Tag: kids

Dad Brog (#110): Who knew toddler recitals were like Taylor Swift concerts?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As many parents do, mythical wife and I have enrolled #1 in dance classes, among other extracurricular activities to explore the aptitude and interest of our children to see what they might like.  She definitely seems to enjoy dance, but she’s also just three years old, so it’s way too early to tell what future lies ahead of this pathway, but for all intents and purposes, she’s nearing the completion of her first “year” of dance class.

And of course with dance classes comes an end-of-year recital, and I am looking forward to seeing my little girl up on stage in matching costumes with her peers and seeing just how well (or hilariously bad) she can work in tandem with her class.

All throughout the year, parents are pretty well-informed of everything going on with the program, and as we gear up for recital SZN (they really love to use that phrasing), emails have gone out to remind parents to get ready for ticket registration.  It turns out that the recital isn’t going to be like some local community center or a nearby high school auditorium or something, but they’re renting out an actual university auditorium, and it’ll be capable of seating close to 1,100 people.  Tickets are genuinely at risk of selling out, so we the parents are implored to be ready to register when they’re available at a specific time on a specific date.

Still, I didn’t think much of it, but when I got home, mythical wife explained to me to “be ready,” and that I should probably go get my laptop so that we could log on together.  I’m like, wtf for, isn’t this just a kids’ dance recital?  Why are we preparing for Dragon*Con hotel registration or Comic-Con membership?

I guess being part of moms groups and such have given mythical wife more insight than I have, but apparently getting our dance tickets is a really big deal, and that we should probably be very ready to go once 8pm EST hits.  But I don’t want to miss the opportunity to secure tickets for my daughter’s first recital, so I get ready to go all the same.

Sure enough, by 7:55pm, the website link we’re given to get our tickets from starts being slow to reload, and it’s clear that they’re starting to get bogged down with traffic.  8pm hits, and the button goes live, and it’s a surprising slog to get through.  The seating chart pops up, I enter our code, but I’m noticing that no matter what seats I press, there’s any reaction from the page itself.  I refresh, the site takes forever to repopulate, and the result doesn’t change.

Miraculously, mythical wife is able to get through, and secure four tickets.  However one is out of sequence, and all in all, we need five.  We solder back to the site to try and get the fifth ticket, hopefully in our row, but the site is completely borked.  I refresh and refresh, and get different results of what shows up on the page.  I get sent back to a landing and see to check back ten days later at 8 pm.  Then to check back at 9pm later tonight.  And then eventually, a crash on the page outright, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to get that fifth ticket.

Now I didn’t try and get Taylor Swift tickets when they went on sale, but I imagine it was just like what I was going through.  It’s apparent that the dance company entrusted their ticket distribution to a company that might as well have been Ticketmaster for as poorly as they go overwhelmed by a bunch of local parents who just wanted to get tickets to see their kids dance.

In all honesty, I’ve had better luck securing hotel rooms for Dragon*Con than I did trying to get tickets for my daughter’s dance recital.  I’ve never failed to get a room whenever I’ve tried, but in my first try to get dance recital tickets, I get shutout.

Apparently, this is the norm for this particular dance company, and if my kid(s) end up liking it and sticking it with the foreseeable future, I suppose I should get ready to get owned again and again for years to come.

I love when a bad plan backfires

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Blue Jays pitcher goes on Twitter to bitch about United Airlines asking his wife to clean up after their kids on a flight, gets bodied by The Internet

See, now this is an instance where The Internet made the right call on someone to unleash the fury onto.

Anthony Bass, a journeyman pitcher of marginal talent, who has played for seven different MLB franchises, and has made over $10 million dollars in career earnings, tries to go on the internet to shame United Airlines over the crew of a flight he and his family were on, asking the pregnant mother of their children to clean up a popcorn spill.  But his evident quest to gain sympathy and shame United Airlines backfires stupendously, and he receives a healthy dose of reality from the cauldron of the internet, leading to lots of disagreement, ridicule, and of course, snarky analysis of his baseball talent.

I think it goes without saying that I’m on the side of The Internet on this one, because I’ve done my share of traveling on airplanes with kids and it is every bit as difficult, aggravating and patience testing as one without kids might think it is.  But I also do it intelligently, and even if the airline were to present fucking popcorn to my kids, I simply wouldn’t let them have it.  The probability of a mess is higher than Bass’s opponents’ batting average has been this season, and I wouldn’t want to put myself in a position to where I would have to be the parent asked to clean up after my kids.

