Dad Brog (#129): if only I looked good in yoga pants. And were also a woman

Not directing my beef at maverickmother, she’s probably my favorite of mommy vloggers I’ve come across

I don’t know what it is about my general existence and the algorithms of social media, but quite often, I am spoon-fed a lot of theFacebook/Instagram reels of stay-at-home-moms doing stay-at-home-mom stuff, and when I wasn’t aware of it when I originally saw them, I’m quite familiar whenever I see the acronym, SAHM.

Because I am being spoon-fed this content, I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve seen a lot more mom vlogs than I thought I’d ever see in my life, and the thing is, I feel a tremendous amount of ability to relate to a lot of these moms, because a lot of the shit they do, I do. 

Sometimes, I’ll find myself unconsciously nodding in solidarity at the bullshit moms have to deal with when it comes to cleaning, cooking, the behavior of toddlers and children, and sometimes I’m pretty sure I’ve been downright triggered at the fact that unsurprisingly, there are parents out there that are going through things that I may or may not be going through at the very exact same time as they are.

Here’s the thing though, and where my disposition tends to turn sour: these broads are all stay-at-home-moms, where all of this bullshit is the only thing they have to deal with.  I deal with almost all of the same shit that they go through, and on top of it, I work a full-time corporate job for 8-9 hours a day.

And honestly, the ones that are being spoon-fed to me, I probably make way less money than they do, because if they’re successful enough to be suggested viewing material to others, they’ve accomplished a lot in terms of views, hits and general engagement, and seeing as how mythical wife has been able to monetize her own YouTube pursuits, I can only imagine what a lot of these SAHMs are making when all they have to worry about outside of their homes and kids is generating content, without the constraints of The Man’s slave chain around their neck on top of everything.

Make no mistake though, a lot of these SAHMs know what they’re doing.  At least the ones that are being suggested and fed to people on the internet, they’re almost all of the easy-on-the-eyes persuasion, look good in yoga pants, obviously clean up extremely well, and are appealing to watch by just about anyone.

And this is where I lament on the fact that it’s a shame that I too, could probably clean up on the internet if I looked good in yoga pants, and if I just so happened to be a woman too.  If I were a SAHM, I know that I have the constitution and disposition to be able to commit to churning out content on a regular basis and not eventually abandon it like 99% of so-called content creators on the internet eventually do.

But in my current state as a full-time working male whose physical appearance probably does not appeal to the vast majority of the internet whose pay grades would actually be able to support my own, I don’t think burnt-out-full-time-working-dad (BOFTWD) vlogs would be nearly as fruitful.

Year four of forever

And just like that, #1 is four years old.

Throughout my own parenting journey, one of the most heard things I’ve been told is to not blink or take any time for granted, because it’ll all be over in the blink of an eye and the kids will be grown and be pains in my ass before I know it, and I’ll wonder where the time went when they were still in diapers and couldn’t do anything for themselves.

Honestly, I think I’ve done a pretty good job of not taking my time for granted, and I’m so often reflecting on the past and I think in this age where everyone has phones and cameras on their phones and it’s fairly possible to chronicle our lives through photographs, that it makes it easier to have a visual reference to reflect with as we can simply just open up our photos app and scroll through time.  That, and the fact that I’ve also been a prodigious brogger for more than half my life at this point, and I’ve always got the means to not only look back in time and reflect, but to also read my very own words to recall specifically where I was throughout the journey of life.

I’ll often times just stop and watch my kids doing the things they do, and marvel at the state they’re in now, as opposed to when they were babies or infants or toddlers, because it’s just incredible watching someone else’s journey through life, through the eyes of a spectator, and of course being their father, I’ve literally seen just about every single day of their lives.

I think it’s safe to say that I’m the first face they see in the morning, about 99% of their lives, I make the vast majority of their meals, and I put a tremendous amount of physical and time effort into my kids regularly.  There are times in which it feels like a lot of work, but I don’t regret any bit of it, and I take a tremendous amount of pride in trying to be the best dad I possibly can be.  There’s nothing I won’t do for my children, and the only thing I really care about at all is being a good dad.

