Contagion in peril, Day 3.

SHEÂ’S HOME! MY WIFE IS HOME! All the sacrifices of small animals (cats) to the gods paid off! She did not have to stay the whole week in Chicago. It was a rough three days, but I survived. When I last left you in this saga, Clone was insuring his inheritance by ensuring that I am incapable of producing any more offspring.

When my eyes finally stopped watering, I cleaned him up and dressed him. He was relatively good while he was getting dressed; however, he still wanted his Momma. It wasn’t until I went to make my breakfast/lunch that I ran into problems. While slicing the summer sausage and cheese that I eat for lunch, Clone decided he had to have some. He barged his way between the counter and me, barely missing my sore testicles. He stood there looking up at me chanting, “Dadda, I want more.” Whenever he wants something and doesn’t know exactly what to call it, it becomes “more”. Thinking it wouldn’t hurt anything, and the fact I do this on a regular basis, I sliced him a thin piece of garlic summer sausage. Even though this appeased him, he did not move. There he stood, right in my way.

During the slicing of the hot pepper cheese things became interesting. Again, he wanted some; however, he knows what cheese is and was asking for “Dadda, more cheese”. Hot Pepper cheese is a misnomer. It is cheese, there is jalapeños in it, but it is not hot. Correction, I don’t think it’s hot. According to most people that know me, I have no feeling left in my mouth. For the longest time I disagreed with them, then one day I was eating lunch with a bunch of people that like hot and spicy food. We all tried an appetizer that was supposed to be really hot. Everyone else said they couldn’t eat it; it was too hot. Me, I thought it was mild and finished it off figuring they where wimps. Come to find out, it was really hot… but I’ll spare you the details on how I discovered that.

After telling Clone for the third time, he wouldn’t like it and him insisting on it. I gave him a piece of the hot pepper cheese. I know what you are all thinking, “Insane bastard! That’s just mean.” Well you know what, you’re right; but it shut him up and it was only a small piece. He took a big bite of it and was happy. After a couple of seconds, he pulled it out of his mouth and tried to hand it back to me. I’m trying not to laugh, remember I’m not feeling too sorry for the little boy that tried to detach my testies with his foot. The “my mouth is on fire” dance he did was rather amusing. Taking the piece of chewed up cheese away from him; I asked if he wanted some milk. Of course, there was an emphatic yes. After he finished his milk, we left the house.

Everything was fine when I dropped him off and went to work. After work was a different story. Upon picking him up he did not want to leave, he wanted to stay with Grandma or Momma. Now he doesn’t do this when my wife is with, so he must really not want me right now. This is fine, because when he gets older it will be a daddy thing all the time. When we get home, before I can even get the mail put away, Clone has started instigating trouble with Boopie. Since Boopie had been helpful, I told him he could play a new video game he bought. Boopie’s room is off limits to Clone, and Clone knows that. Being forbidden only makes it that much more desirable. Again, Boopie was being a good kid and told Clone he could come in his room and watch, but he could NOT make a mess. At this point, I should have just said, “Wait! Clone can not go into your room because that is all he is going to do.” However, I did not say that and went about my own tasks. After 15 minutes, I hear Boopie yelling at Clone and go to check out what the problem is. Legos are everywhere. The bucket they where in was upturned and Clone is sitting on the bed laughing. Clone had climbed under Boopie's bed, pulled out the Lego container and dumped them all out by flinging the case across the room. Trying to be a good father, I helped pick them up.

I had spoken with my wife on the phone earlier in the day. She had told me that she was coming home that afternoon, and in fact was leaving around 1:30 PM. However, they where going to stop at a restaurant. Even with Chicago traffic and an hour stop, they should be back to Rockford by about 5:00. I was starting to worry around 5:30 when I hadnÂ’t heard from her. Then I hear my cell phone on the charger in the kitchen vibrating. My phone is always on silent as that at work they are not allowed on the floor and I frequently have to walk out there as part of my job. Wondering who the hell would call my cell phone before calling the house; I go to check it out. It says I have five missed calls and two voicemails. When IÂ’m at home, my phone goes onto the charger. I donÂ’t check it nor listen to it. No one that calls my cell phone after my work hours should expect me to answer it unless they called my home first and there was no answer.

