When I get home, I off with business casual, into working dad attire

(nice button-down work shirt) + (1 year old throwing baby food) = (high laundering costs)



Thus, I change.

Moustached == respect?

Do you think my three boys would respect me more if I had a bad-ass 'stache like this?

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one. ~Leo J. Burke

Sometimes, the day starts with disciplining.  

With cajoling, prodding, pleading, threatening.  

With threats of consequences, of no treats, of no fun stuff, of no bike riding.  

Counting, 1, 2, 3, "you better get over here now," "why must you make a mess every time?," "stop hitting your brother."

Grab an arm, scoot them to the time-out chair, pick them up.

Just B-E-H-A-V-E.

And the day ends, and they are lying still in their beds, mouth half-open, soft child-like snoring.  And I feel bad for every bad thought, for every not-so-nice word, for every time I thought about how much this sucks for me.  

My boys -- my three boys.  Tomorrow, I will be more patient, more understanding.  More fatherly.

As long as they behave...  :-)

Elections, the kid version

This morning in my household, my wife and I were very excited about voting in the elections, and we scurried about trying to get ready so I could go out and vote with our copy of the filled-out sample ballot, then when I returned home, I could hand off the sample ballot so Sarah could go vote later today.

During this, I engaged both older boys in the election. Note Casey is 5, Brady is 3:
Me: (with enthusiasm) "Hey Casey, do you want to go vote with me?"
Casey: "No."
Me: (a little disappointed) "Why not? I'm going to go vote for Barack Obama, don't you want to come?"
Casey: "No."
Me: (a bit desperately) "C'mon, seriously, why not?"
Casey: (matter of factly) "Mommy is making pancakes this morning, and I'm hungry."Me: (feeling foiled but with an ace up my sleeve...) "I tell you what, you can have one piece of Halloween candy on the way there if you go with me..."
Casey: (without missing a beat) "I don't think Mommy would like that."

*sigh* OK, let's try with Brady.

Me: "Brady, do you want to go vote with me?"Brady: "Daddy, I'm going to vote off Barack Obama." (we had been watching Survivor, and clearly he's got these notions confused!)

Alright alright, I'll go by myself. But let me blog for posterity so that my children will one day read this: you could have said, "Back in 2008, I was actually THERE when my Dad voted for Barack Obama." but now all you have is memories of pancakes, sausages, scrambled eggs, and Survivor episodes. Hmm, who *did* get the better deal here? :-)

Say, It Works!

As I blogged in my previous post, Sarah has started reading these books that eerily describe, down to small details, the behavior of my boys.  It's like they are living at our house, and simply writing about what they witness in our boys' behavior.

So tonight, I walk out of the study (you know, that room where you keep a desk and the rest of all the junk you just don't know where it goes), and find Casey, my 5-year-old asleep in the hallway.

I rememberd a fact about sleeping 5-year-olds:  they often are quite hot, even though the ambient tempreature is normal.  In the past when I found Casey in the hallway, I dragged him back, muttering, "It's time to get back in your bed."

Tonight, I put my hand on his shoulder, and asked:  "Hey buddy, are you hot?"

"Yes," was the sleepy reply, but right away, he got up, and went back into his bed.  What, no protests?  No kicking and screaming?  Once I identified the issue he was going through, he felt ok enough to go back to bed.

Wow, gotta read more of that book!

What ever happened to reading?

Before our first son, Casey, was born, we did a LOT of reading.  Not about anything, but specifically we read a lot about babies, birthing, and bringing up your child.  We became experts of child-rearing from age -9months until 1 year. 

Once Casey was born, we then became so busy with the task of now actually raising the kid, we left the books on the shelf, and read no more.

Almost six years later, and we find ourselves scratching our heads not only about the behavior we see in our almost six-year-old, but also our newly turned three-year-old, and even our eight-month-old.  Seriously, we're just mystified with what we see in our boys, and we have felt a little helpless.

That's when Sarah finally decided that maybe it was a good time to pick up a book and read about our boys.  She borrowed several books from the public library, and I promptly made fun of her.  "I mean, c'mon," I told her as she cracked the first one open.  "When are those from, like the early seventies?  Check out that collar and those bangs!  Seriously, honey, we're raising 21st century kids here," I remember telling her (and if not saying it out loud, I certainly thought it).

It wasn't until she read one of the first passages in the book that literally described, right down to the last word in the paragraph, the behavior and situation we'd been witnessing in our own flesh and blood for the past several weeks!  I couldn't believe how accurately it described our kids' behavior.  This of course had two effects:  (1) we now know we are not alone with this!, and (2) we now have better perspective on how to handle these situations.

Boy, what ever happened to reading?

Heartbreak

Yesterday was Brady's third birthday party.  We were crazy enough to host 14 pre-schoolers plus their parents at our house, but all in all, the damage was minimized while the fun was maximized.  One of the gifts Brady received was this paint-by-numbers sort of Mickey Mouse painting, complete on canvas, paintbrush, and paint.  It's the kind of thing you hang on your wall with pride once you're done painting it.

It was clearly something that Brady was too young to complete successfully, so after consulting with him, we gave it to Casey.

Now, before I go on, I should explain a bit about Casey.  Casey is our sensitive boy.  His feelings are easily hurt, he is the first to cry during movies with sadness in them, and generally is the one of the three boys that seems closest to his raw emotions.  Unsure of the linkage, he is also most artistic in our family.  He will sit and enjoy doing art for sometimes hours at our kitchen table.

So since this particular gift was a bit out of range for Brady's age, we offered it to Casey, who eagerly and quickly accepted the re-gift.  He got his tray, put the painting atop it, opened the small containers of paint, and began right away.  He spent a long time getting all the colors correct and within the lines, even taking to painting the side of the framed canvas a very artsy black.

We had left the painting to dry on the table while we continued on with the rest of our evening, which included making and eating dinner, getting the boys pajamas on, and watching this week's episode of Survivor, a weekly tradition in our family.  At one point, we wondered where Brady had wandered off to, and found that he had gotten into the paint, and proceeded to paint his interpretation over the careful painting job Casey had labored over.  As far as Casey would have been considered, the painting was utterly and totally ruined.

We couldn't quite scold Brady -- he's three, and was just getting into the paint for a toy that used to be his.  So Sarah and I agreed, we'll hide the painting, and just hope that he forgets about it.

Now here comes the heartbreak:  during Survivor that night, Casey leans over to Sarah, and whispers, "Mom, I'm so proud of myself for doing that painting.  I can't wait to hang it on my wall."

These are some of the hardest times as parents.  Not the sleepless nights of an infant, or the increasingly heavy-to-carry toddler.  It's the moment you know that you will have to break your child's heart.  There is not a greater pain for me.