Tidy Husband

Eligible for the seniors discount and the Happy Meal deal at the same time.

  1. Back to School

    At bedtime she told me she’s so tired at the end of the day she just wants to lay her head down on her desk and sleep, she’s so tired.

    We know the feeling. The looooong days of winter sitting in class wishing you were anywhere else.

    a yellow school bus driving down a snow covered street

    Photo by Douglas Schneiders on Unsplash

    She told this to me as I finally got her to bed.

    Our night was fantastic. The morning was a little slow going, but it’s Thursday and all the learning takes a lot out of one and we made it on the bus and off the bus so that’s all that counted.

    When she got home we played with Play-Doh and we had really great time for a good hour I would guess and in between making silly things and laughing she devoured grapes and she sang and was overall just a happy child.

    Photo by Douglas Schneiders on Unsplash

    After dinner we had a bit of push back about the bath, so I explained that if she has a bath tonight she does not have to have a bath tomorrow and she can play on her devices instead.

    She told me that she didn’t want to, so I told her no devices until after bath and went downstairs to clean up.

    The next thing you know, I hear the bathtub running and she’s in there singing her little heart out. I guess she thought about it, and realized I had the better idea.

    Then, homework. We have to create words and write them down on post-it notes and then I have to hide them and she has to find them in the dark with a flashlight. It makes learning fun I guess.

    Oh, I was surfing eBay and she saw a minecraft game pop up somehow. I had a few dollars in my account so I searched and found one used. I can’t describe how excited she is that there’s a minecraft game coming for her in a few days.

    person holding black and orange nintendo switch

    Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

    She told me all about all the worlds she’s going to create with this game. I have no idea what she’s talking about as I’m not a gamer but I guess I am going to learn how to play sooner than later.

    I can’t believe we’re old enough for minecraft - but here we are. Time flies when you’re gaming and not in school.

    Tired of the winter months,

    TH and Co.

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  2. The Four O'Clock Flu

    “Hey Dad”, she proclaimed at the side of my bed.

    white paper boat on yellow surface

    Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash

    I opened one eye to check the time: 7:22. Not too bad, we have an hour until the school bus.

    “Yes?” I asked.

    “I’m all sniffly”, she told me. “Sniffly?”, I asked. “Yeah, sniffly”, she replied.

    That conversation didn’t really clear things up at all, but after some further investigation it seems the child has a bit of a cold and the sniffles.

    She went downstairs all bundled up in her fuzzy knee-high socks and matching pink robe and flopped under a blanket on the sofa, while I made coffee and figured out what day it was.

    Usually when she does this she’s all chatter and energy after a good night’s sleep and this morning she looked wee bit pale and was pretty quiet so I asked if she was sick.

    “I’m medium” she told me.

    That didn’t help with the diagnosis much. Then she told me that groundhogs make their own bathrooms underground. I went to get the thermometer to make sure she didn’t have a fever.

    No fever. But she just didn’t have any energy to get off the couch so BW called it. She’s staying home.

    Great.

    I will not tell you how much screen time she had. It was a lot and let’s leave it at that.

    Calling out sick is a tricky thing - young or old. Because it’s hard to know just how sick we’re talking about when it comes to having a common cold in February which is pretty…common.

    Today we erred on the side of caution because the teacher doesn’t need a snot nosed kid in her class all day and if it did go sideways, we have to go pick her up and bring her home and that’s almost a bigger pain than just keeping her at home.

    Later tonight she was asking for a tissue and she asked where and what are boogers?

    I’m not a doctor and I may have the details wrong but I explained the bloggers are dirt that your body doesn’t want to go into your lungs and your nose stops it from going that far. 1

    She looked up at me with a well-used tissue in her hand and you could see the light bulb in her head light up - and then she says to me:

    “So thats why we shouldn’t eat our boogers - they are dirt!”

    “Exactly!”, I replied.

    Now, go to bed. Tomorrow is a school day for sure.

    TH and Co.

    1. I tried. ↩

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  3. Boys are Trouble

    I’m so glad we have the child.

    Spider-Man hanging action figure

    Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash

    For obvious reasons - she’s ours, she’s smart and funny and beautiful and….you get the idea. We love her.

    I’m also so, so glad that she’s not a boy.

    Here’s the scene:

    She came home from school happy as a lark and grabbed her Tonie box and went downstairs to the family room to continue playing quietly by herself,. This worked out well as I had some stuff I wanted to try and get done on the computer this afternoon before dinner, so I was really glad when she came home and started to entertain herself.

    Then, the doorbell rang.

    When was the last time your doorbell rang? Ya, us too. Maybe the UPS guy would knock on the door as he dropped off a box but that’s about it.

    I open the door and it’s her friend “Carson”. (not his real name, obvs)

    As soon as that little boy crosses the threshold it’s pandemonium. The dog thinks this kid is the cat’s pajamas and is following him around wanting love all the time as Carson showed up just to pet the dog.

    Instead of quiet, I have a six-year-old bundle of energy in the front hall wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey hat, Spider-man gloves and winter boots and coat.

    In seconds, there’s a pile of slush and winter wear dumped on the floor and 2 children so excited to see each other because it’s winter and nobody plays outside any more so they are just thrilled to be in each other’s company

    They go downstairs and within seconds are creating trouble. I don’t know how, but they found the perfume that the child has (and BW won’t let me toss out) and in seconds flat they much sprayed everything in sight.

    The dog smells much better now.

