being a parent makes you a big pussy

I'd love to be able to share...here.

Oh if I bothered to spend the time then that would be my new sig for the day.

My wife has pictures of me having a tea party with my 3 year old daughter and a collection of teddy bears. That kind of blackmail material insures that I would never ever cheat on her.

Now you have a reason to watch the latest Disney movie over and over and over and over again and not feel ashamed. You have an alibi.

Fucking pussy.

I know that being a parent means you got some pussy... Well, most of the time.

My son is just getting to the point where he repeats EVERYTHING you say. So now he's getting a lot of Swykkisms. The latest being, "I took a mean bump, mom!" and "Oh, snap!!"

And what else did he just start saying? "I love you, mom!" Which also means, "I get to go to Toys R Us and pick out anything I want!"

But my favorite game when play is "fall down." If I'm sitting on the ground anywhere, he comes up to me and says, "Fall down, mom!" If I don't fall by my own will, he comes up to me and pushes me down (yes, he is bossy!). After he pushes me down, he backs up a few steps, gets a running start, and attacks me with hugs and kisses. Makes my day every time.

Yes, I am offically a pussy!

And because some people take everything you say and become cocks about it, you cannot?

It looks a lot less dumb if there's a kid in the car when you do it.

Sammy, I think it's pretty damn awesome, myself. You are clearly in the throes of fatherhood and I can see the gleam in your eyes from here.

Until any man or woman becomes a parent, they will never, ever know what it feels like. You can't describe it. Best summation is pure and utter euphoria. The heart overwhelms because you never realized before just how truly deep you are capable of loving.

Kronos, fuck 'em. Spill! I'd love for you to share your stories.

Leave the man alone. If he wants to play peekaboo with an empty car it's a free country!

I have the best kid. He's really, really, awesome.

Heh...that's what we ALL say!

I seriously considered turning on the blinkers for the ride home so people would stay away from us.

You didn't per chance happen to purchase one of those "WARNING - BABY ONBOARD" window stickers yet, have you? If so, you are definitely heading downhill. Fast.

Instead, we get those shades that you put in the back windows. It's a signal that there's a baby in there, and you also get a shady car. Never mind the fact that the windows are all tinted.

Deluded ones, unite!

I choose the PM feature in this case.

So I spend my mornings writing horror stories. Vicious ones, with bug-monsters and zombies and burning flesh. I've got stories out, novels I'm trying to sell, and even have a NotLD rip-off novel I've sent to Tom Savini for a quote. I've got a horror DVD collection that numbers in the hundreds.

And the focal point of my desk is a dirty piece of paper with an orange and black and blue and purple and yellow and brown and red and green squiggle. A rainbow my daughter drew for me when I was having a bad day and she was two and a half. She said it would help me to smile.

And if that's not pussy enough for ya... I've got teary eyes just writing about it.

Awwwwww..that is so sweet! I always loved the pictures and the ten-ton smile when they handed them to you. You just know it made their day as much as it did yours. Awesome story.

My kidlets are all growed up, Sammy. A girl and a boy, 28 and 18, and soon to be celebrating another year of birth (both in November).

I won the lottery the first time when I was first introduced to my step-daughter when she was four years of age. I won the lottery a second time when my son was born.

I was always a picture taking, video camera fanatic when it came to my kids. But, there is one picture that I have that expresses so well, the exchange of love between parent and child. It is a picture of my son and I as he is trying to mimic my words as I tried to get him to talk. It is priceless. I'm talking over-exaggerated mouth movements; wide eyed and close to each others face. He is cooing with a huge grin and we both have the exact same expression. If I EVER get a scanner, I will share it here. It has to be the most treasured picture in my possession and I have hundreds.

My kids are sitting right next to me everyday that I'm here on CHUD. To my left is a shelf that holds various sized pictures of them both. There is my son standing in front of his swingset wearing a polo shirt and khakis (hands in pocket)that was taken on his first day of school. Next to that is a brother and sister hug that was taken on a bench when we visited her at the University of Iowa. Next to that is a picture of my son sitting on a tree limb. Next to that is my very young daughter holding her baby brother. Next to that is my A Hundred Years From Now... plaque. *sniff*

They both have a lovelife now, so I rarely get to see them together in the same room. *sniff* They will both settle down someday and make babies of their own. (NOT YET, DAMN IT!) Yes, someday, someone is going to call me, oh, God, can I even say it? Grandma....*whaaa* and that's the day when shit hits the fan.

