The life and times of an irrational father. One man, multiple personalities.
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This could have been SOOOOOOOooooooo much funnier

As you may or may not remember, Sarah and Tyler were both out of town for a week. Just prior to that, only Sarah was absent from our home. Her sister is getting married in a couple months. Turns out that another of her relatives (cousin maybe?) is also getting married soon, so they threw a combined hang-out-at-the-pool-and-drink-and-play-party-games bachelorette party. This party consisted of penis straws, drinking games, penis cakes, swimming, penis-related games, penis penis penis. I’m told there were no strippers, but that isn’t the point, aside from penis penis penis.

The day following the penis bachelorette party, I was given a taste of what joint-custody must be like. I packed Tyler in the car and drove two hours, to a big-chain shopping center parking lot. I met Sarah there so I could transfer Tyler to her care. I had to continue my duties as an employee of a great company, and locking one’s child in a dog crate is ill looked upon. This left little other choice than to live as a single man for a week. I’m sure you all know how miserable it was. You know, no chores, no responsibilities (aside from feeding the dog), no screaming teething baby. It was torture.

Sarah and Tyler came home Saturday Evening. After passing out many hugs and kisses, I helped in transferring the contents of the truck into the house. As we all know, the thing we need most after a vacation is another vacation. So, instead of putting away the newly created disaster zone, we all hung out and relaxed together. We both talked about our week, played with Tyler, then watched TV after he went to bed.

As an aside, Tyler showed me his new skill(?) as well. If we ask him what sound a dog makes, he opens his mouth and breathes in and out quickly, like a panting dog. I clapped my hands, and panted as well.

“THAT’S where he got it,” Sarah said.

“Got what?”

Sarah explained to me the difference between in the way we mimic a dog. When she does it, she opens her mouth, sticks her tongue out, and pants. When I do so, I park my tongue behind my lower teeth. Tyler has inherited my trait, as it relates to the highly sought-after skill of panting. I have since tried – quite unsuccessfully – to correct this behavior, because Tyler looks absolutely adorable when he sticks his tongue out. I’ll keep you posted, as I’m sure this will make or break me as as an adaptable father.

I made breakfast for Tyler and ate with him the next morning, while Sarah made an attempt to attack her inbox and catch up on the happenings on Facebook. After breakfast, Tyler ran off to play, and I cleaned up the kitchen. It only took a matter of minutes to get the dishes into the dishwasher and wipe off the counters. After finishing my good-husband duties in the kitchen, I walked into the office and stopped. I needed a couple seconds to fully absorb what my optic nerves were sending to the ol’ visual cortex. I distinctly remember two of the roughly three thousand thoughts that flooded my data center:

Should I freak out?
Is this as funny as I think it may be?

Trying hard not to scream like a girl in a horror movie, for fear of scarring my child for life, and slightly due to the fact that I actually wanted to laugh hysterically, I consciously calmed myself before speaking.

“Good job putting the rings on the penis Tyler.”

In my haste of getting the penis away from Tyler, I didn’t even think about grabbing the camera. I did make an attempt to recreate the scene, but Sarah hid the penis from me. She thinks it’s highly inappropriate, while I see nothing but humor in it. After some tension-filled discussion (and a little attitude on my part), I gave up on capturing the real deal. Suffice to say, it’s extremely (EXTREMELY) similar to the picture displayed at the top of this post. The key differences are as follows:

1) The red cone would have been a flesh colored penis.
2) The actual penis picture would have been hilarious (if you’ve got a twisted sense of humor, like myself, apparently).


Seems that I’ve had animals on the brain lately, in titling this and my previous post.

Sarah attended a bridal shower last Saturday. Shortly after she left the house, we traded a few text messages. I feel that only parents will be able to fully appreciate the first two messages.

(Joe) Two words: poop blowout.
(Sarah) Sick. Were there rocks in it?
(Joe) No… Just a bunch of poop. Reminded me of the elephant story you told me earlier.

Yeah… Parenthood is fun.

Note: The picture above is Tyler’s “I’m pooping” face. He’s going to hate me when he’s a teenager.

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Tyler and his M-O-M-M-Y
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I’ve mentioned previously that I enjoy reading children’s stories. This fondness does not carry over to children’s music though. I’d much rather listen to The Doors talk to me about strange people, The Rolling Stones singing about painting things black, or Regina Spektor eating tangerines. I don’t particularly care about the Farmer in the Dell, what the Wheels on the Bus do, or what a twinkling little star is. Turns out, and this is news to me, that even though I don’t like children’s music, I still have to listen to it.

