Those Things You Say You'll Do Sometime After New Years, But Never Do...AKA Resolutions

I know.  I know.  Resolutions are lame.  Everyone has them and few of us follow through with them for more than a few weeks or months at best.  But for some reason, I think about this every year.  I have great intentions of following through.  Then one excuse or another evolves and I inevitably go back to same the old routines and habits when one of my inner beer gulping, curse word breathing, fatty food devouring, lazy ass Sunday lounging demons rears it's not-so-ugly head.

I hear some people say you should write them out.  What for?  I don't know about you, but I can guiltlessly toss a piece of paper with the best of them; my old grade school teachers can attest to this.  Others say you should tell your friends.  Only problem with that is that my friends will be doing the things I may be trying to give up or minimize in my life and even more so, we bust each others proverbial balls so often that some elbowing about some resolutions would go by unnoticed.

No.  I thought this year, I would commit it to the grand and glorious Internet.    

So without further ado, here are my 2013 resolutions (in no particular order):

1.  Be More Patient - With everyone.  I've always had a short fuse.  I'm always in a rush.  I always want my kids to be jumping ahead of other kids in their classes/play groups (developmentally, of course; we don't raise line cutters here).  A little preplanning and a little patience would do me wonders.  Furthermore, I read somewhere that comparison is the thief of joy.  In which case, I have thieved a lot of joy out of my life.  It's time to sit back and let it all happen and only intervene when absolutely necessary.

2.  Find Some Balance and Lose A Little of Me - I've always been a little selfish, maybe even a smidgen more than a little.  I talk a good talk, but when it comes to walking the walk I look more like an orangutan.  As a stay-at-home dad, I have done a fair bit of "poor me".  I want to go running, get in a workout at the box, work on my blog, take pictures, enjoy some beers with friends and eat amazing food all of the time.  I've had a hard time letting go of that "me" concept and to start truly focusing on my kids.  After all, they are my responsibility and I need to be more responsible.  However, I still need to find time outside of the boys time to work on those other things.  They won't all get done everyday, and there will surely be some really early mornings and some late nights...but there has to be a balance.

3.  Watch What I Eat - Notice I didn't say "diet".  Diets are awful, trendy and vastly failure ridden.  Do people fail because of the diets?  Of course not.  They fail because diets are often too restrictive and certainly not permanent.  We go on vacation.  We go to parties.  We have cravings.  I just need to keep those cravings in check, and stop cleaning my kids plates.  I was talking with a good friend the other night who has gone vegetarian (sort of) after watching Forks Over Knives (I have yet to watch it).  His philosophy is unless that plate of meat is going to be amazing, then he doesn't need to eat it.  I love my meat, but I think I can get on board with this to some degree.  I could happily eat meat 7 nights a weak, but maybe 1 or 2 is better.  I just have to get the boys on board...hot dogs everyday may be coming to a close.

4.  De-Booze -  I know what you're saying:  "Say it ain't so!"  Now hold your horses.  I love a good beer or cocktail as much as a good burger or steak.  But I don't need one or two every night of the week.  I need to get back to the good ol'H20.  Just like my food intake, not every beer or cocktail is going to be amazing, so are they all worth it?  Definitely not.

5.  Start A New Creative Project - I have had ideas for photography, tattoos, books and scripts I have been saying I was going to start for years now.  2013 is going to be the year I get it started.  I'm not saying I am going to get it finished, but, at the very least, the ball will be rolling along.

And that's about it.  Nothing too crazy or outlandish.  Some real attainable goals, in my opinion.  And if I should trip up at any point, and I will, I don't plan on beating myself up for it.  We'll see how long this lasts.

So what are your resolutions?  Are you keeping the list short this year or do you have a laundry list?

Let me know, I'd love to hear.

        
 

Please Just Eat Your F*cking Food

Yes, I am using a similar and often the same meter as Adam Mansbach's original ode to his kids of "Just Go The F*ck To Sleep".  I am well aware of this, that shit was genius.  There is no intent on my behalf to make any money from this gem, simply to entertain you all, so I think I should be okay to move forward with it.

And no, I doubt Samuel L. Jackson will be reading this anytime soon, but if Morgan Freeman is available and you know him, then let him know.

Without further ado, for your reading pleasure, here is:

Please Just Eat Your Fucking Food

I hear your tiny tummy rumbling now,
I asked what do you want, you said "you choose".
Then taco Tuesday it is tonight, my prince.
Now, please just eat your fucking food.

Look at your brother, he's a goddamn disposal.
You used to eat well, what happened to you?
No chocopuffs or yogurt pops, buddy.
Just eat your fucking food.

You're not watching TV, you're not having ice cream.
Ground beef plus tortillas equals tacos, dude.
Yes, you can have that banana as soon as you clean your plate.
But for now, eat your fucking food.

You have to take a piss?  Fine, go ahead.
Your tacos are cold, but what's that to you?
Don't forget to wash your hands,
and get back and eat your fucking food.

I appreciate your robot impression
and I love all your hugs, really I do.
I'm getting hemorrhoids just sitting here,
Hey C3PO, Johnny 5 says eat your fucking food.

Yes, I see the grasshopper on the window.
Yes, tomorrow you are going to school.
No, I'm not a teacher but here is a spelling lesson,
eat your f-u-c-k-i-n-g food.

It's 7:45 and I served you at 7
Your brother and I are bored so just chew!
No I don't want to try your taco, know why?
'Cause I ate all of my fucking food.

Angry?  What makes you think I am angry?
Oh...because Dadda is coming unglued?
Well, yes, I'm sort of miffed after an hour
and I see half a fucking plate of your food.

Your brother is screaming and you still need a bath.
Here, I'll show you what you have to do.
Just eat all of your vegetables, this taco meat
and then you'll o-fucking-fficially have eaten your food.

Bath time is over, time to get ready for bed now.
What?!?  Your hungry?  Va fungoul!
Tough titties, life sucks, so sad, too bad
Guess who should have eaten their fucking food.

You and your brother are in bed now, finally,
I can sit down and crack a brew.
Then I hear you yell:  "Dadda, I pooped in my diaper, come change me."
How is that possible without eating your fucking food?

Potty Rockers

For some insane reason, I really wanted to have a horrific potty training story.  I wanted to tell you that we had poop everywhere.  That everything from the dogs to the newel post had been pissed on.  That I went in as a naive stay at home dad, but came out an R. Kelly supporter.  I wanted to have some real useful information for you parents or soon-to-be parents out there who were looking for comfort or direction.  Alas, there is no goopy, smeared up, or inadvertent golden shower end to this story nor is there any real direction (well...maybe a little, but you're really going to have to look hard).

We started potty training the Big Guy in April.  I had this not so glamorous idea of hammering it out through what is called the 'commando plan'.  You let your kid run around buck naked for the weekend, don't leave the house and keep placing them on the toilet until they start to get the sensation of needing to go to the bathroom.  The point to keeping them undressed is so that they can see the action instead of it be even remotely held back by pull-ups or even underwear.

All of the write ups on this method certainly gave warning to the possibility of mass accidents, that it would be a miserable weekend for all involved, but that in the end, we would have conquered the almighty porcelain god...or in our case, the duck potty.

This never happened.

So we went with the easier approach.  The ol'just-pop'im-on-the-potty-every-fifteen-to-twenty-minutes-until-something-happens-and-go-from-there method.  I don't really think that is a per se method, but you get my drift.

The main reason for going about it this way was I was simply too much of a pansy to make a go of the 'commando plan'.  Call me crazy, but I didn't want full fledged piss streams with mini logs running through my house.  I hate getting even remotely close to poop.  After wiping one of the boys, if it happens to touch my skin somehow, I nearly lose it.  You'd think that after two kids that I would have more than gotten over this.  But I haven't.

Just yesterday, the Big Guy said he need to take a dump, then once he was on the toilet he said "my poop won't come out, Dadda".  But apparently he had a turltler (for you uninitiated, that's a poop that just breaks the barrier and is just itching for a reason to drop or smear somewhere).  Because when I came back to the bathroom I saw a small ball of something outside the door, thinking it was dirt I went to pick it up...it was shit.  Now while I really do try to curb my foul language around the boys, when fecal matter is involved, I invariably drop a few bombs.  Nothing too imaginative, just your usual 'son of bitch', 'fuck my life' and 'are you fucking kidding me' variety.  Then to compound the problem, the Big Guy then changed his mind and said he really did have to take a poop.  After wiping him, we needed to get his underwear back on (which he had happily shed upon his false alarm), so as I held his Toy Story 3 underwear for him to step into, I noticed a grape sized smear of crap on his ankle.  As my stomach began to sink, while I realized that there must be the rest of that smear near by, I noticed that the other half was closer than somewhere, it was running down the knuckle of my finger.  And the cussing re-commenced.  But I digress.

