Lessons

You are a bad parent. Yes you.

You feed your kids crappy food. It may be all they eat but you allow it.

They drink too much juice at bedtime.

They stay up too late.

You use the television to babysit. And it is Spongebob.

You avoid some fun things because you don’t want the stress of managing the swirling mass of kids.

Does one have a saggy diaper that needs to be changed? You probably missed that because you were staring at a smartphone huh?

You forgot to brush their teeth before bed.

Your three year old just said, “Shit!” in context.

Your kid handed you a book at bedtime and you said, “Not tonight, daddy is tired.”

You just made your kid cry for wanting your attention. You are frustrated because they want to spend time with you and you are busy with something stupid. They only want you to look at the picture they just drew for you. It is the two of you holding hands…. I hope you hate yourself. It’s a wonder that your kids don’t already.

I never felt lower. She detailed the 'fist bump'.

That last one really happened and I never felt lower. She even detailed the ‘fist bump’ that we practiced.

What a terrible parent…

These are all things I want to scream at myself from time to time.

I get inside my own head big time. I sincerely hope none of you do this but, I suspect that isn’t true.

Life is such a whirlpool of being late, putting things off, and waking up tired to start it all again the same way. I watch myself being a bad parent and I hear the words that come out of my mouth but somehow it keeps happening. I try to balance the bad with extra effort on the good. Maybe I missed reading a book the night before so I will read two books the next.

I know my self-criticism is too hard but it piles up and I can’t help it. Besides, I look at comment wars on Facebook and I know that someone else is probably saying those things about me anyway.

A true first world problem is that we have the luxury of obsessing over stupid small details.

We took a short vacation recently and managed to slow things down. At first, things seemed like more of the same just at a different address. Then we went to tour a historic area and we managed to spend a beautiful day hanging out and taking things in. I was reminded of how hard life used to be and still is in some places. The area was Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Our first stop was at a log cabin. There was one four sided room with a fireplace on one wall and a door on every other. Just a floor, four walls, and a roof. Made out of trees cut down nearby. There were no marks on the wall where pictures had hung. There was no insulation under the raised floor. It wasn’t wealth or poverty at the time, it was just a house on the edge of the wilderness. The soil wasn’t even good for farming, hence the song “Rocky Top”.

Cozy home with a view.

We continued on our way and the next stop was a church and a cemetery. This location really sat with me for a while. The girls played on the old piano and the worn pews. Laughing and shouting and being loud. We took a few pictures and walked out the back door and strolled along the edge of the cemetery.

Quiet neighborhood.

My wife and I were curious how long people lived in those days so we started reading the dates on the tombstones. More than half of the grave markers were for children. Many of them stillborn and many of the others were under the age of three. What made it worse was that several had the same last name and were in sequential years. Those parents lost children year after year and kept going because staying alive was all they knew how to do. I doubt they discussed name brand versus generic or if harsh chemicals in Desitin were harmful.

Two months in 1906 was all she got.

That night I taught Jane how to play pool. She is really good at aiming and with a little arm length she will probably be a good player. We played completely made up card games.

Leaned too far.

The next day we spent our hard earned money on Build-A-Bear animals for each of the girls.

Lady Bug got a stuffed doggy. Worth every cent when she hugged it up and went to sleep.

We rode a Ferris wheel, played in an arcade, and ate pizza.

Three of those dots are family members who chose not to ride the two hundred foot wheel.

That night I caught Supermom working a puzzle and the older two even learned to play Stratego. Prima the five year old ballerina is actually a formidable strategic planner. We watched Ernest Scared Stupid and they loved hearing him call a scary troll, “Booger Lips” and “Butt Breath”. I relaxed a little and realized that they are older and smarter than I wanted to admit.

Quality time.

I learned that I might need to work on parts of my parenting but not necessarily the same areas I have been worried about. Enjoying each other and the fact that we live in one of the best times in history. Despite what the media tells us, things are better than they have ever been. We expect kids to live past birth. We worry about organic labeling. We argue if spanking, timeout, or bribery are damaging to fragile egos. How lucky are we?

I get the privilege of putting the girls to bed every night and making sure I pass out kisses and hugs equally. Sometimes one of them will randomly say, “I love you daddy” for no specific reason.

