Good Intentions

In all areas of life, there are good intentions that sometimes just don’t get acted on or simply fail. 

The Cubs have put together a team they thought could win it all for the last 100+ years.  Good intentions.  Hasn’t quite panned out.  Although there’s always this year.

I meant to send my wife flowers on the first day of her new job, but a week went by, and then it was too late.  No action, but good intentions.

My wife keeps telling me she’s going to buy me new underwear.  I am fairly picky about my tighty whities, and my wife can only find them at Marshall’s, and she’s never at Marshall’s.  So, I continue to wear underwear with holes in them . . . . some of them are getting pretty ratty looking.   Again, she means well, but can’t pull the trigger.

Parenting is much the same way.  We all say things and make decisions that we think are in the best interests of our children.  Unfortunately some of those good intentions are either too difficult to implement or fall way down on the priority list.

From the get go my wife and I agreed that we would not allow our boys to have toy guns in the house.  Now if their friends had toy guns, and our boys were at that house then obviously they could play with the guns, but we were not going to have toy guns in our house.  That lasted until our first son could walk.  Yeah I would venture to say that we made it about a year (give or take) before he was walking around the house with a Nerf gun.  Soon after that he had a battery powered Nerf gun, and not long after that he had a fully-automatic Nerf gun.  We now own every Nerf gun product made, and we’ve actually invited other boys over to our house to have all out wars.  In fact, I usually get involved in those battles, and have on more than one occasion been scolded by my wife for screaming things like “Die you Commie Pig!”  We’ve recently graduated to airsoft guns, and my boys and I research and buy guns based on their FPS Power (Feet Per Second . . . how fast they shoot).  Let’s put it this way, if World War III breaks out you probably want to come to my house, as I can offer you protection.

It was also our intention to have our boys read for 20 minutes a night.  Whether the book was required reading for a particular class or whether it was just for fun, we wanted them to read 20 minutes a night.  That’s happened once. . . . in like the last five years.  I’m not entirely sure my nine-year-old son actually knows how to read.  It’s gotten so bad that he will negotiate with us when it comes time for his 20 minutes of reading. 

“Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll take a shower.”

Or “Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll walk the dog.”

Or “Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll empty the dish washer.”

I think if we keep this up he’ll eventually start negotiating with things that I actually want.

“Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll change the oil in your car.”

It’s awful, and rarely do we get 20 minutes of reading from both the boys.

Getting the boys to bed early is yet another example of good intentions gone bad.  Pretty  much from day one we had planned to get the boys to bed early (at least during the week) so that they would be fresh the next day.  We started with an 8:00 PM bedtime.  That didn’t work.  They were wide awake 30 minutes later wandering the house looking for something to do.  I once heard a noise coming from the living room a good hour after I had put the boys to bed.  I went downstairs to investigate, only to find my oldest on the couch watching a movie and eating a bowl of Chex Mix.  He told me to keep it down as the “good part” was about to happen.  At this point it’s pure anarchy, and if we can get them to bed before we’re in bed, I consider it a major accomplishment.

Same with sleepovers.  They both LOVE having sleepovers with pals.  And it’s gotten out of hand.  I’ve actually started saying things like: “If your last name is not Whipple, you cannot sleep in this house tonight,” and like three different kids will get up and walk out of my house.   Unfortunately for our intentions, having our kids sleep at other houses is like a free night – I mean who turns down an offer to get rid of a kid for a night?  But after we realized that both of our children were having trouble getting up for school on Monday, we knew we needed to act.

So we decided that they could have one sleepover per weekend – no back-to-backs.   Good compromise.  The first weekend we put this rule to the test, Jack had an impromptu sleepover at a friend’s house on Friday night, and had already planned an overnight for Saturday because we had dinner plans.  So, instead of doing the right thing and upholding the rule, we decided to let Jack have the second sleepover. 

Oh well.  Good intentions, but my wife and I don’t see each other enough, especially during the baseball and soccer seasons, so we weren’t going to let a little thing like the back-to-back sleepover rule wreck our night out.  It’s a priority thing.

So my new philosophy is that all I need are good intentions – all is excused if things don’t actually pan out.  Although, if a certain someone doesn’t take some shopping action soon, I’m going to run out of underwear.   Maybe I should have bought those flowers after all.

The Baby Talk

I think most kids have a certain sense of entitlement.  They believe that they should get certain things just because.  Whether it’s a new pair of baseball pants or a new video game or a pack of baseball trading cards or a new Nerf gun, I think kids just feel like they are owed this stuff.  And my kids are no different.  Rarely does a week go by when they’re not asking for something new.  Typically these conversations start after they see some new toy or game advertised on TV or after their friend brings something new and cool to school, but my wife and I are bombarded with “Hey dad, I need the new Nerf Blaster,” or “Hey mom, I just gotta have the new iTouch,” on a weekly basis.

