I want to be like mom’s dad even though I have no memory of him. It’s time to move on from the notion that my kids will fear me like I feared my father when I was their age. The fact is they don’t fear me and I’m happy about that. I want them to always know I love them and I can’t be afraid to express this. I make a conscious effort to not just tell them I love them but tell them how lucky I am to be their Dad. I always say I’m a glad Dad because you’re here and you’re going to make the world a better place. Okay, maybe I don’t say the “you’re going to make the world a better place” bit very often, but I do tell them they’re awesome and they make me happy. I tell them I’ll always have their back no matter what. That if they ever feel like nobody loves them to think of me and know that’s not true. I think my mom and her brothers felt that way about their Dad. The way mom and her brothers’ eyes light up then tear up when they reminisce about him. If my boys do the same when they think of me after I’m gone, that’s a legacy worth having.
Tag: dadblog
Inside The Mind of My Five Year Old Boy
Oh my god I love today. Today is so awesome. Shoot I’m supposed to say oh my gosh. Oh well, holy guacamole today is awesome. I love playing!! This new house is awesome, this yard is awesome, riding my bike is totally awesome! Hey I wonder what kind of cool toys the neighbors have in their garage. Let me check it out. Hmmm, nothing too great. Let me check inside their house. Shoot is that Dad telling me to get out of this house because it’s not ours. I’m trying to look for toys dad! Oh is that our other neighbors in the driveway? Oh yeah it is and they’ve got a gift bag! Cool, let me see. Awesome, sidewalk chalk and bubbles. I love smashing the chalk, let me show these new people how good I smash. Sweet, this the big bubble maker. Let me try to make a bubble. Oh man, this bubble maker doesn’t work. I better dump it out in front of them so they know their bubbles stink. I’m gonna ride my bike, better put on my helmet. I’m gonna ram my new neighbor with my bike and she’ll try to get out of the way, she’s going to think it’s fun. Better get out of my way! Why is Dad telling me to stop? We’re having fun playing dodge the bike over here. If he tells me to stop five more times I’ll think about it. Unless he says he’s going to take my ice cream away. Oh man, I hope he doesn’t remember the ice cream. If he takes away one of my bedtime books I can deal with that, but not my ice cream man. I need that. Okay, better do something else. Hey, look at that stone hill, I wonder if my bike will stay up if I try to roll it down that hill without me on it. Oh man, wipeout! That was awesome, I want to do it again. Daddy, get my bike! It’s too heavy and I want to bring it back up the hill so I can send it down again. C’mon Daddy! Oh man, he says I’m going to break my bike doing that and if I do it again he’s taking my ice cream. Better be cool. Dinner time. I hope it’s a turkey sandwich with cucumbers and mayo. Oh man, it’s chicken. At least there’s some cucumbers on the side. Dad says I have to have five bites or no ice cream. I’m going to pretend to take big bites but actually take little tiny ones. He’ll never be able to tell. I got my ice cream! So yummy. Now daddy wants me to brush my teeth and put my pj’s on. What the heck? I’m not even tired, I just had ice cream, doesn’t he know that’s full of sugar. I better brush really good because I don’t want to go to the dentist again. I should get on top of my dresser and try to jump on the bed, I think I can definitely make it. Dad is so loud when he yells at me, jeez! Ouch! I hit my lip, that really hurts. What is that red stuff? Oh my god I’m bleeding!!! I think I’m dying. DADDY DADDY DADDY! (Twenty minutes of wailing later). That ice helped. Daddy told me he loved me and would do anything for me. I love him to, he’s a good daddy. I really want to keep playing, maybe I could build a fort out of all the clothes in my closet, that would be cool. But I’m really tired, better go to sleep. Oh I can’t wait for my slushee at school tomorrow, it’s gonna be so good! I’m getting orange and strawberry then mixing them together. It’s gonna be awesome!
Lord Huron Canada
It’s Sunday night, I’m tired, and I don’t feel like writing. However, writing has been on my mind for a week and I keep pushing it off. It’s time to find the time so I can quit getting mad at myself for not doing what my mind tells me to. I want to write about our 4th of July trip to Canada.
The Chrysler Pacifica rolled out of the driveway just before 7am on the 4th. Destination = Tobermory, Ontario. J took his travel medicine (aka: Dramamine) even though it tends to make him a total dick. We’ve had to clean up so much hurl on these long car rides that I’ll take the Jekyll version of my son over the stanky puke encrusted version. Since this trip I’ve invested in motion sickness wristbands and ginger root chewables. We will see how those work on our drive to upstate NY in a couple weeks.
