Monday Morning Quarterback: Parenting Edition

I just passed my three year anniversary of becoming a stay at home dad. There was no ticker tape parade. There were no high-fives or any smacks on the ass. The mail got delivered today, the Little Man's preschool was open and there are no known Burl Ives' songs released about this day. I also forgot all about it. It was just any other day.

Until yesterday.

Over the last three years, I have learned a thing or two. We're talking about practical, useful information, the kind of insight that people would kill for if it was political or religious. Then again, maybe you like to read parenting books or have more than a platonic relationship with your Kindle Paperwhite. Then feel free to move along.

The thing with parenting handbooks (aside from baby and toddler 411, those two were gems for us), aside from there being too many to list, is that they are all useless. They all have the same mundane and you're-a-moron-if-you-don't-know-this general knowledge chapter list. If you have seen Knocked Up, you are prepared, or at least as prepared as the books can get you and whatever questions they answer. I'm not saying that they don't serve a purpose. For the Mrs, I think it was more mentally soothing to her to read about what would be happening or what to expect even though it all went out the window as soon as we arrived home with The Little Man for the first time.

Here are a few practical, useful things you should know that no one or at least not may people will tell you before you become a parent. These are things I wish I had known beforehand. Things they never mentioned in the all day birthing class - instead we watched the birthing video (awful thing to make people watch), we learned what the size of a baby's stomach is at one and two months (that turned out to be oh-so useful at 3 AM when The Taz couldn't be soothed; that's not even useful as a fun fact) and lastly how to put on a diaper (let's just get this out right now, if you can't diaper your child without professional instruction then maybe parenting isn't for you). No. This will cover none of those topics. And for that you're welcome.

1. Diapers leak.
They sure do. A lot. And we're not just talking about pee. Try as you may, but if your child has bowel issues, the elastic only holds so much. You'll try to size down in diapers. Then maybe size up. You'll switch brands. All to no avail. Infant poop is not like your poop. It's...well...it's different. The intestines are all getting worked in. Perhaps new foods introduced either physically or maybe through mom's milk. It's going to happen. Hopefully you'll be lucky and the explosion (they're not always as simple as a leak...think more of pipes bursting...yeah you got it now) will happen at home, but it can happen anywhere and you will undoubtedly will not be prepared. At least you are now forewarned.

2. Like your Doctor.
The interview process is fine and dandy and even recommendations from friends can be helpful, but in the end it's you in there with the Doctor and your kid(s). Your personality may not jive with theirs and if it doesn't, then switch doctors. You don't need to have the "it not me, it's you" conversation, just call the office and ask to switch doctors (and FYI, it's always them and it is never you). Assuming you are planning to stay where you are, it's important to like and feel comfortable with your child's pediatrician. Some of them are there because they love what they do, and some are there because they are doctors. It's easy to tell the difference, just trust your gut and move along.

3. Kids get sick. A lot.
This has been the hardest lesson to learn and more so to accept. But this is an unfailing truth. Your kids are like sponges for two things, curse words and viruses, and after three years of staying home with the boys I'd rather them cuss me out than have to administer another dose of Children's Tylenol. However, I suspect, that I'll get that wish in about 12-13 years if I play my cards right. And if you have two kids, it's generally even worse as they volley the virus back and forth until they knock it out or off to you. What's even worse is that there is often little you can do to help them. When you get to your third or fourth sick visit to the doctor's office in as many months, you start wishing for stupid things like infections. Infections have cures. Viruses take time. We have dealt with RSV (respiratory scyntial virus) for the past two years. Hearing your kids cough like 80-year olds with emphysema is not pleasant and the doctor's comment that "just think of it as each cough is one cough closer to health" doesn't make it better. The good news: year over year the infections get less and less dramatic. The bad news: they continue to happen year over year.

4. Rectal temps are the only temps.
I had a hard time with this one. I wanted to use every other device out there from temporal thermometers to underarm readings. They are useless. I don't know what it is, but popping a thermometer up your kids poop chute is going to give you valuable and accurate information, as much as it may pain you to do so. It is better to know this going into things than vice versa. It will save you money and time. And as much as you think your four month old may hold this against you later in life, you are wrong. Just lube it up, put it in and move on.

5. Having two kids is twice the work.
I am an only child. I don't know what it's like to have siblings. But I had one son before I had two. I naively thought that I had this whole infant thing down pat. Diaper, feed, rock, repeat. Even on basic levels, my boys could not be anymore different. The Little Man was relatively easy as an infant. Taz, not so much so. The Little Man was a vegetable hoarder. The Taz...what are vegetables? The Little Man has always been a cautious little guy. The Taz just wants to be let out of the cage. Aside from the fact that I have diapered and fed both boys, nothing about them is the same. What one likes, the other may not. Unless the thing liked is a toy, then they both want it because the other one has it; this is one of the few eternal truths of siblings. What works for one boy, may not work for the other. One may require no child proofing of your home, while the other may require a SWAT team level of security. Don't assume. Don't ever assume. When you assume, you end up like me.

6. You. Will. Never. Sleep. Again.
I used to judge good sleep by a solid, uninterrupted night of 8-10 hours. I now find myself thinking that 5-6 will get the job done and that 3-4 is good too. Even when I have the opportunity to (which I can count on two hands over the past almost four years), I still don't sleep soundly or late. I wake up naturally, albeit groggy around 6 every day and either get out for a run or scour the internet on my phone for an hour or so until the kids are allowed to get up. This is not the result of a few early wake ups as much as it is years of Pavlovian experiences when my kids wake up screaming at odd hours. I used to go into their room to check on them, but have learned that 99% of the time that they just have bad dreams sometimes and then quickly get themselves back to sleep or into a better dream. Give them 5-10 minutes to sort it out and then if they don't get back to sleep then check on them, if you don't hear anything then try and get yourself back to sleep. Try is the key word. Now my dog scratching himself at 3 AM, the Mrs tugging on the sheets or the AC/heat kicking on wakes me up and keeps me up for about 30-45 minutes at a time. The stupid thing is I still set an alarm.

7. Development charts are not the end all, be all.
A lot of pediatricians live and die by the developmental charts. They are these sometimes overly generalized and absurdly specific lists of what your child should be doing by what age. Some doctors use this chart as an accurate measure of developmental success and failure, while others realize that kids all have their own time tables. The Little Man did not start talking until about 16-18 months. Taz is 19 months and doesn't say much besides his grunts for "yes" and "no", "dada" is an all encompassing term, "cat","dat" for when he points at something and supposedly he said "dragon" the other day for the Mrs (I am sure that is going to be a useful word going forward). Both of the boys have had tremendous comprehension from an early age, it's just their speech that has been slower to come around. We've never been terribly concerned. We have The Little Man in speech therapy now and he is doing fine. Our sole goal is simply to do as best we can to see that he is starting on the same playing field as his classmates when he enters kindergarten. Maybe we will have to do the same with Taz. Who knows? But don't put too much weight in or lose sleep over the chart. If your child is healthy, happy and active, then you're doing a great job. Everything else will fall into place as it should.

Hope that some of this helps you out. I think this sort of information would have been useful to me earlier on. But then again, maybe I would have forgotten it all as soon as we got home from the hospital that first time.    

 

    

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.