25 per cent of arguments.

“Ok sweetie, I’ll give it a shot.”

I climbed off the couch gingerly, my groin screaming like a lobster bringing brought to the pot. You’re not going to do this to me are you! It yelled as I got my feet set and readied to begin my split. I allowed my legs to start to spread and waited for the scream I could no longer hold to escape my mouth. But it never came.

So I looked down to see why doing the splits hadn’t hurt at all. And realized I had moved my feet maybe two feet apart. That was how much splitting I was able to do. Even Leah looked at me with a you can’t be done trying yet look. But I was. My legs would not split any further.

“How’s that?” I asked her, more just to let her know that I was trying my best and that next time I told her she could do anything she put her mind to, she’d at least have to give it a try.

“Daddy, your legs are barely apart. Are you really that bad at it? Mommy didn’t do much better than you when I asked her but she at least didn’t look like she was standing up straight.”

“Well sweetie, I did try. It appears as though the older I’ve gotten, the less able to do the splits I am. It is actually a little embarrassing so if it’s ok with you, I’ll straighten my legs now.”

“Please do daddy, I think you look pretty silly. Why do ole people not be able to do the splits anymore?”

“In all fairness, I’ve never been able to do the splits, so it isn’t something that’s just happened to me. But, to answer your question, when people get old, their bodies change a little bit. So even though you were able to do things once, you aren’t able to do them anymore.”

“That sounds sad; I don’t want that to happen to me.”

“It’s not that sad. For everything you’re not able to do anymore, there are a bunch of new things that you are able to do that you couldn’t before.”

“Like what?”

“Well when I was your age, I couldn’t chug a whole glass of milk at once. Now that I’m older, I do it all the time. And when I was young, I couldn’t lift a 40-pound rock, and now I do it all the time like it was nothing.”

“You can lift 40 pounds! Wow. I thought that since you couldn’t do the splits, you were probably really weak.”

“No, no, no, anything but weal. The older you get the stronger you get, and once you get really old, you know so much stuff that you don’t even have to lift stuff anymore, you just convince other people that they should do it for you. So it’s not as bad as you think that you might not be able to do the splits someday because if you can’t do the splits, you’re probably doing something else that’s equally cool or even cooler.”

“I hear you dad. But is it ok if for now I do the splits a lot? It’s pretty fun to do and I hate sitting in chairs.”

“Who doesn’t hate sitting in chairs? You go ahead and do the splits for as long as you want.”

Why do parents want kids to help with housecleaning?

2011-11-16T14:33:00.001-05:00

Question: Why do parents want kids to help with housecleaning?

I think I have a little bit of obsessive compulsive disorder in me. Not with a lot of things, but certainly with some things, primarily my obsession with tidiness and order.

I can’t stand when things are what I consider, out of place. But this was one of the things I wasn’t sure my children would get. Was it in fact a clean gene that was passed on genetically or was this obsession with cleanliness, or maybe more appropriately, tidiness, something that was learned in the home. If it was passed on, I had a 50/50 chance that my genes would dominate. Otherwise, I was going to have to hope that they wanted to copy me, their dad, as opposed to Andrea, their mom, when it came to housework.

Ideally, they’d be an amalgam of her cooking and my cleaning. Well we’re into year four now and we’re still waiting to see how they’re going to develop.

Leah, the eldest, is at least noticing that cleaning is taking place in the house and has done so for some time now.

“Daddy, why do parents always want their kids helping to clean? I even know some peop0le who give their kids money so they’ll was toilets. I think that’s against the law though because we learned at daycare that it’s not ok to make children do work they don’t want to do.”

Her question had so many different angles I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. Did she really want to know why kids help clean? Or did she want to know why she wasn’t getting money for it? I was going to start with the simple route.

“We ask our kids to clean because they’re so small and get places where big fat adults like me can’t get.”

“Like behind the toilet?”

“That’s probably the most important place for a child to clean yes.”

“Dad, that’s so gross, people pee and poo in the toilet.”

“Yes, they do, but they don’t poo on the floor behind the toilet so it’s not that bad a job.”

“That’s so mean of parents.”

“I’m kidding. We ask you to help out because it makes cleaning go by more quickly so we can have fun as a family. There will come a day when you’ll have a big house of your own and wish you had help cleaning so you could do fun things with your family too.”

“Ugh, I knew you’d say that someday I’ll understand better. I want to know now because I don’t like cleaning. But even though I don’t like it, I feel like I should be doing it all the time because I make such a big mess.”