But #1 being four years old, that’s still mind-blowing to process, even though I know the day is coming.  It’s just so hard to fathom that it’s literally been four years since she came into existence five weeks early, right at the on-set of COVID and the (majority) of the entire (intelligent) world shutting themselves into isolation.  Being born so early, she was whisked away into the NICU and stayed there for two weeks, while mythical wife and I had no idea what was really going on with her health, the world, coronavirus and everything else because so much was going on concurrently right then.

Looking at her now, it’s hard to believe she was ever considered an at-risk baby that had to be connected to a heart monitor for the first four months of her life, because within six months, we stopped referring to her as “adjusted age” and never looked back.  She’s a strong, healthy four-year-old that’s ridiculously smart, thoughtful, and brings joy to my life on a daily basis.

She’s fully potty-trained, never has any accidents, knows all her numbers and letters, has demonstrated some rudimentary reading ability, and I have a feeling math will come fairly natural to her, as she’s apparently understanding the processes of basic arithmetic, even if she doesn’t know what the words addition or subtraction mean yet.

She remembers damn near everything, and is so quick to remind me of when she thinks I’ve screwed something up, and seems to be able to recall things from the past now, which shows her budding brain being able to store and recollect memories, and even going to sleep, she always remembers to remind me of what she wanted for breakfast the night before.

Not a day goes by where she and/or her sister isn’t the brightest light of my entire day, whether it’s by making me laugh, something sweet they do or say, or just the happy peace I feel when I watch them doing kid things.  So I’m happy to do whatever it takes to bring happiness to their lives… like taking a cake decorating class, so that I could make my child a triple-layered chocolate cake with buttercream and a dark chocolate drip ganache.  But even if it’s basically pure trash food, it’s also a symbol of growth for my child in that her original severe intolerance to eggs has dissipated over time, and she can at least handle having it in baked goods or cooked into things.

Still not going to give her a straight up omelet or scrambled eggs, but considering I still can’t eat those things without considerable punishment, who knows if she’ll ever fully grow out of it, or be as limited as I am.  Only time will tell, and hopefully there will be many more decades of years to bear witness to what happens next.

So cruel, is the human body

It started the previous weekend, when #2 just began projectile vomiting all over the place.  No warning, no indication of illness, just vomit, lots of it, and spread out throughout the duration of the day.  It was quite unpleasant.  But after a good night’s sleep, the worst of it was over, and after another 24 hours, it was as if she were never sick at all.

A few days later, mythical wife rolls in from work, and is pretty much laid up for the remainder of the day with similar symptoms.  That night, I hear more crying from usual from #1 on the baby monitor, to the point where I feel like I have to check in on her.  The scent of vomit is in the air upon entering her room, and it turns out that she too has caught the bug.  After several hours of hanging out with her, reading her books, and letting her purge everything that’s been in her system, by 1 am, she’s finally asleep.

Same thing, a day later, nobody is vomiting anymore, and a day after that and everyone is mostly back to normal again, although mythical wife seemed to drag a little bit more than the girls did.

Days later, I’m on the phone with my mom on the way home from work.  It had been a long day, and one that really required the second cup of coffee in order to make it home.  I’m telling my mom how it very fortunate that I managed to avoid the bug, considering how hard it hit the wife and kids. 

Sure enough, no sooner than maybe a half hour after getting home, I’m beginning to feel unsettled.  After the kids are put to bed, I don’t dawdle much and head to bed myself, feeling cruddy.  About an hour later, the first bout of vomiting occurs, and its apparent that I must definitely did not escape the wrath of the bug either.

The following day is a miserable day of illness where the only thing I did when I wasn’t laying down drifting in and out of sleep, is a death march to and from the bathroom with some rather unpleasant purges.  I slog through the work day, and my entire WFH Friday is completely burned, where I get no work done, and accomplish none of the little side chores I do in between.  I’m starving and thirsty, but don’t want to put anything into my body when it’s clearly rejecting everything in sight.  I don’t get back to sleep until closer to 4 am due to the constant need to get up and go to the toilet.

