Five Things

To my son Tommy,

Tonight you precociously announced that you wanted to do the following five things.  For some reason tonight I epitomize the word sloth.  Your lazy dad would be happy skipping to number five.  But here is your closing routine for this Friday night.

1.  You want to do homework.  You haven't had school in two weeks and thus have no homework.  So I have to find some type of tracing activity to print out for you.  Since it will occupy while I write this blog, I caved.  Of course you already started bugging your mother to help you so that might end up backfiring on me and you as well.

2.  Brush your teeth.  I know good dental hygiene is very important but again it takes effort.  I will celebrate the day when you can successfully brush your teeth totally on your own without any parental help or guidance.  They are only baby teeth anyhow.

3.  Go potty.  You do this pretty well on your own, unless of course you do poops.  And you always do poops.  And that means daddy has to wipe, which you could imagine is not one of my most favorite duties in life.

4.  Bathy.  Bath time is a pretty elaborate production.  It is filled with power struggles and tears and water in the eyes and toys and time wasting and negotiations and whining.  The tears and whining are mostly from me.  Add to the fact that Mommy wants me to clean the bathtub before it is used.  I cleaned the tub last night but not to her standards.  You see, yesterday I had to thaw an outside hose so I could empty our leaking hot water heater so we could replace it.  I made one heck of a mess.  I did my best to clean it up, but without hot water to help, and considering my general state of mind and the amount of cursing I had done throughout the hot water heater debacle (that I purposely avoided writing to you about and I just now can talk about) the cleaning was probably a little bit lackluster.  Oh well, mommies get mad at daddies from time to time.  It is just the way it is.  But since a bath time will reopen this wound, I am going to fight to skip this step for now.

5.  Bedtime.  There is nothing like the illusion of sweet release from parental obligation that we call bedtime.  Even though the feeling is fleeting and temporal and really just a lie you tell yourself, that few minutes that a parent has to him or herself after they put the kid down is an amazing feeling.  Of course to get there we have to fight through the above steps and all the other steps you didn't mention.  It is not as easy as tossing you into bed and shutting off the light.  We have to get you your mask treatment for your wheezing, and your medicine for your sinus infection, plus getting you into pajamas, and singing, and prayers, and making sure you have your water, and finding the right stuffed animal for snuggling, and turning on the pillow pet to the correct color stars, and then the final tuck in.  I never realized how high maintenance you are.

Anyways, we will most likely do everything listed and then some.  I might be reluctant and regressing to an immature attitude not befitting a father, but I will still do it.  Perhaps this a reaction to realizing how grown up I was that I didn't want a snow day.  So tonight you get to be the adult and thank goodness at least one of us is doing so.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo