You Know You're a Parent When...(#11)

Aloha,

What, Papa?

When you’re raising three boys under the age of six, time flyeth before ye knoweth. Wow… Here’s the eleventh installment of my monthly “You Know You’re A Parent When…” series.

You can find the most recent here and here – and I promise everything happened, and it’s all based on my daily life as a happily married stay-at-home Dad J

 

 

 

Quick! Grab on, here we go....You know you’re a parent when…

·         You decide to write a 15-part weekly series on how training for a marathon can be like writing a book. Great idea, but where exactly is this extra writing time coming from – your arse?

·         You master the power of patience. This Zen-level of awareness was recently achieved when No. 1 Son said he, “peed on the toilet.”

“No, Son,” said you, the Dad/Writer, putting a pen behind your ear in a mad-professorial way, “It’s not on the toilet, it’s in the toilet.”

“Nuh uh, I pee-peed on the toilet, Papa.”

You smile at the child, [still] enjoying this teaching moment.

“Think about it, Son. You pee inside the toilet because the lid is up and the pee-pee goes inside,” you say, crouching down like (old) sitting tiger, “the only way you could pee on the toilet is when both lids are down.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Papa. I peed on the toilet!”

Oh.

 ##########

·         The kids are sleeping.

The laundry is piling

The Elmo sheets are a-foldin’

(And it’s all good, ‘cos)

The ‘80s are a-rockin’

 

Cover of Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Jae Lee.

·         You finish changing the baby and bound downstairs with a spare diaper in your side pocket.

As you traverse the dangerous Pocoyo and Lego-strewn “walkway” to the kitchen, you realize that while you may never be Roland the Gunslinger, you can, by gosh, claim rights to Papa the Kidslinger as No. 3 Son moves from hip to hip or side to side with nary a cry or squeal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

·         You [nearly] poop your pants while at the weekly Moms (and Dad) morning playroom event at the community center.

Scanning the room to verify presence of all three sons, No. 2 Son (who is two-and-a-half) is nary to be found.

It’s a *large* open room, so he can’t be hiding, so where is he?

Putting the smartphone down… (oh yeah, you feel smart now checking your blog… smart as a wet paper bag) you stand up as the Papa Kidslinger instincts fire up.

Slowly, you scan the room again… he’s wearing solid red… there’s about thirty kids, twenty parents… take your time…

Oh gosh, (I may have said a stronger word…) where is he?

No. 1 Son is painting, No. 3 is sleeping…

OK… move toward the front door…. Scanning, turning… out into the lobby…

There is a meeting going on…open door… you barge right in there… “sorry, looking for my son…”

He’s not there.

You look at the door to THE OUTSIDE and there is no way

(is there??)

that he could have gotten OUTSIDE…

You turn around, back into the main, open area… walking slowly… dry mouth…

Real panic starts to bubbliciously announce its arrival when one of the moms opposite where you sat waves.

“He’s over here – in the little (dollhouse-style play) tent.”

He was not on the tent, he was in the tent… the flat-on-the-ground tent where he had crawled into (less than twenty feet from me) to play with some plastic dinosaurs.

(Thank you, Lord.)

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“No problem. I noticed him crawling in the tent, and when I saw the look on your face, I put two and two together.”

I lifted the flat opening of the flat tent…

“Son, what... where, what are you doing in there?”

“Dinosayers! In the tunnel, rook Papa. Rook at my dinosayers. In the tunnel!

 

Moral of the story: We ain’t buyin’ no stinkin’ dollhouse tents in this house J

Papa? Where's my tent, Papa?