How is it that a three foot tall, 28 month old child can make a grown man feel like a horrible, selfish person?

Tyler likes wearing my shoes. Truth be told, he likes wearing any adult shoes. We are a “shoes off at the door” family, but tend to let Tyler’s propensity for stomping around the house in shoes that could contain three feet his size slide. After some time, and realizing that this “phase” doesn’t appear to be waning anytime in the near future, I explained to Tyler that only a couple select pairs of my shoes are to be worn in the house. The most common pair that he chooses are my running shoes. Not because I never run (which, I don’t), but because they are my treadmill shoes that don’t go outside ever.

When Tyler first developed his affinity towards my shoes, he would simply step into them and start stumbling around the house. More times than not, the left shoe would end up on his right foot, and the right on his left.

More recently, however, Tyler has begun to develop his autonomy. He can put his own slippers on. His own boots. His own pants. Pants are easy to explain to a little one. Put the tag (on the inside of the pants) towards the floor. It’s difficult to say to put the snap or the button in front, because not all kids’ pants have snaps or buttons on them, and are simply elastic waisted. Sarah put an “L” and an “R” on the bottom of Tyler’s slippers so he can differentiate between left and right. His boots have distinct characteristics to help determine which is which. Even though he knows which is which, he still tends to ask, mostly for confirmation.

“Dis goes on dis foot?”

Looking down at his feet, we’ll reply “Yes, Tyler. That shoe goes on your left foot.”

“And dis goes on dis foot?”

Well son, seeing as how you already have one on the correct foot, and you only have one to go, yes, that is the correct foot too.

“Yes, Tyler. That shoe goes on your right foot.”

He has now begun doing the same with my shoes as well.

Recently, Sarah was sitting in her chair. I was across the room on the couch, having a conversation with her. It seemed that, over the last couple of weeks, we haven’t been connecting. She’s had plans. I’ve had plans. I’m coming as she’s going. It’s been difficult for the both of us, but it doesn’t happen terribly often.

Tyler walked into the room with my shoes in his hands. He sat on the floor and asked “dis goes on dis foot?”

“No, Tyler. You’ve got that on the wrong foot.”

He pulled the shoe off, and placed it near his other foot. I turned my attention back to Sarah to continue our conversation.

“Dis goes on dis foot?”

Sigh. After getting Tyler squared away, he happily stomped off. Sarah and I talked for a couple more minutes while the sound of his feet clomping away in my shoes filled the room. We talked about life, things that have bothered us lately, things we need to do… things.

“Skuse me daddy?”

We’ve been working on manners with Tyler. Like most children his age, he thinks the universe revolves around him. No matter what Sarah and I are doing, he tends to think he can run up and start talking to us. Sarah explained to him that he has to say “excuse me” when he needs our attention. On the occasions that he follows those rules of etiquette, we have to make sure and address him right away.

“Yes, Tyler?”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Tyler?” Don’t get frustrated, don’t get frustrated, don’t get frustrated. “What do you want?”

“You tie dis?”

I looked down at the shoe. It was tied. Both shoes were tied. Up until this point, I had done an Emmy-worthy job of masking my ever-so-slight frustration. But it was becoming more and more difficult. Why couldn’t he just let me talk to my wife?

“Tyler, the shoes are both tied already. I’m trying to talk to your mommy right now.”

“Shoes not tight enough,” he replied.

I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, and squeezed my hands into fists, driving my fingernails into my palms. Without replying to Tyler, I stood up, walked to him, crouched down, and untied his (my) shoe. I pulled the laces tight and began tying them again. My frustration was unmistakable. I just wanted to talk to my wife for a few moments, and this little… brat… couldn’t give that to me.

“Thank you helping me, daddy. You da best daddy ever.”

A tidal wave of shame rushed and swept away my anger. I looked to Sarah and saw the face of a proud mother. In that moment, I hated myself.

I have an awesome, awesome child.

Is it considered inappropriate to tell a sixteen month old toddler that he is acting like a dick, and I would be extremely grateful if he would cease in being a dick? I had a less than fantastic day at work today. I spent hours on the phone speaking with customers, quality engineers, and other people that had no desire in making this a great day. This is after having a miserable day yesterday where my wife got mad at me for asking questions about homemade fingerpaint, and I got mad at her for being mad at me for not being able to read minds. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m diagnosed bi-polar, don’t take meds, and have been dealing with gloomy, cold, rainy, and just generally shitty weather for the last couple days.

When I come home to a delicious dinner that Tyler refuses to eat, yet still says “More more more more more more more dada more more mama more more more,” I just want to scream out YES TYLER! I KNOW YOU WANT MORE EVEN THOUGH THERE IS MORE ALL OVER YOUR *#*@&$ PLATE!

We make excuses for him. He’s teething. He had a short nap. He had a really busy day. He’s teething. He didn’t sleep well last night. He’s teething. The fact is, he’s a toddler that can’t communicate with his parents as much as we both wish he could. He wants what he wants when he wants it, but Tyler just doesn’t have the means to tell us what exactly IT is. Last week, Tyler would say “no” to a question if the answer was no. “No” had one meaning. Today, “no” has multiple meanings. If he’s holding his cup and says “no,” it means Tyler doesn’t want his water anymore. Unfortunately, we didn’t know that’s what he was saying, so he threw a fit about it. God forbid he just set his water down and push it away.

Full disclosure though, it doesn’t really help that Sarah and I are pickers. We pick on each other all the time, and sometimes don’t know when is the WRONG time to pick on Tyler. Tonight, for example, Tyler desperately wanted to wear Sarah’s slippers. Sarah decided to put the slipper on her own foot. Meltdown. In her defense, we have been working with Tyler about sharing, and this seemed like a good time to continue those lessons even though we were already dealing with a tired toddler with maybe less patience than I had. Then he wanted to wear his cowboy boots. Bedtime was approaching shortly, so I told Tyler that he couldn’t wear his boots tonight, and that he’d have to wait until tomorrow. Meltdown. We told Tyler it was time to put away his toys. Meltdown. I looked at Tyler. Meltdown. I inhaled a lungful of oxygen. Meltdown. A butterfly in Oklahoma fluttered its wings. Meltdown.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I said, aloud, that, while I loved being a father, this was not one of those days.

There was a moment that made Sarah and I bust a gut though. We built a tower of mega-bloks (think big Lego blocks). Tyler was in mid-meltdown, so Sarah and I were doing our best to just ignore him. His cries and whines were drilling into my already critically low patience level, sucking any reserves dry. I took some spare mega-blocks and built an airplane. With the power of my imagination, and with guidance from my hand, the plane took flight. It circled the tower and soared the skies. In a moment of desperation, I crashed the plane into the tower, sending blocks scattering across the carpeted floor. I closed my eyes, ashamed that I couldn’t keep my cool just a bit longer. Weren’t we just about at the end of this particular nuclear reaction anyway? Why couldn’t I just hold my breath for a couple more seconds? As I lay on the floor, eyes still closed, Tyler fell silent.

“Mess. Booooom.”

The absolute innocence in his sweet little voice melts my soul. I could never imagine not being Tyler’s father. When he hugs me, kisses me, tells me he loves me, when he runs to me when I get home from work and wraps his arms around my legs saying “daddeee”; when he does these things, I feel so full of love and awe that my eyes swim for a moment. Sometimes I’m so caught off guard by these pure moments that I feel my breath catch and hitch in my chest.

I hope you didn’t come here expecting to laugh your ass off today. I’m a little apprehensive about actually putting this post up for the masses to read, but I guess parenting isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. While I really do enjoy talking about the lighter side of parenting, I also just really needed to get this off my chest.

I’m just not in a good place lately

The good thing about having a child with a low-grade fever and a cough is that you can teach him how to cover his mouth when coughing. It’s so cute.

The bad thing about having a child with a low-grade fever and a cough is EVERYTHING ELSE!!!