The drive went well. No trouble at the border and only a couple quick pee stops. If you cross over at Port Huron and hug the Canadian coast of Lake Huron headed north, you’ll run out of real estate when you hit Tobermory. We were there for the glass bottom boat tour of the shipwrecks and a closer look at Flowerpot Island. The water was clear and the views were sweeping. The boys loved being able to look down and see the boats preserved in time under the water. They also offer snorkeling and scuba diving for a closer look, something to think about when the boys get bigger. After looking at the shipwrecks the boat took us on a fifteen minute ride to Flowerpot Island. Both boys fell asleep on the ride over. It looked like a great place to explore, it’s part of the Fathom Five National Marine Park. Most people got off the boat to do some hiking, but the boys are still too small for much distance. So we stayed on the boat and got a few pics of the perimeter. The whole tour was about an hour. Our motel was right across the street from the boat launch.
After checking in we went to a place called Coconut Joe’s for dinner. I forgot to mention we had lunch at a pirate themed fish n chips place called Shipwreck Lee’s. Despite popping a Xanax before dinner, it still ended up being stressful on account of terrible behavior from the boys. It took a while to get a seat and the waiting area was out by the docks / pier that borders the harbor town. H kept walking out near the water. Then when we got seated J kept throwing matchbox cars around the restaurant. They had a giant tortoise sculpture that they both kept trying to ride. They wouldn’t eat and they wouldn’t sit still, what else is new. End result was that mom canceled the boys ice cream privileges for the night. The six hour drive and the Dramamine for J had the boys all out of whack.
After dinner we went back to the motel and caught a beautiful sunset over the water. Then we spent an hour trying to get the boys to calm down. I think by the end of the night I had H hog tied and pinned to the bed to try to get him to chill out. As I reflect now it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I know at the time Mom and I were really pulling our hair out.
We woke up on July 5th in Tobermory at the Bruce Motel. Then we loaded the boys in the stroller and headed in to town for breakfast at a coffee shop overlooking the town harbor. It would have been better if the boys would’ve sat down and not whined about their muffins. There was a small part of me that wished we hadn’t gone on vacation at all and just went to the lake at Mimi and Poppa’s. It would’ve been a lot easier, but we would’ve missed out on all the super awesome memories we were making. Gotta have the memories.
We left mid-morning and headed down the lake to Sauble Beach. Nice little beach and town. We spent about an hour and a half at the beach. Enough time to skip some stones, build a cool sand and stone fortress, pee in a porta potty and read 7 pages of my book (The Heart is a Lonely Hunter). We were all feeling really good. We got some pizza at a place by the beach and even got a nice family pic in front of the Sauble Beach sign.
After lunch we got back in the car and continued southbound. The boys fell asleep for a while and we cruised through a bunch of quaint little towns like Bayfield, Goderich, and Port Elgin on the way to our final destination of the Oakwood Resort in Grand Bend.
Hometown Weekend
6/23/19 – Sunday
It’s Sunday morning at 6am. I’m the only one up. I’m sitting at the kitchen table drinking a coffee. This has been a perfect weekend. Probably one of the last ones we’ll have here before we move across town. On Friday we went to our company picnic at the zoo. The weather was perfect. J spent the most time in the reptile room. H and I were outside balancing on rocks while J focused on the snakes.
Later on Friday, we walked to the dentist. Mom was out with friends so it was just us dudes. J had to get a cavity filled. His tooth brushing is subpar. From now on, I’m going to have to brush for him. I also just bought expensive plug-in brushes for both boys. J was nervous going into the appointment, but ended up handling it like a champ. The laughing gas definitely helped. I think he liked it because he was breathing it in like he was hyperventilating into a bag, really trying to take it all in. Doctor said he was the best five year old patient he’d ever had.
Yesterday after my morning OrangeTheory workout I took the boys to swimming class. Then we went and got donuts at the Donut Bar. After that we came home and chilled for a while. The boys watched some paw patrol and I packed some stuff up for the move. Then they played outside with the next door neighbor boy. I sold a couple things on FB Marketplace. When mom got home from her friend’s bridal shower we all walked into town to go to a carnival happening downtown. H was asleep for a while so J rode everything by himself at first. He was having a blast. His favorite thing was the funhouses. Harrison woke up in time to go on a few rides. After that we went to dinner at Bar Louie. Absolutely beautiful day and great time spent with the family.
