Stagnation

I had several things on my to-do list for today, so naturally, I did none of them and spent almost all of the elementary school hours reading old blog posts. It seemed like a self-indulgent thing to do, but I couldn't stop. 2007 and 2008 were two of the most complex and fulfilling years of my life. I was struck by the difference between the me of five and six years ago and the me of today. I was engaged. I was excited. I thought deeply about what I was doing and wanted to tell people about it. I was smart and funny, and I loved my job, even when it was hard and confusing and exasperating. Looking back at him, I liked that me. A lot.

That's why I think I really need to get a job.

Aerie and I agreed when Thumper started school that there was value to me staying home even with him in school. It lets out at 2:40, after all, and a couple of times a month at least there's a day off for a holiday, a teacher work day, a bad weather makeup day. I was excited that it would give me time to pursue other interests, particularly writing. The Great American Novel would at last be finished started. The house would at last be clean. Additional money would be made from all those work-from-home hours I'd be putting in.

But mostly I've been watching TV and movies, reading books, and listening to audiobooks. I haven't even kept up with my exercise and diet routines. I look back at how engaged and excited I was, how every developmental stage was thrilling and new, and I realize how removed I am from that kind of energy now.

I need to get a job.

Summer's almost upon us, so I think we'll do a last hurrah on the whole stay-at-home dad thing. We'll revisit the dads' group play dates. Though the cast of characters has changed somewhat since we were regulars and Thumper is likely to be the old man of the group, it will be nice to see old friends again, both his and mine. We have another friend who has grand plans for play dates and cooperative child care to fill in the days between kindergarten and first grade, and we'll throw in with them as well.

There's a job that I've been waiting and hoping to see open itself to me like a a flower in the morning sunlight, but it hasn't yet, and there's no telling if or when it ever will. If it does miraculously hand itself over to me this summer, I'll happily take it and make other arrangements for Thumper, but if it doesn't, when school starts again in the fall, I'll start looking for work again in earnest.

I'm not being the best me that I can be, and with complete freedom, with no pressure from my incredibly loving, understanding, and patient wife, I can't seem to push myself to be better in the ways that I know I need. It's time that I got back to work and contributed to the family in more tangible ways, like income, and retirement benefits. And not spending entire days doing not a damn thing.

I Don't Hate You, But I Kind of Do

A few days ago, a friend linked to this video based on an excerpt from a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace. I usually sigh and roll my eyes over internet videos longer than 3 minutes or so, but this one is worth every second of its 9 1/2 minutes. I've been thinking about it all week. I can't fathom how I can be so inconstant myself (sometimes deeply in love, sometimes deeply annoyed, sometimes kind, sometimes selfish, sometimes patient, sometimes incredibly short of temper) and yet so unable to remember that other people are no more constant than I. The guy who cuts me off in traffic is no more permanently defined by his moment of selfishness and impatience than I am by mine when I occasionally do the same, and yet I immediately classify him by that action: "Jackass!" If my son learns any obscenities from me, he learns them in the back seat of the car when I'm driving.

These past couple of weeks, I was listening to Alexander Adams read A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Hearing Frederick Henry and Catherine Barkley gush over each other in their small, quiet months together amidst the chaos of the world around them, I felt even more deeply in love with my wife, more grateful for her as a sanctuary. For a time. But a moment later, despite years of history, I am suddenly, disproportionately annoyed as hell by some inconsequential action. Knowing long before it comes just how the story is going to end (because how can it not? But maybe it won't. But how can it not?), I feel closer to my child and the undeserved luck of his healthy birth. But still, I'll snap at him all day long for small irritations. Why?

I also watched God Bless America this week, a mediocre movie that is just as sensationalistic and dehumanizing as the the pop culture that it purports to criticize. While watching it, I thought, "But there are no people that deserve to die!" even while chiding myself that yes, there are some people that deserve to die. Not Kardashians, certainly, but maybe someone that would kidnap teenage girls, keep them captive for years, raping them over and over and over again, yes? Deserve to die? And yet human. With thoughts and feelings and history and circumstances.

I want very much to be a better man, but for some reason, there is no such thing as ever after.

Mr. Wallace, who not insignificantly decided to end his own life, points out that it is a choice to think of others as just as human as yourself, and yet, I can't understand why making that choice is so hard, and never gets easier, day in and day out. It's a choice that must be made again and again, ad infinitum, and so many times in any given day, it's easier, or at least more appealing, to choose dehumanization.

And why is it so much harder to make that choice while driving, or while tediously working one's way through the grocery store?

I don't want to hate you. I really don't. But sometimes, I kind of do.

Again with the Bike

After finally figuring out that I can avoid most of the trouble with exploding inner tubes by deflating the tires a bit before storing them in the garage or shed during the hottest months of the year, I thought, I hoped, that I was done with spending hours each week repairing bikes. Alas, I was wrong. We are now about two-and-a-half months into the school year, and we've only ridden our bikes to school a half-dozen times. I'm beginning to take it personally.

Once the exploding tires were resolved, the chain on Thumper's bike began falling off with surprising regularity. A neighbor carried it home for him when he was riding it in the afternoon. I put it back on. It fell off on the way to school the next day. I put it back on, put my foot against the frame, and pulled the rear wheel back as far as I could before tightening the nuts. It fell off again, at the exact same point in our route to school. The kids at the bus stop across the street must've wondered why we liked to stop at that spot and abandon his bike every day.

I got serious. I put the chain back on and used what I thought was an impressive combination of a lever and my body weight to pull it so tight that when I twanged it, it seemed to have no slack at all. It immediately fell off again the next morning. I looked up techniques for shortening a bicycle chain, then threw up my hands and abandoned the second-hand Goodwill bike for a brand-new, straight-from-the-retail-store bike. The next morning, the front tire was flat.

So I gave up for a couple of weeks, then spent part of the afternoon yesterday using a bucket of water to find the pinhole leak in the inner tube and patching it up. The lining on the rim that covers the ends of the spokes was askew, accounting for the hole, so I straightened it out and put everything back together. This morning, the tire was still properly inflated, so we headed out with hope in our hearts to finally ride our bikes to school again. Less than a quarter-mile later, the chain had fallen off.

