When it rains it pours, isn’t that what they say? Once again I ask, who are “they”, and for the record would they please shut up! This spring has seen a steady string of minor disasters. OK, so I’m being dramatic but I think I’ve earned it. I think it started with the oven, anything before that I must be suppressing at this point. The oven, well it’s dead, so we have been without an oven for a few months now. When it crapped out we thought, well that sucks but at least it’s spring  now and we can use the bbq until we can get it fixed. The three months of consistent rain has sort of put the smackdown on that idea. We were fortunate enough to head back to Calgary for a long weekend to visit with some friends and we discovered a slow leak in one of the tires in our van. We took it to have it looked at in Calgary only to discover we had 4, repeat 4 nail holes in the tire. It’s a wonder it didn’t blow out on the 9 hour trip to Calgary, and anyone that has had tire problems knows, you can’t just replace one tire. So two tires and $500 later we were on our way home. Now to Saturday the day before Father’s day and my beautiful, but apparently not so bright puppy decides he’s going to jump out of the back of a pickup truck, while it’s still moving. An emergency vet visit (on a Saturday), two x-rays, and $500 later we discover he has blown out his CCL (knee) and is going to need surgery to the tune of somewhere between $3000-5000.

At least all the rain and the cold weather has slowed down the carpenter ants this season.

BBD.

The face of a dog with a blown knee. These are his sad dog eyes

It’s Friday night, almost Saturday, essentially the day before Father’s Day. For weeks now my older daughter has been asking me “Daddy, what do you want for Father’s Day?” Every time she asks me, I struggle to answer. On any given day it could be different, but what do I want? Ultimately, time, patience, wisdom, inspiration, and…sleep. Some of which she can give me, some of which she can let me have. She’s looking for answers like “a book, a belt, a movie”. She’s looking for things she can get me. What a beautiful girl and one day she might know what she’s already given me.

BBD 

Turmoil surrounds me as summer approaches, lots of choices to be made. I know I haven’t shared much lately but, I’ve been busy ok? My main focus has shifted from SAHD to WAHD and It’s tough to keep up with everything. My fledgling little business is getting busier (is that how you spell busy-er?) and all of my free time is spent working on it. I am pretty much a one man show and am teetering at the point of being almost busy enough to need some help but not busy enough to pay that help. So the days are long and the nights are late.

I’m also at a point where my skills need to be improved, and I need to be faster, in order to take on more work and be able to turn projects over quicker. So I thought, what about school? Should I slow things down a bit business wise, ramp thing up on the learning side, and come out way ahead in a couple of years? In theory it makes great sense, in reality it’s not so easy. Remember: 2 kids (1 not in school yet), Dog, Mortgage…… It turns out SugarMomma’s salary puts us in the “middle-income” bracket which translates to “Ha, ha, ha,…..no we won’t give you any money for school!” Next reality, the program I want to take is only offered at the campus that is an hour away, not the one that is 20 mins away. So I would have to rent a room over there Mon-Fri and come home on weekends. Remember the 2 kids, dog, house…. not to mention the fact that school is in the winter so add snowblowing into that equation. Talk about reality gut check.

But this blog is supposed to be about the kids right? We just got back from visiting for the better part of a week in Calgary where we moved from a year and a half ago. It was exhausting. I have not been more than an hour away from here since we moved so it was interesting to be in a big city again. I have to say, I don’t miss it. I’m very glad we moved out into the sticks. I woke up this morning to the sound of birds, not traffic, and to the smell of fresh mountain air, not smog. I love the fact that the wealthy people around here drive Subarus and really nice pickup trucks, and not Bentleys and Benzes. I love the fact that at the end of the school day, the principal will get on the P.A. system to tell the kids to be careful going home because there were bears spotted in the alley behind the Post Office.

