I have never been one to think that boys act a certain way and girls act another way. I always assumed that nature played some kind of role, but deep down I figured that nurture accounted for the majority of differences in gender roles. Maybe I believed this in part because both me and my brother were never the stereotypical rambunctious boys and at least one of my sisters wasn’t really a girly girl.
But I was dead wrong. Nature can have more to do with it than I ever imagined.
One of my daughters is a self-described tomboy. She definitely has plenty of stereotypical female qualities: she is incredibly verbal, empathetic, emotional. But she also goes head-first down the slide and the snow pile. And my son is not the stereotypical hyperactive and aggressive boy; he’s thoughtful and quiet and shy. But he's also logical and loves to build. Those two children are mixed. My other daughter, however, is a walking stereotype.
If made to wear pants for a day or two, she’ll demand to be permitted to wear a skirt or dress. If given a choice of clothing, she’ll pick the frilliest, laciest thing available. When she gets dressed in the morning, she immediately runs to the mirror to check herself out. She loves to wear bows in her hair. If my wife makes herself a salad, she’ll insist on eating part of it. Her drink of preference is diet coke. She likes to dance, but only to danceable songs.
Now you might think that the above may simply be evidence of how we’ve raised her over the years and isn’t an argument for nature at all. But that’s because I know something you don’t know. My daughter that has all of these traits is 21 months old (and I am not left-handed).
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. She’s absolutely obsessed with shoes. I mean, that seems like a joke, but it’s not. If you mention the word shoes, she’ll shriek "shoes!!!" and dart to where the shoes are kept in our house and start presenting pairs to you as if you were a high-end designer or somesuch.
She fears snakes; even snuffed-animal snakes. She’ll claim she isn’t hungry and then eat off your plate. She thinks she’s entitled to smack her male relatives, but rarely acts that way to her female relatives. When I wrestled with the older kids, once she learned we weren’t serious, she still shied away from it and would only jump on the pile when things are exceedingly calm, and then would immediately call to be removed, being too dainty to get into the rough fighting. She loves long luxurious baths, but she doesn’t really play with toys in the bath. She just lounges about. She loves all of her female relatives without reservation and seems to only barely tolerate her male relatives. She'll just sit for 30 minutes and page through a clothing catalog. There is literally almost no female stereotype she doesn't address.
Perhaps the oddest thing to me is her obsession with taking care of babies. It is difficult to get her to read a book about anything other than babies. She has a stable of 8-10 babies and her main play activity is to line up the babies, put blankets on them and put them to bed, or to stack them all into a play highchair and feed them. The first time I watched my then 16 month old daughter take care of babies, it struck me as massively odd.
I mean, I’m a 35 year old man. I don’t fantasize about taking care of, bathing and feeding 34 year old men. On top of that, even if she is destined to be maternal, what if she’s right? What must it be like to have figured out the core message of life for yourself at 16 months of age! To know your goal and your probable destiny in life at that age and then …what?!? Just play out the string? How completely different and separate from the modern ideal of a life spent exploring and discovering.
I mean (assuming she really wants to raise kids as her primary life activity, which is admittedly a huge assumption), then she would have figured out life in about 1/25 of the time I've spent at it. So she's basically 25 times better at living than me. You kind of have to respect that.
We've started to teach her how to diaper her baby dolls. I mean, if that is what she wants to do when she grows up, might as well start learning early.
March 31, 2008
March 30, 2008
Gone for the Weekend
I'm starting to wonder about all of the mommy bloggers / stay-at-home-daddy bloggers out there.
I'm off work this week. My wife and my eldest took off on Thursday late afternoon on a trip, leaving me at home with the two younger ones for the past 3 days, and once I get them into bed and to sleep at 9:30 p.m., the last thing I want to do after spending a whole day child-rearing is to sit down and write about child rearing.
Being a daddy-blogger is much more fun when you aren't wearing your daddy hat 14 hours a day.
I'm off work this week. My wife and my eldest took off on Thursday late afternoon on a trip, leaving me at home with the two younger ones for the past 3 days, and once I get them into bed and to sleep at 9:30 p.m., the last thing I want to do after spending a whole day child-rearing is to sit down and write about child rearing.
Being a daddy-blogger is much more fun when you aren't wearing your daddy hat 14 hours a day.
March 29, 2008
Your Sex Life in the First Few Years
Normal men that have witnessed a nine pound creature emerge from their wives thank God when the
March 25, 2008
Dddfsto's Review: Guy's Guide to Toddlers, by Michel Crider
THE GUY’S GUIDE TO SURVIVING TODDLERS, TANTRUMS, and SEPARATION ANXIETY (yours, not your kids!) by Michael Crider (2007)
This version of the Guy’s Guide is the third entry in a series of books by stay-at-home-dad Crider (including guides to the first year of your kid’s life and a guide to the first year of marriage). The Guy’s Guide covers 15 topics about fathering a toddler, with each chapter beginning with a short excerpt from a reader letter or email and with each chapter ending with a jokey fake quiz to recap “What Have We Learned Here?” This version of the Guy’s Guide runs 173 pages, but if you cut out blank pages and acknowledgements, you’re down to 160 pages. If you cut out the reader emails, you’re probably down to 140 pages or so. And these are pages in a book that runs four inches by six inches. If this is your bathroom book, it probably isn’t going to last the week*** and might be making you wonder what you spent your $12.95 for (and Canadians will be really mad; at $15.50 CAN, with a $1.02 exchange rate, that’s over $15). So for dollars spent per minute of reading enjoyment, you’re getting about as good of a deal as Eliot Spitzer did.***
A book this size isn't necessarily a problem if it were chock full of keen observations. Yet Crider all too often appears to be working on earning his master of the obvious degree.*** Crider has chapters on the phrase “Because I said so,” the fact that kids say “Why?” a lot, how kids’ birthday parties are out of control, how Crider’s parents are nicer to his kid than they were to him and how your kid will sleep in your bed and that this may harm your relationship with your wife. Anyone who watches a week full of WB sitcoms (is it CW now? Have you watched that network recently? Me neither!!!***) would have been able to write most of these chapters, and that’s one-third of the book. Many other chapters, including ones on potty-training and preschool interviews, aren’t much better. Part of the problem here is likely that Crider has only one kid and he isn’t a teacher or anything like that. So it’s kind of like reading a sex guide from a McLovin-type that’s only burrowed beaver once.***
A couple chapters are bizarre. I’m learning that 95% of stay-at-home dads feel that the discrimination levied upon them apparently makes their plight similar to blacks in South Africa under Apartheid, and they are not shy about voicing the awful state in which they find themselves in America in the Oughts. And so Crider launches an extended rant on the movie Mr. Mom and it’s unfair portrayal of stay-at-home dads. Note to Crider: Even if we cared about your whining about the situation, dude, that movie came out in 1983! Are we next going to hear about your thoughts on that fierce Lakers/Celtics rivalry? Whether John Hinckley should be declared insane or given the death penalty?
Another chapter contains a several page rant about how your kids will come before your spouse and that’s “how it should be.” Really? There is also a weird chapter on the many roles of a father ("I am the clown ... I am the doctor ... I am the punisher"). Crider may have written that one while wearing a loin cloth at a male sensitivity retreat in the woods or something.***
Crider alerts us early on that he isn’t going to let an easy joke go by. Ever. I actually tried to kind of emulate his style in this book review by creating all of the triple-starred (***) “jokes” above but just didn’t have the skill for it and couldn’t keep it up (and my wife and friends would assure you that, in fact, I am skillful at the bad joke). In an early 3-page stretch of the book, we have jokes on the following topics: Monica Lewinsky; Rosie O’Donnell’s penis; the French like to surrender; anorexia; the “number one rule of being an author: kiss your audience’s ass”; pissing on the toilet seat; and Paris Hilton. That’s pages 4 through 6. And, remember, these are not big pages. The quizzes at the end of each chapter generally follow the same kind of humor pattern or are topical and tend to restate the “jokes” within each chapter. Crider’s statement that he has the sense of humor of “a 12 year old at a slumber party” might be the truest statement in the book.
I think the "humor" is supposed to be Crider establishing himself as the type of guy that is manly enough that he could write a guy’s guide. But Crider can’t seem to even say “I love my son” without feeling the need to next talk about how he enjoys big breasts or threesomes with the babysitter in the next page or two (he even acknowledges that this is how he feels he has to “redeems [his] manhood”).
This version of the Guy’s Guide is the third entry in a series of books by stay-at-home-dad Crider (including guides to the first year of your kid’s life and a guide to the first year of marriage). The Guy’s Guide covers 15 topics about fathering a toddler, with each chapter beginning with a short excerpt from a reader letter or email and with each chapter ending with a jokey fake quiz to recap “What Have We Learned Here?” This version of the Guy’s Guide runs 173 pages, but if you cut out blank pages and acknowledgements, you’re down to 160 pages. If you cut out the reader emails, you’re probably down to 140 pages or so. And these are pages in a book that runs four inches by six inches. If this is your bathroom book, it probably isn’t going to last the week*** and might be making you wonder what you spent your $12.95 for (and Canadians will be really mad; at $15.50 CAN, with a $1.02 exchange rate, that’s over $15). So for dollars spent per minute of reading enjoyment, you’re getting about as good of a deal as Eliot Spitzer did.***
A book this size isn't necessarily a problem if it were chock full of keen observations. Yet Crider all too often appears to be working on earning his master of the obvious degree.*** Crider has chapters on the phrase “Because I said so,” the fact that kids say “Why?” a lot, how kids’ birthday parties are out of control, how Crider’s parents are nicer to his kid than they were to him and how your kid will sleep in your bed and that this may harm your relationship with your wife. Anyone who watches a week full of WB sitcoms (is it CW now? Have you watched that network recently? Me neither!!!***) would have been able to write most of these chapters, and that’s one-third of the book. Many other chapters, including ones on potty-training and preschool interviews, aren’t much better. Part of the problem here is likely that Crider has only one kid and he isn’t a teacher or anything like that. So it’s kind of like reading a sex guide from a McLovin-type that’s only burrowed beaver once.***
A couple chapters are bizarre. I’m learning that 95% of stay-at-home dads feel that the discrimination levied upon them apparently makes their plight similar to blacks in South Africa under Apartheid, and they are not shy about voicing the awful state in which they find themselves in America in the Oughts. And so Crider launches an extended rant on the movie Mr. Mom and it’s unfair portrayal of stay-at-home dads. Note to Crider: Even if we cared about your whining about the situation, dude, that movie came out in 1983! Are we next going to hear about your thoughts on that fierce Lakers/Celtics rivalry? Whether John Hinckley should be declared insane or given the death penalty?
