12 posts tagged “the wife”
As evidenced by what she said and did to reign in the kids at the library yesterday. See they got her while she was vulnerable, while she was checking out books and videos at the front desk. The hooligans took off running and giggling through the music section. Mom thinks fast and says,
"Hey, c'mere and smell my pants..."
The girl runs over and smells mom's pants. Goes on long enough to finish checking out. Totally calms the girl down and diffuses the situation.
This, friends, is nothing less than completely brilliant. I tend to think along the same lines as this when things get whacky with the kids. For instance if they're screaming and yelling I'll tell them to race to their room, loser is a rotten chicken butt. They take off and I get a moment of silence. Gotta think fast you know, and be smart, and always bring your A game.
But man, nothing I've ever said or remember saying beats "Hey, c'mere and smell my pants..."
I'm not sure I'd have had the guts to say that in public and I don't know if having the kids smell my pants would be worth it. I don't know but I'm assuming the worst, that my pants stink. I know they don't but you know, I don't want anyone smelling my pants in case they do stink. Because if I'm out and about and my pants stink for whatever reason I'm going to want to abandon ship, and hilarity will ensue.
And if the kids smell my pants and they stink and I freak out even a little bit, they'll file it away in their evil brain and get me with it when I'm vulnerable. It becomes a trump card. "Jeez dad, your pants sure do stink..." and off I go running.
Anyway, kudos, major kudos to my brilliant wife for thinking fast and smart on her feet. Man she's the best, I swear.
With some of the trimmings. Nothing like turkey on an 80 degree day. 13 pounder. My wife rules.
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I'm not hating winter as much as I usually do, at least not yet. It has been very mild here which must help. We haven't been stuck in any of those odd -20F stretches with six inches of stale styrofoam snow yet. The temps just recently dropped to seasonal levels and I think that might be contributing to this new cold that I have. That I got yesterday. I was gonna at least ride the bike last night but the thought of going into the garage even with the big propane heater cranked made me ill. And my chest is all internal sore, joints stiff, and my whole face is oozing goo.
I told The Wife that I didn't like being the up front guy, the person that gets sick first. I think I just don't like getting sick period and the trend is I'm getting whatever first, thus everything is named "dad's bug". Doesn't matter. I just want to be normal. Which I don't think will happen until like July or something.
December 20th. I'd be damned if I was going to drive and walk all this way and not stick my toe in.
This is my first day back in gosh, I don't know how many days. A long frigging time. So long it almost verges on sabbatical-length long. I knocked off in the middle of December. While I was out, they reorganized the department, scattered my former team to the four winds, moved my desk, changed my title and job description, and plunked me down on a new team. I now sit mere steps from the elevator in an extremely small cube. Not really a cube, just a desk actually. Not even a stall.
On the homefront, The Girl got pretty darned sick. Her version of what we're calling Dad's Bug was limited to throwing up at various awkward times. She got over it like a trooper and was healthy enough to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve. She was pretty excited, and bored, and filled the time with drawing pictures. She talked me into drawing pictures of my favorite bands and then signing her name to my drawings, which was darned cute.
The Boy was doing pretty well until this morning when he woke up and jumped into our bed smelling like poop. Mom got up to change him to discover he'd hurled all over the place. This was long after he was feeling better. Mom is concerned because the ejecta looks like poop. And smells like poop. But did not come from the normal poop place. See before he'd dealt with Dad's Bug he hadn't been pooping all that much. She thinks he might have a bowel obstruction. They're headed to the doctor sometime today, still waiting to hear back. Yeah I know, very pleasant.
The Wife wound up getting sick on Sunday. Finally caught Dad's Bug. Her version was limited to the vigorous and constant pooping variety, no throwing up. And her version was mercifully quick. She was feeling better Sunday night actually and was so-so on Monday, but generally better by last night. I was glad she got sick while I was at home so I could take some of the burden and give a little TLC.
And The Squirrel. I gotta save Squirrely McSquirrel-Squirrel for the next post. That's going to be a long one.
He woke up around 3:30pm, came downstairs, and smelled like a cadaver pulled from an old Buick just pulled out of a muddy swamp. I know this smell as it's the same darned smell that I had to survive through a few days earlier.
I told him he had a dookie-booty and needed to come upstairs with me. He frowned and in a deep, growling voice said, "I'M THE KING!"
I said, "Well alright then King Dookie-Booty, let's go change your fanny."
I picked him up, took him upstairs, put him on the changing table and told him to put his hands above his head and do not move. I took mercy on him and taught him how to do the gas mask trick, the thing where you tuck your nose under the collar of your shirt. And then I got to work. It was rough.
We headed back downstairs and continued watching the James Bond marathon on Spike TV. Around the next commercial break the smell came back, and I changed him yet again. The Boy became a machine, filling his diaper just before each commercial break. I changed five diapers in an hours time. I mean with a 2 year old, most diapers are the pee kind which are pretty much a walk in the park. And since I work I don't get many of the other kind. So pretty much in an hours time I changed more poo butts than I've done in like six months time.
And not nice poo butts mind you, nasty sick poo butts. The kind that smell so bad they singe the hair off the chest of even the burliest marine.
He was in good spirits though. If you saw him you'd never know what was up. I was worried though because of my recent experience with the same bug. So after each diaper I gave him half a sippy cup of grape flavored Pedialyte. For those who don't know it's kind of like a Gatorade sort of drink for babies and kids with tummy problems.
Mom came home, I don't know, around 5:30 or so, we ate dinner, and I was pretty darned cashed and wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to see about a new lifting cage for my home gym (with a lat pulldown attachment) and also wanted to hit a bookstore to see if I could satiate my new Star Trek obsession. I also needed to make a stop at the bank. I hit the bank, was at the bookstore when my cellphone went off.
The Boy had hurled all over The Girls room. Complete disaster, please come home. So off I went.
As soon as I came in the door I took off my shirt and let the dog out before I even closed the front door. I found The Boy in the bathtub in about an inch of very nasty bathwater. Outside of The Girl's room were all manner of cleaning materials. But the amazing thing was the smell. We've all been there and we all know darned well it's rough. But surprisingly enough, this wasn't bad at all. As a matter of fact, the entire upstairs smelled kind of good. It was the grape flavoring of the Pedialyte that provided a sort of fruity, fresh scent.
The Boy had been playing in The Girl's room when he got sick. He was kind enough not to hurl on the bed or the rug or the bookshelf. What happened was he stood still, hurled at his feet, took a step back, hurled again, took another step back, hurled, and so on. Five times, all on bare floor. Really not bad at all, and the smell was quite nice.
I emptied the bathwater with The Boy in the tub, then refilled it and gave him a proper scrubdown, diapered him, put on his jammies, and handed him off to The Wife for the bedtime routine. I rounded up The Girl and we worked on a LiteBrite ice cream cone until The Wife finished up with The Boy. Then I made good my escape and headed back out to the bookstore but not before making sure everything was safe and secure.
We checked on him several times during the night and he made it through just fine, with a dry diaper in fact. He's had a little action this morning but things are becoming much more manageable than yesterday, so I'm thinking the worst is behind us. But he's still a little bit tentative. The wildcard though is The Girl. We're keeping a close eye on her, as well as The Wife.
I'm not sure what these things are called but my kids each got one (from some family member, uninflated) in their stockings for xmas. For reference I'd like to note that I searched google for "bouncy ball thing" and actually found one.
The Girl and The Wife had the following exchange a few days back. I vaguely recall it through a feverish haze. I think you'll understand why I didn't think the exchange actually occurred, but it did. The Girl was in the livingroom holding both bouncy ball things behind her.
The Girl: "Look mom, I have two a**holes! I have one a**hole here and another a**hole right here!"
The Wife: "That's a bad word, you shouldn't say that. Don't you mean butts?"
The Girl: "Yeah! Look mom! I have two butts! I have one butt here and another butt right here!"
Now even though I was sick I caught heat for this because apparently The Wife has never said "a**hole" in front of the kids, ever. Which I find hard to believe. And apparently I have even though I can't think of a time when I've used the term, although I'm certain I have said it. Especially in traffic, when I'm driving. Or even when I'm not driving. I am kind of glad it happened though because apparently we've cleared some things up for the girl, specifically the destinction between one's butthole and one's buttocks.
See? They grow up fast and seem like they know everything but it's the details that can sometimes slip through the cracks.
Well the good news is just a few minutes ago I found out that what I had wasn't food poisoning, must have been a bug. Doesn't really matter, one of those six of one half dozen of the other type of things really, and that's because of the bad news.
The Wife was on the phone with one of her friends, recapping the last few days. She'd just got telling her friend that we're in the clear when The Boy walked by and hurled all over the kitchen. I checked him out, no fever, and he seems to be in good spirits. He said a bunch of times "I barfed dad, I barfed," which in spite of the circumstances was awful cute. I took him upstairs and wiped his face off with a cool washcloth and sent him on his way, under close observation.
Uh oh, he just walked by with mom saying that his tummy still hurts. And The girl just said that her tummy hurts. I wish it was summer. We could all hang out and be sick in the yard together. It's too bad things don't seem to work out that way.
And it was quite fun. Went to Grampa's place and spent time with The Wife's Stepbrothers and their families. It was cool this year with all the kids. We had 4 grandkids in attendance with 2 absent this year. Perhaps next year we'll have the gang all together.
I ate my ass off, which I think might be some kind of oxymoron or paradox or something. It's the most I've eaten in like two months. I had all kinds of hors d'oeuvres, several sodas, half a slab of ribs, a stuffed shell, ice cream cake, and a frosted gingerbread cookie. In anticipation of this culinary massacre I rode the 'bent this morning for an hour and honestly I'm thinking I'll ride for another hour shortly. Gotta get some of this goo out of me and that's the best way.
So tomorrow we'll get our first real xmas tree. The Wife and I have never had a full-sized one. We've either never had the room or the will or the reason to get one. Now that the kids are a bit older we're finally going to do it. We have a small tree that we got a few years back that we put up but this year we're going whole hog, getting a nice big real tree for upstairs. We'll have to get lights and tinsel and whatnot but I think we've got plenty of ornaments stashed away that we've inherited over time.
We're also going to hit one of the local xmas light displays with the kids. It'll be granny-pants lame but the kids will love it and that makes it all worthwhile.
We'll be having xmas day here which I'm a little apprehensive about since to my knowledge we've done no planning for whatsoever. I gotta talk to The Wife, see if she's hooked anything up yet. If not tomorrow will be a shade nuttier than I'd thought.
God man this whole holiday thing is like trying to navigate a minefield at night, in the rain, without a map or a flashlight while dragging two spare tires and wearing pink tap shoes. But for the first time in as long as I can remember I'm actually enjoying it.
After cleaning out the Jeep Wednesday morning, The Girl came out with quite a sour puss. She wanted to say goodbye to the Jeep. She walked up to the side of the car and in a small, sad voice said, "Goodbye, Jeep." and turned around to go inside.
I said, "Well don't you want to say goodbye face to face?" She went around to the front and said goodbye again, and gave the Jeep a big hug on the front fender.
The Wife and The Boy came out next for one last photo, and off I went on the final ride. I was a little sad as I rode off into the sunrise trying to see around the big crack in the windshield, blinded by the sun, freezing my fanny off in the broken, sunken, twisted drivers seat.
