I always get a laugh out of watching this video from Man Stroke Woman, a British comedy show. And it’s perfect for this week, as I’ve come down with a “Man Cold” which is more like the flu. I’m all achy and running a low-grade fever. Nothing a few Advil can’t take care of.

Anyway, the video says it all!! LOL.

Well what an awesome lunch I had today!

No I wasn’t at a bar watching a sports game or out with my coworkers, instead I spent a nice hour taking my (almost) five year old son, LT,  out to Pizzeria Uno’s. I had mentioned that I would like to grab lunch with him one day and this morning he asked me, “Daddy, when are you taking me to lunch?”

“Well today is good!” I replied, LT smiled!

So just before noon I left my office and did the 3-minute drive to his school (he’s in Pre-K). He was so anxious for me to arrive and when I got there he hopped up, ran over and pretty much pulled me out of the building. He was READY to grab lunch with me! He was so excited, I could see it in his face, his walk and voice!! That made me feel special and excited to be taking him to lunch!

A few months ago his class went to Uno’s on a little field trip and they got to make their own pizzas. So as we walked from school to Uno’s, LT was telling me ALL about how he got to make the pizza and wanted to do so again. The only thought that came to me at that moment was, “oh boy…they better have make your own pizzas”!  Luckily that is the FIRST thing on the kid’s menu, whew…crisis averted.

Making his own pizza – no sauce, of course

While waiting for the pizza to arrive I started asking him about his day, what’s been going on at school and if he’s ready to watch the Eagles game with me on Sunday — he just smiled. (He took his “Swoop” Eagles Mascot stuffed animal to school for show ‘n tell today.) I think I’ll be able to have him sit and learn a bit about football as he’s starting to show some interest and want to be with me more and more. (Just so you know, I’m not a huge sports fan or the type of Dad that needs to sit on the couch all weekend and watch sports.)

Ok, pizza arrived and LT begins to add the cheese – only! He does not like sauce…or so he thinks. When we get other pizza he eats it, sauce included, but when he makes his own — it better have NO red on it! LOL!!

LT had such a fun time at lunch and asked to go again. Of course he also said, “Next time Mommy can take me and you take K-bop (our daughter)”.

I had a GREAT time taking LT to lunch today. I’m sure it is a day that he will remember for a long time and most certainly a day that I will never forget!  I will plan on taking him out at least once a month to spend alone some quality Daddy/Son alone time!

Ok, today was my 4.5 year old son’s first ride in his new booster seat – drum roll……

…and he loved it! It was THUMBS UP!

He thought it was the coolest thing to be able to have more mobility and move around, grab books from the seat next to him (easier) and he even managed to reach out and touch my arm and said, “Cool, Daddy! I can even touch your arm!” 

I did tell him that he should always keep his back against the seat while moving like he does on the school bus for his preschool field trips.

He couldn’t wait to get to school and tell his one teacher, Miss Lori, all about the booster seat.  Of course, we had gotten there TOO early and she wasn’t there yet. Maybe tonight at pickup we’ll remind him to tell her.

My wife and I had been contemplating moving him to a booster since he still was squeezing into a normal toddler seat, but decided it was time. He is really starting to “take off” in certain areas such as reading book, learning how to swim and doing more adventurous things…so I feel moving him into the seat is like a “big boy” reward for him doing all the other stuff.  Anyway to help boost his confidence is a good thing in my book and moving him into this seat sure shows him that!

Way to go Buddy! I’m so proud of my son for becoming comfortable jumping into a swimming pool!! Of course, I still freak out when I see him do it and go underwater for 8 seconds. But it no longer seems to phase him.

Today, both of our kids spent the morning and most of the afternoon over at my parent’s community pool while I did some work on my basement project and my wife did her things. I think it’s best this way since I tend to overreact to small things and get freaky when the kids don’t listen to me at the pool (or anywhere for that matter).  I think if I was with them today at the pool my pre-K son wouldn’t have had the courage or confidence to jump in without someone holding his hands or catching him and he also probably wouldn’t have learned to swim with his face in the water.

