Daddy Daze » parenthood

How did you find out?

Dave — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:18:32 +0000

My narcissistic daughter loves looking at pictures of herself. Earlier this week she got out one of the scrapbooks. The first page features a used EPT stick. “What’s that?” she asked. “Oh, that’s just something your mother peed on and decided to keep sealed behind velum forever,” I thought to myself.

“That’s just a stick, honey,” I said. “Let’s see what else we can find.” She accepted my non-explanation and turned the page. I, however, was still thinking about that stick.

When we first suspected that my wife was pregnant, we got one of those over-the-counter pregnancy tests. I remember sitting on the bed while she was in the bathroom. I also remember floating on the ceiling and watching myself sitting on the bed, which I believe is what they call an “out-of-body experience.” She returned from the bathroom with the used test and a puzzled expression.

“That looks blue, right?” she asked, handing it to me.

“Well…yeah,” I said. “I mean, I think it does. Sure. Yes…right?”

Here were two grown people, one of whom holds a master’s degree, suddenly unsure if we had ever seen blue before.

“It’s not supposed to get bluer than that, is it?” I asked. She examined the box while I read the printed instructions. There had to be a color wheel or a Pantone chart or something that would tell us exactly what to look for: Robin’s Egg — Pregnant; Indigo — False Alarm; and Azure — Partly Cloudy with a 30 Percent Chance of Rain.

We bought three more tests from the drugstore ($20 each!). Later that evening, at my sister’s wedding reception, we were dancing with a roomful of people who had no idea that we had just left sixty dollars’ worth of Robin’s Egg Blue in a hotel bathroom.

When we were pregnant for the second time, my wife surprised me with a wrapped present. “Wow,” I said. “It’s amazing what you have to go through to serve divorce papers.”

“Just open it,” she said. Inside, there was a tiny blue jumper, hat and socks. William was on the way.

While I’ll never forget that deer-in-the-headlights moment in the hotel, I really enjoyed the thoughtful surprise that announced our second. Since then, I’ve heard of other women telling their husbands/partners/parents/in-laws, etc. in clever ways, such as hiding an ultrasound snapshot in a briefcase, or vomiting uncontrollably every morning for about a month. All of this has got me wondering: What’s your story? How did you break the news? Share your tale in the comment section below.

As Grace and I looked at the photos, I reflected on how lucky I am to have the two of them, how exciting it was to confirm my wife’s pregnancies and how, God willing, we’ll never, ever do that again.

Mommy’s way vs. Daddy’s way

Dave — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:31:50 +0000

Shortly before Grace was born, we attended “parenting prep” classes at the hospital. When the nurse wasn’t showing us just how pliable my wife’s vagina could be, she was offering practical advice. The most useful, it turned out, was directed toward the future moms.

“Moms, don’t pay attention to the way Dad does things.”

Now let me make it very clear that this is NOT one of those “silly fumbling Daddy just can’t get the poopy diaper right” deals that seems to pass as comedy these days. I detest that nonsense and, frankly, find it insulting. However, it is true that my wife and I do certain things differently. For example:

• I have washed my son off with the sprayer in the kitchen sink. I’m pretty sure my wife has not.
• I told Grace that sticking raspberries on the ends of her fingers is “funny.” I think “rude” was the word my wife used.

• I’ve noted that I think it’s a riot when Grace’s poo-poo “looks like tortellini,” and encourage her to compare it to other nouns in her world: Animals, toys, even Dora the Explorer.

The biggest discrepancy is hair. I suck at girl hair. I can pull it up into some semblance of a ponytail, but there are always wispy stragglers waving about her face. I defend my “daddy-do,” as it’s called, as “natural-looking.”

My wife, on the other hand, brushes that mop until it gleams and manages to get all of Grace’s hair into the elastic through what I suspect is a miracle. Plus, once up, her hair stays in place all day. It’s really something to see.

