My Daughters, The Fashionistas

I have seen the end of my marriage.  It will end in tears, hair-pulling and misery.  There will be "other women" although they won't be my girlfriends.  There will be clothes and personal belongings thrown into the street, although again, they won't be mine.  I do, however, have a secret that I have been keeping from you, dear readers.

I hate the dressers in my daughters' room.  I hate them not for the color of their finish, but for the content of their drawers.

"Sometimes, daddy likes us to match!"

I have previously admitted that I am not the most clean or organized person in the world.  There are almost no symptoms of OCD that you could claim I have.  The current state of the interior of my car can attest to this fact, as would the pile of clean clothes that I keep moving back and forth from the bed during the day to the empty hamper at night.

One of the few things that I do keep at least semi-organized is my dresser.  I do this not out of some sort of need for universal order.  "In a world gone mad, wracked by chaos, one man has the courage to fold his underwear and put them where they belong!" (I hope you read that in a movie announcer voice.)  I do it, I think, mostly because during the school year, I get up much earlier than Sara and I don't want to wake her by hunting for my clothes in the dark.

Sure, we'll go with that because it makes me seem nice...

The point is, I know where my clothes are.  My current dresser has three drawers and is organized in the following way:

Top Drawer: Black/gray/white t-shirts, underwear, socks
Middle Drawer: Pants, sweaters/sweater vests
Bottom Drawer: Shorts, t-shirts with designs, pajamas, workout clothes

I also have a closet for the shirts that I hang and two drawers under my bed for random other clothes that I wear infrequently, like hoodies and sweatshirts.


I think there is an order to the dressers in the girls' room, but I can't tell what it is and last week, I am ashamed to admit, I had a full-blown OCD meltdown.

Since I ranted at my poor wife, who is, as always will remain, my hero, for much longer than was fair, I will only saw one thing in my own defense:  As a stay-at-home-dad for the summer, I find it overly-frustrating that I am unable to discern any order from the dresser drawers and therefore must spend 20 minutes searching through onesies, pants and tops just to find a matching, weather-appropriate outfit.

 "But, your honor, these drawers...they don't make sense!"

"Agreed.  I hereby dissolve this marriage on the grounds of incompatible drawer organization styles."

Post-hissy-fit, when we were organizing the drawers, as per the orders of the marriage counselor, Sara gave semi-explanations as to why the clothes were where they were.  Now, having calmed down, I can admit that there was a logic to it.

But I am not a reasonable person.  We haven't done Harper's drawers yet, but I think I will need some serious sedatives before we tackle those.  I don't want to say things that I will regret.


I will simply end by saying this: Thank you so much to everyone who bought adorable outfits for the girls.  They are incredibly cute (or they are in storage) and we are greatly appreciative to everyone.  For now on, however, in lieu of clothing, donations can be made to the girls' college funds as those do not take up room in the dresser.

My Daughter, The Serial Killer

Last night's dinner consisted on bar-b-qued beef, asparagus and sweet potatoes.  Harper got her plate of sweet potatoes and, after being told they were hot, proceeded to blow on them to cool them off.

In her version of blowing on her food, her hair blows up in the middle of her forehead and the food stays hot.

Once the succulent sweetness was cool enough she gripped it lightly in her fist and proceeded to squeeze the ever-loving crap out of it!  As the gooey orange stickiness oozed from between her fingers, she got the sudden idea that her sister was hungry and may enjoy of a bite of sweet potato garnished with toddler fingers.  We were able to put a stop to that, but not before a trail of potato was left between the table and the bouncer.

For my in depth feelings on this particular situation, see my post about textures.

After dinner, I took my lovely and beautiful daughter to the sink to wash her hands.  My daughter has the soul of a cat which manifests itself in very bizarre ways.  She doesn't land on her feet when she falls, she doesn't lick herself to get clean and she doesn't poop in a litter box (although that might be an improvement.)

She does, however, love running water and will play in it for hours, provided she doesn't have to get in it.

I turned on the faucet and she shrieked and reached for it.  Since she is short with appropriately proportioned arms, she is unable to reach the water with both hands at once while being held at the sink.  I leaned her to the right and stretched her left hand into the water, rinsing off the congealing potato.  I had previously been unaware that unbuttered potatoes could congeal, but there you have it.

As I began to tilt her to the left to wash her other hand, said hand came into view from behind her body.

And by hand, I mean, of course, a 10 inch chef knife moving ever closer to the soft flesh of arm.



Through violence or sleep deprivation, my daughter is trying to kill me.

My Daughters, The Enemies of Morpheus

As I get older, there is an increasing number of things that I am learning to live without.  While my income has increased dramatically from when I was 9, my understanding of finance has also increased, leading a decrease in financial security (mostly perceived rather than actual.)  Similarly, my enjoyment of toys has changed.  I remember being able to spend hours playing outside with a GI Joe, a stick and hole in the ground.  Sara seems to still have to ability to imagine on the level of a small child as is evidenced from her playing interactions with Harper, but I, sadly, have moved into the realm of feeling silly with some of that, or simply being unable to muster the imagination to play those games.

More than any of these things, I've been living with less and less sleep.  In college, I was able to stay up until all hours of the night, but I was also able to sleep in when I wanted to.  Overall, I would say I survived college on 6-7 good hours of sleep a night, (45-50 a week) on average.

When I moved to New Jersey, I was still in stay-up-late mode, but I had something for which I needed to awake in the morning.  (5-6 hours of good sleep per night, 40-50 a week, on average)

Upon commencement of my teaching career in PA, I slept even less.  I was staying at work late and didn't wind down until late, but was still up early in the morning.  Through all of this, I wasn't sleeping well because I was worried about money and we were close to having a baby.  We'll say 30-40 hours a week of good sleep.

This school year, I was getting up at 4:30 to leave the house by 5:15 and be at work by 6:00.  Why do I do this?  There is a long answer for another post, but the short answer is that if I don't get my work done before the day starts, it won't get done.  I don't stay after (also for the other post) and I'm too distracted during the day, so I get to school when no one is there and do what I need to do before they arrive.

I was still going to bed between 9 and 10 and getting up once a night or so with Harper, or bad dreams, or just general bad sleep.

Once Brynn arrived, she was sleeping in our room so that she wouldn't disturb Harper and so that Sara could feed her in the middle of the night.  Brynn is many things, including cute, small and noisy.  She was very congested for the first few weeks and so she would squeak, snort and make all manner of loud auditory emanations throughout the night, further complicating my sleep patterns.

Recently, Harper has been waking up in the middle of the night wanting hugs.  This is my job and while I'm not happy to be doing so in the middle of the night, I will never complain about my daughter wanting to wrap her arms around my neck and lay her head on my shoulder.

Last night, I didn't get into bed until almost 1 and lay awake listening to the sounds of the house until almost 2:30.  Harper was up around 3 yelling for me.  At 7, I was UP with no hope of falling back to sleep.  I went in to get Harper around 8 so that Sara could sleep some more and found my lovely daughter, naked butt sticking up into the air, splashing in a puddle of her own urine, which, because the mattress is coated in plastic, had managed to pool in the middle of the bed and soak into the stuffed animals.


I'm at about 15-20 hours of good sleep each week.