Children and Profanity

By Blake Friis

Parenthood is loaded with challenges. There are daily struggles of diapers and feeding, and long term worries about the changing world and how to equip a child to survive, let alone thrive in it.

But what concerns me most is that I can’t seem to stop saying ‘fuck’ in front of my son.

He is a verbal sponge and I know I am in danger of creating the most foul-mouthed parrot ever to roam the Greater Dallas daycare scene, but the more I attempt to reel myself in, the more the goddamn Bears blow consecutive leads at home to Pete-Scumbag-Carroll and the Seattle-Fucking-Seahawks.

Sometimes it feels like the world is conspiring against you. Actually, most of the time when you root for Chicago sports teams.

Parenthood is also loaded with lessons, and you never know where they are going to come from. When a couple kids from the neighborhood knocked on our door Sunday afternoon and asked if they could play with Gabe, I gained a whole new perspective on the value of squashing my free-cursing nature.

The dynamic of a suburban neighborhood is not a complicated. There are adults and there are kids, and if you can only befriend one, choose the kids. They’re a pleasant source of entertainment, and more importantly, very forthcoming with the dirty laundry of neighborhood grown-ups.

As the sweet little girl from down the street launched into an unprovoked monologue about her parents’ delinquent rent payments, I realized we are not dealing with parrots, we’re dealing with little journalists who unapologetically report “off the record” observations.

I no longer fear the words my child might repeat; I fear the things he might report.

Because we are the youngest couple on the block, and because every little girl on the block wants to be Summer when they grow up, our house has become a relatively high-traffic area. The annoyance of other people’s children hanging around would be trying if they weren’t so damn good at inflating our egos.

“Blake, can you teach me how to make the football spiral like that?”
“Summer, I knew you were good at sports because you’re skinny and you run a lot.”

They should run for office. I would literally vote for them tomorrow.

The compliments took on a new meaning when they shifted from our athletic prowess to the vibe within our home. The kids were quick to acknowledge how laid back we are and how well we seem to get along, which is apparently not always the case with their folks. One kid talked about hearing her parents fight over money. Another discussed his concern with the age gap between his dad and stepmother, a viewpoint that – given his age – has almost assuredly been cultivated by his mother.

The inside scoop on the neighbors personal business is definitely the kind of stuff you would like to unhear, but the kids spilling the beans have no idea they are crossing a line. We find ourselves uncomfortably attempting to steer them back to the story about their older brother pissing his pants while watching the SEC Championship.

Dropping F-bombs in the presence of my son was something I decided I better work on. After learning how openly kids talk about their parents, good or bad, I am scaling those efforts well beyond cursing. The adult issues we deal with have to remain between adults, so our kids can enjoy being kids.

Parenthood is loaded with heavy shit like that.

Distance Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

By Blake Friis

It turns out distance – and a lovely salmon dinner interrupted by an intensifying fire in the vicinity of your wood deck – can make the heart grow fonder.

My mother-in-law swears salt is a highly effective tool for combating small grease fires.  At her urging, I threw a tremendous amount of it at the camping grill on our patio while the flames rose higher and the fire grew hotter and, I swear to God, laughed at me.  When the salt remedy – or possibly my mother-in-law’s elaborate attempt to murder me – failed, my father-in-law grabbed an extinguisher and put out the fire; not in time to save the grill, but at least before the flames teamed up with the propane tank to royally fuck up Thanksgiving.

Standing over the smoldering mass of hot metal and melted plastic covered in a uniquely soothing layer of white fire extinguisher residue, I couldn’t help but think about what else I’d be willing to light on fire to create more moments like this.

Memorable moments are at a premium when you live 800 miles from your parents.

We moved from Iowa to Dallas for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the burning desire to no longer live in Iowa.  It is this mentality that leads so many people away from their small towns for a dose of big city living, only to return to the previously taken-for-granted comforts of home.  I knew this when we visited Dallas for a week and returned with a lease.  I knew the seemingly impulsive nature of our move set the over/under for our time in Texas at one year with heavy weight on the under.

Despite professional advancements and a renewed personal happiness, several family members continued to believe the move was temporary.  The belief was that we would move closer to home when we decided to start a family.

That might have been the case if our only reason for moving was an entertaining change of pace, but there was more to it than that.

Moving was not about proving something to myself or anyone else, it was about finding a place that allowed me to become the person I had been unable to become in my hometown.  As I drove the moving truck out of town, I didn’t know if Texas was going to be the long-term answer, but I knew, based on 26 years of trial and (mostly) error, the Iowa chapter of my life would remain in the rearview mirror.

The better things have gone in Texas, the easier it has been to detach from Iowa.  Texas has become home and Iowa is the place our parents live.  We go back for Christmas and try to make it sometime in the summer as well.  And that feels like plenty for us, but having a child complicates the matter.

The theory of quality over quantity was on display while we watched my in-laws interact with Gabe for an entire week – with the exception of the 15 minutes spent dueling with a three-alarm grease fire – over Thanksgiving.

