Tidy Husband

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

  1. Balance Past Due

    A story about giving a lot of credit.

    Before the school year started I topped up the child’s app so she can have ice cream on Fridays at $1 each.

    I figured $20.00 would last us until Christmas

    Yeahh…No.

    It did not.

    Let me explain. One of the things we learned when she started school was that we needed to add money to her account for Friday Ice Cream Day.

    Great, no problem. If she makes it through the week she gets a treat.

    This year she’s a little older, smarter, and only just a few weeks into the school year I get a notification that her balance is low.

    Wait. What?!!

    How is this possible?

    As concerned parents do - we asked her. We told her she wasn’t in trouble, and she told us that she was getting a snack or treat at lunch occasionally.

    “How often is occasionally?” I asked.

    “You know, a few times” she told me. “I get a bag of chips or something”

    Oh? Really?

    Let’s look at the app.

    As you see on the above receipt that fruit roll-ups are popular for the first grade crowd this year. At least they are for ours.

    We told her she can’t be having a fruit roll up every day. It’s not the money, it’s for her teeth as those things are sugar advertised as fruit.

    We have fruit at home. As I write this, the choices are bananas, apples, oranges and some grapes. She also gets sent with a snack of applesauce daily so she’s far from starving.

    Again, we told her that she’s not in trouble, but she can’t have sugary snacks every day because of her teeth. We have had no cavities to date and we want to keep it that way.

    We did tell her we can make Wednesday snack day and she can get any snack from the cafeteria she wants and charge it to the account on Wednesdays. I figure that’s fair and Wednesday is a good day to look forward to and make the rest of the week a little smoother and sweeter.

    Let this be a lesson to all adults: Don’t give your child a credit card.

    It’s never a sweet ending.

    Keep charging on,

    TH and Co.

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  2. The Authorator

    A story about telling stories.

    So.

    As per usual and especially on Friday nights a proper bedtime is just an idea in my head and not the child’s idea at all.

    What’s her idea? Writing Poetry. Because that’s what everybody does after a long week of education. Not just any poetry but more of a story -

    a poestory? storetry? You can choose.

    But don’t call her just an author. An author is someone who writes. An Illustrator is somebody who illustrates the books.

    What do you get if you end up doing both jobs? You are called an Authorator.

    No, you haven’t been drinking - this reads:

    I see a cat
    It is blue and black
    I see a bird
    It is pink

    I see it’s 10pm and she’s still awake authorating instead of sleeping so I’m going to say goodnight here and try and get somebody to bed

    Keep Telling Stories,

    TH and Co.

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  3. Beans. The Musical Fruit

    Not music to my ears, that’s for sure.

    You should have seen her face when she realized what was for dinner.

    It was NOT what she imagined it was when she saw it. Her face turned to unhappy with the dinner choice in 0-60 seconds.

    You would think we were feeding her slop.

    I highly recommend this book. It might be the best one she has.

    It was not slop.

    It was a Burrito. Burritos have beans. and rice and cheese and this one had pork. It was a great choice for a cool fall night.

    The ingredients were from a Blue Apron meal that I assembled and I have to admit that it did look a little beige and not anything like the picture because we kept the colorful and spicy peppers out of it in the small chance that she would want to eat it.

    She did not want to eat it.

    She did not want to look at it.

    She did not want to try it.

    She did not want the bean Burrito

    She let us know with tears and drama. Lots of drama.

    But we’re not a restaurant and everyday can’t be Sunday. Today happens to be a beige Thursday with bean burritos where dad makes dinner.

    We tried all the usual parenting tricks:

    1. Lie - they’re not beans, they are very small hot dogs
    2. Threaten: no dinner, no dessert.
    3. Bargain. Fine, eat the burrito part then.

    Number 3 kind of worked but we will not be getting the Nobel prize for parenting any time soon with this technique.

    What worked for the most part - like all things - was time. In time she settled down and with a lot of drama she managed to get a few of those “yukky, horrible” beans in her tummy to satisfy the parents and hopefully her hunger.

    She was not happy with the dinner choice tonight that is for sure.

    As she finally met our requirements for eating dinner she said to us:

    “Life is not easy.”

    No kidding. Try writing a daily newsletter about your kid that acts like a simple white bean is the monster from the movie Aliens.

    You’ve got it easy kid but hang in there - Tomorrow night is Pizza night!

    Keeping it Musical,

    TH and Co.

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  4. The Statue of Liberty

    When you open the door you never know what you’re going to get.

    I can’t understand the child.

    By now she should be exhausted because it’s day 3 of late nights despite our best efforts to get her to bed in a timely manner.

    It was apprehension when I asked BW how the morning went and it was surprise when she told me all went well.

    Huh. Go figure.

    But…there’s always the end of the day.

    Nope.

    I got greeted with the Statue of Liberty:

    “Dad!. I’ll go stand on my bed and you come find me and I’ll be the statue of Liberty”

    Sure, I told her.

    I opened the door to the sight you see in the photos above.

    Keep standing tall,

    TH and Co.

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  5. The Mess

    A story about a very small victory in the fight against messy bedrooms.

    Kids are Messy.

    Photo by Ricardo Viana on Unsplash

    I know this does not come as a shock to any parent but every now and then I walk by her room and go OH MY GOD where have I failed as a parent?

    I have 2 minds about clean rooms.

    1. It’s her space and she can keep it as she likes.
    2. NO. Because I said so

    Today when she got off the bus from school the first words out of her mouth were “play with me”.

    Sure, I said.

    “We are going to play clean up your room. Don’t worry I will help you”

    This wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be because we made a game out of it. At one point she had me toss some crap into a bag and then later when nobody was looking I realized that it was just old crayons and crap so I just tossed the whole thing.

    There, problem solved.

    The real problem was the glue. Somehow she decided that mixing water and white glue and few glue sticks would be a great way of attaching items and it seems she is correct, as there is a wooden hamburger bun from a playset that is currently glued tight to the top of her dresser.

    But in the end the glue came to save us because her idea of cleaning was to peel the ‘skin’ off the desk and that was fun for a bit.

    The final chapter in our cleanup besides tossing stuff where it was supposed to go was to peel the dozen or so stickers she stuck onto the floor. I made her a deal: If she peeled off the stickers she could watch her tablet for an hour because mommy’s not here and we break all the rules.

    Then Mommy came home early for from work and we got busted anyway.

    But at least her bedroom is a bit cleaner than it was when today started, so I am calling that a win.

    Keep cleaning,

    TH and Co.

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