But much like everyone else, I’m mostly fine in 72 hours, which seems to be the norm for the adults with the bug.  Lucid enough to be able to watch and slog through the Super Bowl, which was boring as fuck until the end and OT.

However, the real tragedy of me getting the bug is that, circling back to that second cup of coffee that I had on Thursday, I know that had nothing to do with me getting sick, but because it was one of the last things I consumed before I started getting sick, my body has decided to hold it responsible all the same.  Even now as I write this, I’m leery on the idea of drinking a cup of black coffee, which is how I drink it at work because my workplace offers no creamers or additives and often times doesn’t even provide the coffee in the first place.  But when I do drink coffee at the office, it’s black, except now my body is revolting at the idea of consuming anymore black coffee right now.

Even my morning cup of coffee, which has some flavored creamer in it, I’m still a little ehhh about at the moment, but I guess the added flavor and the fact that my body can’t really start without it, it’s an exception to be allowed, but frankly coffee in general has been very unappealing since I’d gotten sick, which completely sucks because I love coffee, and this is why the human body is capable of being so cruel.

Coffee had nothing to do with my getting sick, but because coffee undoubtedly made its way out during my mass purging, it’s like my body is blaming it anyway, and I’m still working myself back to being able to actually enjoy coffee again, and I feel like it’s going take an obnoxious amount of time before I really feel comfort and relaxation from a really good cup of coffee again.

Dad Brog (#128): Breaking Dada again (in a good way)

It’s been a long time since I made a Dada post.  It’s been a long time since I’ve actually taken the time to write, for the matter.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted to write, I just simply have had no time to write, because my life is chaotic, my kids come first, been too busy, and it doesn’t help that I’m insufferably neurotic about having the right conditions to take the time to write.

I’ve got a laundry list of topics that I want to write about, and it will be a challenge to retroactively try to get into the headspace necessary to write about them and try and fool my zero readers that they’re fresh and happening when they did but it doesn’t mean I won’t try either.

But this post, at least, is about as a live and real-time, genuinely written on the day in which the thoughts formulated in my head, which is about as good of opportunity as any to get back on the writing horse and hope that it gets the ball rolling again to where I can also knock out some of the other things I’ve wanted to blab about over the last few weeks.

One thing that I’ve always looked forward to as a parent, was the day in which my kids’ creativity developed to where they could start creating, things.  Drawings, paintings, sculptures, whatever, but tangible things that they make from nothing.  And over the last year and change now, with both of my kids in school, my kids are sent back home on the regular with papers of general scribbles and some developmentally appropriate artwork that they do, and me, being the sap that I am, have basically saved everything, no matter how inconsequential or scribbly they might look to others.  They’re my kids’ first forays into artwork, and for the time being, I’m hoarding them like I want to end up on TLC, and look forward to looking back at them with my kids in the near future.

But today, I come home from work, and when I’m reading to #2 on the couch, #1 comes to me with a person made out of bristle blocks.  She says, this is Dada.  Nobody notices it, but my lip immediately pouts for a second, because I’m cracking just how touched I am at the seemingly innocuous gesture that means the world to me.  Moments later, she comes back with another one, shorter, and says that this is me, and puts it next to the Dada figure.  I have to stop reading at this point because I’m holding back tears at this point, because I’m breaking in the best way possible, and my sniffles I try and act like it’s the seasonal bug that’s been passed around my household over the last week.

After I tell her how much I love them, she vanishes again, and minutes later comes back with yet another figure, the smallest one of the three, and says this is sissy, and I’m just about the happiest dad I’ve felt in a few days at how much I love these kids, and marvel at just how much they seem to grow on a daily basis.

Naturally, #2 destroyed them before I could take a picture of them, but I’m sure now that they’ve gotten such a positive reaction from me, #1 will probably make them again, to which I will definitely require some photographic chronicling of such happy thoughts.

