Tag Archives: Dads

New goat technology befuddles older generation

My boys are sharing a goat.

Let me explain.

The goat is virtual. It is a game app that allows the player to manipulate the activities of a standard goat.

It is really only Big Brother and Buster who are sharing this goat. I’m sure Big Man would be interested if it were a real goat – somebody he could pet or chase as the mood struck him. But he’s not really interested in screen goats, yet.

These flesh goats are so 2013.

These flesh goats are so 2013.

By sharing I mean they are constantly fighting over who gets to play the goat game. Big Brother is searching for some legal loophole or parents’ edict that will cause Buster to cease playing the game altogether. It’s not that he doesn’t want his little brother to have a happy childhood, but it seems as though you, or your goat, can build things in this game, and he lives in terror that the poorly trained, younger goatherd will somehow destroy all he, and his goat, have created.

This only makes Buster’s fire to play the game burn more brightly. I’m sure he understands as little as I do about how virtual goats build apartment complexes, but if Big Brother doesn’t want him playing, it must be an awesome game.

I don’t understand this fascination with the pixel goat. Sure, you can make him swim across a river and break things with his hooves, (Goats have hooves, right? I grew up with cows.) but I can’t figure out how that translates into an addicting game.

It’s not that I don’t like computer games. There are a handful of games I play. I even kind of get the appeal of Minecraft. In that game, you build up some kind of civilization (I think) while working toward some sort of goals (I think). And the best part is, you can create cats and dogs and then leave your tablet in the kitchen so your dad goes crazy trying to figure out where all the meowing and barking is coming from as he makes dinner. Who wouldn’t get a kick out of that?

But this goat I don’t understand. Every time I look at the game, the goat is just swimming or walking, or in the really exciting moments, sleeping. Who spends their time making a fake goat sleep? Okay, don’t answer that. The goat did build a house of some sort, so I guess there’s more to it than that.

How do you put a goat to sleep? Tap the sleep icon, of course.

How do you put a goat to sleep? Tap the sleep icon, of course.

I just can’t imagine my childhood revolving around virtual goats. I used to read, and play ball, and go swimming. My kids do that stuff too, and yet still find time for the goat. Maybe that’s the time I spent milking cows. Or maybe we had more innings in our ball games.

I’m trying to get Big Brother to read more and play games less. I wish I could get him to do so more willingly. Maybe he needs more interesting stories. Anybody know where I can find books about sleeping virtual goats?

And the award for Parent of the Most Civilized Pooping Child goes to . . .

Since I first became a parent, I’ve been taking an informal survey on how old children are when they complete potty training.  This has been an unintentional survey; I’ve never asked parents how long it took to potty train their children. Yet, scads of parents seem to think I want to know. The word potty can’t come up in conversation without people laying out the impressive timetables of their children’s migrations to the toilet.

Due to the unwilling nature of my research, I have never recorded the results of my survey. This could have the slight potential to erode the credibility of the findings. The only result of which I am certain is that 0.00% of respondents’ children took longer to potty train than my own.

My two potty trained children became so somewhere in the three-year-old range. The remaining child seems on pace to match that timing. When it comes to deciding where to poop, I thought I had pretty normal kids. The older two, in their own time, came around to a decision I can endorse. I have high hopes the third will eventually see the wisdom in their choices. On the other hand, I can’t honestly argue that a diaper isn’t a convenient alternative when you’re on the run.

Assuming my youngest takes approximately the same time to potty train as his brothers, he represents the third strike in my beginning hypothesis that my children are normal. It will prove beyond the margin of error that they are outliers – sluggard, ne’er-do-well poopers – the slowest children ever to be potty trained.

Further research has confirmed my fears about the futures of poorly trained children like my own. Source: Delusional Parent Magazine.

Further research has confirmed my fears about the futures of poorly trained children like my own. Source: Delusional Parent Magazine.

The stats don’t lie. And the stats are backed up by random, self-reported data from proud parents that happened to come up in conversation. These facts were presented to me by confident (almost beaming) individuals, through the famously unbiased memory of parenthood, who were prescient enough to ascertain that I was conducting a survey on this exact topic. That’s pretty solid, considering I didn’t even know I was conducting this survey. How can I begin to question the validity of such information?

Having not ever encountered a single survey subject whose children were slower to evolve than mine, I am left to consider the consequences of my children’s backwardness. Will these arrested beginnings hinder their futures? I fear so. None of the survey respondents who offered updates reported that their advanced pooping children are now incarcerated. And since someone has to fill the prisons, I can only conclude it will be the slow toilet adopters, of whom my children are, statistically, the slowest.

I know you’re probably thinking how brave it is of me to publicly admit these facts about my own beloved children. But now that I’ve done it, I wonder if I should have just lied about it. I can’t do that though. I wouldn’t want to be known as the first parent to embellish his children’s toilet skills.

