Tag Archives: abigail

Father’s Day, different angle

Fatherhood,

Despite my insistence that it was bath time, Abigail – inexplicably dressed in her choice of a red flannel nightgown since 4pm – pleaded for permission to ride her bike around the block. I insisted, she pleaded.

So there we were: me walking, she pedaling. As we hit the halfway mark, we arrived at that spot in the sidewalIMG_4922k where the pavement is missing in large spots, a few tufts of grass growing amongst rocks. It’s not impassable on a bike but it’s intimidating if you’re five and still use training wheels. Abigail sounded her concern and slowed down.

I’ve often said I don’t have a significant quantity of unique insight into parenting. I have plenty of stuff you’d hear and think “Oh that makes sense” but maybe it doesn’t occur in the moment. Timing is everything though. What keeps me from writing more about is this: I know what worked for us but that might not work for you. Most parenting advice should come with the caveat “Here’s a blueprint, expect that you will make changes, build additions.”

Yet as we hit that spot in the sidewalk, the sun coming down on Father’s Day, Abigail questioning her fortitude and me at the end of a five-months-long learning experience, I hit on something universal enough to pass on, if somewhat greeting card-like in its phrasing.

“Abigail, don’t go slow, you’ll get stuck. If you hit rough terrain, just pedal harder and faster. That’s the only way to get through it.”

Year Five

Fatherhood, , ,

agmeskatingAt some point during our shared birthday week last year, I realized I wasn’t going to write my annual post about where Abigail and I were in our lives. Let’s just say it was a tough week. 

This year has started with some uncertainty, but I’ve found myself fueled by activity and optimism.

And as I re-read the last post I wrote about our birthdays, I was struck by how much hasn’t changed for Abigail and I. She still loves Daniel Tiger, Doc McStuffins, Elmo and tag. I’m still trying to become a healthier, more productive me. So there’s some comfort in the familiar there. We have, however, left sleepovers on the stairs in the past. Amen.

Abigail’s new interests include Peppa Pig, music (specifically Puffy Ami Yumi), playing superheroes vs. bad guys and riding her bike. I’ve swapped Up for Fitbit and come to the realization that my vague attempts at running twice a week needed to be actual workouts four times a week if they’re going to make a difference. I’m reading more. Finding time to write is still a challenge.

Speaking of the familiar, Abigail’s also picked up more than a few phrases favored by Erin and me.

“Actually, the thing is…”
“You know, guys…”
“Can I tell you something?”

Part of me worries about this. Are we making sure she’s given enough space to figure out who she is without too much undue influence from us? On the other hand, when she caught a glimpse of the Oscars opening montage this week and yelled “Dad, that’s Thor!” I was more than a little pleased.

Moreso than in previous years, it’s easier to see how Abigail is our kid through both nature and nurture. She gets frustrated with things she’s not good at and likes staying busy. At various points this year, she’s taken acting, ballet, yoga, swimming, gymnastics and soccer. The latter activity was pretty much a disaster with me spending more time on the field as assistant coach (a.k.a. child wrangler) than she did.

It strikes me that I’m as influenced by having her as a kid as she is in having me as a dad. There’s no way I’d have volunteered to be an assistant coach of anything if not for her. She’s a big part of my motivation for getting on a treadmill. And on and on.

This year Abigail vacillated between becoming a big kid and staying a little kid. She pushed hard for a “big kid bed” only to find that growing up isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She’s been telling us she wants her “little bed” back (because the big kid bed is “too tall”) even though I’ve told her many times that’s not possible because we used the pieces of the little bed to assemble the big bed. Due, in part, to this, bedtime’s been a bit of a struggle lately. On the night of her birthday, she was setting up chairs for a “roller skating show” and we made her stop and get ready for bed which led to a twenty-minute epic meltdown. It is the height of emotional conflict as a parent to be angry and exhausted by a child’s tantrum but still holding in a laugh while she screams “BUT THE SHOW MUST GO ON!!!!”