Another chapter contains a several page rant about how your kids will come before your spouse and that’s “how it should be.” Really? There is also a weird chapter on the many roles of a father ("I am the clown ... I am the doctor ... I am the punisher"). Crider may have written that one while wearing a loin cloth at a male sensitivity retreat in the woods or something.***
Crider alerts us early on that he isn’t going to let an easy joke go by. Ever. I actually tried to kind of emulate his style in this book review by creating all of the triple-starred (***) “jokes” above but just didn’t have the skill for it and couldn’t keep it up (and my wife and friends would assure you that, in fact, I am skillful at the bad joke). In an early 3-page stretch of the book, we have jokes on the following topics: Monica Lewinsky; Rosie O’Donnell’s penis; the French like to surrender; anorexia; the “number one rule of being an author: kiss your audience’s ass”; pissing on the toilet seat; and Paris Hilton. That’s pages 4 through 6. And, remember, these are not big pages. The quizzes at the end of each chapter generally follow the same kind of humor pattern or are topical and tend to restate the “jokes” within each chapter. Crider’s statement that he has the sense of humor of “a 12 year old at a slumber party” might be the truest statement in the book.
I think the "humor" is supposed to be Crider establishing himself as the type of guy that is manly enough that he could write a guy’s guide. But Crider can’t seem to even say “I love my son” without feeling the need to next talk about how he enjoys big breasts or threesomes with the babysitter in the next page or two (he even acknowledges that this is how he feels he has to “redeems [his] manhood”).
Which isn’t to say that there’s nothing here. A chapter on Christmas is inspired work (including on how a kid’s first Christmas just sucks and how even if you weren’t previously “into” Christmas that you’ll get into it if you have kids). The kid’s party chapter, while obvious at times, has some funny stuff (do the kids at these parties even know who the parties are for?). A chapter on how other people’s kids suck: that observation is sheer genius! Noting that when your kid swears, you can figure out whether the mother or father has the potty mouth based upon what swear words the kid uses. That's good stuff. The chapter on sex has some funny moments too (although his idea that you might have to teach your toddler about sex is a little crazy).
This book might be the perfect book to buy for your boorish brother-in-law if your sister is pregnant. Crider’s style is a tad obvious, jock-ish and Republican (not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you), but is also friendly and laid back and far from intimidating. Crider’s the type of guy who, if he lived down the block from you, would invite you over to look at his grill and have a beer or two with you and you’d have a good enough time shooting the shit.
But you’d decline beer three.
3 Stars (out of 7)
UPDATE: Amazon apparently read this and agrees with me on the pricing. It’s now on sale for $2.59!!!!
March 24, 2008
Children's Entertainments
People are waiting longer to have kids these days. There are a variety of theories as to why that is. Many people think that people are waiting longer because people are living longer in general and are thus waiting longer to do everything in life; others subscribe to the theory that a better educated populace (particularly a female one) wants to become established in their careers before having kids.
I subscribe to a different theory, The Wiggles and Teletubbies Theory, which goes like this. People happen to be channel surfing one day, and they happen to catch the Wiggles or the Teletubbies on television (or they are at their older sister’s house while her kids are watching it). After being exposed to the show for 30-60 seconds, they are so intensely horrified by what they see that they often become celibate so as to not have to risk ever having children and having to see those programs again.
Of course, some of us fail in our quest for celibacy. But even then, when your wife is pregnant, you’ll make a definitive no-joking statement that, once the kid is born, that shit is not coming into your house no matter what. No dumbass kiddie TV shows. No Wiggles. No Teletubbies. No Barney. No Boo-Bah.
And then one day something will happen. Your child, who never before paid attention to the television when you were watching The Office or the Browns or the Indians will happen to see the Wiggles (maybe you’ve left the room and your mom put it on or something). And your child will be fascinated and glued to the television. And you’ll, of course, rush to turn it off, but when you do, your child will cry. If they catch 60 seconds of one of those shows, it’s over. They are hooked. The Wiggles et al are crack cocaine for babies.
This will be a decision point for you. Part of you may think your kids should be kept away from that pap. But do you always keep yourself from non-edifying things? I mean, personally, every now and again, I like a good action movie; from time to time I will enjoy a good pop or rap song with few redeeming artistic qualities. I see nothing wrong with permitting myself a guilty pleasure now and again. If I let myself have that, can I deny my children? I’d love to have them watch the wholesome and healthy Sesame Street. But sometimes they just ain’t digging Oscar.
So I caved. Most dads do. I could see it in their eyes that they really loved that shit like nothing else out there, and as a father, you’re going to have a weakness for that. So I let them go.
Thankfully, within a year, each of my kids grew out of watching the worst crap out there and moved on to barely-tolerable crap (Clifford; Dragon Tales; etc.) or decent stuff like Sesame Street. So I didn’t have to pull my Clockwork Orange impression or anything like that.
NOTE: Speaking of the Wiggles, do you realize how rich those smarmy Australians must be from singing that pap? I once went to a Wiggles concert at $20+ a seat with over 5,000 people in attendance; it was a truly frightening experience, with several people essentially turning their children into Wiggles groupies, with t-shirts and posters and signs and other random merch. At least 100 people brought actual roses at god knows what cost, because the Wiggles’ dinosaur apparently has a thing for roses. Apparently this happens at every show.
But you know what? Every time I watch one of those shows I think “shit; even if you offered me the millions that the Wiggles make, it wouldn’t be worth it. There isn’t enough money in the world.”
I subscribe to a different theory, The Wiggles and Teletubbies Theory, which goes like this. People happen to be channel surfing one day, and they happen to catch the Wiggles or the Teletubbies on television (or they are at their older sister’s house while her kids are watching it). After being exposed to the show for 30-60 seconds, they are so intensely horrified by what they see that they often become celibate so as to not have to risk ever having children and having to see those programs again.
Of course, some of us fail in our quest for celibacy. But even then, when your wife is pregnant, you’ll make a definitive no-joking statement that, once the kid is born, that shit is not coming into your house no matter what. No dumbass kiddie TV shows. No Wiggles. No Teletubbies. No Barney. No Boo-Bah.
And then one day something will happen. Your child, who never before paid attention to the television when you were watching The Office or the Browns or the Indians will happen to see the Wiggles (maybe you’ve left the room and your mom put it on or something). And your child will be fascinated and glued to the television. And you’ll, of course, rush to turn it off, but when you do, your child will cry. If they catch 60 seconds of one of those shows, it’s over. They are hooked. The Wiggles et al are crack cocaine for babies.
This will be a decision point for you. Part of you may think your kids should be kept away from that pap. But do you always keep yourself from non-edifying things? I mean, personally, every now and again, I like a good action movie; from time to time I will enjoy a good pop or rap song with few redeeming artistic qualities. I see nothing wrong with permitting myself a guilty pleasure now and again. If I let myself have that, can I deny my children? I’d love to have them watch the wholesome and healthy Sesame Street. But sometimes they just ain’t digging Oscar.
So I caved. Most dads do. I could see it in their eyes that they really loved that shit like nothing else out there, and as a father, you’re going to have a weakness for that. So I let them go.
Thankfully, within a year, each of my kids grew out of watching the worst crap out there and moved on to barely-tolerable crap (Clifford; Dragon Tales; etc.) or decent stuff like Sesame Street. So I didn’t have to pull my Clockwork Orange impression or anything like that.
NOTE: Speaking of the Wiggles, do you realize how rich those smarmy Australians must be from singing that pap? I once went to a Wiggles concert at $20+ a seat with over 5,000 people in attendance; it was a truly frightening experience, with several people essentially turning their children into Wiggles groupies, with t-shirts and posters and signs and other random merch. At least 100 people brought actual roses at god knows what cost, because the Wiggles’ dinosaur apparently has a thing for roses. Apparently this happens at every show.
But you know what? Every time I watch one of those shows I think “shit; even if you offered me the millions that the Wiggles make, it wouldn’t be worth it. There isn’t enough money in the world.”
March 20, 2008
A Tip For Those Buying a House
These days it seems that most people are swiftly vacating their houses, not buying new ones, but if you happen to be swimming upstream (and probably grabbing a great deal) and are looking to buy a house and you’ve got kids (or expect kids to someday grow up in the house you're buying), there’s lots of extra things to think about. Most of the things that are helpful with kids are things that everyone knows: is there a good school system, a bedroom for each kid; finished basement or family room; eat-in kitchen; a separate bathroom for kids and parents; decent-sized back yard; are you off a busy street; is it a kid-friendly neighborhood; close to a park?; is their space for a third car in the driveway (thinking way down the road)? No one gets all these, but you do your best and try to get as many as you can while still buying a house that you actually like.
From a child-centric perspective, however, there is one thing that’s easily as important as these things, and that is: Is there a way to run through the house without re-tracing your steps?
I spent my formative years growing up in a “dead end” house. If you were in one part of the first floor of the house and some one chased you, you could run from the living room, through the hall, through the dining room, through the kitchen and into the family room. And there the house stopped. You were caught. This absolutely sucked. I mean, it was a nice house and all overall, but that aspect of it sucked.
If you played hide and seek there was no way to get behind the seeker into the other side of the house without them hearing you. Sock wars -- y’know, you divide into teams, you throw socks at the other team, if you’re hit with a sock you’re "dead," there's a capture the flag type goal --invariably devolved into World War I-style wars of attrition, with the teams camping out and fortifying their respective sides, with occasional skirmishes in the Thermopylae-esque hallway. There was absolutely no hope of ambushing from the opposite side. And not only did chasing games stink (since you were caught in 15 seconds), when you really had to run from someone (i.e., your mother, wielding a wooden spoon), you were also screwed.
So when I was house hunting, a key thing I was looking for was a “circle house.” (any of you architecture types want to tell me what this is actually called?) I wanted a house with a way to walk around the main floor so you weren't re-tracing your steps. I was not going to resign my children to the ghetto dead end house
But we did one better. While house hunting, we found the holy grail: a figure-eight house. It was heaven . Our daughter, when 2 or 3, used to just run for 15 or 20 minutes a couple nights a week. Chasing games were so fun even the wife got into it. It was awesome. We even had a small circle path on the third floor. I haven't unveiled sock wars yet -- I've got that one stashed in my back pocket, but that's coming out some day as well.
Just a little something to keep it in mind if you’re house hunting.
Note: Other things to think about that are cool for kids: A large fir or evergreen tree, possibly bordering a fence or a house, that can be trimmed low to the ground to form a hidden fort-type area; a back staircase (or an outside entry into the basement); laundry chutes (a game of catch in a laundry chute is a great way to kill 20 minutes)!
Kids dig all this shit and, frankly, since you’re gonna have to act like you’re a child and play with them every now and again, you’ll dig it too.
From a child-centric perspective, however, there is one thing that’s easily as important as these things, and that is: Is there a way to run through the house without re-tracing your steps?
I spent my formative years growing up in a “dead end” house. If you were in one part of the first floor of the house and some one chased you, you could run from the living room, through the hall, through the dining room, through the kitchen and into the family room. And there the house stopped. You were caught. This absolutely sucked. I mean, it was a nice house and all overall, but that aspect of it sucked.
