Tag Archives: boys

It will be quiet someday; meanwhile, let’s have some noise

Someday they’ll stop calling me Daddy. My name will change to Dad. I won’t mourn that day. There will be, I hope, benefits to them becoming self-sufficient. Maybe I’ll even catch up on my reading.

In the next few weeks, Buster and Big Man will turn four and two, respectively. There are no more babies in the house. I’m happy I haven’t had to heat a bottle in a year, and I look forward to the day the last one says goodbye to diapers. Maybe we’ll take a vacation with the diaper money.

I appreciate all the things Big Brother can do for himself, from making a snack to going to the bathroom without me having to know about it, although sometimes he still likes to announce his intentions. I’m sure I’ll enjoy feeling less like a servant in my own home when the little boys can do things for themselves. I may even gain weight from all the sitting down for more than two minutes in a row I plan on doing.

I imagine being able to go places without someone falling asleep in the car, or what really blows my mind: going places by myself. The really fine thing will be spending time with each individually, free of the competition that comes so naturally between them and turns them into a raucous mob. I’m looking forward to talking instead of shouting over the din.

The raucous mob does settle down from time to time, but always in Daddy's chair.

The raucous mob does settle down from time to time, but always in Daddy’s chair.

I look forward to many good things that will come with my boys getting older, yet I am old enough to know I can wait for those things. They will come whether I appreciate the days preceding them or not. It’s best to appreciate all the days; they never come around again.

There are days when keeping on top of all these boys’ needs runs both parents ragged. In spite of this, my wife would go on having babies forever if that were possible. I’m too feeble for that, but I will concede that nobody hugs quite as good as toddler. I will further admit that nobody’s mind matches the waterfall of discovery of a preschooler’s. And while I’m at it, nobody’s imagination is more entertaining than a grade schooler’s.

As much as I look forward to more peace, I’m in no hurry to say goodbye to toddler giggles or preschool jokes or grade school stories. I can’t hold onto them forever, and I have no desire to. I only want to enjoy them to their fullest while they are all around me. I want to experience the things yet to come, but I can be patient for those seasons to have their place.

Time doesn’t need my help. It moves too quickly already. Sometimes it’s easy to anticipate the future at the expense of the present. I hope to catch myself when I fall toward this trap; though I will not mourn the day I become just Dad, I will, a little bit, mourn the loss of the day when I was Daddy.

Keep your creepy nightmares in your own wing of the castle

I was sleeping so good at 5 o’clock this morning. The thing about sleeping so good is you only know you were sleeping so good after something wakes you up. Sleeping so good is the perfect example of something you didn’t realize you had until it’s gone.

The thing that made me realize I had, up until then, been sleeping so good was a hand that shook me awake. “Daddy, I had a nightmare,” the seven-year-old owner of that damned hand said to me.

“Go back to bed,” I replied. This is my standard response to all young people at 5 a.m.

“I can’t. It was too creepy.”

“Oh, in that case, go back to bed.”

“I can’t. I’ll have it again. I need to sleep with you.” He tried to strong-arm his way onto my bed. Mommy leaves me about a quarter of the bed as my portion, so there’s no room at the inn. Mommy’s not giving up any of her three-quarters; the boy knows this and it is why he came to my side.

I don’t even ask him to relate his bad dreams anymore. There’s no point. They are about as scary as an episode of Peppa Pig. You want to know about a really scary nightmare? I’ll tell you a scary nightmare.

Not this night, because I was sleeping so good, but last night, I dreamt we had to leave our house and move into a single bedroom apartment in California. After all the time I spend fantasizing about living in a castle where the parents have their own wing, imagine my terror at having to share a tiny apartment with these kids. Now that’s a nightmare. And did I go running into his room to tell him about it? Hell no. In a perfect world, his wing of the castle would be too far for me to travel before daylight.

The boys' room

The view of the kids’ wing from my bedroom. (It’s the farthest away part.)

I resisted his efforts to usurp my allotment of sleeping area. “Go back to bed!” I said in the voice of someone who now fully realized just how good he had been sleeping.

“You have to come with me.”

Well, this was a victory of sorts. I got up and walked him back to his room. I tucked him into bed and was back in my room in less than a minute. I guess there’s a hidden benefit in not having my own wing.

I still had some time before work to get more sleep. And that is exactly what I would have done, had not I been reminded of the nightmare of living in a single bedroom apartment in California.  I thought I had put that horror behind me.

By now, my son was surely comfy in his bed, nightmare free, sleeping so good. Anyhow, it would be time to wake him up for school soon, and then we’d let him know just how good he had been sleeping.

 

Make yourself comfortable, you little freak

I sometimes forget what little weirdos my kids are. Once they outgrow some creepy habit, I tend to forget about it. It slips to the dark recesses of my mind until the next kid does the same nutty thing and reminds me that the last one was just as odd.

