Have you been peed on today?

I was changing my 20 month-old's diaper, and once I got through all of the dirty work he stood up and was grabbing toys off the top shelf of the changing table, so I'm holding him against my chest putting things back where they belong, trying to get a diaper on him, all the while my mind is wandering to comments I heard on sports radio the other day by a host that I don't always listen too, his show "the herd" (how appropriate) comes on in the morning between two shows I do listen to, the morning show on Newark's Jazz station WBGO and Steven A. Smith on ESPN radio, anyway this guy is dissing people who have a counter culture view of the world, people in grad school / east coast university grads / intellectuals, and stay at home dad's, (so basically he's hitting me where I live) why I don't really know, I didn't catch why he was on this diatribe, but stupidly it really pissed me off, partially because judging by other times I've heard this guy, he seemed intelligent enough to know better. So basically the past few days I've been going over this my mind, hoping to run into him some where so I could bash his fucking head open, or some other aggro fantasy, I guess it's because I hate how it's easy for these radio personalities to diss people who aren't in front of them, and how they appeal to the tyranny of the majority, "there aren't many stay at home dads, or many counter culture people listening to sports radio so I can diss them and it won't effect my ratings, or get me in trouble with my superiors."
So as I'm playing this over in my head for about the third time my son starts to urinate on me. And you know what, it just pointed out to me to focus on my own life, don't worry about the haters, closed minded people and other ignorant assholes, and lastly don't pollute my time listening or watching crap on the radio or tv. Still sucks getting peed on though.

My Four year-old started full-time preschool yesterday, I understand kids being in daycare all day if no one can be home with them during the day, but a 6 hour school day is too long for pre-school I think, but that’s how they do it now-a-days.

Junk food, TV and the internet 'are poisoning childhood'
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23366610-details/Junk+food%2C+TV+and+the+internet+%27are+poisoning+childhood%27/article.do
"A child's mental and physical growth cannot be accelerated," "It changes in biological time, not electrical speed. Childhood is not a race." "In a fast-moving, hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum."

I think these statements hit things right on the head, and touch on what I was alluding to when commenting on six hour school days for preschoolers.

Unfortunately the more busy I am, the less I blog, which means when the shit hits the fan, I’m usually too engrossed to retell the tales on this page, I’ve jotted down a number of notes in my palm pilot that will hopefully soon make there way on to this blog.

Temper Temper

http://www.wikihow.com/Handle-Your-Child%27s-Temper-Tantrum

 

Fear of a Giant Talking Tank Engine

Spent the weekend with my family and parents and went to Strasbourg, PA taking the kids to see a life size functioning Thomas the Tank Engine, lots of fun, tons of merchandise, my four year old was totally overloaded, my parents were like pick what ever you want us to buy you, and he had choice paralysis and had to be "forced" to pick some items. Not like we wanted to buy him stuff he didn't want, but we knew they had stuff that we couldn't get in a regular store and that he'd totally regret not getting some of the cool items they had on sale.
(They had mad Thomas stuff in Tokyo, Thomas candy, gum, cookies, chips, crackers, every kind of toys, bibs, clothes, etc. ad nauseum.)
He was pretty afraid when we told him that we were going to see a "real" Thomas, and it took him a while to warm up once we got there, he kind of freaked out when we got online to board Thomas, I basically had to threaten him with throwing out all of his Thomas toys to get him to board the train without a complete and very public meltdown. Once the train took off he was totally cool.
I was talking to him about the trip today, after he reconfirmed that he had a good time I asked him why he was scared, was it that he was going to see a "real" Thomas? He said yes, and then I thought and asked, "Did you think that Thomas was going to talk?" to which he answered yes.
So I was like now I get it, an actual talking giant train the size of a small building would be pretty fucking terrifying to anyone. "So would you want to go next to ride Thomas again?" "Yeah and to buy stuff again too!"

