To School

Can it be called back to school if you haven't been there yet? What do we call it? For lack of a better name, I am just going with "To School." Of course, I'm sure you probably noticed that from the title. Whatever.

Anyway, things are getting a little bit crazy around here, since our oldest is going to be starting kindergarten in just a few weeks. We checked out a few schools, various programs within the schools, etc., and I'm pretty sure that just about any choice is a good one. The schools around here are great. The thing is, all of that isn't what really concerns me. So what exactly is it, you may be asking, that concerns me? The other kids. And my kid, in relation to those other kids. Stuff like that.

Will she make friends? Will those friends be a good influence? What kinds of habits and behaviors will she pick up from classmates? Will she be happy with the other kids? How will all of this effect her relationship with her little brothers? Will she be so overstimulated after school that she wants nothing to do with her brothers? Will the fact that I am the primary caregiver make any of the other parents hesitant to let their kids be friends with her? That last one might sound a bit crazy, but when she was part of a playgroup last year, although no one ever said it outright, I really felt like being the only dad in a group of moms made some of the other parents somewhat uneasy with us. Of course, part of this could just be that I'm awkward as hell, and it takes people a while to figure out when I'm kidding. Really though, I swear, that's totally part of my charm.

I realize that I'm being just a little bit crazy about all of this, and I'm sure that everything is going to be great. She's a good kid, ya know. Still, all of this has been going through my head pretty a lot recently, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one. I've heard some pretty awful things come

Easiest Summer Outdoor Activity

Step one: Get a Hose Nozzle Gun.
Step two: Attach to hose.
Step three: Spray kids.

This is more fun than it has the right to be.

We've been having a bit of a heat wave in the NW recently, so we've been trying to find activities to cool off. The kids like running through the sprinkler, which is great fun, but they get themselves really, really, ridiculously wet. And dirty. While this is okay when it is getting close to bedtime, it complicates things a bit if you're just trying to do something quick and fun, particularly in the middle of the day. You know, when it's the hottest? I'm sure a lot of you might be saying to yourselves, "why don't you just throw them into some swim trunks and let them go nuts? Sometimes, that is awesome, but there are still times when I really just want going out and cooling off to be a quick activity (10-15 mins), without anyone getting so wet that they need to change their clothes at all.

The best thing about hose nozzle guns?
You get to control how wet the kids get. You can set it to a mist, or a stream. You can make it rain, have the kids jump over the stream of water, duck under the stream, or whatever else you can think of.
Anyway, it's great.
I am a fan.

Playgrounds are Scary

When I was a kid, I thought playgrounds were awesome. On just about any given day, if we went to a playground, that was the highlight of my day. I can tell from their reactions that the kiddos feel exactly the same way. As great as it is to see the kiddos having a fun, the moment I stepped onto a playground for the first time as a parent,  I was terrified. Playgrounds are scary. For parents, that is, not for the kiddos. And therein lies the problem. By all rights, the little guys should be afraid of playgrounds, or at least some of the attractions at the playground. 

Why is it that every playground needs to have a 6 foot drop without a rail? Seriously, when is that ever a good idea? The worst thing is that, for some unknown reason, those spots are the ones that 2-3 year-olds are most interested in. Hey look, there's an awesome slide, or we could go play on the swings, but no, they want to run up to the dropoff with careless abandon. I swear, I see some playgrounds and I just wonder to myself the whole time how many kids get injured there every week.

Am I just a paranoid parent? I don't think so. I hope not. At least, I always thought that I would be a pretty laid back dad, and in a lot of ways I am. But seriously, playgrounds freak me the hell out.

Headbutts for the Kids

Get it? Get it? Yeah so the post has nothing to do with goats,
but the image just tied in too perfectly to my title to not use it.

I felt like a very bad person today. I didn't mean to be a bad person, but it just works out that way sometimes, you know?

I took the kids out to the grocery store and was surprised to see how many people were there. I had planned to let Cam walk along with me, perhaps even push a small cart or carry a small basket -- he loves that. Unfortunately, there were so many people out and about that I could't have both he and his sister walking along beside me, especially not with carts or baskets. When I told Cam that he was going to have to stay in the double stroller with his brother, he was understandably upset it.

The first thing I always do when the kids get upset in public is to remove them from the situation. Get the kids away from everyone so that their yelling doesn't bother everyone else, and get them away from whatever stimulus is upsetting them. Always a good move. In this case, I took the kids back outside the store so we could have a talk. Anyway, we this thing with Cam sometimes where we have him blow on our noses, and then jerk back, as if he had nearly just blown us over. I did it once, and it worked out fairly well, but he was still having a hard time calming himself down. It usually takes a few times. I went in for the second time and, unbeknownst to me, Elles crept in behind me to see what I was doing. When Cam blew on my nose, I jerked back as per the usual, but not as per the usual, jerking back resulted in me headbutting Ellie in the face. Pretty hard. Not cool.