And it will, Sammy. It surely will. It's the most amazing experience. My wife and I spend so much of our time laughing at our kids. Enjoyment laughing. Like when I yell at our son not to touch the buttons on the DVD player, and he points to his chair and yells jibberish back at me, as if to say: "You forgot to tell me you'd make me sit in the chair!"

Anyway, it's looking like kid #3 for me is imminent. I have been hoping for a Halloween baby, but the way my wife gives birth, she might not last the weekend. Hell, she might not last until I finish this post!

This'll make two girls and a boy. This place is gonna be hoppin'.

Congratulations.

That's cool, Sammy.

In honor of the "original" greatest boy and girl, I want to share this here today:

A Hundred Years From Now...

..it will not matter what my bank account was,
the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...
but the world may be different because I was important
in the life of a child.

Happy Birthday, to both my November born children, Katie and Kevin!

Killian has started crawling up to one of us, standing and just resting his head on us. Sweetest thing ever!

I have no children of my own yet, that's true...

I worked for years in daycare and in teaching after college. And my first graders were pretty damned important to me. Now I have two little nieces, and I find myself worried sick when the toddler (almost 2) takes a tumble.

While they were here last, a few weeks back, my niece seemd to have hurt her finger while playing around. No one saw it, but she just wailed for a long time, and would start up again whenevr someone bumped the finger. We thought it might be broken or something... That night, Halloween, we took her trick or treating at an area mall. She would NOT use the wounded hand for anything. I swear to god I was fighting back tears about the whole thing. It eventually went away, and she is well now.

A day or two later, we were letting her crawl through the McDonald play area for the first time on her own. I panicked that she was going to get stuck, or tumble down the wrong path adn get hurt. We would just shout up through the tunnels to her, to ask her "what color" section of the tunnel she was at. Her first trip down the slide, she tumbled over once, with enough of a bump to worry me, but of course, she was fine... so as she ran to get in again, I went with her. In the midst of my trying to be careful and make sure she was safe and that my adult weight wasn't going to bring the whole thing crashing down, she tells me, in her broken kidspeak that she and I are "climinbg together and having fun". I instantly lose any claim to emotinal toughness for how that moment right there affected me.

And there was another incident a year ago, where we took her to a theme park, and we just did not bundle her up enough for the (surprising) cold that day. Again, I was almost sobbing as I tried to find things to help wrap her up in as she shivered.

I just LOSE any kind of manly toughness with kids, especially my neices. Not that I am the ideal masculine example to begin with. But I just love kids (in a wholesome way, Jacko). I get worked up about their safety and happiness and all that. And I am proud of it.

Kalila is 3 and Killian is 14 months.

Did your wife realize you were naming your kid after a beer?

Indeed she did. A bit ironic actually as Killian's Red almost stopped my wedding.

I've been surfing for an hour or two. nobody is chatting. nobody on Dev's board. Four glasses of wine, 2AM Fri-... Wednsday, no.... Thursday.... Happy Thanksgiving 2003. Feels like a Friday. I have a second job. I work about 70 to 80 hours a week now. I haven't seen my kids much since I got it. I haven't seen CHUD much since I got it. I go for a day or two without seeng my kids eyes open. I talk to them on the phone. I hear Katie tell me how the bad kids were at school. I hear Evan tell me what he ate for breakfast and lunch. I look at my wife, Steph, who I've known since I was 18, she's so goddamn tired. Taking care of 2 kids is a fucking trip. I don't know how 3 or 4 kid families do it, except they have a doctor or lawyer in the family. I'm sick of being broke. I'm sick of being wrong. I'm sick of working so hard for shit. I'm sick of being fucking invisible. Being in the hole. I know it's gonna change.

I just erased a whole bunch of nonsense bullshit rambling. I hate bills. I hate neighbors, and jobs, and bills, and debt, and stupid decisions, and bills, and teenagers with asscrack hanging out of their pants.

pussy. Parents are pussies. Parents worry, and moan and goan, and cry, and bitch, and make faces at you when you act like a dick in public.

blah blahblah blah blah blahhhhh, blah.
when my kids hug me: it's okay.

Fuck you guys for reminding me of this...