On a related note, her imagination is through the roof and through it she’s exploring more of her world. She loves building with Legos just as much as she loves acting out elaborate stories with her dolls – sometimes both at the same time. She’s not as cowed by new experiences as she used to be – “I know I can do it!” is something she tells herself to get psyched up. She has two very close friends at school this year who she talks about all the time so she’s figuring out who she is in relationships with humans other than the ones telling her to get dressed or line up for computers class.

As for me, this seems like the year that “life’s too short” becomes my mantra. Too much is uncertain and nothing’s ever perfect. Do the thing now instead of putting it off. Nothing to lose except for missed opportunities. Don’t settle.

Some of that’s a by-product of being on the other side of 40. But most of it is seeing myself through Abigail’s eyes. It’s easy for her to look up to me at 5. Doing the work to make sure she’s still doing it at 25 takes a bit more effort.

Father’s Day cliches

Fatherhood, ,

Last week, a former co-worker told me he and his wife were going to have their first child within a month. I congratulated him and tried to say something that didn’t cover all the usual bases: it changes your life completely in ways you’re not prepared for, you see the world differently forever after, it’s really hard at first but gets easier, etc. In the end I went with a variation on the first – this guy works at a startup and the metaphor seemed apropos – followed by my standard caution of “you will think you are supposed to know what you’re doing but you will not and that is completely normal” and an invitation to let me know if he needs someone to talk to about it. “You are not alone” is the nicest thing you can tell someone about to be a parent.

sweaterandtieThen yesterday, Erin, Abigail and I were at our friend Mike’s annual backyard pig roast. He and his wife have a five-year-old and many of his friends have kids now, too – at one point the party looked to be two-thirds filled with either kids, parents or grandparents. I was catching up with a friend in-between bites of roast pork and running Abigail to the bathroom (we’re in the midst of potty-training her). He has two kids and his youngest is seven months. As talk turned to our kids – specifically the patterns that repeat themselves with the second kid – he said “It’s crazy how cliched it all is.” He said this not as a complaint so much as a matter of fact.

Most people feel very confident in the ways they are not going be like every other parent right up until they actually become a parent. And then it all seems to fall away. Sometimes this is because of all the things I thought about telling my startup friend. Other times it’s because, developmentally speaking, most kids follow a certain timeline in the first year or two. Mostly it’s because parenting is hard and in moments of desperation you fall back on a combination of nature and nurture that combines the brain patterns formed by lifetimes of child-rearing with a few things you saw on TV (shout out to Mr. Cunningham on “Happy Days” and Steven Keaton on “Family Ties”) and some knowledge gleaned from moments when your own father said “OK, pay attention because I’m only going to show you this once and then I want you to do it.”

These cliches stitch themselves into the rest of your life, too. Or mine, anyway. If not for my job, which requires me to have some sense of the reigning cultural zeitgeist, I would be well on my way to filling my free time with Hitler documentaries and clips of Dean Martin’s Celebrity Roasts DVD (an infomercial I will watch to the end every time I stumble across it). The speed with which my summer plans became ruled not by music festivals but by yard work was astounding. An evening that ends with a glass of scotch is a fine evening indeed. I have no feelings of wistful regret about this. If anything, it feels like “Whew, finally.”

At this point in my life, I’m more interested in helping others set the world on fire than I am doing so myself, which is the perfect mindset to be in as a parent or a person approaching forty. I’d like to say the pleasure I derived from all this would be embarrassing to a younger me but probably not. I was an old person even when I was a young person. More often than not, I find myself considering the parents whose lives are marked by challenges far outside the usual patterns: poverty, violence or extraordinary health and medical needs, for instance. The ones who don’t have the luxury or comfort of cliche. I’m not knowledgeable enough about that intersection to write about it (yet?) but it’s certainly on my mind more now than ever before and I struggle with how to do something about it.