Our parents are going to miss certain parts of their grandson growing up, and that is unfortunate.  We are going to have limited opportunities to utilize their inherent babysitting and diaper changing abilities, and that is absolutely tragic.  But the moments we are able to spend together are twice as meaningful, and that is a unique blessing.

Many people in my position end up moving home with a new appreciation for the life they once took for granted.  I am creating a home with an enhanced appreciation for life’s little moments, and I don’t dare take that for granted.

Killing Time The Target Way

I will be pushing a stroller through Target on Saturday morning. Every Saturday. You can set your watch to it.

With my wife out of town for her nursing program, I am not just responsible for making sure our son lives through each weekend – though it is a minor detail of some importance. For two days each week I have the unenviable task of finding a baby-appropriate activity to get out of the house and avoid going batshit crazy.

There are numerous places a man can play househusband. Parks are especially effective. A walk through the park says, “A healthy lifestyle is important to me and I wish to pass that on to my son, whose development I take very seriously, which is why I coordinated his outfit with this very expensive jogging stroller.”

Unfortunately, I break a sweat changing diapers in my air-conditioned living room. The park is out.

I own a jogging stroller like the park crowd, and I actually use it. The big tires and performance suspension are perfect for cutting across neighborhood yards on my way to the corner store. I could stick to sidewalks and add 100 yards or so to the half-mile walk, but that seems like a lot of work for a six pack of beer.

While parks hold a branding edge among time-killing activities, I find nothing matches the enjoyment of wandering around Target. Having a baby creates an infinite list of things you need and things you don’t, but can justify anyway. For an unsupervised father with frivolous spending habits, the latter can lead to some dangerous conversations with the missus. When my wife comes home physically and emotionally drained from a shift at the hospital in which she watched a patient take their last breath, she struggles to understand why the baby did, in fact, need a regulation size basketball and a Nerf sword.

"I watched a man die today, I don't need this shit!"
"You're right. Let's put a pin in this discussion and go to Target, they have a foot massager that I think we can agree you've earned."

And they do. I know this because after three months of leaving the house on Saturday mornings exclusively to purchase the materials for Gabe and I to survive the weekend – food, socks, Halloween masks, Mrs. Doubtfire on DVD, etc. – I have a tremendous feel for the place.

It’s become our home away from home. And the sight of us waltzing up and down the aisles inspires a range of responses from our fellow shoppers, primarily women toting around a young child or two of their own. Target is like flypaper for us pretty suburbanites looking after the children while our goal-oriented spouses grind through the weekend.

When they see Gabe sitting in his stroller, calmly playing with a toy, they give an approving look, like I am a pair of yoga pants and a complicated Starbucks order away from being part of the club. As their eyes shifts from the stroller to my shopping basket, the looks become sympathetic. They see Hot Pockets, a six-pack of beer, and four Red Bulls and assume my wife upgraded to a man with abs and ambition, and the sweatpants-clad derelict before them is struggling through his weekend with the baby.

Save the sympathy for someone who needs it, Ladies. My marriage is great. And I have a brand new Nerf sword at home.

The Language of Idiot Dads

It's Sunday morning and Gabe is sitting in what has to be a dirty diaper at this point, but the image of his previous blowout has me too grossed out and gun-shy confirm my suspicions. While he happily chews on a clean diaper his mother would have changed him into by now, I down a breakfast of Hershey Kisses and Pringles, wondering where the media gets off portraying the modern dad as a bumbling idiot.

The cavalcade of inept fathers depicted on television can be quite depressing. After being subjected to promo after promo for ‘Guys with Kids’ on NBC, I can’t help but wonder where capable fathers reside in the pop culture landscape.

I play the role of single dad for 36 terrifying hours each week while Summer is at the hospital for clinical nurse training on the weekends. This arrangement gives me plenty of time to contemplate the state of fatherhood in America, especially since we’re up at 5 a.m. Well, we don’t actually get up, but that’s when I attempt to bribe the boy back to sleep with a bottle. He generally shows his appreciation by puking in my bed. I cover it up and allow him to act like nothing happened, because I’m one of those cool, relatable dads.

Great parents appreciate the importance of forming good habits at a young age. A lack of adult supervision doesn’t mean the two of us are free to lie around eating garbage and being filthy. I drive that point home by feeding him a hearty breakfast of turkey and sweet potatoes – the building blocks for a future major league prospect.

At a certain point it becomes critical for young children to get some rest. After contemplating bathing Gabe and changing him into clean clothes, I pass in favor of playing with every toy in the house and watching Lee Corso dance around the ESPN College Gameday set in full leprechaun garb. Then we watch the Iowa Hawkeyes attempt to play football. The traditional name for this activity is nap time.

Okay, so maybe the media’s representation of the bumbling idiot father is not 100% fabrication, but it isn’t a completely fair example of art imitating life either.

