{"id":50165,"date":"2024-09-03T13:09:54","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T18:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50165"},"modified":"2024-09-13T13:25:58","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T18:25:58","slug":"dad-brog-139-the-days-are-getting-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/?p=50165","title":{"rendered":"Dad Brog (#139): the days are getting longer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

I realized that it\u2019s been a while since I did a dad brog, and in spite of my insistence that they weren\u2019t intended to be solely sounding boards for the gripes and complaints I have about the challenges of parenting, there\u2019s no denying the fact that the vast majority of the 138 editions of Dad Brog before this one probably were.\u00a0 Parenting is hard, yo, and anyone who says that it isn\u2019t is either not as hands-on or present of a parent as I am or they\u2019re rich and\/or lazy and have others doing the parenting for them.<\/span><\/p>\n

That being said, let this be a dad brog that isn\u2019t going to be just one gigantic bitch-fest as much as it\u2019s just catching up on the life of being the parent that I am, because as I\u2019ve stated before, this series of posts doesn\u2019t have to be nothing but complaints and gripes, because as hard as parenting is, there\u2019s plenty to love about it as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are lots of times in my life where I sometimes and just watch my kids being kids, and there\u2019s still a sense of disbelief that one, I have kids, and two that I somehow ended up with two girls.\u00a0 Some might find it hard to believe considering they\u2019re four and three and therefore I\u2019ve been doing this for a while now, but I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m not going to imagine that I\u2019m the only parent out there that feels this when they look at their kids, no matter how old they are, and it\u2019s during these little moments where I sometimes just smirk and chuckle at the combined absurdity and satisfaction that the existence of my own children bring to my life.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both kids are in school five days a week now, as opposed to the three-day part-time school schedule they had the year before, mostly on account of the school no longer giving us the option for three-day anymore, so my wallet is definitely feeling the pinch and will continue to feel it for another year, before it gradually starts getting better when #1 begins elementary school and #2 the year afterward.<\/span><\/p>\n

All the same though, as much as I bemoan the financial burden of private schooling, I feel that the results speak for themselves; my kids are both sharp and intelligent and bright, and I\u2019m often awestruck at some of the things they say or demonstrate that makes me go wtf, at how much they\u2019re developing.\u00a0 #2 has demonstrated a really great memory, and she has routinely been whooping my ass at the variety of memory card games we play, at her ability to recall the positionings of matching cards.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just the other day, I was being lazy and was dicking around on my phone a little bit while around my kids; #1 rushed off to the bathroom because she\u2019s fully potty trained now and more often opting to use the actual bathroom instead of the children\u2019s potty we have in the kitchen, while #2 is still working things out.\u00a0 I started to get up to go help, and she immediately shut me down and told me, \u201ckeep looking at your phone, I\u2019ll be okay,<\/em>\u201d and I was just left there with this flabbergasted look and feeling on my face, where I couldn\u2019t be mad at basically getting shut down by a four-year old, but also low-key called out for being on my phone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Needless to say, I put the phone away after that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Staving off boredom is basically the name of the game for me as a parent now, and we\u2019re at the stage where the kids don\u2019t really want to play with toys or read books as much as they want to do physical activities like run around, play tag, hide-and-seek and just burn energy.\u00a0 It\u2019s frustrating when it\u2019s nuclear summer outside still, and I have to be very mindful of letting my kids play outdoors at the peak parts of the sun and heat, and I\u2019m very much looking forward to the full changing of seasons, to where I might be able to let them go outside and play more, so we can all get a win in that regard.<\/span><\/p>\n

And inevitable as it is, the kids\u2019 bedtime has begun stretching longer, which means that my window of non-dad downtime has been getting smaller, much to my dissatisfaction.\u00a0 Whereas we used to have the kids up in the bath by 6:30, in bed by 7:00pm, we\u2019ve been adding 30-40 minutes to the routine now, and by the time the kids are down in bed, it\u2019s nearly 8:00pm if not past it a few minutes now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, this was always going to inevitably happen, but it just means that my window of time in which I reset the house, tidy up, clean dishes, pack lunches and anything else, before I can really sit down and relax, is basically becoming non-existent.\u00a0 I\u2019m lucky to free by 9pm, and if I have any ambitious preparation for the following day, then 10pm more likely.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s really not the end of the world, because I realize these days, I\u2019m so stripped down of everything that used to make me, me, that when I have free time, I don\u2019t know what to do with in the first place anymore.\u00a0 And with so little time to do anything even if I could, I just don\u2019t; as fatalistic and depressing as it might sound, I\u2019ve gotten to the point where it\u2019s just kind of acceptance and I\u2019m not really mad or depressed about it, it\u2019s just something that I hope that when one day when I inevitably do have more time, I might be able to reclaim some of the things that I\u2019ve had to put on back burners or in storage while I focus on being a dad first and foremost.<\/span><\/p>\n

My kids are always priority #1, and everything else is a distant second.\u00a0 The best part is that with their increasing potty control, I\u2019m growing more trust to take them out with me, even if it\u2019s both kids and I, because they\u2019re really not going to learn how to exist in the world if they don\u2019t go out into it, and two-fold, it helps stave off the perils of evil boredom when I can have things planned for them to do with me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, as I had hoped, in some respects parenting will never be easy, but in many other respects, it really has gotten easier, as my kids have aged.\u00a0 When I no longer have to worry about any pooping accidents or malicious wetting incidents, I will have even more trust at bringing my kids out more often to see the world around them, and even more will be easier when I don\u2019t have to always be mindful of where the closest bathrooms always are.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I realized that it\u2019s been a while since I did a dad brog, and in spite of my insistence that they weren\u2019t intended to be solely sounding boards for the gripes and complaints I have about the challenges of parenting, there\u2019s no denying the fact that the vast majority of the 138 editions of Dad … Continue reading Dad Brog (#139): the days are getting longer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193,71,192,83],"class_list":["post-50165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-dad","tag-famiry","tag-kids","tag-observations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50165"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50188,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50165\/revisions\/50188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}