No One Ever Crapped in My Office

Being a stay at home dad pretty much rocks. I get to gallivant around with my kids all day, taking hikes, eating ice cream sundaes, feeding goats -- you know, the finer things in life. I'm my own boss and the only people I really answer to can be wrestled to the ground with ease.

But every now and then, to keep balance in the universe, one of the kids will take a massive shit on my mother-in-law's brand new carpet and then track it around the entire room for good measure. We wouldn't want me getting too comfortable in this job now would we?

Question of the Week: Small Successes

Every Sunday, the Multiples and More blog poses a "question of the week." This week they want you to "name 5 small successes in your life from the past week." In other words, what were your victories? What did you get right?

Most successes in my life are the direct result of serendipitous luck or divine spousal intervention. I'm sure any successes from the past week were similarly had, but who knows, maybe I did actually accomplish something myself. Let's see what ended up in the win column...

1. Poopless Beds - I wouldn't even call this a small success. This might be our greatest accomplishment of the last six months. The solution was simple: putting Truman and Amelia's zip up pajamas on backwards. (Thank you for that lifesaving tip, Angie. Have you ever considered starting your own blog?) Of course, as the laws of nature require, every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Since the twins can no longer spend their mornings smearing poo all over their beds, they have redirected their efforts towards mastering the art of vacating their cribs with nary a sound. And then of course removing every single item of clothing from their dressers. Every single item. But hey, I'd rather refold clothes than swab shit any day. Oh wait... there was the carpet caca incident... I'll let Julie tell that one. No poop in the bed is still a victory.


2. Showing of the House - We finally had a house showing on Sunday. That's a success in and of itself, but I didn't really have anything to do with it. Getting the house ready for a showing -- now that's a monumental triumph. Technically Julie deserves 95% of the thanks on this win, but I will take a little bit of the credit. Sometimes just staying out of the way and not impeding progress is the best contribution I can make. I'm good at doing the heavy lifting and the jobs that involve power tools. And if a task requires a discerning eye and attention to detail and hours of refinement -- I'm your man. However, if you need brute force, "good enough" cleaning -- like cleaning an entire room from top to bottom in 20 minutes -- I'm the key ingredient in the recipe for failure. For example, consider a bookshelf that needs a touch up. I can't just straighten the books and dust it off. I need to remove all the books, dust and polish, and replace the books organized by subject, author, size and color. So when it comes to preparing our house for a showing, my "help" can easily become a hinderance. This weekend though, I didn't get picky about cleaning projects and I handled the brunt of keeping the kids fed and out of the way. Like I said, Julie gets most of the credit, but I'm still counting it as one of my successes.


3. Answering the Call of Duty - I completed the single player mode in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I know, awesome, right? It took several hours (though a real gamer could probably complete it in a couple of hours) but I'm old and any game that uses more than two buttons is technically out of my generation's wheelhouse. Now, I know what you're thinking -- beating a video game is a success? Well, yes, it is. The mere fact that I fed, bathed, played with, read to and put to bed the kids and still had time to play a video game is some kind of success. Granted, the time spent in front of the TV could have been spent on the treadmill and my inactivity probably contributed further to my ever increasing atmospheric displacement. Wait, was this a success? Hmmm. Well, I was drinking Michelob Ultra while I shot up the terrorists. I'm counting it. Sorry, my list isn't open to appeals.


4. Page Turning - OK, this is the smallest of victories. I read a few pages of the book I've been trying to tackle for months. To a normal human this would not be a success, but seeing as how I go weeks or months without reading anything beyond my computer monitor, I'm definitely counting a few turned pages as a positive. I'll be working on this more and more in the coming weeks. I used to be an avid reader, back in the day, but unfortunately it's an indulgence that's fallen by the wayside. In fact, I read so little now that even when I do set aside time to read, I find myself rereading pages two and three times because I can't stay focused. I've lost the ability to shut down and immerse myself in a book. My mind constantly wanders. I'll get back there, though. Someday.


5. Early to Bed - This was an unexpected success. Despite years of bad parenting, Jameson went to bed early (before 9:00) twice this week. Hopefully this is an oft repeated success. Jameson is our hard one to get to sleep at night. He's a night owl, like his mom and dad. Let's face it, he's our first born and we didn't know what the hell we were doing in the early parenting days. Kids need schedules? What? That's crazy talk! Well, anyway, Jameson has had the privilege of being our guinea pig offspring and now routinely stays up until ten or eleven o'clock at night. Sometimes later. Things have progressively gotten better. He goes to sleep much quicker than he used to (in the early days it would sometimes take over an hour to get the kid to sleep) and we're slowly moving up his bedtime. That's a good thing for us and eventually it's going to be a necessity once he starts school. So two nights this week asleep before nine o'clock is definitely a success.

So what an awesome week, eh? Can't wait to see what earth shattering accomplishments I'll be bragging about next week. Maybe it will include more treadmill and less gaming.

SAHD - Day 2

I can officially cross "be a stay at home parent for at least two days" off of my bucket list.

Day two was much better than the first day, though not at first glance. The circumstances were actually similar or worse than the previous day, but mentally things were better. Which means they're either breaking me, or I'm just slipping into plain old insanity. I didn't start wishing I was sitting in a bar until 4:30 today... two hours better than yesterday.

It wasn't all rainbows and unicorns, though.

The AC isn't going to be fixed until Friday morning, but mother nature threw us a bone by topping out at only 63 degrees today. It was a mixed blessing though, because we achieved this comfortable temperature thanks to nonstop rain the entire day. This meant no trip to the park and no backyard escapes. This also meant I felt like I was living in a six foot by six foot box with Nick Swardson, Rosie O'Donnell and a tasmanian devil. The kids dropped the constant fighting today but replaced it with a marathon "who can be the loudest" competition. Amelia won. This was all fluff, though, compared to what happened after nap time.

When I went to retrieve the twins from their room post-nap, I found Amelia smiling over her crib wall waiting for me. Across the room I also saw Truman smiling and eagerly awaiting my arrival. Except. Oh except. Except Truman was covered in... shit. Head to toe. On his clothes. On the rungs of his crib. On his pillow. On his blanket. On his book. He's got a bit of stomach bug and the ill effects managed to work their way out his diaper and onto everything else. Oh god it was everywhere.

This kinda puts a wrinkle in one's day.

My other two kids have never messed a bed like this before. This, however, was Truman's second time. The other time, though, I had help. Today I was alone. In a way it was a good thing this was the second time it has happened because I felt like I had adequate disaster preparation for this particular situation. (Like I just kept thinking to myself: "Remember your training, remember your training. Don't think about it, just do it.") You know, maybe if it had been a jelly bean stuffed up his nose I might have panicked. Wallowing in poo? Nah, I've got that covered.

Despite the headaches, it was a good day. By the time Julie got home, I had a nice dinner on the table and everything was back to normal. I even had time to bake a cake for dessert. Yes, I bake. In fact, I'm a much better baker than I am a cook. I'm working on the cooking part, though.

Looking back, I can't believe this all happened in just two days. It makes me a little fearful for what's in store tomorrow.