I honestly don't believe that I or my father spent any significant amount of time or money repairing or maintaining my bike when I was a kid. I don't get it. Am I doing something wrong? Is he doing something wrong? It's not possible to pedal incorrectly, is it? Maybe he has superhuman strength that no ordinary bike chain can withstand.

I told him I'd fix it today, and I'll give it my best, but I can understand why his faith is shakeable. He hung his head sadly and said, "Maybe I just can't have a bike." No sir! I refuse to accept that! I WILL fix that bike if I have to buy a welder's torch and mask to do it! I am Captain Picard, and the line must be drawn here! This far and no farther!

Directive

Two or three weeks ago, Thumper and I had the following conversation. It arose from a few different incidents:

Rodius: "If a boy hits you, you use words and tell him you don't like that. If he keeps hitting you, you can defend yourself. If a girl hits you, you never ever hit her back, you just get away. Because girls are special and magical, and it's our job as boys and men to honor and respect girls and women."

Thumper: "Uh, Dad?"

R: "Yeah, buddy?"

T: "Girls aren't magical."

Aerie very much enjoyed this line of thinking and has a few times reinforced it by saying things like, "Hey, buddy, tell Grandma: What are girls?"

And he rolls his eyes, sighs, and says, "Magical." Clearly he is not completely sold on this line of thinking.

It's easy to see why he has a hard time seeing the magic. The girls in the neighborhood are of the 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old variety, and now that he's crossed the line from adorable baby to annoying little kid, they're not nearly as kind or tolerant as they used to be. They lie to him. They trick him. They gang up on him. They tell him to go away. They play mean games in which they either try to get him to eat something disgusting or convince him that he has to marry one of them.

For some time, it tormented him, and me, when they treated him this way. He so desperately wanted to be around them that he continued to follow them around even though they weren't very nice. I didn't want to cramp his style or make him look even more like a baby by interfering, but sometimes I couldn't hold my tongue. And eventually, he began to realize that they weren't nice to him, and he started to want to do other things than play outside in the afternoon. We found alternatives like playgrounds and friends' houses in the afternoons where he could play with kids closer to his own age who didn't try to get him to eat "black bean soup" (mud) and "tootsie rolls" (dog shit).

But even with less involvement with the neighborhood preteens, his troubles with girls continued. Inevitably some girl, a little older, a little younger, would hit him, or kick him, or push him.

At the local inflatable play space last week, a little girl, somewhere between two and three, latched on to him and would not relent. She followed him everywhere he went, pinching and hitting and pushing and screaming. He tried his best to take my advice to heart, asking her to stop and trying to escape her, but after about 20 minutes, he finally pushed her down, knocking her on her ass. Instantly she was up and running to her mother in tears.

The mother, to her credit, seemed to know her own child very well, and having as far as I could tell seen none of their interactions, responded to her kid's cries of "That boy pushed me!" with "Tell him you're sorry."

When the girl cried, Thumper became extremely distraught. I tried to tell him he wasn't in trouble. I tried to tell him that I was proud at how hard he tried not to hit her. I tried to talk to him about how we could handle it next time, like possibly talking to the girl's mom instead of just getting away from her. But he was a wreck, and he didn't want to play any more.

Then we repeated the process again a few days later with another girl at a playground.

So I'm of two minds. From one perspective, my instructions to him about girls is perfectly valid and his emotional response is a necessary one. As a modern man in a new world, I don't want him to grow up believing he can and should take advantage of girls and later, women. I want him to think of them with respect and even reverence, though I'm not yet ready to explain to him the full extent of their strange, enchanting, and baffling powers. He must learn that size and strength do not confer upon him a righteous authority over those smaller and less strong, and I don't want him to grow up thinking it's acceptable to use other people, especially women, for his own advantage or pleasure without thought for them as human beings. On the other hand, I fear that I'm teaching him that he must submit himself meekly to those that would treat him without respect.

Too many times as a parent, it seems like there is no correct path.

Goals Met and Unmet

So I'm 40 now. Last year, I set some goals for myself. Some of them I met; one of them I didn't. I'm only halfway to my weight loss goal, mostly because I did not stick to the calorie-counting and limited alcohol consumption. I'm not sure why this is so hard for me, but it's a lifelong struggle. I'll keep struggling.

I'm not going to beat myself up too badly for it, though, because I have succeeded in some ways that I never have before. While I didn't lose as much weight as I wanted, when I stopped losing, I maintained instead of gaining. I ran my first 10K nearly 2 years ago, and I've continued to run, to improve, to decrease times and increase distances, and it's that long-term commitment to running that's new to me. I have, all my life, lost weight, stopped exercising, then gained weight back again. This time I'm keeping regular exercise as part of my lifestyle, mostly by continuing to add running events, 5Ks, 10Ks, and even a half marathon, to my calendar.

Oh yeah, did I mention I ran the 3M Half Marathon? I registered to give myself a new challenge, but at the time, and right through to the time that I crossed the finish line, I didn't really believe that I could do it. I set a time goal for myself that was only a little bit slower of a per-mile pace than my 10K pace at the time, and I thought I couldn't possibly reach that goal, either.

But I did. I ran the whole way, never stopping to walk, and I beat my time goal by 30 seconds.

So looking to the future, I guess it's time to remind myself of old goals, like controlling my calorie intake and especially my alcohol consumption. But it's also time for new goals. I would like to reach my 200 lb. goal by the time the local pool opens for the summer, which is around May 1. I'd also like to be a better father to Thumper. I'm terrible at controlling my annoyance and exasperation. I can see clearly how I'm teaching him to react the same way as every day I see my irritation reflected right back at me. One of the members of the Stay-at-Home Dads group was talking about a class he's taking, called Logic and Love, and it may be that Thumper and I would benefit from something like that. At any rate, I'm tired of being bitchy so much of the time.

This is the year that Thumper will enter kindergarten, and I also plan to start writing now. I'll be staying home full-time for a while even after he enters school, and I'll need to find ways to do that and still earn more money. I've always wanted to be a writer, but I've never actually written very much, so now is the time to establish a more regular writing routine by blogging more often and participating in writing challenges like Trifecta and Velvet Verbosity's 100 Word Challenge. To write, and to sell, short stories, articles, and eventually a novel, I have to actually write short stories, articles, and a novel.

