A Fine Farewell

It's been 179 days, or apparently 257,760 minutes since my last post. Since then a lot has changed and a lot is still the same. Some of it good and some bad and some of it neither here nor there. If that's not colloquial enough for you then I don't know what is. Why has it been so long since I last posted? Mostly laziness, since lack of subject matter would be an impossibility. I just lost interest. I needed this blog to be therapeutic, but it was never enough to simply get my thoughts onto the screen. So this is my final post and I plan to make it an open one and a good one.

Parenting has gotten tough, really tough.

A mash-up of the boys being in stages that drive me up a wall, one constantly pushing established boundaries while attempting to manipulate the Mrs and I and the other constantly testing boundaries yet to be set while rocking the terrible twos tantrum train like a champ. Combine that with me questioning if this stay at home parenting gig is still for me and you have yourself some really awesome FML soup.

The Mrs and I decided four years ago that me staying at home was the best decision for our family. I was already having to call out of work or to leave work early regularly to pick up the Little Man from day care and that was causing a riff between my boss and I, so I started working from home as a contractor. A year later, I had had enough of being tied to a work phone that seemed to ring only when I needed to be paying attention to my son, so I dropped traditional work altogether for full time stay-at-home dad-dom.

Like anything, I have had some ups and downs in this role. And like a typical man, I tend to internalize all of the struggles. Even when with other dads, I often blow off how hard something is for me and joke about it as if my laughing it off would make it all better and I was over it. But I never do just get over it. It's just building stress. That coupled with the fact that it is often just the boys and I from breakfast to bed time, as the Mrs can be working 80-100 hour work weeks with many of those hours falling over the weekends (Mammas, don't let your babies grow up to be lawyers…I think that's how that old Willie Nelson song goes), was making things even more difficult. It stopped feeling like I was a stay-at-home parent and I had now become a single parent. I have to play the role of the fun dad as well as the judge, jury and discipliner when it's needed, which seems to be the vast majority the time. Then when I share my parenting frustrations with the Mrs, she often sees some sort of triviality in whatever event it is I am upset over. And that's no fault of hers. Hearing that the boys were trashing their room instead of napping, or that our two year old has been nothing but disagreeable or that our four year old has been complaining about being bored all day as I cleaned the house; none of this comes off as crimes punishable by infinite timeouts. Unless, of course, you are dealing with it all of the time.

So like anyone unhappy with where they have found themselves lately, I've fallen into a self-pitying funk. Yup, the best kind. Oh, and because I know you are probably saying "well the other option is to buck up and get over it, that's an option too, ya'know", you're right, but that's not what I did. Sometimes you don the rally cap and will your team to turn it around and sometimes your team is so far behind that you just get drunk up in the stands and say 'fuck it.'

But before you get on my case here or stop reading. There is light at the end of the tunnel, or at least I think there is.

I just read this eye-opening article in The Atlantic, The Overprotected Kid by Hanna Rosin. The basis of the piece is centered around this new type of playground (though not in the sense you are thinking) in Wrexham, Wales (that's the UK for some of you geographically challenged). It's called The Land and it apparently looks more like a junk yard than a place I would take my kids for a fun morning or afternoon. It is filled with discarded or donated…well…crap. Pallets, mattresses, couches, shopping carts, tires, shipping containers, an open fire pit (yes…I said fire) and a myriad of other things you would not typically find at a place you would label a "playground." But at it's heart the article is about how parenting has changed since, you guessed it, we were kids.

As the article's title implies, children are overprotected by their parents today. Parents constantly trying to ensure their child's safety at every turn and through all of life's obstacles. Furthermore, Hanna Rosin, goes on to suggest that we as parents have also tried to fill our kids lives with not just safety but with constant entertainment from extra curricular activities, endless supervised play dates and of course TV time. She also makes correlations, through research, that all of this 'overprotection' is adversely affecting our kids. They are becoming less creative, less independent and less confident than we were when we were their age.

I won't tell you that I bought into this article hook, line and sinker. For at least half of the article I thought that Ms Rosin was off her rocker, one of those parents that lets their kids do whatever, whererever and whenever. The type of parent I can't stand. But as my background thoughts began to churn and I read on (it's a long article and I'm a slow reader), I started seeing more to this than just what a 'Return to Thunderdome'-esque park would mean for our kids. I was able to boil down my current state of parental dismay to two primary problems, an over controlling personality and my assumption that the best parent is the parent who does the most with their kids and is physically involved in every little activity from the time the kids eyes open just enough to crack the sandman's nightly delivery until the time their little heads hit the pillow for bedtime.

