Sydney the Arguer

Sydney has gotten to the age where she will argue with you. I find this really fun.

I’m an antagonist. A contrarian. A debater. I like to argue just for argument’s sake. I believe good things come from debate. You strengthen your position. Or, you change your mind.

I think my daughter is going to be a lot like me.

Her favorite show right now is Team Umizoomi. It is a show that teaches kids math and shapes. Don’t let anyone ever tell you TV is bad for kids. You find the right shows, and they learn a lot. My daughter was at a friend’s house recently and picked up a toy and excitedly said, “Look mom, a dodecahedron!” Yes, she knows what a shape with 12 flat sides is because of Team Umizoomi.

I must say, with some embarrassment, that until I overheard Team Umizoomi in the background, I did not know what a dodecahedron was. Or, I knew what it was, but not what to call it.

Now, I’ll be prepared if I am ever on Jeopardy and there is a SHAPES category.

Sydney has taken to giving her family members character roles in the shows she watches. She’s always the hero or star of the show. For example, in Dora the Explorer, you can bet she’s not Diego. No sidekick for her.

In Team Umizoomi, she has deemed herself Millie. I think Millie is the female in the three-person ring of math geniuses traipsing around Umiworld solving mathematical dilemmas. The other two characters are Bot, who looks like a computer, and Gio.

Tyson has the honor of being Gio in Sydney’s world, and Brooke is Bot. She’s even named the dogs, Vegas and Murphy, after the show’s villains, the Troublemakers.

That doesn’t leave a character for dad. So I am Umi-car, the car they travel in.

That’s right. I have been reduced to being a car. I’m not even worthy of a full cartoon character.

Of course, this is unacceptable to me. So, I have decided I will be Gio and Tyson will be Umi-car. When an episode is on and we play this game and she tells me I am Umi-car, I simply say, “No, I am Gio.”

This drives her insane. “No, Daddy! Tyson is Gio! You are Umi-car.” I’ll fire back that I am Gio. And it goes on and on and on, for nearly the length of the cartoon.

Fun for me. She can’t let it go, and I WON'T let her let it go.

But here is how I know my daughter is really like me: we could be hours away in either direction from a Team Umizoomi episode, and she’ll simply walk up to me and, out of the blue, say, “Daddy, you are not Gio, you are Umi-car!”

She is picking an argument. For no reason other than to argue.

A girl after my own heart.

This goes on in many of our conversations. “Sydney, who loves you the most in the whole wide world? Daddy.”

“No daddy! Mommy loves me the most in the world.”

She gets so indignant, too. She forcefully shouts back. This is serious business in her little world.

I can’t wait until she gets older. We will have some great discussions and debates. Hopefully, we will open each other’s minds a bit.

My wife senses trouble. She sees many clashes in our future. She pictures doors slamming in my face.

Maybe so. But I am going to have an independent-thinking daughter, who knows she has to consider all sides in a debate and properly frame and support her position.

That will contribute to her success as an adult.

At least that is what I see in my mind. Sydney may see it differently.

If she does, I am sure I will hear about it.

Tinkle, Tinkle Toot!

 

                                           This hedgehog has seen a  lot of crap. Literally.

We have experienced a breakthrough in the battle to potty train.

For the past couple of weeks, every night, after dinner, Sydney would gather up her blanket and her most trusted partner, Henrietta hedgehog (stuffed animal), and disappear into the downstairs bathroom for about 15 minutes. During this time, no one was to disturb her. I tried several times, and I got yelled at and the door slammed in my face.

Somehow, she always emerged with a load of crap in her pants.

She has a regularness that I admire. And she clearly realizes the bathroom is the place to take care of your business. And she doesn’t like to be disturbed, which is the case with most human beings. If you fit in the “other” category – such as the man I once heard conducting business on his cell phone while sitting in the stall next to me at the Philadelphia airport – well, you sir, are disgusting. 

 

Getting her to take the extra step and sit down on the toilet and go to the bathroom seemed impossible. She wouldn’t do it. She’d sit on the toilet for 15 minutes and do nothing, only to get up and two minutes later and soil her pants.

I don’t understand. Who wants to go in their pants when you have an alternative? Who wants to go in their pants at all? Even if I didn’t have an alternative, I’d drop trou and find a bush. Did that once on a Michigan golf course. That is how dire my situation was. Lost a nice golf towel in that debacle.

