A Stay At Home Dad

Finally, at long last, after many false alarms, the lass has a loose tooth. She’s been waiting for this moment for many months now. Watching longingly as her big brother lost one tooth after the other.

She’s been milking it for all it’s worth as well. She wanted to know how she could make it looser. We told her to keep wiggling it and maybe eat something crunchy. She asked if an apple was crunchy enough and when we told her yes, she immediately tromped off to get herself an apple. She ate the whole thing, as opposed to the usual 3 bites and leave it lying as a surprise discovery for the Wife or myself.

She’s also been giving regular status reports. Each time, it’s a little looser. So unless she can detect infinitesimally small changes, I figure it should fall out tonight.

Or not.

When the boy returned from his sleepover this past weekend, his friend was in tow. One of the great things about kids going to friends’ houses is they come back with all sorts of new ideas about what they absolutely-have-to-have-don’t-know-how-they’ve-lived-without. In the boy’s case, this item turned was his friend’s Nintendo DS.

What was amusing was that his friend decided to be helpful and suggested that the boy ask for it for Christmas. After all, that was how his friend had obtained his DS. They then proceeded to argue about how Santa got the DS. On the one side was the boy, insisting that Santa’s elves made the DS. After all, that’s what the elves are for, right? For his part, his friend was very confident that Santa bought the DS, because there had been some sort of sticker on his when he got it. The lass was in her brother’s corner, but I think she would have been willing to switch given a more convincing case.

I was asked to moderate, but chose not to since stuff like that is way above my pay-grade. Although later, I wished I said that Santa probably has his elves purchase the DS from Amazon, that way the elves have more time to build other stuff. That would have been a nice way to split the baby.

We got home mid afternoon yesterday after a lazy zag(or was it a zig?) through New Hampshire. The Wife got to see the brick-and-mortar version of a couple of her favorites sites, Patternworks and Keepsake Quilting. Other than that, the drive home was uneventful. It also lacked the punch the drive up packed. There’s just no comparison between the White Mountain skyline and, well, any Boston area skyline.

The boy and the lass had each had there own big events to anticipate. The boy was going to sleep over at a friends, while the lass was going to be an ‘only for a night.’ Neither could really contain their excitement. They were both extremely helpful unpacking the car- not wanting to jeopardize their opportunities.

Dropping the boy off was uneventful. His friend was having a birthday party. The boy, for his part, couldn’t wait to be rid of me. There was no hesitation or second-thoughts about being away from home for the evening. I barely got a ‘Good-Bye’ out of him when I left.

The lass was in her glory for the evening. She had Mom and Dad all to herself and she took advantage of it. Particularly with regards to the Wife. Lot’s of reading and ‘playing dolls’ and other girl stuff.

The boy arrives home some time today around lunch. No calls from the other parents which either means that everything has gone just swimmingly, or the combination of the two kids together has resulted in full-scale destruction of that immediate area. I think that would have made a noise, so my money’s on ‘a good time was had by all.’

Whenever I’m in New Hampshire, I get strong feelings of contentment. There’s peace out here- a vastness that captures the imagination. The deeper one gets into the state, the more the signs of ‘normal’ simply disappear. Fellow auto travellers become sparse. Large urban areas reduce to small towns, which further reduce to the odd home whose closest neighbor is miles away. Pristine landscapes become the new normal. Then the mountains come in to view.

And as I drive through here a voice rises inside me, imploring I could live here. It feels right to be in this area…

“Mooommmmmm, are we close?”

Reality bites.

We sprang is on the kids 2 nights ago. Surprisingly, we weren’t peppered with millions of questions like “Will there be beds at the hotel?” and “Will the hotel have chairs?” I was sure we’d get a million of those. Of course, we’re not there yet, so there’s plenty of time.

I’ll be bringing the EEE. So, assuming that there’s wifi at the hotel and I’m not too tired, I’ll still have web access.

For now, time to pack up the car…

There are days where I’m convinced it would have been better had I not gotten out of bed. Where everything is a fight and a struggle. Every little thing the kids do is wrong and my reaction to those things is no better. Heck, even the dogs are steering clear.