Dress is another issue. William has a T-shirt that I absolutely love to put on him. It says “For Sale: $75 or best offer.” It’s a hit at story hour and really shocks the blue hairs at the grocery store. My preferred outfit for Grace is a New England Patriots jersey and some jeans. My wife prefers to, “dress her like a girl.” She is cute in a dress, but does she really need to look like Holly Hobby every day?

Finally, let’s talk about the nighttime routine. I admit that I’m a sucker. Our routine is, roughly:
• jammies
• teeth
• books
• kiss and hug
• bed

Grace is extremely skilled at suckering me into “just one more book.” She blinks those little Bambi eyes and next thing I know we’re on book number seven. I emerge from the room wiped, and my wife is smirking on the couch. “How many books did you read tonight, dear?”

“Three,” I say.

“Liar,” she says. “You’re a sucker.”

Yeah, I probably am. But the way I figure it, that makes up for everything else.

Enter sandman

Dave — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 01:15:42 +0000

We live by the beach, and we’ve got a sandbox in the backyard, so the kids are around sand all of the time. Since we’d like to keep as much of the sand outside of the house as possible, we’ve taken the steps that help a coastal family survive a sandy summer.

First of all, the outdoor shower is up and running to rinse the kids. As soon as we get home it’s swimsuits off and under the shower. Also, the clothesline has been strung up for the swimsuits and Strawberry Shortcake beach towels (as an aside, nothing says “Manhood” like pinning Strawberry Shortcake beach towels and princess swimsuits to a clothesline). I’ve also mounted several hooks to the ceiling of the tool shed to hang bags of toys, beach chairs and so on.

It sounds like we’re well prepared, but Bill still manages to smuggle sand into the house.

In his butt.

The kid eats sand. I don’t mean a few stray grains make their way into his mouth, I mean he’s shoving it in like it’s cotton candy. I can only guess that it’s salty, and that’s what he likes. Or maybe dried seaweed and stray hermit crab parts make quite a nice seafood salad. Either way, we tell him, “No, William, we don’t eat sand,” to which he grins and shoves sand into his mouth. I’m fairly certain I don’t have to tell you what happens at diaper-changing time.

I’ve been on Google researching “eating sand” (because I’ve convinced myself there’s something “wrong” with him), and it seems that it’s rather common and eventually goes away.

What has your experience been, dear readers? Do your kids treat the beach or sandbox as their personal buffet?

Your father’s music

Dave — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:23:16 +0000

“David, we’re late,” my mother says, stuffing me into cold weather clothes. Before I can reply she’s whirling around the kitchen grabbing lunchboxes, backpacks and her own coat and hat with the dexterity of a quick-change artist. She opens the door and the cold air hits us like a board.

“Into the Embarras-mobile,” she says. “Go.”

The Embarras-mobile was an ocean blue Ford Galaxy 500 with no hubcaps, fist-sized rust holes and discolored patches of unsanded Bond-O. It was huge — with a hood like a helipad and bench seats half a mile long.

I climb in. The windshield is covered by a thin sheet of ice. My mother cranks the defroster and peers through a shoebox-sized hole in the frost.

She clicks the radio on. “Another Saturday Night” by Sam Cooke floats through the speakers. “Ugh,” she says. “Your father’s music.” She shifts it into drive and hits the gas.

My father listened to the “oldies” station with a smile on his face. “Someday,” he’d tell us, “I’ll take the car to the car wash, drive through the spray and the brushes and when I come out on the other side … it’ll be 1963.”

“That’s an odd wish,” I’d say, but he wouldn’t answer. He was far away, lost in blissful memory.

My mother turns the corner and the icy windshield suddenly shimmers with sunlight. “I can’t see,” she says.

I roll down my window and stick my head outside. “Don’t worry, mom,” I say. “I can see. Keep going.”

“Are you sure?” she says, hitting the brake.

“Yeah,” I say. The frigid air makes my eyes water. “Just keep going straight ahead.”

The collision throws me hard against my seat belt. We hit a parked pickup truck.

“I thought you could see?” my mother says.

