Da Youngsters

Let's preface this post with, 'I love my kids.'  There, now I can talk about anything I want with impunity; free from any quick intakes of breath (GASP) or accusations of terrible parenting.

One of the funniest thing about parenthood is that unless you are the older sibling in a large family or worked with kids your whole life NOTHING PREPARES YOU FOR IT!!  No one takes you aside when your wife is pregnant and says, 'Hey listen, this raisin' kids business is really flippin' hard and you will start aging in dog years about 15 seconds after your first kid is born.  You know that life thing you have now?  It's gone.  Say goodbye to your friends and disposable income for the next two decades.  Having sex?  HA!  Don't even think about it.  You are now a slave to miniature humans! '

Maybe it's our displaced family lifestyle now or many of our parents are from the 'didn't talk about it much' generation but damn, raising a family has got to be the craziest on-the-job training known to mankind.  I'm sure I could wear my fingers to the nub going on about the highs and lows of being a parent but maybe I'll cover a few things that might have been worth knowing 'BC.'  That means, 'Before Children.'

-Where you aware that getting out of the house is probably a 3 hour ordeal, all told?  I used to be able to grab my stuff and split at a moments notice, now I have to get up at 6am to get me and two kids out of the house before 10.  Who knew putting on shoes would be such a major point of conversation?  This could have been useful knowledge.

-Cooking is one of my joys in life, but did you know it could actually be done semi-successfully with one arm?  I might have called bullshit on that one but I surprised myself here.

-Did you know when baby girls poop, it goes straight up their vaginas?  I couldn't have imagined this fact back when I frequently fantasized about the female's anatomy 'BC.'  It's like some indomitable law of physics or something.  A girl poops, and then it goes up their vagina.  A really big drawback to having a daughter with a big appetite is that I get to relive this fact over and over and over again.  Maybe if someone filled me in on this ahead of time I'd would have been prepared to see this body part defaced on a daily basis.

-I wasn't aware that furniture isn't just a place to sit, it is now just a fort waiting to happen.  If a couch had feelings, it would just be biding it's time before our son appeared and stripped it of it's cushions and transformed it into something much cooler.  I'm sure the couch would be okay with that unless it was an uppity couch.  No one told me!

Oh man, I've gotta stop before this can of worms gets out of hand.  Kids are crazy; they're all weird and funny and grumpy and silly and stoic and snuggly and pouty and etc etc etc.  It's nuts.  Kids, wha?

But talk about unconditional love though, hey?  Amazing.  I love my kids.

G...

Gassed

Alright, running around for appointments. groceries, and playing outside for almost an hour has officially kicked my ass.  I'm just flopped out in the basement with the kids listening to music and Brogan yelling into a mike that's hooked up to the TV.  If I try to ingest any more stimulants at this point I'm pretty much just risking getting a good nights sleep, and you already know how important sleep is to me.  I'm hoping to catch my second wind here shortly so I can muster up the juice to make supper.  Someone help me.

G

In Hiding

So Brogan is at the stage where he's really into 'games.'  He just comes up with these wacky ideas and they become games and we try to play along the best we can.  He's hilarious.  One actual game he's exceptionally bad at is hide-and-go-seek.  I own him at this game.  When I count he runs behind the comfy chair and hides there every flippin' time.  I have to act like I'm searching high and low for him while he giggles maniacally in his hiding place.  I'm pretty sure he's worn a hole into the floor from crouching there for so long.

Not to toot my own horn, but I'm awesome at hide-and-go-seek.  I had a hiding spot growing up that literally no one found me in from like 1982 to maybe the early 90's.  I spent so much time camped out in that spot I could have written novels or invented the internet while hanging out in there.  It occurred to me maybe my fellow hide-and-go-seekers thought I was an asshole and just let me rot there but it was usually my younger siblings so I've since ruled out that thought.  It just may have been the best hiding spot of all times.

Regardless, when it's my turn to count he tries to tell me where to hide (behind the chair, huge shocker) and I have none of this so I go try to hide in the most creative but mildly obvious place.  I'm pretty sure I could just stand behind him while he looks for me and he'd eventually have to give up because either it's bed time or the next Rapture is coming.  So today I hide behind his chalkboard easel and of course this stumps him, even with mommy's help.  He's standing right there, he can practically feel the heat of my breath on his neck, and he still can't see me.  This must be a 4-year-old thing, at least I hope it is because if he was an animal in the wild he'd be eaten in like 0.3 seconds.

Anyways, can you guess what my next move is?  I shoot my hand out to grab him, scream bloody murder and I scare the living bejesus out of him.  I've always loved to jump out and scare people.  I used to wait outside our bathroom back home until my brother came out and I'd scream so loud I swear to god he'd piss himself even though that was his whole reason for being in there in the first place.  So Brogan jumps out of his skin and collapses on the floor like a fainting goat and Amy and I just start crying with laughter.  I haven't gotten someone like that in ages and man it felt good.  I'm pretty sure it won't be the last time...

Happy hiding,

G