Dad Life…

Saw this on facebook and just had to share it.  So true in so many ways…

Dad Life from Church on the Move on Vimeo.

seems to be a theme these days: Hard Core Gansta’ Parenting.

The Sneak Attack

I was defeated.

I thought I could get through the six months of deployment unscathed. Who was I kidding?  I mean I know it’s happened before.  I guess I let myself get lulled into a false sense of security, thinking “this could never happen to me.”  Especially after 5 1/2 months without incident. Well it happened and I was betrayed by one of my closest allies in the process.

It all started like any other evening.  Supper was done. It was getting late into evening so it was time for “The Bath.”  As you may recall from a previous post that my daughter was once traumatized by the bathtub.  It was all my fault too.  It had taken me no small amount of effort to coax her back into the tub and convince her that bath time was “fun” again.  In the process tears and wails of despair were shed. My daughter voiced her own displeasure as well.  Eventually though, it worked.  Bath time was fun again! A rollicking, splish, splashing good time with the help of one of my more effective brainstorms: the bubble bath.

My daughter loves bubbles.  Sometimes we’ll play outside and I’ll blow these big bubbles for her and she’ll just chase them around for hours.  When Yo Gabba Gabba! comes one with their “Bubbles” song she gets real excited and squeals and dances with delight.  Her belly laugh when bubbles pop is one of the most addictive sounds in the planet. So the bubble bath really helped in getting her in the tub again.  It was my greatest ally in this bath time battle.  Little did I know that  it would also turn out to be my greatest betrayer.

So back to this evening.  Here is my daughter enjoying her bath, splashing around and generally getting water everywhere.  After washing her hair and giving her an all around scrub down it was time to come out.  So I pull the drain  to let the water out.  I remarked at how resilient the bubbles in this bubble bath were as, despite my daughters splashing around, there was still a good coating of bubbles over everything.  It was as the water drained that I finally noticed “it".  No warning. No outward sign from my daughter that anything was awry. No, it was a complete sneak attack. I had no idea until it was too late.  Like everything else that had been covered by a layer of bubbles “it” was also covered in bubbles and I didn’t notice “it” until all the water had drained out.

Yup. There was a bubble covered turd in the tub.

Sigh. Et tu bubbles?

Tick Tock

10 days.

As I write this there are just 10 days left in the month of June.  10 days until my wife’s time in Iraq is up.  Barring in unforeseen circumstances and accounting for transit time she should be back in the good ol’ U.S. of A within 15-20 days, God willing!

15-20 days! Woohoo!

…

15 TO 20 DAYS!!!! Crap! I’ve got a lot of stuff I need to do!!  The Piles! The dusting! The floors!  I’ve got get those piles contained… err… rid of! Piles of laundry. Piles of dishes.  Piles of papers.  Oh man. So much to do.  I’ve got to get this house in tip top shape before she gets here.  I’m sure she would not like to be reminded of the dust of Iraq here at home.  Right now though it might be close. Maybe I can convince her it’s part of a acclimatization program that I read somewhere.  To kind of “gradually” re-introduce deployed airmen back into civilization.

Yeah. I don’t think she’ll buy that either.

It’s the Final Countdown!!!

1 month left until she’s home!

Then it’s party time!

Know When to Fold’em…

Laundry.

It’s the bane of any bachelor’s existence.  It’s one of those things where he would rather do so many other things but laundry. Like playing video games. Or eating. Or sleeping. Working on the hotrod in the garage.  Getting a vasec…  Ok. Maybe not that extreme. 

However, my distaste for laundry is one of the carry-over’s of my bachelorhood that refuses to let itself be “fixed” by my wif….er, married life.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate clean, fresh smelling clothes and good hygiene, but it’s just so tedious and there always seems to be so much of it.  And…well…I kinda suck at it.

Let me clarify, the washing and drying part is easy enough.  Technology has wonderfully made that part easy.  Throw the clothes in, select the right setting, measure the detergent, and “presto!” clean clothes!  It’s what comes after that’s such a pain.  What was once a pile of dirty clothes has now magically, wonderfully turned into a pile of clean clothes.  But that’s the problem.  It’s a pile and we’ve already talked about how much bachelor’s love their piles.  It’s just so easy.  Why fold?  I mean it’s clean isn’t it?  And sitting there in a pile, it’s easy access too.  It’s ALL IN ONE PLACE! I can find whatever I want there. 

That being said, I suppose I should come completely clean.  I can see you neat freaks scratching your eyes out and screaming at the screen “The wrinkles! You need to fold and put away your clothes to prevent wrinkles!”  Remember what I said about me sucking at laundry?  Well, this is the part where I suck. 

I can’t fold clothes.

Well, I can but it ain’t pretty.  Often times the clothes that I fold will end up having more wrinkles than if I had just left it laying out in a pile.  So bachelor logic in me is reasoning that there’s no point if folding them if they end up looking worse than if I had just left them there in the first place.  Also, if I really need a clean, pressed shirt I’d still be ironing it folded or not so what’s the point.  The old bachelor is usually very convincing in his argument and coupled with my natural talent at procrastinating doing things that I’m not good at, he usually wins the argument.

Speaking of things I’m not good at, it’s bad enough if I were really just by myself.  Now couple this with a wife that’s deployed (so no help there) and the fact that we have a now 22 month old daughter.

Who has a lot of “cute” clothes.

