My Daughters, The Ones With The (Remote) Control

I wrote and re-wrote the first sentence of this blog entry no less than eight times in an effort to try to word what I wanted to say in such a fashion that would not have someone call Child Services on me.  As it is, I know that this entry is going to make me look like a bad parent.  Allow me to begin with the following:

I have great amounts of respect for people who were able raise well-balanced, happy children without the use of violence and before the invention of television.

Sara and I try to limit the amount of television that the girls watch.  While Brynn would be happy to watch a multi-colored strobe light that would send anyone into fits of epilepsy, Harper requires some sort of programming.  We have been sticking to two things.  The primary tele-caregiver is Sprout, the 24-hour pre-school channel (do I have enough hyphens in this sentence?)  The shows are all short, under 15 minutes and are all based in pseudo-education, focusing on numbers, letters, activities and life lessons, such as "take turns" and "don't bite your friends."  The other show she likes is Sesame Street, or more specifically, Elmo, which, if I have to describe to benefits of that, then I need you to post a comment about how you get internet at the rock under which you live.  This is quality programming.

Look how easy it is to justify sticking my toddler in front of a television.  It's a little more difficult when she comes home from day care and plops herself in front of the TV and looks at me and says "beebee?"  Or when trying to put Harper down to bed, she asks us to rock her and sing to her and when asked what she wants us to sing, she replies with "na na na Elmo."  Her favorite bedtime song is Elmo's Song.

Don't worry.  I think I may do a post soon with all of my favorite Elmo videos, most of which include celebrities.

Before you judge me too harshly, please read on.  For those of you who are parents, please prepare your mouths to utter the words "Well, duh!"  For those of you who are not, I have some information that may come as a bit of a shock.

Parenting is tough.  ("Well, duh" say my parent readers.)  It is tough in ways that I never would have imagined.

When you think about becoming a parent, you romanticize the entire process.  You think that the tough decisions will be things like "How do I talk to my child about drugs/sex/drinking/anythingfunthatIdon'twantthemdoing?" and "How do I plan to instill the proper values in my child?" and "Do I dress her in the blue dress with the jean shorts or the red top and matching pants?"

You spend hours discussing how you will mold them into citizens of the world, how you will teach them to appreciate the arts.  You say things like "My child isn't going to watch any TV" and "We're going to do family outings to the museum" and "Look at that child rolling around on the floor of the restaurant!  What awful parents he must have!  I would never let my child act that way!"

Then you have kids and you find yourself saying things like "We would love to come to the party but we don't have the mental strength to fight the battle of the car seat" and "Go watch Elmo.  Daddy has to poop" and "Please get up off of the restaurant floor before everyone here thinks we are bad parents."  Then you have all of the questions that you never thought you would ever ask, like "How did you get peanut butter inside your sock?" and "Your sister does not go in the dishwasher" and "Why are you chewing on a diaper?"  Christ, I hope it was unused.

You think that your child is going to be Jonathan Lipnicky from "Jerry Maguire" in that he/she will be precocious and cute and say adorable things like "The human head weighs eight pounds."  Perhaps you are one of the few realistic people who knows that there will be cute times, but there will also be projectile vomit and walls smeared with feces and tantrums.  What you do not expect is what actually happens.  You expect that you will be getting up at all hours to soothe a crying child.  What you do not expect is that that child needs to be soothed because they are covered in urine and grape jelly.  Where did that sandwich even come from??

You find yourself in absurd situations.  You find yourself still in your work clothes, cooking dinner, frantically eviscerating vegetables in ways that might be in violation of international law, knowing that you have a limited amount of time before your child remembers that you exist and comes wandering into the room, placing themselves in the most inconvenient spot possible and begins to scream incoherently while pointing around the kitchen.

"What do you want?  This?" you ask, while gesturing wildly with a kitchen knife.