Bitter Pill

Coming back from vacation is always a bitter pill of sorts, particularly an urban vacation. I just got back from Tokyo two days ago, and spent most of yesterday driving through summer weekend Jersey Shore traffic to pick up my kids from their maternal grandmother's. When you come back from a tropical vacation you know that if you lived in Aruba or Grand Cayman or where ever unless they decriminalized drugs and you were sitting on 2 mil in pension you'd probably wind up bored out of your mind, doing some kind of service industry job, because that's what people do in those places.
An urban vacation for me is like a time machine to eight years ago when I had spending money and wasn't thinking about kids or how we're going figure out a way to flip our current house to get a bigger one in the same town we live in without much additional income, again life's temporarily about seeing cool shit, eating good food, sex, getting loaded and for me of course CD shopping in a city that much of world finds interesting.
Then back to the future it's 11:20 PM I've some how watched 2 hours of stupid TV because I'm afraid of waking up the two children that are sleeping on my lap, the younger of which is making me pay for being away for two weeks by screaming every time I'm out his site for three seconds, or if I'm not carrying him. The cookie I gave the older one that I was amazed he ate so quickly before he fell asleep has actually not been eaten at all but is crushed underneath him and ground into our velvet couch, and the handy vacuum has been full for two months so I can't use that, so I have to shake the cushion off out back, where there's a congregation of about 3o to 40 bugs hovering around waiting to rush into what they think is my cool air-conditioned home, but they're wrong because the guy who installed our new furnace last fall never hooked up any of the cooling system, which the repair man who came by today said was not the norm (the repair man had his forearms pierced with two large barbells in each arm, I've never seen that before), my house has been hot as fucking Hades, so I turn off the kitchen lights open the back sliders, stick the cushion out and start dusting it off, but wait I forgot about the motion trigger security light out back, so it's a mad dash back in whilst fending off bugs, which after going to so many Buddhist temples in Kamakura I'm trying not to kill so many bugs as I use to. Then I realize that that stomach ache that has reached back to my spin is actually hunger, so I heat up the bocca burger I was planning to eat three and a half hours ago for a third time, and currently I realize that that was 40 minutes ago, so I think I'll need to move on to a new burger or other food.

My wife is still in Tokyo on business for a few more days, so alone I'm getting to shoulder all of our children's insecurities from not seeing their parents for two weeks and imagining that being a single parent to more than one small child must really fucking suck.
Rewinding a bit, once I finally get the little one up to bed and begin to clean up, an actually good show comes on TV, that political comedian, Frank Black I think his name is, anyway I try to watch him as I clean up, and of course underneath the couch cushion there's enough crumbs and raisons to satisfy a preschooler on a two hour car ride that I have to clean up now as well. I haven't really been able to unpack, and repair man has to come back to fix the A.C.

Stay @ Home Dad hits the front page

I was interviewed about TV being used as a surrogate babysitter for children for this article in the Newark Star Ledger.

Parents refuse to pull the plug on kids' TV, study shows
For tots, electronic baby-sitters are a way of life
Thursday, May 25, 2006
BY PEGGY O'CROWLEY
Star-Ledger Staff

With an infant and a toddler at home, Stacy Theilmeier of Verona needs some help. So when she wants to take a quick shower, she turns on the television for 2 1/2-year-old Sydney. And when she wants to get 1-year-old Chloe settled in bed at night, Sydney goes off to her room to watch TV.
"I worry she watches too much TV. It's a normal kind of mom thing," said Theilmeier. "But I'm being realistic about it. I have two highly demanding children and this frees me up to do things like showering."
The Theilmeier children's TV use is typical of American families today, according to a new study released yesterday by the Kaiser Family Foundation that found a significant number of very young children are routinely exposed to media.
Two-thirds of children 6 months to 6 years old watch some television every day, as do 40 percent of very young children (6 to 23 months). These numbers, experts say, indicate television is so much a part of family life that many parents are ignoring the American Academy of Pediatrics' advice that children ages 2 and under should not watch television at all.
"I had this sense of kids clamoring to use media and parents trying to keep their finger in the dam," said Victoria Rideout, the project's head researcher. "I found that not to be a very accurate picture in most cases."
Rideout and her colleagues conducted a similar survey three years ago that found the same high levels of TV viewing among young children. This survey looked at why and how parents and their kids watch media.
The study's results are based on telephone interviews with 1,051 parents and some focus groups. Respondents gave two main reasons why their children use media: It's educational and it serves as a baby-sitter.
At the same time, most parents (83 percent) said they try to choose age-appropriate shows. About 60 percent said they have rules about the amount of time their children can watch television.
Carlo of Montclair makes sure his sons, Giancarlo, 4, and Matteo, 16 months, watch only educational television and he tries to limit the commercials. But while he and his wife Julie(a)nne have set time limits, they tend to creep up a little higher than he'd like.
"We shoot for one hour a day, but often it's a little bit longer, if I'm making dinner," he said. Salgado estimated the boys watch one to two hours of television a day. "It's really tough. The 4-year-old is glued to the set."
The study also found that children are likely to watch more television in homes where the TV is on all or most of the time, or if they have TVs in their rooms.
High rates of TV viewing among young children have led some experts to ask the academy to alter its recommendation of "no television." A better strategy, they said, would be to create more age-appropriate, educational content.
Just weeks ago, DIRECTTV unveiled BabyFirstTV, the first cable and satellite channel to provide 24-hour programming for babies and toddlers.
At the kickoff ceremony, Edward McCabe, physician-in-chief of Mattell Children's Hospital at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of the channel's advisory board, echoed the argument for better programming.
But critics argue that the long-term effects of TV are not yet known.
"There's no evidence that it (TV) is educational for children under 2," said Susan Linn, a Harvard University psychologist who heads the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, which is against marketing to children.
"What research we do have points to that it can interfere with cognitive and language development and takes children away from creative play, which is the real foundation of learning," she said. The coalition is suing both Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby, the makers of music and videos to young children, for making allegedly unfounded claims that their products are educational.
"It's important parents get honest information about the potential harm or benefit to exposing kids to screen media," she said. "It's a short-term solution with long-term implications for children's behavior, health and values."
Peggy O'Crowley covers family issues. She may be reached at pocrowley@starledger.com or (973) 392-5810.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Monkey Style