Meanwhile, I came home from work on Friday night with a unexpected desire to wear the t-shirt Abigail got me for Father’s Day last year. It has the words “World’s Best Dad” printed across the top, her handprints in the center and the words “Hands Down” underneath. As Ian has said, these gifts are usually huge lies so I’m not usually drawn to it at the risk of seeming like a hypocrite. Better a t-shirt with “Pretty Good Dad Most Days with Occasional Moments of Brilliance” written on it. But for whatever reason, I really wanted to wear it that night.

Today we’re going to have lunch with my dad and on the way home we’re going to pick up a lawn and weed trimmer I’ve been meaning to get for a couple months now. Next week, I’m going to throw some carpet down on the back porch and paint the back stairs so the backyard will finally look the way I want it for the summer.

I try hard not to be a cliche. But sometimes I can’t help myself.

I like it too much.

A few other notable things I’ve written about fatherhood:

Love is a late-night cheese sandwich
Mark Wahlberg hates America
Learning to climb
Guys like Seth MacFarlane are why I bought my daughter a Tonka truck
And the Scott vs. Pink trilogy: Supergirls, Comic books are for girls and Pink

“Love is a late-night cheese sandwich” – Story Sessions – 02.16.14

Fatherhood, , , ,

A couple quick bits of housekeeping:
* In case you missed it, I talked with WGN Radio host James VanOsdol about the Sun-Times comments decision and that US Airways tweet-disaster. You can listen to it here.
* My next reading is at The Paper Machete on Saturday, May 17th. It’s one of the best live performance events in the city so please come to the Green Mill at 3pm that day or any other Saturday.

Here is the piece I read at Story Sessions back in February. Writing this was more of a grind than usual perhaps because I was writing to a specific theme (“Love Is…”) for a reading series I’d never performed at before. The other folks on the bill were incredibly talented storytelling vets so it was an honor to be in their number.

Story Sessions is a great series and I think I did fine, but there are two things about this show that I will always remember that had nothing to do with what happened onstage. But it’s best to talk about those after you read or listen to the piece so scroll down after you’re through.

*****************

We’re up here tonight to talk about love. So I’m going to tell you about my daughter.

Now there are two reactions happening in the heads of those around you. Those without kids are thinking “Come on man, I just came here tonight to hear some stories and drink some wine, I don’t need some jag getting up there and telling me some crap about his kid. This isn’t Facebook.”

Those with kids are thinking “Come on man, I just came here tonight to hear some stories and drink some wine, I don’t need some jag getting up there and telling me some crap about his kid. I paid a 15 year old forty bucks to sit in my house just to be able to walk in the door of this place. Give me a break from myself for a couple hours.”

Let me reassure you this is not the sort of piece where some pompous gasbag tries to tell you that no matter what sort of romantic entanglements you may have found yourself in, you will never truly know love until you know the love a parent has for his or her child. Or even that love is the daily sacrifices of parenting that come from giving yourself fully to a small, vulnerable person who is responsible for 99% of the times you’ve been hit in the face or genitals.

Continue reading “Love is a late-night cheese sandwich” – Story Sessions – 02.16.14 →

Year Three

Fatherhood, , ,

Abigail and I find ourselves at interesting turning points during this year’s shared birthday week. She finds herself turning from a toddler into a little kid. I find myself trying to become…well, an adult for lack of a better word.

At three, Abigail is full of agenda and opinions, just like her parents. (“I need to…” and “I have to…” are frequently deployed counter-arguments to explain why her actions run counter to our instructions.) Last year she evolved her speech to form sentences so this is now the year of the paragraph: mini-discussions on how she’s feeling, how you’re feeling and what’s happening in the lives of her favorite stuffed animals and TV shows. Speaking of, where last year was Abigail’s Daniel Tiger phase, this year it’s all about Doc McStuffins. Thanks to a gift of a doctor bag just like Doc’s there is not a day that goes by without me, Erin, her grandparents, her aunt or anyone else in her vicinity getting a check-up. (“Breathe in, please! Now breathe out. Sounds good!”)

