A Changed Man Already

Wow. What's this--my second entry? And already I'm a changed man. I kicked off this blog thinking I'd update it daily. My two kids had other plans. Full-time parenthood's a ballbuster. For the first time in my 12-year marriage, I finally understand why I found my wife a withered, defeated soul when I'd pull in from work: our children are incorrigible mini-demons who thrive on imploding their parents "to do" lists while shrieking, "ME! ME! ME! YOU MUST FOCUS ON ME!!!" How exhausting are my kids? I've had a thick black hair sticking out of my left ear for three days...and still haven't done a damn thing about it. That's right--I'd rather have Mick Fleetwood's pony tail sprouting from the side of my head than expend the energy it takes to dig up some tweezers. And I thought I was going to blog daily? Stupid, naive boy.

It's all my fault, of course. It's not like either of them was a surprise--we used more charts and graphs to get pregnant than Columbus to find the New World. Funny--all this meticulous planning for something that wound up making our lives such a mess...

But hey, lookee here... The kids are asleep, my wife's in the other room watching "Big Brother," and I have a rare moment to relaunch my "daily" blog. Let's get started...

Today: get up with the kids so my wife can sleep in (I've put the woman's through two cross-country moves in the past nine months, the least I can do is give her an extra half hour of shuteye on a Wednesday).

My kids, much like me, are very schedule-oriented. One hiccup in their routine and all hell breaks loose. Sure enough, since I pour their Cheerios at 7:45 a.m instead of the 7:30 a.m. pour-time they'd grown accustomed to, they instantly become disrespectful little toads. The five-year-old refused to touch her bowl, claiming they looked "burnt" (utter crap, by the way...I found the O's to all be evenly crisped) and the two-year-old squealed repeatedly until I unbuckled his high chair and stuck him in front of cartoons. At this point it should've dawned on me this was NOT the day to hit the grocery store. But it didn't.

I like to do things in one fell swoop. Hence my once-a-week, all-encompassing trips to the local Ralphs. It's a game to me: can I--a mere mortal with no clairvoyant ability--really forecast, transcribe, then go to the grocery store and compile ALL the dietary demands my family will make in the next seven days? What about curveballs? What if one of the kids backs off their chicken strogonoff request and suddenly wants turkey tacos? Would I have tortillas and refried beans ready as back-up? See what I mean? It's a game of cat and mouse between me and the rest of the family...a game that, if I say so myself, I rarely lose.

So I stuffed the kids into the minivan (wifey was still asleep, by the way) and off we went to tackle my extremely ambitious plan of restocking an entire household of food with two kids in tow. As it turned out, the mistake wasn't bringing my five-year-old. Or my two-year-old. It was bringing them both. See, the five-year-old wants to help. NEEDS to help. Will wither and DIE if she doesn't. "Please let me get the pancake mix for you, Daddy? Please, Daddy, PLEASE?!" Meanwhile the two-year-old just wants to drop glass shit on the ground. So I spend two-and-a-half-hours preventing one kid from shattering Prego while coaching the other kid to pull the right syrup brand (ever try to describing Aunt Jemima from ascross the aisle in a crowded LA grocery store? Awkward).

Came home to find my wife already gone (she's preparing her classroom for the upcoming school year--she's a first grade teacher) so, after a quick lunch, put BOTH kids to bed. I emphasize "both" because my 5-year-old's convinced she's way too old to be taking naps. But after a morning like this, even she knows not to argue with Daddy.

Cooked dinner in the evening. Now that I'm stuck at home, I've resolved to learn how to cook. Thank god the TV show had lots of cooking segments, so I built a library of cookbooks. The only one to really resonate with me has recipes for chicken nuggets and stuff. So I ain't exactly Emeril here. Halfway through the recipe I got bored and let my wife take over. She winds up burning the nuggets, which means my daughter refuses to eat them (see her earlier Cheerios complaint) and we all wind up eating Jack-in-the-Box.

The end of Day One.