The Wasians and the Rest of Us: June 2012

Thursday, June 21, 2012

To commemorate my third father’s day as a father, I thought I would put on paper (or internet) the ever growing list of things I have learned to this point. By learned I don’t mean adjusted my behavior for necessarily, more so observed and tried to not act uponJ And to be clear my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek, and being a father is one of the greatest gifts one can receive.

1) Patience with children is different than regular patience. Its one thing to be able to keep your calm at work while someone is driving you crazy. It’s another thing to keep your cool while you have a screaming and kicking toddler laying on the floor in front (possibly spitting on you) of you who has been a pill all day because she refused to take a good nap and is about as likely to surrender as Mel Gibson in Braveheart, on a day when you have also had a cranky infant who doesn’t like the earth or being on it, and possibly when its like 100 or 0 outside. That’s called Megapatience. And on some days you need Megapatience, and most days its hard to find. I struggle with it more than I should.

2) You didn’t know what laughter was before. I mean we all have those days where our faces hurt from laughing – usually its probably that one time you hung out with me or for me it’s the day when I was left to my thoughts and cracked myself up because of how witty I am (hopefully you understand I am being very sarcastic with those comments), but sitting at the dinner table and conversing with Emma about pretty much anything is funny, and in a whole different and new way that you can’t replicate. Yes that was one sentence, I am too lazy to revise it to be better grammar.

3) Public displays of potty are common. We all ask where the restroom is sometimes. But with Emma (and most toddlers) it’s usually followed by her telling the waitress/cashier/other random person that she is going to go potty or poopoo and possibly followed by telling said person some details after the fact. Its usually followed by awkward laughter by the counterpart. What would the world be like if you told your waiter you had to go potty really badly? Try it sometime.

4) Naptime is no longer a happy place. Naptime is now the time when you work your tail off to get something done before naptime is over. Remember the good old days when nap time meant YOU got to take a nap while watching golf, which would be followed by 30 min of spacing out and trying to get motivated to run to chipotle for your second meal of the day there? Well maybe you don’t, but I do.

5) Bedtime is now a glorious time. Kids are great, but 8pm CST is a lovely time in our house. The kids are in bed, the 85 million bottle parts from the day of feeding/pumping are washed, you can sit down and just chill and watch Modern family while your wife tries (unfortunately too successfully) to draw parallels between you and Phil while you admire Cam’s shirts and “flare” (in a totally masculine way) and hope that you don’t have a daughter like Haley.

6) Leaving work is like leaving the earth to head to the moon. At work, at least for we cube surfers, you live in this nice quiet place with clean bathrooms, white noise, everybody walking, and air conditioning. You arrive at a place of controlled chaos where your daughter screams “DADDY’s HERE!!!” which is great and makes you happy, only there’s a small twinge of crazy in her voice so you are afraid that she may be using that as a signal to other toddlers to signal the toddler revolution. You eventually arrive home which is a dance of preparing food and providing food to keep anger subdued (sometimes for mom, dad, and daughters) then run around, play on the playset (and sweat) take a bath, fight the bedtime battle, and then hit the aforementioned 8pm its time for gloriousness barrier. I am certain that paragraph reads as complaining, that time is great, but if it extended too much longer there would be casualties.

7) Bed time also has new meaning. Your bedtime as a father is irrelevant, toddler bedtime is like a hyper exaggeration of basically everything above. There is laughter, which sometimes turns into crazy laughter, which sometimes morphs into having to show patience, but then sometimes morphs into laying next to your daughter and singing the Iowa Fight song and a hug. Its fun, its scary, its hard, its so many things in a 30-45 min timeframe that is always being pushed by said toddler.

8) We live in 1 volume level –LOUD. If Kinsley goes to bed first we try to keep the volume level down so she doesn’t wake up. Which doesn’t work. At all. Emma is loud, there is no getting around it, sometimes between the number of words she says and the volume of words said its amazing that ears don’t bleed.

9) I have a new boss. I used to think, wow, our lives revolve around Emma, its sort of like she is our boss without knowing it. Now I know that Emma is our boss, she likes to tell us what to do at a high volume (see previous item) and is very, very particular.

10) Daughter #2 seems quiet.Daughter #2 loves her big sister and laughs at her all the time, but you notice much more when she makes sound after Daughter #1 is in bed. Kinsley is happy go lucky, but when Emma is in bed and Kinsley is up its like her time to shine. It will be interesting to see whether she defers to emma when get gets older.

11) Wait, we have a 2^nd daughter? Not that she gets completely ignored but because she is so easy and basically just needs to be held and fed, sometimes we almost forget about her.

