{"id":49007,"date":"2022-10-28T10:41:34","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T15:41:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=49007"},"modified":"2022-10-28T10:41:34","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T15:41:34","slug":"dad-brog-100-one-hundred-dad-brogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=49007","title":{"rendered":"Dad Brog (#100): One Hundred Dad Brogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Because I\u2019m a neurotic baseball nerd who has a hard-on for nice round numbers, I was always keenly aware of the fact that I was creeping closer to a nice round milestone number of 100 dad brogs, most of which are bitchy, ragey, or coming from a place of frustration.\u00a0 In my head, I\u2019ve written this post several different times now, but as is the norm for the life of a parent of kids as young as mine, there was never the opportunity to write this until a lot of the feelings in which I\u2019m mentally writing, have already long passed.<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t to say that I don\u2019t love my children, quite the contrary, I love my children and my famiry and would do anything in the world for them, but it\u2019s more of the unyielding truth of just how difficult raising kids is, especially in the circumstances I\u2019ve been under, with two born during a pandemic and being on a path that has never really been explored except by those in similar boats currently charting them as we go.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no sugar-coating it: parenting is hard.\u00a0 Parenting two that are just 16 months apart is even harder.\u00a0 I\u2019ve completely lost the ability to feel any shred of empathy for anyone who proclaims their lives are difficult and they have no kids, because I frankly can\u2019t imagine anyone\u2019s life being as hard without kids as someone with them.\u00a0 In fact, I\u2019ve even turned my nose up at those with just one child, because at this point, I think one kid is a walk in the park, and that I could raise a single child with my eyes closed with the experience I\u2019ve accumulated.<\/span><\/p>\n

At no point during my journey as a dad, have things ever been easy.\u00a0 When it was just #1, we had several months of having to deal with an apnea monitor, on top of not knowing what we were doing as new parents.\u00a0 But once we began to feel that we were getting into a groove and that her sleep schedule was affording us time to begin feeling like human beings again, our world was rocked by the discovery that mythical wife was pregnant and #2 was on the way.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then #2 arrived, and in spite of all the preparation and thinking we got this, based on all the experience we accumulated from our first go-around, #2 was all sorts of different than her sister, in terms of temperament, sleeping habits, and the presence of colic.\u00a0 And with their being two kids now, the inevitability of double duty came into play, and let me tell you that there have been fewer points in my life that I have felt so helplessly inadequate as a father, parent, human being, than when I\u2019m constantly falling on my face as a single person watching two kids.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since then, my daughters have been living up to the tag team dynamic that I\u2019ve given them championship blets for, because since the staffing up of my famiry, they\u2019ve been systematically taking turns, tagging in and out, at which one of them is the difficult kid at any given time; naturally not ignoring any opportunities to get some double-team, tandem offense of both of them being difficult at the same time.\u00a0 #2\u2019s colic was a devastating time where nothing I did felt like it was right. \u00a0#1\u2019s increasing curiosity and the development of defiance and the ability to say the word NO bubbled up as #2\u2019s newborn vices began cooling down.\u00a0 They\u2019d take turn at being picky eaters, and seldom would eat well at the same time.\u00a0 #1 started getting sick every single month since the start of 2022 due to our shitty nannies or sending her to daycare, and without missing a beat, when she gets sick, #2 gets sick 3-4 days later and it\u2019s even worse on her because she\u2019s younger and has a lesser developed immune system.\u00a0 Everyone loves to say that it’s just them growing their immune systems, but I\u2019d rather other parents just stop being selfish fucks and sending sick kids to school all the god damn time.<\/span><\/p>\n

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My current ragers right now is that first, both of my girls are being picky shits about eating, and no matter how much effort I spend cooking them things that I think they\u2019ll like, or have demonstrated liking in the past, they hate everything I make, and dinners and meals have been breath-holding events where I\u2019ve been bubbling over with frustration and defeat.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been dreading mealtimes lately, and even now I\u2019m wondering what the fuck I can make in the morning, and if they\u2019ll eat it or demoralize me again by refusing it.<\/span><\/p>\n

And #1 is living up to the reputation of the terrible twos by being the indecisive bipolar toddler that the title was developed for.\u00a0 Just about every single thing results in a fight, and over the last few months, I\u2019ve had to listen to some of the most shrieking, screaming and nuclear meltdowns<\/a> in history.\u00a0 Mythical wife tries explaining to me that these are textbook power struggles, and tries to coach me methods of approaching my child to try and negate the conflicts but the reality is that I\u2019m around the kids more than she is and I don\u2019t always have the capacity to strategize every single scenario where a fight is likely to occur.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, #1 just got in trouble at school earlier in the week, for biting another child.\u00a0 Ironically, behavior like this didn\u2019t start until she started going to school and being exposed to other children, where she\u2019s clearly picking up behaviors from them, but at this point, they\u2019re already learned, and all we can do is try to adjust and recondition better alternative behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, then why does it feel like the no-two-days-are-ever-the-same nature of parenting occasionally drives me insane?\u00a0 I know that the results of the each day are always going to be different, and yet I\u2019ve so often struggled to retain my sanity when the shit has hit the fan the hardest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Granted, a lot of these hardest days were at points throughout the last two-plus years when my job was at its shittiest on top of the rigors of parenting, and the stress of child care was often and endless.\u00a0 Currently, my different job is less shit, and my household now has an au pair, which I\u2019m sure to eventually write about in a future dad brog, so those stressors are hopefully more of a thing of the past than they were.<\/span><\/p>\n

I still feel like I could use a legitimate break and that it would do me some tremendous good, because for like 99% of every day since March of 2020, I have been the person waking up to do first shift of parenting every single morning with almost no break, and as much as I love my kids and my famiry, I do think that I need to get a real break from such responsibilities, so that I can actually recharge a little bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, things learned from one hundred bitchy dad brog posts:<\/span><\/p>\n