Dads need to go outside and play in the fresh air too, apparently

Now that warmer weather is dipping its toes into our part of the world, the children want to be outside, which is generally a good thing but sometimes inconvenient.

At seven, Big Brother is competent to be outside by himself. Out of context, this would be a really good thing. I could tell him to go outside and play whenever I need a minute to think, or not be pestered by 1,000 questions about tornadoes, or rekindle the romance with my wife. Okay, I may need as many as two minutes.

In context, Big Brother has little brothers. The moment Big Brother even smells fresh air, Buster is at his heels, and Big Man is forming the conga line behind Buster. It’s like outside is giving away free candy and nobody wants the other kid to get it all.

Our street isn’t a terribly busy one, and Buster and Big Man are good about staying out of it, but it’s still a street and Buster and Big Man are still four and two, respectively. Four and two happen to be some of the least trustworthy ages.

When Big Brother goes outside, it begins a chain reaction, ending with me dropping whatever I’m doing and following everybody else. Outside is good, but it is certainly not giving away candy, and sometimes I have things to do in the house, like studying for my next tornado pop quiz.

I hate keeping the kids indoors, but it can’t always be helped, and we’ll have our own organic tornado if I let one go without the others. Neighborhood kids are good at asking Big Brother (and his necessary coattails) to come out and play at inconvenient times. It’s difficult explaining the dynamics of why he can’t go out by himself, so it’s nice when there’s a handy excuse for keeping him inside. Something like “He’s doing his homework right now.” or “Dinner is in three hours, so he has to get ready for that.”

Without sound, you can’t even tell this is the beginning of a fight.
Big boy bike
On the road again.
Big brother on his favorite vehicle. Dream on!

It wouldn’t be so bad if they would stick together once they got out there, but they have different interests, aside from their monolithic desire to be outside. They all have vehicles to ride and two will want to go different directions down the sidewalk while the third heads out cross-country. The good news is they will all stay in one place when they start fighting over who gets to ride what. Then, there will be tugging and yanking, and maybe some crying, which is a good way to keep track of where they are.

Outside is especially tricky at this time of year when the days are long but school is still in session. It’s mean enough to make a kid go inside, but to then make him go to bed is downright cruelty. I know this because I’ve been told so every night this month. It’s totally “not fair!” I’ll consider that while I wait to get old enough to come and go as I please.

The Tooth Fairy doesn’t work weekends

The Tooth Fairy is due to make another visit. In fact, he’s overdue. A top-notch Tooth Fairy would have shown up sometime last night. Our Tooth Fairy is middling at best.

Lately, Big Brother has been shedding teeth like a hockey player with scurvy. Perhaps our Tooth Fairy has merely been overworked.

Our Tooth Fairy leaves $1, in the form of a golden Presidential dollar coin, under the pillow for each tooth. Our Tooth Fairy gets these coins from his day job, where he buys them from the big bag of dollar coins nobody knows what to do with. Dollar coins are a novelty in the United States, which makes them great for Tooth Fairies, but troublesome to institutions that are occasionally paid them but don’t have a clue how to bundle them for bank deposit.

Our Tooth Fairy is not completely without an eye to the future. He usually buys two coins at a time, but at the rate Big Brother spits out baby teeth, our Tooth Fairy often needs a day’s notice before he can accumulate the wherewithal to visit the pillow. For these same reasons, he doesn’t work on weekends.

We can afford only two teeth purchases at a time.

We can afford only two teeth purchases at a time.

For the first couple of lost teeth, the loose tooth phase was a big deal, no matter how long it lasted. Two weeks of drama, waiting for the final separation was not unheard of. Now, teeth fall with neither pomp nor circumstance. The only reason I knew there was a loose tooth situation this time was because Big Brother complained it was making it inconvenient to eat his corn on the cob at dinner.

Half an hour after going to bed, Big Brother came downstairs with a tooth in his hand. It was a fine tooth, worth every penny of a dollar, and it took all of 30 minutes of wiggling to extract. I told him to rinse out his mouth and go back to bed. Nobody told him to put the tooth under his pillow.

But he did anyway.

This morning he complained the Tooth Fairy had neglected him. We explained that the Tooth Fairy had already set out on her rounds with a strict itinerary by the time his tooth came out. His teeth must fall out before the Tooth Fairy leaves the office, which is, coincidentally, about the same time Daddy leaves work.

I bought two dollar coins today, which will net me two more baby teeth. I don’t have a use or a want for this commodity but nobody ever told me Tooth Fairying was a profitable business or rewarding hobby.

That’s the way with children. You spend money on stuff you’d rather not have. Teeth are pretty cheap compared to all the other crap. With two more suppliers coming up, I guess we’ll go on buying at this rate.

A smart Tooth Fairy would probably just go ahead and buy out the entire sack of dollar coins in one transaction, but I never said our Tooth Fairy was top-notch.