Miscellaneous pics from a father's day trip to Deanna Rose with Dylan and company

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Speed Racer

After Kinsley arrived, one of the first things on Lela’s mind was when she could start running again. While Lela didn’t have extreme problems, the second time around it seemed it took her a little bit longer to get rolling to the extent that was acceptable to her (note to her, not to a normal personJ) . We found that after Emma was born it was good for both of us to have race goals as it forced us to keep working out and figure out how to work around the new post child workout life. So I ran in the KC half, Lela ran in the gobbler grind about a month later. This time around I am still out of commission because a hex has been put on my feet by somebody who misinterpreted my use of the term Wasian and thinks that I am a racist rather than a white person who loves all things Asian (rice, noodles, spice, dark complexions, etc). That’s my interpretation of how plantar faciitis occurs. Anyway, Lela decided to get back on the saddle and run in a race. At first we thought about doing a race on memorial day in Columbia. It was all women, sounded neat, all that. Well that and the race that comes the week after that is Hospital Hill. Lela and I have run in the 10k a few times and our comments always involved the phrases/words “sucked” “hotter than humans should run in” “why does God hate Kansas City runners and create these hills that somebody really dumb decided to turn into a race”….well you get the point. We had generally dismissed the half marathon as a venture that should be left for others unless we wanted to see if we could faint during a race. So HH wasn’t high on our list of to do’s. But then we got to thinking (by we, I mean Lela saying “should we thinking about this” and then me thinking about it. . .yes, my brain is slow and linear, like Casey Weigman). Do we really want to go 2 hrs to run in a race with the whole crew, one of which might be up all night in a foreign place? Do we really feel comfortable amongst that many people who are Mizzou fans? Could we get pulled over 5 times for having Kansas plates with hawkeye decals (sorry about that whole Insight bowl thing Mizzou fans)? Also that race started at 7:30 instead of 7, just wasn’t adding up. So we signed Lela up for HH. So memorial day came and it was hot, that Saturday morning the low was 75 and my boy Gary Lezak kept talking about how a cold front was going to move through. I monitored the race day weather like it was a 4 star hawkeye recruit who was wavering on going to Iowa. As the race became more near it was apparent, we were going to have a nice morning on our hands, some relief was coming into the house. We went to Jaspers and carb loaded (even spectators need to do this just because). We put the girls to bed with no real fits, Emma was excited to get up and watch mommy run really, really fast. I was pretty apprehensive at this point to be honest. Its somewhat daunting to get everybody out the door with no tantrums on time, get Lela to the start line and then occupy to lil Wasians for 2 or so hrs. Everything went smoothly, we dropped lela off with time for her to get to the start and the girls and I headed to starbucks around 40^th and main. If any of you have been to this sbux you know, it has an interesting mix. I am pretty sure a young couple was working on their drug business on their Apple computer - at least that’s how I interpreted combining showing a lot of mid drift with pajama pants while being 30 lbs overweight yet having the latest and greatest Apple gear. We high tailed it out of there and headed to the hood to watch Lela first in the hood, then in Brookside. We timed it well and while Emma was a bit shocked to see Lela, she thought it was pretty neat and had some big smiles. She also almost knocked over a police motorcycle. . .not really kidding. Anyway, we headed to the finish line and got to see Lela finished. She did great, was near a PR, which considering she had only been able to run for 3.5 months and it was hospital hill was quite an accomplishment. It was a great day, we were so proud of Lela.

Our house is filled with a lot of laughter any more. Sure there are those moments when we question whether we will be able to make it without losing sanity, but Emma has a knack for saying the most amusing things. I can’t even remember most of them, just that you can’t help but to crack up. I think she knows she’s funny also, so its going to get dangerous around here. Emma is very confident and not the most prissy girl. As in her favorite thing right now is Lightning McQueen, not that there is anything wrong with that and Emma finds various girls princess things interesting, but she doesn’t seem to really care about what she is supposed to like or not, she just does her own thing. We hope this individualism carries her through in life because at times it creates some battles at our house that shouldn’t be so hard. She has also become obsessed with spray bottles, so if we want to keep her entertained, we just take her outside with that. Knocking on wood, but Emma continues to love the role of big sister. She tries to comfort Kinsley if crying, entertain her if Kinsley seems bored and is generally excited to take Kinsley with us places. We hope that continues!

Kinsley’s natural pose is to put her hands behind her head. When she is mad she does it. When she is relaxing she does it. is she going to be laid back, with her mind on her money and her money on her mind (snoop dogg style, minus habitual marijuana use and the other things not so great about snoop)? We’ll see, Emma was also the most chill baby in the world, and she is now, well not so laid back.

Anyway, here are some recent pics, more later.