Brooke’s parents visited for a three-day weekend a few weeks ago. Tired of hearing our potty-training stories, they told us they wanted to give it a shot. I’m sure they thought we were incompetent and they’d be able to step right in and have her trained in a couple of days.

Let’s just say Sydney showed them a thing or two. I think I remember a fit of seismic proportions while locked in the bathroom with grandma.

But we experienced a breakthrough one night last week. Sydney thought it would be funny to, let’s say, “cut the cheese.” However, in the process of grunting and pushing (she learns this stuff from her mama, I swear!), she got a little more than she bargained for and my wife, recognizing this as a teaching moment, rushed her to the potty. She happily did her business and proudly proclaimed that she did “tinkle, tinkle, toot,” just like the potty training book we have been reading.

Of course, this led to loud cheers in our house, like the Cleveland Browns had just won the Super Bowl. (yes, I know the oft quoted joke, if it is Brown (as in Cleveland) flush it down; and I realize the analogy relates Super Bowl to toilet bowl. Just let me dream, people!)

She even got the privilege of flushing it down the toilet and more hoopla with that.

Whatever it takes.

The next day, she proudly announced at child care, “Miss Amber, I did tinkle, tinkle, toot!” And when my wife was on the phone with her parents that night, she had to tell Nana and Papa that she was a big girl and had tinkle, tinkle, tooted.

  

Despite her satisfaction with herself, she has yet to make it regular practice. We’ve had a couple of repeat episodes since then, but mostly a mountain of wet and dirty diapers for daddy to change.

   

Was it easier when we were kids? Or were the methods a little more severe? We all know parenting was tougher back then. No kids seats. Hell, no seatbelts. Smoke blowing in your face during your bottle feedings. A little syringe of whiskey to help the baby sleep through the night.

Things I try to reason with Sydney on were the types of things that earned me a slap on the head when I was a kid and warning that a second offense would garner a trip to Whip City.

Did my dad rub my face in it, like a dog? Understandably, that might speed up the learning process a bit.

I’m open to suggestions if you have any. Otherwise, I’ll stay the course. And stay out of the downstairs bathroom after dinner.

Longing for the Sweet Relief of Narcolepsy

                            If they slept at night, these types of naps would not be necessary.

Life has gotten more complicated in the Gregg household.

If you read this blog, you know Sydney has always been a night owl. She has tormented her mother and I since birth with her inability to sleep through the night. She stays up as long as she can at night and often wakes up crying and screaming a couple or three times during the night.

The other night, we put her in bed at 9 p.m. I fell asleep at 10:30 and she was still awake, sitting in her crib talking to her stuffed animals. Brooke fell asleep a half hour later with Sydney still jabbering away.

I am sincerely glad she does not get us on the other end. While she may stay up as late as her little body will allow, and she is almost always good for a couple “Mommy, I need a drink” or “Mommy, help me’s” in the middle of the night, she is not a kid who wakes up at 6 a.m. in the morning. She’ll sleep as late as 10 on the weekends. This allows us to catch up a tiny fraction.

During the week, we just live like zombies.

Tyson has always been the good sleeper. But, as I said, life is getting more complicated.

Since birth, Tyson has slept in a rock-and-play that sits next to Brooke. Because of his heart issues, we wanted him next to us for monitoring purposes and feeding purposes. At one time, we were feeding him a fortified bottle four times a night. We are now down to three.

We decided a few weeks ago, he needed to transition to his crib in the other room. He’s 10 months old now, and that rock-and-play is too small for him. He no longer likes sleeping on his back, preferring to roll on his side. So, he rarely gets through a night in the rock-and-play without a couple of bouts of crying because he is uncomfortable.

We are trying the crib. He hates it. I think he prefers the snugness of the rock-and-play, or perhaps he just likes having his mom close. Whatever the reason, he pretty much cries as soon as you set him in the crib. Couple that with the fact he is eating more, getting more strength and becoming more rambunctious, and you have another Sydney on your hands. He doesn’t want to go to bed on time, fights you when you put him in the crib and, no matter where he is sleeping, wakes up a couple times each night in a crying fit.

Two kids who think they are rock stars and able to party all night.

Typical night: Sydney jabbers away until 11, Tyson fights us about going to bed after his 10:30 bottle feeding and finally falls asleep at 11-11:30, we wake Tyson at 2:30 to feed him, Sydney wakes up crying about a nightmare or water or whatever at 3- 4 a.m., Tyson wakes up crying about 5 a.m. because he is uncomfortable or unhappy, we wake Tyson at 6: 30 a.m. to feed him and we both get up at that time for work.

And, honestly, there is often at least one more wake up in there somewhere.

The other day, a woman at work said to me, “You always look tired.”

“It is not a look, Jane. I AM always tired.”

My poor wife. She gets the brunt of it. Many times, when the kids wake up, they don’t want me, they want her. Tyson will even refuse his 2:30 a.m. bottle from me, but, if Brooke takes it from me and puts it in his mouth, he will drink it.

Now think about that: these kids are waking up either because they are hungry, terrified by a nightmare or simply as uncomfortable as hell and daddy is still not an option for them.

I am a plague in my own house. Daddies have feelings too, you know.

Mommy may spend more time answering the call than daddy, but she also has the ability to fall asleep any place, any time, in about 30 seconds. She’s still breastfeeding, so it is not uncommon for me to walk out of the shower in the morning to find her pumping and feeding Tyson, with her eyes closed, sleeping while sitting up. It is pretty incredible.

The other night, she had to feed Tyson because he wouldn’t take the bottle from me. I swear, she set that bottle down, placed Tyson in his rock-and-play and was literally snoring within 30 seconds.

There are many nights when, after I feed Tyson or deal with one of Sydney’s outbursts, I lie in bed for another hour and a half just trying to fall asleep. Once I am up, it is very difficult to go back to sleep, no matter how tired I may be. Sometimes I pray for narcolepsy. Or an addiction to sleeping pills.

That’s life in our fast lane. Baby, you can lose your mind.

My 15 Minutes of Fame

The call came in shortly past noon, while I was eating lunch at my desk. I didn’t answer for two reasons:

1) I am in charge of customer service for my organization and if a complaint is not handled properly and works itself all the way up the ranks, it lands on my desk. This means I am often hit with phone calls from very angry people who want to drone on and on about their issue for a half hour. I don’t mind helping (if it is called for – many of these complaints are not valid), but I find it better to do it when on my time instead of theirs. So I rarely answer the phone blindly, preferring to call them back when I have a clean schedule and mind.

2) If you know me, you know I take eating very seriously, even if it is only a 220-calorie microwavable Chef Boyardee, bowl of salad, apple and yogurt. If I am eating, don’t mess with me.

But the 202 area code intrigued me, and I picked up the voicemail quickly. It was from an NBC Nightly News producer in Washington DC and he said he wanted to talk about my blog.

My first thought was he was calling about the blog we have at work, with work-related things. But I knew there wasn’t much newsworthy on there of late, certainly nothing that would generate a call from NBC Nightly News, so I wondered if he was referring to my personal blog.

That would be crazy, I thought.

But, yes, he said when I returned his call, this was about my blog on being an older father. He found it funny and interesting and thought I would be a good representative to speak on a story they were doing that night. It was about a study that showed children of older dads had an increased risk of falling victim to certain diseases and social ills.

I immediately started relating the story of our pre-birth scare when Sydney tested with a higher than normal chance of being born with the fatal disease Trisomy 18 and about our experiences with Tyson’s very serious heart defects.

He cut me off.

“I’d really just like you to talk about your experiences as an older dad. Talk about some of the things you worry about, the every-day things.”

“Oh, I have plenty of funny stories,” I responded.

“Great!”

Thus was born, what I believe to be, a misinterpretation by me. I’ll touch on that later.

First, he told me he was going to be at my house at 2:30. It was 12:30, I had a 1 p.m. meeting I could not get out of, and I had to pick up my kids at child care (he wanted shots of them). It was going to be tight time frame, but hey, how could I pass up on the chance to be on national TV?

I called my wife at work and asked her work colleague to have her call me back immediately. Word to my fellow fathers: if you are going to ever relay a similar message to your wife, make sure you stress to the person on the other end of the line that there is NOTHING WRONG. Otherwise, your wife will call you with panic in her voice, wondering if one of the children is maimed or dead. And when you innocently try to calm her fears by telling her that you needed to talk to her about a good thing, not a bad thing, she will yell at you. For a LONG time.

