Up till now, he’s been babbling: lots of words, phrases, fragments. The only sentence-like things he’s uttered has been phrases he’s picked up wholesale, like song lyrics (“I like you”) and titles. But yesterday, our boy strung together a sentence for the first time. Was it an expression of maternal love, of deep philosophical import, of faith in the future? After a fashion. Because the sentence was:
“I like pizza.”
Well, don’t you?
Offline life kept the Dadwagon from kicking into top gear this week. Matt was off cultivating his new gig, prowling around Ireland with limited Internet access, and thus leaving his wife to deal with a potential day-care crisis. Nathan was filing steadily from jury duty, which provided both quiet time and just enough slow-grinding court business to keep him from getting much else done. He did, however, propose a name for his particular station in life: From here on in, just call him “Morning Dad.” (As a side gig, he’s also taken on the role of DadWagon’s art critic.)
Speaking of outside gigs, Christopher had a week of offline deadline pressure, leading to few posts, though he did manage to connect his child’s sweet demeanor with humanity’s darkest impulses, and also with Daria Morgendorffer. (This is his stock-in-trade.) And Theodore discovered that consumerist kiddie TV (his new favorite distraction, now that he has cable) has grown even more insidiously consumerist. Oh, and he watched his neighborhood get destroyed, all the while finding it impossible to explain what was going on.
Focus returns next week. See you all Monday.
A short cri du langue here for DadWagon readers: what the hell am I?
I am not a Stay-at-Home-Dad. I find their acronym unfortunate (they are quite happy people in my experience, not at all SAHD). But I admire them and find common cause with them. I am not a SAHD simply because I work outside the home. It would disingenuous of me to pretend otherwise.
Nor am I Don Draper. Or even my own father. I am more involved than those dudes, the older generation of dads. So am I an Involved Dad? Dumb name, perhaps, though I like the acronym ID enough (reminds me of all them good eats in Seattle’s International District).
I have changed millions of diapers (or at least it felt like that many). So how about Diaper Dad? It is at least a distinction, because there are, weirdly enough, a fair number of fathers who somehow bully or whine their way out of diaper duty. I am not one of them (though I envy their complete asshole self-centeredness). Diaper Dad has two strikes against it, though. First, it’s gross. Second, it’s too close to Dick Vitale’s overused (are any of his phrases under-used?) Diaper Dandy.
How about something that captures the essence of my most important time as a father: mornings. It is my job to sleep after my wife goes to work (usually around 5:30a or 6a), until it’s time to get the kids up. I then feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and take my daughter to school while my son wails about being left being with the babysitter. Evenings I am often away drinking and networking. During the day I am at work. But I am a Morning Dad by all accounts. Perhaps, to spice up the acronym, I should call myself a Morning Assignment Dad (MADs).
Those fathers who have to take afternoon shifts could be After Work Ends Dads (AWEDs). Nighttime fathers could be Dutiful Evening Assignment Dads (DEADs).
This could go on: those who are selflessly raising stepkids or foster children could be the Not Even my Kid Dads (NEKKIDs).
Or the deadbeats: The No Alimony Ready Dads (NARDs) who duck the bill. The Where’s Ur Mom Dads (WURMs) who direct every chore or complaint to the mother.
Okay, I’ll stop there. But seriously: there’s a large group of us dads who land somewhere between SAHD and Don Draper. We need a name. Any suggestions?
As Nathan so capably described earlier today, we got a sprinkle yesterday in Brooklyn. I happened to be with JP during the brief, watery blitzkrieg, exposed to the Brooklyn elements, which means rows of overpriced brownstones, fancy-pants cheese shops, and the hungry millions of yuppies wondering where, if anywhere, a tree will now grow in the borough.
JP and I took refuge under an awning outside a school. We passed the time watching the storm, hoping a nearby flagpole didn’t snap in half, and joking with a school custodian who was also trying to out wait the rain (to JP: “You hear that thunder? That’s god bowling”).
JP, meanwhile, was determined to prove that his Why phase was firmly underway:
I won’t go into the various lies I told JP to explain these things (okay, one: It rains because the clouds drank too much milk and their tummies needed to be emptied).
Apparently to deal with this little one, I’m going to have review my sixth grade earth-science textbooks. Putting aside the metaphysical queries, I couldn’t really handle the science on just about any of these.
