Of Fatherhood & Life Lessons

I am a scientifically minded individual.  So, one of my favorite things about watching my one year old explore the world is watching her constant experimentation with her environment.  Of the ongoing experiments that she and all children are constantly performing is how to best gain parental attention.  Differentiating between positive or negative attention is still a ways off.  Right now she's just happy to get a reaction.  Not unlike an open mic comic making jokes about rape just to get a reaction, any reaction, from the crowd.

As I watch her learn to navigate the difference between positive and negative attention I am discovering that I am learning something too.  There are a few things about parenthood that no one ever told me about.
The sleep deprivation is something everyone knows about.  That one was no shocker.  Realizing that you are becoming the jerk that assaults others with pictures of your offspring is another one that I was not stunned by.  I already flirt with narcissism so of course I capitalize on any chance to flaunt my brood.
Finally, becoming an under appreciated and under compensated taxi service.  This one hits particularly hard as it is something that I remember my parents utter frequently.

Although they never went 88 Miles per hour

 I would like to share one thing that was never shared with me about parenthood that I would like to give you reader a fair heads up about.  Prior to spawning, keep this little bit of knowledge in mind.

YOUR CHILD IS ACTIVELY WORKING AGAINST YOU ACHIEVING EVEN THE SIMPLEST OF TASKS AT ALL TIMES

Think your going to have a sip of water? Think again dickhead, you've got a baby in your arms and she doesn't take to kindly to you hydrating.

Where you considering trying to pay a bill over the phone to a company with voice recognition software?  Well unless that programmer installed a filter that blocks out the sound of WHAAAAAAAAAA! then your shit out of luck friend.

Did you think you were going to try your hand blogging?  Oh you dumb bastard!  Try baring your soul online after she rips a few keys off the keyboard!

  Alas poor Qwerty, I knew him Horatio

 I don't want to it sound like I dislike any of my children.  They are the light of my life.  Seriously.  I just wish I had been given a heads up about this particular detail so that I could have better prepared myself.
Rationally I know that the reason that I am getting these behaviors is the aforementioned quest for parental attention without the guiding light of experience to shepard her in appropriate attention seeking.  However knowing this does little to alleviate the frustration  of failing to evacuate my bowels in a comfortable an uninterrupted manner.  I don't feel like I'm really illustrating the experience yet.

 Do you remember the scene in Ghost when Patrick Swayze is on the subway and he runs into that other ghost that can touch stuff. The tall weird looking guy that was always known for playing the tall weird looking guy. 

Get off my train!

Yeah, him.

Remember how everyone is just sitting on the train minding their own damn business when the Ghost of Chimo's past starts knocking shit out of people's hands and throwing a big damn ghost tantrum?

It's pretty much like that except that you know good and well who is pulling all of the newly folded laundry out of the laundry basket, knocking over all the coffee, and eating all the pennies.

As a side note, do you know what the only thing worse that having to dig through the contents of soiled diapers for a week in search of a freshly pooped penny is? Not finding that penny.

Again, I love my kids, I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world.  

In closing I would like to say that when we first began this blog it was to discuss much of the chaos of our daily lives coupled with some of our more benign ramblings.  Think of your reading experience here as a trip to the pool.  Sometimes you just may want to frolic in the shallow end, other days you may want to dive into the deep end.  We have not had much opportunity go to the deep end yet, consider this dipping our toes into that end of the pool.  We will usually shoot for about 1000 words per blog but since we came up short this week, we are including a short video to illustrate the issue discussed.

 L&P