Now a veteran potty-goer, Buster has become comfortable enough with the routine to want to customize the experience to his own bizarre preferences. One day, at his request, I took him into the bathroom to have a sit-down meeting with the potty. After he pulled down his pants, I lifted him onto his child potty seat.

I was about to leave him alone for a minute when he called me back. He extended his legs and asked me to take his pants completely off him. Taking them off meant eventually putting them back on, which was more work than I wanted, but okay. His potty seat has a pee guard sticking up between his legs, and maybe he needed to spread out to avoid scraping his thighs on it. Fair enough.

I pulled off his pants.

He pointed to his underpants. Those too.

Whatever. If the underwear are holding back progress, we can take those too. I tossed his underwear on top of his empty pants and turned to leave.

Wait. He wanted his shirt off too.

Really? His shirt was hindering  the process? Oh well, it was a long shirt; maybe he was worried about it hanging down in the way. All right. He lifted his hands and I pulled the shirt over his head. Done.

Undershirt too.

Come on now! That little muscle shirt couldn’t get in the way if it wanted to.

in the zone

Kick off your shoes (and every other stitch of clothing you have), sit back, relax, and let the magic happen.

Yes. Undershirt too.

Well, at least that would be a snap to put back on.

I pulled of his undershirt.

Now there was nothing that could possibly be in the way of him performing his business. I could leave.

Socks.

Oh, what the hell? Might as well. Wouldn’t want to impose any unnecessary constraints on his ability to poop.

I slipped his socks off and put them on top of the pile of his clothes.

Anything else, I asked the now completely naked boy. You want a quick hair cut to keep that out of the way?

Get out and close the door. Hurry up.

My apologies for lingering so long. I don’t know what got into me.

As I made my final escape I found leisure to let some buried memories assail me. This scene was familiar. Just four short years ago, when Big Brother was three, we went through the same routine. I’d forgotten all about it. Well, at least the weirdos are consistent.

I shouldn’t worry about Buster getting completely naked to poop for the rest of his life. Big Brother outgrew that phase soon enough. Then again, that was just before he started singing Christmas Carols in public rest rooms.

The Weird may change, but the Weirdo remains.

 

 

 

 

Poop your Butt!

I wish three-year-olds devoted as much effort to learning their letters and numbers as they do to perfecting potty talk. If working poop into every conversation were a preschool subject, Buster would be at the top of his class. He’s not as much into the alphabet or counting, although he can count to 19, by 19s, but the numbers in between 0 and 19 are white noise.

Going potty at the appropriate time and place is a big deal in a preschooler’s world. As such, poop is an important word to know and use in the development of good hygiene routines. That’s where it ends for the grown-ups, but for the three-year-old, the word poop is an expressive cornucopia.

And in those rare circumstance when poop doesn’t quite fill the bill, butt usually works as a good substitute to bring the point home.

For instance, Buster might offer his impression of Mommy or Daddy giving an ultimatum this way: “If you don’t pick up these toys right now, Big Brother will poop in his pants!”

This is not the conventional ultimatum, in that it involves his brother providing the negative consequence, but even this third-party ultimatum meets the minimum requirements: there is a demanded action and a consequence for not acting. I certainly don’t want Big Brother to poop in his pants. I don’t want anybody in the house to poop in their pants. When it comes down to it, I don’t want anybody anywhere to poop in their pants, if that’s an option.

Where the threat fails is in the fact that Big Brother has not been consulted, and the method of enforcing  the threat is news to him. Big Brother will balk at his role in the proceedings, which may lead Buster to call him a butthead. This is tough on Big Brother as he is sensitive about what part of his body he carries atop his neck. Buster seems to have thicker skin than Big Brother. He is also more ruthless with the trash talk, which leaves him in better shape to endure the times when sibling rivalry goes verbal-nuclear.

Butts are not just a conversation piece. Sometimes they are real and can be a menace to society. One day, I came home to find Buster dressed in his Batman outfit, looking for bad guys to vanquish. He ran over to me and announced, “Your butt is the Joker.” Without giving my butt a chance to profess it’s innocence, he punched it in right in the proverbial nose. I was just happy I was facing the counter at the time because some villains can take a punch and some villains can’t.

Uh-oh! Looks like Batman stepped in something when he started accusing innocent butts of being arch-villains.

Uh-oh! Looks like Batman stepped in something when he started accusing innocent butts of being arch-villains.

I can stand a butt punch from a crime fighting three-year-old as well as the next guy, but that doesn’t mean I should have to. I sat Buster down to have a long talk with him. Within minutes, our heart-to-heart devolved into a discussion about . . .

                                                                                                                  you guessed it . . .

poop.