All the same, I’m really looking forward to the day when my girls start making stuff like bracelets and necklaces, and I can’t wait to wear colorful and vibrant accessories that don’t match any of my office attire or anything else I wear, because fewer things will have more meaning and be more treasured on my person than the things that my own kids make, especially if they’re meant for Dada.

A 2023 Year-End Post

In spite of all the changes to my general writing habits, one thing I always feel compelled to write about is the end of the year post, even if I have an inkling of knowing that it’s going to be pretty mundane, if not kind of depressing.  It’s something I’ve done for years, and old habits die hard, and in this case, it’s a habit that’s not necessarily bad, as much as it is just writing with the hopes of being able to reflect and contemplate life in general, and maybe I’ll recognize some patterns or observations to possibly improve my standing in life.

But mundane and kind of depressing are a fairly accurate way to describe how 2023 was for me.  This isn’t to say that I thought it sucked by any stretch of the imagination, there were definitely a lot of positive things that occurred throughout the year.  It’s just that we as people tend to dwell more on the negative things that upset us or make us unhappy and it truly is a case of what have you done for me lately, life, huh?? kind of attitude.

As has been the case since becoming a parent, twice, and living through the pandemic, I’ve made my general world a really, really small place.  Being a dad and parenting comes ahead of absolutely everything else in the world, and considering the immense amount of, capacity, it requires to raise two toddlers, I barely have any time on a daily basis for myself, and so often times I try not to dwell on just how much shit I have to punt on, on a daily basis because there’s just not enough hours in the day to accomplish everything on top of being a parent.

My daily routine has mostly maintained the same course over the last three years, and I’m always the first one up in order to make breakfast for the kids and be ready for them in the mornings, and most every minute upon my arrival back from the office or the end of my work day is spent with my children, until they go to bed at around 7-8, and then I do a bunch of daily chores to reset the house and prepare for the next day, and when I’m done with that, then maybe I’ll have an hour, maybe two, depending on if I want to forfeit some sleep, in order to have some personal downtime, which has its own pressure in not wanting to squander it, and a feeling of failure if I do.

I don’t have the capacity to dick around on the internet as much as I used to, and look up news and stories from around the world, the state, or even my own city, to have inspiration to write about, and even if I do have the inspiration, I don’t have the time to write about it.  If I earmark it for later, it stands a good chance to not happen, because the knee-jerk reactions that fuel lots of writing don’t exist after too much time passes.

Among the numerous self-imposed writing exercises I put onto myself, I keep a living document that tries to summarize every single day of the year.  In the past, I would jot down some interesting news that might have happened on X day, or a sports occurrence that happened on Y day, or tragic news of a shooting that occurred on Z day, but I generally had this belief that something, somewhere, was interesting stuff happening, on every single day, and it was my way of trying to capture all some of it.

But then COVID hit at the same time I had a kid, and my world became extremely small.  Even though the worst of the pandemic has passed and my kids are getting older, my world hasn’t expanded back out that much, and my general daily summaries are usually along the lines of me being agitated about something, usually parenting related, things my kids did, occasional sports or wrestling observations, but for the most part, a very sparse well of topics that I’ve had the capacity to summarize on a daily basis.

If it sounds depressing, it’s because I’ve come to the admission that I probably am depressed, possibly on a clinical level.  As in the chemicals in my brain are wacked out, causing me to feel apathetic, disinterested in everything, unmotivated to do the things that I generally enjoy and other activities.  The thing is, I feel like I know what’s causing the depression, and it isn’t just solely a chemical imbalance, so I don’t necessarily feel like medical intervention is necessary. 

Throughout my life, there’s been a direct correlation with my emotional state and my financial wellbeing, and the fact of the matter is that I haven’t felt financially comfortable in like three years, and I don’t know how to fix any of it, so it leaves me feeling despair often, and I’m pretty sure that’s the root of my depression.