Why? What happens that everything if so off? So one of them spills milk. What’s the big deal? Then they pull an attitude and refuse to do anything about the spill. Is that my fault? Are they picking up on my own emotions, thus making them worse off? Is yelling at them for their intransigence really solving anything? Aren’t I just reinforcing a bad attitude as well as modeling exactly how not to deal with a bad situation?

Since, presumably, I’m the only grown-up around at that moment, why couldn’t I act the role? Why should I expect the kids to act the part when I’m incapable?

How do you turn this stuff around? An apology? Will they even understand what I’m apologizing for? Do I just force myself to take everything slowly? Can I right the ship just through an act of will? Against current that are clearly, for today, steering me towards snapping, anger and misdirected sarcasm?

These days where I’m at my worst, and everything that happens seems to drive me further down that path, are the hardest. To hear myself and be unable to stop. To know that I’m not dealing with things properly and feel a hopelessness that I can get it right is frustrating.

The answer is so simple. I tell it to the kids all the time.

Just stop.

But the execution is so difficult.

I’ve always considered the lass to be accident prone. Not that she’s a klutz. It has more to do with her constant struggle to keep up with her big brother. And the fact that it is physically impossible for her to remain still. To the point that I think there’s some sort of law involved where, if violated, the world might end. Or something. She’s constantly spilling drinks, bumping into things, falling down etc. She takes her lumps and soldiers on unperturbed.

Yesterday, though, was a day to remember even by her standards. There was the bloody nose, followed by falling off the play gym onto her face, and finally she nicked herself with scissors while helping the Wife in the garden. As I said, quite a day of achievement.

By the time the scissor event happened, she was done with outrage. She merely noted what happened to the Wife, who then took her inside to clean and bandage her finger. No fuss, no outrage. “I didn’t keep the point down” was the most she had to say. It was almost as if, after her previous run-ins of the day, it was to be expected and taken in stride.

So here’s to hoping for a reprieve for her. At least for today.

The water arrived this morning and the pool was full in about 30 minutes. The kids were so excited that they just had to jump in right away. That hit a snag because the ladder for the first pool isn’t tall enough for the new pool. It took me some time to assemble the new ladder.

So shortly after I placed the new ladder into the pool, the kids learned that the pool still wasn’t to their liking. More specifically, the water is cold. North Atlantic cold. It did arrive fresh from a well this morning. It took the boy about 15 minutes to finally get off the ladder and he only lasted about 30 seconds in the water. The lass wasn’t much better, though she at least actually swam. Of course, the water is up to her shoulders, so she’s pretty much swimming already.

So now, the waiting game begins for how long it will take for the pool to warm up. The boy asks me every 15 minutes or so if the water is warmer. I find it hard to resist the temptation to tell him that it is. Of course, it’s only be fractions of a degree- but at least I’m technically accurate!

The new Easy Set pool arrived last night while we were out, so that will be the project du jour. The boy has already asked me approximately a half-million times when it will be set up. You’d think he’d never been in the water before. It’s looking a little overcast now, so I’ll probably get started on it shortly.

Then more power washing.

Good times. Good times.

Kids are a pain, to a large extent. They constantly challenge for power and control. The bicker with one another about who gets the red popsicle. They scream to high heaven when the world doesn’t suit them- which is almost always. They are masters of confounding. They’ll ask simple question about things we as adults don’t give a second thought to; resulting in a flummoxing decision making process of whether to answer the question, whether the question is answerable, how to answer the question, etc.

But not infrequently, they do things that can’t help but make you smile from your head to your toes. The sort of thing where no matter what trials the child put you through during the day, it was all worth it for that fleeting moment of grace. The Wife had such an experience the other night.

On occasion, the Wife sings a lullaby to the lass before bed time. On this night, it was “You Are My Sunshine.” The lass always listens quietly and it always puts a smile on her face. When the Wife finished and said “Good night” to her, the lass asked simply:

“Mom, how come I make you happy when skies are gray?”

How to explain that the answer is because of questions like that?