Then I started thinking back to my own childhood.

Since my parents divorced when I was three, my mom has raised me as a single parent. Going back to kindergarten, I have always had a lot of freedom. I remember when we lived in Massachusetts, I would just disappear with other neighborhood kids into the woods behind the house to set up kingdoms and fight dragons in places I know my mom never saw. When we moved to Arizona, I remember riding my bike to school with a friend in 1st grade (it was maybe a mile or two away from the house). And not just school, we rode everywhere, in and out of our neighborhood. We used to go over into these small tree groves on these farms and set up forts with whatever junk we could find (I think we may have messed up some homeless peoples 'tents' on an occasion or two, thinking that this stuff was just there by chance). We played stick ball with real sticks and if you wanted a shorter bat, then you broke the stick (which I did once only to launch the half I wanted straight into my thigh and then used my tube sock…it was the 80s...as a tourniquet). We were wild, but so was every other kid in the neighborhood.

But the point of all of this is not the shenanigans I got into or that I knew it was time to come home when it was dark; but the fact that I had the freedom to do any of this at all. I don't recall my mom ever being stressed about the little things and maybe she just hid it well, but I don't think so. She worried about money and how we could afford things, but not about what I was doing, how I was doing it or when I would be done (unless of course it was schoolwork, but that's a whole other topic), she just let me be me.

When I thought about it, I realized that a lot of my frustrations with my own boys has been that I'm not only always overseeing their playtime, but I am often directing it and figuring out what we'll do next or signing the Little Man up for sports, lessons of some sort or camp. All of the moving parts and the fact that the outcome, often one of the boys being bored or getting hurt or simply fussing about not liking what I have set up, only infuriates me and leaves me with little patience for additional activities. Then I feel like a shitty dad and try to get through it only to be hit with another age appropriate tantrum and it all falls apart. I am not just overprotecting, but I am also over controlling, over assisting and over entertaining my boys. The kids are unhappy and unengaged while I am also unhappy and feeling ill-equipped to be a stay at home parent and sometimes a parent at all.

So in the interest of the scientific method, I am going to test this theory. I am going to work on letting go of my over controlling nature, letting my kids experience reasonable risk and their own self created play. I want to be less careful and more carefree. I want to be less involved but more immersed. And I want to be happy, and not just during that brief period of time in the morning before anything has happened.

I'm not sure what's going to happen. I've been this way for a long time, so change won't come easily. I've been working so hard on making my kids be who I think they should be or working on things I think they should know, and maybe I've lost us all in that asinine desire to have the best kids (whatever that is) instead of just having my kids who are already the best as they are. It's trite, I know, but it's true. I've gotten so wrapped up in the bullshit of my own mind that I have forgotten to appreciate my kids for the often tender, sometimes beastly, always curious, currently contrary and cool kids that they are. And while two days ago, if you had asked me if I would allow my kids in a place like Hanna Rosin describes of The Land I'd have told you 'no way in hell', but now…who knows? And while the title of my blog, To Live And Diaper, was meant as a joke, maybe that's just what I should be doing.

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.    

 

    

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.      

Killing Me, Slowly

If you haven't seen it, Jim Breuer does a great bit on kids and how they affect your life (start watching at 4:05 through 7:20).  Cliff notes version...your kids are slowly killing you.  One minute you are loving them and laughing about something silly they did, the next you are screaming at your older kid for punching your youngest in the head using a Duplo block like some brass knuckles and the next you are about to have a heart attack as your youngest decides that now is a good time to roll off the changing table as you get more diapers from the closet.  This is all in the span of a few hours, and this can often be an everyday thing (maybe not the changing table...hopefully you, and by you I mean I, only need to learn that lesson once).  Human beings were not meant to go through those sorts of emotional ups and downs in a single day.

A friend texted me the other day that he and his boys would be missing lunch with us at a local brewery (what? you don't have a few beers on a Wednesday afternoon?) as his older son was pushed off some sort of playground apparatus and that they were in the ER getting x-rays for what eventually turned out to be a broken wrist.  I can't tell you the number of times I have seen my kids take some tumbles and started worrying about broken limbs.  So far the boys have earned various merit badges of chipping a tooth, splitting upper and lower lips, a hyper extend knee (had to get X-rays for that), tongue biting and of course bruises from knees to forehead.  Thankfully, we have managed to avoid anything very serious.  But it hasn't kept me from worrying.