Get well soon, Tyler. You’re driving your parents crazy. I fear that one of us is going to snap soon *cough*Sarah*cough* and injure the other *cough*me*cough*.

Pre-post but post-draft edit: Fever is gone and Tyler’s on his way towards being a happy toddler again. On his way… not quite there.

I have a Samsung digital camera. It’s a good camera. 99% of the photos that I’ve been taking are with that camera. This camera is a 6 megapixel camera.

I also have a Canon Powershot digital camera. This is also a good camera. It is a 5 megapixel camera. I don’t use it very much, because we’ve got the Samsung.

I wouldn’t care if they were 1,000,024 megapixel cameras, they are junk. Both of the cameras have been rendered useless with the arrival of little Tyler.

I’ve always believed that I would grow up and be rich. I’m not talking about the high on life, “what more could a man want”, “I’m rich in the figurative sense” crap. I’m talking about wiping my butt with hundred dollar bills rich. I’m 30 years old and have not yet begun wiping my butt with hundred dollar bills, but I am here to tell you now that I have found my calling. I now know how I am going to get rich, and I’ve got Tyler to thank for it.

I am going to develop an affordable digital camera that takes a picture – wait for it – when you press the friggin button! None of this crap where you have to half-press the button, wait 3 seconds while it finds the faces, determines if flash is needed, and auto-focuses. Then you press the button the rest of the way to take the picture. Sure, I could just press the button all the way without doing the half-press, right? No, because it still takes 3 seconds to make those same adjustments, and does a poor job at it if you don’t do the half-press. It’s not a point and shoot camera. That is a point, click, wait, shoot camera.

It never bothered me before. I said “hold that pose” more times than I care to count. A critical difference between Tyler and most of the rest of the world is that Tyler does not, ever, hold his pose. With each out of focus picture that I take, I curse the digital camera engineers that dropped the ball on this one. When I go through my routine of downloading from camera to pc, tagging, captioning, color correcting, and uploading to SmugMug, I now have to delete hordes of pictures that were about half a second from being the best pictures ever taken, in all the history of the world. And I have a very difficult time deleting photos, blurry or not.

I said to myself, “Self, you just have to be smarter than the camera”. I have to think through the problem and find a way to adapt the situation to work for me.

Let’s say I want to take a picture of Tyler smiling, a feat in and of iteself. I would hold the camera in position, half-press the button to “prime the engine” and start making goofy sounds. When Tyler smiles, CLICK! Does it work? Not really. See, the camera has a setting on it, if you haven’t done anything in 5 or 10 seconds, it assumes you mistakenly pressed the button and goes back to default. So if you get that awesome smile you’re looking for and press the button, it takes an additional 3 seconds. The entire time, you’re praying to the gods of picture taking that Tyler can hold that smile for just one more freakin’ second.

That didn’t turn out so well, so I went back to my drawings and flowcharts and schematics to figure out another way. I call this next one “anticipatory picture taking”, APT for short. I thought of calling it “Anticipatory Shooting of Subject”, but I didn’t think the anagram would catch on. What you do is, you make your silly face or goofy sound, and take a picture, in anticipation of his smiling response. Does it work? Well, I did manage to get a couple pictures of Ty smiling, and about 50 of him making no face at all. Then about another 50 where half his face is cut off because I wasn’t able to pay attention to the aim of the camera.

My last attempts had me snapping picture after picture and crossing my fingers that I’d get a good one. I think that all I’ve succeeded in doing is damaging my son’s eyesight. No way should it be safe to look at a camera flash as much as he has.

These cameras have a dial at the top of them where I can select if I want to take a photo, a movie, a scenic shot, and about 5 other settings that nobody ever uses. How hard would it be to add another setting where it is in constant auto-focus mode? Sure, it’ll eat the batteries faster, but I’ll be able to snap a pic the very moment I need to. I don’t mind charging my batteries more often, if it means that I get more of the pictures that I want.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to run to the patent office to tell them my idea of a camera that takes a picture when you press the button.