Eureka! She was beginning to take after me.

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting things around you to be neat and tidy. Your dad has been that way for a long time and your nan was like that before him. It is at times a curse and at times a blessing. I bet at some point you;ll aslo want to start buying antique things because they look cool. Then you’re going to want things to look even neater and tidier because you want the antiques to be the feature and not all the hair and dirt on the floors and shelves.”

“That’s a long explanation to say you’re crazy about cleaning, right?”

“Pretty much. I’ve always felt a need to clean and you’ve been using your own little broom and helping me since you were less than two years old. I kind of figured you might get the same affliction.”

“What does affliction mean?”

“It means we both can’t help but clean even if we don’t really feel like it. I wouldn’t classify cleaning as a disease but it certainly can be a pain in the butt. You just learn to live with this affliction.”

“Does mommy have the same affliction? Because her closet and her side of the bed is always messy.”

“I think you just answered your own question. If someone’s side of the bed or general area is ever messy, they do not suffer from the same affliction we do. You’ll see as you grow up that it gets worse. You’ll find better ways to cope with it of course, but it will get worse.”

“Can you at least give me money for cleaning then if there’s no way I’m going to be able to avoid doing it? I want to get something out of it while I can.”

It was a reasonable request, especially since I had been given an allowance when I was a kid. The problem was she had given me too much information and I knew that if I set the dollar amount at a per job rate, she’s bankrupt me within months. Sadly, I had the bargaining upper hand and was going to wield it with my daughter.

“That sounds fair. How would you like to be reimbursed?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“When have you been thinking about it?”

“Since I just asked you. Let me finish.”

“Ok, go on.”

“I think it’s fair that I’m paid on a per job basis. Provided of course that I do an adequate job of each job.”

“And who is to inspect to make sure your job is adequately done?”

“Mommy of course. She’s an impartial third party to this agreement.”

“But that’s not fair at all. Mommy might be more lenient with what she considers adequate!”

“Why do you think that daddy?”

“Well because she’s nicer than I am and will want you to get paid for the work. Plus she’s plain and simply not as clean as we are.”

“Ok, then what do you propose.”

“A flat rate weekly fee. You do all the jobs I assign you—and I will be assigning you the tougher ones because you’re going to do them better than mommy or your little sister, and you’ll get your weekly pay. If you do what I deem to be a less than stellar job, you’ll still get paid for the jobs you did, but at a lower rate. I need to offer some incentive to make sure you do a good job on these big tasks.”

“You don’t trust me to do a good job without incentive?”

“You’re not even five year’s old, no I do not trust you to do it on your own.”

“Ok, what’s the price here? You give me an offer and I’ll counter with what I find appropriate if your numbers do not meet up to my expectations.”

“Where did you learn these words?”

“I read them on the internet.”

“How did you get on the computer to search for words like that with nobody watching?”

“I didn’t. Mommy helped me.”

“You’re kidding. Mommy helped you find ways to get money from me?”

“Yes, she told me it wasn’t fair that I cleaned so much and didn’t get rewarded for my work and that if I approached you the right way, you’d probably give me money. And then she suggested I talk about why kids have to clean and that you’d probably just make me an offer. Well you didn’t so I just asked straight out, and now we’re coming up with a price.”

“She told you all that and never offered to pay you herself?”

“She said she didn’t need to pay me because you would.”

I was aghast not only at the ploy but at how well it had worked. By cleaning affliction was once again costing me. This time in terms of money.

“Ok, well I was thinking $10 per week. And like I said, that’s going to mean some of the bigger jobs—behind the toilet job included.”

“That’s not good enough. I was thinking $25.”

“Per week?!”

“Yes. That much assuming I do a perfect job. If it’s less than great, then $20. If it’s only kind of good, then $15. And if I do a really bad job but still do all my chores, I’m expecting to get the $10 you mentioned. Does that sound fair?”

Not one bit of this whole conversation seemed fair, but if I wasn’t getting subsidized by Andrea, I wasn’t going to fold on such high demands just because it was my little girl asking for the money.

“No. That does not sound fair at all. I will under no circumstances go above $20. And to get there you have to do a better job than I would have ever done. And it has to be me that inspects it, not mommy, who apparently just wants to see daddy lose his money. And if you get $20, at least $5 has to go to a savings account of some kind. A savings account that I will open and oversee for you.”

Deal. Mommy didn’t think I’d be able to get more than $15 a week out of you anyway, and even that she thought would be highly unlikely. So it looks like I came out on the good end of the deal. Should we start next week?”