Checking the messages, my wife tells me that she is back in town. Allegedly, she called our main line; however, it rang busy. We have call waiting so I donÂ’t know how that would happen and the phone was working normally. I wasnÂ’t on the phone and no one had called the house. There is no reason to doubt her; I just have no idea why that would happen. We went and picked her up, Clone was so happy to see his momma again. Once she was in the van with us, he settled down and acted the perfect angel. My wife is having a hard time believing that he was not the perfect child for meÂ…

I am taking the necessary steps at work to make sure she doesnÂ’t get to go on a 3-day business trip againÂ… EVER!

Posted by: Contagion at 01:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Contagion in Peril, day 2

Somewhere out there, my male ancestors are looking down upon me and, in family tradition, are laughing there arses off. Why are they laughing at me? BECAUSE IÂ’M PLAYING SINGLE PARENT! Great googlie mooglie. I thought this was going to get easier. At this point, I think the spirits of my forefathers are actually interfering to make this more amusing to themselves!

When I last left you, I had gone to work with my cordless phone in my pocket on Monday. It is now Wednesday... ItÂ’s not exactly rocket surgery to figure out why I havenÂ’t posted. (Yes, that was intentional). Monday I had to work late, when I finally was able to leave, I had to work on my fatherÂ’s computer. My father, after a year of prodding, finally bought a new computer last month. The problem with my father and technology is that even though he is a plumbing and electrical engineer, he knows nothing about computers and doesnÂ’t understand them. I get there and after being fed, I start working on his computer installing software and trying to figure out what he did so his computer wonÂ’t recognize his digital camera. The whole time Clone is being a handful. He wants to play with the mouse or the keyboard. Boopie is fine; heÂ’s outside playing with the neighbor kids. Finally, I take clone outside and tell Boopie to play with him and get back to work.

This whole thing should have only taken me 30 minutes tops, however since I had to explain every little thing I was doing 5 times to my father; it took me almost an hour and a half. When I finally left, it was just after 8pm, Clone usually goes to bed around 7:30 during the week, he was somewhat cranky. All right, he was down right nasty. I had to stop at a pharmacy to drop off a prescription I needed to pick up the next day. By the time I got home even Boopie was saying, “Why the heck won’t Clone stop screaming?” Clone wanted Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Stacy and most importantly Momma. No matter what I did, he wanted NOTHING to do with me. I’m not kidding, when I picked him up to carry him to the house, he went rigid and fought me the whole way. I almost dropped him twice. When I put him down, he tried to run back to the van!

Finally, I was able to wrangle him into the house, it was after 8:30 PM and he needed sleep. Clone decided that he was NOT going to sleep and let the neighborhood know it. He again fought me tooth and nail to get out of his clothes and into his pajamas. I was finally able to get him down by a little before 9:00 PM. By this time the liquor in my kitchen was screaming, “Contagion, come drink us. We can make the pounding in your head go away.” Making myself a drink I sat down to do some light blogging, reading e-mails, talked to Bou, my wife… my ex-girlfriend. What? What was that last part...? OH YEAH! Unexpectedly, around 10 pm an ex-girlfriend of mine, I’ll just call her Amazon (Stop laughing LittleJoe) called. I don’t know why or how she got my phone number, but she did. That conversation lasted about 3.5 minutes. There were no pleasantries, as it was a short unpleasant relationship. She wanted to know if I still had something she had given me years ago, which I didn’t. Now this has to look good. My wife is out of town, I have women calling me at home. In addition, for the last 3 days I’ve been receiving strange text messages on my phone. The latest one was “Hey Sweetie, last night was great. I can’t wait to see you again. I love you much XOXO”. Boopie is giving me strange looks and asks, “Why are girls calling you?” (Thank god he hasn’t seen the text messages.) I, being in not such a good mood respond with, “Because all women want a piece of me.” I have a feeling that is going to come back to haunt me later on.