Like if I were to go on some sort of anti-depressants, sure that might make me feel like I’m not so stressed or sad anymore, but no medication is going to magically make my financial woes go away, so I’ve never felt like I should see anyone to try and see what’s up.  Also, my medical insurance at my job throughout 2023 has been absolute hot garbage, but I’m going on mythical wife’s medical for 2024 which is way better, so perhaps I should swallow my pride and look into getting checked out, because living the way I have been living throughout the last few years probably hasn’t been the best for all parties involved.

But like I said, there was also a lot of good stuff that occurred throughout the year, even if I’m a headcase for more days of it than not.  My family went on a bunch of Disney trips that were brutally expensive for sure, but rewarding in their own rights.  Cruising out of New Orleans was great, visiting Hilton Head was pleasant, and trying a bunch of new restaurants at Disney properties were all good, and my kids seemed to enjoy a lot of it, and that’s what really matters.

One of my closest friends got married in Vegas, and I didn’t hesitate to go out there and bear witness, and my company sent me out to Los Angeles for the Adobe MAX conference, which was the coolest work trip I’ve ever been to in my career.

Most importantly, as much as they sometimes drive me crazy with their roller coaster of toddler emotions, watching my kids grow throughout the year is always a wondrous sight of seeing them develop, physically and intellectually.  Both my girls have demonstrated a ton of intelligence, and sometimes I just stop and watch them while they eat, play, read or just simply exist, and three years into the journey, I remind myself of how unbelievable it still feels that I’m a dad.

So, much like my emotional state throughout the year, this year’s end post goes up and goes down, like a roller coaster.  There may be plenty of days in which I’m burnt out, worried as fuck about finances, or in need of a good anxiety outlet, but there are no days where I don’t have love for my family and children and friends, no matter what is believed to be on my exterior.

Overall, I do not feel that 2023 was a poor year, and at the same time, I hope that 2024 and beyond is better.  Because why shouldn’t anyone not hope that the next day is better than the one before it? 

Dad Brog (#127): Purging and inevitability

Over the last few weeks, be it because of needing to clean for hosting, needing to clean just to free up space, or needing to clean because sometimes I come home and want to blow my brains out because it feels like my house is a sneeze away from becoming a subject on an episode of Hoarders, my house has been doing some purging. 

Mostly baby related things that we’re long past needing anymore, and although there’s a tremendous amount of relief whenever we manage to unload a piece of furniture, or a large item, or a box full of clothes, toys or other kid-related things that have long since been outgrown, upon reflection, it’s still bittersweet and inevitable that it would not go unnoticed by me that things that were once mainstays of when our kids were babies and infants, are now no longer part of the home, symbolic of the passage of time and that my kids are growing up.

In the past, I would just drop all these types of stuff off at the local Goodwill, get a donation receipt, and claim as much as possible for tax purposes, but as I’ve learned over the last few years, unless I donated like, my entire home, donations hardly have any effect, if any effect at all on one’s tax refunds, so my thinking lately has been, if I’m getting rid of stuff, I’d prefer them to go to people whom might actually need them for their intended purposes, and not end up getting thrown out by a charitable corporation.

However in spite of the altruistic intentions, fewer things is as maddeningly frustrating than the process of trying to give shit away.  I mean, the stuff is absolutely free with zero strings attached, but it also works against the givers, because of the zero money involved in the transactions, receivers also feel no real obligation to come receive, and the flake percentage is higher than Shaq’s chances at missing a free throw.

But that’s beside the point, the point of this post is that in all the purging we’ve been doing, I recognize the fact that we’re getting rid of some pretty substantial thing in my home’s history over the last 3+ years at this point, with two notable things that are at the forefront of my mind when reflecting over this recent purge. 

Since #1 was born, we had a bottle sterilizer that lived on the kitchen counter for over three years at this point.  When we had a second kid, we actually came upon a second one, courtesy of the manufacturer, sent to mythical wife when she was making videos on YouTube.  But having two kids raised on breast milk, we needed these sterilizers a lot, multiple times a day at the heyday of having a newborn and an infant at the same time.