Now we’ve given them the “financial responsibility” talk, as well as the “things in moderation” talk, and it all seems to be falling on deaf ears.  They are 11 and 7 after all.  So my wife and I have simply started to combat this barrage of requests with our own requests.  Conversations between us and our boys now go like this, “Dad, I want the new Mario Brother’s game for Wii.”  “Good for you, I want a Ferrari.”  Or “Mom, I just have to have a new Blackhawks jersey.”  “Great, I just have to have a million dollars.”  I think they’re starting to get the point because they’re slowly but surely asking for less, but they still ask for stuff from time to time.

In fact recently I overheard my youngest son ask my wife for an iTunes gift card so that he could download new apps on his iTouch and I heard my wife counter it with “Well, I want a baby.”

Whoa.  Hold on.  Wait a minute.  That’s not funny.  Is it time to have another “baby talk?” 

My wife and I have “baby talks” about once every couple years.  These talks typically happen after one of my wife’s friends give birth or after someone moves into the neighborhood with a newborn (the more I think about it, the more I see the similarities between my kids wanting new stuff and my wife wanting a new baby . . . I’m wondering if I can combat my wife’s baby request in the same way I combat my kids’ requests . . . “Honey, I want a new baby.” “Fantastic, I want a blow job three times a week”). 

Now, I know my wife would like to have another baby, and I know she’d really like to have a daughter, and frankly having three kids is something she and I talked about when we first got married.  I think she wanted four kids and I wanted two.  We were both willing to meet in the middle and compromise at three. 

However time seems to fly by and what sounded like a good plan 10 years ago is now a far less realistic plan.  When my wife and I first started having kids we were in our late 20’s, now we’re both a year away from turning 40.  Our young family is not so young anymore, as our “baby Jack” is about to celebrate his 8^th birthday in 10 days.  Though there are plenty of couples who have kids later in life I think my wife and I have forgotten what it’s like to be “young parents.”  The sleepless nights and the diapers and the bottles and the colic are things of the past.  We’ve moved on to travel soccer games and 5^th grade sex ed classes.  The Telletubbies and Barney have been replaced by Hanna Montana and Star Wars the Clone Wars.

However, in anticipation of yet another “baby talk,” I have decided to list the “pros” and “cons” of having a 3^rd child.  After all I owe it to my wife to really give this a fair shake.

So lets start with the pros:

Sex.  And not just sex.  But sex with HER COMING AFTER ME!  As in I could just lay back and relax, and let the hunter become the hunted.  Hell, just for shits and giggles I may say “no” once or twice and make her work for it.  I’m getting excited just thinking about it.

Blog material.  Can you imagine me with a newborn?  It would be a train wreck.  Heck the nine months of pregnancy would provide me with plenty of good blog topics.  Lactating breasts . . . you don’t think I could blog about that?  Really? 

Built-in babysitting.  Our 11-year old is already starting to do a little bit of “light duty” babysitting for us when we go out, so by the time this third child came into the world, we’d have great built-in babysitting.  This cannot be overlooked.  This is huge as I’ll need to get away from the baby as much as possible.

Now the cons:

Sex.  Yes believe it or not this is BOTH a pro and a con.  Getting her pregnant is a pro, but once she’s pregnant, and once she’s past that first trimester sex becomes a bit of a con.  It’s just sex with a pregnant chick.  That’s all it is.  There’s nothing beautiful about it.  It’s wrong and uncomfortable. 

We have another boy.  I’ve already got two boys.  They’re great.  I love them.  But I’ve already got two boys.  I don’t really need another one.

We have a girl.  Well for all the “pros” associated with having a baby girl, here is the one “con” that keeps getting in the way.  And frankly it’s the ONLY one that I just can’t get out of my mind . . . all girls fuck.  That’s it.  That’s all I have against having a girl.  But it’s fact, and while I appreciate that fact as a guy who likes girls, I’m not a big fan of that fact as a DAD OF A DAUGHTER!!!

I think the cons far surpass the pros, but I have to be ready to make my case because my wife doesn’t argue fair.  She either has a strategy laid out for an ambush (although I won’t be caught off-guard now), or she just says something I can’t argue with – “Because I really want/need one.”

And I guess she’s entitled.  Hey, if I cave on the NERF guns, iTouch and pretty much everything the boys “need,” I’ll probably cave on this, too.  The good news for me is that she likes her sleep . . . so if I pretend to actually weigh the pros and cons for long enough, I’m thinking she’ll come to her senses and I won’t end up looking like the bad guy.