It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Today, I helped my son Jack embark on an incredible journey full of adventure, frustration, growth, laughter, love and loss. That 12 year road known as grade school. I should be excited, and I am.

But this ManMom is also sad.

It’s amazing how attached you become to something you pour your blood, sweat and tears into. Or someone. They say a parent’s love for their child is indescribable, and that is certainly true. If you have children, you will know the futility of words. If you don’t have children, you simply cannot know. Suffice it to say I love my children much.

And today I lose a little piece of one of them. That piece who absolutely needs me is slowly dying away, and I hope the piece who wants me sticks around for a long time. The Jack who is home with me each and every day, through fun times and absolutely confounding annoyances, through hugs and through anger – take it all or leave it all – that Jack is no more. From 9-3:30 he will now be “educated”. And I hope they do a good job.

I know, I know. Kindergarten was fine. But it was only half a day! The realization is this; except for summer holidays, I Jack will never again be home all day with throughout the week. It’s a massive shift in the spending of time.

As I walked him through the halls and into his new homeroom, we found a coat hook with his name on it. Then we found his desk, already assigned next to a partner in the front row. A girl partner. He’s still young enough not to care about that, at least. But I notice. I notice his excitement for this new chapter. I notice the simple lessons laid out for him already on his desk. This is your left hand, that is your right. A ruler. Some felt pens to decorate his name tag with a fall theme. And I notice the “Smartboard”, a massive projection screen that interacts with the teacher and students’ hands. Unless the student is too short, and must use a little pointer. I hope Jack likes the pointer.

I hope he doesn’t get made fun of for using the pointer. Or because we didn’t have time to cut his hair before today. For his cowlick. I hope he fits in. I hope he eats all his lunch and drinks his water. But not too much. I hope he doesn’t have a bathroom accident. I hope. I hope. I hope.

I hope his future stays as bright as those felt markers laid out on his desk this September morning. Arranged for him, but open to his choosing. Bright colorful potential. And now it is up to him to decorate his nametag.

ManMom is sad, but ManMom is full of hope, too.

I hope.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 at 5:34 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

It’s been a while since my last Manmom post. One might assume that this is owed to a lack of interesting tales. Not so. In fact, the opposite is more likely true. My Manmom existence is so busy that I’ve found little time to sit back and reflect upon it.

But I had an experience this morning that brought cohesion to some other experiences, and together they certainly demand a blog post.

Multitasking makes my life as a Manmom possible. Without it, I could never get done all that is required of me in a given day. For instance, say it’s 12:15. You need to leave the house by 12:45 to get the kids to school just on time. Before you leave, you need to feed them. And there are dirty dishes all over the kitchen. And Jack needs a snack made. And both of them need their backpacks packed. And then socks may need to be put on before coats and boots can be considered. And you have a phonecall to make. And you need to grab a book for the dead time you may have between drop offs and pickups. A lot for 30 minutes, no? Multi-tasking to the rescue.

The strange thing is though, a lot of these tasks should really not be done concurrently. It is the type of thing that results in putting cooking oil away in the fridge and milk in the cupboard. But, it can result in much worse than that.

We all know parents have to do gross things. If you are a parent, you know much more than others would assume, though.

Perhaps only old-age palliative care workers have any understanding of the disgusting barrage of experiences that make up my daily life.

There are the obvious ones, like using my spit-wet-thumb (and other things) to wash a dirty face on the way out the door. Or dealing with a bathroom accident. But what happens when those activities mix with others?

This morning, I was washing the dishes when I found a cup full of oil, water and syrup (a weird science experiment, don’t ask) that needed to (finally) be emptied. Not wanting to pour the oil down the drain, I began to search for a solution. That’s when I found a diaper sitting atop the pile of garbage in the garbage bag. Diapers absorb, I remembered. So, I poured the rest of the oil and other liquids into the diaper, hoping it would sop even more than it already had in a previous life. Yes, that is gross. Yes, I did it.

