This. Again.

Even if you know bad news is coming, when it is about your children, it slams your gut like a Mike Tyson uppercut.

We knew going into yesterday’s six-month checkup it was likely doctors would determine Tyson needed another open-heart surgery. Still, hearing the words made me instantly sick to my stomach.

And, to make it worse, the doctor stressed that even with successful surgery, Tyson might have to live the rest of his life with a pacemaker.

I’m angry at the world today.

My precious 2 ½-year-old son, a shy, sweet boy who enjoys counting and weekend sleepovers in his sister’s room, doesn’t deserve the havoc wreaked on his life by the randomness of a congenital heart defect.

I should count my blessings. I have a wonderful wife and two smart, adorable children. I could not have asked for a better mate and mother. My daughter is a spitfire of a 4-year-old, a smart and sassy diva always searching for an audience for her latest song, story or other imaginative theater. My son is a reserved, introspective child who can play by himself for hours, content in solving a puzzle or organizing and counting his toys.

My wife and I both have good, fairly secure jobs. Six months ago, we bought our dream home.

I came to this wonderful life late, and it is truly more than I deserve given my youthful transgressions.

I also know there are millions of parents around the world, and many we personally know, who would rip out their own heart if it gave their child a shot at an operation that would allow them to live a “normal” life.  We are reminded of this every time we visit Children’s Hospital.

I know I should be grateful. But dammit, I am angry.

I don’t want my son on that operating table again.

I don’t want his life hanging in the balance again.

We have been through this before. For those who don’t know, my son was born with Double Outlet, Right Ventricle. To simplify, the anatomy of his heart wasn’t right. He had to be delivered at a hospital close to Children’s Hospital – with a team of emergency medical personnel on hand – so he could quickly be whisked away to the hospital’s cardiac unit.

He spent a few weeks there and eventually went home to get stronger, so he could prepare for his operation. We fed him through a tube that went into his nose. Slated to undergo a corrective surgery at six months, he couldn’t make it that long. He was two months old when they first opened up his tiny chest.

  

He survived.

We continued to feed him through a tube. Eventually, he gained enough weight to make it onto the growth chart. The tube came out. He continues to eat pretty well. At last measure, he was in the fourth percentile for weight! We take all the milestones we can get.

  

Other than the jagged scar on his chest, you would never know he has issues. He plays like any other 2 year old. He is small for his age. His speech is a little behind. But honestly, you would never know.

He has come a long way. He is a fighter.

For the rest of his life, he will have regular cardiac checkups. At his checkup last May, they told us that the natural hole in his heart – something they would normally want to close, but in his case they used to route blood flow in the initial repair of his heart – was closing on its own. Eventually, they said, he would probably need another operation. But it is risky, so let’s wait as long as we can.
 

That wait lasted six months. He will have the surgery after the holidays.

The added news is that the repair site is near the natural electrical pathways of the heart. There is a chance that the “fix” will screw with the pathways. If so, he will wear a pacemaker the rest of his life. They will implant it near the bottom of his rib cage and, as he grows, move it to his chest.

My wife asked the doctor how that would impact his life.

No contact sports. Other inconveniences. But a chance at a full life.

It just adds to the list of our worries, which total three big ones right now:

• His survival.
• The need for a pacemaker.
• The chance that these repair sites continue to close and he has to go through this every couple of years.
•  

Our one saving grace: Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. The third best children’s hospital in the nation.
 

He will have the same surgeon as last time. The gentle giant, Roosevelt Bryant III. He has already saved his life once. I know he’ll want to finish the job.

Probably the hardest thing I have ever done in my life was passing my little two-month old boy off for surgery two years ago, not knowing if I would get him back.

Now I have to do it again.

We adults know life knocks you on your ass every now and then. It is a shame my son has to learn it so often at such a young age.

My wife bought Tyson a t-shirt that says “Some Day, I Will Move Mountains.”

It is my favorite shirt.

I hope he gets the chance.

Daddy Humbug!

Call me Grinch.

I’m not a holiday guy. Never have been.

If not for my wife, my kids would have a far different holiday experience, one that resembled Whoville before the Grinch grew his heart.

As they get older, Sydney and Tyson will no doubt add to their nightly prayers, “Thank you God for sending us a mommy who gets excited about holidays.”

I don’t know when or where my ambivalence for holidays started. Sometime after I graduated college, I decided wrapping gifts was a waste of both time and money. Why spend so much effort for something that will be torn away in seconds?

