The life and times of an irrational father. One man, multiple personalities.
Header

bananas

August 12th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in irrational dad | parenting | scared | Tyler - (9 Comments)

With my family being in a different state than myself for seven days, I regret to report that I do not have a picture to post for Wordless Wednesday this week. I hope to remedy this by possibly posting a Wordless Saturday instead.

picture

One of my favorite things to do on a Sunday morning is read the newspaper. This doesn’t usually take much time. Aside from local news relating to my county, I typically just read a couple comic strips and peruse the ads. Anything newsworthy from a national or worldly level, I’ve already read online the day before.

A recent Sunday morning found Tyler sitting in his highchair with breakfast, while I settled into my newspaper reading routine. I prepared a wonderful meal of eggs, ham, and a pancake for my little man. And ketchup. He has to have ketchup to dip his eggs into. And his ham. And his pancake. He gets his taste for ketchup from his mother. I never use it, unless it comes pre-slopped on a Whopper. Otherwise, I don’t touch the stuff. I held onto a secret hope that Tyler wouldn’t like it the first time it was offered, but after personally witnessing him grab a handful of applesauce, dip it into ketchup, and slurp it into his mouth, my little bubble of hope burst ever so silently into an infinity of nothingness.

On this particular morning, Tyler brought his bottomless pit of a stomach to the table. He eats some meals then tells us that he’s all done. And he has some meals where we seriously start to wonder if he has forgotten how to say that he’s all done and is confusing that sign with “more”. This meal was the latter.

“More more more,” he would sign.

Wiggling both of my hands, I asked a leading question. “Are you sure you don’t mean ‘all done?’”

“More more more,” he signed again. This time he followed up by pointing to the bananas on the table.

“Do you want a banana?”

“Dath.”

To drive his point home, Tyler started bouncing in his chair. I peeled a banana, cut it in half and gave one of the two pieces to Tyler. I returned to the newspaper. I looked up after a few moments as I turned the page, and saw Tyler choking. I jumped up and ran to him. Before I got close enough to smash my hand into his back, he was able to dislodge the banana-mush on his own. I pondered exactly how many years have been subtracted from my life due to Tyler’s little escapade. One would think that Tyler would ruminate on the events that triggered his momentary choking. One would be wrong. Instead, Tyler went to work in cramming what was left of the banana into his mouth. And before he had a chance to chew it, he started pointing at the second half of the banana resting on the table.

To his credit, and much to my relief, Tyler took bites and chewed the second half. I watched Tyler adoringly as he took his final bite…

“More more more,” he signed.

Wordless Wednesday v. Photoshoot with daddy

August 5th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in delilah | photos | Tyler | wordless wednesday - (7 Comments)

Language Barriers

August 4th, 2009 | Posted by Joe in Bad parenting | joe | Sarah | Tyler - (11 Comments)


I live in a type of fantasy land where my parents believe that I don’t swear. Deep down, I know that they know better. I’m fairly certain that I’ve never sworn in front of them, but I did say “shi-stuff” once. If you need that in context, it sounded something like, “When I looked in, I saw all sorts of shi-stuff.”

At home (and anywhere else, for that matter), it’s a different story. I don’t “cuss like a sailor”, but I can hold my own with the potty-mouth militia. I made admirable attempts towards eliminating bad-words from my vocabulary when Tyler was born. When I did feel the urge to swear, I reverted to caveman language, and would grunt and growl my frustrations. That lasted for about a week, and then I was back to using **** and **** and ****. My inner voice (so very persuasive) argued that Tyler was too young to learn or understand the words, thus making it okay to cuss freely and as often as necessary. Well, inner voice has been rather quiet on the subject now that Tyler is trying to mimic sounds.

As a result, the campaign for a cleaner mouth has been restarted. A big motivator for me is that I never want to hear the following phrase from Sarah if Tyler utters one of the baddies.

“He learned that word from you.”

