SAT prep works!

My 3 year-old's SAT prep course* is working.

Two kids on bikes wanted to get by us today. One said: "Excuse me."

My kid laughed and said to me: "When there are two kids on bikes, they need to say 'excuse us'!"

His classmates will rough him up if he says stuff like that in junior high, but at 3 it's pretty cute.

(* the prep course line is a joke)

In other news, I've come full circle, from denouncing the Wiggles as a Disney-scam replete with phony Australians designed to get kids to spend their lives watching TV instead of playing outside, to purchasing advance tickets to go see these authentic Aussie fun-sters LIVE and in person. My kid does not typically like big, loud events like that, but I want to see Wags the Dog, and maybe get his autograph. Good, clean fun.

Not sure it can top Los Lonely Boys, but it has a shot.

- posted by Michael @ 2:13 PM

 
For Father's Day, I did a round of media interviews (like it appears all at home dad bloggers did). I'm not even sure why I still do them. But now everyone I know who reads the paper, it seems, is checking out this site, including the moms I hang out with (but to whom I have conveniently failed to mention this site's existence).

So should I go read everything I've ever written here to see if I ever said something dumb about anyone who can recognize herself or himself?

Nah.

Instead, let me make a blanket statement: this site (which is in complete disrepair since I have no time to do it right) is really designed for the would-be at home dad who stumbles upon it while searching the internet while trying to decide if he should stay home with his kid.

Every time I get ready to kill this site (I know I say this a lot, but here goes one more time), I get an email from some dad who says something here helped him. It's so nice to hear that, I keep the site live, even though it presents a me that I'm not sure should be presented.

So read this at your own risk, especially if you know me.

I appreciate the critiques...the spelling errors noted, the friends taking issue with the phrase "full time" father/parent, the books missing from the Greatest Children's Books of All Time list, etc. I'm just not sure I'll ever getting around to incorporating your ideas.

I'm not even sure I can still edit any of this web site besides the blog....can't find the password....

So read on, if so inclined. Please don't be offended. And feel free to shake your head in disbelief that I make this site available to the world without using a fake name.

- posted by Michael @ 3:42 AM

 
I can't really talk about this yet--it's too painful--but my kid stopped napping last week. Just like that. Three and one-third years of blissful, two-hour naps, and they just disappeared in the blink of an eye.

GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gone, gone, gone.....

Two golden hours to maintain a shred of a 'work' career, to sleep, to drink soda without him seeing, gone in a flash.

I never even got to tell the naps I loved them.

- posted by Michael @ 11:51 PM

 
So I get this free book in the mail: How Tough Could It Be?, about a Sports Illustrated writer, Austin Murphy, who spent 6 months playing Mr. Mom.

Imagine, I thought to myself: this major publisher, Henry Holt & Co., is so desperate for some free PR for this book, they sent li'l ol' me a free copy so I would write about it in this blog.

But I only reach 47,000 unique readers a week!

(That's a joke. The real numbers are a better-kept secret than Vice President Cheney's hide-out, the location of which Time magazine just published for al Qaeda.)

I was flattered. No one ever sent me something free before so I could be part of a grass-roots "buzz" campaign. So I was predisposed to like the book.

And I actually read it! It skipped to the front of a very long line of unread books sitting throughout the house gathering dust.

Bottom line: while I had some problems with it, I liked it more than the other bloggers who apparently also received free copies.

Yes, just like the book jacket predicted, I did indeed laugh out loud on numerous occasions. Annoyed my wife doing it, in fact.

The guy has some funny material.

But I also had problems with the book, which would have annoyed me greatly if I had paid for the book.

My biggest beef: much of this guy's "Experiment," as this 6 months was called, was about him learning to cook elaborate meals with sauces and lots of ingredients and other upper-crust, Northern California nonsense that I do not care about.

(As the careful reader of this blog would know -- yes, that's you, Mom -- I decided to raise my kid myself, NOT do any of the house stuff myself. That is all outsourced to more competent people like the fine burrito-makers at Chipotle.)

So endless -- and I mean endless -- pages about cooking, and cleaning closets, and who knows what else were just invitations to skim pages, which, come to think about it, I should applaud, as it enabled me to actually finish the book.