At thirty-nine – dear God – check-ups have become more a part of my daily life. Not just the fictional variety but the medical, mental and chronological versions, too. I’m worried about things like high blood pressure and getting enough sleep. And I’m trying to make time for things that make me a more informed, well-rounded and thoughtful person so Abigail sees she has a dad who reads and listens to interesting things and doesn’t spend all his time checking his phone.

To that end, I’m wearing an Up bracelet now and obsessively documenting what I eat (who knew there was so much sodium in everything?) and how much time I spend sleeping and exercising. I’m putting things on my Google Calendar like “reading” and “running” so I’m reminded to do more of that and less listicle consumption. Digital tools are once again making my life worth living, and hopefully longer.

Of course, Abigail does not have any of these concerns. Her life is filled with books and discovery and new words and dispensing freelance medical advice. While not the omnivore she used to be, she’s settled into some favorite foods – cheese sandwiches, blueberries, black beans and couscous. When she’s not read to by me or Erin, she’s trying to sound out words in her books or learning vowel sounds with her reading apps. She got a new ukulele for her birthday from her saint of a nanny. She still loves dancing and music and runs around at every opportunity (“Chase me!“) when we’re not making caves out of pillows.

Her favorite thing to do right now is have “sleepovers” on the stairs. Blankets are retrieved, stuffed animals are acquired and everyone gets “cozy.” Everyone except the adults she’s wrangled into this situation as no grown human being is able to contort his or herself into a sleeping position on a set of bungalow stairs.

This was also the year Abigail started to figure out the world’s subtle differences. When she was very young, Erin and I thought ourselves geniuses because we purchased several of the small Pooh Bear security blankets Abigail sleeps with and carries around with her. If anything happened to one of them, another would be quickly pressed into service. Somewhere along the line, Abigail developed a preference for one over the others – he has a tag that’s worn through in a particular way. This one became known as Real Pooh. There is also Special Pooh which is the very first one she owned and looks a little different than the others. And then there’s Bathtub Pooh who is any Pooh who is not Real Pooh or Special Pooh and is OK for her to play with during bathtime so it’s not soaking wet during bedtime. So now we have the stuffed animal equivalent of the Ben Folds Five: a main guy you can’t do without and a bunch of other guys who fill out the ensemble.

Last year Abigail and I went to the toy store to get her a birthday present. This year we went to the comic book store after a pizza lunch at Pizano’s with Erin. I’ve been slowly introducing Superman into Abigail’s life and she’s been conscious of superheroes for a while. My boss bought her a kids’ book version of Superman’s origin story and we’ve been reading it at bedtime. She can identify most of the members of the Justice League. But when we couldn’t find a comic book with Elmo in it like the first one I got her, she lost interest in the rest of the store. She had an agenda and this wasn’t on it.

I’m glad we’re raising a daughter who has her own sense of what works for her and what doesn’t. Her dad’s still trying to figure it out.

Learning to climb

Fatherhood

Learning to climbThere’s this Steve Wynn song called “Bruises” that’s stuck with me ever since I heard him play it at South by Southwest in 2006. The first verse goes like this:

Bloodshot, tired and torn apart
I’m at my best when I can barely start
I fall down easy but I get up slow
I really, really hope that the bruises don’t show

The reason it sticks with me is a lyric in the bridge…

If I came to you late at night
Would you answer to my call
I can’t do anything to make it all right
This is how you learn to fall

“This is how you learn to fall.”

There are so many things I love about that line. Summed up, it’s the acknowledgement that life is not without pain and failure and one should learn how to manage it so permanent damage does not occur. You are not entitled to easy living but there’s plenty to be learned from experience and one can learn to wear it well. Maybe that’s not how Wynn intended it but that’s what it says to me.

I’ve thought about that line an infinite number of times since we had Abigail.

—

There are a lot of things they don’t tell you about being a dad. The list is almost too long to bother with but off the top of my head there’s “Changing diapers never gets more tolerable (just easier)” and “You might give some jackass the benefit of the doubt because you suddenly remember he’s someone’s kid.”