So continue to work on my health and fitness, read and write more and watch fewer movies and TV shows on the internet, and try to be nicer to my son. That's where I am right now. Happy 2012!

Thinking About Four

Thumper will very soon become a four-year-old, a landmark that has me thinking again about all the time we've spent getting here, how fast it's gone, and what's changed since all those trips to the obstetrician, mostly, I guess, because we're just about one year away from kindergarten.

Since the early days, and the days in between, much has changed, and much has stayed the same. I think I was better suited to the first couple of years. Three has been tough, with attitude, attitude, and more attitude (from both of us), as his will has developed into something, surprisingly, independent of my own. Many of our days this year have been filled with moments when he expresses an idea ("I want candy!") that I shut down ("You've already had 2 Tootsie Rolls, a piece of taffy, and a cookie; no more sugar.") causing an angry reaction ("I NEVER get candy! I guess you want me to be mad!") to which I react angrily in turn ("Never? Don't even start with that! You've already had 3 pieces of candy and a cookie just this morning! Seriously? Do we have to do this every time?") Things generally go downhill from there.

As we approach four, though, he seems to be softening, sweetening, changing his attitude, which of course is causing me to change mine. He's running and kicking and trying at soccer instead of throwing himself on the ground and making an unending series of angry faces. I've heard that four is pretty sweet. I'm desperately hoping that it's true. I've waffled back and forth since Thumper was around 1 1/2 years old, thinking I want another child and thinking maybe I just couldn't possibly handle another one. If I'd had another one to deal with while working our way through three, I think someone would've suffered, possibly permanent damage.

Now, as he moves out of three and I move closer to forty, I've been thinking more about taking drastic, mostly permanent measures. I think our family is complete now. I have a stay-at-home dad friend who tells me pretty regularly about his adventures with a 6- and 3-year-old, and man, I am not ready for those kind of adventures. His elder child has reached the landmark that I fear most of all: she has figured out that mom and dad will not kill her or seriously hurt her, and she has decided that everything else is a battle that she can win. Where do you go when you say, "I will take this away from you," and the child responds, "I don't want that anyway?" When you say, "I can outlast you," and she says, "No you can't." I am shuddering at the thought.

Anyway, I hope Thumper actually is moving towards helping me be a better dad, because it's been a long time feeling like I'm really pretty terrible at this.

And things haven't changed that much. He's still pretty danged adorable, even though he's almost four now and not almost two, like he was the last time we went to see the Biscuit Brothers at Symphony Square in June of 2009, which we did again a couple of days ago. The Biscuit Brothers haven't entirely lost their charm, and neither has this job that I mostly love, though maybe not as much as I did when he would stay where I put him and never talk back.

My Biggest Problem

I cannot stop yelling at my kid. Is this normal for parents of almost-four-year-olds? It's my biggest daily struggle. I often think that I was well-suited to the daily care-taking of an infant, but a three-year-old is outside of my expertise. Somewhere I picked up the idea that I shouldn't have to repeat myself so much, that he should just listen to me and behave the first, or second, or third time that I say something. I'm not sure why I think this is true. Parents for a millennium have bemoaned the inability of children to listen or pay attention or follow instructions. Somehow I thought I'd be better at this.

So he sneezes full in the face of a pregnant chick, and I snap at him because, really? The whole "Vampire Sneeze" thing that we've discussed ad nauseum and that I remind him of daily, multiple times? And he says, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Like, "Let it go already!" He's gonna sneeze in a pregnant chick's face and then give me attitude about it, like I'm being a dick for reminding him to cover and telling him to go apologize? Really?

And of course I immediately feel guilty every time I lose my cool. My mother told me when I was a kid that being a parent was all about guilt, but, I don't know, I thought I'd be better at this. I remember watching Bill Cosby's stand-up routine about "Come here. Come here. Come HERE. Here! Here! Here!" and thinking, "That's funny." It's not so funny anymore. The phrases I repeat more than three times in a row, several times a day, day after day, include, "don't touch," "get down," "eat your veggies," "get your finger out of your nose," and maybe a hundred others. I try not to think of each of those as a knife in my back or a middle finger in my face, but yeah, I kind of do, really.

So I know, intellectually, that he's a kid, he's three, I can't really change his behavior except in a strictly long-term sort of way. I know that in his purely id-driven three-year-old state, he does not think, remember, or judge before acting or reacting to immediate stimuli. I get it. But man, I just told him, 30 seconds ago, not to do what he is currently doing. While he looks right at me. With that look on his face.

How is it that anybody ever has more than one kid?

Running on Empty, and with a Sore Knee

I ran the Austin American-Statesman Capitol 10K last Sunday, along with 23,000 other people. I thought, since I ran 1:01:44 at the Longhorn Run last year, and since I ran a 56:04 10K on the treadmill, that I would blow my best time for an official 10K out of the water, so when I posted a time just a little less than one minute faster than my Longhorn Run time, I was disappointed in myself. The official photographers of the event quickly posted their photos, searchable by bib number or name, and looking at the pictures of me, I felt old. And fat. And though I've been running and training with nary a sign of knee pain or other injuries, the week before the race, I twisted my knee playing soccer with Thumper and his best pal, and by the end of the race I was downright hobbling.

So I took the week after the race off from exercising to give my knee a chance to recover, and I thought about whether I'm really a runner. I became morose and maybe a little pissy, thinking that I'm not going to meet my fitness and weight loss goals and I'm a terrible father who yells at his kid too much and I haven't kept up with the 100 push ups and I haven't even started the 200 sit ups and there are no solutions to ongoing family problems and I'm constitutionally incapable of keeping a clean house and there's no possible way I'll meet my copywriting deadline and nobody loves me everybody hates me I think I'll go eat worms.

And then I picked up Thumper from preschool and the teacher gave me a daily report that was glowing about his social and verbal skills. And then I went to the gym, ran on a steeper incline with only a slightly slower time than my last 5K workout, and I'd only gained a pound over my last weigh in. Suddenly I don't feel quite like I've totally blown it, though I'm not sure what to do about the knee. And I still have to finish 40 more of those stupid product descriptions in the next 24 hours.