So every year, I showed up at mom’s house with a garbage bag filled with toys and just handed them one by one to my mom, siblings and nephews.

“Merry Christmas! God bless us every one!”

It is not that I hate holidays. Well, maybe Halloween. Who likes dressing up in a costume and spending all night barely able to move?

As I grew older, I found ways to be comfortable during Halloween. Throw on a University of Cincinnati sweatshirt and a pair of shorts and carry around a basketball and pair of handcuffs – these were the Huggins years – and you are a UC Bearcats basketball player.

So I now have a rule on Halloween. If I am going to wear a costume, it actually has to be more comfortable than if I were not wearing a costume. It is a hard goal to meet, but as long as there are shorts and sweatpants, it is a possibility.

I do like Thanksgiving. You get to eat a lot and watch football. That is like any fall Saturday or Sunday for me.

But the rest – ambivalence. New Year’s Eve hasn’t been fun since I was 30 and Dick Clark rocked like a 65-year-old. Now, I rarely make it to the ball drop.

Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day – nice to have a day off work.

Christmas? Seems like a lot of work.

But now I have kids. And they want – no, they deserve – a nice Christmas.

That’s where mom comes in.

Since dad can’t seem to get his act together, she goes into high gear. First, there is the Elf on the Shelf. I never heard of this until a couple of years ago. It is a jolly way of scaring your kids into behaving.

When we were young, mom or dad used to say, “You better behave. Santa is watching.” Now, Santa has his own little spy who lives in your house the whole month of December and flies back to the north pole each night to report on the behavior of the household children.

Has anyone over 40 ever heard of this? I swear there was no Elf on the Shelf when we were kids. I think it has to do with the never-ending commercialization of Christmas. Sell an elf and the book about the elf.  Pretty soon, there will be reason for him to make his arrival around Labor Day as the never-ending Christmas season continues to bleed earlier and earlier on the calendar.

My dental hygienist said to me the other day, while not-so-carefully rooting through my mouth with a very sharp tool, “I’m thinking about doing the Elf on the Shelf this year. But it seems like a lot of work.” I almost choked to death on my own gum blood trying to gag out an emphatic “It is!”

Every night, my wife has to move that elf to a new place so the kids can find it again the next morning. Not a real difficult task, but try to remember to do anything every night. More than once, she has nervously spelled a “H-I-D-E E-L-F” to me as we are getting the children ready for pre-school in the morning, sending me scrambling down the stairs.

But the kids love it. They are like their mother.  They love everything about Christmas.

She has already hosted a Christmas cookie trading party. She has the house decorated in red and green. Every bedtime story in December must be a Christmas book.

Stockings are hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that lazy hubby will get off his derriere.

And the centerpiece of our holiday? The family Christmas tree.

I have managed to cut corners on the tree. We decided to start out with a fake one right from the get-go, so they would never know the difference.

All their life, they are going to have an artificial tree. Yes, this means they will never know the joy of trampling through the snow, searching the woods for the perfect evergreen, methodically checking for a bird’s nest – they’re good luck! – and measuring for a height that will fill the room without hitting the ceiling. (Or going to Home Depot, paying $20 and dragging a bundled, bedraggled tree to the back of the SUV).

I can live with that.

Our artificial tree is beautiful, a 7 ½ foot Martha Stewart given to me by a friend that would retail for about $300 at a store. The kids love it. The wife loves decorating it. I love not having to do anything. A win, win, win.

They also love Christmas lights. The chirping at dad has begun. “The neighbors have pretty lights, why can’t we?” Or the wife: “I don’t like colored lights, but it would be nice to have white ones.”

I try to drown it out. While they merrily think of the joy Christmas lights would bring, I picture myself falling off a ladder, ala Chevy Chase.

My wife finally conceded the other day, telling the children “the only way we are going to have lights is if mommy hangs them.”

Sydney and Tyson both turned to stare at me like I was the Grinch.

Straight Out of TV Hell

One of the rare times they are not pestering mom and dad.

Have you ever tried to watch a movie with a 4 year old and 2 year old in the same house?

Check that. Have you ever tried to watch even a half-hour television show with the children bouncing around the house?

Thank God for DVR. If I couldn’t record and then stop and start a television show a million times, I don’t know if I would ever watch anything from beginning to end. I’d forever be trapped in a loop of NCIS crimes that occur but never get solved.

When I first discovered DVR, I thought its main use would be to prevent fights between my wife and I. Suddenly, I had this tremendous device that allowed me to stop whatever I was watching and look intent and concerned while my wife babbled on about her day. When she was done, I picked right back up where I left off. Genius!

But now that I have kids, the DVR experience has reached a whole new level. With approximately 36 interruptions every time my wife and I sit down to watch a show, the DVR is the only thing that allows me to stay up on the disturbingly new macabre cases Criminal Minds stars must solve.

As soon as we sit in front of the TV, chaos ensues. This is when the kids choose to fight. Or cry. Or need something. Or ask questions.  

It is “Mommy, can I have a drink?” or “Daddy, listen to this new song I made up,” every five minutes. Or, like clockwork, the dreaded, “Daddd--yyyy, coommmeee wipe me.”

Yes, she does it in a sing-song way.

Last night, in the middle of a Criminal Minds playback, Tyson, who isn’t potty trained and shows no interest, asked if he could pee on the potty. This necessitated in a 15-minute break from the show to watch Tyson NOT pee because he really never intended to. It was all part of the master plan the kids have to ensure mommy and daddy don’t stay current on The Middle and The Goldbergs.

Mind you, we actually only try to watch a show three or four times a week. Ninety percent of the time, both televisions we have downstairs are turned to Team Umizoomi or Little Charmers or some kid’s movie on Apple TV while we do parent things.

I get home about 5:30-6 p.m. Bed time for the kids is, hopefully, 9. I’m usually exhausted and ready to go down at 10. In between, dinner, baths, bedtimes stories, packing backpacks for the next day, etc. TV usually has to wait until the weekends or that rare weeknight when it all comes together just right.  

I currently have about 37 hours of taped shows on my DVR. They hang over my head like a guillotine. Will I max out without watching them and have to start erasing for new tapings?


Happened a lot on Time Warner. But Direct TV gives me more storage. Crossing my fingers.

My brother recently gave us some black-market gadget that allows me to watch pretty much every movie ever made. I can get movies that are in the theater right now! They may have Chinese subtitles or the sound may be a half-second off from the visual, but I get to watch Straight Out of Compton without going straight out of my house.


That is a nice treat for a couple who has not gone to a movie theater since Sydney emerged from Brooke’s birth canal four years ago.

How many shows have I watched? Well, I got half way through Black Mass. Did the FBI ever catch that Whitey Bulger guy?

And in Straight Out of Compton, I got to the point where NWA hit the airwaves with Fuck The Police.


That can’t go well for them.

That’s it. Two half movies. Not 2 and a half movies. Two HALF movies.

My wife, on a whim, picked up a RedBox movie while at the grocery the other day. We literally had to order our two children into the other room every five minutes in an attempt to get through it. We got about three-quarters of the way through and the DVD had a glitch, not allowing us to go further.

DAMN YOU, REDBOX!

That makes three movies in the past month where we have no endings.

When we moved into the new house, I signed up for Direct TV. They gave me a package with free HBO and Cinemax for three months. When that was up, I called to cancel. The customer service guy offered to increase my access to movie channels for the same price.

I laughed. More movies I can’t watch? Yeah, I’ll pass buddy.

At some point, these kids are going to be more independent and willing to play on their own. At least Tyson will. Sydney seems to need an audience for everything.

If they ever reach that point, I plan on catching up on a decade’s worth of movies and television.

Until then, if you see me, try not to dish out any spoilers on The Good Wife.

First Day of School Opens Up New Fears

A child’s first-ever day of school is difficult. This is a big, unknown world to them and this life transition can be overwhelming.


The car ride feels like a trip to a funeral.


The stomach is tied in knots and the walk to the schoolhouse door is so nerve racking there is legitimate fear the morning breakfast might make an unwanted reappearance on the sidewalk.


The lump in the throat makes it nearly impossible to talk. And tears. No matter how strong, the eyes get misty.


My first day of preschool did not go well.


Wait, you thought I was talking about Sydney? That girl couldn’t wait for this big transition. Dad, however, was not as excited about this HUGE step.


My big hope -- one that is shared by all parents -- is that my child be liked and have a positive experience in school.  The alternative would rip out my heart.


So, as I approach the door every morning when I drop her off for preschool, I scan the faces of children to first see if there is anyone her age and then if there is anyone whom she already calls a “friend.” After I sign her in, I linger, hoping to see someone run up to her and say hi, or grab her hand and ask her to come play.


