Category: parenting

Today when I picked up the Little Man from school, he was outside in the playground with the rest of his class taking advantage of this wonderful weather we’ve been having. I collected all of his things from his cubby and went out to meet him. He was preoccupied but one of his little friends saw me and told him that his daddy was here. As usual, when he saw me, he came skipping over, “Daddy, daddy, daddy!”

I gave him a hug and he turned to his teacher and friends, “See you tomorrow!” he said, waving.

Just then, one of the girls from his class came running up and gave him a big hug. The Little Man reciprocated calmly. He’d hardly completed his embrace when another girl from his class run up to offer him a hug. The Little Man obliged her as well.

We headed out of school and as we crossed the parking lot, I said to him, “Who were those girls, buddy?”

And he waved his hand vaguely in the air and said with the slightest resignation, “Groupies.”

At home, I tend to drink Cherry Dr. Pepper. Kelly drinks Diet Dr. Pepper, or sometimes Diet Cherry Coke. In any case, the Little Man has long known which is which. He’ll see one and say “Mommy’s soda” and the other and say “Daddy’s soda.”

Last night, Kelly had a girl’s night and I was home with both kids, a rarity, but the fact that I am writing this post tells you I survived¹. At one point, I had the Little Miss on my lap and the Little Man was watching TV. I was craving a soda, so I said, “Hey buddy, will you go get me a soda out of the refrigerator?”

“A daddy soda?” he asked.

“Yes please.”

“Okay.” He walked into the kitchen opened the fridge and I heard some fidgeting. Then I heard the door close and he came back into the TV room carrying in his hand a nice cold bottle of beer². “Here’s a daddy soda!” he said proudly.

Well, I wasn’t going to disappoint him by turning down the beer. Instead I was about to ask him if he wanted to help me open it. Before I could get the words out, he said, “I’ll get an opener.” I wondered what it was he would bring back to me. A spoon? A fork?

He came back into the TV room with a bottle opener.

So I showed him how to open the bottle and he seemed very happy about that. And I thanked him for the beer daddy soda, of course, too. And just to show him how much I appreciated his thoughtfulness, I let him have another cookie.

Now that’s what I call a win-win situation.

I’m home from work today with a sick little boy. The Little Man showed no signs of being sick when he woke up this morning. I was downstairs getting some things ready and heard him calling. I went upstairs and he was sitting there with a slightly confused look on his face. He was shivering slightly.

“What’s wrong, buddy?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, just shivered some more. About a second later I realized what was about to happen, but it was too late. All the milk the Little Man had consumed was transferred from his stomach to the bed. He took that one in stride, though it meant virtually burning the sheets. The next time upset him. And the time after that got him really worked up. I think it was because there was nothing left in his tiny little stomach.

He is calm now, sitting on the couch, watching Chuggington. Meanwhile, I’ll be home with him all day today. Hopefully he’ll be feeling better soon. He looks just so pathetic looming over a little bucket.

The funny thing is that I keep having these flashbacks to when I was a kid getting sick like that. I hated getting sick. (Today, it’s not the getting sick part I mind so much as the nausea, which I can’t stand.) I can clearly remember occasions when I was green around the gills, couldn’t keep anything down and would have to stay home from school. My parents were like ministering angels. Now I’m in the parent role and realize just how difficult it can be to maintain the air of ministering angel under the circumstances.

One of those pointless things that drives me to distraction is when people get song lyrics wrong. It’s not something I complain about aloud, of course. And indeed, I often sing songs and purposely change the lyrics, but this requires the skill of rhyme, meter, scansion, and knowing the right lyrics in the first place. Kelly, for instance, is a master of getting song lyrics wrong–well, not really knowing them in the first place. When it’s someone’s birthday and she’s compelled to sing, she’ll burst out with, “Happy smmm-smmmm to you!” (Indeed, I think the only song she knows that complete set of lyrics to is Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.”)

