Inspired Epiphany

The other day I had a revelation... an epiphany if you will.  I'm the father of 3 girls. (That's not the epiphany!) With my wife and I deciding that the last child was going to be our LAST child, I will not have a son (again... no epiphany).  Now, I wouldn't trade in any of my girls for anything (minus Super Bowl tickets (and they don't even have to be good seats)). But as a father, I realized that I will never be able to pass along my fatherly advice to my son just as my father did to me and his father before him. (Normally, you'd think this would be the epiphany... but we are not quite there yet.)

So I had 2 choices in the matter.  I could let this little quandry consume me.  I could dwell on things that I could not change.  Or... I could turn this into one of those lemons to lemonade stories that you hear about. (Just to clarify, having all girls is not the proverbial "lemon" it is the not ever having a son that is covered with lemons... juice, seeds, peelings and all.)

In the spirit of adding the right ingredients to make my lemonade, I began to think of all of the positive things that this unplanned scenario has brought into my life.  And one of those things stood out (*insert epiphany buildup here).  The more and more I thought about it the more I began to realize that this is AWESOME (epiphany is almost here)!  Since I'm the father (wait for it) and I have all daughters (w..a..i..t.. for it...) I will NEVER have to have THE TALK!  And *BAM!!!* just like that... there it was! (For those who missed it, that was it.)

For most of you this is not that big of a deal.  I really struggled with the idea of THE TALK.  I really didn't know what I was going to say. First off, everything I would have told my son would have been a lie.  I don't know what I'm doing!  So I would have just been making stuff up.  It took me 3 times just to figure out what causes babies to begin with.  (And when I found out, you better believe I stopped that mess right then and there!)

Then there's the whole what to call everything.  I could have called it the birds and the bees.  OK... I'm pretty good on solving problems by figuring out the relationships between (sometimes seemingly unrelated) variables.  But what does birds and bees have anything to do with... well... you know?  If you are going to bring birds and bees into the conversation, why not bring in other animals?: the raccoons and the wildebeests... the turtles and the dolphins... the pigs and the elephants (South Park reference).  Each of these has just as much connection as a bird and a bee. (Quick Note: If anyone reading this had the talk with their parents or had the talk with their children and actually used the birds and the bees to explain things, please email me excerpts from the conversation. I would almost pay good money for that.)

But I get to leave that ALLLL to my lovely and wonderful wife.  Just like with the birth of our last child, I don't even want to be in the same room when all of that is going on. (Yes, I was there(Yes... there will be a post about it).)  I will trust that she doesn't need backup on this one and I will let her do her thing.  I'm not going to interrupt.  I will find out when the talk is and I'll be leaving the house for the evening.  That will relieve me of the temptation to want to go in there and say something.  Because if I do, I know I will screw it up.

If I had to explain the babies without using the stork or a cabbage leaf then I would probably have used sports.  That would completely ruin it for the girls.  Because in sports there is a winner and a loser.  So I probably would have told them that if you let the "other team" score, you lose (and that includes field goals - ESPECIALLY field goals)!  I would have told them that there will be no first base, second base and definitely NO home runs.  As a matter of fact they should try to hit the batter every chance they get.  There will be no free throws or dribbling of any kind.  And 3 pointers are COMPLETELY out of the question! (And right there, I just made a connection I can't figure out myself.) If anyone tries to get the puck in the goal, YOU CHECK THEM RIGHT INTO THE WALL!!!  NO mercy!

And I probably wouldn't stop there.  I know computers too.  So THAT conversation would have been even more confusing than the first one. Say NO to gigabytes and terabytes! Say HELL NO to floppy disks and hard drives!  USB ports?!?!? (I'm not even going there)  Mac? PC? It doesn't matter! Don't let either one touch your spreadsheets.  The'll be NO Internet Explorers of any kind on your desktop.  And you let me know if any guy even TRIES to Google you.  And if I'm still breathing you can forget about anyone Facebooking you as long as you live in MySpace!

You can clearly see that it is in the girls best interest if I stay as far away from THE TALK as possible.  Now that I'm done with with this blog I'm not even sure how my wife and I even had the 3 kids we got! I'm pretty sure if God had asked me to explain the birds and the bees to Adam and Eve, the world's total population would have ended at 2.  I guess I'm OK with that, though.  We all play to our strengths.  So if for some reason my daughters DO ask me about THE TALK I'm just going to point them to Wikipedia.  Because if it is in there, it MUST be true.  (Situation resolved.)

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Where are the Penguin PJs?

Yeah, I did it!  And I would do it again!  I made a statement and I'm sticking to it.  Some may say it was petty and misguided but to them I say, with the style as grace of a literary genius.... :-P <--- Oh, yeah... Don't mess with the QUE because you might get the tongue! (For some reason the BULL and the HORNS original quote sounds much more... menacing.  I'm not sure why).