Right as I was getting ready to hit the sack, I remember my wife had asked me to do stuff for her. I couldn’t remember what it was though. Then it hit me, I was to water the cat and feed the plants. No, wait… Water the plants and feed the cat. Pulling the hose out of the cats mouth… I’m kidding, I’m not that inept. I’m running around putting food in the cat’s bowl and filled it to near over flowing just in case I forget. I then went and watered her plants. Now I have a black thumb, just the act of my tending for plants tends to kill them. When I was younger, my mother left me in charge of taking care of her plants when they went on vacation. I did exactly as she said. However when she get back they were all dead. Accusations were made that I did not water the plants as I was told to. I had, they just didn’t like my touch. Fortunately, one of the neighbors saw me watering the plants and vouched that I had indeed done it. My mother was so pissed at me she never asked me to care for her plants again. Ktreva has heard all of these stories and knows what is going to happen, yet she asks me to water them anyway. This morning when I left for work, most of the plants where dying. They received a watering exactly as she scheduled. All I can say is in my defense is, “she was warned.”

Tuesday morning, CloneÂ’s mood is much worse. While picking him up out of his bed he does a full leg swing kick right into my right testicle. People, I am not ashamed to admit that after I regained consciousness, I cried. Trying to get him dressed was a chore and a half. Fighting me over the last couple of days must have taught him a thing or two, because he was much better. Finally, I get him dressed; I have him in his clothes and shoes. Attempting to pack my breakfast and lunch he is under foot, screaming that I need to hold him or he wants yogurt, or he wants mommy, or he wants my sanity to slide away so I can spend the rest of my days drooling into a cup attached to my chin. Boopie comes and tries to distract Clone for me. Unfortunately, CloneÂ’s mood was impervious to BoopieÂ’s attempt to play with him. Finally, my cooler is loaded and we head out the door, with the boys this time.

Clone does not want to get into the van. He continues to fight me. He screams all the way to my parents’ house. When we arrive, I’m trying to get him out of the van and he’s fighting that. I ask if he wants to see Grandma and Grandpa. His little head hanging down, chin on his chest, he shakes it no. I ask, “What do you want then?” Head still hanging he says, “Play daddy” DAMN THAT BOY! DAMN HIM! My anger and irritation is replaced with guilt. I thought about calling off of work, but I couldn’t do that. I have too much going on. Talking to my mother, (She runs a daycare out of her home, so she is our daycare provider. It makes her and my father happy) I find out that Clone didn’t take a good nap on Monday, couple that with late bedtime and we have a really tired boy. When I picked him up on Tuesday night, my mother tells me that he took a real long nap. He seemed to be in a better mood. At least he wasn’t screaming for Mommy. He did however scream for Grandma the whole ride home.

Boopie tried to help with Clone once we got home, but Clone was into everything. Attempting to make dinner was fun. Looking at the menu, I see Tacos are scheduled. Son of aÂ… Who the hell picked Tacos?!?! WaitÂ… that was me. What was I thinking? While trying to cook my wife calls and wants to chat about her day. Meanwhile I have the boys fighting in the background and IÂ’m trying to drop the phone into the ground beef. My wife, sensing that not only am I busy but that my phone tolerance is over stretched, lets me go. I proceed to get dinner made and served to the boys.

Clone is not the neatest eater, but he loves the tacos. Actually, what he loves is basically a bowl of taco fixings mixed together with a broken up shell. He likes to smear this anyplace he can reach. There was taco in his hair, all over his face, in his ear, on his ankles. It was everywhere. Contemplating turning the garden hose on him, I cleaned him up. Finally, he was happy. We actually sat down and played for a while. He would sit on my lap and I would read him a story or play cars with him. Then he tells me heÂ’s hungry. ItÂ’s almost seven, so I figured why not. Following Bill CosbyÂ’s advice, I give the boys Chocolate Cake. When Clone is finished, he has cake in all the same places he had taco earlier. YouÂ’d think I would have learned my lesson, but I didnÂ’t. Cleaning the boy for the second time that night, I realize that he is happy and not crying. Apparently, the bribe of chocolate cake worksÂ… Bill Cosby is a genius! Clone is all loving and happy and wants to play by himself. Boopie, who was helpful, goes to play some much-deserved video games. Being 12, Boopie is really self-sufficient so he was no trouble all weekend.

Come 7:30 pm, Clone tells me he is ready to go to bed. This time when I change him, he cooperates and all is well with the world. The angels are singing, the sun is shining down, birds are chirping, IÂ’m having a Norman Rockwell moment. This moment of normalcy is going to come back to haunt me the next morning. Why? Well apparently, IÂ’m really good at getting a diaper on properly when the child is fighting me. When they are relaxed and cooperative there seems to be an issue. This morning when I go into his bedroom to wake him up, he is soaked in urine. Either he had to pee his weight in urine or the diaper leaked seriously. From the warmth of the fluid I could tell it hadnÂ’t happened too long before I went into the room. Waking Clone up I go to pick him up out of bed, apparently he thought yesterdayÂ’s wake up game was great fun, because he kicked me in my left testicle this morning.