And they lived on the counter, 24/7 for years.  Eventually we got rid of one, and I was glad to give it to a colleague who was having her first kid ever, because I know how great I loved having the sterilizer early on, to ensure that my kid’s bottles were as clean as could be, but the thing is, they were always there.

No matter how disastrous the residents of my home clutter up the counter and make me want to jump off a cliff sometimes, whenever it is eventually cleaned up, the sterilizer stayed.  Everything worked around the position of the sterilizer and at least once a day, it was running, cleaning bottles and other sterilizer-friendly kid bowls or cups or utensils.  It was a mainstay of the home.

Well, it’s gone now.  Mythical wife has gotten on yet another Great British Baking Show kick again and this time, it’s manifested into actual desire to bake, and when she gets on a kick, she goes full retard and now we’ve got a brand new Kitchen Aid jesus mixer that everyone who bakes loses their shit over, and being the less sentimental between the two of us, she didn’t hesitate to jettison the sterilizer from the counter, seeing as how the kids are using cups that really need to be sterilized, especially since they’re drinking regular cow’s milk from them, long past the days of breast milk.

And the counter still looks weird to me sometimes, not seeing the giant white box underneath the cupboard anymore.  But we didn’t need it, and it was off to the charity pile for it, and it was picked up by someone that allegedly had a five month old, and hopefully they’ll get great use out of it as my household did.

And next we have the high chair(s).  Despite the fact that my kids could still very well use them, they, and really I mean #1, but then #2 has to do everything that her big sister does, has gotten into that stage in her life where she’s clearly three going on 18, and refuses to sit in high chairs and boosters, and will lose her shit at even the notion of being denigrated into sitting into a baby’s seat.

The thing is too, I eventually grew to hate the last high chair we had, because the legs were spread so far out to give it as wide as base as possible to be safer from tipping over than any other high chair, but it actually took up more surface area than it appeared to, and when it was used regularly, not a day went by where someone didn’t trip over the ultra-wide standing legs because it didn’t look like it was that space-consuming.  I fucking hated when I was the victim of it, and when the kids spurned the high chairs in general, it sat in a corner where it could do the least bit of tripping.

Well, it’s gone now.  Along with our old transitioning high chair/booster seat, because my kids refuse to use that one too.  And just like that, my breakfast nook has gone from having boosters and high chairs displacing the normal chair(s) against the wall or absconded by mythical wife into her office that already has multiple chairs in it already, we’ve got a table with four ordinary, regular, grown human being sized chairs.

And unsurprisingly, I got some feelings about it.  Nothing I won’t get over after I post this but it’s still a little bittersweet to see some pretty mainstay things in the house for raising my kids being given the boot, but at least with these specific things, they’ve all been successfully unloaded to other parents and people whom I hope manages to get continued good use and a successful second life, raising kids as they did my own.

Because my kids were born so closely together, it wasn’t difficult to treat the last few years like one really long and continuous birth and raising, because there was a good bit of overlap when both girls needed the same stuff, and I could stop and look at my life and just see myself with two babies.  But now that they’re both basically thinking they’re full-ass grown adults now, but most importantly, out of diapers, it’s been time to say goodbye to a lot of baby stuff now, and time to be me and reflect and reminisce on it.  I’m satisfied with every inch of surface area we can liberate in my home, and frankly it’s harder to give shit away than it’s hard to say goodbye to a lot of baby stuff.  But as much as I do use dad brogs to complain about how hard my life is and how over I get parenting sometimes, it’s times like these that are reminders that time is most definitely passing, my kids are growing further and further away from the babies they once were, and if I keep blinking to brog and bitch, I’m going to miss everything on the way to sitting down with them to guide them through their first job applications because oh yeah, my kids will be working.

Dad Brog (#126): When will the holidays be enjoyable again?

This morning, I was awoken a few minutes before my alarm went off, because #1 had already begun to stir and babble and indicate that she was awake.  My alarm went off three minutes later at 7 am because I get up at 7 am every single day of my life regardless of if it’s a weekend or holiday so that I can hope to get some stuff done and have breakfast ready for the kids for when I inevitably get them from their respective rooms.