This time of the year becomes interesting.  My wife is in retail so she works all the time and late hours.  So that means I get to spend a lot of fatherly time with the kids.  That ALSO means that for those few hours of the day... what I say goes!

If I want to feed the kids Cheerios for dinner (Multi-grain, though.  I'm a good father)... I can. And I'm not saying I have ever done that.  I'm just saying that if I wanted to, there is no one there to stunt my awesome parenting skills.  If I wanted to feed the baby beans when I know it's my wife's night to deal with her... I can.  Again, that's not to say that I would (or have EVER done that).  That's just to prove the point that for these few hours each night during this time of the year are MINE.  (I really should tell you the story about me taking the 4-year old and the 1-year old to the "salon" to get the 4-year old's hair cut.)

With that unwritten rule (which apparently should be written), I have the freedom to dress the kids anyway I choose.  A few nights ago I had one of those "I'm in charge" nights.  So I went through the mental checklist.  I played with the kids... check.  I fed the kids...check (I will neither confirm nor deny the involvement of any said Cheerios).  I gave them baths...check (separate baths, of course.  Those who read this post know why). I put the little one to bed...check.  Now it's time to get the 4-year old ready.

This is where the fun comes in.  She hates brushing her teeth.  So there is always this song and dance when it comes to the teeth brushing thing.  It normally starts with the word NO (GRRR) and it usually ends with me giving my VERY authoritative, VERY stern MANLY voice commanding her to brush or else.  I even stand up sometimes for the affect (Since I'm 6'3" and she's much, much smaller.  That technique has the opposite affect on my wife, though).  She's pretty smart, however.  So I have to watch what and how I tell her things.  If I just tell her to brush her teeth but don't tell her how long, she's usually done in 2.7 seconds (personal best).

Now it is time to change into her night-night clothes.  She always wants to wear her Penguin PJs.  This is an easy one.  But of course... not this night.  When I go to look for them, they are no where to be found.  GREAT!  That usually means they are currently in one of 2 places: the washer or the dryer.  Either way, that's not going to help me now.  DING, DING!  That signaled the beginning of Round 2.  Time for the yelling, kicking and screaming (and that's just me)!  I get to spend the next 10 minutes trying to convince her that her Minnie Mouse PJs are WAY COOLER (they aren't).  What about the Butterfly PJs? NO! What about the Flower PJs? NO!  What about the Panda PJs (which are too big because they are her older sister's hand-me-downs but she likes them anyway)? NO!  What about these???

I reach into a pile of newly dried clean clothes and grab some PJs.  Hmmm... These are cool.  What do you think about these?  And there is was... the 4-year olds approval.  YES!  That's all I needed.  So I put the PJ bottoms on.  Wow, these are kinda tight and a little short.  This is probably the last time she gets to wear these.  I'm not sure if I said that out loud or not, but I was thinking it.  Now for the PJ top.  I had a little problem getting it over her fro (even though I just had it cut a few days earlier).  But I finally shoved her head through the neck hole.  These PJs were too much trouble.  This is definitely going to be the last time she wears these.  4-year old in her night-nights... check!

Parenting skills were in tact.  I started the night with 2 kids and ended with 2 kids (the other was at gymnastics) so that night was a good night. Until... my beautiful wife came home.  As the 4-year old sees mommy, she goes running to her yelling "Mommy, Mommy!" like normal.  But what wasn't normal was my wife's expression.  She was trying to keep a straight face.  She looked a little confused.  She knew it was daddy's night but something was still wrong.  She looked at me and with a very lovely tone asked...

"Why is the 4-year old wearing the baby's 12 - 18 month PJs?"

... What???

... That can't be right.

I really wish I had a good excuse for that one.  All I had was... "She wanted to wear them."  (Which was true) I said that with as much sincerity as I could muster all the while still trying to figure out how that happened.  But my wife knew.  She knew that I had a nice, classic daddy FAIL moment.  And I knew she knew when she fell out laughing!  Then I started kinda laughing (trying to not give it away that I didn't even notice it was the baby's clothes).  But when I viewed the scene with my new perspective I noticed that our daughter did have her Homer Simpson on.  As well as her father... DOH!

We let her sleep in the PJs.  It wasn't cutting off the circulation (that I could tell).  She liked them.  AND she wasn't going anywhere.  So I thought all was done.  But I guess my wife's FaceBook Status Update had a different set of plans.  The next morning, it decided to let the world know that the 4-year old looked like the Incredible HULK that morning and proceeded to tell why.  It turned a wonderfully fun, beautiful and PRIVATE father/daughter moment into something PUBLIC.

Needless to say, dirty or clean, the ONLY PJs my 4-year old will ever wear (on my shift) are the Penguin PJs.  Take that, FaceBook! (notice how I didn't point the finger at my wife.  I blamed FaceBook.  I'm more than a foot taller than she is but sometimes when I stand up next to her I still find myself looking up.)