I still slip once in a while. But when I do, I tend to operate on the assumption that the words aren’t as severe if I whisper them. Telling Sarah about my day, I may say something like, “some dumb ((((****)))) in a Honda cut me off today.” The parentheses would be me whispering the mother of all curses.

Sarah would inevitably reply with, “This is an ’81 Honda! HOW DARE YOU?”[1]

I don’t have Tourette’s Syndrome, but I have been shocked into episodes of it before. For example, I may be inclined to say a specific word or two after stubbing my toe on the entertainment center. A four-lettered utterance may find its sound waves vibrating around my general location on the too frequent occasions that my difficult-to-light gas grill will suddenly catch, and shoot a fireball into the air, typically resulting in a few singed hairs.

The point is, I’m really trying to stop swearing (in front of Tyler), whereas Sarah is trying a different approach. After spending an hour or so in the garden, she came in the house for some water.

“Man, I’m a dirty biznatch.”

“Hon… Disguising a swear word by adding a couple extra letters doesn’t discount the fact that it’s a swear word.”

[1] For the uninitiated, we’re somewhat nerdy, and reply with movie quotes whenever the opportunity arises. We pale in comparison to a couple friends who shall remain unnamed *cough*melandadam*cough*. The quote in this post is from “Employee of the Month.”

He hasn’t noticed yet

August 3rd, 2009 | Posted by Joe in adventures in babydom | breast milk | breastfeeding | Tyler - (6 Comments)


When Sarah left Tyler in sole care of yours truly, she was (rightfully) concerned about a few things. Aside from the obvious and tactfully worded “don’t you dare hurt my baby, you maniac,” one of Sarah’s issues was what to do on the topic of breast milk. Tyler’s been slowly weaning himself off the boob. He still wants HAS TO HAVE his nursies – as they are lovingly referred to in the Gearhart household – before bed, and in the mornings. He also gets them as a late night, please-go-back-to-sleep snack on those nights where waking up at two in the morning seems like the right thing to do, in his mind, of course.

So, what to do when Sarah’s out of town for nine days, two of them without Tyler? I gave her the “don’t worry, I’ve got this” speech, which did little to appease her worries or put her under the belief that I did, indeed, have this. I eventually compromised by telling her that I’d put some breast milk in a sippy cup, if Tyler absolutely had to have his nursies. I didn’t really see it as a concern, because he only wants nursies when Sarah’s around. Wait, let me say that another way. We never taught Tyler the sign for nursies, so he doesn’t exactly know how to tell us he wants them. As it stands now, he will try to pull Sarah’s shirt down and say “Dat”, to which Sarah will say, “Oh, do you want your nursies, Tyler? I couldn’t tell if that’s what you were asking for.” With Sarah being out of town for two days, he doesn’t really have an effective way of conveying the need for nursies to me. As long as he isn’t pulling down my shirt and trying to get to my nipples, he’ll be aces in my book.

This whole business of Tyler weaning himself off of the boob – with this unavoidable extra little push – got me to thinking about how much Tyler has really grown over the last thirteen months. And it hit me like a ton of bricks.

*a ton of bricks hits Joe*

Tyler isn’t a baby anymore. Completely unbeknownst to me, Tyler went and turned into a toddler. I am not happy with this. He’s my baby boy. He’s a baby that doesn’t need nursies anymore. He’s a baby that walks around, and probably doesn’t even remember how to crawl. He’s a baby that stacks toys and tries to figure things out. He’s a baby that tells us when he’s thirsty or hungry. He’s a baby that – sometimes – eats with a fork and spoon.

As much as I hate to accept it, and I really do hate it, Tyler’s baby chapter is over. I became so wrapped up in his story, that I failed to see the page that marked the beginning of a new chapter. My perfect baby boy is a toddler.


Anyway, the title of this post is “He hasn’t noticed yet” and the point I originally intended to make was that Tyler hasn’t had his nursies in over 48 hours. I guess I could have made a couple creative edits to this post and just titled it “The next chapter”, but I like the way it reads as it is now.