Two weeks in and Sydney still enjoys going, so I think she is making headway. She’s a social butterfly who is fearless when it comes to introducing herself, talking to others or even joining into play that is already taking place. She is much better than I am when it comes to working the crowd.


Still, I have seen her attempts to play with older children met with stares and silence. I cried silently inside.


This parenting thing makes you soft.


I owe a former Cincinnati Enquirer editor a humble apology. She once asked me to do a story on school bullying. I brushed it off, thinking it was silly. I thought she was only suggesting it because her kid was a “nerd” and getting picked on. This was before the days of the internet and social media and some of the extreme tragedies we have seen occur because of bullying.


I remember the horseplay we engaged in when I was a kid. I gave some and I took some. I don’t know that it was “bullying,” but I do remember some kids got a lot more than others. We picked on one boy so much that, when he shot and killed his grandfather years later, I actually wondered if we weren’t all somehow culpable.


I don’t want my kids to bully or be bullied. I want them to be the one who befriends those who are being picked on. In this day and age, that simple act of kindness might save your life if that kid one day decides to bring a gun to school.


To say I am worried about bullying already is a little extreme. I’m mainly concerned about acceptance. I don’t need Sydney to have 100 friends, but I really need her to have a couple. I need to feel secure that she is happy and that going to school is positive and something she enjoys. I need to know her feelings aren’t being trampled on every day.


Why? I can’t explain it. I don’t even have those needs for myself. I already have a healthy dose of self-confidence and a probably way-too-big ego, so when I sense someone’s distaste for me or perceive talking behind my back, I brush it off and move on.


But I need more for my daughter. And, in time, my son.


We all want this for our children, right? It is on the list of “big wishes” for a parent, right behind health and safety. We want them to feel happy, loved and accepted.


I even thought to myself the other day that if I could make a deal with the devil, I’d cut off one of my hands to ensure she was always well liked, surrounded by friends and blissfully dancing through life, unbothered by cold stares and silent replies.


That is what we parents do. We worry. We bargain. We hope for the best.


So every morning, after I have signed her in, said my good bye and closed the schoolhouse door, I always take one last look through the window.


I look for the hint of a smile.


I hope for a little spring in her step.


I scan furtively for another child to come racing out of the crowd to greet my daughter.


A friend. That’s all I really want to see. A friend.  

Things Dad Says....Over and Over and Over

I’m as popular with my kids as Ariana Grande at a bicentennial celebration. 

Why? Because I say the word “no” one million times a week. 

“No” is programmed into a parent’s DNA. It might not be the first word children say when they begin talking, but I have to believe it is the first word they understand.

Baby begins to cry? “Shh. Shh. No, no little one.” Baby grabs something that can kill them? “No!” Baby latches on to breast with the suction strength of an industrial Hoover? “Nooo!” Baby experiences explosive ass disorder? “Oh “Nnnoooo!!!!” 

  

It doesn’t stop at “no.” I am a human “repeat” button. In fact, I wish I had a string attached to my chest that I could pull every time I needed to utter one of my frequent sayings:

“Why are you being so loud? Use your inside voice.”

“Stop hurting your brother!”

“That is NOT how we act.”

“Did you wipe?”

You say it over and over and hope it sinks in. Usually, it does not.

Tyson has a new thing. He has this puzzle-like book, with the puzzle pieces being farm animals.  He’ll pick up the piece and ask, in his broken-English, barely-above-a-whisper baby gibberish, “Where does the cow go?” He wants you to repeat it to him – “Where does the cow go?” Then he takes it to the book and puts it in its place and shows you where it goes. Then he repeats the same thing with the horse and the pig and so on, and so on.

So I have said “Where does the cow go?” “Where does the horse go?” “Where does the rooster go?” “Where does the pig go?” a million times each in the past couple of weeks.

Forget reading a book. Forget watching a movie. (Why the hell do I pay for Direct TV?) I spend too much time pretending like I don’t know the cow goes into the freaking cow slot on the puzzle!

It got me thinking about all the other things I say over and over in the quest to keep my children on the straight and narrow – or simply from killing themselves. I’m sure my “sayings” are creating more bad blood with my kids than you might find at a Taylor Swift concert, but I am going to keep doing it.

Because my goal is to keep them ALIVE. And out of jail.
 

In that order.

Here are some of my most popular hits:

Stop hurting your brother!: My daughter thinks it is funny to squeeze her brother… really hard. Or to press down on his head…really hard. Or to lay on him in a way that will certainly suffocate him in about two and a half minutes. I don’t find it as funny, and neither does he.