She played it off like everything was okay for a minute, but as often happens with her, she realized after 5 seconds that it actually really hurt. I don't know if she just has some sort of delay between her nerve endings and the part of her brain that processes pain or what, but it always takes longer with her than I expect. So there we were, the four of us right outside of the store, Cam screaming about the injustice of not getting to push a cart, and Elles screaming about the injustice/pain of getting headbutted in the face by her dad. I did not feel like a good person. I'm not sure that anything makes me feel like a bad person so much as accidentally hurting one of the kids. Or my wife (rolling over in bed can be dangerous). Or the dog, who's paws are surprisingly easy to accidentally step on. Actually, that last one might be the worst. The yelp she gives when I step on her paw is really heart-breakingly sad.

I need to stop being so clumsy.

Experiments in Dadification: Speed Cleaning

I do not like to clean.
Cleaning is the bane of my existence.

Fortunately, I don't mean that in the Batman sense, in which case I would be saying that cleaning is a super strong villain determined to crush me.
While cleaning may feel like soul-crushing, back-breaking work, it has never actually broken my back.
Which Bane has.
To Batman.
This is common knowledge, so hopefully that doesn't spoil anything from the movie for those who weren't already in the know. They probably won't do that part in the movie anyway.

See here.
Seriously though, does anyone know what's up
with the dinosaur in the background? 

So yeah, like I was saying, I don't like cleaning. The kids seem to think that cleaning is fun, but only the kind where you're spraying water and wiping it up. Not the kind where you pick up stuff and put it away in an orderly fashion. They hate that.

It can be hard to get the kids to actually pick up their stuff, and harder still to get them to do it without whining and moaning and just generally being unpleasant. This problem is made worse by the fact that my kids are extremely adept at making messes. It is my firmly held belief that the trashed hotel room scene from The Hangover (see also: that Geico commercial with Richard Simmons) is not actually the result of a night of drunken debauchery, but rather, what happened when they let a handful of toddlers play in there for like 10 minutes.

In an attempt to make the kids clean up more of their messes and to keep it from being unpleasant for any longer than it needs to be, I have started to do what I call Speed Cleaning with the kids.
It works like this:

I tell the kids that we need to clean up as much as we can and that we only have two minutes to do it. That is the most important part right there. Even if the place isn't clean when time runs out, we stop. That just means we will need to do another two minutes a little while later. Usually, I end up letting it slide on a bit longer than two minutes, but the important thing here is that they know that they only have a short time to get it all done. They feel rushed to do it, so they actually start actively working on it. Also, they see an end in sight, so even if it is unpleasant they know it won't last long. Honestly, it's much easier to do something that sucks if you know it won't last long.

We've been doing this fairly regularly for the last week or so, and it's been going well. I'm sure plenty of you do this already, but for those that haven't tried it, why not give it a shot? I am a fan.

It's hardtotypeon a broken keyboard

I am not going to edit this post.

There will be grammatical errors, missing letters, and general weirdness.

This post was made written half on my phone, and half on my broken keyboard. 

Neither option is ideal. Or even good.

At least the spacebar probably works properlyon that keyboard.

So a little while back, Cam got his hands on my computer. Being three and not having any idea what one actually does with a computer, he slammed his hands down on the keyboard and pulled down. In just a split second, he had pulled off and damaged several keys and the mechanisms that make them work properly. I realize that replacement keyboards are fairly cheap and easy to replace, but I have yet to do so. Some keys get stuck for a moment, and some don't register at all unless you press hard and long a few times (haha - apparently, I can't say hard and long together without chuckling to myself). Or two laptops in the house are completely falling apart. They've been broken, torn apart, and reassembled multiple times, and there is little more than necessity and wishful thinking holding them together at this point. Anyway, as a result of all of this, I haven't been posting much recently. Sorry.

Today I an trying something a but different and blogging from my phone. Weird. I'm just waiting to read through this later on and find that autocorrect made me say something totally weird or creepy. You know, like change the word keyboard to balls or something like that. you all injure you've been there (perfect example. I wrote that yesterday, and I don't even remember what that was supposed to be. It makes for a great illustration of my point, so I'm leaving it).

What I am tryingto get at is that 

A) It is lame that I haven't been posting

B) I have my reasons for said lameness

C) I will try to be less lame

D) It's not going to be pretty

I'm Still bad at photography

I think this is going to be a regular thing. Traditionally, if I take a bad picture, I delete it (usually after chuckling to myself for a moment). This tends to leave me with a very small photo collection. A few weeks ago, I decided to buck tradition and instead of doing the obvious, I might as well put those pictures out there for everyone to enjoy. Or not enjoy. You know, because they aren't good pictures. 