Truth be told, the first day of potty training went better than expected.  We had two accidents and one success.  Since we diaper the Big Guy at nap time and bed time, we missed out on a few.  But overall I was happy.  From then on, it wasn't too bad.  The only real trouble is that while he was a wiz (no pun intended) with peeing in the toilet, he had yet to take a poop in it.

That would take a few more months.  Like I said, we took the scenic route.

Now that he is pretty well trained (though we still do nap time and bed time diapers for him), we run into other somewhat awkward issues.  Just things I never expected.  Such as teaching him to wipe.  As natural as it is, just try to (assuming you haven't had to yet) explain the concept and motion to a three year old.  It's hard enough to explain the sun rising or why Momma works, let alone a backwards crank of the shoulder, mixed with a twist of the wrist, very specific targeting and the inward/upward motion that is ass wiping.  With my aversion to getting excrement on me (or as would be in this case, being around other people with crap on them), it makes it difficult to want to explain to him how to wipe himself.  I know I will have to, but I can just imagine all the crappy hands I will be cleaning and just the thought alone of that makes me ill.

Right now we are dealing with 'itchy butt' and 'Dadda, come wipe me'.  Just today as we were having the house sprayed for insects (I now have the advantage of knowing the difference between a smoky brown cockroach, the standard wood roach - also known as the American cockroach and the apparently very fertile German cockroach...and knowledge is power), Benj yelled from the top of the basement stairs "Dadda, I have itchy butt".  To which I told him to go ahead and scratch it, otherwise I would check him out after I was done speaking with the exterminator.  He yelled back "but I have itchy butt now, Dadda".  What's a guy to do?

A few weeks ago, as I was canceling my Direct TV service (since our new house would unfortunately have no line of sight of the southern sky), Benj declared that he had to poop.  He likes to tell me that he has to go to the bathroom.  I am not sure why.  Probably because it is still pretty new to him that he is doing it mostly on his own.  Or perhaps, maybe he is some sort of excrement exhibitionist.  I don't know.  Either way, when he finished, he loudly demanded (of course during a moment that the Direct TV rep was quietly researching something):  "Dadda, I went poop.  Now you wipe my butt".  The Direct TV rep enjoyed this to no end.

All in all, I guess I am happy that my stories aren't more gruesome or that I don't have to wonder where the smell is coming from or why the carpet is wet.  It was a surprising turn of events for me, but like most other things with the Big Guy, I suspect he has something in store for me in some other regard.  Something that will make me want to crawl out of my skin.  Something that will drive me nuts.  Almost certainly something I haven't even thought of yet.  And then there is the Taz.  They remind me a bit of myself.  Crafty, conniving, mischievous prone and ill timed bladder having little shits.      

Cabin Fever Realized

As you may have read, the kids are sick, apparently something called RSV and it ain't pretty.  Yep, it finally hit my 6 month old like ton of bricks yesterday.  We had two trips to the doctor, one planned and the other more of a not-so-much-an-emergency emergency  which included me breaking about 50 traffic laws and driving my Subaru wagon like I was Dr. Peter Venkman in the Ecto-1.  People don't know what to do when you drive like a maniac in the suburbs.  There is a delayed reaction when you go around them or when you don't give them the right away at a stop sign.  It's only about a three second delay, but the look is priceless.  As if they just saw a lion headed monkey eating a a bag of cool ranch Doritos.  Then that confusion turns to the standard grimace, middle fingers get jumpy and they yell (from behind closed windows - I always get a kick out of that, like yelling at the TV screen).  Anyhoot, we've got the boys on inhalers now and are starting to get them back to health.  My 2 1/2 year old goes back to school tomorrow and I for one am excited.  He's been out for a week and a half.  I miss our routine.

So to celebrate our last day of sick at home with nowhere to go, I thought I photo document some happenings.  Here's what we did today:

It was no Disneyland or even a trip to the toy aisle in Target but between making Ben's first fort, jamming out on the doggie guitar and getting ripped on some Albuterol inhalations, it was a fun day.  Now let's get back to normal.

