The First Time I Made My Kid Cry

It's been a weird week.  I've been too fatigued from arguing about what's sexist and offensive and what's not sexist and offensive to write anything here, even though I have a whole bunch of titles for stuff I want to write about in my draft folder.  I did publish a couple pieces that I'm pretty happy with at other places this week, and there are some samples below.  You can just click on the titles and go straight to the other sites if you don't feel like you need to read the teaser.  

Have a great weekend! 

The First Time I Made My Kid Cry

 

It's one of the good days we've been having a lot of lately.  A little outing in the morning, kids playing quietly in the house while I make lunch and simultaneously goof around on the internet.  One of the days I don't want a lot of people to find out about because they'll know how sweet this SAHD gig can be.  One of the days I don't want to talk about because it might jinx me for the next two years.

Twin A (age:2.75, blog name: Cobra) is sitting at the kitchen counter, waiting for her burrito to come out of the microwave.  (Yes. A fucking frozen burrito. At least now the kids like them warmed up instead of straight out of the freezer.)  Her sister is still making "cake" with all the different colors of Play-Doh we own.  Whatevz.  She can join us later.

I hold the gallon of milk in a way that gives Cobra the illusion she is pouring it into her new Abby Cadabby cup by herself.  "I want lots," she says.  We pour lots.

The microwave dings.

"I hear-ed something," she says, fanning her fingers from her cheeks in a way that's not so much cupping her ears as creating the illusion of dorsal fins on her face.

I pivot to collect the radiated vittles.

I hear it first.

The trickling of milk off the edge of the counter.  The splash of milk on the hardwood floor.

Then I see it.

Cobra, frozen, holding the cardboard tray the burritos had once rested on, in the same position it had been in when it made contact with the Abby cup and set the catastrophic wheels in motion.

Read the rest on Dad Centric...

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We Have a Dora Problem

Since we don’t own a TV (ditched our last one in 2000), many of our friends and family members were concerned that our kids would be so isolated from pop culture that they would be ostracized by their peers. Luckily (I guess), the internet solved that problem by offering all kinds of programming for free on the small screen.

Our twin girls got almost zero screen time before age two, per recommendation of… well pretty much everyone aside from the Baby Einstein cartel. These days, as almost-3-year-olds, they watch maybe two hours of actual shows (Elmo and–God help me–Barney, mostly) at home on the iPad, and probably play with kids’ apps for another two hours. And to our snobby delight, they spend several hours every day with books: having us read them aloud, looking at them, and quoting long passages verbatim.

Despite my self-righteousness, I must now admit that there have been a few drawbacks to keeping our kids on this very restrictive media diet.

Read more at Aiming Low...