The big one that no one tells you because it seems too obvious  – but it’s the one that terrifies me – is “barring catastrophe you never stop being a dad.” That one gut-punches me out of nowhere when I’m lying in bed at night.

I used to think the early months of child-rearing – those days of colic and reflux and walking around the dining room table while doing lunges with Abigail in my arms because it’s the only way she’ll stop crying – were insurmountable. But they passed. Then comes talking. And walking. First birthday. Sentences. Second birthday. Paragraphs. Intent. Agenda.  Yet each stage is just a minor evolution from the one prior so they’re easy to get your head around.

Then I start to jump a few years ahead and it all goes off the rails again. There’s always so much more ahead of you and the vast expanse of life gets you to thinking of events both reasonable and ridiculous.

How do I react when she starts liking someone in her class? Not just “like ’em” but “like em, like ’em.”

What happens when someone bullies her? Do I kick that kid’s teeth in or his parents’?

What if we’re on a cruise ship and she falls over the side? *

Someone is going to break her heart. Wait…what if that person is me? What if I disappoint her in some huge, therapy-inducing way?

My God, she’s going to leave home one day and be on her own.

You’d think the idea of parenthood as an evolving, decades-long undertaking would have occurred to me before. Like when Erin and I discussed having kids in the first place, perhaps. I submit to you that you can know things intellectually and be fine with them and then encounter their emotional reality and find yourself completely unprepared.

A better summary of parenthood I have likely never written.

The other thing no one tells you about being a dad that crops up all the time for me is how it breaks your heart a little when you’re not around your kid. I used to think the idea of being in love with your kid was an exaggeration. Nope. There’s no other way to describe that sense of loss you feel in the middle of the day when you realize you’re working on a project you enjoy yet it pales in comparison to being at the park with your kid. You just want to spend as much time as possible with your favorite person and that person is not here right now and so…blagh. I used to think I felt this way because my job was making me miserable. It was, and certainly contributed to the feeling but I’ve been at a job I really like for the last two months and still have occasional blagh moments.

Feeling blagh is helpful. It gives you perspective into what really matters and a clue as to how much time to spend worrying about something, regretting a project or bemoaning anything that didn’t go according to plan.

This is how you learn to fall.

—

Remember the castle boat? Abigail used to struggle with climbing it. She eventually figured it out. We also have this glider (or what non-parents just call “a chair”) she spent significant time learning to climb into and climb out of. I figured it was inevitable she would start climbing on things what with humanity’s tendency toward locomotion so it was probably a good idea for her to learn to do so safely and even learn to fall once in a while. So I taught her how to back out of a chair when she was around a year.  She applied this thinking to the castle boat. Sometimes she fell. And she cried. But she got used to it. And she learned to distinguish between a “whoops” fall and a real fall. And cried less.

Then came the stairs.

Our stairs are steep. We live in a classic Chicago bungalow and unless you’re in pretty decent shape the steps will remind you of  your calf muscles’ existence and how tight your hamstrings are.

One day Abigail decided to climb the stairs. Again, she was barely a year old. Part of me wanted to stop her but the other part of me thought “Well, she has to learn sometime.”

It probably goes without saying that my wife was not home at the time.

She climbed all the way up. Fourteen steps. By herself. I followed immediately behind her, centimeters between her back and my hands, ready to catch her if she lost balance. She didn’t. I was so proud. Several months later she learned to climb down them. Since then, she’s developed a love of playing on the stairs. We’re always with her, except in moments when she’s snuck by us. She’s occasionally lost her balance and hurt herself but hasn’t ever done permanent damage.

From there it was off to the park, climbing the wrong way up the slide. Or the right way up a ladder. Ascending a climbing wall. (No, seriously, there’s a kiddie climbing wall. Surprised me, too.) Occasionally missing a step and bumping her head but doing it all the same.

Then there was climbing onto the bed and accidentally falling off but immediately yelling out “I’m OK!” She says that a lot when it seems like we’ve roughhoused too hard, as much to reassure herself as me.

