A Kiss Before Bedtime

A wonky wireless home networking system kept me from doing any kind of post last night, and the in-and-out connection has been playing havoc with me today, too.

I will probably post another installment of the Cleansed By Fire novel sometime today, if the gods of the Internet are kind to me, but here’s a quickie post to make up for having posted nothing yesterday and to give you something if you aren’t a sci-fi fan.

Mrs. Blue doesn’t like it when I ascribe semi-diabolic  motives to Little Girl Blue’s actions. She’s agreeing me with more often than she used to now when I point out such things, but I remember in the past year or so many, many times when I would suggest our little girl was playing us a bit, and I would get the stank eye in return from the wife.

Now, don’t get me wrong. My 3-year-old is not some devil child. She is challenging at times, but she’s also loving. And she’s whip-smart. To a certain degree, I like seeing that she has enough intellectual power to find subtle and tricky ways to get what she wants. I have to stay one step ahead of her, and that sometimes wears out my own brain, but I’d rather have that than a child who goes into brain-shutdown/drool mode in front of the TV on a regular basis.

The latest trick in her book is asking for a kiss at bedtime.

No, no, you don’t understand.

It’s not the kiss goodnight that’s a problem. I’m more than happy to give out one or even several kisses and hugs as I lay her down in bed.

It’s when she gets up, 5 minutes later and I ask, “Why are you up?” and she says she wants to give me a kiss. And I do. And I tell her she must go to bed and stop getting up. Five minutes later, she needs to give me another kiss, or a hug. And so on.

Now, she will from time to time say she needs a damp cloth to wipe her eyes, or another drink of water, but by and large, she will whip out the extra affection as an excuse to get up more often than not these days.

And this poses a real challenge for me as a loving father.

I know she’s stalling and trying to put off going to bed. And she probably enjoys yanking me out of my office every 5 minutes too, since it’s right next to her bedroom and it’s not like we can let daddy do his thing. 😉 But the real quandary for me is this:

I don’t feel right saying, “No, you can’t have a kiss.” Nor do I feel good scolding her about delaying her sleep after I give her one, even though I sometimes have to.

And she’s smart enough to know this, which is why she added this trick to her arsenal. She found an excuse that at least partially defuses my ability to get cross with her. Oh, sure, I eventually do reach a point at which I may have to threaten to deep-six one of her Dora DVDs or something, but for the most part, she gets to delay her bedtime (which is already way late by most family standards) and give me very little room to operate in a disciplinarian mode.

Like, I said, this girl is smart.

It’s that kind of skill that might serve her very well in life as she figures out how to navigate the hell that is other people (other annoying people at least…I’m not such a misanthrope that I think all people are trouble). But it’s going to give me some headaches, and many gray hairs, until she begins harnessing those skills for good instead of selfish reasons.

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Two-fer Tuesday: Kids by Deacon Blue

Since Miz Pink went and got all sappy with her kid story on Saturday (actually, it was a cute story), let’s make our Two-fer Tuesday topic “Kids.” I’ll start.

No, not going to talk about sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

Not going to go over that stuff about honoring our mothers and fathers.

Already talked about Jesus telling us to “suffer the little children.”

OK, Bible down. I have no doubt I could expound upon spiritual stuff related to kids. Instead, let me give you some real advice, and this is mostly aimed at people who don’t yet have kids, or are about to have kids for the first time soon. But I’m sure even existing parents can get a tickle out of this, too.

Checklist

• Before you have a child, think really, really hard about how hard you think raising a child will be.
• Double that.
• Then add on the stress of working for the world’s most demanding and least flexible boss (for at least four years).
• To that, add the idea of serving in an extended sleep-deprivation experiment (for at least a year, possibly two).
• Now imagine being denied regular access to the forms of entertainment you have come to rely on (movies, sex, clubbing, etc.) for roughly five years, give or take.
• If you are having your first child and you are in your late 30s to mid-40s, increase that total amount by 50%, because you are already getting set in your ways even if you don’t think so.
• Finally, if you are having your first ever child at the age of 55 or older, and you are doing this on purpose, please check into a mental health facility now.

All that being said, children are a joy, and the first time you get an honest “I love you” or a wet sloppy kiss on the cheek, your world will change forever, and for the better. There are few, if any, jobs more rewarding than being a good parent—at least trying to be a good one.

But oh, do those kids work the nerves sometimes. 😉

Cracking the Code by Miz Pink

As I’m nursing Mini Pink Model 3 and talking to Sir Pink about stuff to do with the family unit this weekend, I decide to put forth the idea that we might take the brood out to Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant for crappy pizza and loud noises and kids running all around…you know, the kind of stuff our children will like (well, Mini Pink Model 1 he’ll tolerate it for the pizza and endless sodas and a couple of the video games there…and the fact he can fart around with little sis).

Not wanting to get the hopes of Mini Pink Model 2 up (she loves Chuck E. Cheese’s), I decide to speak in code, in what I thought was a pretty creatively entertaining and preschool child impregnable code.

“Honey, what if we went to Charles Edward Fromage this weekend?”

(Fromage, for you uncultured sorts, is French for cheese.) 😉

Without skipping a beat, and before Sir Pink can even answer, little preschool girl Mini Pink Model 2 brightens up and says, “We’re going to Chuckie Cheese?”

I’m not one to assume that my kids are geniuses just because they use more words than other kids in their class or potty trained early or whatever and I won’t start now but I think I may have to look at educational options for Mini Pink Model 2 a lot more closely. There’s no way she should have been able to figure that out.

Not that any of you are going to learn anythning from that. I just thought it was cool to share one of those moments of breakthrough/milestone stuff where you realize with both sadness (I’ve lost another way to keep “need to know only” info out of my child’s head) and joy (gosh, she’s smarter than even my optimistic self expected) that your child is growing up fast. And here I am holding another one that’s going to run me down that path once again and for one last time.

(Just for the record, my preschool kid is even cuter than the one in the picture.)

Can’t Win For Losing

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep over the past few days and I’m feeling a little touchy.

But can someone tell me what I said, in my first comment to this blog post, if anything, to invite a thorough critique of the idea of raising my children with my religion?

I thought it was nice and simple. In my first (and what I intended to be my only) comment, I sympathized with the author’s opinion, noted that I thought it was impractical to think a parent wouldn’t raise children with dearly-held values and beliefs, and then added that I thought it would be shitty to shut that child out later on if they reject those values and views.

And then I get a comment saying, this post was about “religion” not “values,” thus prompting what I felt was a need to clarify my position and the fact it didn’t matter what term you used, which prompted at least two comments that are aimed at me and (a) the supposed ridiculousness of adding religion to the pile of things I pass down to my kid and (b) suggesting that I said people without religion have no values or weaker values.

All too often, Christians get panned for being “holy rollers” and getting all judgmental. I defend the drive to pass down religion and focus on the need to love and embrace your child even if they reject those values, and I still catch shit.

If anyone non-Christian out there wonders why sometimes Christians feel a bit persecuted even though this is still a largely Christian nation, that is why. It gets tiresome to gently mention my faith and be supportive of dissenting beliefs and encourage that we love everyone, and still get painted as being closed-minded and shallow and supersitious.

Yes, I’m ranting. And if you see this, Votar, I still love you, man (in the platonic, I-only-know-you-online-anyway kind of way). But shit, I wasn’t aiming to debate religion, just encourage acceptance of different parenting styles with regard to religion and urging that we cannot reject our kids if they do choose to reject our values.