I think my parents do a good job of watching and teaching the kids things at the pool and tend to me way more relaxed that myself and my wife.  Probably since grandparents have already raised children (us) and no what to expect.

So anyway, I’m very proud of my son for what he accomplished today. He’s been going to 1 hour swim lessons with this Pre-K class every Friday for a few weeks and has been learning how to blow bubbles and the instructor has them do back float and then pulls the kids in the water. Guess this helps to build confidence!

Today my son wanted to show Mommy and me what he’s been learning and then some! I wish I had my camera to snap photos to remember. Guess I’ll just have to read my blog posts in a few years to remember this day!

Tonight I am totally shocked and scared.

My son has said a few words that just freaked me out.

And these words were not “shit” and “fuck” — those would have been nice!!!

What he said was “I’ll cut you in half” and “I’ll kill you” during his “no-nap, long-day-running-around meltdown” from 7:30-8pm tonight. And he was saying that directly at his sister since he wanted Mommy to put him to bed. My wife heard him say that an immediately asked him where he heard such words. His response, “[name removed] from Pre-K2 at school.”

Great!!!

Well the unnamed child is the same one that less than a year ago was talking about guns and stuff — and he was only 3 years old then!  This is going to be A PROBLEM! And one that I am addressing with my child’s daycare immediately via email to the Director as well as on Monday morning with a phone call or face to face. Something like this needs to be addressed immediately by the school and a resolution to the issue by removal of the problem student and any siblings.  Harsh? No, not at all…it’s a private daycare, one where I’m paying $1200 for both kids to attend. This situation calls for an immediate and appropriate response from the school’s director. If not, then I’ll have to go to the corporate office for satisfactory resolution….which in my mind is the immediate removal of the problem child.

Not only were these words just awful to hear…I also find out that the same child is making all of the boys in the pre-K room speak like robots or people with traceotomy tubes. Ok that isn’t anywhere near as bad as cutting someone in half, but still it’s an annoyance I, and my son, don’t need. My wife learned about the annoying voices while at soccer practice today. There is a child in the earlier soccer class, and that goes to my son’s same daycare,  that came up and said hi to my son in that weird voice. My wife looked and said to the other child’s mom, “Your son does that too!??” And the mom said, “YES! It’s annoying and he’s learned it from another boy in his daycare class”…ends up being the same child that is alleged to have said the bad words and phrases.

Anyway…Over the past two weeks my wife and I noticed that our son just didn’t seem himself at daycare/school. I even emailed his teacher directly to ask her if everything was ok. She replied and said everything seemed to be ok and that my son was playing with all of his friends like normal.  For all of you…my son is very affectionate, caring and considerate and while talking with my wife before writing this post we think our son was acting the way he was because of things going on at school. He knows not to say bad words and stuff and if he was hearing those things he might have felt out of place and unsure of what to do.

My wife finally got my son to calm down and like I said, he told us where and from whom he heard “cut you in half” (just say that like 3x to yourself and think about those words coming from your child’s mouth) it’s sickening. He’s never said anything bad like that.

Do any of you [other parents] reading this have any advice for me? Do you have children in daycare and pre-k that are learning inappropriate phrases or behaviors? I’m not sure what to do?!?  Any thoughts?

Awesome contest over at Dad-Blogs.com where they’ve teamed up with Kid Creations to giveaway a kick-ass wooden swingset / playset to one lucky family (living in Chester County, PA). Oh please let it be me! Otherwise I have the long, drawn-out task this spring to build a playset for my kids. We already have 2 slides, the rock wall, but NO wood…like as in NO actual tower, landing, and swing bar. I guess I could always find a low hanging branch and bungee the rock wall and slide to it.

Does that work??? Hmm, probably not safe, eh?

So if I don’t win the playset then there goes 7 minutes 38 seconds of each weekend to build one! My wife WANTS me to do projects like finishing my basement, or “hey honey MOVE that plant from there to here…no the OTHER here!”, and “can you plant me a garden”, and oh I forgot…”you can’t do this stuff during the day!” So….my kids will be 22 years old by the time I’m done and wondering why the Hell I built them a swing/play set!!