He Already Knows That Forever Young Would Just Suck

For Christmas, Grandma and Grandpa gave Thumper Modern Publishing's Treasury of Illustrated Classics, a box set of 16 children's versions of classic novels. His set has some different titles than this one on Amazon, including Black Beauty, Moby Dick, The Secret Garden, and Oliver Twist but you get the idea. He has been very interested in looking through the books one by one and asking us questions about the illustrations, but he has resisted actually reading them at bedtime. Last night, though, he decided he was ready.

I have to admit, I'm curious what a children's version of Moby Dick might be like. If they removed all of the bits about whale biology and the history of whaling through the mid 19th-century, it might be just the right length. But instead, what we started with was Peter Pan. I was excited to start his very first chapter book.

We read the first chapter, about the mother's perplexity over the presumably imaginary Peter Pan who manages to leave dried leaves and muddy footprints in the nursery while the Darling children are sleeping, even though the nursery is three stories up and he never uses the door. When we finished the first chapter, I told Thumper we could read more the next night, and he thought that was a good idea. We talked about the characters on the cover and in the couple of illustrations in the first chapter. When I told him that Peter Pan is always a little boy and never grows up into an adult, he furrowed his brow. I asked him if he'd like to be a little boy forever, and he said, "No!" in a tone of voice that clearly communicated that he thought that was the dumbest question I could ever have come up with. Why would anyone want to stay a kid?

I can understand why he feels that way. Being a kid has been tough lately. We're in a near-constant battle of wills these days, and most of the time he winds up on the losing end, though he puts up quite a fight. It's been a struggle for me, too, and I feel like most of my time is spent feeling either angry or guilty. I tell him to do something, and he ignores me. I tell him again and he ignores me. I say it louder, and he growls at me, hits me, throws something at me, or yells, "You keep saying it over and over!" And the next thing I know, we're both yelling at each other until finally he's wailing through a timeout in his room.

Today, though, when he refused to eat his lunch and then threw his spoon at me when I said he couldn't have dessert, I skipped all the yelling and carried him calmly to his room. He wailed, "Daddy! Daddy!" through a 3-minute timeout, and then I sat with him in his rocking chair and quietly explained that all of the yelling makes me feel bad, and I don't want to do it anymore. I'm the Daddy, and it's my job to keep him healthy and safe and teach him how to be polite. He's the kid, and it's his job to listen to me. From now on, he can choose to listen to me and we can keep playing and having fun and getting nice treats sometimes, like dessert, or he can choose not to listen to me and go straight to timeout, but we're not going to do the part where I tell him something, he ignores me, and we yell at each other anymore.

"But I don't like timeouts," he said.

"Then you should think about doing what I ask you to do. Does that sound like a good plan?"

"Yeah."

"I love you."

"Now can I have some dessert?"

I've heard that 4 is sweet. But it's only Tuesday, and 3 is already making me question my resolve not to drink.

Mostly Unstructured

What I really should be blogging about is the thing that's on my mind most, which is all of the guilt and frustration I've been going through lately and the sneaking suspicion that I'm not that good at this job and it's a pretty good thing that we've only got one kid or I might end up either divorced or in jail.

But gah, who has the energy for that kind of self-loathing on a Sunday night?

So the other thing I've been thinking about is structure. Since the boy was a wee lad of less than two years, we've occasionally attempted library story time. The first one we went to was a moderate success, until I realized that it was intended for kids under 1, and he was stomping around among the crawlers like Gulliver among the Lilliputians. He enjoyed himself and participated in the activities, but, despite another dad's reassurance that the age ranges listed for the several story times were merely suggestions, I felt socially awkward and we didn't return to that age group's story time again.

Instead, we tried his own age group's story time, and it was, each and every time, a complete failure. He refused to participate. When everyone stood to sing and gesture and pantomime along to the songs ("down came the rain and washed the spider out!") he would sit in my lap, sucking his thumb and eying everyone else suspiciously. When everyone else sat still while Ms. Jane read, he would stand up and wander and talk to me as loudly as a teenager with headphones on ("I WANT MY SNACK, DADDY!"). The more we went, the shorter his attention span was ("I WANT TO GO PLAY PUZZLES, DADDY!")

So we kind of gave up on structured group participation activities for awhile, until we decided to try a gymnastics class at the YMCA. It was titled something completely non-descriptive, like "Buddy and Me" or something like that, and I signed up thinking it would be a mild introduction to structured group activities, with instructors at least suggesting specific activities for the various pieces of equipment.

Instead, it was 45 minutes a week of free play time in the gymnastics room, with no instructor participation except reminding us that the "TumblTrak" was a one-way street and the high balance beams were off-limits. Otherwise, it was Daddy and Thumper playing, much like we do any other day, except on gymnastics equipment instead of playground equipment. It was fun, but by week six, he was more interested in exploring the thermostat and electrical outlets than he was in playing on the equipment again.

In the meantime, my mother and several of the members of the moms' groups expressed the opinion that a Mother's Day Out program was an essential step in his preparation for a classroom setting someday. I felt like paying someone to watch him while I did something else was sort of like cheating, and pretty much what we'd tried to avoid by having me stay home with him full-time in the first place, but I also didn't want to deny him an advantage that would ultimately help him get ready for school. So I priced the YMCA's Mother's Day Out program, was a little shocked, and immediately tabled the idea for reconsideration at a later date.

So time went on, he turned three, he was potty-trained and eligible for the next level of YMCA classes, and I signed up for gymnastics again. This one was "Intro to Tumbling" or "Toddler Tumbling" or something like that, and definitely had instructors and group activities, and the whole thing. I was certain it would be a complete disaster.

And it wasn't! At his first class, every other kid sat in a circle listening to the teacher and participating in a toddler stretching routine ("Pretend your hands are a butterfly. Now land your butterfly on your toes; now fly your butterfly way up in the sky!"), Thumper ran 'round and 'round the outside of the circle. The teacher suggested he sit down and join them; he just kept right on running.

But after a few minutes, he did sit down. He did participate. He followed instructions. He joined in the group activities. I was stunned. I was proud. And I realized: one of the keys to his success in group activities is peer pressure. With other kids staring at him like he's a nut, he starts to reel in his behavior a bit. The other key: I was not allowed in the room with him. On the last of the six weekly classes, the instructors declared that it was "Parents' Day" and we were allowed to sit in the room, and lo and behold, it was utter chaos. Not only my kid, but almost every other kid in the room, went nuts. If I'd been able to watch Library Story Time through a window, he probably would have been just fine.

