Well this is awkward...

Thing 2 loves to dance.  If one of her jams comes on the radio, she'll shake her car seat like it's the '89 World Series in San Francisco.  

A little while back we took the kiddos to Ripley's Aquarium in Toronto and as we stood in line, Uptown Funk starts blaring out of the sound system.  She stood there and shook her diapered ass like no one was watching.  Only hundreds of people were.  The grin on her face was priceless. 

I see a future full of recitals and expensive dance outfits.  Can't wait.

So anyway, because I love her so dearly, I signed her up for a free session of this thing called Salsa Tots.  It sounded harmless enough.  I envisioned a room full of two and three year old kids and lots of salsa music.  I could tolerate that for an hour no problem.

There was a problem though. Only two other kids capable of walking showed up.  The rest of the dozen little ones were strapped to their moms' chests.  Odd, I'm sure it said this was for kids aged two and three. But we stuck around. How bad could it be, right?  Naturally, I was the only male over 3.  I'm used to that by now.  My presence was neither welcomed or acknowledged.  I'm used to that by now too.

Seeing the turnout, the instructor announces that the demo class would now be half Salsa Tots, and half Salsa Babies. I assumed the Babies version might be slower beats or something like that.  We dance for ten minutes with the tots while the baby-toting moms do their best to look as inconvenienced as possible.  This is what you signed up for, ladies.  The instructor, sensing she's beginning to lose out on some subscribers decides it's time to switch demos.

Salsa Babies, as it turns out, is like a Zumba program for moms wearing their babies. Why any one would want to exercise with a baby attached to them is beyond my comprehension, but to each their own.  To me, it's weird. Now I tried to be a sport and hold all 25 pounds of Thing 2 to my chest and do some of these moves. I got some weird looks from the moms and Thing 2 alike.  This was awkward.  Clearly no one is comfortable in this situation. It was time for us to go.

So we did one of these:

Once out of the room, I frantically searched for our shoes in the entrance way, jammed them on our feet as fast as humanly possible and got us the hell out of there.  If she was upset about, thankfully she didn't show it.  I think she knew Daddy needed to leave.  For the good of everyone involved.

Oh the places we will go.

The Art of Invisibility

Sometimes everyone feels they're invisible.  For instance, I almost got smoked the other morning while towing the kids in their bike trailer by a person backing out of their driveway in a school zone.  You would think someone living on the same street as a primary level school would be extra careful when backing out of their driveway at 8:45 in the morning.  Not so much.

But there's another way you can be invisible, and that's to be any dad out in public.   About a month back, I brought my two to toddler time at the local indoor trampoline park.  You think this would be the most fun place you could bring your child.  They get to jump around out springy floors and throw big balls at each other.  Well Thing 1 and 2 quickly grew bored of this and discovered the mini lockers near the snack shop.  You want to talk about fun?  Fun is watching two tiny kids squeeze themselves into little tiny ground level lockers then pop out and say boo seconds later.  I thought it was as hilarious as they did.  

Note: Please ignore the fact the my phone takes photos the same quality as a Polaroid circa 1976.  This was the best of the five pics I took.

Now I'm standing about 6 feet away, taking pics to send to my wife who had to work.  This other kid comes up and wants to play too, but his helicopter mom quickly says no and tells him that he could suffocate in there because there's no air holes. Are you f'ing kidding me? She then proceeds to physically pull my kids out of the lockers and tell them it's not safe.  I was dumbfounded and just kind of stood there in shock.  She appeared to be heading for the exit, so I tried to let it go.  She had good intentions I'm sure, but the more I thought about it, the more it pissed me off.  I never thought for a second that any harm could come to either of them by playing in the lockers.

I saw the Safety Mom again about 20 minutes later, so I did the only thing I thought would calm me down about it.  I went over to her and asked her what she thought gave her the right to parent my kids, let alone physically remove them from the locker. Now it was her turn to be the dumbfounded one.  She stammered an apology and said she didn't see the kids' mom around.  

Wow.  I mean, it's not like I was the only dad in the place.  It was a Sunday after all.

So maybe I am invisible.  Maybe all dads are invisible in public places. Or moms all over just assume we're incompetent and that they know better, even if the kids aren't their own.  Hopefully that mentality changes before my kids grow up.  Or else, it's going to be a long 16 or so more years of being a SAHD.

Anyway, I tell my wife the story later that day and she tells me about Mommy Wars.  You should Google it if you've never heard of it. I may have fallen victim despite the lack of a uterus.  My wife couldn't believe that I confronted the woman.  Apparently that's a Mommy Wars no-no.  You're just supposed go online and bitch about the other parent inferior way of parenting.  Now I know.  So I got the satisfaction of confronting her, and I got to bitch about here.  Double-win. 

Why I hate Pinterest

Diet is important in our house.  It's probably because my wife and I both grew up as "the fat kid".  I think we're both a bit petrified that Thing 1 and/or Thing 2 might have to go through that growing up. We take it pretty seriously.  We even fired Thing 1's first daycare provider for taking him to McDonald's without asking. Seriously.

We also have a lot of dietary restrictions around here.  The kids can't have dairy, the adults don't eat gluten, my wife doesn't eat meat.  We don't use refined sugar or eat processed food.  It means I pretty much have to make everything from scratch. It's a pain in the ass really, eating healthy and all that.  It leads to spending way too much of my time in the kitchen. And just like I have no natural athletic ability, I also have no natural cooking ability. If I don't have a recipe, I'm up a creek without the proverbial paddle.