Fortunately, the Little Man has picked up singing from his Old Man. And, as I’ve written before, not just kids songs. He’ll sing any number of Bing Crosby songs, for instance, and has even started altering his voice slightly when he sings the Louis Armstrong parts on the duets. Now, he’s a little over 2-1/2 years of age and I can forgive him mistakes in lyrics that might annoy me if sung by one of my friends because he is still learning. But there is at least one song that he sings incorrectly that is quickly driving my into the grave. Out of nowhere, in a rising soprano, he sings:

…and Bingo was his name-o
Bee-Why-EnGeeOh, Bee-Why-EnGeeOh, Bee-Why-EnGeeOh
and Bingo was his name-o

No matter how many times I try to correct him and tell him that it’s B-I-N-G-O, the next time he sings the line, he has transposed the letter from vowel to consonant. This has the net effect of long nails on a chalkboard. My god, how many kids will hear him sing those lyrics and sing them wrong themselves? By the time the Little Man is a Big Man, kids might never have heard of a song called “B-I-N-G-O.” It will have been replaced by a completely different song, and a completely different dog, much to the farmer’s dismay.

We have a parent-teacher conference coming up this Friday, and I’m bracing myself for the worst:

“He really is a sweet, generous, intelligent and handsome boy,” they’ll tell us. “But.” (Was it a character in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire that said nothing matters except what comes after the “but”?) “But, he can’t seem to sing the proper lyrics to BINGO and it is having rather deleterious affect on the other children.”

To which I will respond, before I can stop myself, “Well, stop singing stupid songs about dogs named after geriatric gambling games and sing songs about fish instead. He’ll have no problem with either of the two parts in “Gone Fishin’.”

Sheesh!

The Little Man has a routine before bed. After he’s gotten into his pajamas and brushed his teeth and is all cleaned up, we find Kelly and the Little Miss. I remind to him say goodnight.

“Goodnight, Mommy,” he says.

“Goodnight, Little Miss,” he says.

Then I usually have to nudge him before he says, “I love you!” (Which comes out sounding like “Ah lahv yoo!”)

Last night the Little Man had been playing with a new toy on our bed–a little train set from Chugginton. (His reward for doing a very good job using the potty.) I collected him for bed and got him all ready. I think reminded him to say goodnight.

“Goodnight, Mommy,” he said.

“Goodnight, Little Miss,” he said.

Then he paused and I nudged him as a reminder. “What else, buddy?”

And without missing a beat, the Little Man said, “Goodnight, train tracks!”

So I have finally started down the road of getting the Little Man to sleep in his own bed at night. His first night back in his bed was Saturday and it went remarkably smoothly. I sat with him, reading, until he fell asleep. He woke up once in the middle of the night, calling for “Daddy!” I went in there for a few minutes until he fell back asleep. And he then remained asleep until about 7am.

Last night was a little rougher. He fell asleep at 9pm, but I was back in his room three times before midnight, and then another five or six times between midnight at 5:30am when I finally got up for work. I think I managed an hour or two of solid sleep last night.

Last night, the Little Man demonstrated an example of his cleverness and perhaps foreshadowed some of the difficulty he’ll give us as he gets older. Kelly had taken him upstairs and he decided to stay there. He had some milk (which he usually has before bed) and I’d put a second sippy-cup of milk in the small refrigerator in our bedroom for the morning. He took the pillow from his bed and brought it into our room as if he was going to sleep there. When I finally came upstairs, I saw him and told him that we were going to sleep on his room, on his bed.

“Daddy come too?”

“I’ll come in a read you a book,” I said.

“Okay, I have a book.” He pulled out the book he’d taken off the shelf. “And my milk!” he said. He showed me his milk. I thought that a little odd, but didn’t linger on it. We got his pillow and book and went back to his room. I read to him and eventually he fell asleep.

When I went back into our room, Kelly was there with the Little Miss. As I came in she said, “I think the Little Man pulled one over on us.”

“What do you mean?”

“He drank both his milks while he was up here by himself.”

“What?” I went to the refrigerator to check it out. Sure enough, the morning milk I’d put there was gone.

Clever, sneaky Little Man!