So the kid who wouldn't participate in group activities was finally participating. The kid who wouldn't jump off of anything more than an inch high if he weren't holding my hands was suddenly jumping and tumbling and rolling and balancing and hanging and swinging. When the six-week program was over, I asked him if he wanted to sign up again, and he said no. The only other class for his age group was "Tap Dance and Ballet," and when I asked him if he wanted to do that, he said, "No, that's just for girls." I'm not sure where the kid who loves to dance and who has the dad in the alternative gender role gets the idea that something is "just for girls," but there you go. Cultural inculcation starts early, I guess.

With structure a success, but with no structure on the near horizon, I thought again about pre-school. Aerie took Thumper to a "Fall Fest" with pony rides that turned out to be a marketing ploy by a local pre-school. She gave them my phone number on Saturday, and by 9 a.m. on Monday, the owner called me. I had no doubt it would be more expensive than the Y, but I also figured with that kind of response time, he was probably not going to leave me alone, so I took him up on his offer for a tour that afternoon.

It was impressive. The teachers seemed patient and kind, and the owner was too. Thumper started out clinging to me like a baby chimp. I wasn't sure why he was so anxious, but after awhile, when he said, "You said school when I'm five!" it became clear that when I told him we were going to "tour a school," he thought I was going to take him there and leave him. The owner captured his interest with a collection of Melissa & Doug puzzles and then let him wander into each of the different classrooms while we watched and talked in the hall. By the end, Thumper didn't want to leave.

It was state-of-the-art, with a security system that uses two keypads and a thumbprint scanner. When he pointed out some kind of interactive touch-screen wall projector and proudly declared that "we're the only school in the state of Texas that has one," I was even more certain the program would be out of our price range. And I was right. It was twice the cost of the YMCA Mother's Day Out.

So there you go: a whole bunch of words to say, "We tried structure, we liked it, and we're not doing it anymore."

The End.

Stuff and Things

Wow, it's been a month since I posted, and I left a vague reference to a curse word up as my lead title all this time. For shame.

Things are tough over here, but not absolutely horrible. I've not been to the gym, until today, for nearly a month. I've also been eating crap and drinking excessively. Coincidentally, I've gained 10 pounds. Yay!

Speaking of going to the gym today, it was almost an hour and a half excursion. I began to feel like Odysseus attempting to return home. The surprising rainfall amounts from (I think; I'm too lazy to look it up and confirm) Tropical Storm Hermine as she moved up from the Gulf of Mexico and across Central Texas flooded several roads, leaving our local YMCA completely inaccessible. We approached from one direction; the road was blocked. We took the long way 'round to approach it from the other direction; the road was blocked. So we chucked it in and went to the other not-so-local Y. I hope the building didn't get flooded; the boy starts a gymnastics class there next week.

A month off, and by the way, I could barely run for 10 minutes, let alone a full hour. I best get my act together if I'm going to run in Warrior Dash in November.

So yeah, I'm a fat lazy bastard. I'm way behind on a copywriting project. Like waaaayyyyyy behind. My wife is working most of the time and still under coal-to-diamond pressure to solve unsolvable problems for her family, with the people she's trying to help not always being so nice to her. I'm hosting play dates here tomorrow and Friday, and I haven't finished cleaning my house.

Hmm. What else? Oh yeah, I got peed on by one cat shoving him into a cat carrier this morning and scratched by the other. One has a chronic UTI problem that's getting beyond old and more than expensive. The other is apparently allergic to his own teeth and has a rare viral infection that gives him the permanent runs. I spent $375 to maybe, or maybe not, find solutions to these problems. I think I'll do the Happy Happy Joy Joy dance.

Oh yeah, and then, what with my wife working 14-hour days and burning out her brain cells and feeling guilty about it, and then burning out her brain cells again the next day and feeling guilty about it, we decided to just go ahead and close the door on the second child thing and cut out the stress of the whole "Now? Later? How much later, 'cause we ain't getting younger? Can we afford it? How much bodily damage will a second pregnancy do?" conundrum. Hasn't seemed to reduce the stress much, but it has managed to make me pretty sad. Maybe adoption? Probably not. Doesn't feel like the right thing to me. But little babies sure is cute...

And so then bitching about it makes me feel like I should say: I know we're blessed. The boy is a marvel, a wonder, a joy. He held court at the vet's office today, cracking up staff and customers alike. But also: even that, I mean, Lord, he just. Never. Stops. Talking. I can't think straight talking to the vet about this med for that cat, and that med for that cat, and how often and how much because he's chattering non-stop and asking questions peppered with "Why?" every 10 or so words and climbing on the stool when I told him not to because he'll tip it over and hurt himself and then he almost tips it over and I can just see the chipped teeth and split chin and I snap at him and the vet looks all uncomfortable and I'm feeling guilty again.

Wait, what was I saying? Oh yeah. Blessed. Wonderful. Lucky. And we are. But man. So much for not complaining.

OMFG

I thought I didn't want to let this space become a place where I complain about my life, but I just don't know how to process all of this. I thought, when we got married, the "I'll always love you, no matter what" part would get us through anything, and I guess it has, and it will, but it isn't making it easier. There is no one I can talk to about all of the stress that we, our little family unit, is under right now, and I should be worried about who will see this and what I'll do if the wrong people see it and take it badly, but...

FFFUUU...!!!

No, that didn't really help.

And the Rage Thread, by the way, is a meme I wouldn't know anything about if my hip, just-graduated-from-high-school nephew didn't reference it on Facebook all the time. Tip o' the hat to ya, Penguin Man.

What was I talking about again? Oh, yeah. At the exact moment that the pressure exerted on my wife in her professional life is increasing, for a variety of reasons, and the staff that she has available to her to help her deal with that pressure is decreasing, for a variety of reasons, the demands placed upon her by her extended family are also increasing. She is the go-to chick when it comes to getting problems solved, only this time, the problems are starting to look pretty damn near unsolvable. Yet solve them she must, while navigating the minefield of family history and catering to the particular needs and sensitivities of each individual party, and especially one particularly needy and sensitive party, all while still working 12 hours a day and not letting her son, or her husband, feel the burden of her stress or her absence.

