Category Archives: Daddy Fail

Stories of how daddy comes up short

Mr. Manners, paging Mr. Manners

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This weekend we were up by the sound in Gig Harbor visiting Beautiful’s parents as they visit their first grand-daughter courtesy of their eldest daughter and her husband. After five boys, girls finally got on the board in the McGrail clan and she is a cutie. Their two boys and our two boys love being together but the sheer force of the four boys together keeps us on our toes. I find myself trying to mediate silly skirmishes over which of our boys sits next to their cousin, or who had the giant green ball first. The other big issue I run into is the vanishing of manners when my boys get together with other playmates.

“PLEASE!” I shout at Segundo when he cries for the same juice his cousin got, or when he demands the toy his brother is playing with. “What do you say?” is another big one as Primo gets more grapes at lunch and ignores his aunt. Teaching the kids to have manners is important to us so the repetition is just part of the process but I realized something this weekend as we were all together: I don’t have very good manners in communicating with them.

Maybe it’s the stress I feel having all the boys together, or maybe it’s a response to their powerful presence but either way I find myself barking commands at the boys instead of communicating with manners. I know that modeling behavior is much more effective than shouting orders but for some reason I forget that in their situations. It reminds of me of that great 80’s PSA about the dad who finds his teenage sons weed and yells “Where did you learn to do this?” “I learned it from watching you dad!” For some reason this PSA always makes me laugh but it’s true. They do what I do and conversely I can’t expect them to do what I’m not doing.

I know that the boys are inherently selfish and won’t just mimic manners because I use them but that doesn’t mean that I am not part of the equation. Modeling along with communicating our expectation with the boys still requires near constant reinforcement for the boys to learn good manners. Lately I feel like I am skipping the first step and I need to fix that before trying to hold my boys to higher standard then I hold myself.

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The Curious Case Of The BB Gun At Christmas

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Surveying all the colorful packages under and around the tree one long rectangular package caught my eye. To Primo, From Santa read the tag and as I reached for the present that “Oh Shit” feeling came over me. This was the BB Gun that Papa and Grandma asked if they could get for Primo, the one I said yes to without talking to Beautiful, and the one he would open in a few minutes. I hurried to Beautiful and pulled her a side to tell her about the gun and to apologize for being an idiot.

The problem wasn’t the gun per se. While we aren’t much of a gun family, we don’t have one and likely never will, we aren’t militantly anti guns either. Just last month we enjoyed some Shepard’s pie made with the Venison from a Deer Papa shot with his hunting rifle and I look forward to the day that my boys and I join Papa on a hunting trip. A closer connection to the food we eat and the realities of where it comes from is important to us and hunting plays a big part. No the problem was my unilateral decision making on whether it was OK for our five-year old to have his first gun.

When you are alone with the kids there are any number of decisions to be made from things as small as what’s for lunch, to whether or not the boys can ride their bikes across the street with the neighbor girl. These decisions don’t need to be discussed with someone else so I get in the habit of being the decider. Along comes one of those bigger decisions and I just answer on impulse without talking to Beautiful. I think about how she would respond and make informed decisions but I don’t always include her in the discussion and answer. But “don’t always” I really mean “almost never”. There has been a time or two when made the right call and said “Let me talk to Beautiful about that first” but that is not a natural response for me.

When I cornered Beautiful to tell her about the gun she was OK with it as well, but teased me the rest of the day. She asked if there were any other big decisions I had made for the family that she should know about. It was playful and in good fun but I knew that I was wrong in not talking to her first before WE made a decision. It’s that “WE” part that is tough for me sometimes and it comes across as me not valuing my wife. When I make these unilateral decisions I am communicating that her thoughts, opinions, ideas, aren’t important and that is far from true. I told her how sorry I was and she could see I really was even if others there didn’t see what the big deal was. It was only a BB gun after all. But it wasn’t the gun, it was the relationship and the communication. Isn’t that always the case.

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Raising money while lowering expectations

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Now that I am on the board at the preschool and trying to take a more active role in the boys education I figured it was time to take the fund raising part a little more serious. Last year there was zero participation until the auction and we came well short of our fundraising goals as a family. Well this year is going to be different and it’s already off to a great start. The first racket is selling local coupons called chinook books. These are all over the place with coupons to all the local restaurants and stores and have a good margin for fund raising. We sell the books for $20 and the school gets $10 off of each sale.

So when we got our books this year I got started hitting up all the right family members in the area and they came through. Then we sent Primo door to door in the neighborhood hitting up all the neighbors with kids. He knocked on the door and asked “Would you like to buy a Chinook Book for $20 to help keep me off drugs?” It was amazing the success rate he had with that line and I knew he would. I fancy myself a master seller who just never had a chance to flex his muscles. Some of the neighbors thought it was funny and bought a book, and others thought he was dead serious and bought two. Anything they could do to keep that cute little kid of the smack, they were going to do it. Everyone in the neighborhood knows that I am a stay at home dad so the boys get knowing nods whenever they pull stuff like this. “It’s that unemployed fellow, their dad, that makes them do this!” Just like letting them dress crazy, this is part of the fun of being a stay at home dad, and the fun we are having has us meeting our fundraising goal with the first offering. I should probably keep this up to help the school prosper but I’m goal oriented and once we meet our goal it’s on to new ways of terrorizing the neighborhood with my bad parenting. What would they have to talk about if I didn’t?

