March 2007 Archives

I wonder why we haven't heard the following re-working to "I've been working on the railroad."

I've been working in the house-hold, all the live long day.
I've been working in the house-hold, just to pass the time away.
Don't you hear the baby yelling?
Rise up so early in the morn.
Don't you hear the baby squishing
"Baby, won't you blow"

Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow your diaper?
Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow,
Baby, won't you blow your diaper?

Someone's in the kitchen with Daddy.
Someone's in the kitchen, I know.
Someone's in the kitchen with Daddy
Playing with the old dishes.

Smash, bang, rattle-i-o.
Smash, bang, rattle-i-o-o-o-o.
Smash, bang, rattle-i-o.
Playing with the old dishes.

If you have any doubt that we evolved in the tropics, consider how much easier every aspect of parenting is in warm weather. Today, with no change other than the extra 40 degrees from our last no-school day, instead of sitting around missing TV, sighing in a dramatically bored fashion, climbing on couches, or throwing forks, we painted 2 giant murals (in the outside air and light), played in the sand box, and climbed trees for hours.

There was some time ago a study showing that childless people are happier than people with children. At first I found this absurd, but then I looked into the study (I can't find the study on the internet now) and the method was to have people write down every 4 hours or so what they were doing and how happy they were at that time, and then they just averaged it all together. Well, shoot, that's not happiness.

Before we had children, I believed that the work of raising children was distinct, was separable from the work of keeping a home clean and running well. However, I've been coming to the conclusion that they aren't really two different things.

Check out this funny article Sue Katz Miller wrote about taking her tweens to the Who concert recently.

In Goldilocks and three Bears, "Just right" in the middle is easily attained. That one's too hard, that one's too soft, ahh, this is perfect. In our house, it is not so.

A recent Saturday afternoon at Rock ‘n Romp made me realize just how much I missed my grown-up life. We’re still in that “I can’t go to sleep without Mommy” stage, which, while very sweet and fleeting (or so I thought), makes me turn down evening outings rather than deal with a wired kid who finally conks out 3 hours past her bedtime.

I used to be an avid camper, having seen much of Texas outdoors (which is pretty easy, since you can camp nine months out of the year, more if you can tolerate the heat). I’ve backpacked my way around the Rockies and even – gasp! – my first ever backpacking trip was solo, using borrowed gear. I started accumulating and had just about everything any survivalist would give his best wool socks for. I could even stow enough stuff in one backpack to last me for two weeks in the wild, including food. Then I became a parent.

I’m a (mostly) stay-at-home parent who told Liesl I’d be glad to post to the new Voice parenting blog in an apparent (get it????) fit of insanity. I’ve probably seen a blog once or twice, why in the world would I think I have anything interesting to say in public about being a mom? But it seemed like such a good idea at the time.

In one of the emails planning this blog, someone implied that the group of people writing were to be an "expert resource." I have to laugh. I am in no way an expert about parenting. Just listen to me yelling "Try that relaxing breathing right now, or you're going to lose TV!" I find that being a parent has shown me most clearly my faults and actual limitations.

I'm a stay at home Dad in Takoma Park with two kids, six and two years old. I maintain a website in my basement that aspires to capture the collective best advice of people on a local parenting listserv. My daughter goes to Takoma Park Elementary School in the first grade. My son isn't in school yet, just a play group where he tends to scare the other two year olds in between trying to play with them.