But once we got over that, I asked my wife if she was ok with the kids going on camera. Her response was a quick yes…”but the house is a mess!”

This is her main concern. Really?

“Oh, don’t worry, he can shoot around that.”

“No, you cannot have someone in our house right now! I am going to see if I can get off now and go home and clean before he gets there.”

OK. If it involves you cleaning and not me, I am ok with that.

That’s exactly what she did and our house looked better than it has since Sydney was born when I walked through the door two hours later. Amazing how motivating a potential public shaming can be.

My next call was to my child care provider. Amber was excited about the situation and said she would have the kids looking good enough to go on camera when I picked them up. True to her word, she accomplished that feat, which is no easy task with two toddlers.

So we were good to go when I rolled up about 2:30.

The camera guy, Ray, was already setting up. My wife had already done her Tasmanian Devil-like cleaning job. The dogs were locked upstairs.

Everything was perfect.

Then the light went on. This was a gazillion-watt light that lit up our house like a prison yard in the middle of an inmate escape. I am pretty sure you could see dust mites in the corner of the dining room 15 feet away. I knew at once this was not going to be good for my “look.” I’m old and craggly looking at this point in life, so anything above a 75-watt soft bulb is not BG-friendly.

But what to do? I didn’t want to appear vain and run upstairs to ask my wife for makeup. The camera guy said he had some powder, but “you look like you are ok.”

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

For the interview, we decided my wife would take the kids upstairs to avoid noise and then bring them back down when he shot B roll of us as a family. Surprisingly, the kids were ok with this and it worked.

Ray started giving me the logistics of the interview and I cut him off, telling him I do about 40 of these a year for my day job. I then asked if he wanted me to white balance his camera. If you ever want to look like you know what you are doing with a video guy, hold up a piece of paper and say, “hey, let me help you get a white balance.”

Totally impressed, he called the DC office and told them we were ready to roll. Soon, the guy from DC was firing out questions from a cell phone sitting next to me, which I answered, looking straight into the camera.

I told a funny story about how my wife, 15 years younger, gave me an ultimatum: kids are part of our future or we have no future. I caved.

I got sentimental and told him having kids was “the best decision I ever made.”

I told jokes about my main concerns as an older dad: being mistaken for grandpa; being in diapers at the same time as my children; being on social security when they graduate.

I was funny. I thought the interview went well. I thought that was what they wanted from me.

The guy on the other end of the phone line even said, “You nailed it.”

Then, my wife brought the kids down and he shot video of us together. I told Ray, “You have a very short window on this. These kids won’t sit still long and sooner or later one of them will cry about something or throw a tantrum. Get what you need as fast as you can.”

He must have been a parent because he understood. He moved quickly.

He got some great shots of me reading to the Sydney and coloring with Sydney. Tyson was either in my arms or in the nearby jumperoo. I looked like father of the year. When the camera went off, I turned them right over to my wife, the REAL parent in our family.

This is about the time I noticed Sydney’s scraped face from a run in with the corner of a wicker basket. She felt it would be fun to spin around and around in the living room as many times as possible, and on about the 13^th time around, she spun herself into a head-first fall.

This might not be a good look for national television, I thought. And, I am the spokesman for the local agency responsible for protecting children from abuse and neglect.

Was it too late to stop the interview?

Good husband that I am, I kept trying to get my wife in some of the shots, but the guy kept positioning us so she was not in camera range. He did not come out and say it, but I think NBC hates women. Or mothers.

He had the shoot wrapped up by 3:30. Then it was wait on pins and needles until 6:30 to see if we made the cut.

I celebrated with an early dinner of ribeye steak. Hey, I was home at 3:30 with a lot of time on my hands. And, I told you, I take my eating very seriously.

So 6:30 rolls around and we excitedly tune in. Right in the opening preview, they show a shot of me reading to Sydney! We made it!

In fact, we were the second story. I think they led with coverage of some war or whatever. Then they got to the important stuff.

I had DVRs rolling both upstairs and downstairs as they began our segment.

The first thing I noticed was that hi-def was absolutely killing me. I not only have a face for standard definition, I have a face for radio.

I could have used that powder.

Every blemish was highlighted and redder than a fire truck. My crow’s feet looked like ostrich feet. My goatee needed a serious trim.