Use your words.: I learned this from my wife. Apparently, this is something teachers use with young kids. I had never heard it in the 35 years before I met her, but now I use it several times a day.

  

My daughter has a tremendous vocabulary and is a verbal butterfly, flitting from topic to topic with ease. Yet, at times, she thinks it is ok to communicate with the world in guttural sounds. Usually this happens when she is trying to fill quiet periods. She doesn’t like quiet. So, I spend a lot of time telling her to use her words or not say anything at all. She usually chooses to do neither.

Don’t put that in your mouth!: I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to keep my kids from choking to death. They have no qualms about putting anything into their mouth. Caps. Rocks. Coins. Whole cupcakes. My wife once ate a dog turd – mistaking it for a tootsie roll – when she was a kid, so they clearly take after her.

     

You are fine.: My kids are as graceful as a hippopotamus on ice. They fall and start crying as often as one of those Real Housewives tries to attack a co-star. What is a daddy to do? I’m not raising any wimps. “You are fine.”

It will work until a bone is broken.

That is NOT how we act!: This almost exclusively applies to Sydney. With Tyson, I just say “no.” He is not old enough to understand the whole idea behind good and bad behavior. Sydney is. But understanding and obeying are two different things. No, it is not appropriate to color in daddy’s books. Or on the walls. No, you can’t soak the dog with that water gun. No, I would rather you didn’t scream and cry and throw a kicking tantrum while we are shopping at Krogers. Or while we are walking from the car to the house and our neighbors are all out in their yards doing nice, civil family things.

Did you wipe?: Self-explanatory.

Stay away from the edge of the pool!: I know this is a first-world problem, but I swear kids have no sense of how close death is. It is always right around the corner, people! Neither of my kids can swim. That doesn’t keep them from dancing around the edge like Rumer Willis.

They also will do this with two 100-pound dogs frolicking in their direction, dogs whom I happen to know would have no issue knocking a toddler into the water if said toddler were between them and 1) any morsel of food, 2) a nice pat on the head from their owner, 3) any critter that dared enter our back yard or 4) an ominous leaf floating in the pool that is no doubt a threat to said 100-pound dogs.

Don’t interrupt when I am talking to other adults.: Sydney commands attention 24-7. If you have a friend over and feel like having a normal conversation – well, that is the best time for her to start asking a million questions. “Dad, do snakes bite?” “Dad, why does Siri talk funny when she answers our questions?” “Dad, what Palace Pet would you want to be?”

She asks even if she knows the answers. “Dad, what color is your black shirt?”

Don’t interrupt when I am on the phone.:  She desperately wants you to understand that what she has to say is the most important thing in the world. If this means singing a made-up, gibberish song at the top of her voice while you are on the phone for work, well, so be it.

Don’t be so loud!: Outside of “no,” by far the most used in our house. I’m a loud talker and so is my wife, so this should not be a surprise. Sydney speaks at the same decibel level as a 12-gauge shotgun blast. It is annoying in the house. It is worse in public: “Dad, I need a wipe!”

That’s the current list. I am sure I will have to add a few dozen to this list by the time they are teens. It won’t make me popular. But it might just get them into adulthood.

Defiant behavior: Extinguish or Encourage?

I don’t know what I was like as a toddler, but I am pretty sure I was an a-hole for my mom to raise once I hit my teen years.

I not only thought I was the smartest kid on the block, I assumed I was smarter than most adults in my life. I had the confidence to consider myself the captain of my own destiny and in need of no one’s help to get where I wanted to go.

Those are admirable qualities. Unless you are a parent trying to keep a teenager in check.

My ultimate weapon, when all the arguing was done, was silence. I would go days without saying a word to mom. It wasn’t worth my time.

Like I said, a complete a-hole.

I bring this up now because Sydney is driving me crazy. And the other day, my mom said to me, “She reminds me a lot of what you were like when you were a kid.”

Thanks, mom. Now, not only do I not know how to stop the behavior that drives me crazy, I’m not even sure I want to. 

I only have experience raising two children. I can tell you raising Tyson is 100 percent easier than my daughter. And I think a lot of that has to do with personality. Tyson's is much more like my wife's and Sydney's is much more like mine.

Tyson is laid back.Up until the past few months, he rarely even got angry. He’s two now, so we are dealing with a few temper tantrums every now and then, but they pass quickly.

