Good Enough for Me

I am addicted to cookies.  I used to enjoy them a lot as a kid, but now, as a stay-at-home dad, it's almost impossible for me to get through a day without them, especially since the second child was born.  Coffee keeps me awake, but cookies keep me sane.  Yes, I know it's not healthy.  I've tried to wean myself off them from time to time, and I think I'm down to one pack a week.  Sometimes I even opt for the gum, but spearmint is no match for peanut butter chocolate chip.  No, cookies are my vice.  It's a little after noon as I write this paragraph, and I've already had three.  Kyle isn't even home from nursery school yet.

Jennifer has laughed at my addiction, and has mockingly called me a Cookie Monster from time to time.  I admit that I am, but she's not innocent in all this.  No, she's an enabler.  Just look at the thing sitting on top of my refrigerator.  Do you see that?  That's a gift she gave me a couple Christmases ago.  Yes, it is emblazoned with the Coca-Cola logo.  Yes, it says, "Big King Size: Ice Cold."   But don't be fooled: there's nothing cold in there.  There's no Coca-Cola in that jar.  That jar was given to me for one thing: cookies.  Sweet, beautiful cookies.  Mmmmmmm.

Where was I?  Oh, yes, the cookie jar.  I suppose it was a necessity.  I was already deep within Nabiscoland by that Christmas, and Jennifer was probably tired of seeing an open package of Chips Ahoy! in the kitchen.  At least the jar is neater.  I like it because it's quieter than the crinkly packaging, especially now that I have to hide my addiction from my three-year-old, who enjoys the treat as much as I do.  Often while he's sitting on the couch, watching TV, I sneak into the kitchen and slowly and carefully open the jar.  I grab a couple and then close the jar, hoping he doesn't notice.  Sometimes I accidentally clang the lid against one of the edges, and then my boy's finely-tuned cookie monitor dings, and I hear, "Can I have a cookie, Daddy?"  It's very difficult to say "no" to that, especially since I can't really say anything at all with a cookie already in my mouth.  Mmmmmmm.

Okay, so maybe that's a little pathetic.  How did it get this bad?  I look at the picture below and I say, how did it NOT get this bad?

Mmmmmmmm.  Where was I?  Oh, yes.  Blaming the child.  Kyle drove me to this.  Back when I was a brand-new parent, with a brand-new baby, I suddenly found myself alone with brand-new dirty diapers, brand-new tantrums, and brand-new anxiety.  Did you know that when a baby wants a bottle, and when you tell that baby you're getting that bottle ready, the baby doesn't sit and wait patiently?  Did you know that sometimes a pacifier doesn't pacify?  Did you know that a baby can cry when he's tired and cry when he doesn't want to nap - at the same time?  Did you know that diapers sometimes don't do the one and only job they are supposed to do?  Did you know that it often takes at least 45 minutes to get out the door with a baby if you are planning on going outside for about 45 minutes?  I think at some point, as I was rushing around, trying to figure out what this constantly demanding child needed, I realized I needed some relief.  Something for myself.  Amazingly, the taste of a cookie did the trick.  Well, not just one... more like five.  Ah, who cared if there was still half a day 'til bedtime?  I was happy, at least for a moment.  Now there's no going back.

Sometimes I look at the Nutrition Facts and laugh at the serving size.  Really?  Do they actually believe a person would eat just one or two of these things?  Maybe some people do, as a special treat in the middle of the day, on a little plate next to one of those miniature cups of espresso.  But these people probably don't buy several packages of Chocolate Chunk at a time, or even go for the supermarket duplex cookies.  They prefer the quality cookies.  I usually don't have time for quality cookies.  Even when I do, I wouldn't eat just one.  Sometimes Jennifer has to stop me from eating a whole package of Pepperidge Farm in one sitting.  Really, what are these "Nutrition Facts" people thinking? 

Time does play a factor in my cookie-eating abilities, and so does my cookie-loving son's highly-sensitive ears.  I must eat my cookies fast, quietly, and with nobody noticing.  So I have learned how to eat them like a frog eats a fly.  I grab a cookie and, using my tongue, zip the entire thing into my mouth.  Now you see it; now you don't.  It's one talent I have perfected as a stay-at-home dad, and I'm awfully proud of it.  I have eaten hundreds of cookies without Kyle noticing, and now I'm sneaking them in as Adam screams for a bottle.  Mixing formula is a whole lot better while slowly munching on some Oreos.

