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: parenthood
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.
Pure Michigan
7/1/2019 – Monday
I’m sitting in the family room with no power. Luckily there is enough juice left on this laptop to get some words down. I just pitched for the work softball team in Southfield. We got smoked by my old company. I’m feeling a little pissed because J pulled the curtain rod holster out of the wall. It happened because he constantly stands on the curtain and yanks it. Even though I’ve told him that doing so would break the whole setup, he continued doing it and broke the whole goddamn setup. Now me or mom is going to have to fix it before we close on the house next week. That is an extremely shitty fix it job waiting to happen.
Time to put that out of my mind and reflect on the wonderful weekend that was. We got on the road a little after nine on Friday morning and headed across the state to Montague where we met wife’s cousins family for lunch. It was a quaint slice of Americana right across from Lake Michigan with deli sandwiches and ice cream. They had a beautiful backyard courtyard where everyone dined. There was a sand box, games, fountains, and a koi pond. The boys ran free which gave the adults time to catch up. After that we stocked up at the local market then headed to our weekend home on Lake Michigan in Whitehall.
We stayed in the top right section of a big house on Lake Michigan in the town of Whitehall, right by White Lake and Duck Lake. About an hour after we got there, the Rizzo’s arrived from St. Louis. They have a boy named Luke in the same grade as J and a girl named Marmy the same age as Harrison.
We started with a climb down to the water level from the bluff above. There was no beach because the water level is higher than it has ever been. The owner of the place, Buddy Pops, told us there used to be a good 40 yards of beach. Or maybe it was 40 ft. Not sure, but it meant that come Saturday we’d need to find another place to hang out since our plan to lounge on our private Lake Michigan beach was dashed. Friday night we ate at a place called “Buzz’s Roost” on White Lake. It was only a half mile from the house. They had a great outdoor seating area looking out at the lake and a guy/girl duo playing folky tunes. We gave the boys the iPad’s in an effort to ignore our parenting responsibilities for the two hours we were there. Then we came home to catch the sunset over Lake Michigan from our balcony. Looking down the beach you could see everyone had come out of their homes to watch the sun make its curtain call. Looking out across the seemingly endless expanse of water at the sun slowly dropping below the horizon is all the entertainment I needed. My mind was at ease. And it was great to be hanging with Stickler and Bracy. We used to hang out a lot in Chicago when we both lived there. We let the kids keep the iPad marathon going until 10:30 ish when we finally put them down to bed. Then the adults sat on the balcony until around midnight. The stars were brilliant and I saw a shooting star.
The next morning there was a little more beach on the big lake so we explored the coastline until we ran out of real estate. After that we went to Duck Lake State Park because we heard there was some beach there. Duck Lake is pretty small so the water was warmer. The beach wasn’t much but there were only a couple other people there so it felt like we had the place to ourselves. The kids got along great with Luke and Marmy. Well J and Luke got along great and H and Marmy seemed to coexist well. We had packed a lunch so we ended up spending the whole day at that beach listening to tunes and peeing in the water. I got a good workout throwing Luke and Marmy into the sky then down into the water.
We were supposed to cook brats at the house for dinner, but nobody felt like it so we ended up just going back to Buzz’s. It was hotter Saturday and we all got a little toastier than we would’ve if we were being more diligent about sunscreen application. After dinner we went back to the house and claimed the communal firepit. We made smores and watched another sunset. The boys stayed up way too late again.
Sunday morning after breakfast we went and played in the Lake Michigan surf for a bit before it was time to go pack up. You know it’s been a good trip when you feel a bit sad knowing the end is near. J was getting especially sad knowing that goodbye’s were coming. He really loved him some Luke. He said he wanted to marry him. They gave each other a nice hug goodbye and there were tears from both boys. I love seeing J build relationships and care for other people so much. He’s more like Mom in that regard. It’s a beautiful thing.
Now it’s getting late and I’m tired, but Sunday was also pretty sweet. We got lunch with my cousins family and my Aunt and Uncle. They live just a little up the road in Ludington. Their last name is Hart which is my mom’s maiden name. We met in the town of Hart at the Big Hart Brewery. Hart’s don’t eat free, but it was pretty tasty. J and H both pooped there so that was good timing before we started out 3 hour and change drive home. Before we drove home we made a detour to the Silver Lake sand dunes. Mom and I took turns climbing the dunes with J since H was asleep and really needed sleep. Something like 3 miles worth of big sand hills, it was beautiful. They have a bunch of off road vehicles you can ride in or drive around. Next time we come back we are definitely doing some fun sand dune activities. Great tease. Great trip.
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.