If you played hide and seek there was no way to get behind the seeker into the other side of the house without them hearing you. Sock wars -- y’know, you divide into teams, you throw socks at the other team, if you’re hit with a sock you’re "dead," there's a capture the flag type goal --invariably devolved into World War I-style wars of attrition, with the teams camping out and fortifying their respective sides, with occasional skirmishes in the Thermopylae-esque hallway. There was absolutely no hope of ambushing from the opposite side. And not only did chasing games stink (since you were caught in 15 seconds), when you really had to run from someone (i.e., your mother, wielding a wooden spoon), you were also screwed.
So when I was house hunting, a key thing I was looking for was a “circle house.” (any of you architecture types want to tell me what this is actually called?) I wanted a house with a way to walk around the main floor so you weren't re-tracing your steps. I was not going to resign my children to the ghetto dead end house
But we did one better. While house hunting, we found the holy grail: a figure-eight house. It was heaven . Our daughter, when 2 or 3, used to just run for 15 or 20 minutes a couple nights a week. Chasing games were so fun even the wife got into it. It was awesome. We even had a small circle path on the third floor. I haven't unveiled sock wars yet -- I've got that one stashed in my back pocket, but that's coming out some day as well.
Just a little something to keep it in mind if you’re house hunting.
Note: Other things to think about that are cool for kids: A large fir or evergreen tree, possibly bordering a fence or a house, that can be trimmed low to the ground to form a hidden fort-type area; a back staircase (or an outside entry into the basement); laundry chutes (a game of catch in a laundry chute is a great way to kill 20 minutes)!
Kids dig all this shit and, frankly, since you’re gonna have to act like you’re a child and play with them every now and again, you’ll dig it too.
A Quick Thought About Mommyfesto
One nice thing about the new blog is that, if I ever do get divorced from my wife, I don't think I'll have a hard time showing why I should get joint custody.
Copyfesto?
Nope, MOMMYFESTO.
Because there is nothing in the world better than two parents sitting at their computers blogging about parenting while completely and totally neglecting their children.
Because there is nothing in the world better than two parents sitting at their computers blogging about parenting while completely and totally neglecting their children.
March 19, 2008
Just a Thought
The wife and I are heading out on short vacation on Friday, driving the 6 hours to Chicago, leaving the kids with her mom, planning to come back on Monday. I know this drill as we've done maybe 10 weekend trips since our first daughter was born nearly 8 (!) years ago now, and I'm really ready for another one. The next 36 hours can't go fast enough.
If you're like me and most of American men in their 30's, you just get tired. You go on a long weekend vacation with your wife like this, sans children, and you have a little too much fun. You get drunk once or twice and actually get to sleep in instead of waking up way too early (which feels like it triples your hangover). Hell, sometimes if I have to wake up after drinking (which is rare, thankfully), I try to wake up extra-early so that I'm still drunk just to avoid that awful feeling. But even better than sleeping in after a bender, you'll get to sleep in after going to be sober. And that feels even better. And waking up slowly, gradually over the course of an hour instead of rising with a jolt, like a school bus accident, with kids screaming.
And after this four-day vacation (because your wife doesn’t want to be away from your kids for a whole week), you come back refreshed and when you see your kids, you’re … well, you’re really excited to see them, because you missed them. Remember: they’re your kids, not other people's kids, so you actually like them. And everything will be great with the kids.
For a few days.
And then, after about three or four days with the kids, you think “Wow. I’m ready to go on vacation without them again.” Luckily for you, you’re not a woman, or you’d feel guilty about having this thought. Instead of feeling guilty, you start to scheme. How can I get this again? How can I get my parents and my in-laws to take my children for 3-day weekends every single weekend? But your parents aren't going for it.
But then you’ll think: wouldn’t it be amazing if we could come up with a system where you could have your kids for three or four days, and then get rid of them for three or four days. What kind of amazing nirvana would that be?
And then you realize that divorce is the answer.
Look. I love my wife dearly. And she's cool; I like hanging out with her; like doing shit. But damn if it ain’t tempting to leave her to get this awesome 3 on, 4 off deal. It's outrageous all the fun shit I can imagine myself doing if I only had my kids half the time. The 50% divorce rate so widely quoted almost makes sense to me now. You could be married to Helen of Freakin’ Troy and that would be almost too tempting to pass up.
If you're like me and most of American men in their 30's, you just get tired. You go on a long weekend vacation with your wife like this, sans children, and you have a little too much fun. You get drunk once or twice and actually get to sleep in instead of waking up way too early (which feels like it triples your hangover). Hell, sometimes if I have to wake up after drinking (which is rare, thankfully), I try to wake up extra-early so that I'm still drunk just to avoid that awful feeling. But even better than sleeping in after a bender, you'll get to sleep in after going to be sober. And that feels even better. And waking up slowly, gradually over the course of an hour instead of rising with a jolt, like a school bus accident, with kids screaming.
And after this four-day vacation (because your wife doesn’t want to be away from your kids for a whole week), you come back refreshed and when you see your kids, you’re … well, you’re really excited to see them, because you missed them. Remember: they’re your kids, not other people's kids, so you actually like them. And everything will be great with the kids.
For a few days.
And then, after about three or four days with the kids, you think “Wow. I’m ready to go on vacation without them again.” Luckily for you, you’re not a woman, or you’d feel guilty about having this thought. Instead of feeling guilty, you start to scheme. How can I get this again? How can I get my parents and my in-laws to take my children for 3-day weekends every single weekend? But your parents aren't going for it.
But then you’ll think: wouldn’t it be amazing if we could come up with a system where you could have your kids for three or four days, and then get rid of them for three or four days. What kind of amazing nirvana would that be?
And then you realize that divorce is the answer.
Look. I love my wife dearly. And she's cool; I like hanging out with her; like doing shit. But damn if it ain’t tempting to leave her to get this awesome 3 on, 4 off deal. It's outrageous all the fun shit I can imagine myself doing if I only had my kids half the time. The 50% divorce rate so widely quoted almost makes sense to me now. You could be married to Helen of Freakin’ Troy and that would be almost too tempting to pass up.
March 16, 2008
Bedtime
Once your child is a few months old, unless you are some kind of weirdo co-sleeper or something, it’s time to get them used to their crib. It was a pain to put together; you might as well use it. Although the Ferber-ite types have started to cave in a bit and are saying that you shouldn’t be too hardcore about making kids go to bed by themselves, there remains a debate regarding how best to get children to “put themselves down.” (note that, not for no reason, the phrase for getting a kid to go to sleep and the phrase for killing a suffering, dying animal are the same)
Our get-them-to-sleep approach was to put the three/four-month old kid in the crib, shut the door and ignore any sounds emanating from the room for at least 30-45 minutes: screaming; yelling; choking; crying; she could’ve started talking and yelling "auito mio padre.” It didn’t matter. We weren’t going in. After a week or three, this approach had our daughter falling right asleep about 90% of the time. As for the other 10%, did I mention that she fell asleep very quickly about 90% of the time? This was perhaps our first victory of parenting after a series of early struggles and we were so impressed with our results that started bragging about it to anyone who would listen. We were finally winners.
As a result of all this bragging, someone finally pointed out that if we weren’t going to go in the room under any circumstances, what was the point of even being at home? Essentially, since there was no sound that would make us enter the room, the only help we could possibly provide to the child would be in the case of a fire. And a fire seemed unlikely. The baby didn’t even have matches or a lighter in her room or anything. So we realized that we were essentially giving our daughter the same quality of parenting that someone who tucks in the kids and then goes out and hits the neighborhood bar. But we weren’t actually getting to go the bar. So we were not only bad parents; we weren’t getting to have the fun that bad parents have either. So we weren’t actually winners after all; we were doubled-sided losers.
So the lesson there was when you’re happy with how shit’s going with the family, just shut the hell up and don't muck it up by talking too much. This is a lesson that my dad has been trying to teach me by example his entire life, and I’m finally starting to buy in.
But, anyway, once your kids are 2 years old and definitely sleeping through the night (largely on their own, hopefully), it’s time to set a bedtime. Many new parents think that the reason to have a bedtime is to make sure that your kids get enough sleep.
This is a fallacy.
Secretly, for the last 50 years a small cabal of parents around the world (a cabal that is actually an arm of the Tri-Lateral Commission and being hunted doggedly by Ron Paul) have been paying off researchers to publish studies concluding that young children need 10 or 11 or 12 (or sometimes 14!!) hours of sleep. (ed note: really 14? Dddyfsto: Yup. Look here if you don’t believe me) The number of hours listed in the study varies based upon the size of the bribes made that year. (ed note: Wow; it really says 14!?! Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t believe that even passed the smell test. People believe this? Who could possibly need to sleep that much?). Since most scientists are themselves parents, they have sometimes engaged in pro bono work in this regard and reached these conclusions sans payment. (ed note: I’m still stuck on this 14 thing. Did they do the study by putting the kids in bed and then going outside and timing how long it was before the kids wandered outside to find them? 14-15 hours? I’ve drunk a fucking case and not slept that long) Parents everywhere are the beneficiaries of this group’s efforts as they now have an excuse to get away from the fucking kids for a few waking hours a day. (ed note: if kids sleep 14-15 hours a day, then how fucking hard can parenting be, really? I mean, they’re pretty much sleeping the whole damn time; sign me up!) So you really should thank these researchers when you get a chance. What these researchers have buried (and what anyone who has actually sat and watched a child during the nighttime hours knows) is that kids (once they are 4 years old or so) actually need about 9 hours of sleep. Some need 10, but all kinds of kids are completely fine with 8 or 9 hours a night; some with less.
Now there’s no harm in a kid spending a little time in bed awake. So setting a bedtime is much less about necessity and much more parental choice than most care to admit. And the bedtime you set for your kids says quite a bit about you as a father and you and your wife as parents.
One group of parents sets bedtimes earlier than 8:00 p.m. so they can spend between 8 and 9 p.m. tattooing the words “I’m no fun” or “I secretly fucking hate spending time with my kids” on their asses so they have more time for important stuff, like a daily re-calculating the value of their 401(k) or ironing creases into their khakis or going back to re-shred their credit card bills "just in case."
Another group of parents sets a 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. or later bedtime because “they” are a lonely single mom that somewhat pathetically keeps her kids up to keep herself company. Or maybe they don’t ever want to have to be alone with their spouse for too long. Or maybe they live in fear of their children and want to be bitch-slapped around by their kids a little extra each day. Or, my personal favorite, they are still trying to be hip or different or alternative and are rebelling against the conventional wisdom of parenthood out of reflex because rebelling against parental wisdom has been their primary goal in life since adolescence.
A message to parents in this last category: if your kid isn’t going to school yet, and you want them to sleep from midnight to 10 a.m., you should realize that you’re making Li’l Johnny miss the best cartoons, but other than that, it’s your own damn business. I’m ok with that. But can we clarify that your doing that doesn’t make you hip; it doesn’t make you yourself personally cool or some kind of rebel? Can we just clarify that right here? Thanks for your time on that one.