Lately–perhaps because I am rapidly approaching my 40th trip around the sun and have been ruminating on this–I’ve been trying to spend more time with the Little Man. I find myself thinking about him quite a bit when I am at work. There is usually some quiet time in the house when I get home from the office, an hour or two before I have to pick the Little Man up from school. But lately I’ve wanted to pick him up as early as I can just to hang out with him. Having kids really puts into perspective how fast time flies.

We spend part of Sunday on the floor, making up games to keep up busy. We were supposed to go and see an ice show, but the Little Man has been running a low-grade fever and we didn’t want him to overdo it and be sick during our vacation. So we stayed home and had to find ways to entertain ourselves. He and I made up several games. Some involved tossing around a ball. In another case, we pushed toy cars into a “tunnel” moving farther away from the tunnel with each success to make it harder. That graduating into knocking down plastic cups with cars from a distance. The Little Man clearly had a blast, and I had fun, too.  I think his fun was in playing new games. Mine was in just getting to hang out with him.

When the Little Miss was born she slept in our room. The Little Man, not wanting to be left out, refused to sleep in his bed, and with a newborn around, we had no energy to fight him. So for the last four months, the Little Man has slept with me on a mattress on the floor in our bedroom, while the Little Miss has slept with Kelly in our bed. We are going to be transitioning both of them into their own beds/cribs when we get back from our vacation. I had grown tired of sleeping on the floor but recently, it is comforting to have the Little Man there. A time will come, of course, when the Little Man will rather hang out with his friends than his mom or dad so I’m learning to try to take advantage of these moments when he still wants to do things with me.

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I’ve felt terrible all morning and I can’t shake it.

It’s been getting more and more difficult to get the Little Man to go to sleep at night. He is already sleeping with me for now–until we can get the Little Miss out of our bed and into her crib, the Little Man sleeps with me and the Little Miss sleeps with Kelly. Now, when he comes to bed I have to lay they with him until he falls asleep. Which takes FOREVER! He wants to play. He doesn’t want to sleep. And now, it’s not like I can just lay there myself. Now he isn’t happy unless he’s got his head in the crook of my shoulder. Or unless I’m holding his hand. It’s at times like these that I really wish we’d fought the battle with him when he first wouldn’t stay in his own bed, but you can’t go back in time.

I was tired last night and frustrated and not in the best of moods. The Little Man finally fell asleep and so did I, but every time he’d wake up in the middle of the night, he’d want something. “Chocolate milk, Daddy!” “Hold my hand, Daddy.” “Sleep here, Daddy.” And the problem is, in the middle of the night, you don’t have the sensitivity that you do in the light of day. You’ve been sleeping restlessly. Your filters are down. The Little Man would whine and I’d snap at him, “There’s no need to cry! Go back to sleep!” Of course, this only made things worse because now he thought I was made at him, or disappointed. Or both. I wasn’t. I was tired and frustrated and half-asleep. But how do you explain that to a twenty-nine-month old.

A few days ago, the Little Man had a toy car in his hand and he was playing and got excited and smashed the toy car into my knee. And it hurt. I didn’t say anything, just sucking in air and bit my tongue, but he could tell it hurt. His expression changed to one of concern and he touched my knee very carefully and said, “Sorry Daddy. You okay, Daddy?”

How can I snap at a kid who is so polite and sensitive to others? He’s two. He’s doing what any other two-year old does. The last think I want to do is give him the impression that I’m disappointed in him or angry with him for something that he almost certainly can’t control.

And so this morning I feel terrible, bitterly terrible. I feel down-right rotten for snapping at him in the middle of the night. That’s not the kind of parent I want to be. How long will it be before I’m looking back on the days when the Little Man was just a toddler, sleeping in my bed and wanting to hold my hand just because I’m his daddy and it makes him feel safe? How long will be it be before I’m sitting around wondering where the time went? I should be embracing those moments. I wish I could control my mood better when I wake up in the middle of the night. I wish I could better try to put myself in his place.

Right now, though, all I want to do is go home, dash over to his school, pick him up and say, “I’m sorry, buddy. You okay?”