I don't know if this is the final piece of proof to sway those who don't believe in evolution, but ...
even though while eating little ones wear bibs and sit in highchairs with big assed trays they usually manage to get 2 to 5 teaspoons of food on themselves, the chair and the floor. This being the case I always have to brush them off before I let them out of their highchairs else-wise that'll be another 3 teaspoons of food on the floor (ant season is on the way too).

So I'm picking pastina off of my toddler while listening to the radio and notice that rather than putting them on a plate on napkin for the last 90 seconds I've been popping them in my mouth monkey style!
Makes me wonder if I've ever done that before without noticing it?

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One thing I find endlessly cute about my toddler, and his brother when he was a toddler, is that everytime I take off his shoes he wiggles his toes without fail.

"Daddy I know everything"

My preschooler had his third soccer class this past week, and I'm glad to say it's been going well, much better than the first time around, the first class he tried to hide behind me and refused to participate. Now he's one of the more aggro kids and most talented kids in the class, nothing too aggro though, I wouldn't put up with that, just appropriate sports aggro.

So when ever we go to the park where the soccer class is we get ice cream before we leave. Well the Ice Cream man hasn't been around so when we get home we'll walk around the block to the store to pick up some ice cream.

Anyway he got some huge prepackaged cone today, I let him eat half of it, as I was wrapping up the left over portion he asked me for a cracker to get the sweet taste out of his mouth.
I asked who taught him that, Mommy, one of his Grandmothers? He said no, I said, "Well how do you know that," to which he answered, "Daddy I know everything."
Okay.

I had a nuclear stress test yesterday, the doctor administering it seemed to think I probably didn't need it, and kept asking if I told my primary care doctor that I was having chest pains, which I didn't. My doctor said I may have Mitral Valve Prolapse, and a slightly enlarged heart, neither of which is a big deal. The "Nuclear" doc said those wouldn't really warrent a nuclear stress test, which made me think (a) is my regular doctor just being thorough (b) is he just sticking it to my insurace by having me do these fancy assed expensive tests and (c) what the fuck is the nuclear component in the stress test?
The nuke doc had a little box of radioactive material on his desk, which I meant to ask about but forgot when the treadmill got cranked up because it was taking too long for my heart to get stressed.
ANYWAY I said all of that to say this, they put a bunch of "electrode" type things on my chest which my preschooler found interesting, I told him they turned me into a robot. He's into robots lately because of the movie Robots and a SpongeBob game that has robots.
So I peel a few electrodes off of me and tell my son, "I'm going to turn you into a robot," and stick them on him and he starts freaking out and crying.
I'm like what's the matter, and he starts saying, "I don't want to be a robot, I don't want to be a robot!"
I explained I was only joking and take them off of him, five minutes later he puts some back on himself and starts pretending to be a robot.

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My preschooler will turn four this month, his feet don't look like baby feet anymore it's weird.

Sonic Youth and other band shirts for babies and small children:
http://www.babywit.com/bands_1.html

NIGHT TERRORIST

Last Friday night into Saturday morning from 11:30 pm to 4:30 am my toddler had the night terrors intermittently for 2 1/2 hours, thank god I don't need to sleep or anything like that.
Now I'm dealing with my first sinus infection, not pleasant, at first I could barely blow my nose and when I did, a sound akin to a creaky door shutting in a haunted house would emanate from my sinus that was audible for a radius of seven feet.

My poor baby

Another source of pain can be added to my poor preschooler's list of woes ... unfortunately my two sons have not inherited my cat-like agility but my wife's propensity for hurting herself through a deadly combination of easy startle-ability and clumsiness. My preschooler inherited her low pain threshold as well, the toddler has head made of rock and can shake off getting needles with only 5 to 10 seconds of crying.
Back to my point, I was getting the boys together so we could take advantage of the 70 degree weather and stroll them a few blocks to meet their mommy on her way back from a doctor's appointment. The almost four year old was laying on his back playing with a baby digital drum toy when I yelled, "Don't make me ask you a third time, get up so we can meet mommy."
Well I should have taken his genetic disposition for jumpiness into consideration before using my DAD VOICE as I walked in the room because he let go of the drum toy and jumped up all at once and the toy landed on his front teeth.
He is pretty dramatic so one can never be sure how hurt he actually is right after an accident happens, but I could tell this was real pain because of how quickly his crying escalated to five-alarm level. I gave him an ice pop, which I always do when he hurts him mouth, it's a lot easier than holding an ice pack on his mouth. After about five minutes he said thanks for the ice pop but it didn't work my mouth still hurts.
After meeting my wife, he had me tell her what happened (I'm like his publicist, he always telling me to tell people things that have happened to him or that he's done), she noticed that one of his front teeth is chipped. Man that sucks, he's just had such a rough frickin' week ...
Some potential good news, he passed my not very scientific hearing test with his "exploded" eardrum ear, so hopefully that is healing up nicely.