I just spent nearly two weeks away from my kids. These were the FIRST two weeks I have EVER spent away from my kids. They were necessary, I was setting up a house, moving shit, getting people off my back, getting on other people's backs, emailing Kronos and shamelessly using him for a glowing reference (which the bitch never checked out, if I am correct), calling him on the wrong goddamn phone number and yet talking to someone named **** for nearly five minutes before realizing that "Hey, this is not the **** you know as Kronos, this is some fucking crackhead who is playing along with you in weird code because he thinks you're his drug hookup (and kronos, fuck you buddy, I can hear you laughing at me from HERE) and that YOU are talking in code, too.

'S okay...if I'm lucky, he spent a cold night at corner of Power Inn and Folsom, across from the courthouse, wondering "when motherfucker gon' GET here?!"

The crackhead. Not Kronos.

Anyhow, as I was babbling moments ago, it was a NECESSARY two weeks, and on the day of my return I sat down all road-lagged (think jet-lagged, only slower) and watched FINDING NEMO with my two girlies, which they had seen and I had not.

And there I am in the last five minutes of the film, clutching them to me and laughing, WHILE CRYING, with them asking me what's so funny/wrong with me.

Fuck Disney. Fuck Pixar.


Fuck, I'm such a pussy.

That's why I keep getting spammed by "Crack Ho's Is Us" online magazine!!

Pussied out big-time today. The wife and I spent the day watching The Big Lebowski and wrapping the kid's presents for Christmas. I get to play Santa Clause nowadays... meaning that I'm in charge of what Santa brings, and how it's presented.

I had so much fun picking one big present to wrap with the uber-special bright red paper and prepping the box with all the stocking stuffers for the magic night, that now I cannot sleep to save my life! I've got butterflies in my gut, I'm so anxious to get a load of the kid's reactions when they wander out of their rooms on Christmas Day!

Just yesterday I took my daughter to the dollar store to pick out gifts for all her friends and cousins, and then we stayed up late and wrapped them all. She even wrote everyone's name on the tag (she's four, so I wrote the name on scrap paper and she copied the letters willy-nilly all over the tag). She has taken me aside and told me how much fun she had with me about sixteen times today. Complete with hugs and kisses and requests to do it again tomorrow.

Good God. I haven't been this excited about Christmas since I was knee-high to a duck.

Again, here's grendel with the fucked up-edness:

So now we're in Boise, as was stated a few posts up from here, and we're getting all settled in, and then NEW people come to the house we rented and say that they live there now, and that we must leave. Not their fault. Landlady bitch of evil's fault and she did it on purpose (not against US per se, but double-rented the house because she wanted a quick $1500 before Christmas).

Police arrive. Landlady arrives. She shows our lease, shows the NEW people's lease, explains how ours is invalid due to this point and that (all points, I might add, were places where the lease was made invalid by HER violating it, not US) and how we now have to be escorted off the property. It is, I might add, Dec. 17 at this point in my little tale.

Police call supervisors, supervisors call legal folk, police tell us we have to leave, but are kind enough to tell us to sue the shit out of her and also to referee us moving all our stuff into the garage so it doesn't get mixed with new people's stuff. Needless to say, new people are not thrilled with landlady either....hmmm....no wonder such a beautiful 5 bedroom place was so goddamn cheap...

In any case, here we are on the week before Christmas trying to find a house (landlady meanwhile holding Dec. and Jan. rent, and $900 security deposit, all told about $2800, saying with some surprise when we called her "Oh, you don't get that BACK!" She will be a fun one to destroy...heh...HotPants already left several X-Mas and New Years messages on her answering machine, in calm soothing mommy-voice, telling this lady's middle school kids about their black-hearted mother), living in a hotel (god bless AmeriSuites) with six of us and a cat (I don't think they knew about the cat)...

And my kids thanked me for the special adventure that Daddy was taking them on before Christmas.

See, I told the kids it had to snow before Christmas could come. It didn't snow on Christmas while we were in the hotel. It didn't snow the day after.

We got a place. That night, it snowed fucking BALLS.

Then the Uhaul breaks down. (For those of you who would like a copy of the letter I sent to Uhaul corporate today via fax, their website, and their webmaster, feel free to PM me)

We had Christmas last night, in our new house which is nicer, cheaper, and in prime central location from which to fuck those who have sought to welcome us to this nice little town in such a vicious and evil manner.

And my kids were THRILLED. THRILLED with absolutely ALL of it.

I am so undeserving of their worship, and sometimes its almost enough to break my damn heart.

But isn't it weird? They're what keep it from breaking all the time anyway.

I'll figure it out someday. Or at least that's what my wife tells me.