Maybe I’m not the monster I paint myself to be after all. I sincerely hope that nobody else is either. Maybe we should all reach out and congratulate each other once in a while for keeping our kids alive or say, “I noticed your kid owns some clothes, good job.”

Enjoy the view.

For people who are wearing themselves to a nub and feeling like a terrible parent, this post is for you. Slow down even if its just for a day. You’re welcome.

Underdaddy to the rescue.

So today I am on the confessional. I kill small animals. Not on purpose or maliciously but it happens. That doesn’t make it any better, I know. In fact my bad luck isn’t limited to animals. This black cloud of death has always lingered around house plants and small scale gardening too.

I have a certified black thumb. I can’t begin to tally the tomato plants that were doomed when I put them in the cart at Lowes. Plant food, over watering, under watering, bugs, over application of pesticide, kids trampling the plants, mowing the plants with the actual lawn mower. I was not meant to sustain small and fragile life. Our long term pets make it because they remind me of what they need.

My wife is also not immune to the accidental murder juju. One spring in a particularly wet season we found some tadpoles in a puddle across the street. Being awesome parents we thought, “What a wonderful opportunity to teach the kids about biology.” We collected the tadpoles in a large flat plastic Tupperware container and filled it with pond water. The kids were really excited and I energetically described how they would grow legs and lose the tails. Then the tadpoles would become frogs and leave the water. Each little swimming thing was given a name and we checked on them all day long. My oh my how the girls loved those tadpoles.

Those little dots are tadpoles.

Once the kids went to bed we talked about what a mistake we had made. Here are these tadpoles that are living and we have zero idea what to do to keep them alive. The slippery slope of reasoning took us to putting pieces of crackers in the water and adding crushed up stoneware for the tadpoles to use once they get new legs. Now, I’m not placing any blame but the next day someone put the tadpoles on a picnic table to get some sun and by the time I saw them they were baked. I assured my wife it was a quick death but who can say how long they fought… Then we thought of the kids.
Fortunately the kids were away at Grandmother’s house so we had a short few hours to come up with a plan. Obviously the kids would be destroyed emotionally from such a devastating loss. We had to come up with a believable story or find a more interesting replacement. My children are expert interrogators but they have the attention span of a fruit fly. The only option was to replace the tadpoles with something even more difficult to keep alive. Fish. What a spectacular idea.

New distraction

The pet store sold us a starter tank and a set of fish that were supposed to play well together. They were beautiful; pink, rainbow colors, glow in the dark, and a sucker fish for the algae. The children returned home to a bubbling tank of entertainment. We watched the fish for hours like a group of college kids staring at a Lava Lamp. The best part was that they didn’t mention the tadpoles. Success.

Oooooooh.

Then a few of the fish got the Ick, a fungus that kills everything in the tank except the sucker fish. Our replacements had the Ick too. We treated the tank and only half of the third round of fish died. Our kids, who we worried would be devastated by death of a beloved pet, had made a game of “spot the floating fish” and “who’s turn is it to flush?”

Once we went on vacation and I guess there was a power outage that turned off the filter pump. A week later there was a cesspool of fish skeletons. The sucker fish, named Vacuum, was happily eating the algae. Then a fish got sucked up the filter pipe and decayed. That was awesome too. I finally sent the sucker fish to a bigger tank at a new home and put the ghost town fish tank on the back porch. Suddenly the sight of a tank with a little water on the back porch triggered a memory and the second child looks at me and asks, “What happened to our tadpoles?” The first child, Calamity Jane, answers immediately, “They probably died.” They had zero concern for the tadpoles or the fish. I could have told them that the tadpoles turned to unicorns and flew away.

It was decided, from now on we will just observe things like bugs and fish and birds. They aren’t meant to be pets anyway and they will be safer from us. This seemed like a very good rule.

One night we noticed a beautiful green and yellow tree frog on our back window. He was stuck to the glass and every now and then he would move around. The girls watched in wonder and we got several good photos.

Majestic beauty of the tree frog.

We even followed the new rule. Previously, I would have put him in a box and tried to feed him flies. We would have looked at him and eventually he would have starved or been baked in the sun. We had learned our lesson and the next morning he was gone but we rested well knowing he was in the natural habitat. No doubt eating flies and enjoying the cool night air.

I know the air was cool because I let the dog out at about 1:00 in the morning. She has the bladder of a squirrel. By 7:00 am she already has to pee again and when I let her out again I found this…