Yesterday I had to do dishes too. You need to understand that kids just don’t care what you need to get done. As I write this, for instance, I’ve become a magnet for the kids, who just moments ago were happily playing a game all by themselves (which is why I thought I had a moment to write). But they know when you are doing things, they do. And they knew when I started the dishes, because I soon heard one call out “dad, I went poo”. At this stage, that means I need to come in and wipe a bum. So, I put down my dishes, went to wipe a bum, then returned to cleaning dishes. Yes, the dishes we eat off of. But I washed my hands in between. Only a second or 2 later, I heard “dad, I went poo” again, but in another voice. How do they get the timing so right with these things? So, I paused my cleaning again to … wipe a bum. And then I resumed washing dishes. If you eat at my house, I suppose you’ve now been warned.

There are more disgusting multitasking stories I am sure. Do you have any of your own, I wonder?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

So many early mornings, that is the question.

Here’s a parent dilemma I hope other manMoms, regular moms and dads can relate to.

I am lying in bed, awake. I am trying to go back to sleep, but there is an acute discomfort I am fighting. It is my bladder, bursting at the seems, begging for relief. In the long run, it will be good for me to listen. But in the short run, this morning, I have my reasons for staying put.

See, it is early. Not really early, because then there would be no problem. It just a little bit earlier then the time the kids usually wake up. Or, the time I would like them to. Right now, they sleep soundly. But also, I know, lightly. If I am to leave this comfortable haven and creep the 15 feet to the bathroom between my room and theirs, the creaking floors will surely give me away even if my creaking bones do not. If I go to the bathroom now, they wake up. And they are now going back to sleep.

If I pee, the day begins.

And so I lie there, in bed, in pain, in thought. And of course I don’t sleep anyways. In the light of reason here with my words I can see I should just make a break for it. Take my chances. But in the morning haze, decisions aren’t so clear. And so I lie there.

To pee, or not to pee. That is the question. So many mornings.

Sorry bladder.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 2:51 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Well, it’s been a while since the paper airplane. It was time for something new.

Today, Jack needed something with the “oa” sound in it for show and tell homework. Boat was the obvious choice.

But we don’t have a boat. (well, there IS that big one that I don’t want to lug to school …)

So, we decided to make a paper boat. Of course, following my man-mom tendencies to blend parenting with technology, we hit up Google and found a pretty cool catamaran on an origami site for kids. I felt up to the challenge.

Here is the fruit of our labors.

You can get instructions here …

http://www.origami-kids.com/paperairplanes-2-catamaran.php

I am very glad I’m allowed to play!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 6:36 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Do you ever have something happen to you that makes you feel like you found a crack in the universe somewhere – like something messed up and gave you a peek behind the curtain? Or like you are onto something that is top secret? A glitch in the matrix, perhaps?

Deja-vu ranks among these moments, but I had another freaky one the other day, and I’m pretty sure there is a conspiracy involving me at the center of this.

I had just dropped off Lucie at preschool and was listening to the traffic report on the radio. They were reporting on a collision. It was right in the traffic circle I’d just driven through moments earlier. Only, I didn’t remember seeing any collision. It must have happened right after I left. Phew, that was close.

But, moments later, I came back through that same circle, and … nothing. No collision. No police blockade as the radio had reported. Perhaps they got a bad tip, but just moments later they reported it again – “still backing up traffic in the traffic circle so you’ll want to stay on the outside lane to avoid that” reported Rod Kurtz to the CBC faithful. Weird. I shrugged it off.

Until the NEXT day.

I am coming through the same traffic circle, at the same time. What do I see – the exact situation described on the radio the day before. Accident. Outside lane only in use. Police blocking the way. It is just what I would have expected to see, had it been the day before.

And no reports on this one that I remember.

So, what happened here folks?

Is this just life with the kids eating away at my rational brain? Or am I in the center of a sci-fi short story concept?

Every had a day like that?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 5:00 pm and is filed under ManMom, stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

So, it;s that time of year again. I know because we spent some time filling out those little punch-out cards with funny sayings on them like “you’re out of this world, valentine” (to be accompanied by a picture of ALF, in my day).

I do love Valentines, and I know my kids love it too. But, I have been wondering, filling out these cards, what the allure is here?

Let’s look at it objectively. You can’t just give a Valentine to people you actually LOVE or even LIKE in school. You have to give one to EVERYONE in your class.