Next big problem: I did not really enjoy reading about this guy's wife. If I wanted to read how nasty a wife could be to her husband, I could just go upstai....never mind, dumb joke almost slipped out.

This guy's wife comes off as an organic-food eating Nurse Ratched, or worse. Wow. He says he loves her. But his book makes her out to be one huge B----. She better be REALLY REALLY gorgeous and REALLY REALLY rich if she is accurately portrayed in the book, otherwise he should run for the hills.

Third beef (and maybe the most serious): They obviously planned the whole thing hoping to score a big book and movie deal. In other words, while pretending this was about the kids, it was really about using the kids to get rich. Yuck.

But I disagree with some of the other bloggers, who argued that the kids were absent from the book. I thought they took a back seat to cooking, etc., but I got a feel for what they are like. When the kid refuses to go to that birthday party—that’s priceless.

So what did I like about the book that helped redeem the flaws noted above?

First, I did, I repeat, laugh out loud on numerous occasions. Numerous. (Maybe I need to get out more.)

Second, I thought he nailed some of the humor and fun of being a dad hanging out with moms all day. As I said recently to the one at home dad I hang out with: "Why do I hang out with you at all? My mom friends come up with great play dates (like tadpole catching), give me hugs, prepare multi-course lunches for me and my kid, and wear bikinis. And they never have that Fu Man Chu thing going on their chins like you do."

Austin Murphy clearly enjoyed being the token dad, and I thought he wrote about it with insight.

Third, he came to the right answer, which is that he has to be more involved in the life of his kids (and wife), even after he returns to the road as a traveling writer. Can't argue with that.

Finally, I feel for the guy. He's writing a book with no market. At home dads are too scarce to make this book sell. So he had to write for the moms. But he's a macho sportswriter, so many moms will not connect with his writing style and frat boy mentality. So he's screwed.

(Except, it just takes one movie studio exec to option the movie rights—if that’s the right phrase for it—and he gets the last laugh.)

Prediction: he DOES option the book, makes a boatload of money, but KEEPS traveling all the time for work, even though he no longer needs the dough. Also, I further predict that the eventual movie will barely resemble the book. They will simply use the sportswriter-becomes-at-home-dad premise and run with it for 100 minutes.

Bottom line: if you get this book from the library, or come by to borrow my copy, then you won't be furious when he goes on and on about cooking fancy meals or describes how cold his wife is.

And you will get some great laughs, provided you don't actually skim over the good punch lines.

Also, at home dads should be happy that he has not written the definitive book on this life. So the manuscript in your head should still be written....

- posted by Michael @ 10:45 PM

 
We all want our children to be the kind of kid who makes sure no one is left out at the playground. I am proud to tell you a story that suggests we are raising just such a compassionate child.

Yesterday, the boy announced he was pooping. Then, he announced he was peeing. "This way, the peepee can keep the poopy company."

There shall be no lonely excrement in our house.


In other news about that area of his body, he asked last week what a certain semi-obscure private part was. I figured there is plenty of time to teach him all the correct terminology--no need to teach him the word "balls" straight-away--so I told him it was his scrotum.

He asked me what it was for. As I looked at him with a blank stare on my face, completely unprepared for the question, he helpfully suggested: "Maybe it's there for decoration."

"Pretty much," was my lame reply.
- posted by Michael @ 11:59 PM

 
A woman toll taker called me "Baby" today--"Go ahead, Baby--it's green"--which The Boy simply loved. "Why did she call you baby?"

It was simply too hard to explain.

He's still cicada-obsessed. Generally, that means carrying 1 to 4 living cicadas in his hands at all times while outside. (I've held the line against bringing them in the house or the car, although two found their way into the car.)

He was unable to play t-ball with some friends recently because he would not put down "Ci-Katie," his pet cicada. Tough to bat with an insect buzzing in your hand.

Even in the midst of many farm animals today, cicadas held their interest. But the mom we were with at the farm did succeed in convincing him to put his friends down for a while, by offering her cowboy hat as a temporary container.

I was impressed.

- posted by Michael @ 11:13 PM