It’s interesting to see your personalities develop. J is much more cautious than H. Any time H does anything I feel like it’s an emergency room visit waiting to happen. Absolute reckless abandon. Last night when mom was reading to the boys in J’ bed, H decides to try to flip over on his head and ends up bending his neck all out of wack. Probably a mild sprain. After donuts, H was running through the planters in front of the store like a crazy man. There were rose bushes throughout the planters and he got his legs totally scraped up. He didn’t even notice. I was putting him in the car to leave and saw all the scratches and was like “dude, those bushes had thorns.” He was like, “yeah, whatever.”.
So at five and three we’ve got ourselves an academic and a daredevil. It’s going to be so fun watching these boys grow.
Inhospitable Hospital
6/16/19 – Sunday
Happy Father’s day to me. It’s been a great day, but I haven’t written in a while so before getting to today, let’s catch up on the past week. Last Sunday Harrison had a fever. Mom called the Doctor and the doctor said, get that boy to a hospital bed. Since H was also complaining of knee pain the doc thought it’d be a good idea to go to the ER. H had a skinned knee get infected over Easter so they were worried perhaps the previous antibiotic hadn’t taken care of it entirely. They decided to admit him because he was dehydrated and there was a higher level of a bacteria and a low white blood cell count in his blood test. It was determined that he had herpangina (I remember this by saying “Herbie’s vagina”). They didn’t see any issue with the knee via X-ray, but wanted to check using an MRI. They couldn’t get an MRI until Monday so Mom spent the night in the hospital with H. J and I went up there for dinner. It was tough seeing my little guy hooked up to an IV, looking scared and sick. The docs were pretty certain the MRI would be fine, but they wanted to rule out a bone infection. Bone infection would have been really bad news, but treatable.
We took a backseat to emergency MRI’s, so we didn’t end up getting in on Monday. It was my turn to spend the night with you on Monday. We finally got you into the MRI on Tuesday evening. They had to give you general anesthesia before the procedure so you wouldn’t move around in the MRI tube. The MRI analyzers were gone for the day by the time they were done with yours. They said we might need to stay another night, but mom wasn’t having it. They let you go home Tuesday night and called in the morning with the results. And the winner is…Harrison’s knee! No problems with the MRI. We spent two days in the hospital for Herbie’s Vagina.
Yesterday afternoon we went out to Mimi and Poppa’s. The weather was rainy. We went out to dinner, then got some ice cream, then came home and watched some of the U.S. Open golf tournament. Sleeping out there is tough because you two are each in little cots on each side of the queen bed mom and I share. Since you two don’t usually share a room, you get all excited and it takes forever to calm you down. By the time we get you calmed down, mom and I are ready for bed too. This puts a crimp in our alone time.
This was the first Father’s Day that my dad hasn’t been alive. I was thinking about him a lot. I took a 10 mile bike ride in his honor. My dad liked to go on long bike rides. I took a rest at the Shiawasee river to sit on the river bank. My plan was to meditate but the skeeters were all up in my grill so that backfired. I’m not a super spiritual person so I wouldn’t say dad was with me on my ride or during the day, but I enjoyed thinking about him and imagining what would have been going through his head. Thoughts on the beauty of nature and the gratitude I have for my life dominated my mind.
The weather was rainy and cold, but we still bundled up and took a boat ride to go get ice cream. On the way there the three of us sat together under a big heavy blanket. I loved holding you close to me and looking across the boat to your mom. As Poppa would say, “it doesn’t get any better than this”. Even later when I was napping and you both started jumping on me and acting completely insane, nothing but love coming from me. That’s a retrospective love. At the time my exact words were, “What are you doing? Get off me!!”. Time for me to go to bed. Gary Woodland won the open over Brooks Koepka.
The Baby Girl that Wasn’t
6/7/2019 – Friday
I’m sitting in the surgical lounge on the 3rd floor at the hospital. Mom just had what’s called a D & C to clear up the area where a baby is supposed to grow. We found out a few days ago that the baby that was supposed to be 9 weeks along in her belly had stopped growing at 6 weeks and no longer had a heartbeat. The doctor just talked to me and said everything went well and I’ll be back to see her in a half-hour. So now we hit the reset button. 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage according to our doctor. It’s sad, but shit happens. We move forward. If we want to try again, we will. If we don’t or can’t, we won’t. It’s that simple.
