Month: December 2014

My Dad Drinks

I have tried to be good, really I have. My cautionary tales of trying to be careful of what you say and do around children have apparently been in vain. There really is no way to guess what can be misrepresented.

I am responsible for the bedtime ritual of tucking the children into bed and I love it. Not only because it starts off adult time but because at the end of the day I get a few minutes with the girls to wish them well for the night and give hugs and kisses. For about a month now they have asked me for themed hugs at bedtime. Themed just means that I am supposed to act like a different animal and give them hugs like that animal might (an elephant uses big flappy ears and trumpets).

The first night I gave “Turkey” hugs where I would proceed to gobble my way to each one and tickle them. Orangutan hugs and penguin hugs are fun ones too.

It never fails that after hugs one of the girls will think of a question or complaint to keep me around and stall at bedtime. Monday night it was my oldest who had been drinking a juice cup as fast as she could go while I was giving monkey hugs goodnight. She finished the juice cup and gasped for air as I was walking out and she called me back into the room.

“Daddy!”

“Yes?”

“I feel dizzy and like I might be sick.”

“Well… You just sucked the bottom out of a juice cup and probably didn’t breath the whole time so I think dizzy is a reasonable feeling.”

“What do you mean?”

I then made a show out of acting like I was drinking her juice cup very intensely and then gasping for breath and laying in the floor. Exaggerating the point and making all of the girls laugh. Then I gave the cup back and told them goodnight and shut the door.

No big deal there right?

The next Saturday we go to a dinner party with the kiddos to play with our friend’s kiddos and just to hang out and have a good time. Fellow blogger familydoctormom, or MaryAnn and her husband the Professor have a couple of girls that our girls love playing with. Everything was going great. Our gracious hosts had dinner, dessert, and entertaining toys for all the kids to play with while we visited in the kitchen. Then the sugar of the cupcakes began to wear the children down and they start flocking back to the parents. Like little alien ships they return to the mothership and crawl up in our laps.

Prima the Ballerina was sitting on the couch and we were chatting with our friends. She made a comment that “Daddy is funny.”

Familydoctormom replies, “Oh yeah? What does daddy do that is funny?”

She doesn’t miss a beat, “He drinks a lot really fast and then passes out in the floor.”

I protest, “Wait wait let me explain.”

Too late, they are all laughing hysterically. I am a little concerned at how easily the description rolled out of her thoughts. Almost like she had said it before…

“So Prima did you tell anyone else about our game?”

“Oh yes. I tell my friends that my daddy drinks until he can’t breathe and falls in the floor and he is so funny.”

She is laughing and so is everyone else and I have nothing to add at that point.

Once again I expect a call from the school or the government any day. I really have to work on descriptions or context or something with these kids. Next thing you know they will be bringing home gifts from the angel tree at school because the teacher feels sorry for my alcoholic struggles.

If you try to make it fun for your children and they portray you as a fall-down drunk then this story is for you. You’re welcome. Underdaddy to the rescue.

Results Page

I am still figuring out this survey thing. I realize that you cant see the results or comments of anyone before you so I have added the results below.

If you are tuning in and confused. We took weird questions here and then I made a survey of all the weird questions. If you took time to answer and comment then you can check out each one below. I got lots of extra questions after everyone saw what everyone else wrote so this will probably have another round in the future. Good stuff and I like the comments on the broken toilet and the kids being jerks. I was surprised that some of the questions were fairly common. It will be open indefinitely so feel free to go on either link above and put your two cents in.

Question 8 – Weirdest Thing You Have Eaten.

Question 10 – Popping Zits

Did You Really Just Ask That!

Over the past few days I have been collecting strange or inappropriate questions that maybe other people share or would find interesting. I was a little surprised at how much these questions centered around the excretory system. Explains the popularity of the pees and poops dolly. I feel like we are all a little closer today. Creepy but closer.

I tried to ease into the inappropriate subjects and some phrasing is softened but I think these questions get at the intent. This is purely for enjoyment and once again I wont be tracking any answers so be honest and we will get more out of it.

Survey Click Here

If you feel that I missed anything feel free to comment that too.

The Inappropriate Questions

Children and drunk people share one characteristic that I would love to be able to control in real life. Uninhibited and brutal honesty. But children go beyond drunks in this case because they have something extra. Curiosity. That leads to epic questions and uncomfortable scenarios. Who doesn’t love standing in a crowd with a four year old tugging on your shirt while asking, “Daddy, Daddy! Did that man poop his diaper? He smells like corn chips!”. Or how about your kid pointing at someone with a round belly and saying, “Baby baby!” You try to whisper and tell them that they are pointing at a man but they don’t care or understand at that point.

WordPress has a survey or polling feature that I don’t fully understand but I would like to try it out in a couple of steps but I need participation. I know that is a lot to ask because, if my word processor function is working correctly, you have read through a staggering one hundred and sixty eight words. Exhausting. You are already feeling like something else is probably on the ol’ newsfeed and that life is passing you by but stick with me just a second.

First take a second and think of some weird question that you want people to answer honestly but you would never in a million years ask. For example, my curiosity sometimes wonders things like, “How many people have dug in their own bellybutton and then smelled it?” Totally weird and uncomfortable but part of you says, “Okay freak, what is the answer?”

I don’t know the answer but for some reason I want to. I bet you do too.

Enter Question Here

So enter a question at the above link or email me at Underdaddy@charter.net . Don’t let me down, I mean if you read this far you might as well click the link and put in something… anything. Seriously, whatever pops into your head.

