08.26.08
Bad Dad (sometimes)
Allergies have been bad the last few days so I finally relented and took an Allegra, which I have a small stock of. I’m not dead set against taking anti-allergy meds, but I don’t want to be on them year round, and I didn’t feel I needed them from late last fall until this summer. Summer seems to be the peak season for dust mites, but the other seasons aren’t nearly as bad. In winter we can hang the bedding out every day, and the cold kicks the dust mites’ asses. This summer is so darn damp and humid, and the dust mites love it, and we can’t even air the bedding because it’s never sunny and the balcony is always moist and damp.
The other day I burned a CD which didn’t burn right, so I turned it into a piece of art (I drew little animal faces on it). The twins liked it and they tried to play it on my PC’s CD-ROM drive. Last night I told them no, but this morning I found out my CD drive was jammed. Someone had stuck that CD in the wrong way! I didn’t panic, though, and instead used my head. I figured out that with a straightened paper clip, it was easy enough to manually open the drive and extract the offending CD. Lots of little antics like this. Today the kids detached the curtain apparatus from the wall, which I’ve now jury rigged with plastic twine.
Anyhow, today I had the morning and afternoon off (just one class in the evening), so yesterday I asked Shiho if we could keep the kids home from daycare. Shiho agreed and she said she would go to work at her mom’s* and I would stay home alone with the kids until lunchtime.
However, that plan fell through as Mickey cried and said he wanted to be with Mommy. Though much less of a momma’s boy than he used to be (last year Shiho couldn’t even go number one or number two alone), he is still pretty much of one, but sometimes he likes to do things with Daddy and it’s OK to leave mommy for a while (getting changed with me in the swimming pool changing room, taking a quick drive to the convenience store).
I had a good morning with Milo, who was happy to be alone with Dad. A few times he asked “Where is Mommy?” and I told him the answer, and he was OK with it. We fed the birds, did some horseback rides and tickling, spilled and wiped up some juice, went for a walk around the neighborhood together, and then came home to a snack of cashew nuts and apple juice / calorie-free sports drink. Milo was very quiet and sweet with me.
When Mickey came home, the dynamic really changed. Mickey started fussing and crying quite a bit, even though he had been quite over at mom-in-law’s. It’s totally different with two. They really egg each other on, inciting the other into mischief. After lunch, my wife and I were trying to vacuum and they kept sitting on the vacuum cleaner or interfering with the hose. I was a little pissed off and slapped them lightly on their bums (they had taken off their pants and were pretending to pee on the floor) but it only made them laugh. Then it was about 2:30 and it was time for bed, and that was when I became an even more bad dad.
The kids wrecked the curtain holder thing, which they had already weakened before, and I lost my temper, shouting things at them that I don’t want to repeat or commit to internet memory. Then they wouldn’t go to bed and I was quite physically rough with the kids. I slapped Mickey with a magazine, but it just made him laugh. I accidentally hurt Milo when I yanked a book away from him, because he had the book in his mouth. Then I was mad at Milo for not going to bed so I placed him in the empty receptacle of the washing machine and he cried. I went there after a minute or so and I had an angry face but he just stared at me seriously and then his serious face turned into a smile and a laugh, and despite my anger, I couldn’t help but laugh, too. It turned out that Milo had peed his pants in the washing machine due to fright or unhappiness. Poor kid. Despite my meanness and anger they still wanted to laugh at me, I don’t know how you get kids to take you seriously. Shows you what short memories they have. One minute they’re crying loudly because you’ve timed them out, the next minute you let them back into the bedroom and they’re laughing and fooling around again. Then they went ahead with their usual pre-bed demands, such as asking for cream applied to their feet, asking for their nails to be trimmed (even though they were already really short), asking if they could bring their (current) favorite toys and books to bed. Finally, after much cajoling, nagging, and threatening and repeated attempts to put them to sleep the kids went to bed.
Anyway, I feel bad for losing my temper. I hit them a little and was rough but I didn’t really hurt them, as they laughed at me. Of course that doesn’t excuse my behavior but sometimes you just lose it when they’re not listening to you, still laughing out loud and egging each other on when it’s their naptime and if they don’t go to bed now then they’ll have a late nap and then not want to go to bed until 11:00 or midnight.
God I love my kids so much. I wish I could always control myself, but sometimes I don’t. Thankfully they have short memories and don’t hold it against me, and judge me by the balance of my behavior to and treatment of them. I love having two three-year-old boys. It’s a very precious age and I’m very glad to spending time with them. One day they will be thirteen years old and won’t want to spend much time with their dad anymore.
* Shiho’s mom is basically her employer now. Mom-in-law bought Shiho a brand new $10K car, and Shiho is paying it off by doing household chores at mom-in-law’s pad (a hop, skip, and jump away). (Ah, the word household brings on another tangent, which is a funny mistake by Korean/Japanese learners of English. When I ask salarymen what their wives do for a living, I often get the answer “housekeeper” or “houseworker” or something like that. Definitely not the low-status image they wanted to convey. Of course what they meant to say was “homemaker” or “housewife.”)