“Fine.”

Conversations with kids: A NaNoWriMo joint

2011-11-07T14:59:00.003-05:00

The art of raising a kid isn't one that can be taken up only by those who are immediately good at it. It's not like painting or singing or paper macheing where should your first attempt at it go horribly wrong you can discard the craft entirely.

If day one with your new baby goes badly, you're still on the hook for day number two. And then day number three and so on and so forth.

What I'm trying to capture is the cultivation of my talent in an art I'm not a master in. A child gives you plenty of chances to improve on your skills, whether through testing your ability to discipline bad behavior that you actually find cute (think calling an acquaintance you're not that fond of a 'fart') or through testing your ability to make crap up on the spot when asked a question you can barely understand let alone answer.

The art I'm trying to improve upon is that latter art-the art of always having an answer to a child's question.

To be upfront, I have no problems lying to my child. First off because they spend their entire childhood lying to you and second because a well spun yarn can greatly improve a child's imagination.

I long for the day when my kids and I compete to see who can come up with the most believable never could be true tale.

Besides, who doesn't have a story or two about their kid that starts with "so I'm just sitting there watching my shows when out of nowhere my kids asks..."

What I need to mention first though is that my daughter is very much like me. By that I mean that many people probably consider her crazy. She's a cute little girl who likes to giggle and laugh and ride on stuffed unicorns-which is exactly why I like talking with her so much.

Here then for your pleasure are some of my conversations with my little girl...

Question: why do we watch so much sports?

My love of sports is only really rivaled in terms of total time spent by my concern that my daughters won't love sports. It's not that they have to love sports for me to love them, I'm just scared because I don't know anything but sports.

This concern sometimes shows itself in my day to day habits. Like how I have sports on the television as background noise to everything.

"daddy, why don't we watch Dora instead of hockey? I think the whole family would be happy with that."

"oh, I don't know if that's true. Dora spends a lot of time talking to a map and I don't think enough time playing sports."

"does everyone need to play sports?"

This was the tricky part. No was the obvious answer but it needed to be said strategically.

"well no Leah, not everybody need to play sports. But I must stress that sports does indeed put people in I good mood. Like when daddy watches his Pittsburgh penguins and he gets very happy."

"well I don't get as happy when I watch sports so can I watch something like Dora instead?"

"I think if you watched the penguins with me more often you might come to like sports a lot more. What do you think about that?"

"are they real animals? I could watch real animals."

"no they're human people on skates. But it's still really exciting I promise."

"ok i will give it a try."

"so I can keep watching as much sports as I want, can I?"

"no."

Good god, the clothes

2011-10-28T12:11:00.001-04:00

Now that we know baby number two is one the way (donate to my Movember campaign at http://mobro.co/moikereynolds to find out some of the letters in the name), we've hauled all of the clothes Leah went through up from the basement and have started to go through it.

And sweet baby Jesus are the lots of clothes. While it's well intentioned, it's crazy how many people load you up with onesie after onesie when you're expecting your first child.

Trust me, you'll need then all, they try and tell you as though your baby is going to act like The Hulk and shred clothes all day long. You'll go through twelve an hour, they go on to promise you. And then they also hand you three hundred facecloths just for kicks.

Well, having gone through one child, I'm now calling BS on all that "you'll need seven thousand onesies" crap. You need two for the entire first year of life. One that will last from 0-3 months, then another that will take you from 3-12 months. If you're really worried about poop and puke stains, I could maybe see an additional one or even two to help you through the really tough days.

But anything else is unnecessary. Not one time in Leah's first year did a change of a onesie ever make her stop crying. And isn't that really what getting through the first year is all about? Finding out what will make your baby stop crying?

And as a dad, I hate all the buttoning and unbuttoning for the 89 diaper changes you have to do for the first few months. Has anyone, ever, even once, managed to realign the buttons properly after making what they thought was a stealthy change? Not likely. more often you get the onesie done back up and then realize you have all kinds of extra fabric hanging down one leg because of your lopsided button job.

We now luckily have a moratorium on button sleepers in particular because if dealing with the three buttons of a onesie is too much for me, imagine the fury I can build up with a 25 button sleeper.

Anyway, the whole point to this rant was that you don't need 100 onesies for your baby to make it through year one. Don't listen to people who tell you that. If you're spending the entire year in one pair of pants and one sweatshirt because you're tired of getting puke on everything, your baby should be ok to do that too.