But if I were?  I’d do it, no questions asked.  I’ve flown enough in my life and know enough about the airline industry to know that flight attendants aren’t maids, butlers, servants or custodians.  I respect what they do, and I know that cleaning up after mine or my kids’ messes aren’t their primary jobs, and any assistance that they do give is a genuine act of generosity to be grateful for, and not expected.

Bass, his wife, and his wife’s sister, who is also married to a (former) professional athlete, are all a bunch of spoiled, infantilized idiots who have lost touch with normal people in normal occupations, because they’ve been coddled in the lifestyles of professional athletes for the better part of a decade.  I absolutely am tickled by the notion that Bass and his clan all got on social media with the intent to shame United Airlines, but it mostly backfired on them all, and of all the resistance they received, I absolutely love it when a baseball player’s poor performance inevitably is brought up, because in most cases it adds nothing to the argument, but in the context of comparing it to the situation, it kind of works.

I love the fact that someone screen grabbed his Baseball-Reference page, primarily showing off his 2023 stats where he has an abysmal 7.11 ERA and a negative -0.2 WAR, and made the comparison that he had no room to complain about United not doing their jobs when it was very evident that he was not doing his.

But I kind of get Anthony Bass’s frustration a little bit too though.  I’ve been twice a husband to a pregnant wife, and I understand that if I’m not here, I could only wish people were willing to help her out when needed.  Frankly, he had some reason to be frustrated with a flight attendant, if they didn’t help at all, and stood there and watched his wife get down and pick up popcorn, but frankly I’d also be miffed with surrounding passengers who sat on their asses with seatbelts on, and didn’t help a very likely obviously pregnant woman on the ground picking up popcorn.  Sure, it’s not their job to do such, as it isn’t the jobs of the flight attendants, but a little bit of empathy and compassion can go a long way in life.

Either way, I still got a lot of amusement of reading the fallout of Anthony Bass and his beef with United.  He clearly thought he was going to have The Internet to back him up against United, but much like the confidence in his abilities he must have had after his fairly decent 2022 season, he was wrong.  And I love seeing spoiled professional athletes get owned on the internet.

Dad Brog #109: My kids seem to only have my weaknesses

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Up until recently, I’ve been thinking that #2 seemed to be the more sturdy of my daughters, seeing as how #1 can’t eat eggs without it coming back out in some unpleasant fashion.  She gets this unfortunate ailment from me, seeing as how almost to the day I turned 30 years old, my body has decided to revolt against eggs.  I can still eat things with eggs as an ingredient to a small extent, but I can’t fry up eggs or hard boil them and eat them without a fairly predictable and unpleasant result a few hours later.

Some say that peoples’ dietary tendencies have a tendency to change every 7-10 years, but it was actually very recently where I indulged in a quiche, and most definitely paid for it later in the day.  A decade later and my body still doesn’t like dealing with eggs any more than when I was 30.

However, not only can #2 eat eggs, she loves them.  Scrambled, fried, Korean-souffle style, she really enjoys eggs, and doesn’t have any ill effects like her sister or dad does.  For that reason alone, I figured she was the more resilient child.

Until just a day ago, I was getting texts from my au pair asking if #2 had any allergies.  Subsequent photos came in, and there were some rashes on my daughter that were unnerving to see, resulting in me leaving work early and taking her in to urgent care, because I wanted to get some professional opinion on what I was already suspecting.

At the tail end of the cruise, my group did a load of laundry on the ship, so that we could get it out of the way while on the ship, as well as the fact that with as many outfit changes my kids were doing, we had to.  As is often the case with lots of cruises, nothing is free, and I had to purchase an individual wash cycle, a dryer cycle, and because we didn’t bring any, some laundry detergent, which was a plain, regular single-serving size of Tide.

Long story short, I quickly pieced things together, and made an educated guess that it was a detergent-related rash that #2 was dealing with, because some articles of clothing from the cruise laundry were coming back into circulation, as well as the fact that, not specifically with Tide, but again, a detergent allergy is something that has happened to me before as well.

In my case, it’s Purex, or whatever the fuck they put in their formula, that triggers my body to have a rather unpleasant hives-ey/rash-ey reaction, and it’s pretty evident that Tide has the same effect on my daughter.

Needless to say, swapping out the afflicted articles and replacing them with not-Tide washed bedding and clothes have already stabilized things, and I’ve learned that Tide is 100% on the blacklist for shopping in the future

But it’s apparent that my second child has picked up a weakness from her dad, just like her sister has.  It’s too early to tell yet, but I’m hoping, considering how much they’re already taking after me, that they get some of my strengths and don’t just continue to grow with weaknesses of mine without any sort of balance.