Anyway, Kid Creations is a manufacturer of wooden swing sets and accessories and located smack-dab in the middle of the US, as in Kansas. Good for shipping to the east and west, I guess. Which is perfect for shipping down Interstate 70 or whatever road is close by.

In any event, what a kick-ass contest to be running in time for spring and summer fun, barbeques, playdates, my annual Autumn Pig Roast, etc.

Why Kids Love Swingsets and my time as a kid

I’m not sure why all kids LOVE swingsets but they do. “PUSH ME!!!!!” “No!!!! Not that fast!” “Faster!!!!” oh sorry, i had a relapse back to a few nights ago… Well I might have an idea as to why they love it. When your kids are young they enjoy having Mommy and Daddy there with them, pushing, pulling and laughing with them. As kids grow up a swing set could be a way to boost a little confidence…i.e, jumping off at eight feet high!

I know when I was a kid we had one of those old Rusty-Pole-with-Metal-Chainlink-Swings swingset. We also had some rickety old metal-tetinus-causing jungle gym to climb on. But guess what? My friends and I loved it! Wherelse do kids learn to be afraid of heights? haha…I am and it’s probably because I used to swing fast and high and then jump off. Who didn’t!?

Ok, wow, I was just going to write a short paragraph about all of this, but then my fingers just kept typing and I got to remember my youth! cool! time to get some sleep.

Ha! I wish I meant that kind of “lucky night” (i.e., Business Time – watch video)…but unfortunately my lucky night isn’t about having sex…it’s about the evening I get to spend alone with my wife.  Usually once a week my parents (mama and papa) take both kids for the night – picking them up from preschool and dropping them off the next morning. Do I miss my kids??? Not really…well of course I miss them…but I also love the fact that I get to spend alone time with my wife to talk about things, grab a nice dinner alone, and tackle house chores and projects that can’t get done when all four of us are home.

As for our kids, well they really do love going to Mama and Papa’s house (15 minutes away) and playing, watching movies, eating popcorn, getting a fun bath, you name it — they like it. And so do my folks! Sure, my wife and I are probably spoiled because we have my parents around to watch the kids one night a week — no…we are spoiled and WE LOVE IT!

For instance, tonight…my wife and I hit Wegmans (food store) after work to get food for the rest of the week and weekend. Then we hit Victory Brewing Company, Downingtown, PA for  a good meal and beers, we had the Abbey 6 ale. Truly amazing ale! After dinner it was time to head home where we got to do our ‘own’ thing and then off to bed…yeah, I know, I’m lame and posting this from my bed right now while my wife is sleeping.

Ok, I know what some of you will say…but having two kids, sure takes the “energy” out of us and even on our alone nights we spend the time talking about us or fun things. Sometimes we even catch up on missed shows on the DVR.

B R E A K I N G N E W S ! ! !

[Candyland, 2/12/2009] It looks like tonight that Mr. Mint and Gramma Nutt have finally been caught. What crime did they commit? Let’s just say they were in the wrong place when cops raided Gum Drop Mountain after an anonymous tip.

In parenting terms…I gave my children’s Candyland game a time-out.

Why you may ask?

Well because it was getting late in the evening and we were all playing a quiet game of Candyland. My wife usually “stacks the deck” in favor of our kids and lets them draw the cards with the candycane, gumdrop, gingerbread man, etc. Well for whatever reason — I drew a pretty sweet card and traveled the the front of the pack, at least 20 spaces in front of my 4 year old son. Well……….

Tip #337 of the Parenting Guide – Let you Kids Win

With the combo of being 10 minutes from bed time, me going halfway to the finish line (in front of my son), that just made my son just lose it. He said, “I don’t want to play anymore, I NEVER want to play again!” Of course, those words were just that — words. But he pushed all the pieces off the board and I just about had it and therefore took the game and stuck it on the top of our canopy bed frame. In a time-out!