People are only telling you you need so many because they're trying to clear their own basement of the 99 onesies too many they had when they had their first child. We're now in that position and I hope we get through a few of them before we start passing ours on.

Raising money so I can stay healthy for my girls

2011-10-25T13:09:00.001-04:00

Once again, I've decided to donate my face to research. In a few days, I'll shave my face (likely irritating my skin in the process, what a trooper) and start to grow a moustache as part of Movember.

For the most part, fundraisers are really good things. In the past I've donated to Environmental causes, AIDS walks, United Way, animal shelters etc. because there's a need to find cures and support the people or animals or Mother Natures associated with those causes.

But with Movember, I feel the need to do more than just make my donation and forget about it. Now that I have a little daughter, and another little daughter on the way, I realize how vital it is that I keep myself in good shape and regularly get checked up---even if that means a little minor bum inconvenience.

Too often men brush their own health aside, thinking a check-up is either too invasive or too wimpy to go through. It's not. It's a vital part of living a long life. And it shows more toughness to get checked up than it does to ignore your health.

I'd do anything I've been able to think of to make sure my daughters live a long and happy life. I've imagined fighting off crocodiles, doing the CN Tower ledge walk and even going toe-to-toe with Chuck Norris in a glass gloved boxing match to make sure no harm comes to them.

So how hard should it be to grow a moustache and make sure I visit my doctor for a half hour check every year?

It's not that hard. At least the doctor check-up part isn't.

As for the moustache growing, last year I raised $595 to go towards programs supporting prostate cancer initiatives. This year, I'm setting my sights at a very lofty $1000. At the time of this post, I'm at $170 with the month of Movember yet to begin.

My wife has been outstanding in helping me brainstorm some ideas for how to raise money and it's truly become a family endeavour. Even my daughter is likely to get into the moustache cookie on a stick making that we plan to sell off as part of my fundraising.

If you have the time, please visit the Movember website to read more about the excellent work they're doing to support groups researching men's health initiatives and to look at my own Movember site to make a donation or to write some words of support. To make it fun for you, I've also bought a little bit of meMOrabilia as prizes for my very valued contributors.

We've all got at least one reason for choosing to make sure men's health get's its proper due, I just happen to have to very tiny, but very important ones.

A sick child is a child you'd give a shmoosh to

2011-10-22T07:51:00.001-04:00

The way we're dealing with the first really bad cough, we've learned, is going to set us up for long term sick child failure.

We're lenient as hell, allowing her to keep her shmoosh with her at all times and catering to every whim we'd normally try and ignore.

Which means, because Leah is a smart kid, she's going to start dropping fake colds on us all the time.

"cough, cough,"

"are you sick Leah?"

"yesh."

"your coughing sounds more like a laugh though. Are you sick for real?"

"cough, laugh, shmoosh."

"ok, you're probably sick so here's everything we don't think you need."

And it's not going to stop as she grows up, it's only going to get worse. I know because I've grown up myself and know that faking illness is one of the finer arts of growing up.

I'm just hoping Leah isn't as good as I think I was when I was younger. I do hope she's exactly as good as I, in reality, probably was.

She'll try all the tricks I'm sure but I'm not writing them here just in case she ever finds this post.

Not all news you read about parenting has to be sad

2011-10-19T13:26:00.003-04:00

Recently, it seems as though a lot of the news about parenting has been of the incredibly sad nature. There's depressed teens committing suicide after being bullied mercilessly, there's mothers refusing chemo treatments to all their unborn baby to live, stories of little girls bleeding in the streets being ignored by passers-by and the numerous stories of children under the age of two fulfilling a dream as they battle cancer.

That these stories have to be told at all is incredibly saddening, and now that I'm a parent to a nearly two-year-old girl and a soon to be parent to a second girl, I feel the deep sense of "oh my god what if that were my kid" that I couldn't truly get before I had any children.

Back then, I thought I could. I figured, you just need to imagine a close family member dying and that's as bad as it can get. Surely a child dying is like that. But there's no way it can be imagined unless you've had your sleepy child rest their head on your shoulders or listened to them try and pronounce Feliz Compleanos before they can even say mommy and daddy properly.

But as much as you can't imagine that, you also can't imagine how great it is to watch your child grow up. And those are the kinds of stories that don't make it into the news headlines. But you know people want to see them because you need only look through the videos on YouTube to see how many children act like a cat or children cook mud pies videos there are, and how many of them garner ridiculous amounts of views.

