This Won't Be Pretty

I can be a little tough on my kids, more so on the Big Guy, as he is almost three.  I have these moments where I get it stuck in my head that I can help him reach that next developmental milestone...or simply catch up.  The Big Guy has been developmentally slower than average, but he is by no means stupid.  He grasps most things just fine, however, there are a few things that he really struggles with which really drive me nuts.  

The problem (besides me, of course) is that as a parent we are given all of these abstract ages by which our kids should be doing certain things.  Books and doctors tell you that your kids should be able to walk, talk, hop, skip and jump between X months and Y years.  Then if your child goes over that amount they just say that you should wait a little while as it may start happening any day.  And if you go past that, then they send you to developmental specialists...and having been to one before for the Bug Guy, I have little faith in their expertise.  

There are no step-by-step instructions on how to help guide your kids to success, if there was I would be fine and blogging would seem a waste to me.  So some parents subscribe to the ultra casual approach of "they'll get there when they get there".  Good for them, but I think that mentality is a bunch of horseshit.   To me it seems lazy, then again maybe it is pure genius (I'm leaning more towards the prior). 

That brings us to tonight.  I had gotten the Big Guy's bath ready and it was time to get undressed.  I asked him to take off his shirt and he starts pulling it in all sorts of directions and making these obnoxious grunting sounds.  All of his moves are over exaggerated, he keeps dropping his hands to his side, looking up at me and breathing heavy as if to say "well...I gave it the ol'college try, Dadda.  Now you do it for me."  So I sit down and I start telling him how to do it.

"Grab your shirt sleeve and pull it out.  Then pull your arm back in" I say.  He goes back to the abstract tugging and grunting.  "No, that's not what I said.  C'mon, we've been over this a hundred times.  You know how to take your shirt off, just grab your shirt like this," I say as I grab the bottom of my t-shirt sleeve and pull it out towards my outstretched hand to show him, "and pull your arm back like this".  He proceeds to grab the top of his sleeve and pulls it across his chest, while trying to pull his sleeved arm back the other way.  It's obvious that this is not working, but he keeps going (and so do I).  

Next I tell him to quit that method and to try another way.  

"Grab the back of your shirt like this," I say as I grab the neck of my shirt from behind my head, "and pull it over your head like this".  He grabs his shirt and pulls it on top of his head, and while I am about a 6 out of 10 on the frustration scale I still find it hard to not laugh as he looks like Beavis playing Cornholio.  He keeps pulling the shirt up as the neck of the shirt gets stuck under his chin, so I tell him to just pull the front of his shirt over his face.  He just keeps doing the same thing, looking at me like I am speaking another language.  

This has now been going on for 15 minutes.  Frustration scale is now 7 out of 10.  A smart man would give up here and just do it, a smarter man would never have started this in the first place and I am neither of those two men.

I tell him to go back to the other method, because this is clearly not working and as I have seen him do it the other way successfully, I figure we should just stick to it.   The tugging in odd directions and exaggerated grunts starts again.  I sit watching him for 5 minutes.

Frustration has reached 10.

This is where I unattractively lose my cool.  The "oh gods" come out, my face drops into my hands, the stare down begins and I punch the floor (my hand still hurts as I am writing this).  I told you this wouldn't be pretty.  

So I walk out of his room, close his door and try to cool off.  At this point, I keep thinking two things:  why does this matter to me and why can't he do what he has been able to do before?  

I know the answer to the first question; if I knew the answer to the second then I wouldn't be writing this.

Newsflash, kids are mean.  If you aren't at least normal, you are cast into the loser group.  To make matters worse, we now have social media so other kids who aren’t as cool as they think broadcast our kid’s not-so-cool attributes all over the Internet.  

When I was a kid, if you weren't one of the cool kids or at least somewhere in the middle, then the worst part of your day was at school.  Now that crap can follow you home.  I get that he is almost only three and it is probably a couple years before kids get really mean, but I don't want to wait until some kids are making fun of him.  So yes, I put a lot of pressure on myself to teach him these things and consequentially a load of pressure is dropped on him.  At times like these I feel like I'd make a better Bela Karolyi than I do a Dad.  It's unfair to both of us and frankly ruins evenings or even whole days depending on when the charade starts, but somehow I feel like this is all for the greater good...though I am not entirely sure how.  

I come back in the room, not cool as a cucumber...more like a squash which in case you didn't know is not so cool.  He climbs out of his bed and I tell him to try again, but this time try the other arm first.  He pulls his arm right out of the sleeve like he's been doing it for years, like I have seen him do before.  I am ecstatic!  I tell him to do the other arm.  He does it in a flash.  He takes his shirt off and tosses it in the hamper with a huge smile on his face.  

"That's my boy," I say "let's try it again".  So I take out his shirt and put it back on him (this is where I imagine hearing a resound "what an asshole" from my readers).  This time he struggles like he has never taken his shirt off by himself ever before in his life.  He is putting his arm up through the bottom of the shirt, pulling on the neck, making the grunting noises and raising my frustration level again.  So I tell him to drop his hands and just relax, then when he is relaxed I tell him to try again.  He pops his right arm out and then his left. 

I am smiling and laughing.  He has a big shit-eating grin on his face.  I offer him up a high-5 and a fist bump.  He is swelling with pride and frankly so am I.

