Dorky Dad the Annoying

I spent part of the evening inventing a game called "Top The Boy." As The Boy sat on the couch immersed in a computer game I tried tossing my baseball cap onto his head from three feet away. I awarded myself a point every time I topped his head with my cap without him screaming.

I played the game for several minutes. I scored a half-dozen points.

The game got boring, mostly because The Boy was so intently focused on his computer game that he was completely unwilling to scream -- he yelled once, even though I was doing play-by-play indicating that I'd lose if he screamed. He even stopped tossing the hat back to me. So then I put the hat back on my head and began staring at him from just above the computer screen.

"Daaaaaad," he finally said. "You're anooooooying."

Yes!

I have precious few skills. (You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills ...). But as you may imagine, the one at which I'm best, by far, is annoying people. This makes me excellent dad material, because one of the main tasks involved in being a dad is to annoy. It's a responsibility I accept with gusto.

The division of responsibility goes something like this: The Wife's job is to make the kid comfortable (you know, by kissing his booboos and building his self-esteem and by comforting him when he's sad). It's my job to make him uncomfortable. Mostly by annoying the heck out of him.

I've always gotten the impression that dads of all sort like annoying their kids, and their kids' friends. Perhaps dads annoy their kids because because they spend so much of their time annoying us -- like, say, those times I'm trying to have a conversation with The Wife only to be interrupted when The Boy decides to break out in song or loud nonsensical babbling or, most of the time, some evil combination of the two.

(Seriously, here's the deal: The Boy talks constantly. Except when we actually want him to talk. Then he shuts up. So he spends hours telling us about all sorts of things, or just mindlessly yelling. But when we ask him what he did at school that day he clamps his mouth shut like The Sequel does when I'm trying to feed him pureed peas. After 15 minutes of coaxing, we get a small, "I don't know" out of him and I feel like I just completed a triathlon. The kid is like that Warner Brothers singing frog. Hello my baby, hello my darling, hello my ragtime gaaaaal.)

It also could be revenge for losing my childless dad freedom, not to mention bank account. But I'm simply going to say that dads annoy their children because it's just so dang much fun. And it'll only get better. Because soon The Boy will get embarrassed by my very presence and then my mere appearance at some sort of event will annoy the heck out of him. But that will be easy.

It's far more challenging now, because when I do something annoying he's much more likely to tell me to "DO IT AGAIN!" as he is to give me the "You're annoying" look. But I keep trying, time and again. Because that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm dad.

The irresistable lure of tasteless brown glop

I think it's a little disturbing that the first solid food many of us consume has the look, consistency -- and often taste -- of barf.

We're feeding The Sequel baby "food." Some of this stuff is decent, like the peach "cobbler" I fed The Sequel this evening. But I wouldn't feed most of this crap to my worst enemy, even if it meant I'd be freed from a lifetime of torture. (OK, maybe I'd do that, but still ...)

The purpose of baby food, as you all should know, is to introduce little ones to the glories of food -- which, in general, is awesome. Yet if it weren't for the danger of death by starvation this baby "food" would probably drive the vast majority of people away from food. I can't imagine anybody saying, "I want more of this!" after a heaping helping of tasteless brown, barf-like glop.

We pretty much figured going into this whole parenting thing that baby food would likely taste like raw sewage, because that's how most canned vegetables taste like. And so we talked often about how we were going to be waaaay better than all those other parents by making our own baby food.

And then the kid arrived. He got old enough for baby "food," we looked at our suddenly-intense schedule and this whole make-our-own-food idea went out the window, where it landed right next to my plans to wake up in the middle of the night with my wife and our insistence that our children not get loaded with clothes based on licensed characters.

So we loaded up on jarred baby food.

But The Boy is far more, uh ... discerning* than that, and quickly rejected the baby food. He started off fine, when we fed him squash and carrots and applesauce. Then we made the mistake of feeding him jarred meat baby food, like chicken or beef, and suddenly the entire jarred baby food universe was suddenly off limits. Pureed meat with no flavoring whatsoever is about as delectable as mud.

(* Otherwise known as "picky.)

The Boy had a sixth sense whenever we pulled out the jarred baby food, and his jaw clamped shut. So we'd employ "tactics." We'd make him laugh. When he opened his mouth to chuckle, we'd shove a bite of food there. He quickly learned how to laugh with his mouth shut.

The Sequel isn't remotely as picky. But feeding him is like playing a video game, a really frustrating video game that you were forced to play by Death to earn your way out of hell. I have to get the food past his waving arms, timing my move exactly to when his mouth is open -- but I have to beat his thumb, which is usually headed straight for the same place as the spoon (I think it's an anti-baby-food defense mechanism). But watch out! One false move results in food splattered throughout the kitchen! Or, worse, a crying baby! (But an opportunistic parent uses the baby's cries to get more food in said mouth.)

All of this seems a tad ironic. I'll spend these next few years trying to pump his body full of food. When he gets older, everybody else will tell him to stop eating so much. (This wouldn't really be a problem if all we had to eat was baby food.)

Sometimes, if I'm successful at this baby-food-feeding-to-get-out-of-hell game, he'll stop waving his warms and will turn suddenly cooperative. And then feeding him feels more like I'm feeding gruel to a depressed and hopeless prisoner (which, given that he's strapped into a seat and cannot be removed until we say so, is about right). He sits there, emotionless, staring off into space while I shove some horrible gray muck into his mouth.

Mercifully, this phase is short -- not short enough, which would be non-existent, but short -- and soon he'll be coating the floor near his high chair with chopped-up bits of people food. But that is another blog post.

Avoiding the dreaded ear infection

Some of you may find yourself completely shocked when you hear that I was not always gung-ho about having children. Indeed, like plenty of guys, I had second thoughts.

Why?

Did I fear that children would relegate me to a lifetime of poverty beginning with day care, continuing with the unending purchase of toys and electronic goods, then with their teenage human-vacuum-cleaner stage followed finally by -- gulp! -- college?

No, because I was already accustomed to a lifetime of poverty. I'd kind of grown to expect it.

Did I fear having no time with myself, subjecting myself to being constantly interrupted by screaming, crying, yelling or barging through the bathroom door?

No. I kind-of expected that when I got married.

(Note to self: Edit that out before The Wife sees it.)

Did I worry about subjecting the world to more of my genetic material?

Well, yes. But I took a gamble that my DNA would be watered down by The Wife's. (So far, it seems, that hasn't been the case. Stupid genetics.)

The thing I feared most -- and I mean THE MOST -- was either colic or ear infections.

I'd been around enough babies in my lifetime to develop a healthy fear of both of those conditions, and in my pre-kid days I'd been convinced that the baby gods would hand me children suffering from both afflictions.

I had no idea what colic was, except that it sounded like cowlick, something my hair has in abundance, and so for much of my life I thought that bad hair days made babies cry uncontrollably for hours and hours. My hair, therefore, would clearly scare the hell out of any and all babies. No kids for me.

Ear infections scared me, too. Again, I knew little about them. I just saw the sunken eyes and the gaunt faces of the exasperated parents who speak of ear infections in hushed tones and with a deep fear. Some then have to go change their pants after the mere mention of the word "tubes."

The simple truth is this: I feared most being a desperate, sleepless parent at wits end trying to calm an uncalmable baby.

So, after deciding to go ahead and reproduce anyway, I spent a few healthy pre-baby days praying that whatever child I was "blessed with" did not get either of these things, because I reasoned that they made parenting a living nightmare. And I had no desire to produce a living nightmare, no matter how cute.

When The Boy had his first bout of crying, my prayers got a bit more intense:

Oooooooh, please please please please please please please please please please pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't let it be colic! Not colic! I'll do anything just ... not ... colic.

Prayers answered. No colic.

Then, when The Boy got his first ear infection, I tried the same thing:

Oooooooh, please please please please please please please please please please pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't let the ear infections be reocurring! No reocurring ear infections! I'll do anything! Just let ... this ... be ... the ... only ... one.

And it was. WOOHOO! Two for two!

Now, I'm a big believer in the Law of Averages. I'm also not a risk taker. I knew that a second child would most likely have both colic and ear infections. Still, we had the child anyway. And I prayed -- again -- when that first bout of unexplained bawling took place:

Oooooooh, please please please please please please please please please please pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't let it be colic! Not colic! I'll do anything just ... not ... colic.

And -- once again -- No colic.

(I'm guessing that most of you by now know where this is going. But I'm going to keep writing, anyway.)

When The Sequel got his first ear infection a couple of months ago, I kept praying -- and why wouldn't I? Worked the first three times. Why not the fourth?

Oooooooh, please please please please please please please please please please pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't let the ear infections be reocurring! Please no reocurring ear infections! I'll do anything! Just let ... this ... be ... the ... only ... one.

Alas, the Law of Averages caught up with me. Or my prayer wasn't sincere -- probably because of my belief in the Law of Averages. In either case, The Sequel is now on his third ear infection. We've been filling him with more drugs than the east wing of a nursing home.

But I suppose three out of four isn't bad. And it could be worse. I could be the one with the ear infection.

Check that. I think I'd rather have the ear infection.

A new set of baby milestones

The Sequel is nearing eight months old. These months have been filled with various "milestones" showing the baby advancing and, supposedly, learning more about the world. I know all about milestones because my wife tells me all about them all the time.

She, like lots of moms, tend to get a bit excited over some of these little events. "Oooooooh! It's his very first projectile vomit!" she exclaims as I clean off about a gallon of regurgitated breast milk from my face.

The Wife has thus informed me when The Sequel has learned "object permanence" and "cause and effect." And with each there is a minor celebration. But I have my own list of "milestones" that The Sequel -- and his predecessor, The Boy -- have passed. They rarely result in any sort of celebration, however:

HAIR REMOVAL: This is the milestone when the baby gets dad to forcibly remove hair from his head for the first time. Some babies do this early, like The Sequel did just before birth, by showing up a full week late and arriving on the first of January -- so not only does the birthday take place on a holiday, it comes mere hours after the deadline to qualify for that popular tax credit. In his post-uterine life, The Sequel accomplished this milestone the same day he learned "cause-and-effect." The cause: He drops his toy from his high chair to the floor. The effect: Dad grumbles and picks it up. Repeat. Over and over again. 'Till dad removes hair. Start giggling.

DIAPER DODGING: The Sequel recently learned to "roll over." He has since employed this new skill with gusto on the diaper changing table. He did this to me this evening, and whenever I got him on his butt, where he belongs, he simply gave me a maniacal smile and started over again -- yes, my 7-month-old baby has a maniacal smile. I blame it on his mom.

PAPER CONSUMPTION: Forget the dog. The Sequel eats more paper than a, uh ... uh ... thing that eats a lot of paper. The Sequel's first stop upon learning to roll over was our magazine rack, where he carefully selected magazines we want to keep (Consumer Reports; Bon Appetit) while leaving those we don't (Forbes; all those dang gardening catalogs we keep forgetting to recycle). He then moved to the table and sought out coupons, but only coupons for things we like.

EXPENSIVE ITEM DESTRUCTION: This hasn't happened yet, but it will. The Sequel's No. 1 job right now, according to him, is to grab anything -- and I mean ANYTHING -- within reach of his little 10-inch arms, even if it means a death-defying lunge from his parents' protective arms. If while holding him we are idle for 5 seconds he will use that time to grab the nearest item, intent on shoving said item into his mouth. Never mind that it may be as large as an RV. He still thinks he can eat it. At some point, he's going to do this in an area with lots of breakable items, probably the Ultra Expensive Crystal Department at Macy's or some other store that smells heavily like perfume. As soon as this happens I'll just go ahead and stop by a bankruptcy attorney's office on the way home.

TRICKING DAD: The Boy has become an expert at this at the ripe old age of 5, and The Sequel is following in his footsteps. To wit: He began sleeping through the night at a mere four months old, enabling me to brag heartily to my not-so-fortunate fellow parents. Yet, a few weeks later, he began his midnight screaming again. I swear he gives me a maniacal smile every time he wakes up, too.

More van nonsense

The first vehicle I ever test-drove was a van. This was in the 1980s. The van had mag wheels and was populated heavily with red and orange, both inside and out. It had a dark brown table and lots of shag carpeting.

Come to think of it, the van looked a lot like my house when we bought it.

A friend was trying to convince me to buy said van. I had two problems with this: I had no money. And I had no intent on buying a van with no money. Cool as this van was, it was nowhere near as cool as it was 10 years previous, which might as well have been a century to a teenager at the time. I shall never buy a van, I said.

Naturally, I'm about to buy a van.

I have yet to run into any vans with shag carpeting or painted barf orange. None of them have windows painted with scenes of sunsets or wolves or Native Americans or, if you're really cool, all three of them at once. They don't have oversized wheels. None of the vans have had ELO blasting in the 8-track player.

I had a neighbor who had a van like this back in the 70s, when most of my formative years took place. Though I was young, even then I knew that these vans were designed for two purposes: Doing drugs and fornicating.

Indeed, it wasn't long after that when I found myself at the drive-in. I have no idea what movie was playing, for I was far more entertained by the scene taking place in the van right in front of us.

It was a white van. And its occupants were, uh, testing out the van's shocks. That thing was bouncing more at an inflatable jump castle at a 5-year-old's birthday party. Hey, why is that van bouncing? I asked.

And then some important looking dudes with flashlights surrounded the van from all directions and slowly descended upon it and its rabbit-like occupants, fully intent on preventing the conception of a future used car salesman. Or a drive-in theater manager.

The van's decline in the 1980s would make the art of disturbing lovemaking much more fun. Not long after I bought my first car, a fabulous puke green Dodge Aspen (I wouldn't buy a van, but I'd buy a Dodge Aspen? REALLY? WHAT WAS I THINKING?), myself and some friends drove deep into an area along the Mississippi known for being a popular hangout for couples too cheap to get a dang hotel.

Our job: Slowly drive up to said car with the lights off. Turn on the lights. Enjoy the show.

With vans out of the picture, to be replaced by tiny cars with names like Chevette, we got full views of people scrambling quickly in the back seats to clothe themselves and make it look like nothing was going on. In one instance, we were inadvertently provided with a full moon of a rather ample, and naked, backside -- right up against the window.

Vans are much more popular these days, but for decidedly dull reasons: To transport stuff, mainly excess family members. The only action that will be taking place in the van I buy will likely be fighting, probably between the two boys. Or the in-laws.

But maybe, just maybe, one day I'll get a babysitter. I'll take The Wife down by the river, blast the ELO on my iPod, and ... start driving around, looking for bouncing, parked cars.

I, uh, borrowed the image from this site here.

Here comes the dorky minivan

Thirteen years ago I bought a little red pickup, and it was good. It had a bench seat, meaning it was as comfortable as a park bench. But it had oversized tires and mag wheels and a cool little topper and it was all mine.

(It was particularly nice because my previous vehicles had been given names like "The Frosted Pickle" and "The Eggplant." I had one that was known as "The Blueberry," but I didn't have it long enough for people to remember much about it, because the car literally blew up after I had it for two weeks. Aaah, good times.)

And then some old guy in Indiana decided to ignore a stop sign and cross a highway, placing his adult son riding in the passenger seat directly into my path. Fortuitously, I noticed my traffic-device-impaired friend and hit the back of his pickup, saving his son. But not my pickup.

So we decided to buy new. And I wanted another pickup, so that's what I got. The decision prompted my mother-in-law to note, subtly, that our vehicle lacked something.

"Don't you want something with more ... (pause) ... seats?"

Of course not. Why would we want extra seats? It's just two of us.

(Aaaah, good times.)

Five years later, The Boy was born. And then I looked at the extended cab of my pickup, and saw the pathetic excuses for seating -- both of them pointed inward and clearly designed for stick people -- and thought to myself the following: I hate it when my mother-in-law is right.