I told my friend that broken bones are a solid 7 out of 10 on my 'shit-my-kids-will-do-to-put-me-in-an-early-grave list'.  So I got to thinking, what would that list look like right now (as it will undoubtedly change as the boys get older and dumber  become freer spirits.  I give unto you my SMKWDTPMIAEG List (you didn't think I was going to write that out again, did you?).

*just a quick explanation, there are a lot of terrible things that can happen to a kid, this list is simply what can happen on a daily basis

And without further ado:

1.  Eating Food Off The Ground

I'm all for the three second rule, except when I'm not.  

2.  Eating Sand

As long as it's not glass or a needle, eating sand remains pretty low on my list.

3.  Kneeling Or Not Sitting Properly In Chairs/Standing On Couches/Jumping On The Bed

The Big Guy just reaffirmed my concern for this while we were recently on vacation.  Long story short, he was leaning too far over to one side of the chair playing with the Little Man, lost his balance, fell over, hit his face on the restaurant's slate floors and then the chair fell over and cracked him on the cheek.  Good times.

4.  Running Around The House

I know, I know.  I sound like an old so-and-so, but it's true.  If you have kids and they run around the house, they take falls.  Going bare foot, there is less of an issue but even the "sticky" socks don't solve this.  I have seen the Big Guy take some turns on the hardwood floors only to have his feet fly out from under him as I then watch his face bounce off the floor.  He has split his upper and lower lips so many times it's mind numbing.

5.  Learning To Kneel/Stand/Walk

Bruises.  Bruises.  And more bruises.  I've had more skipped heart beats than I care to count watching the boys go through these stages.  What puts this at the middle of the scale is that as a parent you are supposed to let them fall, because if you sit there and catch them every time, they never learn to catch themselves.  I have aged at least a month for every fall I have watched, and week for every teeter-totter I have prematurely leapt up from my seat in order to make a diving infant catch.

6.  Rolling Off The Changing Table

You can't turn your back or trust your children.  You do and when you turn back around they will be in the throws of death.  When the Big Guy was not so big, I went to remove the bag from the Diaper Genie while he was on the changing table.  I turned my back for three seconds as I tied up the new bag...THUD.  The Big Guy decided to roll right off the three foot high table and onto his back.  Luckily he managed to make it far enough out to land on the area rug, so there was no other issue than scaring himself as well a me a little more than half to death.  One of the worst moments of my fatherhood to date.

7.  Playgrounds

Playgrounds are breeding grounds for skipped heart beats, scraped knees, broken bones and other fun stuff.  We are encouraged, if not brow beaten, to childproof our homes, then we head out to a playground where ten foot climbing walls, wheeled monkey bars, fireman's poles and steep twisty slides await our little ones misstep or a hard push in a game of tag ends in a kid getting knocked off a five foot tall play structure.  The new spongey grounds are better than concrete, but they only do so much.  I loved playgrounds as a kid, I hate them as a parent.

8.  Public Restrooms

As I don't frequent the ladies room, and as I have two boys, I can't really speak to the cleanliness and sanitary concerns of using women's public bathrooms (though to be honest I have heard some horrific stuff - some of you ladies should be ashamed).  As for the men's room...well...they're all fucking nasty.  I don't care if it's the Ritz-Carlton or Bub's Bar and Grill...men round the world and of all levels of socio-economic status lack the ability to pee into urinals or toilets.  Most men don't believe in flushing either.  And worst of all, there are a good number of men who believe that the obligatory "shake" afterwards can happen anywhere between the pisser and the sink.  Taking my boys into a public restroom is near pure panic for me, and the boys don't make it any easier as they want to touch everything...and I mean ev-er-y-thing.


I technically have a 9 and 10 on the scale, which are birth at 9 (if you weren't scared out of your mind for your wife, your kid and yourself during those moments before during and after your child entered this world then you're either a liar or James Bond) and at 10 - kidnapping or terminal illness...no explanation necessary.  But both of those are things that don't happen on an average day...so I kept them out.

Sure, I'm a little crazy, a little tightly wound and perhaps a smidge overprotective.  You may see me in these places where my fears are growing and think "he looks cool, calm and collect - no problem here".  I'm not.  Inside, I am losing my mind.  Luckily, it's only the Mrs that is going gray right now and she's younger than me.  Though I suspect I'll just wake up one morning with a full head of white hair.  Hopefully the kids will be on their own by then.