A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
Evan has been reluctant to give up his pacifier, bop, at night. Last night he slept without it! Today he is a little crabby and just walked through the house with it so I bargained it away from him.
Dad: "Evan. I want you to say oral fixation.
Evan, 4.5 years old: "Oral fixation."
Dad: "Good. Now I want you to go tell Mom, ‘I have an oral fixation.’"
Evan, yelling through the house: "Mom! Dad has an oral fixation!"
It’s as if Evan can detect that I’m nearing my breaking point so he’s going to extra effort to try to push me over the edge.
Dharma, I know you are a dog and I recognize that your brain may have a short circuit or two so let spell this out for you. Pooping in the walking path is not allowed! You are very funny and obviously have figured my gait out perfectly because your landmines are batting 1000. See if your doggie mind can read my human mind because the mental image I have right now is of a cold, outdoor kennel. Molly knows where to poop in this yard. Follow her!
Evan, I know you are four years old…four and a half to be fair…and the antique, crank out windows in this house have a particularly rewarding feeling to their almost steampunk mechanical opening action. However, when the temperatures at night are dropping to -1.6°C*, sleeping with the window open is inadvisable and does not lend to a friendly electric bill. If this behavior continues, I will have to increase your rent to offset the cost of heating this house. Oh, and you may catch a cold.
*Temperature conversion provided by Onlineconversion.com.
Evan, 4.5 years old seeing the food I just prepared: "Eggs!"
Me: "Do you want toast with your eggs?"
Evan: "Yeah!! What’s toast?"
One of the thrills of the single digits is raiding my desk. Often I come down to find my organized chaos in a disarray. To Amy and Evan my clutter is their treasure trove, as it should be, so I try to keep it child friendly. I fidget with my magic from time to time. My nickel to dimes trick currently lives on my desk in a ziplock bag so the money doesn’t accidentally get spent. I found the ziplock open. The nickles and dimes are accounted for but a critical piece of the trick has gone missing. Nevermind…I’m stupid. This reminds me of the time I purchased my first rainbow rod. I was in Disney World and the magician at the magic shoppe performed the trick so well that I understood exactly what to do. I purchased my own. I was so excited that back the hotel I pulled the wand from its container and tossed the instructions aside. I had enough prop magic to understand how these worked. I did exactly like the performer from the magic shoppe and my heart wrenched from my chest as I immediately broke the wand! The result of my actions had produce an outcome unlike anything the magician had done. It was totally unexpected and nothing I did seemed to fix it. That is, until I read the instructions and laughed myself to tears. So, the nickel and dime trick…it’s kinda like that.
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad listen. I sing Nam myo go."
Evan: "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo" (well..pretty close at least!)
He did this unprompted and out of the blue. I was quiet surprised. He also brought it up on Halloween: "I’m daddy. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo"
Evan, 4 years old: "I heard my stomach growl. That means I need some candy."
I dropped the milk. The cap popped off and poured all over the floor.
Me: "DAMMIT!"
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad said dammit."
Mom: * gives Dad eyeballs *
Amy, 7 years old: "Moooom! Evan said dammit!"
Evan: "No, Dad said dammit."
Amy: "Don’t say dammit."
Noah, 13 years old: "Evan, don’t say that. It’s a dirty word."
Evan: "No! Dammit. Dammitdammitdammitdamitdamitdamitdamtdatmdaaaaammmmmmmit!"
Mom: covering her face in towels to hide her laughter.
Dad: hiding in the fridge unable to breath laughing.
Uncle already! I get the message. Mouth meet soap.
Moments after I posted Dad Fail, Evan walked up to me with a question.
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad, why do you always say…" He bent over at the waist at a 45 degree angle with his arms hanging straight down and in a deepened gruff voice, "crap crap crap crap crap crap crap…"
It just went on and on but in the end, it turned out he was repeating a noise from the Nintendo DS Mario game.
Please excuse the screwed up aspect ratio on the video but I did that in haste.
Nothing specific here. I’m just not feeling like a very good father today.
Evan, 4 years old, playing Wii, gleefully announces: "I’m Donkey Dong!"
Okay. I’ll concede there may be some speech therapy in his near future.
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad, can you make me some chips?"
Me, noting that it is 5:20pm: "No."
Evan, softening voice, tilting head, and putting on droopy eyes: "Please make me some chips."
Me: "No, I’m working. You have to let me finish my work so that I can make dinner. NO no no."
Evan: "Okay. But please."
Me: "I’ll be right up. Just let me make this one blog post."
Sometimes parenting makes me feel like Lt. Commander Worf.
When the 4 year old is up before 7am, it’s a sign that a rough day is ahead.
Evan, 4 years old: "Dad doesn’t like me when I talk with an outside voice."
Me: "That’s not true. I always like you."
Evan: "But you don’t like me when I has an outside voice."
Me: "I always like you. It’s the loud noise I don’t like."
Evan: "No. You don’t like me."
Me: "I love you! I like you. I don’t like your outside voice inside the house."
Evan: "You don’t like me when I use my outside voice."
Me: "I like you! I like you no matter what you do! I will always like you. I don’t like the noise."
Evan: "Oh, you don’t like my outside voice."
This conversation felt endless. I remember holding Evan and trying to rock him to sleep. I looked into his eyes and told him, "I cannot wait to have conversations with you!" I love talking with Evan. Still, some of our conversations leave me shaking my head and left in disbelief at the words spilling from my mouth.
