Tag: kids

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.

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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.

Dad Brog #148: an example of having to take it on the chin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t really know anything about Judaism, but for whatever reason, my kids have the entire week off because of Passover.  I don’t really know anything about Passover either, but far be it for me to question any religion’s stuff beyond the fact that my kids are off school, but some of my colleagues at work who are Jewish are all in the office like it’s any other day of the week.

The thing is we’re a week removed from a week in which both mythical wife was off on spring break on account of being a teacher, and the au pair was off on spring break on account of her being a student and going to school.  In previous years at my kids’ preschool, they’ve usually just aligned with the county school schedule, and this is the first time that I can recollect them having a separate Passover week off.  This has never been an issue in any of the previous years that my kids have been going to their school, but for whatever reason, here we are, this year.

All I know is that it really sucks because as is often times the case, I’m the one who has to take it on the chin and alter my days in order to accommodate this misalignment of time off, and further illustrate that I don’t get time off, ever, and this is just my life and I really have no other choice but to cope with it.

So, for this week, I have to stay home with my kids until my au pair gets home from class to which then I have to go into the office late, play catchup the entire days, and probably have to stay late a little bit to make up for lost time, so that I don’t fall behind on more of my shit later on.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t seem fair, but there’s little sense in calling it out because nobody listens or would be willing to do anything about it.  So it’s just grin and bear it, and make the best of my shitty situation where I don’t ever get a fucking break, and try to take solace in the fact that I can spend a little bit of extra time with my kids and try to push out of my mind the meetings I may be missing and the optics that goes along with flaky attendance, even if I do manage to get all my shit done.

As I’ve opined a thousand times, I would just like a little bit of help and a little bit of breaks from having to be the hard fucking hyper carry in my household.

My daughters will extend my life by almost three years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Okay: recent study suggests dads with daughters have tendency to live longer, with each daughter adding on average 74 weeks of lifespan

When this story was fed to me, I couldn’t help but smirk as I often do whenever I read anything related to girldads or being a girldad.  The notion that by virtue of them being daughters instead of sons, my two girls will be responsible for keeping my ass alive for 148 weeks longer than my life expectancy should suggest, nearly three entire years, is amusing to me.  Even more so, that it’s pointed out that sons, add no extra life to their dads, comparatively.

The thing is, the story could have ended with that, and kept it vague, yet still sweet, but in this day and age, where everyone is expected to show their work, when they dive a little deeper, it’s mostly attributed to the notion that when said girls become women, they’re way more apt to nag their dads about health and preventative care, which is the primary reason why they tend to live longer.

I mean it makes sense, since harping on their dad to go see doctors and get checkups and critical milestone tests probably is more useful in the long game versus daring dad to see how long they can go without farting, how fast they can go in the rental car, or can they take a spinning power bomb off the top of the couch.  But it does take some of the sticker sentimentality away from the general headline, but not enough to where I can’t make a brog post about it.

What’s interesting to me though, is that I wonder how much truth this will hold in my particular case.  A lot of the longevity is attributed to what seems like a bunch of out-of-shape dads who view their children as a sudden reason to get into better health and pick up better habits, which would naturally be beneficial to their life expectancy.

I’m no Zac Efron, but I’ve always been consistent and routinely with exercise, and mythical wife has already gotten a handle on egging me to go to the doctor at least for annuals, so the things that my daughters would’ve been expected to drive me to do in order to give me 148 weeks more of living, I’m already doing.  Of course, I want to be around when they graduate schools, maybe get married, or any other life’s milestones.  Maybe there’s another level of physical improvement to reach, probably when they’re not little brats who are sometimes shits about their food, and I end up eating a ton of shitty leftovers on account of not wanting to waste food.

Conversely, there’s always the easy joke about how my kids, regardless of their gender, are solely responsible for taking years off of my life on account of the sheer amounts of stress they put me through with their childish insubordination, stubbornness and constant power struggles.  Maybe that’s something that the study doesn’t account for is that daughters might each give me 74 weeks of extra life at the tail end of my life, but they’re sure as fuck siphoning a lot more of it on the front end.

Either way, let’s choose to ignore all the background noise of this study, and choose to believe that my two little girls are going to be the reason why I live three years longer than I really should be, solely by existing. ❤️