This illuminates what a blessing life is. It doesn’t come easy and we’re already lucky enough to have two of the most awesome dudes around in you two. Your mom is the studliest of all the studmuffins. It’s her body that has to go through all this. I know it’s harder on her than anyone, but she’s tough, she’ll move on. I was thinking yesterday about how cool it is that mom cares so much. I remember when I first met her it was a little overwhelming. I couldn’t believe this fun, beautiful person wanted to be around me so much. Then I noticed that she always brings people together, which is so difficult. She cares about everyone and can always be counted on. This will hurt for a little bit, but we’ll take care of each other, and we’ll count the blessings we have. There’s always something to be thankful for when you’re lucky enough to be breathing air on this planet.
Whatever happens along our journey in life, good and bad, we keep going. Because we’re alive! And you boys are guaranteed unconditional love from Mom and I forever. That means no matter what you do that is shitty or great, you’ve got love from us two regardless. We’ll be home soon and we’ll chow down because Mom hasn’t eaten since last night so she is going to be one hungry hippo!
Why would a 5 Year Old Want to Die?
6/3/2019 – Monday
Last Thursday when I picked J up at daycare (H was home sick with Mimi) a teacher gave me an incident report stating that J said he wanted to kill himself earlier in the day. It went on to say, that when questioned, J clarified that he didn’t want to be there was all. I thanked the teacher and said I’d have a conversation with J. Inside me everything went fuzzy and I had to focus really hard on pretending to be unfazed. How did J ever hear about killing oneself as a thing? Was he depressed? Should I get him a therapist? What can I do differently to make him happy? When I talked to him on the car ride home he said he wanted to be alive and that he just didn’t want to be at school that day. I tried to tell him how great it is to be alive and that we’re so lucky to be blessed with life and how precious it is. But the dude is five, it’s not like these nuggets I tell myself everyday to stay upbeat are making him see the light. He doesn’t even understand what killing ones self is. But how the heck did he hear that to even say it? He probably caught it in a song or on a show and it registered. He remembers everything. He’s so smart. I worry about him being sad and scared in public settings. At home and with close friends he’s always having fun. I worry he secludes himself with the bigger groups. When I picked him up the other day, his class was outside and he was standing in the corner by himself picking dandelions. Then Friday evening at his graduation, he threw up and couldn’t go on stage with his classmates to sing. I don’t know how much was nerves and how much was the fact that he was running a fever and feeling sick. He did rally to accept the diploma when they called him. I know he has lots of good friends at school. I can’t expect everyone to think he’s as awesome as I think he is. I hope he’s strong enough to ignore the haters, love him for him, and be him always. There will be people that love him and people that don’t. There’s a lot of shitty and mean people in the world, I hope he stands up to them instead of trying to please them and be their friend. There’s plenty of good people to go around. I wasted way too much time growing up trying to be friends with jerks. I sacrificed my self-respect because I didn’t have any confidence.
Oh shutup, J is a natural born leader that people want to be around. He knows what he wants and is able to convince other people what he wants is what they want. I feel like I’m projecting my rough time from 7th – 11th grade on to his pre-school experience. The dude was sick, he was having a bad day, take it easy. He’s fine.
Sold & Old!
5/28/19 – Tuesday
Tuesday after Memorial Day. I’m sitting at home with a sick kid at 3pm. H has a fever, cough, and runny nose. He’s watching Super Truck. We sold the house on Saturday. The thing sits on the market for 35 days with no offers, then we ended up getting a flurry of three between Friday and Saturday. A couple from Chicago was the winning bidder. They’re letting us live in the house until August 4th. On Saturday we were getting a lot of calls from the realtor when we were out at Mimi and Poppa’s. It was pretty exciting and a huge load off to get the house sold. Now we just need to pass the inspection.
Mom and I went out to dinner and a concert last Wednesday to celebrate her birthday. You two went to Mimi and Poppa’s because we had house showings. We ate at Mabel Gray and it was delicious. Then we saw Jim James (lead singer of My Morning Jacket). There were plenty of good seats still available. The show was good, but I was nodding off so we decided to leave early and go home to go to sleep. Not having you two bust into our room in the middle of the night to try to sleep in our bed was awesome. You stayed the night at Mimi and Poppa’s on Thursday night as well. By Friday, we were missing you and couldn’t wait to get out to the lake to give you big hugs.