That's what being a stay-at-home dad has done to me.  Cookies and coffee have kept me from turning prematurely gray during the toughest parts of the past three and a half years.  Could be worse, I suppose.  And while I often cower in a corner with my addiction, there are many other times when my kids make the job easy, and during those times it's fun to live it up... sharing a cookie together.  Mmmmmmmm.

The Real World

Believe it or not, there are some who say a person must have more than one child to be considered a REAL parent.  Jennifer ran into one such person at work, months before Adam was born.  Naturally she was offended, and a bar fight ensued.  Once Jennifer came home (and recycled the broken beer bottles), she told me about the comment, and I was disgusted too.  How arrogant or mentally unstable would you have to be to say such a thing?

Then Adam was born, and now we're seven months into our two-kid adventure.  Sometime last week Jennifer brought up that comment again, after the two screaming kids went to bed and we began the hours-long process of cleaning up and imbibing.  Once again, we both agreed that the person who made the comment was wrong, and I'm not just saying that because I don't want hate mail or death threats from my closest friends and some family members.  You simply cannot be sprayed by a child at 3 a.m. and not be called a real parent.  But these days it is easier to see why someone would make such a comment.

Here's a little snapshot of what happens most days:  let's begin with my three-year-old son Kyle, who is suddenly STARVING, even though he had a snack not too long ago.  He won't stop telling me about it.  "I need a snack, Daddy!  I need a snack, Daddy!  I need a snack, Daddy!  I need a snack, Daddy!"  This usually happens right after nursery school, while I still have a jacket on and am trying to get a wailing (and also hungry) Adam out of his baby carrier.  Since it is, indeed, snack time, I tell Kyle to hold on and I'll get him one soon.  There's a pause for about a second... then, "I need a snack, Daddy!" 

After I pull Adam out of his carrier, I put him down in his bouncy seat, and I go get Kyle a snack.  Adam starts whining for a teether while Kyle complains that the bowl containing his Goldfish is not up to his high standards.  While this is going on, I measure out some water for Adam's formula and start warming it up in a bowl of hot water.  I get Adam a teether and then take my jacket off.  Adam flings the teether to the floor, and Kyle realizes that Goldfish make him thirsty.  "I need water, Daddy!  I need waaatteerr!" he cries as if we just came back from a retreat in the desert instead of nursery school.  Adam is tired and hungry and sick of being stuck in one place, so he whines some more as he tries to flip himself around in his bouncy seat, and each day he seems closer to succeeding.  I grab him another toy. 

"Daddy, let's play Christmas!"  Kyle has developed a new game in which he and I sit down for a half-hour, pretending to give each other presents by opening two of his plastic boxes over and over again while feigning excitement and gratitude (he's practicing for the future, when gifts become less fun and more underwear-like).  Christmas will last all year in our house.  But tears are streaming down Adam's face, so I tell Kyle not right now.  "But why, Daddy?" he whines, "I want to play Christmas."  I start to mix Adam's formula, and Kyle forgets how to walk.  He trips over his would-be Christmas toy (rejected by that cruel Scrooge Daddy), and falls to the ground.  He starts to give that open-mouthed, wrinkled-faced, red-cheeked cry.  So I stop what I'm doing to give him a hug and I check to make sure there's no blood and all joints are working properly.  Adam stops whining for a second, but once he realizes that his brother is okay, he goes back to his demands.  In very kind words I tell Kyle to suck it up and get over it and then I walk back to Adam's bottle and open container of formula.  I stand there, confused.  Before the cry, did I put one scoop or two scoops in?