The pictures make this one longer than most, so you can click to see my poor photography after the jump

Toilets Are Fun

This might make me a bad person.
Or a bad parent.
Perhaps both.

So here's what happened:
upon finishing changing Cam's clothes, I was startled to find that baby boy wasn't in the living room anymore. The moment I looked down the hall and saw the bathroom door open, I was pretty sure that I knew what to expect.

This:

Yup, there he is, playing in the toilet. Sadly, I don't think that this picture does the mountain of unrolled toilet paper on the ground justice.

So here's the part that makes me a bad person/parent:
When I saw this scene playing out before me, I stopped a moment and laughed... Then I took out my phone and started taking pictures... Then I took a few more, until I had gotten just the right picture.

But just check out how happy he looks

So seriously, aren't good people supposed to see this sort of thing and instantly put a stop to it? I just kept thinking about how great this was going to look in a slideshow at his wedding reception someday. 

Whatever, don't judge me. 

I can do that myself. 

And I judge that I am probably a bad person.
It's alright, I've come to terms with it.

Regardless, I think that it's important to be able to squeeze what humor and enjoyment you can out of these situations. Sometimes, that's just what it takes to carry you through until tomorrow. In my case, this kind of made my day. I will probably chuckle to myself every time I see this picture for the rest of my life. Of course, it might not seem so funny when he gets conjunctivitis or E Coli or whatever, but I'm sticking to my guns on this one. Worth it.

Hide and Seek, Minus the Clothes

Note: The title is not intended to be read as a suggestion for adventurous post-bedtime activities, but instead as a reference to the below photograph. Still, make of it what you will. I'm not here to judge.

The Photograph in Question:

That's Cam.
Naked.
Under the bed.
Don't ask me why, I have no idea.

I gave the kids a bath today, and as I was getting Con dressed, I could hear Cam laughing behind me. When I finished up with baby boy, I turned around and saw a foot sticking out from under the bed. I reached for him, at which point he retreated further under the bed and started laughing harder.

Like him, I could see the humor in this.
Unlike him, however, I could not see the appeal.

You see, it was a good 20+ minutes of this before he actually came out. While I can see actually doing something like this for 2-3 minutes, tops, he was still just as thrilled about it at the end of the 20+ minutes, when I finally got him to come out. Even then, he only came out because we were about to go somewhere fun, and before we could leave he had to be both:

a) out from under the bed
and
b) dressed

I'm pretty sure that I would have become unbearably bored and uncomfortably cramped if I had stayed under there for anywhere near that long. Isn't he supposed to be the one with the short attention span? I'm confused. Anyway, I say it at least once a day and today is no exception; Cam is the silliest boy. I am not going to qualify that statement by saying that he is the silliest boy that I know, or anything along those lines, as that might imply that there was actually some boy out there that I didn't know that might, in fact, be a sillier boy. Perhaps I should just say that Cam is the silliest and leave it at that.

The rest of the pictures I ended up with of him were somewhat less internet friendly.
I'll just say that despite  my best efforts, they turned out somewhat tainted.

I am a big fan of naptime. Seriously, I love naptime. We're simpatico, naptime and I.
I'm not the best multitasker out there, so naptime for the kids tends to be try-to-get-as-much-stuff-done-as-I-can-before-the-kids-wake-up time for Dad. If I don't get enough done during naptime, the day feels wasted to me.

Right around the time she turned three, Ellie decided she wasn't taking naps anymore. That was a very sad day in our household. As were all of the subsequent evenings in our home for months after that. You see, even though we couldn't get her to take a nap anymore, her body still needed it. She was sooooooo grumpy most evenings, due to the sudden nap deficiency, but there was just no swaying her on the topic.

Aside from the resultant increase in overall grumpiness levels, the other consequence of the cessation of napation was a crippling blow to parental naptime productivity. I mention this because, despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise, Cam (now almost 3) is getting to that same point now. He is at the same age Ellie was when she stopped, and he has been resisting naptime more and more with each passing day. While he has been doing pretty well when awake during the would be naptime, the real problem comes a few hours later; Sometime after 4:00 he starts to get really grumpy, and those last few hours of wakefulness are just a blur of unpleasantness. Anyway, I want to find a way to stop the tide of inevitability on this one, but I'm afraid that this is really just a losing battle.

The bright side, I think that having both he and Ellie awake during naptime is easier than it was when Ellie starting skipping naps, since they can keep each other occupied somewhat.

Naptime, thank you for all that you've done for us. We love you, and even though you'll be gone, you'll still be with us in our hearts (cue montage of naptime, set to Boys II Men's "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye").