Baby Daddy 54: My Son Ate It

What man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.....

Have you ever had it where you want to write, and you have all the material, and you never get the time to write it? Literally the past month. I have been traveling more than I ever wanted. I have been working more than I ever wanted. And for the first time in a decent while (two months) I am finally writing again. For the record, I have started getting to the office at 5AM, which affords me time to get shit done. And for the record, a 19-hour day is not sustainable. I know this. I respect this. And I recognize that it is necessary for short sprints.

But that does not delve into the world of fatherhood. What does? My son. My son learned an important lesson.

For those that have not been keeping up, such as myself, my son is two years old. Actually, he is two and half years. And as any good two-year-old, my son loves to run, play, learn, and test limits. Last week, my son was playing with the idea of chewing things. In particular, my son decided to put small toys in his mouth.

While we don't have many toys that would be a choking hazard, we do have some that fit in his mouth. And as any good parent would, my wife and I work hard to keep our son from putting those toys in his mouth.

Enter: The Two-Year-Old

As I said, my son is an active two-year-old and like to test limits. You can tell when he is testing limits because he gets this gleam in his eye. He gets a smirk on his face, you know that he is thinking, "how serious are you, Baba?"

Well one day, I kept telling my son not to put the toys in his mouth. Of course, he kept doing so until I took the toy away. My son then found the next closest thing: a brown rock. I immediately said, "NO!" and lunged for my boy. He put the rock in his mouth, got a look of confusion, and immediately spat it out.

Now, I should probably share the fact that we were pet-sitting the week before, during which time the dog and cat started a turf-war. Imagine the Bloods and the Crips, but with pee-pee and poopoo.

I'm going to let you think about the situation a little bit longer......

There it is!

Yes, my son put a small piece of poopoo in his mouth. As it turns out -- despite my best efforts -- I had not completely cleaned the mess. I thought I had, but it turns out there was one area that I was not aware of. It was kinda like walking down the street and discovering a body in the alleyway.

Like any good parent/cop, I set up caution tape, cleaned up the scene of the crime, and waterboarded my son into a confession.

That's a lie. I washed his hands and mouth before cleaning the rest of the area.

Moral of the Story: My son ate shit, and I now have additional ammunition to wield against him during those angsty teenage years. Oh, and I think he is technically a casualty of the gang war.

Baby Daddy 52: Corporal Punishment

Well I must say, I suck at keeping up with this. I do good, I do good, I do good, and then BAM! I lose a month. All the same, I am expecting, hoping, and praying that everything has settled down a bit. I am also hoping that I can force myself to write more, which would allow myself to write more. Something about habit and practice and what not. SO! On that note, I plan to catch up on some thoughts. Some are going to be may be long, some may be quick, and some may be dirty.

First thing first, my friend Craig is going to be a father. I don't know if I shared that before or not, but he is. We were talking one day, after he was getting some jitters, and started talking about how we parent kids. Craig was talking about how he knows that spanking and physical punishment don't work, but that he also had to keep the rod as an option for disciplining his kids. I reiterated that physical punishment does not work, to which he said that he is not creative enough to do something else. I told him it is easy. As a toddler, you say "no", they cry, and then they learn. I also told him that, as the kid gets older, he can simply use chores and such.

This got me to thinking about the idea of spanking and such. Of course, I immediately flashed on Shoot 'Em Up, with Clive Owen:

Now why did this flash into my mind? Well, probably because I don't believe in spanking, or any physical discipline on a child. But yesterday, I started to dig deeper. Why do people spank? To create a negative consequence for undesirable behavior. At the same time, it is something more than that. Craig's desire to have the rod as an option for punishment was a crutch to express his own frustration.

Now let me ask you something. What if you were not frustrated with a child, but with an adult? What if, instead of your son or daughter, you were frustrated with a 250-pound, muscle-bound motherfucker named Glenn? Would you try to spank or beat Glenn if he was upsetting you? What if you knew that Glenn was a 'roided out fighter? Odds are that you would suck it up, accept that Glenn is an asshole, and move on with your life.

What if the person that upset you was a co-worker? Unless you are planning a workplace shooting, you would likely find some petty way to get vengeance. For the record, do NOT plan a workplace shooting. If you plan to do that, do everyone a favor and start with yourself. If you are planning something petty -- such as stealing their stapler, or leaving the stapler and stealing the staples, or maybe a Whoopee Cushion! -- then do that! And then do that to your child! Not the Whoopee Cushion, because kids think it's funny. And not the stapler, because kids tend to find ways of hurting themselves. But you know, take away the toy that your kid threw. Force the kid to rake the yard or paint the house. Or even just enjoy letting the kid fuss for a bit.

For the record, I have taken the toys my son throws. I have removed my son from situations where he is being volatile. I have also let my son fuss, and just found a dark place in my soul that could find comfort in it. In the case of that last one, my son was extremely tired and needed to discharge his leftover energy to sleep.

Moral of the Story: If you are not willing to use physical discipline on Glenn, you should not do it to your child. Also, if you eat my lunch, I WILL TAKE YOUR GODDAMN STAPLES KAREN!

Baby Daddy 50: My Son Lost His Virginity

I know, I know, I know. I KNOW! I keep saying that I am back, and then I disappear. I apologize. Shit has been crazy and I have not managed well. In fact, I developed a nasty little addiction. Not drugs, per se, but caffeine. I got to a point that I was drinking coffee throughout the day and night.

At one point, I was drinking liquor and NyQuil to take the edge off and sleep. I had enough caffeine in my system to rival a small cocaine addiction. It wasn't full-blown coke, but maybe diet coke? All I know is that I am coming down and can't tell if I need to sleep or rip my skin off.

In other news, I am still a father!! And what's more, I have had some new experiences as a father! One experience is that my son is officially "behind" in his communication development. If you compare my son to other kids his age (20-ish months), he is incredibly behind. There is a girl in his pre-school class, Jenny, who is only two months older. Jenny can talk and listen and all that shit.

As a side note, my son was crying once when I got him from school. I don't know why he was upset, but I saw Jenny walk over to him, pat him on the shoulder, and say, "There, there." In that moment, my heart broke and I realized that she would be my future daughter-in-law. It was adorable.

But I digress. My son is technically behind in speech. My son is also learning English, Chinese, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, and Russian. I think he should get a pass for not speaking much. At the same time, my son has said words like glove, lamb, okay, whisper, hazard, yellow, wei, wen ci ji qi ren, mama, baba, hot, etc. This has led me to the conclusion that my son is perfectly capable of talking -- he just doesn't want to.

I fully believe that, when we ask questions, my son refuses to talk. "What is this?" Nothing. "Can you say ____?" Nothing. "What do you want?" Nothing. As soon as we leave the room, my son starts talking (in Barack Obama's voice), "Four score and seven years ago, I had a dream. A dream in which all people -- large and small, short and tall, old and young, of every race or faith or orientation or identity -- could watch as much Story-Bots as their heart desires WITHOUT the tyranny of a nap or bedtime."

And why is it in Obama's voice? Because goddamn could that man talk well. And goddamn do I miss that man as president. He may have had his flaws, but holy shit. At least Obama wasn't openly laughed at and fucked with at international summits. And if you are reading this and don't like the political commentary then fuck off, yeah? If Trump does something worth praise, I will. Until then, fucks for him.

But that is not the reason for this post. The reason for this post is that my son has lost his innocence. And what's more, he doesn't even know.

But how can that be? After all, he's a baby. And I'm not in jail. WHAAAAAA?!

Let me explain. We had family friends visit for the start of Chanukah. We LOVE these friends. At the same time, they have a dog. In fact, they have a little boy dog. Fortunately, that little boy dog was neutered; we figured everything would be fine.

We were wrong. As it turns out, that dog has never been around a bunch of people. It also turns out that the little boy dog has never been around another dog. This is problematic, when the little boy dog and the family friends were staying with my folks and their dog.

Nobody knew it, but it turns out that the little boy dog has an anxiety disorder. How did we find out? Because he started humping. Everything. My mom was wearing socks, until the little boy dog humped a sock off her foot. I was setting up the menorah to light candles, when I noticed my right leg getting scratched.

Of course, these were not the initial cases of the little boy dog humping. No, that would have been tolerable. The initial humping incident occurred when my son was crawling on his belly, reaching for a block. I looked down, and saw the little boy dog humping the shit out of my son's ribs. My son, blissfully unaware, was reaching for the block. I reacted calmly by yelling, "FUCK OFF TOBY!"

Of course, the family friends were shocked and embarrassed. They grabbed the little boy dog and held him for the rest of the day. Not well enough to keep the little boy dog from humping everyone else in the family, but enough to keep the dog from FUCKING MY SON! For my part, I did not fucking murder the dog. That is how much I care for these friends. I did not kill the dog that humped my son. My mother left the room so that she could react in private. And the family prayed that everything would just magically be "okay".

Well I have news for you Karen, IT IS NOT OKAY!!!! Your little boy dog HUMPED MY SON!!!! He is not even TWO YEARS OLD!!!! WHAT THE SHIT, KAREN?! WHAT. THE. SHIT.

Moral of the Story: I am still nursing a caffeine addiction, and my son has a dream. I, too, have a dream; in it, I do not witness my son losing his virginity to a dog.