SO, here’s what you do. You buy a big box of generic punch out cards with licenced characters on them, then write a person’s name on it – nothing but their name – and give them this ‘card’. Essentially, it means nothing, because you will of course get one back. Everyone has to waste these few dollars so that everyone else feels equally unimportant and generic. Huh? And what you are giving out is essentially (no, literally) garbage. How is it any different than just cutting a Disney Princess off of a retail toy box and handing that to a kid? Oh wait, that would include some personal effort. Perhaps that’s what we’ll do next year.

All kidding aside though, it’s fun to see the kids get in the act. And I like it, too, even if I have no idea why.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 4:06 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

On the topic of “From the Mouths of Babes”, here’s one I don’t want to hear again.

My kids are having a bath and I just heard this …

“Lu, did you just go poo without even knowing it”?

Only a parent can understand how horrible that one sentence is. It is ominous my friends. Gotta go. Cleanup on aisle 3.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 4:31 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I get a lot of joy out of listening to my kids talk. They are trying out words and how they string together. They are testing their meanings and building vocabulary every day. And sometimes the results of their verbal exploration are hilarious.

From time to time, I’ll post some of their words here. Here are some from the past few days;

“Leaders make you say excuse me when you toot or you fart or you cough” – Jack on leadership

“P is a letter. And pee is when you go to the bathroom” – Lucie on the letter P

“Dad, I think Mag really loves me” – Jack, on the girl he is apparently going to marry

“I’m going to keep my decision” – Jack, on the same topic

More to come I am sure …

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 4:16 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

“Hey dad, maybe tonight we should use our flashlights and try and track down some will-o-the-whisps”.

That is what came out of Jack’s mouth over breakfast this morning. No, really.

Before that creative suggestion, he and Lucie were making strange noises and scratching under the table, then asking “what was that?!” They were trying to draw me into our family mythology.

We all have family mythologies (I hope). These are the stories we tell each other, the places and people and things we create through play. Perhaps you have a red-suited, bearded man or a giant egg-bearing bunny in your family mythology? Perhaps you have other things as well.

As we have played over the years, read stories, told stories, sang lullabies and the like, Christie and I have developed a little set of fantasy worlds of our own. And it always makes me smile when the kids want to return to them. For us they are funny little stories or nove little concepts. For the children, they are real dreams and hope and fears and adventures.

We build on our family mythology when the kids as me to sing them the “Dragon’s Keep” lullaby I made up because I couldn’t remember any good lullabies. Or when they ask Christie to sing a song about a mad scientist and a princess before they go to sleep.

There was the story about Tiny Timothy who was stuck in a garbage can, and so sad about it that his tears filled the can, letting Timmy float up and out to freedom. Then there was the scratching beast.

That scratching sound has become the greatest part of our family mythology… The Hoogerman.

This mythical beast was created over time, but began while we were on a pretend camping trip in the living room. The Hoogerman was my ghost story. A large, bear and ape cross-breed who stalks the woods and scratches on doors with giant claws. Hoogerman stories always end with “and it was …. THE HOOGERMAN!”, and the kids screaming and laughing.

Do you have a family mythology? Or did you, growing up?

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 4:30 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

A few days ago I was going crazy. I felt like a chainsaw was ripping a hole through my skull from one ear to the other. Why this madness?

The screaming of demons. At least, that’s what it sounded like (to my untrained ears). In reality, it was the screaming of my daughter Lucie. Seriously people, her scream could be fed through a PA and use as a weapon of war or torture. Except that the Geneva conventions would outlaw it as inhumane. It would have to sit beside waterboarding in the time-out corner.

Those of you with screaming children know what I mean. Those of you without cannot fathom it.

But, it’s funny how the smallest light can brighten the darkest corner.

This afternoon I had the opportunity to just work a bit while Lucie played LEGO on our coffee table. She turned to me and said, “Daddy, I made this motorhome for you”. We even hung out a bit. It was a beautiful few moments and reminded me that I love being a dad, occasional demon screams and all.

There is nothing like the sound of your child’s sweet voice saying something endearing. Something simple and small and insignificant. That small voice has put a smile on my face today, and made me glad once again to be a daddy.

Thanks Lu.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 9:11 pm and is filed under ManMom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.