“I thought I could, too,” I say. Now the radio was playing “Put Your Head On My Shoulder,” and I was wishing for a magical car wash.

* * *

Last week, my wife and I took the kids to the playground. After three days of bickering in the house, we needed to get out.

We pulled out of the driveway and my wife turned on the radio. A Van Halen song blasted from the speakers.

“Jeeze, hon!” she shouted, turning the volume down. “Don’t leave it on like that.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“What was that?” Gracie asked from the back seat.

“Your father’s music,” My wife said.

“Someday Grace,” I told her, “I’ll go to the car wash ….”

Noogie and Sally C Cups

The saddest part of Halloween

Dave — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:15:24 +0000

Next month is October, and that means Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. When I was young, my aunt decorated her house like the set of a Vincent Price movie. She wore an elaborate witch costume and greeted kids in character, cackling and over-acting. I don’t know what was more fun: anticipating how she’d outdo the previous year or watching the unsuspecting kids poop themselves when she threw open the door.

When I say she gave out candy, I mean the good stuff. No “Fun Size” candy bars, no generic gum, no popcorn balls and no freaking apples. I’m talking about the full-sized Snickers and Bazooka Joe. Primo.

My parents would stand at the end of the block and wait while we performed from house to house. We had to sing, dance, tell jokes, or do something more than knock. One year that I went as Jimmy Carter and a friend was Ronald Regan. We went from house to house performing the mini “debate” we had worked out. Boy, I was a dork.

By comparison, my own kids’ Halloween is dull. Last year, Grace wore a Snow White dress that she already owns. Paired with her red ruby slippers and blond hair, she was a mish-mash of fictional characters (I called her Snow White in Oz). William wore an Old Navy dog costume that was just a glorified coat and hat.

Strangest of all is the trick-or-treating. We went to Main Street around 4:00. The shopkeepers “decorated” (if a skull Xeroxed to orange paper counts as a decoration) and handed out candy to the kids. The whole thing is profoundly strange. First, we were out during the day! What the hell? Secondly, we visited stores, not people’s homes. Nothing says “Halloween” like a bag of Twizzlers from the head shop. However, Main Street was packed with kids and their families, so I guess we aren’t the only strange ones.

We got home around 7:00, and that’s when I performed the Saddest Part Of Halloween. Gracie has a peanut allergy, which means I must divide her loot into two piles: “Edible” and “Lethal” (see above). It’s sad to deny her a portion of her candy, but even sadder to slam an EpiPen into her leg and rush to the ER.

So, that’s our Halloween. Different than I remember, but still fun. Mostly.

Noogie and Sally C Cups

Dave — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:27:38 +0000

The following is a throwback post from my days blogging for Parenting Magazine, re-published here for posterity’s sake. And because it’s funny.

The kids have invented a game called The Door Game. It goes like this:

Grace goes into her bedroom and closes the door while William stands in the hall on the opposite side. Then Grace throws the door open. William laughs hysterically and then pulls it shut, which causes Gracie to laugh hysterically. She then throws the door open again just as William runs out of the way.

The game usually ends with purple fingers and/or tender feet that have been bashed by the door. Despite these deterrents, as well as my own stern-voiced requests to end The Door Game once and for all, they continue to play.

Hanging from the doorknob is a pitiful rabbit holding what is essentially an arch of piano wire over its head like a mafia hitman. Since William can’t reach the doorknob, he uses the rabbit to shut the door. Being a highly intelligent problem-solver, I deduced that removing the rabbit would end The Door Game.

I slipped it off of the doorknob.

“No,” Grace said. “That’s Noogie’s rabbit!”

“What?” I said.

“That rabbit belongs to Noogie, not you! You put it back!” She was yelling and angry. “He’s right there and put his rabbit back.”

“Right where?” I said.

“There,” she said, pointing to the toddler-sized chenille easy chair in her room. The empty toddler-sized chenille easy chair.

Uh-oh.

“Is he there now?” I said.