Did I mention I am not cut out to be a single parent?

Posted by: Contagion at 01:11 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Contagion in Peril Day 1

My wife left for Chicago just over 24 hours ago. I knew there was going to be problems the moment I left her with a co-worker that is going in with her. As I climbed back into the van to head home, Clone started screaming for Mommy. I tried everything under the sun to get him to calm down. I even resorted to singing The Wiggles' tunes. Nothing seemed to work. Digging through my wife’s van I found one of my Queen’s Greatest Hits CD’s (Little thief is stealing my music and hiding it on me again!). Popping it into the CD player, I turned up the volume so we could rock to it. Appropriately enough, “We Will Rock You” started playing. At a stop light, I was teaching Clone to clap along with the beat and he calmed down. We ended up listening to that song 4 times on the ride home. When it was over, he started screaming for more, as long as he stayed quiet and wasn’t screaming for “Mommy”, I was happy.

Once we got home, Clone decided Daddy sucks and wanted nothing to do with me. He wanted Mommy, Grandpa, Grandma, or Aunt Stacy. I figured it was time for daddy to show him how we could have fun. I ordered dinner for us. He had his favorite, pepperoni Pizza. Which made him a happy little boy then. Afterwards I played with him doing puzzles, cars, catch and tag. We both quit playing the overly active games rather quickly. Our region set a record high temperature yesterday here, and I donÂ’t have air conditioning. Too much activity made us very sweaty.

Clone cannot be left unsupervised for more then 2 minutes or he will be destroying something. After my wife was gone, my phone didn’t stop ringing off the hook all evening. I’m trying to get some work done around the house AND watch clone AND deal with people calling me for nothing more important then to tell me the new Harry Potter book is out. As if I care about Harry Potter. One of these calls was from my mother. I had just finished getting Clone a sippy cup filled with Ice water and myself a giant mug of iced tea when she called. I had set my drink down just long enough to answer the phone and start talking to my mother when Clone grabbed it. Laughing in glee, he proceeded to attempt to take a drink out of it and poured 36oz of iced tea down the front of him and onto the floor. Apparently, Daddy’s unsweetened Tea was better then his ice water he asked for. Quickly hanging up on my caller, I proceed to clean up Clone and the mess he made in his “Flashdance” re-enactment.

My evening went down hill from there. Clone would drag out his puzzles and start spreading them all over the place every time I turned my back. I would get on his case and make him help me pick them up. If I left the room to refill our drinks or go to the bathroom (Even if I tried to take him with me) He would find someway to run back and start dumping puzzle pieces all over the floor. IÂ’ve developed a special hatred for puzzles, especially the ones with the wooden pieces and plastic knobs. Those pieces hurt like hell to step on bare foot and they blend into my wifeÂ’s rug really well! If it wasnÂ’t the puzzles, it was matchbox cars, if it wasnÂ’t matchbox carÂ’s it was EVERY OTHER TOY HE HAD IN HIS TOY BOX! People, my living room looks like it was hit by a F5 tornado! If it wasnÂ’t his toys he would go after what ever drink I had. He either wanted to stir it for me or wanted to dump it all over the place. Either way I wasnÂ’t in the mood for either game!

Boopie didn’t arrive until after Clone had gone to sleep. His help would have been much appreciated. Once Boopie arrived and Clone was asleep I was able to get housework done. Today was my late night at work. On my late nights, I don’t have to get to work early. The extra sleep is always appreciated. Since I had to handle both boys on my own this morning, I decided to wake up earlier then I needed to. I’m so glad I did. Clone, like his mother, does not always wake up in the most pleasant of temperaments. All right, he is down right nasty! He has to do everything himself; if I try to help to expedite the process, he starts yelling, “I DO IT! I DO IT!” This leads to me asserting my dominance by taking the “Mean dad” tone of voice and explaining that if he doesn’t settle down, he won’t be able to sit down. Either that or he’ll just cry and go limp while I try to change and dress him.

