Gun Free Kids

GunFreeKids Legislative Scorecard
Seems like a cool organization, plus I like the idea of making legislators who support and take money from the gun lobby accountable.

"I look cool / Do I look chubby in this jacket?"

My kindergartner always tells me when he gets in trouble at school, which is pretty rare, and also when other kids get in trouble, which is good because we have an idea of who we don't want him to hang out with, and it's setting a good precedent for the future, when the kinds of trouble kids are getting in is less cute or innocuous.
So he starts telling us about one kid that we know gets in trouble, who his teacher in fact has decided to not let our boy sit with because he prompted my son to tell some girl that she's not pretty. Which was the only time he's really gotten into trouble.
Anyway he's telling me how this kid called him poopy-something or other and pushed him. I ask if he told the teacher, he says yes but it was clean up time so the teacher didn't do anything about it. To get the whole story from young children you have to ask them the same question a few times often in different ways because they don't necessarily understand what information you are trying to get out of them. So I again ask why did he call you names, and my son answers, "Okay I'm looking in the mirror saying, 'I look cool' (as he reenacts smiling and pointing at himself in the mirror) and then he called me a poopy-head and I didn't stop looking in the mirror, then he pushed me."
Oh, I understand now.

---------------------------

My son has a cool Timberland jacket that he's been wearing since the weather has finally begun to cool off, so while we are driving to school today he asks me, "What does chubby mean?" so I tell him it means a little overweight, a little fat, but knowing that a question asked never comes from nowhere I ask him why does he want to know. He's like I just want to know, and I tell him it's okay to tell me, did he see something on TV, or did a kid at school call someone chubby?
He answers, "Okay, do I look chubby in this jacket?"
Me, "No! did someone tell you that, you're the least chubby person in our family." (He's lucked into a thin yet muscular physique)
Him, "Who's chubby in our family?"
2 1/2 year old son yells his own name in response to the who's chubby question, which is slightly true.
Me, "No one's chubby, but you're totally not chubby at all."
5 year-old, "No not me, I mean the jacket, do I LOOK chubby in the jacket?"
Me, "No you don't, your jacket is cool."
Him, "Okay."

Sexual misconduct plagues US schools

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_re_us/teacher_sex_abuse

Daddy, Am I Going to Die?

My Five year-old asked me when is he going to die.
GREAT
I was like I don't know, heck maybe you won't die, maybe you'll go to heaven, so it's like you don't need your body any more but your soul lives on, so you can't really be dead then can you? Well at least that's what a lot of people think, and that's what they believe at the church you and mommy go to, but really nobody really knows.
"But you know daddy right?"
No I don't know, but I hope that's what will happen. Who told you, you were going to die, or did you just figure that out on your own?
"I just figured it out."
Oh, I don't know son, hopefully you'll just go to heaven.

Now I've noticed his wheels turning when we talk about humans and animals dying, and I knew that eventually he'd figure it out, and judge me if you must, knowing that I lean to the agnostic side when I'm not leaning to the Buddhist side, but I'll be damned if I'm telling my five year old that he can look forward to a life of trials, tribulations and travail* to be rendered meaningless by an inescapable death, I don't mind the idea of being worm's fodder, or turning to vapor and becoming one with the universe or whatever bullshit we tell ourselves in place of the self deluding comfort lies of religion, but I'm trying to give my son a few years before he crawls up his own arse via his inherited inclination for neurotic introspection.
Honestly sometimes I'd rather he live deluded and happy having some all encompassing lie that explains away all the evil and contradictions of the world, rather than being a compulsive seeker of truth, when the truth is life is pain and suffering that has to be accepted and overcome somehow without becoming totally numb.
Of course I don't really want him to run around totally deluded, because that will leave him easily lead by the likes of televangelists and politicians, and possibly result in his viewing others as "non-believers."
I hate that idea of "non-believer" I remember a co-worker saying, "Oh that's right you're a non-believer," to which I answered, "No, I'm not a non-believer, I believe in things, they are just different things than you believe in."

*travail is french for work

Student Family Housing?