So you figure out what bedtime between 8 and 10 works for your kids and you run with that. But it can still be challenging. First, your children, who normally clam up like they’re in the mob if you ask them questions about their social life, who will break off 90% of your conversations with them with no warning and for no good reason, will, at bedtime, all of a sudden be as chatty as junior high school girl at a sleepover. And chatty in a very good way. Well over half of my best conversations with my children have begun with them in bed and me doing my damndest to escape the room.
Example:
Me: “you have your drink, your blanket, it is totally flat, I’ve tucked you in, I’ve hugged you, I’ve done our secret handshake (and no your sister didn’t see it, don’t worry), your mom kissed you too, I saw it so don’t lie and tell me she didn’t, your nightlight is on, your music is on, doggie is here, the door is open, I’m leaving now, goodnight”
Child: “Daddy… what makes a thing funny? Also, explain infinity to me. And I liked that Pixies you played today; can we listen to more tomorrow?”
Even if they are manipulating me, it is a magnificently skillful manipulation, so it only makes me proud.
Once you’ve escaped the room, however, you probably haven’t escaped. You’ll notice, particularly when you first take the kid from the crib to a bed, that your kid keeps getting out of bed and bugging you and interrupting you when you're trying to get all the swear words out of your system that have built up over the course of the day. So you’ve got a decision to make. Most fathers, thinking the next step is obvious, create a “no leaving your bed” rule. My first child, however, being the child of a lawyer, asked “I can’t even leave my room in a fire?” So we had to identify a number of exceptions to the “no leaving your bed,” including (and these had to be re-explained each night for several months): vomiting, bleeding, pooping the bed, peeing the bed, fire, invasion of house by robbers, water dripping on you from the ceiling, caving in of wall to your room in any fashion, loud screaming from downstairs (this one was later repealed after repeated abuse) or a window breaking. There may have been others that I don’t recall. “If monsters try to get me” was proposed by my daughter but vetoed. My daughter struggled but was ultimately OK with this because she noted that I was “good at tripping people” so she was reasonably certain that if a monster was coming upstairs I would be able to get into the hallway and prostrate myself and utilize my trip skills in the nick of time. (at least it’s good to know that later into life she’s going to be good at making shit up and lying to herself and living a deluded existence.)
Anyway, with these rules in place and well-explained, we thought ourselves all set. The kid would be in bed, wouldn’t bother us unless there was a problem.
The kink in the plan was that now, whenever she needed something, anything, she would scream our names at the top of her lungs “DADDY … MOMMY.” We had no desire to scream in return, so would trudge up to her room to hear the tragedy (example tragedy: "I forgot my hippo stuffed animal. Please get it.") Even worse, after her brother was born, we would have to sprint to her room once the screaming began to shush her harshly before she woke the baby.
So after a month or two, the “no leaving your bed rule” was abolished and replaced with a “no yelling” rule. “If you need something, you can leave your bed and come downstairs or into our room and tell us what you need.” As an entirely unintended consequence, this rule quickly morphed into a “no sex for dad” rule, since my wife thought it possible for our daughter to come into our room at any minute because, after all, we told her she could come find us if she needed something (and she wasn't shy about exercising the privilege). If I waited until I could go in and check that my daughter was actually asleep to "make my move," my wife was commonly asleep (or feigning sleep) already as well, since she was in the habit of going to bed about 30 minutes after the kids did (does any other man feel tricked that his wife goes to bed at 9:30 p.m. or 10 p.m? I feel totally fucking cheated, tricked by my wife into thinking she was cool during courtship only for her, post-nuptials, to unveil her true goin-to-bed-early-ass self).
In any event, it was only several years and another child later (about 9 months ago actually) that we stumbled upon the solution. When our son, at age 3 and a half hit this stage, we left him something in his bed that solved our problems: we left him my cellphone. The “no leaving your bed” rule was reinstituted. If he needed anything or was scared, he could call our land line, and we would address his issue. There was no chance of his walking in at an inopportune moment.
And, as a side benefit, he learned our phone number.
Our get-them-to-sleep approach was to put the three/four-month old kid in the crib, shut the door and ignore any sounds emanating from the room for at least 30-45 minutes: screaming; yelling; choking; crying; she could’ve started talking and yelling "auito mio padre.” It didn’t matter. We weren’t going in. After a week or three, this approach had our daughter falling right asleep about 90% of the time. As for the other 10%, did I mention that she fell asleep very quickly about 90% of the time? This was perhaps our first victory of parenting after a series of early struggles and we were so impressed with our results that started bragging about it to anyone who would listen. We were finally winners.
As a result of all this bragging, someone finally pointed out that if we weren’t going to go in the room under any circumstances, what was the point of even being at home? Essentially, since there was no sound that would make us enter the room, the only help we could possibly provide to the child would be in the case of a fire. And a fire seemed unlikely. The baby didn’t even have matches or a lighter in her room or anything. So we realized that we were essentially giving our daughter the same quality of parenting that someone who tucks in the kids and then goes out and hits the neighborhood bar. But we weren’t actually getting to go the bar. So we were not only bad parents; we weren’t getting to have the fun that bad parents have either. So we weren’t actually winners after all; we were doubled-sided losers.
So the lesson there was when you’re happy with how shit’s going with the family, just shut the hell up and don't muck it up by talking too much. This is a lesson that my dad has been trying to teach me by example his entire life, and I’m finally starting to buy in.
But, anyway, once your kids are 2 years old and definitely sleeping through the night (largely on their own, hopefully), it’s time to set a bedtime. Many new parents think that the reason to have a bedtime is to make sure that your kids get enough sleep.
This is a fallacy.
Secretly, for the last 50 years a small cabal of parents around the world (a cabal that is actually an arm of the Tri-Lateral Commission and being hunted doggedly by Ron Paul) have been paying off researchers to publish studies concluding that young children need 10 or 11 or 12 (or sometimes 14!!) hours of sleep. (ed note: really 14? Dddyfsto: Yup. Look here if you don’t believe me) The number of hours listed in the study varies based upon the size of the bribes made that year. (ed note: Wow; it really says 14!?! Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t believe that even passed the smell test. People believe this? Who could possibly need to sleep that much?). Since most scientists are themselves parents, they have sometimes engaged in pro bono work in this regard and reached these conclusions sans payment. (ed note: I’m still stuck on this 14 thing. Did they do the study by putting the kids in bed and then going outside and timing how long it was before the kids wandered outside to find them? 14-15 hours? I’ve drunk a fucking case and not slept that long) Parents everywhere are the beneficiaries of this group’s efforts as they now have an excuse to get away from the fucking kids for a few waking hours a day. (ed note: if kids sleep 14-15 hours a day, then how fucking hard can parenting be, really? I mean, they’re pretty much sleeping the whole damn time; sign me up!) So you really should thank these researchers when you get a chance. What these researchers have buried (and what anyone who has actually sat and watched a child during the nighttime hours knows) is that kids (once they are 4 years old or so) actually need about 9 hours of sleep. Some need 10, but all kinds of kids are completely fine with 8 or 9 hours a night; some with less.
Now there’s no harm in a kid spending a little time in bed awake. So setting a bedtime is much less about necessity and much more parental choice than most care to admit. And the bedtime you set for your kids says quite a bit about you as a father and you and your wife as parents.
One group of parents sets bedtimes earlier than 8:00 p.m. so they can spend between 8 and 9 p.m. tattooing the words “I’m no fun” or “I secretly fucking hate spending time with my kids” on their asses so they have more time for important stuff, like a daily re-calculating the value of their 401(k) or ironing creases into their khakis or going back to re-shred their credit card bills "just in case."
Another group of parents sets a 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. or later bedtime because “they” are a lonely single mom that somewhat pathetically keeps her kids up to keep herself company. Or maybe they don’t ever want to have to be alone with their spouse for too long. Or maybe they live in fear of their children and want to be bitch-slapped around by their kids a little extra each day. Or, my personal favorite, they are still trying to be hip or different or alternative and are rebelling against the conventional wisdom of parenthood out of reflex because rebelling against parental wisdom has been their primary goal in life since adolescence.
A message to parents in this last category: if your kid isn’t going to school yet, and you want them to sleep from midnight to 10 a.m., you should realize that you’re making Li’l Johnny miss the best cartoons, but other than that, it’s your own damn business. I’m ok with that. But can we clarify that your doing that doesn’t make you hip; it doesn’t make you yourself personally cool or some kind of rebel? Can we just clarify that right here? Thanks for your time on that one.
So you figure out what bedtime between 8 and 10 works for your kids and you run with that. But it can still be challenging. First, your children, who normally clam up like they’re in the mob if you ask them questions about their social life, who will break off 90% of your conversations with them with no warning and for no good reason, will, at bedtime, all of a sudden be as chatty as junior high school girl at a sleepover. And chatty in a very good way. Well over half of my best conversations with my children have begun with them in bed and me doing my damndest to escape the room.
Example:
Me: “you have your drink, your blanket, it is totally flat, I’ve tucked you in, I’ve hugged you, I’ve done our secret handshake (and no your sister didn’t see it, don’t worry), your mom kissed you too, I saw it so don’t lie and tell me she didn’t, your nightlight is on, your music is on, doggie is here, the door is open, I’m leaving now, goodnight”
Child: “Daddy… what makes a thing funny? Also, explain infinity to me. And I liked that Pixies you played today; can we listen to more tomorrow?”
Even if they are manipulating me, it is a magnificently skillful manipulation, so it only makes me proud.
Once you’ve escaped the room, however, you probably haven’t escaped. You’ll notice, particularly when you first take the kid from the crib to a bed, that your kid keeps getting out of bed and bugging you and interrupting you when you're trying to get all the swear words out of your system that have built up over the course of the day. So you’ve got a decision to make. Most fathers, thinking the next step is obvious, create a “no leaving your bed” rule. My first child, however, being the child of a lawyer, asked “I can’t even leave my room in a fire?” So we had to identify a number of exceptions to the “no leaving your bed,” including (and these had to be re-explained each night for several months): vomiting, bleeding, pooping the bed, peeing the bed, fire, invasion of house by robbers, water dripping on you from the ceiling, caving in of wall to your room in any fashion, loud screaming from downstairs (this one was later repealed after repeated abuse) or a window breaking. There may have been others that I don’t recall. “If monsters try to get me” was proposed by my daughter but vetoed. My daughter struggled but was ultimately OK with this because she noted that I was “good at tripping people” so she was reasonably certain that if a monster was coming upstairs I would be able to get into the hallway and prostrate myself and utilize my trip skills in the nick of time. (at least it’s good to know that later into life she’s going to be good at making shit up and lying to herself and living a deluded existence.)
Anyway, with these rules in place and well-explained, we thought ourselves all set. The kid would be in bed, wouldn’t bother us unless there was a problem.