the Hives / Overwhelmed part deux

My preschooler's ear has been filling up with dried blood the past to nights which was worrying my wife, she was afraid that it might seal up and not allow the busted ear drum "ooze" to leak out, then lead to more infection, so we got an appointment with OUR REAL DOCTOR, the one who is one of the top pediatricians in NJ. He was concerned about my son's loss of hearing and wants to see us again in a week to ten days, not the three weeks his associate suggested. He also said if the ear isn't cleared up to his satisfaction or if there are still hearing issues he'll send us to an ear specialist who'll check things out with some kind of special microscope.

We also noticed that our son had broken out with hives all over his limbs. The doctor said that was most likely from the virus that had caused him to be sick and that it was most likely brought to the surface from being exposed to heat, which made sense because I had just given him a warm bath. Unfortunately the hives became super itchy and his face got all puffy and bloated like he’s been on a month long drinking bender, my poor son has been through the ringer this past week. The doctor suggested children’s Benadryl for the hives, which at last check seems to be working.

Overwhelming

Being a parent has been so overwhelming these past months, back through the holidays really that I've been lame about posting. I don't want to just complain and bitch and moan, but if I can't always put an entertaining spin on parenthood at least I can be real and post about the underside of parenting that you're parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents don't talk to you about because they want you to have kids.

So the illness continues, it seems like two out of five days one or both of my boys are sick, and if one of them is sick then they other one will soon be, and then I'm next, and my wife catches it about half of the time, I guess because she spends more time out of the house than I do. Being sick so much takes a toll on my psyche, I hope it doesn't do so to the kids as well. On top of that up until a couple of weeks ago for two months four out of five nights one or both of my kids diapers failed them in the night. I had to wait a month to switch my toddler to the next diaper size because we had a big assed Costco box to get through before switching up to the next bigger size.

The preschooler brings home a cough, virus or sniffle about once a week, which turns into a cold or flu about twice a month. Right now we're all ill, my preschooler threw up at school on friday and now has an infection in both of his ears. At first when we called the doctor's office they were like just give him some Motrin and deal with it, he'll get over it in a week, but then he got to the point where if he wasn't sleeping he was crying so I brought him in to see the doctor. We didn't get to see our doctor of course, which always seems to happen when you are really sick and don't have an appointment, anyway the other doctor wrote my son a prescription of Amoxicillin, which was cool because they hardly ever prescribe antibiotics anymore.
So this morning my wife notices that our son's right ear and pillow is covered in dried blood.
We call the doctor for the third day in a row now, he gets back to us and says that it's not out of the norm for a child's ear drum to burst (or as my wife kept saying "explode") and bleed.
Okay, not good but nothing to be worried about.
Later that afternoon my son is trying to talk to his maternal grandmother on the phone and he can't hear her with the phone up to his right ear ... my wife however can hear her mother through the phone, and has him switch the phone to his left ear, with which he can hear her.
Needless to say we're a little freaked out, and call the doctor's office again, now for the fourth time in three days which I'm sure they love, hours go by with no call back. Our regular pediatrician is one of the top doctors in the state and he does a really good job of letting us know what's going on with our children and what we can expect, his associate is good too, but sometimes seems bothered and is not nearly as communicative. For these reasons I wasn't totally panicked about our son's loss of hearing because, as I told my wife, I wouldn't be surprised if he just failed to mention that an ear drum "exploding" would result in a loss of hearing.
Well he gets back to us at the end of the day and states yes a ruptured eardrum would cause temporary loss of hearing for two to three weeks. WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO MENTION THAT WHEN I TOLD HIM MY SON HAD A LOW BUDGET HORROR FILM COMING OUT OF EAR, but hey it must be more fun for him to have us calling back all day and wasting both of our times.

Something about ear infections that I didn't know, they mostly come from water/mucus from inside one's head not outside, from things like blowing your nose and mucus shoots back to where your nasal passage meets you ear canal, or from brain ooze leaking into your ear canal, okay I just made up the brain ooze, but other gross internal fluid exchanges that I can't exactly remember right now.