So I'm doing research into getting a Masters of Social Work and have learned that only a few schools in my college rich area offer MSW's. One of the schools is my Alma mater, which has two campuses in my general area, and another one that is one county south of where I live, anyway, I'm looking at the requirements of the one county south one and it says I need to have taken classes in biology and statistics, which I have no recollection of taking, I vaguely remember one Senior Psychology course that involved statistics, but no straight up statistics courses and no biology since high school, so shit am I going to have to go back to college to go to grad school?
(I've had a reoccurring dream all of my life where I'm about to either start college, or graduate from college and somehow they missed that I didn't complete some course work in High School or Middle School, depending on the dream, and I have to go back as an adult and take classes with kids. That would be totally weird if I would now actually have to go back and take undergrad courses, I'm nervous enough as it is about going to grad school pushing 40, under grad courses with 19 year-old's is not how I pictured launching my mid-life career change. My other reoccurring dream for years was that I was going to die in a car crash, so I hope this isn't the start of some kind of trend.)

So I go to my Alma mater's web site, search out the transcripts page, fill out the info, they have me on record, which is cool that they transferred files from the dark ages into their current system, but what comes up but a note about there being a HOLD ON MY TRANSCRIPTS, having something to do with the Department of Student Family Housing? What the fuck, I went to college for an extra year after I moved out of University Housing, why wasn't I made aware of these issues then? Shouldn't they have held up my diploma or something, isn't that what they do when you don't pay parking tickets and shit like that?

Yikes, now I'm starting to vaguely remember getting some kind of notice from the university about some kind of fine or something that I went down to contest and they couldn't find it or something and just let me leave without paying anything ... honestly this is a super-fuzzy memory, a lot has happened since 1992, so I can't be sure of how on point this memory is, either way, now I've got to call them and have them track down what these two ancient holds on my transcripts are.

I can picture it now, "You have two $50 fines to pay, but with 15 years of interest that totals to ... $7,780, payable in person by travelers check or money order only."

Don't they know I'm the one of the least motivate people on earth, and hurdles might as well be great walls of China so far as my inclination to scale over them.

20Gs is 20Gs

I'm pissed off, we put an offer on a house that is a block away from our townhouse, it's beyond the top of our price range and I'm not sure how our finances will work out if we get the place, as in our day to day finances.
I told our realtor to bid $X00,000 which was 19,000 under what they were asking IF there were no other bids on the house. She said that they said they were expecting two other bids, so we upped our bid by 20,000.
It turns out that no other bids came through, but she didn't double check before putting in our higher bid.
Now they haven't accepted our bid because it's contingent on selling our old place, which the sellers don't like, plus they are nervous about whether we have the money in place to pay, to the point of asking about how much money we make and asking about our credit rating.
We were approved for a loan, and we have a deposit that is well over 20%, so I don't know what the fuck they are stressing about, I wonder if it's because I'm a stay at home dad? I wonder if I was the one who was a compensation manager at a huge ass corporation rather than my wife, and if she were the one who stayed home if they would be stressing so much about whether we can pay or not?
They may just be greedy and expected their house, which is really nice, to be the object of a bidding war rather than just getting one bid, I don't know, I just know that that combined with our realtor not doing her due diligence has me in a pissy mood, plus I don't really feel like moving / selling our house during the Fall, which is my favorite season.
Our house is a disaster and will take literally weeks to get into shape for a good "showing," which means tons of work on the weekends or not getting what it's worth because it looks like shit.
I have to weight this against the house being a decent deal for the money, though since no one else bid on it, it makes me feel like a sucker for bidding 1G over asking price, though it was done on false pretenses.

Jazz

Lots of heavy things going on, which you could tell by the fact that I haven't been posting very often. That of course sucks because I miss out on recording a lot of intense moments, but I guess it's better to live life first hand rather running up to my computer every time I feel an emotion, like people who spend their vacations behind the lens of a camera, video or otherwise, so worried about capturing the moment for posterity that they miss out on experiencing the actual moment in real time.
blah blah blah

So while I was feeding my two and a half year old son I was listening to WBGO, the straight jazz station. My son says, "Is this the music upstairs that I go to bed?" at first I didn't get it, but then I realized he was talking about the jazz music, because I put WBGO on "sleep" when I put my boys to bed, so he was asking if this was the kind of music / or the music station that he hears when he goes to bed, which was really cool.
I guess he noticed because I usually listen to the jazz station upstairs and sports radio or Air America when I'm in the kitchen.