“Well he’s not there right now,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, and left to find my wife.

“Are you aware of ‘Noogie?’” I said.

“What’s Noogie?”

“I think Grace has an imaginary friend.”

“Oh?”

I relayed the story, including the part about my impressive problem-solving skills, and asked if I should locate a child psychologist right then, or wait until morning. My wife, who is the rational one (and who has a master’s degree in early childhood education), assured me that it’s normal for 3-year-olds to have imaginary friends.

“But why ‘Noogie’?” I said. “I mean, it’s such a ridiculous word … ‘Noogie.’ What does that even mean? How’d she come up with that?”

“Who knows,” she said. “Kids like to make words up.”

Well that’s true. When my sister and I were very young, we spent our afternoons tormenting our mother while dad worked. She tried to keep us “on task” as often as possible, having us “help” with the dishes, color, use Play-Doh or make crafts like paper bag hand puppets, which we used to put on little shows. We even had recurring characters, including the infamous Sally See Comps.

I don’t remember who came up with the name but, like Grace, we were young enough to enjoy nonsensical words. My sister and I would make our own ornately decorated Sally See Comps puppets to be featured in our shows. For some reason, my mother hated Sally and demanded that we either change her name or stop making her altogether. This only ramped up Sally’s Awesomeness Level, and most of her shows revolved around the loud repetition of her name.

Years later we learned that mom thought we were saying “Sally C Cups.” I wish I could lay claim to such wit as a 6-year-old, but I’m afraid I can’t. To this day, I still snicker whenever I see a paper bag.

Maybe “Noogie” isn’t so bad.

School Daze

Dave — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:26:36 +0000

Earlier this week, I brought two quarters to the bank and asked the teller to exchange them for a half dollar. I took the coin and walked back to the car, remembering when I was just 4 years old.

I have scattered memories from preschool, like the little hut with grapes and vines on the ceiling. I also remember napping on a braided rug and the musty smell of it. One time we made some sort of potato concoction on a hotplate like a college student would use. My friend Peter and I cowed those things down while sitting crossed-legged on carpet squares. I also remember the stone-floored lobby. But mostly I remember crying.

Every preschool in the world has that kid who can’t separate from his parents. The kid with the striped shirt and uncombed hair who sobs and falls to the floor.

I was that kid. What a pleasure I must have been.

One day at home, my father told me, “I have something for you.” He pulled a half dollar out his pocket and asked, “Do you know what this is?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s a magic coin,” he told me. I had never seen one like it, so I decided that it must be true. “Here’s how it works. Keep it in your pocket, and whenever you feel scared or sad, you just rub the coin, and you’ll feel better.”

The next day I went to school with my magic coin. I clearly remember reaching into the pocket of my corduroys and rubbing John Kennedy’s face. The fact is, it worked. The coin made me remember my father’s kind words and attention. I also recall the day I handed it back and said, “I don’t need this anymore.”

Now it’s my turn to play magician. Last week was William’s start as a “Downstairs Boy,” or his second year of preschool. It’s been hit or miss. On Wednesday he was enthusiastic but that waned on Thursday and he spent Friday morning wailing. This week is up for grabs. For all I know, he’ll love every minute of it.

If not, I’m ready.

Where the mild things are

Dave — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 02:16:40 +0000

I’m the parent of that kid.

Do you know the kid who stares at his feet while everyone else sings at story hour? The one who won’t sit on Santa’s lap or acknowledge a seldom-seen relative? Do you know that kid? That one puttering in the sandbox while the other kids enjoy the bouncy castle? I know that kid.

He’s my son. And he wants to play soccer.

He doesn’t have the eye of the tiger. More like the cheekbones of a meerkat. So when #8 slipped into his jersey and doll-sized shin guards, dad was nervous.

“How much did this cost?” I asked my wife.

“Fifty dollars for eight weeks.”

“We could have just tossed two twenties and a ten into the fireplace. This will end poorly.”

“Try and be positive.”

“This will probably end poorly.”