It’s all been an evolution. Parenting is a long process, but apparently there aren’t so many big leaps forward that it’s unfamiliar.

—

Eventually, Abigail is going to get bullied. And like someone. She will get her heart broken.  And leave home.

By then she will have learned to fall hard and get up slow.

So will her dad.

Probably not going to take her on a cruise ships anytime soon though.

* Since Abigail was born, our family has never been on a cruise together. Erin and I went on a cruise once and didn’t end up overboard and that was back in 2010 because of Oprah which is a long story but what I’m trying to say here is this possibility does not at all relate to our current circumstances and is therefore completely irrational but popped in my head once and now it occasionally revisits me…like hemorrhoids.

Abigail vs. The D-word

Fatherhood, , ,

I am a terrible influence on my daughter.

Like most toddlers her age, Abigail is in a mimic stage where she copies what she hears and sees in her world. Lately, this has included everything from Daniel Tiger (“Come on in!”) to us (“Hi, honey!”).

Abigail’s also in a phase where she wants nothing to do with a diaper change. Merely suggesting it sets her off with whining usually followed by a dash in the opposite direction of the changing table. Trying to pick her up results in her throwing her arms up and going limp like a war protester in the middle of an arrest. While trying to strap a Pooh bear-adorned diaper on her I have to dodge flailing arms and legs.

These two phases came together one night last month when Abigail was trying to squirm off the changing table. Diaper tabs in one hand, the other on her belly I said “Wait a second, wait a second!” “Waaait a sec-end, waaaiiit a sec-und,” Abigail replied in a tone that betrayed a hint of mockery. I started cracking up because she sounded a little like my departed grandfather who, when faced with us squabbling grandkids would say “Wait-a-while, wait-a-while!” She also sounded a little like a precocious sitcom child in search of a catchphrase.

Several times over the next couple weeks I’d be trying to change her diaper and get more of the same. “Waaaaiit a sec-ennnnd!” This was all fine and good until one night last week when Abigail was being particularly squirrely and kicky. You know those times when you’re parenting your kid and you’re so focused on keeping them from harming themselves you don’t quite realize what you’re doing until suddenly something happens that brings your conscious mind back into the moment? That happened to me this night when Abigail – naked and thrashing – started saying…

“Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit!”

I just stared at her.

“Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit!”

Oh god, my child is cursing. At two years old. I have failed as a parent. Game over.

Where had she picked this up, I wondered. As if she, at two years old, was spending time with stevedores and pipefitters and bringing home some colorful language she’d never otherwise be exposed to from her incredibly kind nanny who’s never so much uttered an unkind word let alone a curse word, several PBS characters and her parents who…

Oh wait…that was me wasn’t it?

Much like the “Wait a second” bit, I realized I had unwittingly let loose with a “Damnit” when she was thrashing around as I was trying to wipe her butt. And so I began trying to unring the bell. My daughter was, at that moment, like an overflowing toilet whose filth was spilling out over its lip. And I was powerless to stop it.

Look, I swear. So does my wife. Quite a bit. And often creatively. But I don’t want Abigail showing up to story hour at church dropping mind bullets on the other kids in four-letter-word form. This toothpaste needs to get back in the tube.

“No, no, no, Abigail. Waaait a second! Waaait a second,” I exclaimed trying desperately to redirect her language back into the hacky sitcom-like verbiage I found so charming.

She stopped. But the damage was done. My daughter’s innocence had been stolen by my momentary lapse in judgment and her incredible facility with language.

So far there’s been no recurrence of her colloquial usage. In the meantime, I’m going to try saying “Filth Flarn Filth” in those instances when something more colorful is required.

Year Two

Fatherhood, , ,

Today is Abigail’s 2nd birthday. In re-reading the post I wrote last year about the intersection of my birthday and hers, I’m struck by what a difference a year makes.

I’m sure next year I’ll re-read this and think about how we spent that morning playing with her ukulele, listening to James Brown during breakfast and entering Day 3 of No More Bottle. A day full of things worth remembering.