The kink in the plan was that now, whenever she needed something, anything, she would scream our names at the top of her lungs “DADDY … MOMMY.” We had no desire to scream in return, so would trudge up to her room to hear the tragedy (example tragedy: "I forgot my hippo stuffed animal. Please get it.") Even worse, after her brother was born, we would have to sprint to her room once the screaming began to shush her harshly before she woke the baby.
So after a month or two, the “no leaving your bed rule” was abolished and replaced with a “no yelling” rule. “If you need something, you can leave your bed and come downstairs or into our room and tell us what you need.” As an entirely unintended consequence, this rule quickly morphed into a “no sex for dad” rule, since my wife thought it possible for our daughter to come into our room at any minute because, after all, we told her she could come find us if she needed something (and she wasn't shy about exercising the privilege). If I waited until I could go in and check that my daughter was actually asleep to "make my move," my wife was commonly asleep (or feigning sleep) already as well, since she was in the habit of going to bed about 30 minutes after the kids did (does any other man feel tricked that his wife goes to bed at 9:30 p.m. or 10 p.m? I feel totally fucking cheated, tricked by my wife into thinking she was cool during courtship only for her, post-nuptials, to unveil her true goin-to-bed-early-ass self).
In any event, it was only several years and another child later (about 9 months ago actually) that we stumbled upon the solution. When our son, at age 3 and a half hit this stage, we left him something in his bed that solved our problems: we left him my cellphone. The “no leaving your bed” rule was reinstituted. If he needed anything or was scared, he could call our land line, and we would address his issue. There was no chance of his walking in at an inopportune moment.
And, as a side benefit, he learned our phone number.
March 13, 2008
Sharing the Load
I had always believed that, once my kids were born, I was going to be an equal partner in raising them. Once my wife decided to stay home, here’s how I thought it would work: We would develop a set of rules and patterns and a methodology under which we would raise the children that would be consistently applied. Once I got home, we would be equal partners; sometimes I would feed, bathe, change diapers; sometimes she would. Each of us would have equal input at all times and each of us would undertake equal labor during the hours I was at home. So I expected to sacrifice a lot for my kids: money, time, energy, the ability to watch an entire sporting event uninterrupted. And in exchange I thought I would get the experience of crafting a young life or young lives.
Here’s how it really works: When the kids say that they want chips at 4 p.m. after school, and you aren’t there, and your wife is cleaning up the baby’s room, which has vomit all over it, she might just say “ok” to get them to stop fighting and shut up. And you won’t have any control over it. Your three year old will come into the living room one day, hungry, and seeing you will say “where’s mom?” instead of “I’m hungry,” as if you, the father, had no idea where the food was, because he's used to mom getting it for him. You’ll go somewhere as a family and your wife will get in the passenger’s seat and just expect you to drive. You’ll go to change a diaper but you’ll have no idea that your wife changed where the wipes are kept and so you won’t even be able to get through a diaper change without calling her in for an assist. You're not going to have equal roles within the home no matter how hard you try.
And it’s not like your notions of equality are eroded over time. They’re pretty much gone from the get-go, as within the first few hours of your child’s birth, your wife is breastfeeding the child or holding the child and you are fetching things for her; your wife is helping the baby; and you are helping your wife.
The fact of the matter is that if you work, and your wife doesn’t, then she is pretty much going to take charge of the kids. And so, at the end of the day, a lot of the decisions that govern the kids' everyday lives aren’t up to you. Maybe you'll look at what gets packed in their lunches and realize that it's not what you would pack if up to you (string cheese for an older kid just seems embarassing to me). Maybe you wished your kids would have to play outside for an hour after school each day (or if not a rule, at least you’d heavily encourage it) and your wife just doesn’t have the same priority and they get home and sit around and color instead. Maybe you have fond memories of nerf basketball in the family room with your brother, but your wife wants to keep the nicer china in there, and so the nerf gets put into the garage. And so you’re not sacrificing all the things you’re sacrificing so that you can mold and shape new lives. You’re doing all this so your wife can mold and shape new lives. And that’s something less than what you had probably hoped for. (It's at this point that you might realize that when choosing a wife, the qualities your mother suggested you focus on seem a bit more important)
Every father realizes that some day they have to start to sever the emotional bonds and let their kids go; every father realizes that some day the kids will leave home and go out in the world. Every father even realizes deep down that because his expectations and hopes for his kids are higher than are really possible, their kid will break their heart in some way. You expect this at 13 or 21 or 16. What you don’t realize is that your wife might have them in her hands and, through no volition of her own, never let them really wander on over into your grasp to begin with.
And while you won’t be sharing the good parts of the load, you also won’t be equally sharing the bad. Your wife will naturally just get the kids clothes on them on the weekends and you’ll stop even considering that it’s your job, because she just does it. She’ll start changing 80% of the diapers on the weekends because she’s used to changing 100% of the diapers during the day while you’re at work. You’ll start to notice that you’re a little harsher than your wife when disciplining the kids, and its really because she has to live with them all day, and disciplining relatively strictly just takes too damn much time.
And when you notice this, it will start to really bug you. It really bugged me. But the scary part is that even though it bugs you, and you do what you can to fight back against it, you eventually make your peace with it in some way. You find some middle ground between 2008’s we-are-equals couple philosophy and a 1950 Ozzie and Harriet-style family and you live with it.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, I’m not saying it’s a right thing. I’m just saying that if you’re having a kid, it’s something you should probably be ready for.
Here’s how it really works: When the kids say that they want chips at 4 p.m. after school, and you aren’t there, and your wife is cleaning up the baby’s room, which has vomit all over it, she might just say “ok” to get them to stop fighting and shut up. And you won’t have any control over it. Your three year old will come into the living room one day, hungry, and seeing you will say “where’s mom?” instead of “I’m hungry,” as if you, the father, had no idea where the food was, because he's used to mom getting it for him. You’ll go somewhere as a family and your wife will get in the passenger’s seat and just expect you to drive. You’ll go to change a diaper but you’ll have no idea that your wife changed where the wipes are kept and so you won’t even be able to get through a diaper change without calling her in for an assist. You're not going to have equal roles within the home no matter how hard you try.
And it’s not like your notions of equality are eroded over time. They’re pretty much gone from the get-go, as within the first few hours of your child’s birth, your wife is breastfeeding the child or holding the child and you are fetching things for her; your wife is helping the baby; and you are helping your wife.
The fact of the matter is that if you work, and your wife doesn’t, then she is pretty much going to take charge of the kids. And so, at the end of the day, a lot of the decisions that govern the kids' everyday lives aren’t up to you. Maybe you'll look at what gets packed in their lunches and realize that it's not what you would pack if up to you (string cheese for an older kid just seems embarassing to me). Maybe you wished your kids would have to play outside for an hour after school each day (or if not a rule, at least you’d heavily encourage it) and your wife just doesn’t have the same priority and they get home and sit around and color instead. Maybe you have fond memories of nerf basketball in the family room with your brother, but your wife wants to keep the nicer china in there, and so the nerf gets put into the garage. And so you’re not sacrificing all the things you’re sacrificing so that you can mold and shape new lives. You’re doing all this so your wife can mold and shape new lives. And that’s something less than what you had probably hoped for. (It's at this point that you might realize that when choosing a wife, the qualities your mother suggested you focus on seem a bit more important)
Every father realizes that some day they have to start to sever the emotional bonds and let their kids go; every father realizes that some day the kids will leave home and go out in the world. Every father even realizes deep down that because his expectations and hopes for his kids are higher than are really possible, their kid will break their heart in some way. You expect this at 13 or 21 or 16. What you don’t realize is that your wife might have them in her hands and, through no volition of her own, never let them really wander on over into your grasp to begin with.
And while you won’t be sharing the good parts of the load, you also won’t be equally sharing the bad. Your wife will naturally just get the kids clothes on them on the weekends and you’ll stop even considering that it’s your job, because she just does it. She’ll start changing 80% of the diapers on the weekends because she’s used to changing 100% of the diapers during the day while you’re at work. You’ll start to notice that you’re a little harsher than your wife when disciplining the kids, and its really because she has to live with them all day, and disciplining relatively strictly just takes too damn much time.
And when you notice this, it will start to really bug you. It really bugged me. But the scary part is that even though it bugs you, and you do what you can to fight back against it, you eventually make your peace with it in some way. You find some middle ground between 2008’s we-are-equals couple philosophy and a 1950 Ozzie and Harriet-style family and you live with it.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, I’m not saying it’s a right thing. I’m just saying that if you’re having a kid, it’s something you should probably be ready for.
March 11, 2008
A Daddyfesto Book Review: Mack Daddy, by Larry Bleidner
MACK DADDY: Mastering Fatherhood Without Losing Your Style, Your Cool, or Your Mind (2006)
by Larry Bleidner
Per the back cover, Larry Bleidner is “a television producer and writer” who “lives in Los Angeles with his wife and young daughters.” He uses the term “MACK DADDY” as a compliment and he ALWAYS CAPITALIZES IT. The book cover proudly displays an expensive running stroller with fancy rims. So I guess I was on fair notice of what I should expect. Bleidner has certainly succeeded in writing the book on fatherhood that you would expect from an L.A.-based television producer who believes that not “losing your style” is appropriately of utmost concern for a new father.
Bleidner’s book covers the time from conception through the first six years of a child’s life, but doesn’t dwell on pregnancy or childbirth for long (Bleidner and his wife wrote a childbirth book published in 2002 and he apparently was out of bad material about that topic). Bleidner starts the book setting up a number of archetypes and giving faux quizzes to the reader to drive home the point that the archetypes all suck except one. The archetypes are: Daddy Distant, Mack Daddy, Lactating Daddy (beware the “man-o-pause” joke), Der Fuerher Daddy and Rubber-Stamp Daddy. I kept turning the pages trying to find the archetype that I wanted to be and ultimately had to check the front cover to remind myself what I was to meant to aspire to here. Bleidner then uses an informal, highly assured, cool guy, SoCal (and at times obnoxious, ranting and evangelistic) writing style, employing these archetypes periodically throughout the book in his attempt to provide fathers-to-be with practical and serious advice, with a comical touch. Thus, we have “Mackin’ Vacations” and “Mackalicious Dinin’ Out.” Etc. A heavy comical touch, I guess.
One major problem with MACK DADDY is the quality of the advice being given. Some of it is reasonable or even helpful, including an extended section on how to assemble / decorate a nursery, advice on buying a camera, a section on vacations with the kid, dropping them off at school. Certain of his pointers are nice: “Before you take a kid to task for bad behavior always consider first the two reasons to let bad behavior slide – fatigue and hunger." This is reasonable stuff.
But too much of Bleidner’s advice is hopelessly obvious: Libraries are good places for kids. Don’t leave a child with a stranger. When a doctor recommends surgery on your kid, get a second opinion. If you swear around your kids, the kids will start to swear. Wading through Bleidner’s many lengthy exhortations to the morons who might happen to have picked up his book gets a touch tedious.
