Party Attire

What to dress the kids in when going to a party, of course you usually want them to wear their finest gear too accentuate how damn cute they are and to express to the world what a good job you are doing in manufacturing presentable future world leaders, HOWEVER there are three things at parties that run counter to risking your children's best outfits;
1) FOOD: self serve buffets, bowls of snacks and dips, cheap disposable adult size plastic cups, colorful cakes and other messy desserts. Kids have access to all of these things without full parental supervision and the persistent cajoling party hosts and relatives long in years to try this or that.
2) PARENTAL DISTRACTION: depending on the gathering the parent will either be super busy hosting or helping the host, or doing the yak-yak dance with long lost friends and relatives, leaving your child free to double dip their cuff sleeves into the oozing fudge fountain.
3) HYPER-ACTIONS: Mix the free flowing sugar products, Mom's focus on recounting a family vacation from 1979 and we have Hyper-Actions, kids playing out door sports in their finest indoor clothes, well intentioned horse-play evolving into a back alley brawl resulting punch to the head and a retaliatory kick in the gut, and the party's crowning moment a rainbow of vomit being spewed from the little guest of honor's digestive system recapping the afternoon in wide palette of food dyes. This last example actually happened, my boy was the kicker not the vomiter, not sure which would have been worse?

2nd Son, 3rd Person

I guess my pre-schooler is destine to become a professional athlete because as of a few months ago he started referring to himself in the third person, "'Othello' doesn't like asparagus, 'Othello' likes soft broccoli."
(I just asked him to name a food he doesn't like and he named asparagus which I'm sure will thrill his mother who has been trying to get it into our regular vegetable rotation. He then started to name foods he does like and hasn't stopped talking since and is trying to sit on my lap and is doing everything possible to separate me from the computer, unless of course I let him play Papa Louie, Batman the Brave and the Bold or some other free online video game, then the computer is great!)

Organized Soccer

My first grader played his first organized soccer match today, his team lost 0-3. I am incredibly proud of how hard he played, he was one of 3 new kids on the team and he fit right in and was aggressive, played great defense, took on some bigger kids on the other team with no fear, I just hope he can appreciate that you can play well even if your team loses.

FUUUUUAAAAAAACK part 2, read original FUUUUUAAAAAAACK posting below first

After a bad night's sleep and coming to terms with the fact that I have a pathological fear of disappointing my kids and I have a major internal conflict when problems like this come up I think my fight or flight instinct kicks in and I get a mad rush of adrenaline and want to explode on who or whatever I have perceived to cause the problem, but I hate being rude or aggressive and double plus hate when people are disrespectful to clerks, admins, operators, servers, basically anyone who gets your order wrong, so I have all this negative energy swirling around being fenced in by my moral gatekeeper, leading me to want to take a nap or get loaded in lue of having an anxiety attack. Basically a typical ID verses Superego battle, which is not a groundbreaking concept, except that I had assumed that my ID was much more in check than it actually is.

So midway through Sunday after emailing every contact I can find for the place where the party is scheduled I finally call them, expecting to leave a message. Quelle surprise someone answers the phone and puts me in contact with someone who knows what's going on, who says they are aware of the issue and it was their error and everything is fine for the date that I thought the party was suppose to be.

Another issue I've noticed is that I dread hosting these family/kid parties because I spend the week or so leading up to them worrying about every possible thing that can go wrong, I think I have a fear of being found out as a fraud, if that makes any sense, I think that's why I have a hard time taking compliments, also working like six years as an editor with no editorial or collegiate English background I'm sure added this addition neurosis to my portfolio. Okay that's enough, Neurotic Dad has been issued a cease and desist order and his take over of Dissonant Dad's blog has been ended.

FUUUUUAAAAAAACK

I'm checking my family email for RSVP's to my 4 year-old's belated birthday party and notice one from this past Thursday:

Description Dates/Times Qty Rate Price
Birthday Party:
Field 1 {Deluxe BP (half field 24 kids): $375.00/Per Hour} Sat 3/21/2009 12:00 PM-1:00 PM
1 $375.00


My reply:

Just saw this email.