Picture yourself standing with a friend in the nosebleed section of a baseball stadium.  Suddenly, your friend points onto the field and says "Look at that guy!"  With 10 players and 3 umpires, it takes very little time to narrow down and figure out who is talking about.  You could ask questions like "On the left side?" "On our team, or the visitors?" or "At which position."  When you figure out who he is talking about, you can have a good laugh, or cry, or whatever is appropriate, together.

Trying to identify what your child is talking about in the kitchen is very similar, except that, instead of pointing to the field, your friend is pointing into the stands, filled with 70,000 people.  Instead of being able to ask pointed questions, you get to ask "That guy?" while pointing in the general direction.  Instead of having a calm resolution like "Yeah!  Look at his hat!" once you have pinpointed the person he is talking about, your friend screams at the top of his lungs and points in another direction entirely.

Or he just storms out of the kitchen to dig his fingers into your unattended chap-stick.

In short, I do my parenting much the way I play chess.  I go into it with a grand plan feeling that I could beat a good number of players.  I quickly find myself out maneuvered and after 2 moves have switched to an entirely defensive strategy.

It is for these reasons, your honor, and because sometimes you just have to go to the bathroom, that I do occasionally use the television to babysit my children.

But I swear, I never inhale.


Now cute pictures to make you forget what a bad parent I am.

We win the "War on Car Seats" by losing the "War on Drugs."

The Mom is Posting Something!!

Good Evening,

I just wanted to share a few gems with you. Phrases if you will. If you are a parent, you will most likely understand, and if you aren't then you will probably still find it amusing or just think I am weird.

"After we clean up the alphabet, then we will be home" - sent as a text to let the Dad know our ETA

"I think she is going to poop a coupon" - In this one I wish she hadn't eaten the coupon, it was for a free chicken sandwich! Dang!

"I'm waiting for the wife to get home, so that I can poop!" - The Dad doesn't feel comfortable having a poop party and inviting everyone.

I know it has been a while since the last post. What?...We have kids! Since the last post I am sure things have changed some. Justin is back to school, and not so sure about it. He is now at the Jr High and to give you an idea of the difference he found a student with a pacifier - NO KIDDING I found it and asked him where it came from. I thought maybe Harper had stolen it from a kid at daycare. He informed me he took it off a student. Gross!!

I have sadly left PTI... :( However I now have a new job in Greensburg! It is very nice to be closer to home and forget when I last filled my gas tank. I am working for Pace Analytical, testing water samples for Radioactivity. It is very different and very busy. I get to take the girls to daycare and I don't have to leave before I get up in the morning... yeah that is early!!

The girls are both doing well. Lil B just had her 6 month check up. She is weighing in at 13 lbs and 25 inches long. She is petite and very happy, strong and giggly! She has 2 (going on 4) teeth and loves to stand and play with Harper. They often giggle at each other. It is too cute!

Miss Harper is also doing well. She has been putting words together to form old Chinese woman sentences.

Ex: "Go nigh nigh?" (She likes to get in our bed and pull up the covers) "Seee down" (this comes with a pat on the floor or wherever might be most inconvenient for you to sit down) "Baby Eeet?" (She likes to try to feed Brynn, that isn't a good idea). "Poo Butt?" (Unfortunately she was accusing someone after she busted them on the toilet)

We are looking forward to the cooling weather of Fall and seeing some friends and family in the upcoming months. I'm sure we will have a few more great phrases, and please feel free to share yours too! Take care!!

My Daughter, The One Who Finds My Weak Points

I'm not usually one to write lists, but I think that it is important to discuss one of my least favorite things about being a parent and, I feel, the clearest way to do so, is in list form.  So, without further ado:

Four Reasons Why Diaper Rash Cream Is Worse Than Human Feces

In no particular order

1)  It smells worse than poop
  I may have written a post or two about the horrendous alchemy that occurs in the intestines of a child, converting innocent things like blueberries and apples into something that Satan himself must have concocted.  My daughters give off odors from their posterior ends that would cause those who work with raw sewage to weep for their mothers.  During the diaper changing process, I attempt to bring some light to the awkward situation of wiping the anus of another human being, by saying things like "Ew stinky!  Let's get a fresh diaper and we'll be aaaaaaaaall clean!"  I know, someone nominate me for creative dad of the year.  What is usually said, however, sounds more like "Ew stink...BLECH!!  DEAR GOD GIRL!  What did you eat?!?!?"

