The Cottage

The cottage.  Our family's first real vacation.  We didn't really know what to expect.  That's kind of the danger with renting something online.  Pictures can be deceiving.  Just look at a listing for a house in your town on a real estate website, then go to an open house.  It can be a big difference.  We lucked out in that the cottage itself was pretty nice for a cottage.  Being first-timers in cottage rental we thought we did okay.

Then we looked at the state of the beach on this "beachfront" cottage.  Now I don't have a whole lot of experience with Lake Erie, but the few times I've seen it, it was decent.  This beach, however, was frigging disgusting.  There is a full 20 feet of black sludge covered in a green icing .  And it stunk.  Not exactly the kind of place you want your kids playing in all week.

That's the "beach".  If you tossed a rock in, it splashed up black sludge pudding.

So we had to find other arrangements.  We were told about this provincial park by one of the neighbours.  We took a wrong turn in the deserted park though by following the "This way to swimming" sign.  What we found was a barren rock beach littered with the carcasses of dead fish.  

Mmmmm.

We ended up finding the good part later in the week, so all was good.

In the meantime though, we also found the neighbouring towns had free pools.  It was here that I showed my boneheadedness in its full glory.  As I was in the pool a full 10 minutes before I noticed my cell phone in my pocket.  

Crap.

Three days in rice and I was able to turn it on and save all the pictures.  Thank goodness for that life hack meme.

(Disclaimer: The next part is gross if you've never had kids.  If you have then, you'll see the humour.)

So the final evening we decide to go out for dinner.  A few minutes in, we noticed Miss Thang Two (formerly Thing Two) stunk.  It was my turn.  Of course there's no change table or counter in the men's washroom, but we make due.  It was a minor deuce, a two wiper.  No more than five minutes later, she reeked again.  Mama's turn.  Thang Two comes back to the table in a diaper only.  The diaper did not hold in all the contents.  Shorts in trash. Happy girl.

Here's the gross part. A woman walks by the table and slips.  Looks down and sees some "food" on the floor and tells the maître d' about it.  We look over and to our horror/hilarity, the "food" had squirted right out the diaper.  Gnarly.  I managed to clean it up with a bunch of wipes and dispose of it in the loo before they showed up with  a broom.  Ah, parenting.

Should we have told them about the biohazard? Probably.  Did we?  Heck no.  We paid the bill and high-tailed it out of there.

But alas, the vacation, like all good things,  came to an end.  Both kids learned to doggie-paddle in the pool and we had some laughs.  All in all, a successful first family vacation.

The Minivan of Awesomeness

There's quite a divide between those that minivan and those who swear they never would, even it was given to them.  When I started telling people how we were getting a van after our second car went for a shit, the divide was pretty impressive.  Pretty much anyone who has never owned a van is anti-van.   Quite simply, they're uncool and unsexy.  Kinda like me.  Vans are the cargo pants of the vehicle world.  They're boxy, unflattering, and you can put all kinds of shit in them.

Case in point: First trip to the cottage. Two adults, two kids, two 70 lbs. dogs, two coolers, two giant totes, 3 suitcases, a laptop bag and toys.  Plus random bags of groceries we couldn't fit in the coolers.  All in one unsexy minivan.  That trumps any shred of anti-van you can fire at me.

Vans are awesome.  They're the best thing to come along since sliced bread (the wheat kind, not the gluten-free kind.  That bread is crap).    

My uncle-in-law bestowed the magical purple wonder on us despite the fact that he has four grown boys, all of which appear to be anti-vanners.  We've known about it for awhile now, but we only came desperate for it when the old Sebring gave up the ghost a month ago.  Three weeks between vehicles when you're home all day with two kids pretty much sucks.  Luckily the weather was good enough to tow the kids around in the bicycle trailer most places we needed to go. 

We only had to use public transportation twice.  Do you know why no one likes to use public transportation?  Because it takes for-freaking-ever to get anywhere.  Thing 1 had a doctor's appointment  the day after the car died. A whole 25 kilometres away.   I thought it would be an adventure for the kiddos to ride the bus, so I planned out the trip.  Three buses and over two hours to come within 15 minutes walking distance of the doc's office.  I also grossly underestimated how much snacks would be required for a two hour bus voyage.  They pretty much ate everything in the first 10 minutes.  Big fail on that one.

Bring on the van, I say! And maybe some cargo pants.

#52traits: Because There's All Kinds of Jerks Out There

The following is my article in the #52traits series on GetConnectDAD.com.

https://getconnectdad.com/2016/07/05/be-forgiving-because-theres-all-kinds-of-jerks-out-there/

You can follow them at https://twitter.com/GetConnectDad or https://www.facebook.com/GetConnectDAD/

Here's the article in its entirety:

We all do stupid things. We’re inherently selfish beings who, at times, do things without any regard for others. We hurt people. Sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally, sometimes mentally. Basically, we’re all jerks at some point in time. Some more than others, but you get the point. Not one person reading this is ever going to say they’ve never been an asshole. If you were a toddler, you’ve been an asshole at some point. My two kids are generally lovable little beings, but both do malicious things daily.

As parents, we have lots to teach our kids, but when it comes down to it, our main job is to bring them up to be functioning members of society. We all may have different ideas of what that means, but it should all end up looking pretty dang similar.

But alas, it doesn’t always work out. Some people are just jerks. Like the kid who insisted on kicking my kid’s train every two minutes at his kindergarten orientation, he then proceeded to shove a girl and pinch her when she was down. That kid may grow up to be a glorious asshole.   To combat these types in the world, we need to teach our kids about forgiveness, in all its forms.

Fist Bump

Firstly, I want my kids to be able to forgive those the jerks they come across out in public. I want them to know that it’s usually not personal, and if it is, it may be because they’ve learned that behaviour from someone else doing it to them. Maybe the person being a jerk is just having a bad day. Whatever the reason, I want to teach my kids to put themselves in the other’s shoes and see if they can figure out why that person behaves that way. I want to make little anthropologists out of them. I want my kids to try and talk to the other and ask how they’re doing. See if they can help in some way. If it helps, great. They made a new friend, or at least gained some insight into how others think. If that kid still wants to be a jerk, then at least they’ve learned another important life lesson: some people are just plain assholes.

I also want my kids to have the strength to forgive a loved one who messes up. This is something I had to learn well into adulthood. Even people you love can do crappy things. The fact that love is involved makes it more difficult to make peace with the other’s mistake. I want them to know that holding on to the anger or hurt that the loved one caused is more detrimental to themselves, than to the other person. Even if no remorse is shown, it’s still better to forgive, for your own sake. I just hope it isn’t me they’re going to have to try to forgive.

Which brings me to the one type of forgiveness I want my kids to learn the most: To forgive themselves. They’re going to screw up. They’re going to get bad grades, detentions, and maybe even suspensions at school. They’re going to burn things on the stove, blow things up in the microwave, overflow the bathtub, spill crap on the rug, crash my car. The list goes on and on. It’s all going to happen. I want to teach them to go easy on themselves. No pressure is worse than the pressure you can put on yourself. Life is full of bad decisions. The trick is to learn from the mistakes and move forward.
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”. – Mahatma Ghandi

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.