It can’t possibly be a year ago that she was just getting off the bottle considering she now consumes everything from Cheerios to curry to granola bars but there it is. The uke is busted and sits behind a chair though she’s now obsessed with bongo drums. Still likes James Brown but is more into dance-pop lately (Robyn is a big favorite). She’s also got this weirdly awesome dance: moving back and forth while rhythmically bending her arms and hands. Vogue meets the Funky Chicken.

Plenty more changed in a year. We long ago lost count of Abigail’s words as mimicry gave way to sentences and context and intent. “Get UP!” she will say. Or “Take a walk” as she grabs your hand. “OK!” was a stand-in for “yes” until this week when it became “I did!” “Nay” became “Nooooo!” in a month. She now knows all her letters and can tell you her name (which has evolved from “Abby” to “Abigail” finally).

And Lord, our child is a daredevil. She wants to climb on everything. Yesterday she ran full-on through our upstairs (“I’m fast!”) and plowed straight into an Elmo-shaped plush seat which obviously couldn’t support 27 pounds of kid hurtling at 10-12 MPH and sent her head-first into the glass door of our entertainment center with a thunk. (No breakage. Thank you, Ikea. You’re tougher than you look.) I swore and scooped her up while she complained then shook it off and demanded to be set down so she could run around some more.

This year we were a little schedule-challenged – because Abigail’s parents just can’t not be busy – so we had a party for her two weeks before her actual birthday. Erin was in New Orleans for the half-marathon last week and our change in plans for the trip may have inadvertently led to a new tradition for me and AG: a father-daughter birthday trip to pick out her present. We’ll see if that holds up next year.

As for this weekend, I’m headed out of town for my traditional March guys’ weekend with friends. This year, our schedules just happened to align so my birthday weekend was the one that worked best. I’ll be home early in the afternoon on my actual birthday so I can spend it with Erin and Abigail but it’s kind of great that AG ends up spending a weekend around her birthday with one parent and the following with another. Each of us gets to be a little selfish with her.

But this morning, we played with hand stamps and dinosaurs. And tonight we had a Daniel Tiger cake together. She knew it was her birthday.

If you’ve read this far, I apologize. This post has no real agenda and nothing particular to say about where we are at two years into this whole child-rearing thing. More than anything I just wanted to make a few notes for Future Scott of 2014 who sits down to write a post then about co-celebrating his birthday and thinks “Oh man, that’s when she was in her Daniel Tiger phase.”

Tonight Erin asked me if there was anything I wanted to do on Sunday for my birthday. As I said last year, I felt like I already had my celebration.

Guys like Seth MacFarlane are why I bought my daughter a Tonka truck

Fatherhood, , , ,

This weekend I was solo parenting Abigail while Erin was in New Orleans for a half-marathon. We were supposed to be down there as a family but a last-minute toddler cold and fever had us facing down a nightmare travel scenario for our first plane ride together. Less a noble act of chivalry and more self-preservation, I did wonder – after what seemed like Erin’s second Facebook status about beignets – if I’d chickened out a bit.  Midnight on Friday-into-Saturday morning with Abigail refusing to sleep unless she was leaning against me argued otherwise. It’s one thing doing that in your own house, another on a plane and other unfamiliar surroundings.

(Side note: Somewhere in my head is a post about how parenting is the art of things not going according to plan but I made two runs at it this weekend in between sick-toddler tantrums and I’ll be damned if I can fashion the ping-ponging thoughts into something coherent. Nora Ephron was right.)

Anyway, the weekend wasn’t without its merits.  Saturday we tested out the family-friendliness of  Horse Thief Hollow, a new gastropub-ish spot here in Beverly (passed with flying colors) and Sunday we went over to Toys-R-Us so I could buy Abigail a Tonka truck.

—

I’ve never much cared for Seth MacFarlane though I’ll admit to enjoying some of his Family Guy-fueled Star Wars parodies on a couple weekends away with some guy friends. Overall, I was disappointed that a dude who is clearly a song-and-dance man at heart felt the need to overcompensate with misogynist humor and gay-baiting.