With this said, I use baby powder when the girls have rashes because the smell of the diaper rash cream is worse than the worst diaper I have yet to change.  It smells of depressing retirement homes where the relatives never visit and the nurses would rather watch One Life To Live than find out why Mrs. Elderson is moaning.  It smells of people who have been living at the hospital because they don't have the strength to leave and besides, where would they go?  There's no one waiting for them at home.

2)  Harper will not eat her own poop
  I type this while knocking on wood.  So far, she has shown no interest in writing her name on the wall in poop, as is shown in every comedy that has toddlers.  She has actually demonstrated an aversion to her own waste, wanting to get the diaper off and away from her as soon as possible.  She is clearly my daughter in this respect as, once I soil myself, I too need those clothes as far away from me as I can get them.  The diaper rash cream, however, seems to hold some strange fascination for her.  She loves to pry the lid open and squeeze 15-20 butts-worth of cream onto her fingers, most of which goes into her mouth.  Once there, she realizes that this was a terrible idea, but for reasons I will lay out in number 3, it's too late.  This does not, however, stop her from doing it again the next time she gets her hands on a tube.

3) Poop is not grease-based...
  ...at least until they start eating more buffalo wings and faire-food.  Parents who are reading this will know that, in the course of parenting, occasionally, you get poop on your hands.  It happens.  In my case, there is lots of crying involved, but once I settle down, I wash my hands and I'm alright.  Soap and water remove all traces of texture and odor of whatever the girls had for breakfast.

Diaper rash cream is made with a mixture of skunk vomit, super glue, and sun screen.  In this particular case, it is the latter that concerns me.  What this means for me is that even the slightest trace of the stuff on my skin and my pores open up, as though they have stumbled upon an oasis after wandering in the desert for weeks, drinking in as much as possible, pulling it deep into the dermis.

Now, we watch Sesame Street fairly often, as I did when I was a child.  The only segment of Ernie and Bert that I remember from my childhood was one in which Bert painted his hand purple.  The paint wouldn't wash off and he had to wait for it to wear off on its own.  The cream is the same way.  No amount of hot water, soap, steel wool, borax, hydrochloric acid, etc. will remove the goo and therefore the smell.  I feel as though for the good of humanity, I should lock myself in quarantine.

"Why can't you come to work? Are you sick?   ...   DIAPER RASH CREAM?!?  Jesus Christ, son!  We'll be praying for you.  Take as much time as you need.  We don't need that spreading through the office."

4) Harper gets it EVERYWHERE
  As though my previous items were not conclusive enough, my biggest issue is when Harper manages to combine all three into one super-happy-fun time.  She puts it on everything.  This evening, after getting a liberal dose from Sara, Harper managed to get a hold of the tube.  By the time I found her (read: 3 seconds later) she was using it to finger paint on her sister.  When I grabbed the tube from her hand, she flung herself away from me, leaving a diaper rash hand print on the couch and a line of cream along the carpet.  Since it is grease-based, as previously mentioned, it will be there, smelling and being unsightly, forever.  In hurling the tube out of her grasp, the cap came off, leaving more drops on the wall and floor.  While I was trying to clean up those spots as best I could, she somehow managed to find another tube, opened it with her teeth and started giving herself tribal tattoos.  When I went to clean her, she ran away and buried her (cream-covered) face in the upholstery of a chair.  If you're wondering how long it will remain there, please allow Squints to tell you.



As I've said before, Harper does not like to play with her poop.  If, however, she decided tomorrow that she wanted to finger-paint the walls with her own excrement, it would be easier to clean up and would smell better than the current medium of choice.

