Tag: kids

That “as long as I’m living” part seems ominous

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Toronto Star: Author Robert Munsch, currently 80 years old, approved for MAID which is medical assistance in dying, intends to go out on his own terms

This wouldn’t be the first time Robert Munsch has been brought up in the brog, as at one time, and I still fully believe, that one of his iconic works, Love You Forever, should come with a trigger warning, because for people like me, it’s impossible to make it through reading the book without breaking down into uncontrollable sobbing.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a marvelously beautiful book, and something that all parents who genuinely love their kids should (attempt to) read to their kids in their lives, but at least for me, it’s moving to the point where even just thinking about it right now has gotten my eyes a little bit watery.

Anyway, I came across the news that up in Canada where he lives, he has been approved for MAID, which for lack of a better term is legal assisted suicide, in the sense that he is being allowed to end his own life.  I mean, it’s a lot of murky area and the details are in the terminology, but the end result is that he is voluntarily ending his own life at his choosing.

Ordinarily, I’ve not minced words how I’ve felt about people in time who have committed suicide, which is that I think it’s a coward’s way out.  But all the details around the news of Munsch’s approved MAID are definitely different, and are kind of like, at least for me, uncharted waters when it comes to thinking about how everything is proposed to go in the near future.

Long story short, Munsch is 80, has both dementia and Parkinson’s and has already witnessed what a slow expiration looks like, seeing his brother succumb to ALS.  If there were ever someone who should get a little grace and understanding of why he might want to be able to go out on his own terms, it’s Munsch.

And the more I think about it, in spite of my general disapproval of suicide in general, I think the idea of MAIDs is substantially different, and despite the fact that both end with the expiration of life, the circumstances, intentions and executions seem different enough to where it’s not nearly as, negatively connoted.

Like in the case of Munsch, I’d hope that in the times where he’s still lucid and sound of mind, he’s been getting affairs in order, got all his legal loose ends tied up, wills, trusts, inheritances, etc.  And if and when his afflictions begin to worsen, and in his own words,

when I start having real trouble talking and communicating. Then I’ll know.

…I imagine things will (hopefully) go rather smoothly, albeit no less tragic and devastating at the sheer reality that a life will be ending.

However, here’s the one thing that I do still find a little bit concerning about MAIDs:

He said a date has not been set yet, but he has to choose while he can still actively consent.

Like, how does anyone choose a date in which they voluntarily end their own life?  As progressively compassionate the potential of MAIDs provide, it still seems a little short-sighted and rigid to make a person set a date.  Maybe I’m missing something here, but I feel like this is probably more likely to be a game-time decision, or something very close to it, and not necessarily something that a person has to lock in, weeks, months or even years in advance.

As I said, there’s so much gray area and so many hypotheticals, that way smarter people, and actual legal ones at that, have probably presented the whole idea of MAIDs in the first place as legally tight as they can make it, regardless of the subject matter of the whole concept.

On the flip side, there seems to be potential for a person on their way out to have an unprecedented farewell tour, to life, and it be completely legal, or at least without any personnel trying to stop you.  Hopefully, Munsch and his family have a bucket list of things that they want to experience and accomplish, and it not be too complicated if and when the inevitable proposed go-time approaches.

The bottom line is that as sad as the whole thing is on account of the main thing being the expiration of a life, in this particular instance, I can’t say that I blame Robert Munsch for going in this direction.  I know that if my mind were going, and I couldn’t remember my kids, my wife or my family, and my body were deteriorating to where I was falling regularly, I’d begin to think that maybe I’ve had a pretty full-ass life, and perhaps it would be best for all parties involved that I left the party and everyone else could exhale and move on with their lives without me and all my burdens putting everyone’s lives on hold.

However, I will say that when thinking about the song from I Love You Forever:

I’ll love you forever
I’ll like you for always
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be

That third line, as long as I’m living, is something that I don’t necessarily agree with, because I like to believe that even after I kick it, whatever afterlife or aether where my soul or essence of life that might be swirling around somewhere, the love for my kids will still be around, and as I tell my girls regularly, they’ll always be my babies.