Vulture writer and person-I’m-proud-to-call-a-friend Margaret Lyons sums up his hosting performance better than I can and explains why it’s not “just a joke” though I’ll add this: Just because there are other sexist aspects of the Oscars – the pre-show theatrics, plot elements of the films, etc. –  doesn’t mean we can’t object to a joke about Jennifer Aniston lying about being a stripper. What we joke about when we joke about women: appearance, emotion and sexual availability. All this time and so few are working with new material or imagination.

—

We were at a kid’s birthday party several months ago when Abigail grabbed the back of a Tonka truck and steered it around the basement with glee. I was thrilled: Here was our daughter, young enough to be blissfully ignorant of the concept of gendered play and enjoying the hell out of a truck, tossing stuff in the back of it and self-powering it all over the basement of someone she just met. And not just any truck but the fabled Tonka truck – the Bob Seger-soundtracked-Ford-F-150  of kids’ toys. I made a mental note to buy her one for her next birthday.

With Erin in New Orleans and me needing reasons to get us out of the house, the timing seemed perfect for a trip to the toy store. I’ve obsessed over written of my desire to not default Abigail to pink and princesses and give her some say in her play.  So, even with an agenda in my head, when we walked into that Toys-R-Us I took her hand but let her lead. She zipped past the shelves of Barbies but paused at an endcap of generic dolls. “Lala!” she exclaimed and ran over to the dolls, picking one up and inspecting it. Abigail’s first nanny was Polish. She bought her a doll and the Polish word for doll is “Lala” so there you go. After getting to know her, she hands me the doll. “Do you want this doll?” I ask. She nods yes.

As far as I’m concerned, we’re here to buy a truck. But I want to get her the truck for the same reason I don’t want to assume she’s genetically wired to like princesses. When possible, the world should be hers to explore and decide for herself what she’ll like and what she is like. Someone else’s expectations – even my own – are just that: someone else’s.

We walked through a few more aisles. I took her down the superheroes aisle just to see what would happen; she couldn’t have been less interested. When we got to the Tonka truck aisle there were three that caught her eye though we eventually settled on a dump truck of a size large enough for her to be challenged by it but big enough for her to master.

There was, however, still the matter of Lala, an issue made abundantly clear when Abigail placed her in the bed of the dump truck and proceeded to push the still-in-its-box Tonka truck across the floor. A dollar amount was in my head for this trip and Lala #2 put us over it by about 10 bucks. Plus, it’s not like Lala #1 wasn’t still sitting in her crib.

At this point, I’m rather charmed by Lala #2 so I’m happy with whichever toy makes it home. If it’s the truck, I’m pleased I’m introducing her to the concept of options. If it’s the doll, I’ll prove to my wife I’m not against girly things so long as it’s Abigail who decides it’s what she wants and not everyone else.

I put it to her:

“Do you want Lala or the truck?”
“Truck.”

Win. Except…wait…

“Do you want the truck or Lala?”
She thinks about it a moment.
“Lala.”

“OK, do you want the truck?”
She nods.
Do you want Lala?”
Nod.

At an end, I put the doll in my left hand and the truck in my right and hold them out in front of me. She looks back and forth between the two before charging at the truck, grabbing it with both hands and walking away. When we pass the endcap, I put Lala #2 back on the shelf, knowing I’ll remember this moment the next time I’m passing a Toys-R-Us and turn into the parking lot before the thought passes out of my brain stem.

—

All I’m saying is I don’t care if she wants a doll or a truck so long as she knows she has options.

Hopefully, she never sees Seth MacFarlane host the Oscars.

* In the interest of limiting the scope of this post, I’m not going to get into The Onion’s idiocy other than to say if we as a society can’t rally around the idea that if you’re going to send up the misogyny we aim at actresses you probably shouldn’t use a misogynist term and the name of a nine year old actress within the same 140 characters – yes, even “satirically” – then I don’t hold out much hope for us.