“HAH!!! that’ll teach you,” I thought with a smug look on my face. Well did it work?

50/50 I would say. Of course, I actually felt like I got my point across to him. He was saying sorry about 100x at Formula 1 speeds – he does that when he knows he’s wrong and my wife and I are going to take something away or not allow him to do something as a form of punishment. He knew that he did something wrong, but he was just over tired and couldn’t think it through.

Sure, I was being a hard-ass Dad, but i just needed to do this. My son is NOT the type of kid that does well in time-out (himself) so i resorted to removing the game from the child. I read that somewhere a year or so ago, ’stick the game or toy into timeout has good results’ (I’ll have to dig up that article again).

My son one that can be talked down from his rants and rages by my wife -God bless her! She is really good at talking to him and making him understand what happened, why he was in trouble, and in this case, why the game was in time out on top of our bed frame!

I guess my point is this: Parents, choose wisely on what you punish for and how you punish. Maybe I went a little overboard on this one…but I still think he learned from it.

We’ve yet to play Candyland again.

I just learned of this site tonight, Dad-Blogs.com, a new, freakin’-awesome site for us Dads! Dad Blogs is a site based on the vision of two dads, Joe Schatz (author of Joeprah) and Pete Janelle (a.k.a peteej from My GPS Camera Phone). Thanks guys for for getting this site off the ground!

First Impressions

I just joined and am very impressed by the layout, the interaction and how simple the site is to navigate and find groups, participate in forums, find buds (friends), write reviews on movies, beer/wine and much more. I can’t wait to actually be more awake to dive in and see who else had joined and what groups are out there.

Shit, this site has it all for us Dads!

Gotta Love the Posts!
Just to get you started…here are two of my (or soon to be) favorite posts. I’m going to have to read, re-read, share, and explain myself to my wife.

Top 6 Things Not to do if you want More Sex with your Wife

…and another post that I NEED to learn from

Parental Cursing Could Become a Child’s Habit, No Sh*t

Ok, so here is a snapshot of my profile to give you an idea of what the site looks like.

Another sweet aspect of the site is that I joined the group for BEER DADS, where we can chat about the beers we all enjoy and so badly need at night. There is even an event scheduled for tonight, 2/20 9pm to chat. I’m hoping I can make it!

Well, enough babble from me…if you haven’t yet checked out Dad-Blogs.com, do it now.

Also, stop over to Building Camelot, where author Tyler, wrote his review on Dad-Blogs.

Are you looking for something fun to do with your kids this weekend for an hour or so? Didn’t get your wife anything for Valentine’s Day? No worries…here is a great solution to both! (Image from RunnerJenny on Flickr)

Why not participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count? Yeah, that’s right, sit by your window or journey onto your deck (if it’s fairly warm) and count some birds. While counting have your kids draw some pictures of birds and slap some hearts on it. Give that to Mommy as a Valentine’s Day card.

I receive an email from Green Daily and the post was in today’s feed.

If you enjoy birdwatching or even just need a good reason to get outside, consider the Great Backyard Bird Count which takes place February 13-16. In the midst of the Valentine plans for the weekend, take a few minutes to look for some birds.

Read the full article “The Great Backyard Bird Count Coming This Weekend“

By counting the birds, you’ll be teaching your children about nature and possibly how birds migrate — and if your kids are 4 and 2 yo like mine, you can teach them to count and learn their colors. Have them count the birds on the ground, the birds in trees, and even the birds flying. Try to determine which bird is bigger than the others. By doing all of this and interacting with them you may spark an interest in nature in your child which I always think is a good thing! I’ve done similar nature activities with my kids last fall…when I took them on a “nature hike” in our backyard. We looked for bunnies and I even showed them “where the bunnies live”. It was just a brush pile in the woods behind our house. But they sure thought the bunnies lived there — in that EXACT spot.

So if the weather is nice in your neck of the woods…why not get outside, breathe the fresh air and teach your kids a little bit about the birds and the bees…well there won’t be any bees in my area yet…whew! I can hold off on that conversation for a long time!