soccer mommin' the ozone / oh my back / does anyone else find not having a job somewhat terrifying?

i'm super soccer mom chauffeur now, wake up at 6am, 8 am, drive my K-gartner to school, next if I haven't had time to stretch that morning I take the the toddler with me to the chiropractor because my back has been totally fucked up after the occurrence of a really disturbing extended family matter, ie. mucho stress + bad dreams = crappy sleep, speaking of which add to that a couple of weekends in a row out of town and not on my fancy Tempur-Pedic mattress and pillow which I've become addicted to, so now every morning I wake up, my back is on lone from a 67 year-old day laborer and if I don't stretch or go to the chiropractor or get a massage it takes about seven to eight hours for my back to loosen up.
Anyway I pick my K-garter up at 2:25pm, then take the toddler to an after school program* cross town at 3pm, and also at 3pm take the big boy to taekwon-do on Monday and Wednesday & soccer on Friday, it's amazing how I can clone myself and be in two places at once, the good thing is that my house is in the middle of all of these activities so if necessary and if we don't get caught in traffic we have about 5 to 10 minutes in which to do a drinks, uniform change and bathroom drive-by. Also the after school pre-school program, the soccer bubble and the dojang are all in the same part of town though not a walkable distance from each other, god I drive a lot now, there's some public transit where I live, but not for this kind of in-town shit, plus kids on public transit = a major pain in the ass.
I stay at the big boy's activities rather than driving home for 20 minutes and then driving back, then a couple of hours later at 5:30pm I pick up the little guy from his program, so again, for someone who drove like once every 5 to 7 months for 13 years this is a lot of driving.

*do to the fact that my wife and I are too lame to check our answering machine, particularly when we are out of town, I missed a message about my toddler making it to the head of the waiting list to go to pre-school full-time, which would have given me many many more hours of "free" time to research, pick, apply and go to grad school during the daylight hours, plus more time for my household duties, but for some reason we're too important for phone messages so we missed out on that opportunity. Oh yeah, we were on the waiting list even though we could have gotten him signed up in advance due to his older brother attending the school, but at first my wife didn't think we should pay for him to go full-time pre-school if I wasn't attending full-time grad school, and my easily abandoned stick-to-it-tiveness and anemic persuasive powers didn't push the matter, so by the time my wife brought up the idea that it would be helpful if we sent our toddler to school full-time the program was full-up.
I actually think it's better for him to start part-time anyway though, being the "caregiver" I've gotten kind of use to subjugating my larger artistic and career aspirations to the needs of the family, and surprisingly after a rough year or two, I'm much more at peace not trying to accomplish anything grand outside of the home, life's ridiculously busy, and in someways less fun, or I should say less adult fun-ish, but I don't trip out on supervisor, co-worker, getting ahead bullshit, so it's a fair trade-off.

The two stressor / fears I do deal with are, sometimes it's terrifying not having career, no less a job, like what the hell would I do if my wife died? Where's all the insurance papers? I think I'd get enough in survivor benefits to pay off the house, or was that the benefits from her old job or new job, well her new job is like a year-old now. I haven't had a real job in five years, and I wasn't on the fast track even then, would I have to just take what ever job I could get to make ends meet, then I'd be a widow with two kids and a crappy job, great prospects there, I'd need to go to grad school to actually get moving on a career that I was interested in, but if I was the sole bread winner, we couldn't afford for me to go to grad school, plus therapists with MSW's don't make a whole lot of money, would I have to do something totally different? And forget trying to date with all of that shit going on ...
The other thing that I fear is since things are going pretty well for me and kids with this stay @ home dad gig, and like I said I'm pretty at peace with myself and my situation, family, wife etc., whereas the whole rest of my life I compulsively questioned every aspect of my life, "did I chose the right school, town, wife, job," no matter if things were going well or not, I'm afraid that changing everything now may lead to me being less satisfied with life, and being a worse parent because I wouldn't be able to devote the vast majority of my energies to it, plus for the foreseeable future my wife would still be working her mega-pharma-corporate job, so she'd still be working daily overtime and be totally physically and emotionally spent at the end of 3 outta 4 work days, so the kids would definitely be getting a lower quality of parenting once I started grad school and later began work. Add to that the fact that our kindergartner breaks out in hysterical tears at the mere mention of my going to school or getting a job, "I don't want you to go!" "But buddy, I want to help people who need it, I'll be helping them to have better lives," "I don't want you to help people, you're suppose to help me!" and honestly it goes on like that for a few hours after the subject is ever broached.
Lastly another less pressing fear, how we are going to see to fruition my wife's desire to down-size her stressful career to something more manageable,while pursuing her other dream of super-sizing our house while staying in our very very expensive town, all while I still have no desire to take on the stress of a high paying corporate career, if I even could at this late date?