The night before, J smashed Mimi’s ipad in frustration and ruined the glass cover. Extremely not cool dude. We’ve started a money jar for J to collect enough money by doing chores to pay for the repair for Mimi.
Aunt D came to the lake with her daughter on Saturday. You all had a fun time. We caught some fish in the net, went for a boat ride, got ice cream, and jumped off the raft.
You started coughing more on Sunday and then yesterday you had a fever. It didn’t stop you from playing outside though. You don’t want to miss out. On Sunday, H and mom caught a bass with a nightcrawler. It was pretty awesome. We think we’re going to get more into fishing this summer. I want to catch a pike off the dock. We’ll see how my patience holds up.
I went to take you boys for a canoe ride on Saturday and discovered a dead possum underneath where we had stored it for the winter. There were stinky guts all over it. Peeeeeee-youuuuuu! Or as H would say after I say that when I’m changing his diaper, “Peeeeee-meeeee!”.
Mundane Retelling of a Day
5/18/2019 – Saturday
House all cleaned. Ready for a showing at 12:45. Best buddy and his girls are on the way. When they get here we will go out to lunch then head to a nearby park. The boys are watching Justin Time and have been for the last 3 hours. I feel bad about all the screen time but really needed to clean the house. Plus it’s educational so they’re probably getting a leg up on the competition thanks to Justin.
Yesterday we closed on our new house. So now we officially own two houses, which puts a major strain on the wallet. So we need to sell the current house soon. The former owners of our new house are renting from us through the end of July. We didn’t do a good job keeping up our current house, which I think is why we’re having trouble selling it. At the new house we will stay on top of fixing everything as soon as it goes wrong.
The realtor got the boys nets, a bucket, spelunking lights, and a box for any critters they catch at the new house. He got me a book about bird watching so I can learn about all the pretty birds we’ll see out our back window.
I got mom a surprise night away in Detroit at the Foundation hotel with her friend yesterday. They ate at Takoi, a funky Thai restaurant in Corktown. Me and the boys got cheap Chinese then went to the park. They were pretty good, but I did have to take a book away from J for dumping sand out of the sand box after I had already told him not to. After the boys were asleep I watched a couple Game of Thrones episodes. J crawled into bed with me at 5:30, and although it’s a king size bed he wanted to use my shoulder as a pillow. Fine by me. You both don’t like to be left alone at night. I wonder if we’re meant to sleep in a pack like a family of bears would do. I hate to see you both get so sad and lonely when I close the door. Hope that’s not damaging your emotional growth or something.
No Discipline on a Wednesday
5/15/19 – Wednesday
Pretty standard Wednesday. In the morning H and I had bowls of granola and watermelon slices while J and Mom got a little extra shut eye. J & H ignored our requests to get your shoes and jackets on and get in the car as usual. (Sidebar: Why the fuck do the kids not do anything we tell them to do? I hate being the bad guy. I hate having to think of shit to take away from them. Lately we’ve been taking away books at night. Books are good for development so I need to come up with something else. I don’t like threatening to remove TV time in the morning because if I have to follow through on that then the alternative is they get a bunch of toys out that will then require an extra five minutes of cleanup I don’t have. When I do Google searches asking how to get kids to do what you want it says not to repeat yourself, use fewer words, see it from their point of view, don’t talk until you have their attention, and stay calm. It must be fun for the childless to write that bullshit. I hate losing my temper, but I don’t know what to do aside from working toward becoming a licensed hypnotist. Tomorrow I’ll try to get on their level and make it super fun then I’ll report back.) J cried the whole way to daycare because he meant to grab a third bag of fruit snacks and I wouldn’t let him go back in and grab them even though mommy had said he could. So bad daddy was in effect. Zero sympathy from me. I told him crying was pointless and turned up the music. Then I made up a song about J crying, which eventually made him laugh and stop crying.
We had a house showing tonight so we had to be elsewhere. After H’s soccer we went to McDonald’s because they have a play structure. It was so much better than last night when we went to a trendy new rooftop bar and spent 3.5X as much. The food was junk and we had the only kids in the place, big thumbs down. McDonald’s play structure had plenty of padding so we could let them go with limited supervision until the coast was clear to come home. As always the day ended with hugs, kisses, and I love you’s, as it should. I’ll now continue watching season 7 of Game of Thrones.
The Family Record 