I have our party as being on Sunday March 29th @ 3pm to 4:30pm?
My wife had contacted you about a party Christmas week and was told that March 21st was the next available, but we needed to call you back with a credit card deposit to hold the date. Later I called to see if March 21st was still available and spoke with a woman who told me that the 21st was no longer available and the only opening in March was Sunday the 29th at 3pm, so this was the date and time I signed up for.

Please get back to me ASAP to let me know if we still have the Sunday March 29th at 3pm time slot, as we already have 20 confirmed guests for that time slot.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,
Dissonant Dad
--------------------------
MOTHERFUCKER, I remember this whole fucking situation, I was mad at my wife for not salting this away, and she thought that I had done it, and I called my wife while she was at work and told her I thought that Sunday at 3pm was a weird time for the party, but figured it might work out well because only 24 kids are allowed per party and our son has over 30 kids in his class so the off timing of the party would hopefully result in a decent number of regret RSVP's, so I know what I did and that I'm right, but it doesn't help that I once in the past had a problem with the people at this venue and it wound up that I was wrong, and more importantly I think dating back to my childhood where my mother would seeming change the truth from argument to argument, she was never wrong when she was angry and what she said last time was unsubmittable evidence this time, so I have this built in self-doubt about my memory, so this situation pushes a number of uncomfortable buttons, plus my son may be out of his first "friends" birthday party, fuck.

Dissonant Dad has some "splanin' to do"

These are some postings from one of my other blogs that deal with parenting issues, I have made note of the blogger's gender because to point of this entry is how one group, dad's in this case, but it could be any group whites, bourgeoisie, etc. can say things and in turn belie beliefs held, that are never questioned unless they are exposed to people outside of their group, gender, race, etc. Basically you need all kinds of friends, not just people who share all of your beliefs and characteristics, to keep your ass in check:


DISSONANT DAD:
... Come on my niece just derailed her career in Pharmaceutical Development to go on welfare and have some ghetto jail-bird's illegitimate kid, (Names of two expats on my other blog) we need your tax dollars yo! Sadly the previous sentence is true, I'm glad I had boys, I worry enough as it is I can't imagine how much the dad's of girls stress. I guess Mom's stress about boys playing contact sports and getting in fights and getting shot and shit, so it probably goes both ways and has to do with familiarity with what you did as a boy/young man and girl/young women.

Female Philly Friend:
... as a responsible father, do you not worry about your sons getting some girl pregnant? I always feel like a lot of people make the statement that they are happy they have boys because they don't have to worry about pregnancy issues and that it perpetuates the mindset that girls are trouble because of their reproductive capabilities. Meanwhile boys get a big pass since they don't have to wear their "sins" like a big old scarlet letter basketball stuffed under their shirts for nine months. I really think this type of thinking has to change so that more men take more responsibility for their reproductive capabilities.

DD:
... to be honest I probably won't worry about my boys irresponsibly knocking any one up until I am conscious of them being sexually active, which is hopefully 10 to 15 years away, whereas having a daughter I think I would irrationally worry about it happening in the future, part of that is because they get left with the baby, part is it's hard for the opposite sex parent to deal with the idea of their child having sex, and part my assuming that I'll do a good job teaching my boys to respect women and themselves and to be responsible.
I know what assuming leads to, so I'll have to remember to closely follow the birds and bees talk with the condoms, pregnancy and disease talk. I was a late bloomer so far as girls and was pretty shy and idealistic about falling in love and not sleeping around*, so I'll have to keep in mind that my boys won't necessarily develop at the same slow rate and in the same way and I did. (*Until I fell in love and got dumped and quickly changed my views.)
I think I and maybe most parents dangerously assume that your kids will automatically do better than you did as if they can build off of your experiences and learn from your mistakes.