And with that, I have to wrap up this post, lest I be reduced to full on start sobbing about this sad topic.

Dad Brog (#153): the State of Parenting

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I realize that as the passage of time has progressed over the last five years, the frequency in which I’ve written these very dad-centric brog posts have petered off.  As much as how things change, the amount in which I write is one of those things that I don’t want to ever fall into that category, but such can’t necessarily be said about the topics in which I do write about.

However, over the last few weeks, part of my chaotic morning routine includes checking the sheets of both my kids when I wake them up, because this household is now diaper-free, and has been for the better part of the last few months now, and now we’re at the stage of life where they’re going to bed without any safety nets, and bedwetting is very much in play. 

I realize that at one point I probably was planning on making a dad post about the glory about no longer needing diapers at all, but it’s been pretty seamless into feeling relief, mostly financial, at the fact that we don’t have to participate in the escalating cost of diapers and always needing them, but going into night-training where there are periods of time in which we have more wet beds than not in the mornings, and the new aggravation and disappointment of having to do laundry just about every single day has taken its place.

But yeah, we’re trying everything we can at this point to expedite the process, like cutting off water consumption at a certain time, repeatedly taking them to the bathroom before lights out, and even trying to incentivize having as many dry nights as possible to get each kid closer to upgrading to big kids’ beds, to the point where we’ve even taken them to a store to look at beds to give them understanding of what awaits once they get their bedwetting under control.

However, like I said, there are times in which it feels like it’s never going to improve although I know it eventually will.  At the time I’m writing this, both kids are on like a four-day streak in the wrong direction, with sheets being wet every morning, and there’s a part of me that’s debating on whether or not to have the kids go back into overnights although I definitely won’t cave, I’d be lying if I didn’t think it.

Unsolicited parenting tip for those going through a similar journey: dog pads.  Stashed under the fitted sheet primarily where the child sleeps, they’re low profile and effective at preventing any overnight leakage from soaking into the mattress itself.  Costco has the biggest bang for the buck, and if you’re like me, you’re going to need them during this stretch.  Perhaps in the future there will be a dad brog championing the lack of need for these that I’ll never get to.

Otherwise, as mentioned in the dad brog prior to this one, my eldest is now in kindergarten, officially in elementary school.  #2 still has one more year of pre-K to complete before joining her sister, and my wallet will definitely be thrilled to not have to pay the cost of private pre-K, but it doesn’t change the fact that it is a truly fantastic school to send my kids to.

But as a dad to a five and four year olds, I have to admit that this is probably one of the hardest stretches of being a parent I’ve felt in a while.  Mostly on account of the fact that my kids are at an age where they’re tapping into their wills, which are extremely strong, and it results in a lot of just not listening, a lot of fighting, and a whole lot of exasperation on my end.

I admit to getting flustered and frustrated more than I want to be, but it’s like asking my kids to do anything is usually like having to ask no less than 13 times, occasionally requiring some sort of bargaining or threatening to leave without them, which results in a separate meltdown, and if I weren’t afraid of losing my hair, I’d be pulling it out on a regular basis.

Bath time, bed time, time to go, time to do anything usually results in a whole lot of defiance if not straight up not listening, and I’m finding myself exasperated pretty much any time I have to try and get my kids to do anything.  Getting them to leave a store, while holding my hands in the parking lot, while trying to steer a shopping cart – by the time I’m in the driver’s seat pulling out, I’m pissed and sweaty and not wanting to speak to my kids, and my kids are upset that I’ve probably had to raise my voice at them because they’re not listening.

And then after bedtime when the dust settles, I think about how much I love my kids and how shitty I feel about having ever gotten exasperated with them.  Their motives aren’t ever malicious or remotely detrimental, it’s usually they just want to explore, experience or spend more time with the family instead of going to bed or getting into the car, or being told what to do, regardless of it’s for safety purposes or not.