As I shake the formula, I pause to tell Kyle to stop licking the dishwasher.  I then put the nipple on the bottle and I stop Kyle again, this time before he makes a pretzel out of Adam's arms.  "Gentle," I say, "he's still a baby."  Kyle doesn't believe me.  By now I probably should have put on the TV, but I plan to save that card for later, when I want to have my coffee without a kid jumping on me and scalding my hands.  I pick Adam up and he's all smiles.  Hooray!  Daddy to the rescue with formula!  I walk towards the chair to feed Adam, when Kyle blurts out, "I have a dirty diaper!"

I suppose I could just let Kyle sit in it, and sometimes I have told him to wait.  But in the end it's easier to just get it over with than to smell it while I'm feeding the baby.  So I put Adam back down, and he screams like he hates my guts and will move out once he can walk.  But then, after I change Kyle diaper and deny a few more of his "Christmas" requests, I grab Adam and he's my best friend again.  Feeding time is here!

So that's about twenty minutes with two kids.  Fortunately, the entire day is not like that; thank God for nursery school.  And once the TV is on, Kyle becomes too riveted by the plot (Will Oscar find true love?  Will Cookie Monster ever recover from that cookie ponzi scheme?  Who murdered Snuffy?) to take his eyes off the screen.  Adam naps, too, and that gives me a little break.  Yes, life with two kids is more intense than it was with one kid, but the jump from one kid to two is nowhere near the perilous leap from zero kids to one.  And at least I don't have three kids.  Maybe that's when a person becomes a "real" parent.

Of course, adjusting to this new life is taking quite a bit of time, and that's why you haven't heard from me much.  I think I'm finally getting into some sort of rhythm, at least until Adam changes his sleeping habits.  So maybe, just maybe, I'll be back next week.  But I'm not making any promises, at least until the kids go to college.

House of the Early-Rising Son

"DAAAAAA-DEEEEEE!  The sun is up!"

Groan.

"LOOK!  The sun is up!"

This is how my eldest son often wakes me these days.  He proclaims that the sun has risen, not-too-subtly suggesting that we should all rise with it, as if the sun were lonely and needed company in the earliest hours of the day.

"DAAAAAA-DEEEEEEEEEEE!" repeats my son, in case I didn't hear him through our booming child monitor.  Notice how he doesn't usually call for his mother.  He respects her desire to sleep.  And Adam's too.  I think nothing brings my son greater joy than tormenting his father.  "LOOK!  The sun is up!"

I groan again and use all my will to not shout something profane.  "Go back to bed," I respond, and he hears it because he's young and has super-sensitive hearing, which is piqued whenever he expects me to say something profane.

"But I'm not tired.  The sun is up!"

I want to throw a pillow at him to get him to stop, but there's no effective way to do that from my bed.  The pillow hits the wall. 

"Go back to sleep, Kyle!"

To be honest, this isn't a bad wake-up call.  It could be worse.  It could be a scream.  It could be vomit.  It could be Kyle tipping over Adam's crib.  A little proclamation that "the sun is up," is rather harmless and amusing at times.  I probably would welcome it daily if it weren't so often completely inaccurate.  The sun does not rise at 5:15 a.m.

"The sun is NOT up, Kyle!  Go back to bed!"

Okay, maybe the sun is up at 5:15 a.m. somewhere.  There are parts of Alaska where the sun rises early and then doesn't set for more than a month.  But in New York City, in December, the sun does not appear before seven o'clock.  That is, unless the Earth is about to crash into it.  Then, and only then, I'd be okay with getting up.

"DAAAAAAAAAAA-DEEEEEEEEE!!!  DAAAAAAAAAAA-DEEEEEEEEE!!!  The sun is up!"

Don't be fooled: Kyle does not believe that the sun is up, either.  Only once was he confused, and that was because of a full moon at 2 a.m.  When he's up at 5, 5:15 or 5:30, it's because he can't sleep and is excited about going to nursery school, which begins at 8:30.  Our clock alarm is set for 6 a.m., but many times that's too late for Kyle.  If he's up, then naturally the sun must be up, and if he repeats it enough times, he'll convince us all to get up and get going.  But I fight back, determined to stay in bed at least 'til six.  Especially during the weekend.

"Go back to bed Kyle!"

"I'm done sleeping, Daddy!"