Part 2 of my response to Philly Friend,
A very high percentage of important people in my life have been raped or molested, including males, so I'm highly sensitive to that being a parent, with boys if you get them to 18 and keep them out of jail, the likelihood of them being sexually assaulted is extremely slim, but with women it's a life long concern, so my statement about being glad I had boys also has to do with my perception that the constant concern and worry of being a parent lessens faster with boys than girls, now I could be totally wrong, and I know Jules worries about the boys playing contact sports and getting into fights and hanging around the wrong crowd, all things that I had done and was able to see myself through unscathed but those are areas that she's unfamiliar with, where I'm unfamiliar with this cool person I recently met attempting to rape me the first time we are alone together, or my mate being the person that is most likely to kill me, so I guess it's fear of the unknown.
I'll be more mindful of using phrases that are often used to express sexist thought and think on what it says about my thinking.
I have to admit I'm very biased when it comes to kids entertainment, things have gotten better than when we were kids with Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake, but I'll take superheroes over Bratz any day.


FPF:
... thanks for your thoughtful response to my post. I know you to be a conscientious person and was wondering what your thought process would be as a father who is responsible for his kids' daily needs. My parents divorced when I was really little and I grew up with my dad taking care of me so I know a lot about the fears that fathers have when it comes to their daughters. Also, my father had pretty much just gotten back from Vietnam so he was constantly living with fear and post-traumatic stress. So, yeah, I'm extremely guarded and I don't get fucked with, ever. I just wish it didn't have to be that way and that society would commit as much time to educating males about responsible behavior, as well as taking responsibility for their misbehavior (i.e. "You, son, are going to get stuck with the baby too or go to jail for hurting a woman."), as it does to instilling fear in general, and women in particular, about misbehavior in men and its repercussions. As it stands now the overall societal message is that guys are a threat to women therefore women are troublesome, so it's better not to have to care about too many women; I know that biology dictates that men are stronger than women and women gestate but that message is detrimental to society as a whole and commensurate with an extremely cro-magnon thought process.
=====
I forgot to say that I don't know anything about Bratz but I know that Barbie is the devil's spawn, superheroes rule, and Yoda is the undisputed shit .


NYC Male Friend:
LOL, Bratz are definitely freaky. They're pretty unwholesome and unrealistic representations of women. They have big heads and lips and obscenely skinny long bodies and are dressed in a way that most wouldn't want their daughter under 13 yrs. old to dress like. My God daughter was into them when she was about 7 or 8 and I remember thinking how horrible they were and how scary it was that she was drawn to and influenced by them.

LONDON Male Friend:
ok, since the blog has moved on to kids - i've got one of each ... not really worrying (yet), a summary of both:

my son (5yr old) is into flowers, formula1, soccer, bmx, tennis, some rugby and piano - typical daredevil
my daughter (8yr old) is into animals (especially horses), books, elvis, violin, guitar (she's begging for an electric) and some classical/opera (recently took her to the magic flute)
...and they both complain whenever i suggest an afternoon walk on the hills

i try to ignore the fads (we've had barbie in the house - personally like Bratz even less - all that can be summed up by one word ... 'tat' and steer the kids' attention to stuff which can be more productive/creative/rewarding - fads come into the house every now and then ... but, lucky to say, don't really stick around for long ...

Eastern Daylight Suckings Time

Daylight is all well and fine but that first Monday after springing forward is near impossible for your body to have adjusted in time. My 1st grader got up 40 minutes late, which gave us 20 minutes to get ready and get out to school, which is three miles away, not far, but not the neighborhood school around the corner either.

First I drop my 1st grader off at his grammar school which is technically in another town, then come back home and quickly get my preschooler ready to drop him off at his school which is in completely other part of town, pretty much "Downtown,"anyway my contribution to the morning lateness was a gem of daylight savings induced idiocy, I'm rushing around getting my preschooler ready, and searching for my keys, after about five minutes of cursing I remember I came in through our "mudroom" rather than the regular back door, maybe it's in there, or maybe I left my keys outside hanging from our side door knob, an area where someone could easily walk off the street and take the keys without anyone inside the house noticing, pure genius, who's that walking down our driveway, pulling out keys, and driving away with my car?

If you HAVE to eat fast food, these are the places

America's Healthiest Fast Food Restaurants
A-
Chick-fil-A
Subway
Jamba Juice
Au Bon Pain
B+
Boston Market
Cici’s Pizza Buffet
McDonald’s
Taco Bell
Wendy’s

I guess I have to stop telling my kids that McDonald's is the worst and most unhealthy place in the world to eat. Damn the brainwashing was finally starting to take too!