Yet when it inevitably happens the following day, and then the day after that, it’s like the cycle that keeps perpetuating itself.  I love my kids more than anything on the planet, but damn if they don’t get on my nerves sometimes, and I can’t help but feel exasperated when they just don’t listen to anything.

I know most everything when it comes to parenting happens in phases and all things that annoy will eventually come to pass eventually, but I’ll be the first to admit that this current juncture of parenting definitely has been patience-testing almost as much as how things were pre-pandemic, pre-au pair, when I was having to do double duty, an inordinate amount of time.

And then I’m sure there will come a point in my life where I’ll look back at miss these young formative years, and try to remember all the good times that came from them as opposed to all of the stuff that I let bother me, and maybe then I’ll write Dad Brog #181 then.

Dad Brog (#152): I now have a kindergartener

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When people are in high school or college, when they think about kindergarteners, they probably think about kids that are babies, barely out of diapers, a stone’s throw from being out of the womb.  When people become parents, and realize that from the day a kid is born, there’s still around five years before kindergarten comes into play, and it feels like a lifetime before the kid is walking, then is out of diapers and if you’re like my kids, navigating through three years of preschool before entering elementary school.

My firstborn is now a kindergartener, and is going to freaking elementary school now.

I still remember with crystal clarity, the days and nights spent at the hospital with #1 when she was born and was kept at the NICU on account of being premature.  I remember the hospital being closed off to visitors shortly after #1’s birth because the first COVID-19 death had occurred within a day, and began ravaging its way across the entire planet.

I still remember the diapers, the apnea monitor, the first time meetings with grandparents.  I remember the first solid food, the first crawl, the first steps.  The introduction of #2 into the mix.  The revolving door of shitty nannies, feeling like life was nothing but one big shit show trying to raise two kids in a fucked up society.

I also remember all of the extraordinary things, like all the glimpses of intelligence and emotional growth.  Traveling and watching my kids experience the world and new things.  Going into preschool, and meeting new kids for the first time and learning from peers, and seeing the breakneck speed in which she began her educational journey.

And now, kindergarten.  Elementary school.  Five years later, in elementary school.  Five years more, and it’ll be middle school.  By then, she’ll probably be 11 going on 24, thinking she has all the answers to the world.  Three more years, and then comes high school where she’ll inevitably think she has life figured out, and I used to make jokes about how with each life’s milestone achieved, that she should go out and get a job next, but at this rate, such remark will become a reality sooner rather than later.

Similarly recently, I saw some memes about how now is the introduction of the 2020 COVID babies into the school system, and varying remarks about how teachers should be ready, but I can’t really imagine what it is there’s any need for concern over.  Responsible parents kept their kids safe through the worst of the pandemic, and by the time #1 entered preschool, coronavirus was way less a threat than it was initially.  She never had to wear a mask during the height of masking up, and she started preschool at the appropriate time and age, and I don’t think her interpersonal growth was really stunted at all by the pandemic.

Frankly, such a COVID-related designation to be watched and observed really should be the classes of 2032-2035, where those were the kids, already grown, who had to completely alter their school experience, starting school in-school, getting pulled, adjusting to remote learning, and then heading back.  But not my kids, either of them, as far as I’m concerned, they’re as normal as things were pre-COVID.

The point is that it’s absolutely bonkers to me that my oldest child has just started elementary school.  She is now going to school with mythical wife, as she’s a teacher there, and has conveniently placed her where she works, giving our child the ultimate in safety nets knowing that mom is in the building with her, every day.

Which is good, because #1 has expressed nerve of moving onto the next level, because she’s spent the last three years of preschool with widely the same kids every day, and now there’s not a single one of them going to be in the same class with her now.  I’ve reminded her that most of her classmates will also be going through the same thing, and it’s also exciting to be in a situation where there’s going to be so much new-ness across the board.