Being Sick Sucks

There is nothing worse (at least thus far into my two year foray into stay-at-home dadhood) than dealing with sick kids.  And not to discount single child households, but lets face facts, when you have more than one the ante is upped - and when you have more than two...well you're just nuts in my opinion, but that's another post for another day.  Your kids can't help but share germs.  They touch each other, sneeze on each other, share toys and for most of the time breath the same air.  For a cold virus this is nothing short of a two week rave that would make Burning Man look like a book club.

My 2 1/2 year old has been bogged down with a cough the past few days and was sent home from pre-school yesterday for a minor fever (under 100) and a cough that reminds me of the first time I smoked pot and thought I coughed up my appendix only to wonder why the hell anyone would want to partake in such an activity.  Mrs Griswold Wanna-Be got the call form school and the teacher gave that classic passive-aggressive note of "you don't have to pick him up, we just thought you should know".  On our handy-dandy teacher code decipher ring, we learn that this translates to "if you don't want to be looked at as the sh*tty parent, you should come and get your kid".  So she went to pick him and bring him home.  

I read website after website to see what I could do for him.  I had ordered a vapor bubble bath mixture from Diapers.com, I had made him a honey, lemon and apple juice elixir supposed cure-all (load of crap from some dumb hippie), cool mist humidifier was rolling hard, Vicks Vaporub was thickly applied and children's fever reducer at the ready.  If this was Tombstone, I was Doc Holliday, Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan Earp all rolled in to one.  I was ready to be this cold's Huckleberry.  

Just to cover all my bases I called the triage nurse as well to see if there was anything I could do to ensure my son got a good night sleep.  An hour later, when I finally got a call back (aside form simply being there when I call, there is no amount of time that will ever satisfy me when it comes to getting back to me regarding my kids health - if I wait 5 minutes, whether busy or not, you're a D - and that's not a letter grade -  in my book).  Nothing could be done. We had to make an appointment for the next day, so we did and now we had to get through the night.

When my son woke up form his nap we gave him the vapor bath, all while he was shivering like a leaf and then readied him for bed after shellacking him with the vaporub.  Since he no longer likes to sleep with his door closed, the cool mist humidifier seems to have zero effect just pouring out into the hallway, so I decided to sleep in his room with him so he would sleep with the door closed.  

At around 1:30 AM he woke up disoriented and talking about going to the playground, even going so far as to try to climb over me and get out of bed.  After convincing him it was still nighttime he came back up to his pillow, but not back to sleep.  He proceeded to whimper every now and then, hack up a storm, he cried once or twice and kept chattering about being hot or cold.  This went on until about 3 AM when he finally fell asleep again and did not make another sound - except for about a dozen lung puncturing coughs - until 11 AM.  He woke up with little bursts of his healthy self, but you could still just look at him and see that he was in a bad place.  So it was off to the doctor.  

Just as a back story, my son is terrified of the doctor.  He screams, cries and tries to climb over my shoulder as soon as we enter the exam rooms just for routine visits let alone sick visits.  Ironically, he loves to play doctor at home.  But today he was okay in the waiting room, nervous but okay.  He even walked into the exam room with little to no reaction.  I was able to reason with I'm when the nurse asked to take his temperature and get his weight.  Then the doctor came in and checked his ears, nose, throat and lungs, he was timid but making it through.  I felt like we were turning a corner, developmentally.  Then we were told he would need an Albuterol treatment and be looked at one more time.  I said fine, how bad could this be.  How bad?  Unimaginably f*cking terrible.

See, the albuterol treatment is a mask attached to a small compressor gadget.  He would need to wear the mask over his face or have me hold it.  The nurse turned on the compressor, my son jumped.  Screaming was immediate.  Streaming tears were not far behind.  The uneaten graham cracker he had been holding this entire time was now getting covered in running snot and tears.  I asked the nurse for 5 minutes to talk with my son and try to reason with him - after all I thought we were making some head way on his doctor fears.  I tried all of my tricks as well as blunt honesty with him, he wasn't having it.  I realized now that I was going to have to hold him down and give him the medicine that way.  I asked the nurse if I could administer it to him and she was fine with that - I would have been too If I was her.