Plant your Flag
5/29/19 – Wednesday
Well I guess we jumped the gun on getting H back to school today. We got a call around lunch saying H had a low grade fever, didn’t eat his food, and said his ear hurt. So I left work early again to pick him up and take him to the Doctors office. Mom will be picking up his prescription for the ear infection later. No soccer for him tonight. J has ice skating lessons.
I finished the “When Breath Becomes Air” audiobook today. Tough listen. It’s the memoir of a super smart Neurosurgeon who was just finishing up all the years of schooling it takes to become a stud Stanford doctor when he discovered he had lung cancer. He primarily wrote it during his last year of life as he came to grips with his impending death. 8 months before he died his daughter was born. I was crying like a baby on the way to work today. Part of me was thinking about my Dad and how he experienced almost the same last year of his life. I was also thinking of my Mom and how she cared for him during that time. I wondered what it was like in those intimate moments between the two of them when they talked about death and what was most important as he fought for that last year. I thought about how fragile life is and how lucky I am to be here and have such a great family that I love so much and loves me back. I want to protect the boys from anything bad ever happening to them. I worry about those life defining moments that set you down your path in life. I know I’ll feel whatever pain they feel so viscerally it might as well be happening to me. There’s much physical and emotional pain to come. That’s okay. We get to live! For a short time on this earth we are alive and your mom and I will do everything we can to facilitate the life you imagine for yourself. We’ll also expand your imagination so you understand you can do anything. No matter what you decide, no matter what you do wrong or where you end up, we are going to love you always. I’m going to be the sappy dad that cries a lot and tells you how much I love you and wants to give you hugs. I’ll have a hard time letting go when you’re trying to turn yourself loose on the world. I’ll do what I can to help you but just because you want something doesn’t mean the rest of the world is going to cooperate. The rest of the world can be a real dick and it might take a while to show it how amazing you are. I know you’ll wear it down, you’ll keep at it. Eventually the world will be begging for mercy as you plant your flag with a smile on your face, just happy to be alive and doing what you love.
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!”.
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.
Buy this House & Dance
5/4/2019 – Saturday
Mom took the boys to a mommy/son dance yesterday. On her orders I had stopped at the florist to get two single roses for the boys to give to her. (Sidebar: I was next in line for the cashier and there were two people behind me. This old lady moseys in and walks right up to the counter and asks to pick up her order. She sidled right in front of me to yell at the cashier: “Yeah, pick up for Cunt McCunterson!” I really wanted to notify her of the fact that there was a line in a very impolite way, but I resisted. However, when she was filling out her cards and asked the audience how to spell choreograph, I didn’t help her and you know damn well I knew how to spell choreograph.) I told the boys to give the flowers to mom, ask her to the dance, and say “these flowers are beautiful, but not as beautiful as you”. They gave mom about five seconds with her flowers before taking them back and tearing them apart petal by petal (She loves me!).
While they were at the dance I ate a dairy-free dinner since I decided yesterday that I’m not doing dairy anymore. Me and cow titties have had a good run, but there’s been enough flatulence to call it a day. After that I spot cleaned the many stains on our upstairs carpet. Most of them have been in there long enough to make it a lost cause, but I did get a milk stain out of H’s room that I should’ve cleaned up 8 months ago when it happened. When they got home from the dance J was sent packing without bedtime books because he wasn’t listening and he face rammed mommy while she was trying to show me videos from her phone of H doing an amazing twerk.
We had an open house today from 11-2. No takers, five visitors. Going to drop price from 375K to $360 or $350 soon. I’m trying to tune out my inner insane person because every time I clean something it opens my eyes to something new that sucks about our house and I say another promise not to neglect our new house like we did this one.
I took the boys to H’s soccer class while mom did some last minute cleaning. They did the soccer lesson on the tennis courts. Every time H runs I picture him falling on his face. I feel like I’m just waiting for them to get hurt. Then we met up at the dinosaur exhibit. Driving down the long, rolling, winding lane of the perfectly manicured grounds of the prep school made me wish we could send the boys there. Part of me wanted to pull out of the deal on the new house, stay in the current one, and put all dad’s life insurance money into tuition. Even all that money would probably only get you kids through grade school. Then we’d have to pay our own money when Dad’s ran out, which would really cut into our plan to retire in key west by age 60. The public schools in our new town kick ass, you’ll be fine.
We ate lunch at a new place. J and H each got pancakes that were amazing. I had to violate my dairy-free lifestyle in order to test them for heat. It took a few bites to make sure they were just right for consumption. H had a pretty huge milk spill. Accidents happen. No nap for J today so he was acting extra insane tonight. After having to tell him five times to brush his teeth and put his jammies on I was at my wits end. Then when he kept putting his nose in my face like he did to mommy that was the last straw. I’m going to head downstairs now and watch “A Star is Born” (Bradley Cooper / Gaga version) with Mom. Sleep tight.
The Family Record 