And so we go back and forth with a shouting duel between two very stubborn people.  As you can imagine, my wife absolutely loves this.  She often talks about just giving in to the three-year-old, but doing so would require actually getting up, and she usually has no energy for that early in the morning because at night we tend to stay up much later than the parents of two kids should.  So she groans an objection as I keep up the battle.

"No, Kyle, we have to rest a little longer!"

"LOOK, Daddy!  The sun is UP!"

Of all the battles I pick with Kyle, this is one I win fairly regularly, but that's often because it just lasts until six o'clock.  Once the alarm goes off, I stop the fight.  Jennifer gets up, looks at me crossly, and then heads to the shower.  I shuffle my way to the boys' room, and Kyle jumps out with a burst of energy.  He does not admit defeat because he has no concept of time.  The little guy runs to the couch to watch TV, and, after changing Adam, I slowly follow him there.  As I stare blankly at the television, trying figure out why Jennifer and I didn't choose to raise plants instead of children, Kyle begins a new battle, asking repeatedly for breakfast.   Our morning is now officially underway, and, despite claims to the contrary, the sun is still not up.

Painting the Town Brown

For Halloween, most kids dress up as vampires, witches, superheroes or princesses.  Some imitate characters of myth and fable, while others prefer to look like their favorite TV star.  Monday night, our son Kyle was dressed like the UPS guy.

It's not easy to pick out a costume for a three-year-old, especially when he refuses to give us any suggestions.  Kyle is just as picky with clothing as he is with food, and any attempt by parents to get him to try something else will be met with uncontrollable wrath.  Yes, that means the extremely fashionable bacon suit, the perfect combination of style and cuisine, would be Kyle's ultimate punishment.  Fortunately, we tend to deal with the food and clothing aversions separately, and as Jennifer and I searched for this year's costume, we went through the extensive list of no-no's.  No bulky clothes.  No super-tight clothes.  Nothing too flashy.  Nothing too frilly.  Nothing too slimy.  Nothing with spikes.  No masks.  No funny noses.  No enormous ears.  No slippers.  No hats. 

The last bit about hats is a big one.  Kyle has one hat he likes to wear - a Brooklyn baseball cap - and he even throws that one to the ground often.  Many of the costumes we liked required him to wear an identifiable hat.  Initially we wanted Kyle to be a zookeeper, since his brother Adam was going as a lion (a hand-me-down gift from our good friends Matt & Amanda, whose son Evan was a lion last year).  But every zookeeper costume we saw looked like a nondescript beige uniform without the hat.  Then we came across the UPS costume.  It was simple.  Everyone would know who he was from the badge on his brown shirt.  The hat was nice, but not required.  Plus, Kyle nearly wets his diaper with excitement every time our UPS guy rings the buzzer, and he always demands I take him downstairs to get the package.  We just couldn't resist giving him the costume.

"I want to be BATMAN," said the little guy several days ago.  Tough luck, kid.  That ain't gonna happen, especially with Halloween less than a week away.  It would have been nice if Kyle told us that in September, or even two weeks ago.  At first, I thought we'd have a crisis on our hands, but fortunately Kyle forgot about his suggestion a day or so later.  Next year we won't be as lucky, I'm sure.

So, on Halloween, Kyle wore the UPS costume with little resistance, and Adam was a fiercely drooling lion.  Kyle first went to a party at his nursery school, where he says many girls dressed up as butterflies.  Butterflies?  That seemed like an odd costume.  We asked him if he was sure, and he said, yes, they were butterflies.  It took us a while, but then we realized his likely mistake.  The wings must have thrown him off.   The girls probably were dressed like other winged characters, such as fairies, angels or Winged Nazgul.  Not butterflies.  That would have been silly.  We didn't bother to correct Kyle, since it's often futile to correct a three-year-old on matters such as these.  The girls were butterflies.

Then came the trick-or-treating.  That was a lot of fun.  I'm guessing a couple hundred kids (no kidding) roamed our block and the next, asking for treats and getting plenty.  Kyle's pumpkin bucket was full in practically no time.  Everyone recognized his costume, and many people asked him if he had a package for them.  Of course he didn't, but Kyle didn't want the candy-givers to get upset and deny him sweets.  So he said, "yeah," then grabbed the candy and ran off before the candy-givers could respond.  Adam lurked behind, ready to scare them with his fierce lion gums should they try to go after his brother.