Which brings me to Pinterest.  Pinterest has every recipe imaginable, and a few you wish had never been thought of.  And my wife loves the damn app.  If I make the mistake of asking her what she wants for dinner this week, I wake up the next morning to 47 new pins with such meals as Vegan Chicken-less Tofu Noodle Soup and Vegan Moroccan "Meatballs".  Some of which have 47 frigging ingredients.  Who has time for that shit??  I've made cauliflower "popcorn" and vegan "bacon" out of portobello mushrooms.  I kid you not.  Just last week my wife read somewhere that the Flintstones chewable vitamins that we give to Thing 1 cause cancer, so I  woke up to pin for homemade gummy vitamins.  Did I make them? Of course I did.   Luckily, the kids are still at the gullible stage when they'll eat anything if you tell them it's candy or a cookie or a pancake.  Beet or spinach pancakes?  More please, Daddy!  We eat so healthy that if I ask Thing 2 if she wants a snack, she heads to the cupboard and hands me a can of chickpeas.  Chip of the old block, that one.  These kids are going to be really pissed off when they find out what real candy tastes like.

So just because someone took the time to post a recipe on there, it does not mean it actually tastes good.  Even if the author puts "Amazing" or "Delicious" in the title.  I've made countless dinners where not even the dogs came around for a taste.  What happens to those dinners?  They get put in those aluminum trays and frozen for a year until I finally throw them out blaming freezer burn and not the fact that it was crap to begin with.

In case you're not familiar, I'll give you a bit of a description on how a Pinterest recipe works.  First, the person writes a long diatribe on how good and easy the recipe is, including about 47 pictures of the dish at different angles, then finally gets around to posting the damn recipe way down at the bottom.  Oh and there's always a pop up ad as you're scrolling down that stops you midway asking you if you want to subscribe, of which you have to search for the little black X to close it.  Now I'm perfectly aware of  the irony of bitching about other peoples' long blog posts in my own blog, but you didn't come here to get a recipe as two kids are whining at your legs saying they were hungry, did you?

Also, never believe the prep time and cooking time calculations.  If it says prep time is 15 minutes, it's at least triple that.  Fifteen minutes if you employ a sous chef maybe or spent 47 minutes cutting everything up the night before.  Oh and if the kids want to help make it?  You may as well forget about everything else you had planned to do that afternoon.

It's 8:30 am, I better get cracking on dinner...

Today's post was brought to you by the number 47.

Intro to My SAHD Existence

Disclaimer: Being a Stay-at-home-Dad (SAHD for the purposes of this blog) is the best and most fulfilling job I've ever had (Mind you I worked in accounting for 11 years, so the bar wasn't set very high).   The hours are brutal and pay really sucks, but the benefits are pretty sweet. Having said this, my life is now filled with some pretty hilarious, ridiculous, and the downright bizarre moments.  

As this is my first post, I should give a little background.  I quit my job to stay at home with our two kids back in September 2014.  At the time, my son (Thing 1) was barely 2 and my daughter (Thing 2) was 4 months. Not that I thought it would be a cakewalk, but I did think it would be less stressful than being a credit manager, of which my career had dead-ended at. Now, the most stressful thing I have to worry about is what the hell I'm going to feed everyone for dinner...

Before I began this endeavour a year and a half ago, I had read that more and more dads were choosing to do the same.  I thought, great, I'll make the leap and easily find like-minded dads who've done the same.  Well, not so much. 

So far, I've met one other guy on parental leave. The rest?  All women. ALL OF THEM.

For the most part , outings with the kids leave me with the feeling like I'm intruding on Uterus-only territory.  If you've seen any meme's about stay-at-home-dads, I'm telling you now, no matter how ridiculous they seem, they're all freaking true.  

Like this one:

See the one there with the Predator at the park?  That's me apparently. I've brought the kids to the park many a time where the moms/caregivers immediately start talking in hushed tones as soon as we arrive.  Huddling closer to each other, glancing over their shoulders, making sure I'm at a safe distance from them and there kids.  Look, I already have two kids under 4.  Do you really think I'd want one of yours too? Also, I'm wearing a wedding ring.  I have all the crazy I need in my life.

So the other day, I took Thing 2 her little story and song group at the local library.  It's for 2's and 3's and she loves it.  So we were the first ones in the room and I took a spot along one of the walls and sat down on the floor.  Now it's a small room and there's about 12 or so adults and a ton of kids.  So not a lot of room to share.  Did I mention I was the only male over the age of 3? Well, I am.  So anyway, the next six women that come into the class with their kids cram themselves shoulder to shoulder as far away from me as possible as if I'm a ripe diaper.  It's like junior high all over again I tell you.  Eventually, the room fills up and some older caregiver ladies sit next to me and I feel a little less awkward in the room.  At least my daughter enjoys herself.

Oh that's not all for this excursion.  So then they brought out the big parachute in the open room next door after the class.  You know the kind where everyone grabs a handle and makes it blow up and down while the kids run under giggling and screaming?  Thing 2 was off playing and suddenly decides she wants to partake.  So I go over and grab a handle.  The lady next to me immediately moves away and grabs a different one.  I seriously smelled a pit on one of the parachute upswings to see if I was a little rank or something.  I wasn't.

Welcome to my SAHD existence.