I feel like my house may reach a tipping point.  Sometime soon, there may be so much diaper rash cream spread of various surfaces that I will cease to attempt to clean it.  I will simply let it pile up until, in an effort to escape the smell of itself, the house opens a portal to hell and sucks itself in.

I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate diaper rash cream.

I can't wait to grow up and find other things you hate!

My Daughter, The Tester of My Psyche

It has always been my goal to keep this blog positive.  Even when I get frustrated about things, I try to put a happy spin on them to make it entertaining for everyone.

It is precisely because of this that I have avoided writing any posts lately.

I have been frustrated and have been unable to see a way to spin it for entertainment value.  So what have I done?  I've decided that I need to just get my thoughts out of my head so that I can make room for funny
anecdotes again.

Harper has been making me insane as of late.

Let me back up.  I don't know where my left post ended and I'm WAY too lazy to go and check, so as a quick rehash, let me say that once school let out, I've been home with the girls.  I've been keeping Brynn with me almost every day, unless she's being taken care of by her aunt or grandmother.  Harper, I have been sending to day care twice a week in order to get some things done around the house and to keep her socialized with other kids.

When Harper is home, I have been trying to take them out as much as possible.  Errands and road trips are a bit ungainly as Harper likes to scream and cry every time I put her in a car seat.  Instead, we go for walks.  I found a coffee/breakfast sandwich place that's about a mile and a half from the house over the hills of the town so I'll put them in the stroller and we'll go there and back.

There have also been a few times when I strapped Harper into the backpack carrier and pushed Brynn in the stroller and we walked on the trail.

When Harper is at day care or with a relative, I can do pretty much whatever I want/need to do.  Brynn is still at the stage where she's content to sit in the car seat and watch what's going on.  With her alone, I've been able to go to lunch with friends, work on the wall, run errands or just waste the day watching movies or playing video games.

I think it is because she's so easy to take care of that my frustration level with Harper has increased drastically.

I've spoken before about she doesn't really want to play with her toys, but only wants the power tools.  She only wants to destroy things that we need, like my car registration.  She'll stand in the kitchen and point to something and make a sound like a wounded animal.  When we point to things that she might be wanting and say "Do you want this?" she screams and throws tantrums, regardless of whether or not that was the thing she wanted.  The other alternative is that she'll ask for something clearly, agree that's what she wants and then, as soon as it comes into her hands, she freaks out and throws it away.

Last night, while I was on the phone with Verizon Customer "Service" she stood at my feet and screamed.  When I went to another room, she followed me and screamed.  When I went to pick her up, she thrashed until I put her back down.


I understand that there is a level of frustration on her side as well.  She knows what she wants to be doing and simply does not have the vocabulary to communicate the way she wants.  There is a huge gap between what she wants to be telling us and what we want to be communicating to her.  For the most part, she understands us.  We can tell her to put her clothes in her hamper, and she will.  We can tell her to go find her shoes, or a diaper, and she will.

Last week, after telling her that she cannot hit her sister, I told her to go and say sorry and she did.  It just about broke out hearts, but she knew she had done something wrong, said sorry and walked into her room to go to bed.  I rocked her to sleep and told her how much I loved her and how proud I was that she said sorry and how I know she loves her sister, she just can't play as rough.

As I said before, I've been trying to keep this light and positive, but these are things that I need to get off of my chest.  I also feel very bad that I don't talk about Brynn much.  I don't want her to get second child syndrome and I spend a large quantity of time with her, but at this point, it comes down to one simple thing.  She just isn't doing much.  She's unbearably cute and has a very good-nature.  She sleeps pretty well, eats pretty well and is easy to take care of.

Here are some pictures with a few clever captions.

 Neon Swing X-Perience owes me endorsement money

 "Why-I-Otta...!"

Go to my happy place... 

"Noooo, Mr. Bond!  I expect you to die!!" 

Having to deal with me, my ladies need a nap.

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.