Savoir-Faire

My 5 year old son is now in kindergarten, his school is known for having a number of international students.
Apparently there is a french girl in his class, and he told my wife that he was trying to "speak french to her" which means the made up faux french babblings of a five year old, and she didn't understand him, I can just image the confused look on the face of this little girl in her first week of school in a new country while my mini Casanova kicks his best Pepé Le Pew verbiage in her direction.

He asked Mommy what he should do and she told him that Daddy speaks much more french that she does, so he asked me what he should say and I came up with "bonjour mademoiselle."
He had yesterday off, so he's been practicing that phrase for the past 36 hours and turned it into a mantra on the way to school today, so here's wishing him bonne chance in his endeavors into international preschool affection.

Anti-Social Germs

I just noticed a very old note that I'm not sure if I blogged about or not,
In my big boy's first year at preschool, I taught him to was his hands every time he came home.
He didn't like doing this so he asked why he had to do this everyday, I told him because there are germs at school, that's why kids get sick so often, the kids bring germs to school, they all play together and then they bring new germs home, and germs are what makes a person sick.

So for a couple of weeks I notice that every time I pick him up at school he's playing by himself, I eventually ask why I don't see him with other kids and says he's afraid of their germs.

First Day Back from Non-Relaxing Vacation

On my first Monday back home after 10 days visiting family on the other side of the country, I had some weird dreams culminating in one about my 5 year-old wetting the bed on three consecutive nights.
The very few times that this has happened in real life I try not to make it a big deal, but in this dream world after not making a big deal the first time, the second night I couldn't impress on my son the importance of his not wetting the bed and by the third occurrence, after he seemed totally unbothered by his bed wetting and unreceptive to my cajolings I snapped and slapped him across the face numerous times resulting in red markings all over his face.
So soon after that dream i woke up as I usually do after having unpleasant dreams, I'm not use to the multiple time zone change yet, so it's like 4 a.m. to me and I think I better hit the shower just to fully wake up, something I don't usually do before taking my son to day camp.On the way i hear some rumbling in my boys room and go to check on them and notice that my 5 year-old's underwear look dark, oh no, I check and he wet his pants, shirt, teddy bear, and bed and pillow to a lesser extent.
My two boys sleep together (when they slept alone they would join my wife and I in bed in the middle of the night about 3 out of 4 nights, now it's down to about 1 out of 3), so I check my 2 year old and he's still asleep seems dry so I put him in my bed so he doesn't roll over into the wet sheets and so i can strip the bed.

Great now a load of pee laundry and a change of sheets is added to my first day back list of chores. I get my big boy undressed and ready to shower when my wife gives our youngest a good-bye kiss and says, "Oh, his hair smells like pee," great, by now already late for day camp, and still not fully awake I have to give both the boys showers and the time consuming and often tearful washing of the hairs.
So I wake up the 2 year-old, pull him in the shower, wash 'em both up, do big boys hair, no problem, start on the little guy and the tears start flowing, my wife pokes her head in the shower to say good-bye, which at this time isn't a good move because the boys have had all day access to mommy for about two weeks now so her first day going away to work is met with a meltdown by the already upset little guy.
Thanks, see you later honey.

I try to console the little dude, then his big brother, who is growing into a great older sibling (when the little guy woke up at 9:20 p.m. at the airport rather than surrounded by family at his aunt's house the previous night he totally lost it, and his big brother said to me, "Daddy I know why he's crying, because he woke up some where he doesn't know where his is and now he's confused," very perceptive son) anyway my 5'ver puts his hand on the 2'ers shoulder and says "It's okay buddy Mommy will be home later," to which the little guy responds by giving a two hand shove to his concerned brother, which in shower with three people is way fucking bad, I catch the big guy, yell at the little guy and rush through the rest of his hair washing without my usual concern for how much water got in his face.