Then while IÂ’m getting him ready he wants to brush his teeth, put on his shoes; play with his toys, etc. He re-drags out all of his puzzles and books while IÂ’m trying to get my breakfast/lunch together. Boopie is trying to get ready himself so he wasnÂ’t able to help either. Then the damn phone starts ringing. People calling to make sure everything is okay, because they forgot it was my late night and the boys would not be dropped off at their normal time. I had a company call to try to reschedule an estimate on windows (Which I canceled because IÂ’m not interested and told them that twice). There was also a wrong number. The whole time IÂ’m trying to finish getting my breakfast and lunch together, get all my stuff and take care of the boys. Clone is screaming for his mommy, Boopie is asking me questions about various things, IÂ’m trying to remember everything my wife told me to do and I knew I was forgetting something. I still havenÂ’t figured out what it was yet either.

After 30 minutes, I had finally had enough and told the boys, “That’s it! We are going bye-bye!” I grabbed my stuff and headed out to the van. Putting the van in gear, I quickly stop, run back into the house and grab Clone who was happily coloring in a coloring book. Boopie had been talking, but I was just ignoring him at this point. He was trying to tell me I forgot Clone. I stopped by the post office and the bank, and then dropped the boys off. As I did this, I realized that I had something in my front pocket that didn’t belong there. At first I thought I put my cell phone in there. Pulling it out, I looked at it puzzled for a second… It was my home cordless phone. For what reason I put it in my front pocket is lost to me. I have never done that before and I don’t know why I would have this morning. Usually I just toss it where ever when I’m finished with it. You have to understand that I really hate the phone and I try to avoid using it at all cost. It is not uncommon for me to holler at my wife to answer the phone, even if it is sitting right next to me. I hate those vile things.

I was never so happy to get to work in my life. I have until at least Wednesday before my wife comes home. IÂ’ve decided there is no way in hell I can make it as a single parent. I donÂ’t have the patience or the temperament for it. ItÂ’s going to be a long week.

Posted by: Contagion at 07:17 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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Happy Birthday Ktreva!

My beautiful, charming and loving wife celebrates her 29th (Version 5) birthday today. In celebration of that IÂ’ve arranged a sitter for Clone and we are going to be hitting the town doing what ever she wants. As IÂ’m writing this what she wants to do is sleep, thus she is upstairs sleeping in. This afternoon when she is awake IÂ’m going to spend some quality time with her.

My wife is the best thing that ever happened to me, without her I’m afraid of the type of person I would have become. Through her love and companionship she destroyed most of my self-destructive behaviors. My friends and I still like to make fun of the way I was before her. I’d get to drinking and I’d start to get violent and combative for absolutely no reason. One of the more infamous times was about 9 years ago when we all went out to a bar one night. I had been out with a couple of my friends hitting other bars first and had drunk two cases of beer. At the bar where we met everyone else, Grau bought me a 36oz Jack and Coke. I had about finished that when this guy comes walking in, he had to be about 5ft 2. Upon seeing him I felt my blood start to boil and I announced, “I’m going to go kick his ass because he is short!” I don’t know why, but that is what was going to happen.

Since Ktreva and I have been together I no longer have those urges. My drinking has considerably dropped off, and I donÂ’t find myself getting more hostile and violent when I drink anymore. To me these changes are a direct relation to our relationship. I now have something to lose that actually means something to me. When I was younger, there was nothing in my life that I couldnÂ’t replace. Now I donÂ’t want to do anything that will screw up that relationship. I just donÂ’t believe I can be a functional member of society with out her. If something where to happen to her I know I would slip into a downward spiral of self-destruction.

Her love is like a drug to me, I always want more. There are times when I wake up in the morning, look at her sleeping next to me, and wonder how I was lucky enough to marry such a wonderful woman. We work together, and there are times when IÂ’m having a rough day, I will catch a glance of her. Just that brief glance can smooth over a lot of the bumps. When times are bad I can sit and talk with her about the problems. Afterwards I always feel better. Sure we have our fights, but I think the longest weÂ’ve been mad at one another has only been a couple of hours.

I donÂ’t know that I deserve her, but I have her and IÂ’m lucky.

Happy Birthday Ktreva, just remember your not old. Grau is old!

Posted by: Contagion at 09:02 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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Bonding time.