The Complete, EAT THIS, NOT THAT REPORT CARD, rating every kind of fast food resturant!

Spicy Face

4 year-old son: "Daddy your face is spicy."
Me: (Is he commenting on my swarthy good looks, oh, I get it) "I'll shave tomorrow buddy."

A letter to my 6 year-old's teacher from 1/15/09 that I forgot to post.

Sick vs. Snow & the Bowels of Disney

Damn, week after week its sick kids or snow, with tomorrow being no exception, like 10 to 14 inches being predicted for the next two days. Last week my 1st grader was sick most of the week, and the week before his little brother was mildly sick at the end of the week, it's like I can never frickin' get any free time to catch up with chores and loose ends. I actually jogged a couple of times last week and was looking forward to doing so again on Monday and now tons of snow is coming.

Since I last posted we went on a family trip to Disney World, and when I say family I mean 16 people from my wife's side of the family. It actually was going pretty well until eight of the 16 came down with a stomach virus or it could have been some kind of intestinal bacteria I'm not sure all I know is that it was going around the park, and all four members of my family came down with it, lots of late night vomiting followed by the same consistency out the other end, not getting out of the room for days on end, a strictly limited diet, no fried food no dairy (not easy at an amusement park, no matter how large), feeling slightly better and over doing it and getting sick again, my kids not understanding why family members were fleeing when they tried to huge them, two doctor's visits, me not getting to do the one thing I remembered liking from going their 25 years ago, the Lands at Epcot, and my wife not getting to do he favorite amusement park activity, roller coasters, which I refuse to go on because they are either the stupidest way to attain momentary excitement or I'm a little bitch or somewhere in between, I just know I never want to be the guy you read about who died on some faulty ride it seems like weak assed way to go out, I like the feel of being on a little run away train so I died in pursuit thereof in shorts, sandals and a novelty t-shirt with a ketchup stain, I'd rather OD at the Chelsea Hotel if I'm going to die stupidly but that's for another blog and another day.

For the most part those Disney workers were really really nice and not in a weird found our savior via some charismatic cult leader sort of way either just nice for sake of it being the way you should treat people sort of way.

Also, when you travel if you are not staying with family or friends get travel insurance, we got it being worried about a snow storm ruining our trip by canceling our departure flight or whatever, but since we had travel insurance we were able to have doctors make house calls to our hotel room, which was amazing, they came, checked us out and gave us drugs and we didn't have to give them an additional red cent, which if we had to go through our regular insurance we would have has to take a taxi 30 minutes away to go to an emergency room, that would have been real fun with one parent barely able to walk, the other shooting fire out his arse and two slowly recovering kids, spending the day in the emergency room with our reward being to have to track down a cab in Central Florida and take a 30 minute ride back to our stale hotel room would have been just too awesome for words. Travel insurance, unlike extended warranties, well worth it.

If you are a vegetarian or just like to eat like one, the end all be all of Disney World dining is the Tusker House Restaurant @ Animal Kingdom, it's a buffet, has seemingly endless vegetarian choices, the food had mostly a middle eastern vibe with a great selection of breads and nice small portioned desert options, I seriously could have eaten there twice a day, though I don't mind eating the same food for a few days straight and when I clothes shop I tend to buy things in multiples like, I'll take those pants in blue, khaki, grey and two in black, but that aside they still had enough options that I wouldn't have to repeat my food selections if I didn't want to.

Though I pretty much experienced Disney with a huge dose of Hater-Aid the first time I went their at 15, much like the three Star Wars prequels, Disney isn't so bad when experienced with your kids. God I hated those prequels and Jar-jar fucking caricature of a Jamaican Binks, but they aren't half bad when you view them as child's movie and not as a jaded 30 year-old bitter urban hipster type, I don't know how the fabulously successful urban hipster types felt about it, but us get through life with bitter irony types weren't popping up two digits for it except perhaps the middle ones, man that Anakin guy could not fucking act at all, where did they find him? We need someone extremely wooden with the ability to pull his decent female counterpart down to his level of crapola.

Though now tolerable I actually like the new animated Clone Wars better than the recent live action films. My kids are totally into the whole Star Wars franchise now and we are watching them in chronological "according their prequel and episode 2.5 cartoon revised world" order.