The coach called them in to stretch. William sat in the semi-circle and reached for his toes. He reached for the sky. He lined up for a turn at kicking the ball. I skittered across the edge of the field, snapping pictures wildly, certain that the photo op would end soon. And abruptly. With pouting.

He ran and kicked, taking his “position” on the field. I’m felt optimistic. Just as I snapped the photo to the left, he walked off of the field. “I quit soccer,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling strangely vindicated. “See?” I thought. “I knew it.”

“Everyone is faster than me,” he said.

“You’re doing awesome, William.” I said. “I saw you running up and down and getting some good kicks! Look, here comes the ball. Now, go out there and get it! Here it comes!”

He was still. Poof! The Devil of Disappointment appeared on my left shoulder. Zap! The Angel of Optimism on the other. “What did you expect?” said the Devil. “Another typical day with William. Get used to it.”

“Just hold on,” said the angel. “Give him a minute. Let him work it out. He’s almost there.”

Five seconds passed. Then ten.

William ran out onto the field.

“See?” said the angel.

He made two more trips to the sidelines, but always went back out onto the field. That night, I asked him for his favorite part of the day, as is part of our routine.

“Soccer” he said without hesitation.

Yeah, he’s a meerkat. But he’s the baddest meerkat you ever saw.

School Daze

Floor d’Oeuvres

Dave — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:55:09 +0000

The following is a throwback post from my days blogging for Parenting Magazine, re-published here for posterity’s sake.

Earlier today, I was playing “Pretty, Pretty Princess” on the floor with Gracie (I was TOTALLY winning. I had two earrings, a necklace and a ring. She only had two necklaces) when William walked into the room, chewing.

“What is William eating?” I called.

“He’s eating something?” my wife answered from another room.

“Yeah,” I said. “He just walked in here chewing.”

“What does he have?”

“Don’t know,” I said, inspecting his empty mouth. “It’s gone now.”

No worries. It was just what we’ve come to call Floor d’Oeuvres.

While Grace was pretty good at finding Floor d’Oeuvres in her younger days, William is a master. Like a shark that can detect a single drop of blood within the vast ocean, this kid can hear a Cheerio hit the floor from clear across the house. He immediately drops what he’s doing and zooms towards the wayward treat as quickly as his short, stubby legs will carry him.

Here’s an example. William and his mother were at the beach earlier in the week. At one point, she noticed that he had a warm, oily, sand-covered corner of cheese.He heard CHEESE hit SAND. This kid’s got a career in international espionage ahead of him.

So what happened to it? “I don’t know what ended up happening to the cheese,” my wife said. So if the whole spying thing doesn’t work out, he’ll at least be able to win a few bar bets.

Kitchen or kids?

Dave — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 04:22:05 +0000

Kitchen or kids?

It’s the proposition that follows dinner in our house. It basically means, “Do you want to clean up the post-dinner mess or kick-start the kids’ PM routine?” Don’t jump too quickly. There is no easy answer.

Answering “kitchen” could mean scrubbing a mountain of dishes and/or pots and pans, plus cutlery, the counter tops, the table and so on. With some luck, the dishwasher will actually be empty (a rarity), the trash can won’t be overflowing (hasn’t happened yet) and the evening’s “chef” would have tidied up while cooking (a bona-fide miracle).

Selecting “kids” is even riskier.

If they actually ate something, they’re probably satiated and happy enough to keep from attacking each other like cage fighters while you arrange pajamas, line up the lotions and diapers, begin baths, choose the evening’s books and answer the phone (because someone ALWAYS calls just as you’re getting started). Finally, you’ve got to referee the inevitable argument over who will be first in the tub.

Not that it’s all bad. While cleaning the kitchen you can listen to music or, even better, the sweet, happy voices of your little ones in the next room. On the other hand, having two fresh-smelling kids curled on your lap, their damp heads pressed into your chest as you read their favorite books is just about as close to heaven as you can get.

As for me, I’ll take “kids.”