    I find and confiscate the perfume and tell them no more of that, and warn them they only have 20 minutes and then Carson has to go home.

    In the 20 minutes they have left Carson wants to play with every toy the child has and then he asks to take them home and the child says “Sure”. I pipe in and say that all the toys are staying and they can play with them here but they are not going to Carson’s house. Carson has a lot of stuff of his own, trust me.

    Then, boys being boys - he grabs her remote control car and places it right at the top of the stairs and launches it down as fast as he can. This is something that the child would never do because you know, you could break the car, but I guess this isn’t a worldview that Carson has - He’s more of a YOLO type.

    She of course is in love with all this while..well, let’s just say I was quite enjoying the Carson-free afternoon where she was quietly singing to her Play-Doh downstairs.

    Finally, It’s 5:00 pm and Carson’s over-sized Spider-Man watch chirps that’s it’s time to go home. I get him into his coat and we find his gloves and hat and I zip him up and send him on his way home.

    Peace and quiet enter the house again.

    At bedtime the child tells me that she wants to marry Carson.

    Sigh. They always fall for the wild ones.

    Always.

    At least it smells nice here now.

    TH and Co.

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  4. Play Doh Day

    We thought we were past the age of play-doh.

    play dough

    Photo by Julietta Watson on Unsplash

    But then the other day when the child found all that stuff behind the bookshelves, one of the things that she found was a small baggie of kinetic sand that must have fallen behind.

    You would think that she had won the lottery. “Ooooooh, Kinetic Sand”, she squealed when she saw it and it was the toy of the hour for a few hours the other day. I think it still is because I still find little sand droppings here and there.

    After our toy box cleaned out and our wall unit clean out we realized we had a lot of Play-Doh toys but no actual Play-Doh.

    Today, the Amazon delivery associate fixed our Play-Doh-less existence with a fresh box - full of the stuff:

    there is nothing like fresh play-doh.

    The possibilities of a fresh box of Play-Doh are many if you’re a skilled sculptor and actually create anything with this stuff - but here we’re just trying not to get the colors mixed up on the first day too much.

    She was in love with the idea and I set up a little Play-Doh station for her to practice her craft with small table and chair. She then needed some entertainment while she was sculpting and so she brought down her Tonie box and a few Tonies so she could listen while she worked.

    Every now and then she would stop and yell up the top of the stairs a “fun fact” about Egypt (the Tonie she was listening to) or Penguins.

    “DAD! Did you know that JUST ONE of the pyramid blocks weighed 15,000 tonnes?”, she would ask with her eyes wide open like 2 little pizzas.

    And, speaking of pizza, I made one:

    The best thing about the Play-Doh delivery is that it bought me time to do other stuff tonight while she happily worked at her “art desk” learning all about Egypt. It’s not all we did tonight and we played with her remote control car after dinner - but it felt like she was a bit more grown up and didn’t have to be entertained all the time.

    And, as a bonus - bedtime was a breeze tonight.

    Keep sculpting,

    TH and Co.

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  5. It's Not FAIR!

    At the top of the stairs.

    All protests must be at the top of the stairs in our house.

    people walking on street during night time

    Photo by Manson Yim on Unsplash

    Tonight, after dinner, she decided to go back upstairs and watch more YouTube Kids. 1

    Okay, whatever - it was early and we were still cleaning up from dinner so the fact that she was out of our hair was actually a good thing. But then she got bored.

    Her boredom and my plans for her to go have a bath met at the top of the stairs and did not mesh at all.

    She wanted to play her Nintendo.

    I wanted her to go have a bath because, it’s time. It’s a school night.

    I don’t have to tell you that this did not go over well, because, well - it didn’t

    Cue the screaming and the pleading: “Just five minutes”, she pleads.

    “No minutes” I tell her.

    “Pleeeeeeeeassee” she whined at me - as this would help her cause any.

    Once again, NO. Go have a bath.

    The end.

    “It’s NOT FAIR”!! she protested. She then went on to tell me why she’s all of a sudden not tired and she doesn’t need a bath because she had one last night. I told her that last night didn’t really count because there was not a whole lot of effort with the soap and that tonight you will actually use soap - besides, she was in the pool earlier and..oh nevermind for god’s sake!

    JUST GO GET IN THE TUB!!

    Good lord.

    By this time the mood has been set for the bath and the hair washing and the bathing went as expected.

    I’m trying to get her to be a little more independent and have her stop thinking I am her personal valet, so I set a timer and told her she has 8 minutes to get out of the tub and dressed. If the alarm goes off and you’re not dressed, I told her - no snack tonight - just straight to bed.

    Of course, she farted around the bathroom until the last 15 seconds and out she comes in a towel and beep beep beep! - there’s the alarm.

    She looked at me - thought about where she was, what she was doing vs what she was supposed to be doing and then burst into tears while dripping all over my clean floor.

    She realized she had made a mistake in that moment. I keep telling her that if she listens to Dad that good things happen, but I guess sometimes she just doesn’t get it.

    “IT’s NOT FAIR” she exclaimed again. This is the 2nd time tonight with the fair thing.

    Like all good parents do, I let her sweat it out for a minute and then told her if she put her PJ’s on and stopped the screaming that we could still go down and have a snack before bed.

    Around here we like snacks a lot more than screaming so this was an easy deal to make.

    One might even call it a FAIR DEAL.

    Keep negotiating,

    TH and Co.

    1. once again, parent of the year. ↩

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