99% of the music I listen to is either through my iPod, or through my computer. I don’t listen to the radio, or to CD’s. As a result, I’ve had to – very reluctantly – clear some space on my iPod for a “Tyler” playlist. I currently have 139 songs in there. Whenever we go out in the car, I can fire up the TP (Tyler Playlist) and listen to countless songs about farms, monkeys, apples, or the letter “g”.

For the most part, I am perfectly fine with having a TP on my iPod. I’ve resolved myself to the fact that it needs to be there. But, there are some unwanted embarrassing situations created with having a TP on my iPod. Take, for example, the day I was in my garage. I was cleaning out one of our cars and had the iPod blaring through the stereo that I keep in the garage. I’m pretty sure I had the volume dial set to 11. I walked out of the garage towards our trash can. The neighbors were outside doing some gardening, but both of them were looking at me with a very strange expression on their faces. I waved politely, but found myself thinking, “What the heck are you looking at?”. It was a good 10 or 15 seconds later that I realized that “Apples and Bananas” was testing the decibel limit of the cheap 5 inch speakers. It was loud, and you could clearly hear the words.

I like to ote, ote, ote
Opples and banonos
I like to ote, ote, ote
Opples and banonos

I like to ute, ute, ute
Upples and banunus
I like to ute, ute, ute
Upples and banunus

If you’re a parent, I’m sure you know the song. When you are a man… alone… in your garage, there’s no way to explain yourself out of that situation. Instead, I scurried back into the garage, lowered the volume to barely a whisper and clicked “Next”.

Or how about the time that I was working on a hospital bed at one of my accounts? At the time, I thought I was alone in the room. I found myself humming Dinosaur Round. Then, completely without realizing that I’m doing it, I start SINGING it.

How can I feed this dinosaur,
Who eats my lunch and asks for more?
More …. More …. More …. More
Never own a dinosaur

Imagine my mortified shock and surprise when I stand up and see two nurses standing side-by-side in the doorway. One was slack jawed, the other was biting down, hard, on her lips. I would rather have been caught with my pants down and an apple pie in my hands. My frozen horror was broken just long enough for me to say, “Oh God”.

Nurse 1: “Wow.” *walks away*
Nurse 2: “Don’t stop for us. Keep going.” *begins laughing loudly*

I had a flash of thought and almost told the nurse that was still standing there that I was singing the intro to a new song by Linkin Park and that it was about to get very dark and graphic. But I knew that my previous “Oh God” would render me incapable of being able to really sell it. Instead, I said what comes naturally to me, “I’m such an idiot.”

Or – because, why shouldn’t we have 3 examples? – I could tell you about the the time I told a nurse at another hospital that I was finished and they could start using their stretcher again.

“You must be a dad.”, she said.

I inhaled through my nose, wondering if I smelled like spit-up breastmilk. I couldn’t smell anything, but I’m pretty sure that my sense of smell has been conditioned to that scent. Tyler’s sleeping when I leave for work in the mornings, so there’s a really short list of things for me to contemplate.

“Yeah, how couldya tell?”, I inquired.

“I’m pretty sure I heard you whistling ‘Snuggle Puppy‘ a few minutes ago.”

I couldn’t remember whistling that song, but those melodies are so simple that they burrow deep into your head. I’ve woken up on plenty-o morning with one of those songs already playing in my head.

Self-deprecatingly, I said, “I’m sure I was.”

I’ve found a few songs that I really enjoy, which is a testament to my simple mindedness. Every children’s album should be required to have one song, at a minimum, that appeals to adults. That will give me something to look forward to as I’m singing-along to Tyler about Five Little Ducks going out one day, over the hills and far away, and mother duck saying “Quack quack quack quack”, and only 4 little ducks coming back.

One of those rare songs that I find myself enjoying is “The Coffee Song” by Ralph’s World.

M O … M M Y needs C O … F F E E
D A … D D Y needs C O … F F E E
M O … M M Y needs C O … F F E E
D A … D D Y needs C O … F F E E

I love my kid
I love my kid
Gosh … I love my kid
But I need
What I need
And I need a lot of what I need and that’s
C-O-F-F-E-E

M O … M M Y needs C O … F F E E
D A … D D Y needs C O … F F E E

I need a latte
A cappucino
And tonight I think I’ll have a little vino

M O … M M Y needs C O … F F E E
D A … D D Y needs C O … F F E E
M O … M M Y needs C O … F F E E
D A … D D Y needs C O … F F E E

It’s simple, to the point, and oh so true.