My wife is going on a business trip next week into Chicago. That leaves me at home with the boys. Some guys might not like the idea of having to watch after their kids for 3 days on their own with out any help. Not me, IÂ’m kind of looking forward to it. We are going to do all kinds of manly-man guy activities. I have a list of things that I have wanted to teach the boys, but I canÂ’t while my wife is around. There is too great of a chance that she would interfere and ruin my tutelage. Now IÂ’m sure some of you are assuming this is teaching them stuff like controlled burping, skinning animals, Fire fun or fighting. All of you would be wrong, not this weekend. This weekend IÂ’m going to work on the art of womanizing, ogling and flirting with girls.

It is time for Boopie to start learning some of the tricks of the trade. Sure, I could be like most fathers and let him discover it on his own and make the same mistakes most guys made, buy why? Being as I am a father is it not my duty to instruct my boys on various skills that are needed? Why should I let my son make the same mistakes I made growing up? To me that is just cruel, amusing, but cruel. Now I may be rusty in my skills. There is no need for me to practice them since I’ve been married. Sure some people say, “Just because you are married doesn’t mean you are dead.” I, however, subscribe to one of the greatest philosophical minds of the last 15 years, Homer J. Simpson. Who once said, “Marriage is like a coffin and every kid is a nail in it” Due to my rusty skills I am going to have to spend extra time on each subject. I figured that since I only have three days I’m going to have to focus on three very important aspects of trolling for chicks.

First is the “Check her out with out her noticing” ability. We’ve all been somewhere and seen a guy fall over himself to check out an attractive woman. Maybe it was at the mall, the grocery store or even possibly at work, but it happens way too often. What is even worse is when the guy is with one girl and is caught checking out another. Hilarity ensues when the girl he is with proceeds to pour a 36-ounce coke down his pants. There is however, a way to check out girls with out the subject or even your date realizing what is going on. I mastered this technique when I was in college. I can look a woman in the eye having a nice conversation and still be checking out the three girls around her simultaneously. This is a hard trick to master, so I figured I should start early. There are a lot of guys that can do this, so ladies if you feel you are never being checked out, you’re wrong. The guy is probably being nonchalant about it.

Second is the most important aspect of picking up a babe, Attitude. Woman might not like to admit it, but the nicest, “sweetest” guy could ask them out and they will turn him down if he doesn’t have the right attitude. I’ve seen butt ugly guys pick up girl by having the right attitude for the moment. Females say they want a “nice” guy, they lie to themselves. They only truly want the nice guy after the mean guy has hurt them. Ladies before you go to tear me a new one, just hear me out. This may not be true with all women, but I swear 95% of them it is dead on accurate. Every female I know, beyond an acquaintance, that is in a happy long-term relationship is there because some bad boy hurt her emotionally. She then went on to find a nice guy and is now happily with him. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to teach my boy to be a jerk to women, no. You can use the proper confidence and determination to camouflage the nice guy with in. That is what I’m going to teach my boy, how to have confidence and determination with women.

Thirdly I am going to teach the boy how to bring the women to him, how to make a woman instigate the contact. This has nothing to do with coy looks or body language. That is all covered in attitude. I will teach him how to use “bait” for his trolling. In this case we are going to use the most coveted of all baits… little children. For this lesson, I will take the boys out to the store and maybe to dinner. I will use Clone and his blue eyes to demonstrate how women can be lured in by something and use that to start a conversation with them. You think I’m kidding? Clone once was responsible for my getting four cases of pop free. I had told her that I was buying five cases of pop after putting one on the belt. She acknowledged that I had five total before Clone worked his magic. HE was flirting with the cashier at the store, which started her and I talking. Clone continued to flirt and the cashier and I joked about it. I didn’t realize she only rang me up for one case of pop until I got home. I called the store to advise that I had been under charged, they said they appreciated my honesty and to keep them. Well a similar trick can be done with women. I know that with out trying I’ve gone to the store with Clone and ended up talking to some very attractive women just because they came over to see him. If I were single, I’d be using him to get a date.

I know some of you are thinking IÂ’m a pig. Some of you are wondering if you can baby-sit Clone. Either way, itÂ’s my bonding time with the boys.

Posted by: Contagion at 04:28 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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How to explain this one?