I understand news publishing well enough to know that "child figures out where ostrich piece of puzzle goes" won't sell as many papers as "child abducted by family member, feared dead," but that makes the first accomplishment no less outstanding.

Outstanding like my daughter, who recently sat on a merry-go-round horse at a fair. To me that's a pretty awesome thing, so I'm sharing it with you...

Baby wipes are useful

2011-10-13T10:24:00.001-04:00

Of all the cleaning instruments that come along with raising a child-the mini bath, the 3000 facecloths and the bib being a few of the more common ones, none has been as versatile to me as the baby wipe.

Just this morning I blindly found myself wiping up some spilled maple syrup with none other than a baby wipe. Which in itself isn't outrageous or even mildly exciting. What I found interesting was that I had to move aside more appropriate cleaning cloths to get to the wipes.

At some point it just became the defacto cleaning tool.

And I can envision it filling the role of restaurant wet nap, emergency kleenex and wedding suit pocket square as well.

In fact, I don't think our family is too far away from really taking the baby wipe to a level not yet seen (or at least not admitted to).

*while driving

"dammit I think we just blew a tire and of course, I took out the spare tire before we left."

"why'd you do that?"

"I had some garden hose I wanted to coil up where the tire would go."

"for no reason I assume."

"correct. But it doesn't matter anyway, I packed the baby wipes."

"oh thank god. Are you going to patch the hole with them?"

"oh god no. I'm going to take the tire off and wrap the wheel in wipes."

Or, should we somehow lose power to our home and simultaneously lose all connections to the Internet...

"honey I think the power is out."

"I thought it felt like an awfully long and boring black screen commercial."

"the connection for our phones is gone too. I have no idea how we're supposed to entertain ourselves."

"we could just take sleeping pills and hope we don't wake up until everything is fixed."

"yeah I don't think that's the best idea. We can play cards, or a board game, or tell stories."

"never mind, I figured it out."

"what is that?"

"I always keep a few baby wipes and a pencil on hand for such occasions. I just put together a flip book."

"with three baby wipes?"

"the movements are pretty crude but you get the gist. See I'm standing, now in the air, now standing again."

"so jumping up and down."

"I'm breakdancing. Let's watch that for a few hours."

I'm sure were just seeing the tip of the baby wipe iceberg and will only continue to find more uses as we prepare for baby number two. I wonder if I can turn one into an iPad?

Viability

2011-10-04T11:42:00.000-04:00

Three years ago I didn't know that I'd look forward to celebrating viability day---that day when the monster growing inside your partners belly gets one day older than they were the day before which means they're at the point where if things went wrong, you'd still have a chance at saving a baby.

That's not at all how people who know what they're talking about would define the term viability but it's how I think of it so there you go. And today, when I got my little pregnancy iPad app reminder that we're now 23 weeks into this go, we officially reached it.

In celebration, I'm going to continue to buy things I would have bought yesterday and drink a glass of wine that had I had yesterday would have tasted the same.

In all fairness though, getting this far is a big thing. I never really knew how scary it would be to wait 40 weeks to give birth to a human. And I realize I'm not the one pregnant so it's impossible for me to know exactly how scary it can be if the baby doesn't kick for a whole day or if you suddenly start feeling sick when you don't think you should be sick.

But not feeling those things is another reason why it's hard to be the dad. You kind of go day to day, hoping and thinking that things are going well and when things feel like they may not be going well, pretending that you think they are so that both parents aren't freaking out.

So really tonight, I'm going to hug my wife for being awesome and growing a baby, and then I'm going to get as close to kissing that baby as I can and then I'm going to kiss the little girl I already have. Because they're all awesome right now.

Daddy does things

2011-10-02T15:22:00.001-04:00

I'm making an effort to stop spending money on antiques and prove that I'm not a hoarder who will one day be told by the government to clean up my act. What a funny pun.

So instead of buying stuff, I'm making it with stuff I've already hoarded. So here, for Leah and next Reynolds girl, is the measuring board thing I made out of left over patio wood.

Daddy tips for: single parenting weekend

2011-09-26T15:46:00.001-04:00

When a dad like me has to take the parenting reigns for a weekend, there's more to it than just surviving for 48 hours. While ensuring your child lives for that long is indeed an accomplishment, were I to set out with the goal of survival the moment my wife left the door, both me and Leah would surely be doomed.

When a dad takes the solo stage, things need to be broken down into much more digestible bits. We can't look at it in the big picture because 48 hours in a row where one child depends solely on you is not possible for a man.