And I'm supposed to help her. What I want to do to help her is to unleash the venom of 18 years of suppressed anger on certain parties, and especially one party in particular, but I know that it wouldn't really help, and I know that Aerie would definitely not appreciate it, so I keep on suppressing it. Come to think of it, she probably isn't going to appreciate this post, either, but...

FFFUUU...!!!

She's had enough. More than enough. And I've had enough. And more keeps coming, with no end in sight.

Struggling, in a Strictly First World Sort of Way

My blog output has been hampered of late partly due to my reluctance to use this space to complain about my pretty-all-right life. I mean, we're not suffering through starvation or disease. Our neighborhood is not torn apart by warfare or even criminal activity. We're all doing very well, relatively speaking. But still, I feel like I'm struggling, and I haven't wanted to say so. I asked for this job, this stay-at-home dad job, and I got it, and it's made me very happy, so complaining about the difficulties seems, well, a little whiny.

But.

I'm having a hard time here. I yell at my kid daily. My levels of frustration, irritation, annoyance, and outright anger often catch me by surprise and fill me with guilt. I think I want another child, but I'm frequently pretty sure I can barely handle the child I have, so another one might just unravel me completely.

Aerie and I like to point out which of Thumper's phrases, sayings, and gestures originate with whom. "Oopsie, doodle bugs" is definitely hers. "You're getting on my nerves," unfortunately, is definitely mine. I try to obviate my frustration by blogging and Facebooking all of the fun things, the adorable moments and interactions, and to remember to see him as other people do, as a smart, charming, sociable kid who's pretty much funny as hell.

Today, for instance, when we were leaving the YMCA, a staff member I'd never seen before, without so much as a glance at me, gave Thumper high five and said, "See you later, Rock Star!" People love this kid. He's a charmer. Often, his charm is lost on me, though.

And don't get me started on the whole potty training saga. It's mostly going pretty well, but good God, it's exhausting. How can I be so full of pride when he craps on the toilet and so mortified when he pees on the floor at the mall, all in the same day?

And I'm sure my struggles are all perfectly normal. Thumper's darn-near three and is supposed to be pushing and testing every limit that's set for him. He screams; he flops; he throws things and hits people, mostly me. I nag him all day long: "Don't touch that. Don't put that in your mouth. Be nice. Don't hit. Don't throw that. Ask nicely. Stop kicking me. Say thank you. Sit up and eat your lunch, please. Sit up. Sit up. One more bite. Get in your seat, please. Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on! Come on! Come here right now!"

When I tell him over and over again to leave the back door alone and don't slam it, and then he slams his finger it, and then does it again the next day, when he cries I practically yell "I told you so!" at him. I just don't feel like I'm being the kind, patient, and loving father that I should be, especially since this is exactly what I signed up for.

Wow, That Was Two Years Ago?

I was thinking my whole Self-Improvement Project Thingy was last year, and I was thinking it was time to do an update about how I've done. Turns out it was two years ago, and last year I already did a progress report. I must be getting old, because the time, it is a-flyin'.

So anyway. As of today, I'm at 243 pounds, which is 19 pounds less than this time last year. As I mentioned last year, virtually all of that progress was while sticking to the tenets of Weight Watchers, but I friggin' hate sticking to the tenets of Weight Watchers. It's tedious, and takes all of the joy out of every single meal you'll ever eat for the rest of your life. I was, at my best, down to 232 pounds, but, well, I gained some back. I'm not too down on myself right now, because I think I may be about the best I've been as far as health and strength and endurance, physically. I mean, this is the year that I ran a 10K, and I'm pretty proud of that. I may never be my ideal weight, but I'm still exercising, and that's a good thing. My downfall is caloric intake. I like to eat, and I like to drink. I haven't smoked cigarettes in 4 years now, and it's been even longer since I might possibly have consumed whatever illicit drugs that I may or may not have done at some unspecified point in my life. My greatest vices are eating and drinking, and while I know that needs to change, right now I'm kind of OK with it.

So if I have goals for change for the next year or so, they would mostly be gaining control of my emotional reactions to Thumper and his more or less constant testing of his limits and mine. I'm not always the calm and reasonable parent I'd like to be. I may never be, but I need to work harder at not losing my shit on a nearly daily basis. He's pretty damn cute, but he's also a test of my patience and kindness and selflessness, and I fail that test far more often than I'd care to admit.

So, as DJ Lance and the Yo Gabba Gabba gang tell us, keep trying. Don't give up; never give up.

Yes, We Read the Grinch, Too, Even Though It's June

This week, in addition to trying to control my calorie intake and workout every day and just generally try to be a better person, I'm trying to remember that despite the ear infections and Terrible Twos and tantrums and the retorts of "no, I'm just tryin' to do this" when I tell him to stop doing something and the several thousand times a day that I say, "Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on." and the throwing of toys and the bashing of various household objects with his officially licensed Texas Longhorns baseball bat, that doing this job really is fun and exactly what I wanted for my life.

Wow, that was a really long sentence.

Tonight, as I was reading him his bedtime books, I thought about what a strange and wonderful experience it is watching him turn into a real person. Anyone who sees my Facebook status updates knows I talk about him a lot, and post ad nauseum all the funny things he says and does as we go about our daily routine. He gets a lot of attention wherever we go. Just as a fer instance, we went jogging Saturday morning, and as we passed the tennis courts, he pointed and yelled, "I want to watch tennis!" So we paused and sat on the little bleachers with a couple of moms who were watching their kids receive tennis lessons. He had an entire conversation with one of the moms, completely independent of me, asking her name, pointing out what a funny name "Dixie" is, telling her his name and age, discussing the hummingbird on her shirt and what exactly a hummingbird is, telling her about his recent haircut and the birthday party he'd be going to later. She told him he didn't get a hair cut, he got 'em all cut, then snorted out a laugh and apologetically told me her humor was about at a two-year-old level. He told her Daddy cut his hair, and she said she bet I'd done it with clippers rather than scissors because that was a lot of ground to cover over his big ol' brain.

When the tennis lesson was over, and Thumper ran out onto the court to help the kids pick up balls and rackets, The mom asked me if he was really two, which we get a lot. She repeatedly marveled at how smart he was and how well he spoke, which we also get a lot. As often as I report encounters like this, and how often I'm reminded of how special he is and how lucky we are, it's still easy to forget and get bogged down in the challenges, the less pleasant aspects of taking care of him day after day.