This was the best Halloween we've had in a long time, perhaps the best one since we've gone trick-or-treating ourselves (and we've had a lot of good ones since Kyle was born).  I just love seeing it though Kyle's eyes.  I can't wait 'til Adam can trick-or-treat with him.  That will be a blast, and it will also bring in twice as much candy.  As it is, I've been on a sugar high since mid-October, but I'm guessing it'll wind down by Veteran's Day.  Someday I hope to keep it up 'til Thanksgiving.  Oh yes, I love Halloween.

Closing Time

There are certain places that are obviously unfit for an infant and three-year-old: a topless bar, a slaughterhouse, a place where Santa Claus decorations are melted for recycling.  But what about an attorney's office on the day of a closing?  It's hard to see any dangers there.  Sure, it's not as exciting as a playground or a grilled cheese sandwich, but the office has pens and paper and chairs to play on, as long as the kids sign waivers absolving the attorneys of any responsibility should there be an accident.  Plus, a closing should be exciting for kids, as it is the start of a new adventure into a brand new home with nice clean floors and walls for them to destroy.  Why not bring our children?  At least that's what we had to tell ourselves, after our many babysitting plans fell through.


(Above: Packed up and ready to move to a new home)

So, in late August, we smiled sheepishly as we walked into the attorney’s office, apologizing in advance for our kids, as Kyle ran off and almost whacked the bank representative with a swivel chair.  That required another apology, and more paperwork.  Jennifer and I took our spots at the long table, with our real estate attorney sitting between us.  The sellers sat across from us with their lawyer, and there were other representatives there from the bank and the state.  Nobody was upset that our children were with us, or at least they didn't show it.  Adam remained in his car seat, on the table next to Jennifer.  Kyle was supposed to be near me, but he couldn't stay in one spot when there were so many cabinet doors to open.  We had brought some books and crayons, but he was done with those and off to something else before we could sign the first document.

And, wow, there were a ton of papers to sign.  For some reason, you can form a country with a single document, but you can't buy a home in that country without getting carpal tunnel syndrome.  Page after page flew in front of us for a signature, as our lawyer briefly explained what each one meant.  Much of it was over my head.  This was our first time purchasing a home.  I was used to signing a one-page lease that basically told us to pay the rent on time, keep the place clean, and don't throw animals out the window.  Now I had to sign a mountain of paper, taking ownership to every little crack in the wall of our new condo, and giving the bank permission to remove our kidneys should we be delinquent with our payments.

At least, that's what I understand of what happened that day.  I couldn't quite focus with Kyle running around, taking off his shoes, skipping out of sight into the hallway, and climbing the office blinds.  As I carefully watched Kyle and tried to steer him from harm, I just nodded, signed and initialed each page before me, hoping that somehow I wasn't doing anything I'd regret later.  I also figured that my wife, who is an attorney, would be closely following and understanding everything that was going on.  If I had questions, I could just ask her later.  But Jennifer was having a rough time with Adam, who that afternoon realized that being a quiet little baby is boring and screaming incites a funny reaction from Mommy.  So she just signed away as she tried to quell our infant, hoping that I was listening to the proceedings.  Once we were done and on the way home, we realized that neither of us had a clue as to what just happened, or why we agreed to let the sellers' Uncle Murray stay with us on weekends.

Now it's nearly two months later, and I think we survived the home-buying process.  I still feel buying a home was the right thing to do.  Our savings account had been dragging us down, and we were tired of living someplace we could actually afford.  Besides, owning property is part of the American dream, and buying a home allowed us to take part in another joy of life: moving.  This time we packed and unpacked with two children around, which should be illegal.  Everything went much more slowly, but with far more stress.  Blankets and toys had to be found - immediately! - even if you forgot what box you put them in.  Fortunately, some meltdowns were averted (thank you, DVD player) and now a majority of things are where they should be.  I'm getting to a point where I can stop unpacking and do other things, such as showering and writing.  It feels good.  Life is finally returning to normal, whatever "normal" may be.