Fatherhood Role

I think I've successfully transitioned into my new role of fatherhood which entails me wandering from room to room all day long turning off light switches and mumbling to myself about everyone wasting electricity.

Thug

The 5-year-old is turning into quite the thug ... just recently he seriously threatened to "put a knuckle" in my sandwich.

"Quiet Morning"

Sometime ago, my wife instituted what she calls "Quiet Morning" on Sunday mornings. This basically means the kids promise to make a conscious effort to lower their volumes while playing inside so only the neighbors on either sides of our house can hear them as opposed to neighbors on the entire block.

Wake Up Call

Over the years, my kids have employed many different methods to wake me up in the morning. The most popular one these days, for them anyway, is jumping on me and inadvertently making sure that I'll never have any more kids, which ultimately I'm all for, but the "knees-to-groin" type techniques I don't so much appreciate. Anyway, this morning was different. My 10-year-old daughter quietly entered the room where I had been peacefully sleeping just minutes before — I say "minutes before" because my survival instincts have developed over time to often allow me to actually hear them approaching and wake me moments before they strike. Usually it's just enough time for me to get in the fetal position to protect myself ... but not always. This time, my fetal-position-reflex turned out to not be warranted as she walked up, gently tapped me on the shoulder and said, matter-of-factly, "Daddy, today I'm going to start puberty." Uh ... okay ... well that's a new one.

Chores

I overheard my wife giving our 10-year-old a list of chores to do this morning, starting with cleaning her disaster area of a room. I'm not exactly sure how well that went over, but minutes later I did hear the song "Hard Knock Life" coming from in there. So I'm guessing not very well.

New Shirt

I bought a new shirt recently. I tried it on in the dressing room, liked the fit, it was on sale and I left the store feeling relatively confident in my purchase. I wore to work it for the first time this morning. When my 10-year-old daughter saw it before I left, she said (and I quote), "Oooo ... I've never seen that shirt before. It's dazzling." Dazzling? Now, I know it was probably meant as a compliment, but I'm not exactly sure that she knows what that word — dazzling — means. Or at the very least, she doesn't know what it might mean to someone of her opposite gender. It's definitely not the effect I was going for. Not that I was going for any effect at all really. I left the house now somewhat confused about my purchase.

Childhood Memory

One of my very first memories of childhood happened in the summertime. I had just turned 5 and I remember asking my mom when I was going to start school. It's a small, simple memory, but I remember nearly every detail about that moment. Just this morning I experienced a sort of out-of-body deja vu feeling when I heard my son, who also just turned 5, ask my wife the same question. It was a surreal feeling, hearing it ... but not nearly as surreal as when Elton John suddenly popped out of nowhere belting out the song "Circle of Life" from the Lion King. Full disclosure: The first part actually happened, but the 2nd part with Elton John didn't. Well ... it did kind of happen in my head at the time, but mostly I was just trying to end this post on some sort of joke ... so don't ask me to get his autograph for you or anything.

Mad Libs

Playing Mad Libs with my 5-year-old is fun. Of course, he doesn't understand the difference between nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs yet so that means every blank is filled with his favorite word "buttcheeks."

I Am Furniture

At what point in my life will I stop looking like a chair to my children? If I'm sitting in a room and they either enter or are already in the same room, they WILL, without question, be using me as their chair, sometimes both at once. I'm starting to feel like a mall Santa Claus here. Actually, now that I think about it, I don't even need to be sitting, I can be laying down and they will still sit on my belly or chest, deriving great joy at the strained sound I make when they plunk down on me as hard as they can. Is it my clothes? Do I dress like furniture?!

Great Scott!

One of the highlights of seeing a screening of "Back to the Future" at the Hollywood Bowl recently had to be my 4-year-old excitedly (and loudly ... but then that's the only way he does anything) repeating every single curse word in it (there's more than you might remember) to the apologetic embarrassment of his parents and the sheer delight of the people sitting around us. At least after the first few he would do us the courtesy of repeatedly asking us (only after yelling it first, of course) if what he had just enthusiastically shouted was, in fact, a "swear" or not.

"No, 'Great Scott' is not a swear."

Context

If there's anything that my children have taught me, it's that context is very important. For example, while playing with my 4-year-old today, he turned to me and said, "Dad, we need to get us some hookers." See what I mean?

Proofing

It's funny, when your kids are first born, everyone tells you that you have to "baby proof" your house, but just a few years later no one warns you that it's actually your house that needs "proofing" from them.

One Finger

So I think it's a pretty common hope/thought/prayer that most people have when they are about to have a child that it will arrive "healthy and have 10 fingers and 10 toes" and we were fortunate to get that wish with our son. Nearly 5 years later, out of those aforementioned 10 fingers of his, I'll give you one guess as to which one he was enthusiastically holding up in the back seat of my car, in full view of the car directly behind us, when I heard him excitedly (and innocently) yell out, "Dad, look, I have only one finger!"

Father's Day Gift

4-YEAR-OLD: (handing me something made of Legos) I made this for you for Father's Day, daddy.
ME: Oh wow, thanks, Big Guy.
4-YEAR-OLD: It's a Transformer.
ME: Oh, really? Cool!
4-YEAR-OLD: (holds out his hand) Two dollars.

Fatherhood Survival Technique

I finally figured out why a lot of dads stereotypically eat gross things like pickled pig's feet and herring and liver and onions. It's not because they particularly like those foods, it's because their kids are always mooching their food so they have to adjust their diets in order survive. I'm not quite there yet, but I finally get it.