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The whitest El Tricolor fans you know

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On a recent trip to the thrift store with their mom the boys found some treasures that they were excited to share with me when they got home. Apparently while broswing the isles of clothes Segundo was pulling stuff into the cart unbeknownst to Beautiful. When she came to the register she found a soccer jersey for Cuauhtemoc Blanco from the Mexican National team. This matched the Mexico shirt that Segundo always wears so the boys finally both had the same team on their shirts. When they came home they told me all about it, with Primo calling it his Timbers jersey and Segundo searching out cherry stained mexico shirt.

So these two pasty white boys are an eighth Mexican from my grandmother on my mom’s side Faye Flores, but as I wrote earlier in the tortilla post, there is no flores in these boys. Well it turns out that is not true, at least not when it comes to their national team support. They both seem drawn Mexican National team and now want to watch videos of Mexico playing. Since Mexico is the biggest rival for the US men’s national team this is a little odd for me to swallow but hey the soccer theme is carrying on through this summer. We watched some old Blanco goals on youtube and Primo was so fired up to be wearing the same number as the guy hitting those shots/ I guess we go with this for now until they move on to something else bu I can’t help but see this as some sort of Daddy fail.

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I have no answers, just stories

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I was catching up on episodes of the funny Stay at home dad shorts by the Milkmen and there is one with a Daddy Blogger that got me thinking. These videos are funny to me but it would be hard to recommend them since they are not safe for work and the dude is generally a terrible person. So watch them at you own risk or just skip it and keep reading. The one with the Daddy Blogger has a guy that has all the parenting answers and is happy to share what he knows with whoever is nearby. This got me thinking about what I’m doing with my blog and how it comes across. I try to write about my kids, our experiences, and some things we’ve learned along the way but in no way do I think I have this parenting thing on lock and that if “you would just follow my simple steps for raising kids you too could be like me!” I do think I am really good at being a dad to Primo and Segundo but any other kid I couldn’t say one way or the other. Truth is I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time, and the times I do know what I’m doing usually end in disaster. Primo just had a check up and he is healthy and smart and personable and mostly I think that is just him or blind luck. He takes shots like a boss, without flinching or crying while daddy nearly passed out from watching, and he says his favorite foods are Beets, Radishes, and Brocoli so daddy looks like good guy to the pediatrician. He does love those things but he eats just as much crap as any other kid and it seems that was just the first thing that came to his mind. Anyway he is doing great, I’m super proud of him, and I feel like very little credit goes to me. I don’t want this to come across like I’m unsure of my role or I am fishing for compliments because i’m not. Like I said I am super awesome at being Primo and Segundo’s dad, and even pretty good at being Beautiful’s husband, though I still say she married down. A parenting expert I am not, and most of my advice should be disregarded but I will still write about what we are doing and some things I have learned along the way. They may work for you too, or they may just confirm what you always knew about me, that I am out of my mind.

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Fashionistas they are not

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I’ve been letting the boys pick out there clothes each morning more out of laziness than an effort to foster a sense of creativity and freedom but all of that too. The boys seem to put together outfits based on criteria of how easy it is to pull out of the drawer instead of how these items go together from a fashion sense. It drives Beautiful crazy, and I have to admit that is a big part of the fun. She says it’s fine if we stay around the house but I take the boys out looking like they do in the picture to the right. When people comment I tell them I’m a stay at home dad and they nod knowingly. That explains it, dad dressed them. I’m cool with that. What the others, Beautiful included, don’t see is how fired up Segundo is to put on two different rain boots with his Timbers scarf. He’s so proud of his choices and thinks that he looks great. When we are out other kids agree, they love the crazy outfits Segundo puts together even as their parents openly judge me. Messing with my wife and others is definitely one of the perks of being a stay at home dad.

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Men and trees and balls

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Here is the ball in question, of course it's a Timbers Ball #RCTID

I admit I was showing  off a little when I tried to drop kick the soccer ball. I wanted to show Primo just how far daddy could kick the little ball but instead I kicked it straight up into a tree. A tall tree with no branches low enough to climb up and get the stuck ball. Instead of impressing him he just stared at me with confusion and a little sadness and asked why I did that. He kept asking, what I was trying to do, why I did that, how I was going to get it down, how come I didn’t know how to kick, … really piling it on. The ball was stuck about 25 feet up resting in a nice nest of branches. I could see the bottom of the ball and thought that if I could just hit it with a pine cone it would come down.  Cut to 15 minutes of me muttering swear words and throwing pine cone after pine cone up, even hitting the ball a couple of times.