This wouldn’t be so bad if you were wading through the tedium to get somewhere good, but most of the time you ultimately arrive at “advice” that’s just pathetic or wrongheaded. Bleidner describes a woman’s adoption and mocks the fact that she took “maternity leave” from work after the adoption (his quotation marks, not mine). Bleidner includes an extended anti-circumcision screed that compares it to female genital mutilation. Bleidner on women: “If [women] wrote the rules to baseball, anyone who stepped up to the plate would advance to second base just for having his shirt tucked in. Everyone would win, too (Except when it came to who had the biggest tits, best hair, nicest shoes/tennis bracelet/husband/boyfriend with the biggest wallet/job/cock … then they get competitive.)” So he’s clearly a real feminist. Bleidner rants about Ritalin in a section titled “When They Are Trying To Get Your Kid” and recommends that kids try yoga instead.
Even then, one piece of idiocy rises above the others. Early in the book Bleidner posits that there are two major pieces of advice that fathers need once they learn that their wife is pregnant, the second of which is “You are needed ... now more than ever.” Which is good and all, but he then explains that you are needed because your wife will be worried that motherhood will “ruin any possibility of [her] ever becoming a Laker Girl / Playmate / Victoria’s Secret model.” So at least we know that his wife had honest-to-god goals. Bleidner explains that your job as a father-to-be is to note to your wife all of the hot Hollywood models who have had kids (he actually names Cindy Crawford, Pamela Anderson and about 10 others). Bleidner concludes that these celebrities are “All moms. All smokin’. And of course, your wife is hotter than any of them.” And your job is to, apparently, assure your wife that these Hollywood actresses have blazed a trail that she too will follow.
What excellent advice. Mentioning to Daddyfesto’s wife – who of course is hotter than the hottest women in the world (how could anyone question that premise) – how Hollywood women have had kids and still look "smokin" is absolutely a winning strategy. There is nothing that a wife loves more than hearing about how hot Cindy Crawford is even though she has kids. MACK DADDY'S readers should let me know how this one works out for them.
But enough about advice.
There’s the comedic aspect as well. For example, there are at least 6 jokes about “Lactating Daddy” having breasts and/or breastmilk.
Per the back cover, Larry Bleidner is “a television producer and writer” who “lives in Los Angeles with his wife and young daughters.” He uses the term “MACK DADDY” as a compliment and he ALWAYS CAPITALIZES IT. The book cover proudly displays an expensive running stroller with fancy rims. So I guess I was on fair notice of what I should expect. Bleidner has certainly succeeded in writing the book on fatherhood that you would expect from an L.A.-based television producer who believes that not “losing your style” is appropriately of utmost concern for a new father.
Bleidner’s book covers the time from conception through the first six years of a child’s life, but doesn’t dwell on pregnancy or childbirth for long (Bleidner and his wife wrote a childbirth book published in 2002 and he apparently was out of bad material about that topic). Bleidner starts the book setting up a number of archetypes and giving faux quizzes to the reader to drive home the point that the archetypes all suck except one. The archetypes are: Daddy Distant, Mack Daddy, Lactating Daddy (beware the “man-o-pause” joke), Der Fuerher Daddy and Rubber-Stamp Daddy. I kept turning the pages trying to find the archetype that I wanted to be and ultimately had to check the front cover to remind myself what I was to meant to aspire to here. Bleidner then uses an informal, highly assured, cool guy, SoCal (and at times obnoxious, ranting and evangelistic) writing style, employing these archetypes periodically throughout the book in his attempt to provide fathers-to-be with practical and serious advice, with a comical touch. Thus, we have “Mackin’ Vacations” and “Mackalicious Dinin’ Out.” Etc. A heavy comical touch, I guess.
One major problem with MACK DADDY is the quality of the advice being given. Some of it is reasonable or even helpful, including an extended section on how to assemble / decorate a nursery, advice on buying a camera, a section on vacations with the kid, dropping them off at school. Certain of his pointers are nice: “Before you take a kid to task for bad behavior always consider first the two reasons to let bad behavior slide – fatigue and hunger." This is reasonable stuff.
But too much of Bleidner’s advice is hopelessly obvious: Libraries are good places for kids. Don’t leave a child with a stranger. When a doctor recommends surgery on your kid, get a second opinion. If you swear around your kids, the kids will start to swear. Wading through Bleidner’s many lengthy exhortations to the morons who might happen to have picked up his book gets a touch tedious.
This wouldn’t be so bad if you were wading through the tedium to get somewhere good, but most of the time you ultimately arrive at “advice” that’s just pathetic or wrongheaded. Bleidner describes a woman’s adoption and mocks the fact that she took “maternity leave” from work after the adoption (his quotation marks, not mine). Bleidner includes an extended anti-circumcision screed that compares it to female genital mutilation. Bleidner on women: “If [women] wrote the rules to baseball, anyone who stepped up to the plate would advance to second base just for having his shirt tucked in. Everyone would win, too (Except when it came to who had the biggest tits, best hair, nicest shoes/tennis bracelet/husband/boyfriend with the biggest wallet/job/cock … then they get competitive.)” So he’s clearly a real feminist. Bleidner rants about Ritalin in a section titled “When They Are Trying To Get Your Kid” and recommends that kids try yoga instead.
Even then, one piece of idiocy rises above the others. Early in the book Bleidner posits that there are two major pieces of advice that fathers need once they learn that their wife is pregnant, the second of which is “You are needed ... now more than ever.” Which is good and all, but he then explains that you are needed because your wife will be worried that motherhood will “ruin any possibility of [her] ever becoming a Laker Girl / Playmate / Victoria’s Secret model.” So at least we know that his wife had honest-to-god goals. Bleidner explains that your job as a father-to-be is to note to your wife all of the hot Hollywood models who have had kids (he actually names Cindy Crawford, Pamela Anderson and about 10 others). Bleidner concludes that these celebrities are “All moms. All smokin’. And of course, your wife is hotter than any of them.” And your job is to, apparently, assure your wife that these Hollywood actresses have blazed a trail that she too will follow.
What excellent advice. Mentioning to Daddyfesto’s wife – who of course is hotter than the hottest women in the world (how could anyone question that premise) – how Hollywood women have had kids and still look "smokin" is absolutely a winning strategy. There is nothing that a wife loves more than hearing about how hot Cindy Crawford is even though she has kids. MACK DADDY'S readers should let me know how this one works out for them.
But enough about advice.
There’s the comedic aspect as well. For example, there are at least 6 jokes about “Lactating Daddy” having breasts and/or breastmilk.
So comedy is covered.
Bleidner’s claim to live L.A. certainly seems confirmed in a number of ways. There is the use of certain terminology, including jing (money?), vines (clothes?), the “industry” (the movie/TV industry?), shredded (muscular?). Bleidner certainly complains like people from L.A., spending a little too much time on minor slights to fathers in the entertainment industry (i.e., Lifetime movies depict dads in a poor light! Boo hoo!) and playing the victim card in response (in light of Bleidner's claim on the back cover to be against "political correctness," the victim card is an odd choice).
Bleidner’s claim to live L.A. certainly seems confirmed in a number of ways. There is the use of certain terminology, including jing (money?), vines (clothes?), the “industry” (the movie/TV industry?), shredded (muscular?). Bleidner certainly complains like people from L.A., spending a little too much time on minor slights to fathers in the entertainment industry (i.e., Lifetime movies depict dads in a poor light! Boo hoo!) and playing the victim card in response (in light of Bleidner's claim on the back cover to be against "political correctness," the victim card is an odd choice).
Other things in the book are just odd. The book ends with a 4-page section that aspires to be a tear-jerker about giving your daughter away at a wedding. Per the back cover, Bleidner lives with his “young daughters” so I’m not sure what wellspring of experience he’s drawing upon there, unless he’s weekending in Utah and marrying off the little ones at age 11 or something.
Between Bleidner’s sheer idiocy, his ripping apart paper tigers and his seeing a mild annoyance, blowing it way out of proportion and wildly overreacting to it, he does have his moments. He shines in a few attacks on his Daddy Distant archetype. Bleidner’s love for his daughters truly and legitimately comes through in his writing, for example in an anecdote about treating a child’s knee-scrape at a park by filling your mouth at a drinking fountain and spraying the wound like an elephant. Bleidner implores the reader to help their kids “find their own bliss” and tells dads to introduce kids to all kinds of great stuff – and provides helpful examples of how to do it. Implicit (and sometimes explicit) in his advice is that all fathers need to give their children undivided and real attention (no radios in cars; don’t waste too much time on football) and truly engage them on their level with respect. In fact, in his finer moments, Bleidner moves you and starts to make you think that he knows what he’s talking about.
But not quite. Actually, fuck him. Bleidner got the opportunity to write a book and tell the world about his fatherhood experience and he used it to tell men to play I Spy with their kids and choose the next color by ogling the smallest miniskirt he passes in his car. Bleidner devotes several pages to implore fathers to work out and look good, so that the “hottie in marketing will take interest in you.” He devotes several pages whining about how women get baby showers and men get nothing and proposes the creation of a party for prospective fathers called the THUNDERSTORM (shower for women; thunderstorm for men, get it?).
This is what he thinks men want or need these days? A fucking baby shower for dads?
Look, ultimately, I don’t have much of a problem with Bleidner’s fathering techniques; when he focuses on interacting with his daughters, he doles out some decent advice. My problem is that when he relates to anyone in the world other than his daughters, he’s pretty clearly an obnoxious SOB that you wouldn’t want to spend 20 minutes with, much less 210 pages.
Between Bleidner’s sheer idiocy, his ripping apart paper tigers and his seeing a mild annoyance, blowing it way out of proportion and wildly overreacting to it, he does have his moments. He shines in a few attacks on his Daddy Distant archetype. Bleidner’s love for his daughters truly and legitimately comes through in his writing, for example in an anecdote about treating a child’s knee-scrape at a park by filling your mouth at a drinking fountain and spraying the wound like an elephant. Bleidner implores the reader to help their kids “find their own bliss” and tells dads to introduce kids to all kinds of great stuff – and provides helpful examples of how to do it. Implicit (and sometimes explicit) in his advice is that all fathers need to give their children undivided and real attention (no radios in cars; don’t waste too much time on football) and truly engage them on their level with respect. In fact, in his finer moments, Bleidner moves you and starts to make you think that he knows what he’s talking about.
But not quite. Actually, fuck him. Bleidner got the opportunity to write a book and tell the world about his fatherhood experience and he used it to tell men to play I Spy with their kids and choose the next color by ogling the smallest miniskirt he passes in his car. Bleidner devotes several pages to implore fathers to work out and look good, so that the “hottie in marketing will take interest in you.” He devotes several pages whining about how women get baby showers and men get nothing and proposes the creation of a party for prospective fathers called the THUNDERSTORM (shower for women; thunderstorm for men, get it?).