Uggh.

The second thing I noticed is that all my good stories and jokes were cut from the interview. It quickly became apparent I had misinterpreted their intent. I thought they wanted me because I was an older dad who could provide witty commentary. Turns out they just wanted an older dad. I fit the bill based solely on birth date.

Any thought I had of promoting my blog and getting that book or sitcom deal went out the window when they 1) didn’t let me say anything funny and 2) didn’t promote my blog.

Sigh.

The third thing I noticed was that I needed to lose a lot of weight. This was no revelation, and I jokingly said I had ten cameras on me at 10 pounds each, but being on national TV at anything more than your Freshman 15 weight is a little embarrassing.

The fourth thing I noticed was that the story they were doing was not really a good one and went beyond the increased risk of ADHD and other some genetic diseases that I had discussed with the producer. They said my children had a greater risk of becoming drug addicts or committing suicide. When this sunk in during the DVR playback, I literally muttered “Jesus Christ” under my breath. I didn’t realize how seriously depressing this was going to be where my kids were concerned. 

 

But the positives outweighed the negative. Being on national television is fun. I have received calls or messages from folks around the country, some I have not talked to in some time. In fact, my phone was going off WHILE the segment was playing. Some people couldn’t even wait to call and tell me how shocked they were that I was showing up on their TV screen next to Brian Williams.

Getting to show off my kids was even better. I’ve received so many “adorable kids” messages over the past two days, I’m floating on air. Two people have mentioned they think Sydney could do model work, even with the wicker-basket face.

It will be a cool thing to someday show the kids. They went national when they were still in diapers.

I asked Sydney if she liked being on TV and her reply was an excited “Yes! Let’s do it again.”

Sure. We’ll make it an every-day occurrence.


PS: Here's a link to the story:

http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/study-some-disorders-more-likely-among-children-older-dads-n39341 

Baby, Don't Hurt Me; Don't Hurt Me, No More

 

 I am pretty sure I am raising a hypochondriac.

If I had a dollar for every time my daughter said “My eyes hurt!” or “My knee hurts!” I could buy Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, which already has a wing dedicated to my children after getting about half a million dollars of my insurance money over the past nine months.

Parents, please tell me if this is normal for a 2 year old?

Of course, you first worry that she really is hurt. But after awhile, you realize no human being on earth can be hurt in the elbow, knee, eyes, foot, belly, ear, beard (her word for cheeks), finger, toe and every other body part as frequently as she is. And, when you ask her what hurts and she replies “finger” one second and five seconds later says “knee,” it is kind of a giveaway that she might not be telling the truth.

So then I theorized it was about attention. She has been surrounded with sickness and hospitalizations over the past nine months, between my son’s birth and heart surgery and my mother’s stomach surgeries. Maybe she sees all the attention they received and wants in on the action? Plus, she’s had her own legitimate sicknesses and those have paid off with extra attention.

But Lord knows this chick is already Queen of the Ball. She couldn’t get more adoration from her parents, and whenever she visits with relatives or friends, she’s usually the center of attention.

We have recently noticed that some of these “hurts” come up when she is scolded. She begins to cry – real tears -- and says “Daddy, my knee hurts.” We’ve come to realize that it is her feelings that are hurt, but she does not have a way of expressing it. So, we are trying to teach her about “feelings.”

That’s like trying to teach geometry to Jessica Simpson. She is having a really hard time grasping it and often still reverts to the “my eyes hurt” line.

The key for me is to determine what is real and what is fake. As you can imagine, I am a pushover for those tears. I’m a puddle of jello.

I try to hold out. The other night, she was crying in her bed, yelling about her leg being hurt, and I thought it was another attention-seeking episode. I let her go on and on. As the cries got more urgent, I grew frustrated and finally went in to say “enough.”

That’s when I found her right leg legitimately caught in between the slats of her crib, obviously causing her great pain.

Ahh….yeah. Nice move, daddy. It isn’t really Woody Allen material, but a move like that will surely keep me out of the Daddy Hall of Fame. My heart ached on that one.

I think where this type of thing is concerned, it is always best to check first and ignore later.

I hope this phase does not last long. If it does, then she either legitimately has pain, which is obviously not a good thing, or she is a hypochondriac, which means I’m in for a long 18 years and another wing at Children’s Hospital.