I got off of the couch because my in-laws were visiting and mythical wife and I forfeited our bed because we no longer have a guest room because we have an au pair, and I trudged into the kitchen to begin the morning routine.  It didn’t last long, because #1 began screaming and crying out for dada to come get her, and it was getting louder and louder, and typically I try to no-sell it and hope she calms back down, but it was evident that that wasn’t going to happen this morning.  And before her screaming would wake up the rest of the state of Georgia, I went up to get her early, regardless of the fact that I hadn’t gotten anything prepared for the morning.

Turns out she had completely soaked the bed, and most likely from a combination of shame and embarrassment, she was furious, despite the fact that I did not get mad or upset with her and explained calmly that everything was okay and that we would fix it.  She wailed like a banshee and had a nuclear meltdown, while I stripped the sheets and got her changed and brought her downstairs.  I love my kids, but trying to do anything with them around is at least three times harder than it should be, and putting away yesterday’s dishes and trying to prepare breakfast for them is no exception.

After getting #1 situated and eating, I went up to get #2, and thankfully this morning she was the chill kid, and didn’t fuss and fight at all which was a huge relief.  She sat down and began eating and for two seconds, things were quiet with them eating breakfast.  But that didn’t last long, because the rest of the house started waking up, and other human beings are automatically distracting to them, and before I know, breakfast is abandoned, and they’re running amok, primarily fucking with the Christmas tree and some of the decorations we had just set up the night prior after Thanksgiving dinner part two.

To cut to the chase and cut down on redundant words and stories about how hard my life is in my parental circumstances, that was basically the story of the day, playing a fuck ton of defense throughout the house as #2 was being a little shit all day long just trying to get into things, fuck with the Christmas tree and being a defiant dick, throwing and knocking over anything she could get her hands on, and #1 being an uber-clingy barnacle to me the entire day, demanding my attention or having a meltdown if she wasn’t getting it.

Mythical wife and I declared that today was arguably, the hardest day we had as parents as we’d ever had, as in ever, and we both agreed that as much as we love the kids, this was one of those days where we just could not wait to put them down to bed for the evening.  I often think it’s cliché for people to crack open a cold alcoholic beverage after a trying day, but today definitely encapsulated the circumstances for it to sound like the greatest idea in the world, and not five minutes after I came downstairs after putting #1 to bed, it was straight to the fridge to pull out a Schofferhofer, one of the weak-ass fruit witbiers that I still actually enjoy drinking at home, when I feel like having something with a little booze in it.

As nihilistic and pessimistic as it might sound, this was just another year of holidays that I just can’t really get into and didn’t really look forward to, because this stage of parenting is just so overwhelmingly difficult on a daily basis, that I don’t really much like getting out of the routine, even for holidays in which we’re expected to be happy and thankful for things, because it just means a whole lot of extra work of preparing my home, hosting people, and a whole lot of gray area of childcare and eyes on the girls, resulting in mostly me feeling like I’m the only one who is mindful of the kids and being the primary person chasing after them and keeping watch over them, all while I have other responsibilities and expectations to do as well, because trying to do anything with kids around is automatically eight times harder than it should be, but I still have to do them anyway, hell or high water.

And I can’t help but think about holidays in the past prior to having kids, because they were all just so simple and full of space to have the capacity to think about things like traveling instead of hosting, contemplating Black Friday shopping, and actually having the money to do both, and I love my kids and family until the day I die, but there’s no denying just how different, simple and mindless life was prior to the rigors of raising kids.

Lots of parents of children far older than my own often like to say how things get easier as they age, which makes sense, but god damn there are times in which I can’t wait for those days to become reality in my life, because days like this I find myself cursing in private at how much I’m so sick of parenting sometimes, and wanting to scream and break shit over the aggravation of my kids can be when they both feel like being little asshole shits, and I feel bad for doing such, but I’m already always living in a state of high RPM stress on the regular, and I just wonder when things will actually calm down to where I don’t have to feel like this and dread holidays and can eventually get back to enjoying them again someday.