So I sold the pickup, and in my infinite wisdom purchased a Honda Civic.

The Civic was great. It was green and it had custom wheels and performance tires and it looked cool. Yet it meant that our big car was a Toyota Corolla.

So while we had plenty of seats for our little three-person family, we had the storage space of a shoebox. Purchases of anything larger than a bread machine required us to empty the vehicle of most of its contents, as well as its population, push down the seats, shove said box in the vehicle as far as possible, then secure the trunk closed with some rope.

I'd then drive home while praying the entire time not to be seen by a cop or a guy with a blog, a digital camera and a sense of humor. And then I'd pray that my purchased object would not free itself from its bondage and land atop another car or, worse, the cop. (But I'd be OK if it fell atop the dude with a blog, present company excepted, of course.)

But it was OK, for the most part. I don't like spending money on cars, because I'm cheap and cars by their nature lose value. So we held out. Then The Sequel was born, and I noticed that adding children to a family adds an exponential amount of stuff to the vehicle. So for the past few months we couldn't go to the grocery store without looking like the Beverly Hillbillies.

So I sold the Civic, and now I find myself shopping for used minivans -- which have more storage and seats, though I'm hardly naive enough to think that I still won't look like Jed Clampett on most family trips, even if I only have two kids. (As a rule, the amount of stuff you have expands with the amount of available space; so if I were driving a semi-trailer, I'd still find myself cramming stuff back there within a few short days ...)

Soon, lest my brain returns to its rightful place and stops me, I'll be an official, 100-percent suburban father. I'll have to enroll The Boy into soccer practices, of course, and drive the entire team there, then take them to the local Dairy Queen afterward.

I'll also have to choose how to drive.

There are, as I've said before, only two types of minivan drivers:

* People who have coronaries at the mere thought of driving on the freeway and thus always drive the speed of your average golf cart. On the freeway. In front of me.

* Complete nutjobs who, because they must compensate for the fact that they drive a minivan, insist on driving like complete maniacs. Nine times out of ten, whenever I'm cut off on the freeway, the vehicle doing the cutting is a male-driven minivan.

The Wife, for the record, has already said I'll probably be a nutjob. Correction: She already thinks I'm a nutjob. The van will just be my nutjobmobile.

You asked for it: Another post on male nipples

The Boy enters kindergarten in a few weeks. At day care, he is officially out of preschool and into summer camp. There, he is being exposed to older kids. Kids who know things, like the word "boob."

"I'm going to kick you in the boob," he said one day, to me.

Hey, Boy, I don't have boobs! These are pecks! Monstrous, muscular pecks! Got that?

"Dad, what's a boob?"

Aha.

The Wife, in her calm wifely manner, came to my rescue and explained in general terms that a boob is something mommies have and that they are definitely not to be kicked.

The Wife has become our designated Household Body Part Dictionary, on account of the fact that I'm usually too busy desperately trying to stifle laughter to provide much of an explanation for The Boy's questions -- laughter that would certainly result in him using whatever word on a frequent basis. Probably in company.

I could not, however, help myself the next time The Boy decided to show off his knowledge of the human anatomy.

I don't know where he was, or what we were doing. All I remember is that one day in front of both of us he lifted up his shirt and shouted, "LOOK AT MY NIPPLES!"

Thank you, Boy, for giving me another opportunity to talk about male nipples on my blog.

He did it again, and again. Then he stopped. And I wondered why he stopped, so I did it myself, just to remind him.

This got me in all sorts of trouble with The Wife, who gave me the "You're encouraging him!" shout. She, like most moms, is afraid that The Boy will one day do this in front of strangers. To this I say, "Good! Because him doing that would probably be better than whatever conversation I happen to be having at the moment." In fact, I'd love it if he did that in public.

Then again, I'm frequently in trouble with The Wife over my nipples. One of my favorite pastimes, at least on days I'm wearing a tank top, is to show one of them off. I then sit back and enjoy as she groans, covers her eyes and looks away and says something about me being disgusting.

Come to think of it, maybe that's where The Boy picked this up.