He covered his mouth with whichever hand I wasn't holding.  He rolled over and planted his face on the exam room table.  All the while screaming bloody murder.  Now as a parent and a competent adult I know that this is for his own good, but there is no way to explain that to him.  He's scared out of his mind and he wants out, not later but at this very instant.  I then manage to grip both of his elbows behind his back with one hand and try to place the mask on his face with the other hand.  He kicks the mask out of my hand and it hits the floor popping the mask off.  Now I am irate.  I put the mask back together.  I man handle him and flip him over on the table face down where I am going to place the mask in front of him and hold his head steady.  All the while I am near yelling at him.  On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most crazy and irate I can get, I am at about a 7.  I finally lift him back up, hop up on the exam table, put him in my lap, lock his legs up in my legs, wrap my arm around his body and finally get the mask over his nose and mouth.  Strangely enough, he almost instantaneously relaxes, closes his eyes and puts his head down on my arm.  Why didn't I think of this position first?  Too bad this was all for not.  

Yeah...when he kicked the mask out my hand and it came apart on the floor, the watery stuff that came out was apparently the albuterol.  The nurse came in and noticed the stuff on the floor and when I told her what happened, she let us know we would need to do this all over again.  F*ck my life!  So she goes away to get more meds and my son keeps saying "me get down!  me go home!"  I explain to him that we have to get this medicine in him before we can go anywhere.  Now that he is calming down my 5 month old starts screaming.  Did I forget to mention I am at the doctor with both kids?  Yep.  And we have been pushing my little one's feeding by about 45 minutes at this point.  Everyone is as happy as a pig in sh*t. 

So I make him a bottle and get him set up in his car seat up on the exam table with us.  The nurse comes back in and fixes the inhaler contraption, hands me the mask and I turn it on.  Now both of my kids are screaming and crying.  I have to lock up my 2 1/2 year old again and get the mask on him.  He goes back to relaxing on my arm without too much trouble and now I have to feed my 5 month old with my other hand.  

I'm reminded of the first time I saw one of our friends feed their twin infants.  The kids were stacked one behind the other in two Boppy pillows and our friend had two bottles in hand leaning over the two kids, one arm fully extended to reach the further baby and one shorter to the closer one.  I was blown away.  As if one of the great mysteries of the world had just been solved before my very eyes.  I also knew right then and there that I was thankful for not having twins.  Now let's get back to the doctor's office.

We finish the treatment and the doctor comes back in and checks my son's lungs.  Apparently no crackly wheezing sounds, which is good because that would indicate that he might have had pneumonia.  Not a road I was mentally prepared to go down when I walked into the sick lobby 45 minutes earlier.  So he could be treated with an inhaler.  Great, now I have to get his face into another mask 3 times a day for the next week?  You have to be kidding me.  There is no other option?  Apparently not.

So after we leave and pick up the prescription, we head home.  I explain to my son he has to take medicine when we get home, and of course not having seen what said medicine is he says "okay".  Like Lincoln getting tickets to Ford Theatre that fateful night - he had no idea what was coming.

I break out the contraption and even get him to put it in his mouth without the mask.  But then he loses it and we are back to square one like at the doctor's office.  But now he has wisened up to the holding him technique and is squirming like a worm on a hook, screaming and crying.  I immediately lose my cool and put him in his room for a timeout because I am ready to put my head through a wall.  Once I have cooled down, I go into his room and try to reason with him again.  It takes some pretty serious and stern reasoning, but he finally gives in and sits on my lap, takes his 5 breaths and is all done.  He then turns to me and says: "me all done.  Thank you dadda.  Dadda fix my cough".  

And there it is.  In those words that I officially feel the worst I have felt all day.  I have lost my cool with him twice today in two very immature and overly hostile ways.  I've yelled at him, called him a brat and put him in timeout.  Then he goes and says very nicely and with a smile "thank you dadda.  Dadda fix my cough".  As if its been nothing but ice cream and gum drops all day.  And that's just another amazing feature about little kids that we (or at least I) as adults have unfortunately lost; the ability to instantly forgive and move on.  For all of his illogical and often intolerable fears, all of his whining and all of his inability to grasp simple tasks like taking off his socks - he is a better person than me and it kills me.  And I'm not saying this for sympathy, it's the truth, you can't convince me otherwise.  Fortunately it is moments like this that make me desperately want to step up my game and be better for both boys, because frankly he deserves it and I need it.  

*photo credit. http://discountwt.com/mcknight-poy-sian-inhaler-alternative/