Sydney is a…challenging child. Her initial answer to anything you try to tell her to do is an emphatic “no.” Tyson pretty much does what you tell him. Sydney pretty much wants to know why you want her to do something and she’ll make you tell her seven different times and threaten punishment before she does it.

Everything is a fight. Bed time? Tyson might let out a little statement of protest or cry a little, but he’ll march right in there. With Sydney, it is a two-hour argument. Daddy, one more book please! Daddy, are dinosaurs extinct? What about turtles? Daddy, let me give you 30 reasons why I should not go to bed right now. 

Every…single… night. Ugh.

Tyson would fit right in as a Marine or soldier. He is a selfless team player who does what he is told, trusting it is for the greater good. Sydney is the high school student who gets expelled from school for defying  authority and running a school newspaper story critical of the principal because she thinks it is the right thing to do.

    

Tyson might become the victim of a bully. Sydney would punch out that bully…and then bully her brother herself.

Tyson will share his jelly beans with his sister. Sydney will accept the ones he shares, and then take the rest when he isn't looking. 

Tyson is content and can play by himself for hours. Sydney commands the attention of everyone in the room 24-7.  

She is exhausting. She is bull headed. She is feisty. She is selfish. She is a prima donna. She is…like her daddy.

There, I admitted it.

Is that something I want to change? For all the negatives, there is no way I am where I am in life without developing extreme confidence and independence at a young age and riding that attitude straight into adulthood. I came from a poor family in a small steel town; anything I wanted in life I had to take.

Those same traits that drive me crazy in her toddler years will send me to an early grave during her teen years. But those traits will also ensure she never becomes a battered woman or settles for anything less than the best in her mate. They’ll help her knock down glass ceilings she faces in the workplace and deal with workplace bullies who think they can boss her around. They’ll allow her to cope when friends abandon her, enemies come after her or life throws her curveballs of misery.

I heard on the radio recently that therapists like to say life is a pattern. The same things you do as a kid, the same mistakes you make as a teen or young adult – those types of things will repeat themselves throughout your life. We can’t really get away from our real selves.

I know there are things I wish I had done differently. I’m sure I’ve made doozies when it comes to mistakes. But overall, I’m pretty happy with where I am in life. I’d absolutely wish that for my daughter.

Don’t get me wrong. She needs and will learn to be humble and unselfish. But that inner drive she has, that little thing inside her head that tells her to question this or stand up for herself on that, that confidence that forces her to say no even when her head is telling her daddy is on his last nerve…I don’t think I want to extinguish that.

But those teen years are going to be painful.

"I Want More Balls"

Tyson is finally calling me “dad” with some regularity.

He’s said it once or twice before, but over the past month he has really started to talk and that is one of the words in his burgeoning vocabulary.

                                                                    Tyson at a recent hospital check up. He said "fish"
                                                          about a dozen times while looking at this aquarium-like contraption.

This has been a long time coming with him. I only have Sydney to compare him to, but the two have definitely had different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to development. Interestingly, they seem to fall along traditional gender lines.

She was quick with talking and intellectual-type things, while she was slow with walking and other gross motor skills. Tyson was the exact opposite. Even in what they choose to focus on, they seem cornered in tradition: Sydney knew her ABC’s at a young age, while Tyson was counting before he really started speaking.

His words are still not very clear. He actually sounds a little like Marlee Matlin. But hey, he’s talking. We will still likely get him in some sort of speech therapy, but a month ago I was absolutely sure he needed intense work with an expert. Now, I think maybe just a little help will do.

He has a sister who talks more than a wife on a Real Housewives show. I am convinced her chatterbox nature has kept her brother from talking. He can’t get a word in edgewise.

The other day, he said his first complete sentence.

“I want more balls.”

Now that could lead you to some pretty interesting interpretations. I’ll save you the headache: he was talking about cheeseballs – those neon orange things that somehow pass for food.

My wife and I used to have an agreement that we wouldn’t feed our kids junk food, but somewhere in the past year or so, my wife fell off that wagon and, since I am only a secondary parent when it comes to feeding, I have no say in the matter.  Her explanation is that he is tiny, she is worried about his growth and she is going to get food in him any way she can.

At least it has given me a good joke for years to come:  “Hey, my kid took forever to talk and when he finally did, he looked at me and said ‘I want more balls.’  ”

OK, maybe not so funny.

But I love when he calls me dad.