By now we're super late, I whip up a breakfast and pack a lunch straight out of the shitty-parents-anonymous-processed-diet-regimen as supplied by kwik-E-mart, a grain and fruit snack bar each for breakfast, two peel-E-cheese sticks, spiderman real faux fruit candy drops, and a pack of airline pretzels for my big guys lunch.

I get my 5'ver to camp late, drive home, feel my back is tight, pull right back out of the driveway and drive to my chiropractor, who I didn't have time to go to right before I left two weeks ago, and he is of course is on vacation, as is his back-up back cracker his wife.

That Furry Thing

My 5 year-old was cuddling with my wife and not letting her go saying,
"I’m going to make you stand here for ever and ever and not let you go"
Mommy says, "I need to eat and go to the bathroom,"
5 year-old says, "you can take your penis and 'psssss' (makes a urination sound in the direction of the bathroom)"
Mommy, "I don’t have a penis"
5 year-old, "Then you better stretch that furry thing and go like this (pretends to be urinating from the master bedroom's bed into the adjoining bathroom)"

Maybe it's time to stop being naked in front of our kids.

Busy schedule

To avoid the constant, "What day is X's birthday party, when is grandma coming over, how many days until the school year is over?" I've taken to drawing pictures on my 5 year-old's calendar and crossing the days off so he can keep up with his schedule with only minimal parental questioning.

plucked from an email to a new dad friend of mine:

"a couple of days ago, after a long assed day, & weekend for that matter, of family obligations (pre school graduation fri, pre-k classmates b-day party sat, a 50 wedding anniversary party sunday), everyone's asleep and i finally get to hang out a little, put the headphones on and chill on the couch then about 15 mins later, from upstairs i hear some gagging gurgling and moaning, i run up stairs and my 2 year old had puked up huge chunks all over his bed, which he shares with his big brother, nothing like bathing and washing the puke filled curly hair of an upset toddler at midnight, plus some got on his brother who luckily stayed asleep as the wife wiped him off. then after all that i'm rewarded by the toddler wanting to cuddle his mother back to sleep so i get to clean up the two pints of puke that cover his pillow and sheets.

hey feel free to hit me up with any questions, i've even read a couple of books, some good, some too wimpy and one from a right wing christian coalition that my mom gave me, she didn't realize that it promoted beatings, it was good to see some other points of view even though i didn't agree with everything it had to say, or even most of it, though the instilling accountability in your kids aspect i liked, i'm actually am a fan of rules and structure for kids, i figure with the parents my kids have there's a pretty good chance that they are going to turn out to be freaks/counter culture/ alternative/ whatever is the appropriate term for people who don't just accept the crap society feeds to them and blogs to the beat of their own drummer, anyway i've known plenty of freaks, some who have self discipline can make a niche for themselves in the world and be successful on their own terms, other freaks, even those with a lot of talent who don't have the ability to structure their lives, career plans, relationships or whatever, often wind up free floating and sometimes much worse. "

so to recap, no beatings, but no taking bullshit either, remember for better or worse you're the adult in the parent child relationship, don't get caught up trying to be their best friends, your job is to act in their best interest to help raise responsible, high functioning adults, not cater to whatever will make them be quiet, or whatever makes things easier for you in the short run, unfortunately, the harder path is usually the one that needs to be traveled with kids, not harder as in meanness, but harder as in more time, effort and patients on the parents part.

fresh from the M&M slaughterhouse

My very soon to be five year-old asked my wife yesterday after seeing an M&M commercial where the candies are anthropomorphized, "Are M&M's real?" Meaning are they living beings.
He also seems to think he's a vegetarian like his Daddy, because he eats some of the veggie "meats" that I eat and has given his maternal grandmother a hard time about eating animals. She wanted to tell him that he's not a vegetarian, but I told her if she still wants him to eat meat at least until he's a teenager (when I plan to give him the option to convert over from the darkside) that she'd better leave him to his misgivings. The funny thing is that I never told him he was a vegetarian, just that I was.