I don’t want to give off the impression that these dad brogs are only reserved for when there are aspects of parenting that are only stressful and infuriating, because contrary to such logic, there are tons of times in which there’s nothing I love more in existence than being the dad to my children.

The last time I wrote a dad brog was when burnt-out dad went on his blow-off trip to visit his brother in Texas, and frankly it was a tremendous help and I felt that a lot of good came out of it.  It’s amazing what just two days of getting to sleep in without any semblance of an alarm can do for one’s mind and mental well-being.  Since returning from that trip, I think things have been pretty well overall, and in the world of parenting, no news should be considered good news, and it’s on me that good news goes quiet when it really shouldn’t.

In fact, the image above was something I made that I wanted to write a blurb about, how my oldest loves her maple syrup, and has this amusing ritual on waffle mornings, where she’s conservative about how much syrup she uses while dipping in her waffle strips, with the seeming express intent so that she can drink the rest off her plate at the end instead.  Immediately, I’m reminded of Super Troopers whenever she pulls that off, and such photoshop work is the ensuing result.

But such is the nature of parenting, is having the time to actually embark on hobbies of mine, such as writing.  Not to mention I’m such a neurotic kook about my writing habits that if one thing is off, regardless of if I have the time, and writing just doesn’t happen.  Instead, it’s kind of put on the shelf until parenting gets difficult again, and it just so happens to be convenient that the impulse to write again happens only when I’m getting annoyed by a parenting trope.

A few weeks ago, my entire household got sick.  It wasn’t coronavirus, it wasn’t the flu, it wasn’t strep throat; it was just some nasty bug that started with #1, passed on to #2, and then slowly picked off everyone else in my household, including our au pair.  It was during this time that #1 had some truly miserable times while she was dealing with the worst of the sickness.  Massive emotional meltdowns, crying and snot screaming over anything and everything, and mood swings that changed at the drop of a hat at times.

During the peak of the plague, she kind of got a pass on the exasperating behavior, because there was the possibility that it was onset by just feeling like crap.  But I remember having this dreadful thought in my mind, and asking mythical wife on what if this wasn’t just sickness, and this was the new norm of her development?

Welp, the household is just about entirely on the mend at this point, nobody’s nearly as sick as they were last weekend, and sure enough, the emotional instability of #1 remains as it did when she was sick.  #1 is less than a month from becoming three years old, which means we’re embarking on the journey of having a threenager in the house.

Heaven have mercy on our souls, it’s been trying at times.  Every event throughout every day has the potential to turn into a nuclear meltdown, and it’s a Christmas miracle whenever I can have a morning that doesn’t turn into a disaster zone for breakfast. 

Fortunately, #2 is at the stage in life where most everything is fairly predictable and she’s the chill kid of my two, because if she were still Civilization nuclear Gandhi at the same time as #1 being her own rage demon, I’d probably want to jump off a cliff.  Unfortunately, whenever #1 goes into one of her tantrums, she occasionally takes it out on her little sister, which requires some Pat Riley defense to anticipate and prevent sometimes.

Either way, this is where life is at in the journey of parenthood currently.  Taking a break a month ago was a critical success, and is something I and we, as in mythical wife and I, need to embark on from time to time in order to not lose our heads, and it better prepares us mentally for when shit like raising a threenager starts to heat up.