Growing up this would have been an awesome game for me and my boys. We invented games like this to see who the best aim was. Standing on the shore trying to hit that log floating by, or lining up cans or bottles and getting as far away as we could while still being able to all throw that far. We would have taken turns throwing our pine cones up there and taunting each other until Jesse or Adam finally hit the ball and we went back to what ever boring game we were playing before. But I had not friends there to help, just a 4 year old that was finding new ways to insult me with confused questions, and a wife looking at me with pity as I tried harder and harder to aim the pine cones.

We left the park and headed home vowing to come back another day, this time with golf balls or something like that. This morning I woke up to the sound of that ball calling out to me. We went back with 6 golf balls and a water logged baseball and renewed sense of capability. The boys ran around the playground while I found the ball up there in it’s cozy nest. I tried the golf balls but couldn’t get enough pace on them and maintain the accuracy so I went with the baseball. After a couple of throws I knew this ball was coming down this time. I was surrounding the ball with the first attempts and getting more and more accurate until finally I hit the ball square and knocked it down. I looked around to see if anyone was watching wanting just a little nod of admiration but all I got was Primo telling me I couldn’t kick his ball anymore because I wasn’t that good at it.

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Gardening Fail: I think it’s the dirt

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After reading this great post by Bob at Juicy Matters I think I might know why all but the beans in my garden have died. His post talks about the difference between Soil and Dirt and though I thought I had a good start with some compost and dirt mixed together I’m beginning to realize that I didn’t do enough of the ground work to get my raised beds going. So more work needs to be done to turn that dirt into soil and our composting is a good start. There are still other ingredients like manure that would go a long way to enriching the garden. Having parents in the country means I know a guy, or at least my dad does, so I will try to get some this weekend.

Meanwhile we have started some plants again: carrots, beets, chard, tomatos, zucchini, and cucumbers. Hopefully learning from my early failures and building on this slowly acquired knowledge to good harvest. These are all teachable moments with the boys as we talk about trying and failing and trying again. We learn by experimenting and not giving up and Primo and I have had some good talks about why our garden isn’t growing and what we need to do to fix it. He’s committed too and that helps keep me on task.

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Parenting when you don’t particularly like your kids

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I love my boys, I do, but there are days when I don’t particularly like them too much. That is terrible to say, even worse to write it out and admit to others. Parenting is hard and repetitive and most of the day is spent trying to bring a consistent patient response to irrational terrorists. Days like today when the crying and tantrums start even before I have made it out of bed are even harder. We have fights over breakfast, and brothers sitting too close together. They cry when Beautiful leaves for work and fight over anything and everything. I know the score, that this is going to be a challenging day but it is made even more challenging by the fact that I don’t really like the boys today. I am annoyed by the 4 year old and his fake laughing, and the whining shriek the 3 year old uses to communicate everything is like nails on a chalkboard.

This is not often the case, my feelings about them I mean, not their behavior. Days like this I try to dig deep, try to bring back those high school basketball practices when I felt like I would collapse but still went on. I try to distract and steer them into another direction. I try to have the empathy for a little boy who is still learning to figure out the powerful emotions inside of him. But none of it works and I need to just check out for a while. So I lay on the couch tuning out the chorus of cries and screams. I snap and send kids to timeout because I am tired of hearing them. I yell and intimidate instead teach and discipline. I vacillate between feelings of validation and shame and I know that this one day will not define them or me. I know that we will get through this because though I may not like them right now, I love them fiercely. I don’t get to pick the days I parent them and I’m not always going to be enamored with my kids. Being self aware enough to know I’m not at my best helps me work towards a more measured response.

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It was needed, if not enjoyed

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When we start out the front door I know what kind of situation I’m dealing with but I also know they need the walk. It is cold outside but we are all bundled up nicely with toques and gloves to go with our winter jackets. We have been getting outside and playing everyday but usually around the house and in the big dirt pile in the back yard and I know that the boys need to open it up a bit, stretch their legs. I also know that neither is feeling a hundred percent and and their diva gun is already cocked with a hairpin trigger.

I try to keep the boys close as we start to explore the neighborhood but the trains are near and need a closer look. Once we get to the trains the park is in view but a little further off and the playground is at the far end of park with two softball fields to navigate. If I tell them we can’t go to the park we have the melt down now, if we go to the park the melt down starts when it’s time to leave and the walk home is too long. We go to the park, choosing the moment over the future. Along the way we found shapes and numbers. We picked up sticks and threw rocks in puddles and generally had a good time meandering to the jungle gym. The melt down started early as the boys fought over the teeter totter and who got the red swing. They fought over every apparatus there and I was ready to head home.

There was crying and whining and demands to be carried, and the boys were being difficult too. We made a game to find colors or trees, whatever the next milestone was ahead of us to keep the boys moving forward. They calmed down and for a while we walked at a snails pace, one little hand in each of mine, while the rest of the street zoomed by. Back past the trains, through puddles, and up the street to our house. It was a good walk, a needed excursion for all of us. The boys are down for naps early, worn out from crying and being sick and I hope they sleep well.

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