So that's what I was thinking about while I read him his books. Because I've read all of those books so many times, I began changing We're Going on a Bear Hunt up a bit to amuse myself. I sang the first two sentences; he turned and gave me the Upraised Finger of Discipline, that I apparently use on him, though I'm not aware when I do it, and said, calmly, "No, you don't sing it. You just read it." I began reading from where I left off, and he said, "No, you missed some words." So I started over. Then I began changing some of the words. I turned the thick, oozy mud into thin, squeaky mud. I turned the whirling, swirling snowstorm into stinking, creeping smog cloud. At each point that I wandered from the printed text, he patiently brought me back, explaining that it wasn't woods, it was a forest, it wasn't a squeaky, wooden door, it was a narrow, gloomy cave.

And my heart grew three sizes that day, swelling with love for this remarkable, adorable, maddening kid who knows much more than he should, and who is, after all, only two, and is exactly where he should be, doing what he should be doing, just as I am.

Complex Human Emotions

Aerie gave me the morning off, and I went to see Where the Wild Things Are at the discount theater. $1.75 ain't bad. Too bad the soda and popcorn weren't on the same price scale.

Much thanks to Aerie; it was the perfect movie for me to see today. I couldn't see Max as anyone but J-H through all of the pre-wild things segments, but J-H sort of disappeared when Max hit the island.

I was a little distracted by the Wild Things performers, too. Tony Soprano was particularly distracting. And Catherine O'Hara. I thought Alexander must be Steve Zahn. And it took me awhile to place Chris Cooper as Douglas. I didn't peg Mark Ruffalo as the boyfriend, or Forest Whitaker as Ira. And I thought Catherine Keener must be doubling as the mother and as K.W. But she wasn't K.W. at all. So all of that kept pulling me out of the story a bit, now and again. But mostly I was amazed.

It was good for me because it was a story about a young boy coping with the complications of being a human being. He was an immature person trying to process complex human emotions like love, jealously, anger, isolation, fear, powerlessness, and so much more. Each of those wild things was an aspect of himself as well as a study in the impossibility of peace, love, and harmony in a human community.

Which of course made me think of me. And the boy. And how he acts out. And how I react to it. He is the wild thing. He is Max in the wolf suit, standing on the table and yelling and biting. And I am Catherine Keener, reacting, and knowing I'm not doing right, and not knowing how else to do it.

I don't know that it helped, but it made me want to keep working to be my better self, to remember that each of us, including me and my son and and everyone else are all weak and afraid and hurt and capable of more and trying and failing. And trying again.

29-Month Slump

I've been in a slump lately. My weight loss has stopped, mostly because I stopped following the tenets of Weight Watchers. Again. My daily enthusiasm for spending time with Thumper has dropped off, partly because of a string of days where he was sick and the weather was too cold for playgrounds, partly because of the phase he's deep into now (throwing, hitting, screaming, resisting every idea that is not his own), and partly because my attitude sucks.

I yelled at him at dinner at the end of last week. Somehow, table manners became a big pet peeve for me. He bangs his fork. He plays with his food. He spits out his beverage. He throws peas on the floor. He paints with his spilled soup. I don't know when I became the "act right at the dinner table" Nazi, but I yelled at him. And Aerie got upset with me. And I got upset with her. And I brooded about it for two days before I came to the conclusion that she was right and apologized. I have to find a way to change my expectations for him. My expectation that he feed himself without incident is clearly out of whack with reality, so I can continue to get upset when that expectation isn't met, or I can accept that it's not a reasonable expectation now.

I've been thinking about this job, and about the arcs my other "real jobs" have taken over the years. I think I'm at the point where I'm comfortable with my ability to do my job. I've mastered many of the positive challenges of my daily tasks, the challenges I enjoy, but I haven't yet learned to live in harmony with those negative challenges, the ones that I don't enjoy. I've become complacent, and in some ways bored with a job I feel like I've learned how to do pretty well.

So what's the next part of the arc? Well, either settling comfortably into the rut and learning to appreciate the ease and the boredom, or finding new ways to expand my role so that I can keep growing and learning new things. What does that mean in practical application? I'm not sure. I don't think it means just finding new places to go, new parks and playgrounds and museums and shows. I've been thinking about Mother's Day Out programs a lot lately, as people keep impressing upon me how it's important to get him comfortable with a classroom setting before he enters full-time public school. The problem is: they're freakin' expensive. I wonder if these two problems of mine can find a solution for each other?

I don't know; I'm just talking here.

It's a Long Time Until July

I'm struggling to be the parent I want to be. Thumper is exhibiting all sorts of stereotypical two-year-old behavior. He wants to do everything himself. He throws himself on the floor and screams at just about anything I say, even if I'm suggesting something he wants to do, even if he suggested it first. He bit Aerie hard enough to leave blood under the skin, though I think he was as shocked that it happened as she was. At first I thought tantrum behavior was kind of funny, as in, "Hey, look at that! Two-year-olds really do that! Cute!" Now I'm just tired.

I want to be the parent who acts calmly. I want to be the...

Jesus Christ, will someone shut that goddamned dog up! He's been barking for 45 freaking minutes already!

What was I saying? Oh, yeah, the parent who responds to behavior rationally, not emotionally. But apparently I can't do that. He throws his food on the floor and bangs his fork repeatedly on his plate, and I snatch it away from him. He screams and throws his milk cup across the room, and I yell at him. He hits me with a Tinker Toy stick, and I put him roughly onto the timeout stool. I have never hit him, though, and have no fear that I ever will. I've just been doing a lot of yelling, and he's doing a lot of screaming. Did you hear us in WalMart this morning?

Oh, great. The cat's throwing up in the other room.

Anyway, there you go: evidence that it's not all peaches and cream in the Rodius household.

You Met Me At a Very Strange Time in My Life

That's a quote from Fight Club, Mom.

1. I'm not real keen on the new look. I have a suspicion that this is one ugly color scheme, but I was getting tired of the last one.

2. Happy Kissiversary, Aerie!

3. Things have been pretty strange around here, stressful and aggravating and also fun and amazing and tiring.

(a) There are serious disruptions taking place in Aerie's family, and we're hurting for them and worrying with them about what the future will hold and also hoping it all doesn't spill over too much into our little world.