And it’s not just for #1 too, because of this one step for her life’s journey, is a change for pretty much everyone in my household.  I’m now having to get up even earlier in the mornings to make sure #1 is out of bed earlier and fed, because she now goes to school with mythical wife at the teacher’s schedule, and I’m basically having to make breakfast twice, since #2 is now going to preschool by herself, on a completely different schedule.

Inevitably, that’s what life is, constant change and adapting to it, but in spite of my occasional gripes of having to be the earliest riser and on point with my parenting, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my children, and I’m not mad or grumpy about having to alter my schedule.  It’s more exciting to witness the growth of my kids and seeing what comes next in their life’s journeys.

Dad Brog (#151): Father’s Day 2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

#4 of forever

True to my neurotic nature, this is the date in which I will forever post the annual Father’s Day blet picture day photograph, so that I can be tickled in future years when I look at the On This Day section of my brog and see a veritable montage of the years and passage of time as my kids go from tiny little baby nuggets into the vibrant and sassy little shits that I love more than anything in existence.

I should also like to point out that this is the first, and probably only year in which all blets in the photograph are actually still actively on television.  Literally every other blet in my collection is retired or redesigned, and it’s only a matter of time before NXT rebrands the North American blet, and it’s seemingly always rumored that the WWE will scrap the women’s tag team titles.

Full disclosure, I actually took these photos almost a month in advance and have been sitting on them until this time, and I’m glad that I did.  I had just gotten my hair cut, and my lawn was cut a day earlier, and I’ve been having some issues with my landscapers and was forced to softly fire them, leading to me having to cut my own grass after taking the last four years off from the chore.

Also with the summer in full effect now with daily 90F+ temperatures, all of us would’ve been miserably hot and cranky doing our photos now, compared to the conditions of when I had taken these.  So no regrets whatsoever on shooting well before Father’s Day and well before my arbitrary posting dates, especially with how they turned out in the end.

Continue reading “Dad Brog (#151): Father’s Day 2025” →

Shitty game alert for parents: Donut Dash by Goliath Games

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My kid begged and whined for us to get this game.  And seeing as how it was on deep discount at the death row of JoAnn’s, we acquiesced, because nowadays, anything that can occupy and entertain my children for more than two seconds is considered a win, and which is why my house feels like a future episode of Hoarders: Buried Alive, is because it’s so full of shit like this.

Mythical wife has this funny habit, where she’ll buy things for the kids, but then just kind of hand them off or leave them for me or the au pair to give to the kids, or in some cases, just kind of give the things to the kids and let them tear into the boxes and packages because they love to do that kind of shit.  But in most cases, that’s not always the best idea, because games aren’t made to be immediately played right out of the box, now more than ever, and this fucking game, Donut Dash, is among the worst I’ve ever experienced.

The above image I made pretty much gets right to the point on why this game blows, because there are no batteries included, and worse off, there are a ton of stickers in the box that need to be affixed to very specific things, like the little car, as well as decorating each and every single one of the 22 donuts included in the game.  And my kids love fucking stickers, and it took less than 10 seconds for them to start peeling them up and affixing them to absolutely anything but their intended objects, and I spent an inordinate amount of time, obviously annoyed, trying to carefully peel and correct sticker placement onto the bullshit donuts that couldn’t possibly have been bothered to have that kind of shit printed on, on perhaps cardboard instead of shitty plastic.

And when I read how the game actually played, I could already see in my head upon reading that the car shot the discs out in random directions, that this game wouldn’t last five minutes before we lost one or more of these stupid donuts.

That is, if the dumb car didn’t jam immediately, because of the donuts that my kids put stickers on themselves poorly stuck to the inside of the well, clogging immediately, once again requiring parental intervention to fix it.