The kids had a great time visiting and playing with some friends and family. It was fun to go to the Zoo and see some new exhibits and animals, although sometimes we get wild animals in our front yard, so the bears were not such a big deal. It has been raining for most of the spring here and SugarMomma has been trying to get her garden planted before it’s too late. We have had partial days of sun here and there but rarely when she is at home. A couple of weeks ago there was a break in the rain after dinner and it dried up enough to spend a little time and get some seeds in the ground. 20 mins after getting the seeds in the ground 2 medium-sized bears decide to use here garden as a thoroughfare, tramping on all the work she just finished, true story. Bears are so rude.

Summer’s almost here and that means trying to figure out what to do with the ShortThings for two months. SugarMomma is taking the ‘things back east to visit with her folks for two weeks in August while I stay back and Dog-sit. ThingOne’s best friend from Calgary is coming for a week prior to the trip back East so that takes up the middle of the summer. I just have to figure out how to keep them busy for a couple of weeks at the beginning, and a couple of weeks at the end,… without spending any money.

Any suggestions? What are the top 10 free things to do with your kids in the summertime that won’t kill you, and will keep them happy?

I’ll try to share a little more often because online visits are good too.

Cheers,

BBD

So I asked the Venerable “Dear WeaselMomma” over at Dad-Blogs for some help with my increasingly Tyrannical 4yr old. Her advice was sound, but I feel like I must expand the scenario. In her defence the examples I gave of this behaviour were simple ones and her suggestions for dealing with them were good, but I’ve already exhausted those tactics. So let’s set the stage.

For those of you who are new to BBDR and now that my archives are lost in cyberspace I have two girls known affectionately as ThingOne and ThingTwo. Both are strong willed, independent, beautiful girls. ThingTwo has had more of a battle with her young life. She has been saddled with a host of life-threatening allergies and because of that has had a very different first four years than her elder sibling, and we have parented her quite differently as well.

ThingOne was in a day-home at 1, A day-care program at 2, Pre-school, and then Kindergarden, as most children of working parents are. ThingTwo has never been anywhere without myself, my wife, or more recently my mother with her, supervising her every move. She has never been in a normal toddler/pre-school type situation. The short-lived Day-Care facility she attended (with my mother) lasted only two months at the end of which various factors dictated the facility was not adequately equipped to handle her unique situation. So, she has been protected, from everything, her entire life.

This has lead to the situation I currently find myself in where she does not know how to deal with NO for an answer. I know that this is not unusual, and that most children her age go through some form of this. ThingTwo is not your usual 4yr old and that is partly nature’s fault, and partly ours. She has always been catered to differently because of her allergies, and we have had to make huge life changes because of them. We had to rid our house of Dairy, Peanuts, Shellfish, and a few random other things that seemed to cause allergic reactions. Now Shellfish, whatever, I don’t care for it, but dairy and peanuts, milk and peanut butter sandwiches!? These were big things! The first year after we learned of her allergies were hell, we spent every day terrified that something we were not yet aware of would land our child in the emergency room, or worse. So we did what any parents would do, we protected her, from everything.

But she’s older now, and needs friends, needs to interact with other children, needs to see more than her own backyard. The problem is, most other parents, don’t get it. They don’t get that feeding their kid yogurt, in a public play place, and not wiping their kids’ hands, and that kid touching the slide with his unwashed hands, and my kid touching the slide, ……could kill my kid. Yes, I said kill my kid. It’s that simple and that easy. We don’t go anywhere without benadryl and two Epi-Pens. Thankfully we’ve only needed the Epi-pen once. Let me tell you a baby, jacked up on adrenaline, is not a pretty sight.

I’m a pretty laid-back guy, I like reason, logic, and rolling with the punches.  I worked at a summer camp for under-priveledged boys for almost a decade, and dealt with a lot of crap, both figuratively and literally. I thought I had this parenting thing well in hand, second kid and all that. I have never been so man-handled in my life! This little being is a force of nature, like a hurricane. She is relentless, and will not stop until she gets what she wants. Case in point, the other night she convinced SugarMomma to make cupcakes, after dinner, before bedtime, before SugarMomma even realised what she was doing. It went something like this.

T2: Momma, let’s make cupcakes.

Momma: No.

T2: FINE! I’ll do it myself!

(T2 opens the baking cupboard, looks, lingers….)