We're getting a hamster in couple of days and bought all of the accoutrements for it today. That's enough for now, I've been holding off posting because I didn't feel like going over our ruined vacation but didn't feel right posting anything else until I got that episode down on wax.
peaceout

Please no more snow

Since before Christmas it seems like every other day it either snows and the kids have off of school or a delayed opening or one of them is sick. With the holidays and my three year-old's fourth birthday occurring in this time frame there is always some pressing chore or duty to clean something I don't normally clean because company is coming over or toy to get stuck in traffic for (though I live in the suburbs my town is pretty self contained and has no highways, so I really only have to deal with highways, malls and strip malls during the holidays, so I have an extremely low tolerance for them).
So since I can't really clean much or toy shop for the kids while they are with me I depend on the three days a week where they are both in school do accomplish these things, so if the kids are home on snow days it means that my time frame for doing these things shrinks and I wind up having to do them last minute which stresses me out.
It does not help that no matter what company my wife works for there is always some kind of deadline, deliverable or crisis before Christmas so I get very little help gift shopping and setting up the Christmas magic.
Also the constant snow shovelling is getting 0ld fast, as is the whole bundling up the kids routine as they try to run around house and wrestle with each other every time before we leave the house.
My stay at home dad duties are starting to wear down my resolve, I wonder how much longer I can do this.

A letter to my 6 year-old's teacher:

Dear Mrs. "Kaft",
"My 1st Grader" was very distraught today after school, so much so that I had a hard time deciphering exactly what the causes were. What I was able to glean from his comments is that he kind of “freaked out” during his math quiz, he said he was having a hard time counting by seven’s, and then thought he had to do some hard math problems which he did not understand, but later learned that he was not required to do them.
I am not sure if that makes sense or not, anyway he said he had to struggle to keep from crying in class during the quiz. I vaguely remember a flier being sent home that talked about 90 second quizzes and I am assuming that this is what he was talking about. The fact that they are timed is apparently very stressful to him.
He is also nervous about an assignment that he apparently did not finish in which he has to draw and label body parts. He is afraid that if he does this assignment that he will not be complete some other assignment on time.
In reference to the not knowing which questions on the quiz he needed to do, I asked him if he was paying close attention when the teacher explained what needed to be done, and in reference to the quizzes I told him to do his best and to not get upset by the idea of not doing well, everyone understands he is six years old and does not already know everything and that he is in school to learn and tests just let the teachers know what he does and does not understand.
He then was upset by the idea that I was going to write you because he thought you might yell at him for “not knowing the answers,” and he also did not want to be pulled aside to be talked to. I told him that teachers want their students to learn so they would not yell at them for having questions, and that talking to a teacher one on one would just help him to solve his problems/answer his questions and was nothing to be afraid of.
Please take a moment and try to learn what exactly is confusing him, be it that some of today’s work built upon what was taught on Tuesday when he was out so he did not understand it, or if he’s not paying close enough attention when assignments are being explained, or if needs to ask more questions when he does not understand what is expected of him, or his time management needs development, whatever the problems are it is hard for me put my finger on them since I do not know exactly what is going in his classes and when I ask him about them he gets upset.

Thank you for your help in this matter,

Dissonant Dad

Abstinence, Shmabstinance

Looks like lots of unprotected premarital sex is going on in the bible belt, it just doesn't make any sense, you would think teaching kids about abstinence would work as opposed to teaching that evil sex-ed with all of it's condom talk, it's basically condoning premarital sex, one would think one of those evil Satan worshiping, homo marrying liberal states like New Jersey, Massachusetts or California would have higher rates of teen pregnancies.

Okay tongue out of my cheek: Abstinence-only sex education has totally failed the nation's teens
Programs mandated to teach only "the social, psychological and health gains (of) abstaining from sexual activity" have been awarded failing grades for truth and effectiveness. The programs that work best combine honest information about sexuality, including contraception.
By Ellen Goodman

VIDEO GAMES AND DEVELOPING BRAINS

3 year-old: Let's play video games.
Mommy: Not now, video games aren't good for you brain.
3 year-old: Video games aren't good for other people's brains but they ARE good for my brain