Dad Brog #108: Unless they figure out how to open doors

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

First, that’s a quote from Jurassic Park.  Obviously.  Secondly, my kids already know how to open doors.

However, they didn’t know how to unlock the doors… until now.

Since we converted #1’s crib into a bed, I fully baby-proofed the room and anchored all the furniture to the walls, and when we put her down for the night, we’ve locked the door behind us, so that she couldn’t open the door and go exploring around the house unsupervised.  And when I say locked the door, I mean locking the door from the inside so that we’re technically locked out, needing a key to get back in.

Since we got back from the cruise, #1’s sleep behavior has been off-kilter, and she has been a little more resistant to going to bed the last few days.  We don’t need the camera monitor to know that she’s upset about bedtime, based on some of the screaming she’s been doing in disagreement, but usually it stops after a while, and we can see that she’s passed out in bed.

But just the other day, along with the screaming of unhappiness, came some audible footsteps of her running to the door, and before we knew it, the sound of a door opening, and the frantic footsteps of an ornery three-year old charging down the hallway, and we realized that one of the raptors has figured out how to unlock doors.

Hold onto your butts.

Dad Brog #107: Finally had to use the Ladies’ Room

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One specific dad story/milestone I have from the cruise, is that for the first time ever, I’ve had to take my children into a women’s bathroom.  Typically I’ve just taken them into the men’s room with me, but with at least #1 needing actual toilets since she’s potty trained, it’s imperative that I have to have a stall available to me when I enter.  And as I’ve alluded to, the Magic is smaller than my previous Disney cruise (Fantasy), and it never felt more like it than the availability of restrooms.

Naturally, #1 says she has to go potty right after I’m left with both kids on my own, and thankfully there’s a set of restrooms nearby.  I go into the men’s room and sure enough both stalls are occupied, and after about two minutes it’s obvious the assholes in them are taking vacations, so I leave.  I see a cast member nearby, and I ask him if it’s okay if I use the women’s room since I have two daughters in tow, and they give me the green light.  I enter the women’s room, see one of the stalls is occupied, so I announce my male presence, I have daughters, the men’s room is full, and I need to use the stall.  I get the green light from an understanding woman, and it’s into the stall for my girls and I.

As #1 is doing her business, I hear the door open and a woman enters, so I announce my presence again, as to not freak out any women who hears a man in the room, even if I’m speaking to daughters.  She’s cool about it too, and I start making jokes about how I’m proud of my daughters and how a bunch of gross boys are hogging the men’s room, and we take care of business and get out hastily.

Ultimately, this was one of those situations where I’ve read about how other dads have handled it on the internet, but I didn’t think I’d really ever run into the situation myself.  But as I’ve said, the Magic isn’t the Fantasy and felt like it in terms of size, and into the ladies’ room I went.  Hopefully this will not be a regular occurrence over the next few years, but if it does, I only hope it goes as positively as this one did.

Dad of the year, right chere’.

Dad Brog #106: the Girls’ first Disney Cruise

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For #1’s third birthday, mythical wife made the decision that we should go on a Disney cruise.  I’m usually so drowning in dad life that I don’t really have much capacity to think about vacations and trips, and I’m pretty much down to go along with any of mythical wife’s ideas as long as it doesn’t tank us financially and I have the capability to take the time off of work for it, and this was no exception.

It would be a daunting task taking a three-year old and an 20-month old, but we were also being accompanied by my mother in-law as well as our au pair, so with an adult-to-kid ratio of 2:1, it seemed more plausible.

Overall, despite the fact that there were points of the trip where everyone, including myself, hit burnout points of exasperation in dealing with a kid or kids, I would still say it was a positive and memorable trip as a whole.  Sure, it’s not something I like to admit that I lose my cool at times, but the combination of my kids being so drastically out of their routines, not napping, the choppy rocking of a vessel that I had expected to be a little smoother, and piss-poor air conditioning all over led to some instances where it was easy to boil over and get pretty annoyed at circumstances, but that’s basically what parenting is sometimes, having expectations that don’t get met, and being flustered as a result.

Countless times throughout the trip one or both of my kids would be fussy and intolerably cranky, and when this occurred, it just sandbagged everything around us.  I didn’t want to be the parents of the loudest kids in the room, which fortunately rarely occurred, but at the same time I’d like it of my kids behaved like angels all the time, which is the utmost pipedream for parents all over.