T2: (with fluttering eyelashes and twinkling eyes) Momma,……how do I make cupcakes?

And you know the rest.

ThingTwo has willpower that would make Thor look like the Cowardly Lion. She’s had to endure a lot in her short life which has fueled the intensity of her temper, and she’s used to people jumping to help her with anything she needed or wanted for fear that something “else” might be motivationg the emotions. She has little sense of authority, and there is little that you can use as leverage. So we are now entering the “Bootcamp” phase of swift and definite consequences, which is as tough or tougher on the parent than it is on the child. It takes commitment and resolve. The time between instruction and consequence is getting shorter, and the grace period for the “Please, I’ll listen, I’ll cooperate now!” is almost non-existent. For Example:

1. Ask nicely. > If ignored >

2. Remind nicely. > If ignored >

3. Drop the Hammer.

BBD: T2, time to get jammies on.

T2 ignores BBD.

BBD: T2+middle+last name, it. is. time. to get your jammies on.

T2: NO! (followed by giggles and evasive manoeuvres)

BBD: Get your jammies on now or there will be no stories.

T2: NO! (followed by more of the same.)

BBD: Fine. NO Stories.

Which if I’m on my game I stick to it,  is followed by 20 minutes to an hour and a half of hysterical begging, crying, screaming, growling, door slamming, toothbrush throwing, and sobbing, depending on how tired she is when this all starts. The next day, she remembers, a week later…not usually.

We are having to find ways to make the consequences relevant, not only to what she is doing, but also something that is relevant  to her. The consequence has to mean something to her so that when you pull out the “Remember what happened last time” it means something and she remembers. This is the challenging part, and so, the battle continues.

A bathroom door with a lock.

New computers, and old computers, living together, sometimes in harmony. We have a few computers and not all are on the same frequency, if you know what I mean. 802.11b vs 802.11g and all that. My computer lives mostly in my office and is connected to the interwebs by a cable, but occasionally ventures upstairs to the kitchen table to hang out near the other computers. I also almost exclusively use a wired mouse as well even though my computer is a laptop. So imagine my surprise and shock while I was sitting at the kitchen table, typing away and my cursor starts moving around my screen, of it’s own accord. When it stopped I thought, that’s weird, and kept on going. Then it did it again, randomly moving about my screen, and then it closed a window, and brought something else to the front of the pile, ……WTF? I have no idea why this occurred to me but I looked over at ThingTwo who was using one of the other computers, the most recent one prior to mine, and she was using the BlueTooth mouse right next to it. As I watched, my cursor was moving in time with her hand and clicking movements. When I think about it that mouse was paired to my computer at one time, so it must have sensed it in the vicinity, and reconnected to it without me realising it.

I thought three things before I figured out what was going on.

1. Am I nuts? Did I just see that?

2. Is my machine about to die?

3. Is someone hacking into my machine?

I can exhale now, it was just the BlueTooth Fairy. Now, how do I turn that shit off.

Welcome to The Gold Medal Sunday edition of Big Bad Daddy Rant. Sunday morning, Hockey morning,  and it feels like nobody has talked or thought about little else since the buzzer sounded against Slovakia, which I have to admit was a little unnerving, but truly Canadian. We don’t believe in easy.  We believe in Hard Work, from the ground up. Do I want to see Canada win the Gold Medal today? YES, of course, I mean, um, duh! But do I want to see a good game, a game where the outcome is uncertain, where they fight for every inch, every check, every shot…….YES, because ultimately that is what hockey is about, what the olympics are about. I have loved watching all the sports over the last two weeks, and seeing so many of our athletes perform beyond expectations, what an amazing thing! I may actually take up a new sport because of it. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next 4 years for winter sport in Canada, whether or not the resounding success of these Olympics, and our Canadian athletes will translate into more support for grassroots sports in Canada. I know my interest is peaked and with two young girls, getting involved is going to be a no-brainer. I said to my wife last night, “I want to be an Olympic Daddy” I want to be one of those parents they show up in the stands, ectstatic to be watching their children’s accomplishments.

GO CANADA GO!