But, if I "watch Leah play with a pet unicorn for 10 minutes while watching sports updates," I've reduced the 2880 minutes I have to watch her by 10 whole minutes without breaking a sweat.

So in increments of no more than 20 minutes, a dad can sail through his time alone with his child, or god forbid, children.

Now, simply being able to trick yourself into thinking you can get through a weekend is only about 77 per cent of the battle. The other 23 per cent is trying to come up with ways to fill the increments. Sure, many of them can be filled with eating crackers, drinking milk, watching movies, poking the cat and ring the push mower as daddy mows the lawn, but there will inevitable be some spaces where, without proper planning, you'll just be staring at one another.

You can Google things like "dad things to do with a little kid" or "I'm home alone with my little girl who is staring at me, what should I do?" or you can look about the house for obvious children's activities.

If you're like me, this will include Sharpie pens, glass picture frames and scissors. There's a school of thought that suggests the earlier you give your child independence, the more likely they are to cut themselves because they don't know what they're doing. That's the train of thought I kind of go along with when I'm looking to kill a ten minute increment that takes place closer to the end of the 48 hour daddy and daughter period.

For a lot of dads (and moms too), the final part of a single parent weekend is spent cleaning. This could mean cleaning the dishes you used to cook the vegetable heavy dishes you made, or clean the pizza boxes (with vegetable toppings) you ordered in for every meal, or cleaning up the evidence that you invited over your mother who had prepared meals for you and then brought them over under the promise that she'd get to play with her granddaughter.

In summary, if you can only hold ten things in your brain at once, the ten things I'd suggest you hold for a single parenting weekend (as a dad) would include:

Never look more than twenty minutes ahead.
Never reflect on the 20 minutes that just passed.
Choose the movies you're going to watch while your partner is still there (so you don't get caught with your pants down and end up watching Waybuloo 20 minutes at a time).
Have lots of food in the house because a child can't cry if he or she is eating chocolate.
Try to keep your entire weekend to two or three rooms. The clean up will be much more contained this way.
If you have a nearby relative, call them and say your child has been calling their name for five increments of 20 minutes and ask if they'd like to come visit, or better yet, if you can stop by.
Prepare a craft for when your wife returns. To save time, do this yourself and just make it look like the kid did it. She'll think you guys spent 12 twenty hour increments on it but really it will have taken three minutes.
Try to capture a moment to submit to Americas Funniest Home Videos.
Try to stay alive.
Kiss your kid because your kid is awesome.

Like taking candy from a 21 month old

2011-09-19T12:26:00.003-04:00

There’s only one person in the world aside from Andrea and I who know the name of our yet to be born second daughter. That one person is a little over 21 months old and blabs about everything to everyone.

The blabbing is the negative side. The not making any sense when she babbles is what convinced us to tell out first daughter her soon to be sisters name.

We made this decision without putting much thought into it. We figured, we can barley understand her, so how in the hell would other people be able to decipher what was coming out her mouth?

What we didn’t consider was how damn fast a 21 month old learns new things. One day our conversations sound like this:

“Leah, what is in mommy’s belly?”

“Puppy.”

“Mommy has a puppy in her belly?”

“Woof.”

“Ok.”

Then three days later, we can ask the same what is in mommy’s belly question and get a different response:

“Digesting food.”

“Huh? No what is in mommy’s belly?”

“Whatever you’ve eaten today. If you’re trying to get me to say baby, then you’d better ask what’s in your uterus. Even them, I’m likely to respond a Singleton intrauterine pregnancy or something similar to that.”

So the secret lies with Leah if anyone is willing to try and pry it out of her. Depending on her developmental cycle, it could be one of the easiest tasks you could undertake, or could be an effort in futility.

The choice is yours.

The second perfect thing in the world

2011-09-09T16:07:00.001-04:00

There's not a lot that needs to be a said in this post. We found out today that we're expecting another girl. I don't care if people have the perception that a dad wants a son to complete his family. If you have a girl, you know they are perfect in every way. Are boys great? Yes, they are and I'm proof enough of that. When we were told "there's nothing between the legs," we both looked at each other with tears in our eyes, as happy as the day we found out our first child was going to be a girl.

Am I in massive heaps of trouble? Yes. Leah alone has me wrapped around her finger. Add (girl name) Reynolds to the mix, and I've thrown away my ability to say no to anything for one hundred years to come.

So here she is, a cute little girl...