It’s one thing to find the time to fold laundry between work, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of a rambunctious little toddler.  It’s a whole other thing when you’re already bad at folding your own clothes but must also fold the clothes of a baby girl.  First of all her clothes are small.  My hands are not. If I can’t even fold my own clothes without wrinkling them, what makes me think that I could successfully fold miniature clothing?  And then there’s the gender issue.  I’m a guy and I grew up with brothers.  Clothes for guys are simple, easy (probably in recognition of the fact that we suck a laundry).  Shirts, shorts, pants, and socks.  That covers about 99.9% of all male clothing. Scots need not comment please.  Girls, on the other hand, have much more variety in clothing and must be kept and stored in mystifying ways.  In addition to the shorts, pants, and shirts they have dresses, skirts, skorts, mumu’s, jumpers, leaotards, etc.  The list goes on and on.  And what the heck are bloomers!?

So the point of this post? Well you know how the military wives prepare “honey do” lists while their husband is away?  Usually it’s things like fix the car, fix the roof, move some furniture?  Well, let’s just say that I might have a “honey do” list too but it’ll be more like “Here are some bloomers and I have no idea what to do with them.”

Yay Piles!

Trauma at the Hospital

I don’t like going to hospitals. 

To me, you go the hospital only when you’re sick and because I don’t like getting sick, I don’t like going to hospitals.  My last visit to the hospital was the ER trip for my daughter that I wrote about in a previous entry.  It did little to temper my distaste for hospitals.

It is with this frame of reference that you can understand my attitude when I had to bring my daughter in for her last well-baby check-up the other day.  My daughter’s attitude toward hospitals is about the same as mine.  She just takes one look at the examining table and she “knows what’s up.”  Especially since her doctor’s visits are followed by visits to the vaccination clinic.  Yup. I was in for a great time.  Little did I know…

So this particular check-up was going pretty smoothly until the provider that was seeing us started asking me questions about my daughter’s development.  She was giving me advice about her diet, what her vocabulary should be like, and other cognitive developments that I should expect.  She then I asked me if I was potty training her to which I emphatically said, “No.”  So at this point the provider starts telling me that I should think about getting a little potty for her, gives a few tips here and there, and mentions the fact that the way kids learn about “going potty” is just by watching. 

Oh boy. I know where this is going.

And then the magical words come, “You know, you should start letting her come to the bathroom with you.  And, well…since she’s a girl, you should probably start sitting down when you go to the bathroom.”

I don’t like going to the hospital at all.

Night of the Living Dead…

“What is it? Is it dead?”

“It doesn’t seem to be moving. I’m gonna look closer.”

“Don’t do that! What if it wakes up?”

“Aw c’mon. It’s dead. It won’t move now. See?”

Kick.

“Quit it!”

“Aw quit be such a ninny.  I told you it’s AHHHHHHHH!!!”

“AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

“It’s ALIVE!!!”

Yes, dear readers (if there are any of you left that is) this blog is being resurrected from a premature death or at least I’m going to try.

There’s probably a number of reasons for the huge gap from my last entry but the most likely reason is a combination of my laziness, lack or creative juices, and well, the fact that my life has been pretty boring.  Seriously. 

After the excitement of change and adjustment of the first few months of my wife’s first deployment things have kind of just settled down.  We REALLY got into a routine here at the home front so there’s actually been very little to write about.  The unfortunate by-product of settling into routine is that life quickly gets boring.  Not that I have time to dwell on that.  I’ve discovered that it’s entirely possible to be very busy all the time and yet be completely bored at the same time. 

Not that I’m complaining or anything.  If excitement is anything like what I went through the first couple of months, then I’ll take boring routine any day of the week.  Every day of the week apparently. It also explains why I’ve not really written anything in a while.  But as I write this it is now the last week of May meaning that we are getting near to the one month mark before my wife gets to come home.  It’s charged me up a bit.  Given me something to look forward to and gotten my energy level up a bit.  Hopefully it’ll get my creative juices a jolt and I’ll be back to blogging like when I first started out. 

Exercise

Today I was able to get a bit of exercise in.

In futility that is.

I was able to find time today to actually mop the kitchen floor today.  It was filthy.

Then it was time for my daughter and I to have dinner. My daughter still has this fascination with gravity…

Recess

Here’s an amusing anecdote about life on base.

Today I used my lunch hour to run over to base and get some grocery shopping done at the commissary.  It was a very pretty day and and I was enjoying the nice Florida spring.

On my way back I drove by the elementary school on base.  The kids were all outside in what I assumed was recess.  The were all in their street clothes.  Except, as always with the military, something was a bit different.  Instead of running through the playground the were running around it.  Cones had been set-up around the perimeter of the playground and every single one of those little grade schoolers were doing laps.

Recess. They do it different in the military.

At the End of the Day…

I miss her most.

 

Please forgive me if this post isn’t filled with the usual hi-jinks and misadventures.  I simply don’t feel like it right now.

It’s the end of the day here.  The toys and books have been put away.  The kitchen is clean. Dishes done. The dog is lounging on his pad and the baby is upstairs in her crib sleeping.  The night has come and the house has settled into a very quiet stillness.

Too quiet.

It’s moments like this that the fact that my wife is far away from me, in a strange land fighting in a distant war, becomes inescapable.  Without the distractions of work, a house to keep after, and a 19 month old to keep track of, I find myself alone with my thoughts. Naturally my thoughts turn to her.  It’s when the house is this quiet that you realize that someone is missing. That there’s a void where there shouldn’t be one.  It’s when you can hear your own thoughts echoing in your head that you wish you had your wife here, just to talk to.   And when you finally head towards bed at night your only thought is that the bed you once thought was too small is now too big for just you.  It’s at night when I miss her most.

My only solace is that nighttime brings the bliss of sleep and the rising of the sun the next day marks one more day she is closer to home.  As the sun rises, so too does the energy and activity level of the house.  Hope and a spirit of perseverance make a comeback.  And the world shakes off the night and moves forward once more.

 

“Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?  Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”  

                                                                                                                      Psalms 42:11

“Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”

                                                                                                                      Psalms 27:14