This is what he thinks men want or need these days? A fucking baby shower for dads?
Look, ultimately, I don’t have much of a problem with Bleidner’s fathering techniques; when he focuses on interacting with his daughters, he doles out some decent advice. My problem is that when he relates to anyone in the world other than his daughters, he’s pretty clearly an obnoxious SOB that you wouldn’t want to spend 20 minutes with, much less 210 pages.
So most of the time, you’ll want to be doing the opposite of MACK DADDY.
Be a Daddy Mack and Kris-Kross MACK DADDY off your reading list.
************
1 Star (out of 7)
1 Star (out of 7)
************
March 9, 2008
Daylight Savings Time Was Clearly Not Invented by a Father
Spring Forward = Fuck, I’m never going to get these kids to go to sleep at bedtime.
Fall Back = Great, now they’ll wake me up at 6 a.m. on the weekends instead of 7 a.m.
I’m moving to Indiana or Arizona.
Fall Back = Great, now they’ll wake me up at 6 a.m. on the weekends instead of 7 a.m.
I’m moving to Indiana or Arizona.
March 8, 2008
The Unbalanced Holy Trinity of Fake Creatures
I am certainly a moralist, but even Daddyfesto is not someone who thinks that lying to your kids is never OK. In some cases, you gotta lie, and here in Christian lands, unless you’re an ass or aren't a Christian, one thing that you have to lie about is about the existence of the holy trinity of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. This is an uneven trinity if one ever existed. Most dads actually care about Santa Claus and the Christmas tradition. The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, well: they just kinda suck away your money and time. Some moms like making the baskets; most dads could give a shit. I could handle a lifetime without peeps, personally.
But you will, of course, have no choice and be performing all three roles. It takes a few years to adapt to all this, but luckily your child at age 2 isn’t catching on to all that much when you put half a bag of candy into their Easter basket and leave the other half sitting on the counter. So there is room for a learning curve.
And there are advantages to your new role. At some point in the first few years you’ll be up late on Christmas Eve, maybe putting together a simple toy, maybe arranging a new set of blocks from Santa, hopefully with a nice buzz on halfway through a six pack of a fine Christmas Ale … and it will feel just about perfect to you. It will be one of those sublime moments of fatherhood (enjoy it, you only get two of these a year for each kid; savor the ones you get).
Five years later, when you have 3+ children and its Christmas Eve and you’re putting together complex toys (including affixing dozens of stupid crappy stickers onto plastic because your wife insists on “putting them together right” and apparently it’s not even cost effective to have those kindly Chinese workers who made the toy affix the stickers at the factory) until 3 a.m. when you count the presents under the tree and realize that you bought one child twice as many toys as the other, so you start trying to figure out what gifts you can downstream to the underbought child, but you’re not sure which gift is which, so you actually have to unwrap the gifts to figure out what they are and re-wrap them at 3:30 a.m., and then you realize that you engaged in insufficient battery purchases (children of the 1970s and 1980s would probably think having insufficient batteries is inexcusable, but it’s actually harder now, because a lot of newer toys actually include batteries, lulling you into a false sense of security), and so you run into the basement playroom and start digging into the kids’ old toys, battery scavenging, and you can’t even get the old toys fucking open because you're fucking hammered because those Christmas Ales are like 9% alcohol and you finished the whole fucking 6-pack it took so damn long getting those toys together, and you are smashing the old toys against the basement pipes to get the batteries out at 4 in the fucking morning … and then it will no longer be sublime.
Especially since, at 4 a.m., you have about 30 minutes before the kids – and thus likely you –are waking up.
With the Tooth Fairy … well, I like to say that the Tooth Fairy does a different continent every night, but no one knows his schedule. That’s why sometimes you get your money on the first night. Other times, it takes four or five nights until he comes. You don’t think he can do all the continents in one night, do you? That’s crazy. He doesn’t have reindeer or the ability to manipulate time or any of Santa’s other advantages.
After a few years pass and your kid gets to 7 or 8 or 9, another problem arises. The rumors start going around school about how Santa Claus isn’t real. You might hear your child talking to a friend about whether Santa is real. Worse, your child might put you on the spot and just ask. If that happens, there’s only one thing to do:
Sell the Easter Bunny down the fucking river.
I mean, let’s face it, out of the three members of the trinity, the Easter Bunny is by far the least plausible. Jewish people must be completely laughing at us behind our backs on this one. I mean, I've now been through 35 Easters and I’m not even clear about whether he’s a regular sized bunny or a giant man in a bunny costume kind of bunny, or whether he can talk, or how he gets into the house. Because there’s almost no Easter build-up -- it’s just BAM it’s Good Friday, it’s Easter, it’s over -- with no build-up, kids don’t dwell on it, no questions are asked, parents can wing it and get away with it. Hell, I make up something different every year (“it’s a green bunny, that’s neither male nor female” or “it flies through the air and kills silly Englishman”) until I am pinched by my wife.
Look, I understand fucking over the Easter Bunny may not seem cool. You might not be down with that. And let me assure you that I’m totally down with Carmello and don’t like snitching either. But we’re talking about protecting the big dog, here. We’re talking about Santa, and when Santa is threatened, it’s time to take action.
So just pull your child aside and explain to them that the Easter Bunny is completely made up, tell them it’s a sham that all adults are in on. Tell them that the child’s mother and you buy the candy and hide the eggs yourselves, then mock the entire idea of a giant bunny going all around the world. Then say: “The Easter Bunny is fake. Not like Santa Claus, who is completely and totally real. Make sure you don’t tell the other kids!”
This has two effects. Obviously you are building you own street cred, whereas the other kids’ dads aren’t telling them “the truth” about the Easter Bunny. More importantly, you have created your own little double agent to sow confusion within the child community. [In this regard, it might be best if some dads say the Easter Bunny died; other dads can say it’s actually Santa Claus in a bunny suit; coordination to maximize confusion can only help us here ... I might start a separate website on this … but I digress ...]
Screwing the Easter Bunny should buy you an extra year of Santa Claus that you didn’t deserve. It also means you never have to have a four pound rotting mound of chocolate in your house that your child only gnaws the ears off and which will melt on the first really hot day of summer. So it’s really a no lose situation.
A WORD OF WARNING
It is a Holy Trinity of Fake Creatures. Do not make the mistake of creating additional fake creatures to try to make it a quartet. I learned this the hard way (after originally thinking I was oh-so-clever) in creating the “Starburst Monster.”
The Starburst Monster appeared in two ways. First, if a child were to ponder and consider the very existence of the Starburst Monster and then throw a nickel into a fountain – any fountain in the lower 48 -- a pack of Starburst would fall magically from the sky (let’s just say that a child concentrating on getting a coin into a fountain isn’t paying much attention to what you’re doing in your back pocket). If we didn’t have a pack of Starburst on us, if my daughter asked for change, I showed her what I had and just said “that’s not a nickel,” even if it was a nickel. (For a while my child thought there was a coin called a “fraggle” but other than that, no harm, no foul.)
Second, the Starburst Monster would hide packs of Starburst in ridiculous places – in hoods of sweatshirts, in letters and even (in an inspired stroke, if I do say so myself) inside the child’s sippy cup full of water – and then call on the phone and, utilizing a mysterious gravelly voice, tell the child to look in the place for the pack of Starburst. Oddly his calls seemed to coincide with my trips to the bathroom.
This worked well until it all of a sudden didn’t. When my daughter explained the “Starburst Monster” to other adults who laughed and then said “did you make that up?” and she got a tad upset. The Starburst Monster was one subject in a parent-teacher conference at school. She was a tad messianic about the Starburst Monster, and her friends – even in preschool – thought she was a fucking idiot. Once my daughter learned the names of the coins and knew what a nickel was (and clearly she was incentivized to learn this), I had to be carrying Starburst on my person (or make sure I had no change at all) every time we were near a fountain. When I had no change, eventually my daughter figured out to say “well lets buy something and get a nickel in change that way” and I knew I was totally screwed. So the Starburst Monster hasn’t visited in 2+ years and I’m trying to kill him off but he’s not dying an easy death. Every now and again my daughter questions why he doesn’t visit anymore.
So play it safe. Keep it easy on yourself. The trinity is hard enough to manage.
But you will, of course, have no choice and be performing all three roles. It takes a few years to adapt to all this, but luckily your child at age 2 isn’t catching on to all that much when you put half a bag of candy into their Easter basket and leave the other half sitting on the counter. So there is room for a learning curve.
And there are advantages to your new role. At some point in the first few years you’ll be up late on Christmas Eve, maybe putting together a simple toy, maybe arranging a new set of blocks from Santa, hopefully with a nice buzz on halfway through a six pack of a fine Christmas Ale … and it will feel just about perfect to you. It will be one of those sublime moments of fatherhood (enjoy it, you only get two of these a year for each kid; savor the ones you get).
Five years later, when you have 3+ children and its Christmas Eve and you’re putting together complex toys (including affixing dozens of stupid crappy stickers onto plastic because your wife insists on “putting them together right” and apparently it’s not even cost effective to have those kindly Chinese workers who made the toy affix the stickers at the factory) until 3 a.m. when you count the presents under the tree and realize that you bought one child twice as many toys as the other, so you start trying to figure out what gifts you can downstream to the underbought child, but you’re not sure which gift is which, so you actually have to unwrap the gifts to figure out what they are and re-wrap them at 3:30 a.m., and then you realize that you engaged in insufficient battery purchases (children of the 1970s and 1980s would probably think having insufficient batteries is inexcusable, but it’s actually harder now, because a lot of newer toys actually include batteries, lulling you into a false sense of security), and so you run into the basement playroom and start digging into the kids’ old toys, battery scavenging, and you can’t even get the old toys fucking open because you're fucking hammered because those Christmas Ales are like 9% alcohol and you finished the whole fucking 6-pack it took so damn long getting those toys together, and you are smashing the old toys against the basement pipes to get the batteries out at 4 in the fucking morning … and then it will no longer be sublime.
Especially since, at 4 a.m., you have about 30 minutes before the kids – and thus likely you –are waking up.
With the Tooth Fairy … well, I like to say that the Tooth Fairy does a different continent every night, but no one knows his schedule. That’s why sometimes you get your money on the first night. Other times, it takes four or five nights until he comes. You don’t think he can do all the continents in one night, do you? That’s crazy. He doesn’t have reindeer or the ability to manipulate time or any of Santa’s other advantages.
After a few years pass and your kid gets to 7 or 8 or 9, another problem arises. The rumors start going around school about how Santa Claus isn’t real. You might hear your child talking to a friend about whether Santa is real. Worse, your child might put you on the spot and just ask. If that happens, there’s only one thing to do:
Sell the Easter Bunny down the fucking river.