I actually didn’t stick around for the actual play of the game, but when I came back home later in the afternoon, I found at least three donuts randomly on the ground, and I imagine that there’s probably others underneath the refrigerator, under the area rugs, and undoubtedly underneath the couch.  And the kids were completely uninterested in it any further, and I opted to just box it back up, and put it away, because as far as I’m concerned, Donut Dash is a colossal piece of shit and a waste of money, even if it was down to just $8.

The point is, this is an awful fucking game, not just for the kids who will lose interest in a fifth of the time it takes to properly set it up, but the parents who not only will pay for it, but are also the ones who will be responsible for said proper set up, lest the kids like my own fuck it all up from the on set, which I would highly recommend not allowing to be the case, if one was still so inclined to want to give this turd a try.

Dad Brog (#150): Next stop, kindergarten

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I blinked a few times, and now my eldest daughter has graduated pre-K, and is en route to starting kindergarten the next school year.  I still have a hard time digesting that, considering that the last five years have soared by, where my kids were born the generation of COVID babies, and the world has gone through a whole lot of hoopla to get to where we are today.

Like, it didn’t feel that surreal when #1 began 2K and went onto 3K while #2 started a year later, but more recently, it dawned on me when I went to the last Friday sing-along of the year, that this was also the final Friday sing-along for #1 outright.  Very soon, the school year was going to come to a close, and all the classmates she’s mostly had over the last three years, almost all of them are going their separate ways, since being a private pre-K, kids are from all over the place, and despite the fact that this school is zoned for a specific elementary school, almost none of them will actually be going there.

Obviously, #1 doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that she’s not going to be seeing a lot of her classmates again with any regularity very soon, and instead it’s me the parent that feels sentimental for her that she’s not going to be seeing her friends, some of whom she’s grown quite close with over the years, and we as the parents can all tell each other that this doesn’t have to be the end, but much like our own adult relationships, it basically is.

Such is the relentless passage of time and the journey of life, and my first kid has completed one of the first stages of life, being preschool.  She’s a whip-sharp, intelligent and observant kid, that has a beautiful imagination, loves to draw and paint, and I’m often floored at the academic development she’s shown over the last three years of preschool, and it’s going to be all sorts of emo-dad emotions in the future to see what she does next, starting elementary school.

As most parents aside from myself probably opine at similar circumstances, I just can’t believe that time has flown so fast, and I’ve already got a kindergartener on deck.  Aside from the financial alleviation of having one less kid in a private pre-K, it’s going to be exciting to see what lies ahead in the future as #1 takes the step into the next stage of life, entering contemporary education.

Dad Brog (#149): I am so over children’s sandboxes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

With the school year coming to a close, I can think of several things that I’m looking forward to not having to do anymore on account of my children.  At the top of the list is shaking out my kids’ shoes and watching a fistful of sand pour out of each shoe of each kid.  I do this over a trashcan because I used to do it in the garage but it was getting to a point where my garage floors were getting excessively sandy and grainy, and above all else, I’m tired of the feeling of sand sticking to my own feet when I’m indoors from the shit the kids track into the house.

I swear, I’m sure that if I were to collect all the sand that my kids bring home on their feet and in their shoes, I could probably fill an entire sack of play sand, and return it to The Home Depot.  Sure, that would be a tremendous amount of effort for about $6 in store credit, but the money is beside the point as much as it’s about the sheer amount of sand that my kids manage to bring home with them on a regular basis that I’m completely over, and looking forward to the end of the school year where I (hopefully) won’t have deal with this crap any further.

The word count of this post doesn’t accurately reflect my disdain for sand.  I thought I had a lot more piss and vinegar to spit out about my general annoyance about all the sand my kids track all over the place from playing in the sandbox at school, but that’s really all there is to it.  I’m over checking their shoes every morning before school and watching a metric ton of sand pour out, and it’s definitely top-2 in things that I’m looking forward to not having to do once school’s out.

And to think me being all old and adult now, I wouldn’t be able to relish in the joy of school being out like my own children and the kids we once were.