I give him a hug and tell him I love him.  He gives me a kiss and off to bed he goes.  

Now was that so hard?  Yes.  Yes, it was.  Who knows?  Maybe he'll wake up tomorrow and he won't need my help getting dressed or undressed anymore.  But if you believe that, then I have some beach front property in Idaho that I'd love to sell you.  

     

You'll Miss These Days...I Doubt It

My boys are everything to me.  Literally everything.  When they're happy, I'm happy.  When they're upset, I'm upset.  Generally speaking, I love spending 9-12 hours a day with them...except when I don't.  I'm not ashamed to to say it.  My kids sometimes irritate me like alcohol on a chaffed crotch.  And like a chaffed crotch, you sometimes simply can't get away from it.  Sure you can lie down, take a shower, apply some Triple Bond but in the end you can't escape chaffed crotch and you can't escape your kids (this may be the only time that the words "crotch" and "kids" appear in a sentence together without Chris Hansen waiting in the wings).  My mom always had a phrase that never hit me as a kid, but as a parent it has truly resonated with me: "I may not always like you, but I will always love you".  And whether you have the cajones to admit it out loud or not, you know it's true.

Since becoming a parent 2 1/2 years ago, I have noticed how crazy some parents can get when it comes to talking sh*t about their kids.  Like some cultural taboo or something, some parents just won't do it even as Junior is standing there punching them in the thigh with all the fury they can muster - it's just all smiles and sunshine to them.  When you share stories of your own kids shortcomings: whining, stupid fears, contrary disposition etc. these parents are always the first to say: "Well, they're just going through a stage.  You'll miss these days".  The hell I will.

For the first 4 months of my youngest son's life (he's almost 6 months now), I was open with just about anyone who asked that dumb question: "Aren't babies the best?  I just love them at that age".  No, as a matter of fact babies are not the best.  I can't stand them at this age".  I told my Mrs Griswold Wanna-Be multiple times how much I disliked my younger son.  She was always hurt by it, but it was true.  Then she would intermittently ask me: "Do you like him now?"  And of course I would say: "No".  I told her that I loved him and if he needed my heart to live I would rip it out of my chest for him without a second thought, but that's love.  Completely different.  I'm talking about liking, as in getting enjoyment from being around him, sharing memorable moments, looking forward to seeing and spending time with him.  These were not things I did with my younger son, until about a month and a half ago.  I was all too happy to hand him off to my wife as quickly as possible and whenever possible.  He was fussy, didn't sleep and all-in-all was a completely inconsolable baby.  We think that he may have had some gastrointestinal issues, which he has since appeared to work out, but excuses or no excuses - he was a d-bag.  Around 5 months, I bought into him.  He smiled when he saw me.  He took decent naps.  He made adorable sounds.  Yet I know that when he's around 2, I'll like him even more.

What it boils down to is that I don't really care for the infant stage.  The inability to do anything for themselves is in no way endearing to me.  The 18 diaper changes a day, the sleepless nights, the fact that only Mrs Griswold Wanna-Be could satisfy his hunger (no, I don't have boob envy - I was happy to feed him pumped breast milk, but could only do so when it was available), the 100% dependance on you and the 20 minute cat naps.  What is there to like about this?  Though my 2 1/2 year old whines all the time and is terrified of the most ridiculous things (birds, doctors, taking medicine, and guy friends of ours that are taller than me) I thoroughly enjoy my time with him more than with my 5 month old.  He can express himself pretty well, he has a goofball personality, he is reaching the age where he can be reasoned with and he has a similar love for Legos like me.  Sure, he makes me want to put my head through a wall sometimes but so does my wife...for that matter so do I.

Then as for these people that come up to us in the store, at my son's preschool or wherever else I may be with one in hand and the other Ergo'd/Baby Bjorn'd and tell me how precious my kids are - especially my younger son and how he's at the best age.  These people are idiots and probably liars - but mostly idiots.  I'm busy looking forward to when my kids can entertain each other, wrestle around, tell me about their days.  My 2 1/2 year old is nearly there in all of these departments and I love it.  But I know my 5 month old is still at least 16 months from even touching on these items (as I sound a deep inhale and deep exaggerated exhale).  I'm over being thrown up on 5 times a day, I really am.  My shoulders wreak of nearly digested formula and there's always dried snot all over my pants and sleeves at the end of each day.  I'm a walking petri dish for every cold virus that ever dripped out of a kid's nose.  I'm lucky to get to spend the time that I do with my kids as a stay-at-home Dad, but don't tell me I'm living the dream, because if this is what you dream about then you have some issues.

At the end of the day, I know that these proverbial bumps in the road are just stages.  My kids will go through hundreds of them on their way to adulthood and while I know I'll enjoy some of these stages, the others I may loathe and I'm all to happy to admit it.  These happy, go-lucky, no sh*t talking, enjoy these days type of parents are questionable characters at best.  The type of people I would unfriend from my Facebook contacts, yeah that's right, it's like that.  See, what I think resonated with me so much about my mom's phrase "I may not always like you, but I'll always love you" is that it was real and it was brutally honest.  I like to think that this was the major trait I took from my mom and I'm proud of it, I won't lie to your face to save your feelings and I hope my kids get that from me.  If I'm being an asshole, I want them to call me on it.  However, if they actually call me that, though secretly I'll be proud of them, they'll be grounded for a week.