I mean, let’s face it, out of the three members of the trinity, the Easter Bunny is by far the least plausible. Jewish people must be completely laughing at us behind our backs on this one. I mean, I've now been through 35 Easters and I’m not even clear about whether he’s a regular sized bunny or a giant man in a bunny costume kind of bunny, or whether he can talk, or how he gets into the house. Because there’s almost no Easter build-up -- it’s just BAM it’s Good Friday, it’s Easter, it’s over -- with no build-up, kids don’t dwell on it, no questions are asked, parents can wing it and get away with it. Hell, I make up something different every year (“it’s a green bunny, that’s neither male nor female” or “it flies through the air and kills silly Englishman”) until I am pinched by my wife.
Look, I understand fucking over the Easter Bunny may not seem cool. You might not be down with that. And let me assure you that I’m totally down with Carmello and don’t like snitching either. But we’re talking about protecting the big dog, here. We’re talking about Santa, and when Santa is threatened, it’s time to take action.
So just pull your child aside and explain to them that the Easter Bunny is completely made up, tell them it’s a sham that all adults are in on. Tell them that the child’s mother and you buy the candy and hide the eggs yourselves, then mock the entire idea of a giant bunny going all around the world. Then say: “The Easter Bunny is fake. Not like Santa Claus, who is completely and totally real. Make sure you don’t tell the other kids!”
This has two effects. Obviously you are building you own street cred, whereas the other kids’ dads aren’t telling them “the truth” about the Easter Bunny. More importantly, you have created your own little double agent to sow confusion within the child community. [In this regard, it might be best if some dads say the Easter Bunny died; other dads can say it’s actually Santa Claus in a bunny suit; coordination to maximize confusion can only help us here ... I might start a separate website on this … but I digress ...]
Screwing the Easter Bunny should buy you an extra year of Santa Claus that you didn’t deserve. It also means you never have to have a four pound rotting mound of chocolate in your house that your child only gnaws the ears off and which will melt on the first really hot day of summer. So it’s really a no lose situation.
A WORD OF WARNING
It is a Holy Trinity of Fake Creatures. Do not make the mistake of creating additional fake creatures to try to make it a quartet. I learned this the hard way (after originally thinking I was oh-so-clever) in creating the “Starburst Monster.”
The Starburst Monster appeared in two ways. First, if a child were to ponder and consider the very existence of the Starburst Monster and then throw a nickel into a fountain – any fountain in the lower 48 -- a pack of Starburst would fall magically from the sky (let’s just say that a child concentrating on getting a coin into a fountain isn’t paying much attention to what you’re doing in your back pocket). If we didn’t have a pack of Starburst on us, if my daughter asked for change, I showed her what I had and just said “that’s not a nickel,” even if it was a nickel. (For a while my child thought there was a coin called a “fraggle” but other than that, no harm, no foul.)
Second, the Starburst Monster would hide packs of Starburst in ridiculous places – in hoods of sweatshirts, in letters and even (in an inspired stroke, if I do say so myself) inside the child’s sippy cup full of water – and then call on the phone and, utilizing a mysterious gravelly voice, tell the child to look in the place for the pack of Starburst. Oddly his calls seemed to coincide with my trips to the bathroom.
This worked well until it all of a sudden didn’t. When my daughter explained the “Starburst Monster” to other adults who laughed and then said “did you make that up?” and she got a tad upset. The Starburst Monster was one subject in a parent-teacher conference at school. She was a tad messianic about the Starburst Monster, and her friends – even in preschool – thought she was a fucking idiot. Once my daughter learned the names of the coins and knew what a nickel was (and clearly she was incentivized to learn this), I had to be carrying Starburst on my person (or make sure I had no change at all) every time we were near a fountain. When I had no change, eventually my daughter figured out to say “well lets buy something and get a nickel in change that way” and I knew I was totally screwed. So the Starburst Monster hasn’t visited in 2+ years and I’m trying to kill him off but he’s not dying an easy death. Every now and again my daughter questions why he doesn’t visit anymore.
So play it safe. Keep it easy on yourself. The trinity is hard enough to manage.
March 5, 2008
Toilet Training
Toilet training?
Don’t be bothering with toilet training. Your wife may think you should be involved, however; so tell your wife that the diaper budget will become the shoe budget once the kid is potty trained and she’ll have them pissing in a toilet before their first birthday. OK, that’s sexist too. But it might work, and you should be willing to risk sexism and many other awful things if it gets you out of toilet training. If the show gambit is somewhat ineffective, have your parents fake an illness or something during potty training and go live at your parents’ house for three months. Take a business trip. Get out now!
DO ANYTHING TO AVOID POTTY TRAINING.
Don’t be bothering with toilet training. Your wife may think you should be involved, however; so tell your wife that the diaper budget will become the shoe budget once the kid is potty trained and she’ll have them pissing in a toilet before their first birthday. OK, that’s sexist too. But it might work, and you should be willing to risk sexism and many other awful things if it gets you out of toilet training. If the show gambit is somewhat ineffective, have your parents fake an illness or something during potty training and go live at your parents’ house for three months. Take a business trip. Get out now!
DO ANYTHING TO AVOID POTTY TRAINING.
You need to join the military and get your ass to
March 2, 2008
Your Wife, At Home, During the First Twelve Weeks
Once upon a time (i.e., the day before your kid was born and each day before that (i.e., a million years ago)), you and your wife lived similar lives. You likely were both working, a bustle of activity at home in the morning, commuting to and from work, packing lunches or choosing where to eat out for lunch, both having to shop for work clothes, both dealing with office or work politics, maybe both using email at work and being connected to the internet. Hitting a happy hour or the gym after work. You had a wealth of common experience to share with your wife. Common understandings. In many ways, you were the vision of the 1960’s women’s movement. You were equals in the eyes of society and equals in your relationship, and you liked it that way.
Every man whose wife chooses to stay home with the kids will have a time when he calls his wife and explains that he is coming home from work. “See you in 10 minutes honey.” And he will get in his car and drive home, but before he gets into his driveway, he’ll see an oddity in front of his house. It is his wife, holding his child. And he’ll wonder what she’s doing. She isn’t gardening. She isn’t talking to anyone. She isn’t going for a walk. She isn’t getting the mail.
What she is doing is this: she is just standing there, doing nothing, waiting for him to get home. This is the same independent woman who (in what feels like another completely different lifetime) used to insist on paying for her own beers and who can drive a stick shift better than him. This is the same capable, independent woman that he fell in love with, and, here, in this place, she’s so desperate and frazzled that she’s hanging out on the curb so she will notice his arrival home from work 20 seconds earlier than she otherwise would. And she will not look good.
After you go back to work after a week or two, like most men, your wife will likely stay home for the first 12 weeks at least; maybe even longer these days. And your wife might end up staying home for good. Either way, while she’s home, this is her life: she doesn't talk to practically any adult all day long (except for the number of calls to you at work, which will double at least). She shops at the drug store during business hours when there’s nobody else there. She goes for meandering walks before lunch with no destination and no time limit and passes playgrounds where kids are having recess (when is the last time you saw a playground with kids on it at recess during a schoolday?). She now has access to a TV during the day, when TV is really, really bad, like way worse than Friday night even. And she might start watching some of those really bad shows … admittedly, there isn’t much to do with a baby on your teat, or while holding a bottle for it… if you stayed home, you’d feed with a bottle in one hand and flip to Sportscenter with the remote with the other. But her shows are called Oprah and Dr. Phil. And because your wife doesn’t have people to talk to, if you were a fly on the wall, you might see her actually speaking to Oprah and Dr. Phil,, even though you are reasonably sure (but maybe not completely sure) that she realizes that they are not really in her living room. And now, your wife, with whom you used to have minor differences because you liked to have lunch at Arby’s once a week, while she preferred Au Bon Pain, is now officially living on a different planet from you. She lives on the planet full of people that actually talk to the screen when Oprah is on. She will start to obsess about things like where the pacifier is. She will cry because another baby’s mom slighted her by asking if your baby is smiling yet, when he isn’t. She will cry because, at times, she fucking hates being a mother. She will have all kinds of reactions that seem foreign to you. You might ultimately understand them, after multiple explanations, but you’ll never really be completely on the same page anymore.
I would like to tell you what to do about this, how to address this, but there’s just nothing to say. If your wife stays home, you and your wife are going to be living different lives now.
And you probably are going to be living different kinds of lives even if she doesn’t stay home.
Every man whose wife chooses to stay home with the kids will have a time when he calls his wife and explains that he is coming home from work. “See you in 10 minutes honey.” And he will get in his car and drive home, but before he gets into his driveway, he’ll see an oddity in front of his house. It is his wife, holding his child. And he’ll wonder what she’s doing. She isn’t gardening. She isn’t talking to anyone. She isn’t going for a walk. She isn’t getting the mail.
What she is doing is this: she is just standing there, doing nothing, waiting for him to get home. This is the same independent woman who (in what feels like another completely different lifetime) used to insist on paying for her own beers and who can drive a stick shift better than him. This is the same capable, independent woman that he fell in love with, and, here, in this place, she’s so desperate and frazzled that she’s hanging out on the curb so she will notice his arrival home from work 20 seconds earlier than she otherwise would. And she will not look good.
After you go back to work after a week or two, like most men, your wife will likely stay home for the first 12 weeks at least; maybe even longer these days. And your wife might end up staying home for good. Either way, while she’s home, this is her life: she doesn't talk to practically any adult all day long (except for the number of calls to you at work, which will double at least). She shops at the drug store during business hours when there’s nobody else there. She goes for meandering walks before lunch with no destination and no time limit and passes playgrounds where kids are having recess (when is the last time you saw a playground with kids on it at recess during a schoolday?). She now has access to a TV during the day, when TV is really, really bad, like way worse than Friday night even. And she might start watching some of those really bad shows … admittedly, there isn’t much to do with a baby on your teat, or while holding a bottle for it… if you stayed home, you’d feed with a bottle in one hand and flip to Sportscenter with the remote with the other. But her shows are called Oprah and Dr. Phil. And because your wife doesn’t have people to talk to, if you were a fly on the wall, you might see her actually speaking to Oprah and Dr. Phil,, even though you are reasonably sure (but maybe not completely sure) that she realizes that they are not really in her living room. And now, your wife, with whom you used to have minor differences because you liked to have lunch at Arby’s once a week, while she preferred Au Bon Pain, is now officially living on a different planet from you. She lives on the planet full of people that actually talk to the screen when Oprah is on. She will start to obsess about things like where the pacifier is. She will cry because another baby’s mom slighted her by asking if your baby is smiling yet, when he isn’t. She will cry because, at times, she fucking hates being a mother. She will have all kinds of reactions that seem foreign to you. You might ultimately understand them, after multiple explanations, but you’ll never really be completely on the same page anymore.
I would like to tell you what to do about this, how to address this, but there’s just nothing to say. If your wife stays home, you and your wife are going to be living different lives now.
And you probably are going to be living different kinds of lives even if she doesn’t stay home.
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