Staying at home

August 1st, 2009 | Posted by Joe in babysitting | family | joe | sad | Tyler - (6 Comments)


Sarah left me today. When she finished loading up her Blazer, the only space not packed floor-to-ceiling was the driver’s seat. Every year, Sarah drives to her Aunt’s house for “girl’s week.” She spends a week up there with her three sisters. They drink, hang out by the pool, play card games, and talk about going to Lake Michigan (which is just minutes away). They talk about going there, but it just doesn’t seem to happen. Since I still have to work while she’s gone, Tyler will also be going up there for the week. This year, they are also having a bachelorette party for one of her sisters. Tyler is not invited to that. As a result, I am the stay at home parent for two days.

“I don’t want to leave. You do it everyday. It’s different for you,” she said.

“I’m bringing him up to you in two days. It’s not a big deal.”

“YES it is! I just wish I could see him again before I leave.”

“Hon, it’s probably better that you leave while he’s napping. Go on, get out.”

“Why are you so eager to get rid of me?”

*SIGH OF EXASPERATION*

Sarah did get to say goodbye to Tyler, because he woke up just seconds before she left. Sarah then proceeded to find reasons to delay her departure. First she tried getting clothes for him to wear for the day. I kicked her out of his room and ordered her downstairs. Then, she asked Tyler for enough kisses to get her through the next two days. I could go on, but I think my point has been made.

Stay at home parenting is hard! My day was filled with the following:

“Please don’t touch that.”
“Close that, Tyler.”
“That’s not for Tyler’s mouth.”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
“WHAT’S IN YOUR MOUTH?! Seriously, what is that? Why do you eat anything and everything?”
“Tyler, please don’t touch daddy’s penis. I’m trying to pee.”

I’m not trying to say we didn’t have a good day. Quite the contrary, actually. I just wasn’t prepared for the need to have more than one set of eyes at all moments of the day. We had an absolute blast today. He can now show me where his belly button is. He kept digging his finger into mine (so hard, in fact that it was hurting my manhood), and I would say “That’s daddy’s belly button.” Soon, I started asking him where his belly button was, and I would show him. After a few demonstrations, he started lifting his own shirt up and pointing at it. One time, he pushed on it and either tickled himself, or did the same thing that he did to me (made his junk hurt),  because he looked up with a silly little grin on his face.

Shortly thereafter, Tyler started pooping. That, in and of itself, is fine. I know it’s a normal bodily function and am perfectly fine with it. What I was not perfectly fine with was Tyler standing over me and staring me directly in the eyes while doing so. I thought babies were supposed to go hide in a corner when they crap themselves. I have also learned – from Sarah’s mistake – to give Tyler a couple extra minutes to finish his business before changing him.

“Just let me know when you’re done, and we’ll get that diaper changed.”

I tried to hide the slight frustration in my voice when I said that. I was less than pleased that he was desecrating a 5 minute old diaper. Why couldn’t he have said, “Wait a couple minutes, pops. I’ve got a major transaction to complete before you change this dirty diaper. There’s no need to dirty a second diaper, right?” Instead, Tyler let me change his dirty diaper, so that he could poop in a clean one. Tyler, you may not be aware of this, but those Mickey Mouse diapers you’re filling with your waste are expensive! My bank account cries every time you poop. Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone next time, whaddya say?

I decided to pass the time by tweeting this:

I find it disturbing when Tyler is staring me in the eyes while he grunts and poops. AND THEN tries sitting on my chest!

I am lying on my back, on the floor, and typing this message on my phone. The very moment I press the send button, a diaper lands on my face. Tyler was apparently ready for a new diaper, because he went to the basket, grabbed one out and brought it to me. If any of you were thinking hoping that he took his dirty diaper off and dropped it on me, SHAME ON YOU.

We played, we read books, we went for a walk, we ate together. We had a great time tonight. I’m going to miss him next week.