(b) I also spent three straight weeks spending most of my free time working on a large copywriting project, and it couldn't be clearer to me that it's not a lot of fun and puts more stress on my family life. It does pay well, and it would be easier if I were better at managing my time.

(c) I'm struggling to stay motivated with Weight Watchers. As I've noted before, success gives me an inexplicable tendency to sabotage myself. I've kept up the exercise, though I think I've got a rotator cuff injury that's making weight lifting a bad idea. I'm still hitting the treadmill, though. In fact, I had a new personal best yesterday, burning 1070 calories in 60 minutes. I've got to say, The Crystal Method's Drive is my all-time favorite workout album. I think it was released as part of a promotion of Nike's integration with iPod, or something like that, which makes it about as corporate as you can get, but man, it's effective. I only wish it was long enough to get me all through a full hour instead of quitting at about 45 minutes. Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel... Bad, right? Wait a minute, what was I talking about again? Oh, right. Stalling on the weight loss. Yeah.

(d) Thumper's been testing a lot of limits lately, and has developed a strong tendency to contradict everything that's said to him. We have whining, and screaming fits, and "I won't..." and "I can't...", and conversations that tend to follow these lines:

Me: "It's raining."
He: "No, it's not raining."
Me: "It's not?"
He: "No, it's raining."

So the stress and frustration from (a), (b), and (c) tend to make (d) less bearable, but every day I'm reminded by the people around me how wonderful he is. Wherever we go, people tell me how cute and big and smart he is. We had one of our best playdates ever this week, with 4 other kids on the playground all about the same age as he. The kids played together and shared toys with minimal friction, the 2 moms, a babysitter, another dad and I were all friendly and talked Halloween and potty training and developmental milestones and mothers-in-law. And they all expressed amazement at Thumper's age. The dad even said, "He can't do that yet!" when Thumper pedaled a borrowed tricycle on a circuit round and round the playground. So I'm daily reminded how lucky we are with him, but still, I'm doing a lot of yelling lately.

So, uh, yeah, all of that just to say I haven't updated much lately, and I don't like my new layout here, but I really don't have the time or motivation to change it. We're doing a National Downs Syndrome Society Buddy Walk today, which will be fun. And my beloved database project that was suspended indefinitely has been revived, so there's more work such that I may actually someday be able to signup for ushering shifts online, glory hallelujah. Facebook's responsible for my light posting, too. Curse you, you evil Bejeweled Blitz!

Cucumber Daddy and the Boy Genius

Thumper was calling me Cucumber Daddy for a while this morning.

Oh, but wait! First, I have to tell you: one of the ladies at the child care center at the gym asked me today when I picked him up, "How old is he again? I mean, I know he's two, but when does he turn three?" When I told her, her jaw dropped. "He JUST turned two? He's so smart! He knows all his colors, and not just the easy ones! He even knows black and white! And he was counting. He said, 'One, two, three, four, five... Five million dollars!'"

"Yeah," I said, "I don't know where he got that five million dollars thing. I ask him if I can have some, and he says, 'No...'"

She was still gushing. "And he told me that the red pick-up truck on his shirt was 'Kinda like a fire truck.' He's so smart!"

Yep. That's my boy!

Oh, yeah, anyway. Cucumber Daddy. We went to the playground, and we brought his scooter. Man, he loves that thing. He's actually getting pretty good at it, too, pushing with one foot and scooting along. He has a hard time scooting and steering simultaneously, though. This is the second time we brought it to the playground. Last week, one mother, after watching him work it, said, "I thought those were for three- and four-year-olds!"

I thought the scooter might be a little advanced for him, but he's proven me wrong. There was a four-or-so-year-old there with a tiny bike with training wheels. When the kid had abandoned it, Thumper went over to investigate. The kid's mom told him, "I don't mind, but you have to ask your dad if it's OK." Thumper walked up to me, nodding, and said, "It's OK." So we experimented with the bike for awhile. After a few minutes and a seat adjustment (the mom whipped out an adjustable wrench and lowered the seat for him! How cool is that?), he was climbing onto the seat by himself, placing his feet on the pedals, and doing his best to push. As with his tricycle, he couldn't quite get the rotary motion going, but my two-year-old was riding a bike today.

Oh yeah. Cucumber Daddy. I keep going off on Boy Genius tangents. After he scooted for awhile, and before he discovered the bike, he played in the sand box. The sand box has this thing in the middle that makes it look like it used to be a water feature, like a mini-splashpad, but that they filled it with sand at some point to save money. Or something. Let me see if I can find a photo of it... Ah, here! The thing in the background of this photo.

So Thumper's climbing on the tall part in the middle. I get distracted doing some people watching on a family that gave all appearances of being prolific breeders that homeschool, with the dad sort of nagging his older kids in this cheerful, sing-songy voice. "Don't push Baby Ethan so high on the swing, Princess. You'll scare Baby Ethan. Of course you have to wear your shoes, Goofy. I know they get rocks, but they're protecting your feet." Etc. Suddenly, a mom near me jumps to her feet and gasps, covering her mouth, and I hear Thumper say, "Oh. Uh. Yeah." I look over at him, and he's done a sort of flip over the top of the sand box thing. He's doing a handstand, with his feet at the top, and he's trying to figure out how to extricate himself from the situation.

I say, "What, are you doing gymnastics now?"

"Yeah," he says.

"Do you need some help?" I ask. But he gets himself free and gracefully lands on his feet before he can answer. Grinning, he starts climbing up again.

"Wow," says the mother who leaped to her feet. "That's one cool-as-a-cucumber daddy. My heart almost stopped!"

"Yeah," I say, "he takes a tumble now and then. He's already scraped his elbow this morning with that scooter over there."

"I know," she says. "I saw." Maybe with a not-so-subtle tone of disapproval. Maybe. I think about telling her that he can be a nervous kid, so I try not to teach him that the world is a dangerous place by reacting too strongly to minor incidents. Then I figure, eh, what's the point? She probably won't bother to call CPS on me, anyway. So I keep my mouth shut and look back at Thumper.

"Cucumber Daddy!" he says. He's climbed to the top again and is leaning over so that his feet start to rise. "Do it again?"