My son is really starting to develop his vocabulary. HeÂ’s been talking for a while now, but of late, he is actually trying to expand his vocabulary. The problem is that his pronunciation and enunciation needs work. My wife and I are trying to teach him the proper way to say words, but sometimes he is stubborn and refuses to learn. Other times he sticks by his guns and refuses to pronounce it correctly, like last Sunday.

Clone had spent the weekend with my sister while my wife and I participated in our re-enactment. While with her, she had taken him to the zoo. He fell in love with a stuffed monkey. My sister being the spoiling type bought it for him. When we picked him up Sunday night he had this bright, neon green stuffed monkey in his arms. Okay, if it makes him happy, what do I care? At least itÂ’s not a pink unicorn. We started the long drive back to Rockford. (Oh, we found the cure for his not liking to ride in cars. He must ride in my truck. This is fine for short trips, but since we are not taking my 14 MPG on the highway truck on our vacation this does not help there.) Clone is in the back seat playing away with his new pet and drinking his Chocolate Milk from a sippy cup being happy as a clam.

Clone has always been fascinated by Semis. Even when he was screaming on a trip, the only time he would stop is when we passed an 18-wheeler. He would stop screaming, point and say, “WOW!” over and over until we were done passing it. Then he would take a deep breath and proceed to start screaming again. Sunday was only slightly different in that he wasn’t screaming as we drove down the road. This time however when we passed one of the big rigs, he would say, “Wow, look! Truck!” Except that isn’t exactly how it came out, what came out was, “Wow, look! F*CK!” He then would start chanting “F*CK, F*CK, F*CK!” My wife and I are trying not to laugh, we know he is trying to say truck, but can’t make the TR sound. We kept trying to correct him. We had the following conversation a couple of dozen times.

Us, “No, TR-uck”

Clone mater of factly, “F*ck”

Us, “TR-uck”

Clone “F-*ck”

Us, “TR-uck”

Clone, “No, F*ck”

Us laughing now, “No, it’s a truck. TR… TR-uck.”

This would go on for miles. Every time I passed a Semi he would start over all again. At one point he was playing with his stuffed monkey when we passed the truck and he started chanting, “Monkey F*ck, Monkey f*ck, MONKEY F*CK!” The attempt to correct it failed miserably. No matter what we did, he kept calling them the wrong thing. Then to make matters worse my wife, in an attempt to change the topic, was pointing out the cliffs alongside the road. She said, “Look Clone, ROCKS!” I kid you not, with out skipping a beat that little boy shouts, “COCKS!” and proceeds to chant it. I almost caused an accident due to my hysterical laughter. My wife is not as amused by this as I am. This went on for the entire trip home.

I’m just glad he didn’t get creative and attempt to merge all three into one. I don’t know if I could have handled driving down the road when my 2 year old says, “Monkey f*ck cocks!” My head would have exploded from trying to control my laughter.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:23 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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So what, I'm a bad dad.

Reasons 12,214 and 12,215 why I am a bad dad.

It is July third. Tomorrow we are having a small party of close friends at our house and we have been preparing for it all day. At the end of the day the Scot in my told me I needed a drink, therefore I made myself one. I started to stir my Jack and Coke. Clone found this highly amusing. When I would stop he would say, “Dada, do more!” I would then stir my drink again. After doing this six times I finally asked, “Would you like to stir my drink?” He enthusiastically said, “YES!” Hence Clone stirring a Jack and Coke:

Then after I had drank that one I had. He tells me, “Dada need more drink!” He was adamant about it. Since he insisted, I went to make another he came in with a glass I had been drinking water out of earlier that day and said, “Dada, I more drink.” Me, being the ever so bad dad that I am, felt the need to “pour” him a drink. I started making mine, pouring Jack Daniels into my glass. When I put the lid on he pitched a fit. He had to have some for himself. At that point I pretended to pour Jack Daniels into his drink. (No, I did not actually give him any. I’m not that bad of a dad!) Then I add Coke to both of our drinks. Unbeknownst to me, when I would stir my drink Clone would stir his. My wife found this highly amusing. She snuck in with a camera and took this picture of us.

Yea. ThatÂ’s right. Not only is he getting me to drink, but also he is mimicking my habits! And yes, this is my Karnival of the Kids entry.

Posted by: Contagion at 10:17 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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