I will pile the questions up and put them in another survey. Then we can all rest easy knowing what kind of strange people we live and work around every day. Sharing this on Facebook will move it along better than likes and we get more questions to enjoy.

Soap the Tree

The holidays are a time of memories and tradition. We grow up celebrating holidays a certain way and it becomes ingrained in who we are. Sometimes our traditions are not always that traditional.

My earliest Christmas memories are tied forever to the smell of the big green and red candles, Brenda Lee’s “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree”, and soaping. If you are like most people I talk to about soaping then you have one eyebrow higher than the other right now and you are thinking, “What is soaping?”

Soaping a Christmas tree involves shaving Ivory soap into a bowl and then blending it with boiling water. Whip it into a foamy froth with a cake beater and spread it by hand onto the branches of the Christmas tree. It has several useful functions; Looks like snow, holds the dead needles on the tree longer, and makes the house smell like a fresh bar of soap.

For most of the childhood that I remember the Christmas trees were always fake. My mother had a tree with color coded branches that was fun to assemble but over the years took some pretty heavy wear and tear. If Charlie Brown had went looking for a fake tree he might have found something like ours in a smashed box in the clearance section.

I liked that tree.

That is how nostalgia works, I suppose. I also like multi-colored lights with the really big bulbs. They always cast a glow into my room and from early December until sometime in February I had a soft rainbow glow of a night light. I still love multicolored lights.

There was also a gigantic Santa head that we hung over the garage on what I imagine was a lonely nail. I call it a lonely nail because it held on to the giant plastic Santa head in an almost constant winter wind. Something about the shape of his beard or the gable over the garage made the head thump against the house. Some nights it was an all-night struggle between the wind and the nail to see who could control the glowing Santa head. There’s nothing like waking up at three am from something banging on the outside of your house only to look outside and see lights and shadows dancing around the front yard. I don’t love the Santa head but I enjoy the memory.

Fast forward several years and I am newly involved in a long term relationship with Supermom. We are living with her father while I finish school and I tell her on our first Christmas together about soaping the tree. She gives me the eyebrow squinch and so does my soon-to-be Father in law. Apparently I grew up thinking this was a “thing” and it is not a “thing” to everyone I have asked since. Somehow I convince them to let me demonstrate and we have a soaped tree for Christmas. It was something from my memory and it made Christmas feel a little more like the ones I remembered as a kid.

Take another leap of three or four years and we have a house and children of our own. We restarted the tradition of the soaping of the tree. The Grandparents joined in and we took several pictures commemorating the event. We take pictures of everything, or used to before we had so many kids, and while it was special it didn’t stand out as significant to other events around the holidays.

Prima learning the right way to decorate a tree.

This year I started my blog and I looked through old pictures to get some images for stories and maybe rekindle some older memories for a good post. It worked for a couple of funny stories about rabbits and clowns but don’t read those right now. Finish this and then come back up the page if you are interested.

One image I found was the picture of me as a kid helping Grandma soap the tree. It immediately struck me how similar the picture was to the recent photos of my own children and the Grandparents in their life.

We do these things at the holidays and it seems burdensome. The kids don’t seem to care for more than fifteen minutes and I wonder if they even notice. Then I look at my pictures and am reminded that it isn’t about the kids enjoying the here and now. Christmas tradition, and any tradition like it, is about planning seeds of memory that flower into nostalgia, and later give fruits of live to a family where new seeds are planted and the process repeats.

That is why I soap my Christmas tree. That is why the ornaments are a growing collection of personal knick knacks and special things with no cute theme or organized thought. That is why the lights are multicolored and they stay on the entire time the tree is up. The girls have a small tree for their room and I can only imagine into the future how that may affect what they enjoy. The other night one stopped me while leaving the room and asked, “Daddy, can you leave the lights on our tree? It is a pretty night light.” If you know the big ball of emotion that I can be then you could head my forced crackly answer of, “Sure honey, as long as you want them.”

Explosion of Christmas Tree awesomeness.

These happy moments are the ones parents try to save and watch and re-create. It is the reason that we will do the same thing next year even though there is very little that I actually enjoy about the holiday season. We all bring in our traditions and they mix and become something new. We have a list of things that are required to officially kick off the Christmas season.

Christmas tree, soapy branches and colored lights.
Christmas songs, All I Want for Christmas Is You by Vince Vance and the Valiants and Tender Tennessee Christmas by Alabama.
An evening where we turn off the lights and leave on the tree while watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas. (This is my favorite book to read all year round.)

I also enjoy planning Santa and sneaking with Supermom to place Santa without waking up our elves. Snuggling each other on the couch for a few minutes after the stage is set for Christmas morning. The soft glow of the lights casting shadows over the toys. The smell of baked cookies and milk. The note to Santa. They all sit frozen in time for a few seconds while I hold Supermom in my lap and we relax. That quiet few seconds is parenting, love, partnership, relaxation, and recharging for tomorrow. It is the silent climax to our holiday duties and a sigh of relief.

Those are things I never could see as a child and they only make sense from this side of the coin. Tradition can take all kinds of different forms. The only place I know to start is by putting soap on a half-dead Frasier Fur tree.

I hope we all realize what traditions we can start as parents and make an effort to make them strange and memorable. If you actually have heard of soaping a tree, this one’s for you. You’re Welcome.

-Underdaddy to the Rescue