A thought I had is that my kids have been raised with such structure and routine, that putting them in an environment such as a vacation cruise, where their settings and beds are different, the food is richer and restrictions have been relaxed, and they’re basically not on a very structured schedule anymore, leads to what felt like chaos.

It was these moments of frustration and despair that I began to think about all the other parents I know, who have basically stated that they don’t feel that it’s worth taking their kids to Disney or any Disney-related things like cruises, until they were like 8-10 years old, where they might be a little more manageable than basically two toddlers.

But on that same token, I’m grateful and glad that my kids can already say they’ve been outside of the United States, and although they won’t really remember much, I’m happy that my girls have stepped foot in Mexico and been outside the country, which is something that I really couldn’t say until I was an adult.

And no matter how much my kids might have acted like pills at times, one of the consistent things was that the sight of any Disney princess or seeing Minnie or Donald Duck, immediately snapped them out of their angst and into awe-struck children who were all smiles and hugs when given the opportunity to meet them.

I had the foresight to go ahead and plunk down for the unlimited photo package, and I would highly recommend it to really anyone who takes a Disney cruise and has the expectation of wanting at least 5-6 good photos from the on-site photographers, because that’s the threshold in which it basically pays for itself.  My party ended up with 142 photos, which are basically the best souvenirs I could ask for.

Overall, this was a vast improvement over the vacation experience from two years ago where I was taking a 16- and a 2-month old to Disney World and absolutely everything in the world was a colossal undertaking, and I know that as the kids age these things will become easier.  I had high expectations for the Magic based on my experience on the Fantasy, and they fell short because of all the differences I was unaware of.

But damn, after this vacation, I could use a vacation.  I love my kids, but I’m completely incapable of relaxation when I have to be a dad.  I wanted to at least one opportunity to run a train on the breakfast buffet at Cabana’s, but that didn’t happen because of needing to tend to my kids’ needs first, and the fact that the lines and demand for it was way harsher than I had expected, and it was impossible to get in line.

But at least I was able to get another La Parka lucha libre mask when #2 and I spent a few hours walking around Cozumel on our one shore day.  Shit was so cheap that I didn’t feel right trying to haggle with the locals, even though I used to enjoy such in the past.

Dad Brog (#105): when the Karens become real

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s no secret that many of us of a certain demographic love good Karen stories. Stories of uppity white women making outlandish entitled demands, asking to speak with managers, getting off on generally being pains in the ass to millennials, minorities, and society in general. 

We love when the internet feeds us stories of them, exposing their bullshit, low-key doxxing them and revealing them left and right, but I have to say it’s not nearly as entertaining when the Karens start targeting you, or attacking your personal world, proving themselves to be real-life insufferable c-words, and not just demons from stories on the internet.

On my daughter’s birthday, we went out to eat; a rare occurrence considering my two toddlers, but the grownups outnumbered the runts, so we braved the excursion.  My group was sequestered in a wing of the restaurant that it became quickly apparent that this was where all larger groups, parties with kids, diners needing special accommodation, and ironically, black people (this is a pretty white area), were all stashed away.

The booth seat in which I was sitting at with my daughter, had small openings in the wall behind, that can peek into the booth behind us, if she stood up.  And being a curious now-three year old, of course she stood up and took a peek at the neighboring booth.  Despite my quick admonishing her to not do such, the woman in the adjacent booth wasn’t slow to hide her displeasure at being seated near some young children.

I get it, I’ve been them before too. When I was in my teens and twenties and had no consideration of the challenges of being parents dining out with toddlers.  And she probably was too 40 years prior, the old fucking Karen hag who started making remarks about “it was so empty here” and clearly voicing her displeasure at being near my kids.

I took #1 to the bathroom and when we came back, I noticed that they were gone.  They had moved somewhere else in the restaurant, because they didn’t want to be near my kids.

Here’s the thing, had they stuck it out 10-15 minutes, I wouldn’t have blamed them one bit for wanting to move.  My girls did get noisy for some bursts, and #1 did poke her head over the partition again.  If they moved after those little annoyances, I wouldn’t have taken it as a slight.

But the fact that they did, in advance of any troubling behavior, irked the shit out of me.  It’s like they banked and hoped that my kids would do some mischief to justify their self-important moving so they could continue to have their trite white people conversations about probably how colored folks are ruining their town or some shit.

I felt insulted and unfortunately triggered by it, and it was a stinky moment in what was supposed to be an entirely great dinner with family for my daughter’s birthday. 

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