For most of us, parenting is like picking up a second language in adulthood. Taking classes and reading books can help you familiarize yourself with a foreign language, but every bilingual person will testify there is no substitute for immersion  Sometimes you just have to go into a foreign country and figure out how to find the nearest bathroom. There are bound to be some confusing moments, but after pissing in a coat closet or two, you’ll pick up on signs and tendencies, and eventually fully understand the language and all that goes with it.

The bumbling idiocy in fatherhood is not a destination, it’s the part of the journey in which some of us piss in a coat closet on our way to figuring out the language.

But seriously, I’m pretty sure he’s sitting in shit.

Summer will be home in 14 hours.

Quality Time - A Grayson County Day Trip

Despite the fact it is an hour north of our house, and is the birthplace of President Eisenhower, I’m not sure I had even heard of Denison, Texas at this time last year.  It certainly never jumped off the map as a town I would take off a day of work to visit.

I’d like to say we never would have spent the two hours required to pack clunky baby accessories for an overnight trip if the La Quinta receptionist had let us know ahead of time they were without cable and internet access, but that’s not entirely true.

When you have a six-month-old child and the limited babysitting options that come with living 800 miles from all his grandparents, the least glamorous destinations become strangely attractive potential day trips.

Since the clinical portion of my wife's nursing program is at the hospital in Denison, I decided to take Gabe and spend the night with her in this strange town she spoke of with such bewilderment.  Most of her experiences take place in the hospital, which is uniquely insulated from the fringe weirdness of the area, but front and center to the extreme cases that make their way to the ER on Friday and Saturday nights.

The stories that make their way home with her tend to stem from dinner outings with her classmates.  There may be no better way to gauge a town than by breaking bread in one of the local establishments, and if you really want a unique experience, try walking into said establishment during their down time, with a baby.

I woke Gabe up and plucked him from his comfortable car seat, pulling him immediately into the bright light and crisp air of the North Texas afternoon, and hurriedly walked into Johnny Carino’s Country Italian.  When we strolled through the door our expressions were similarly confused even though I had been awake for hours and played a role in choosing the restaurant.

My confusion started the second we decided on Carino’s and encountered the phrase Country Italian.  As best I could tell from our experience it means your baked tortellini will be brought out by a 22-year-old who drops his g’s and thinks the most effective way to engage a couple with a baby is to discuss his four children, ages 7, 5, 5, and 2.

“Oh, you have twins?”
“Nah…”

I suspected there was more than one lucky young lady in the greater Denison area.

It turns out in Denison you get two waiters.  One to take your appetizer order, strictly a hobby as he never did relay the information to the kitchen or put it on our bill, and one to take over when the first waiter has to “run to the store for the manager.”  His trip to the store took approximately the amount of time it would take someone to go outside and smoke their drug of choice, and based on his demeanor upon returning, is equally as relaxing.  I have always said nothing takes the edge off like running a quick errand.

Luckily, our brief replacement waiter also had a son, and thus the ability to regale us with totally relatable parenting tales.  He validated Summer’s decision to order a side salad by sharing that his two-year-old enjoys their bread and ranch.  Well, actually, just the ranch.

But the real jewel of the dining experience came when the appropriately named Waiter #2 discussed his son’s ability to let he and his baby mama know when he has to poop.  The boy typically “walks around in boxers” so when prompted, they put him in a diaper so he can do his business, then clean him up and return him to the comfort of his boxer shorts.

“So he should be easy to potty train,” said Waiter #2.

Yes, I suppose he will, considering he is already out of diapers until he demands you put one on him so he can shit in it and force you to clean him up.

If this power-tripping ranch dressing enthusiast isn’t nicknamed “The Mayor” by age 14, I’ll be stunned.

We left Johnny Carino’s feeling full and awesome about the job we’re doing as parents.  All that was left to do was check into our hotel and relax.  Most couples who check into the La Quinta Inn off the highway in Denison with a giant bottle of Sutter Home are there to make a baby, so it did seem a little odd to be bringing ours with us, but that’s what constitutes a date night when your spouse is in a demanding program with the most intensive training taking place over the weekends.

Unfortunately that program is contingent on having access to the internet at all times, and for any non-student or meth user to spend the night in Denison without television is unthinkable.  When a down-on-her-luck gal at the front desk informed us the hotel was without both – in between phone calls from more than one hotel guest asking what time it was - we had no choice but to cut our trip short and head home.

At this time last year I would have considered two hours of packing, three hours of driving, and what felt like an eternity of parenting chit-chat with a wait staff that put the country in Country Italian a complete waste.

Now I appreciate the uninterrupted time with my wife and son so much I never want to unpack the car.

A Series of Infuriating Cat Naps

Sweet Jesus, please let the little monster go back to sleep.

This is what I think on a nightly basis as my precious little son attempts to break the glass out of his bedroom window, armed with little more than over-developed lungs and as much ambition as God could pack into 19 lbs of teething nocturnal psychopath.

I'm told this phase will improve dramatically after Gabe's teeth come in.  That would provide a degree of solace if the relentless aggression in his middle-of-the-night outbursts didn't have me absolutely convinced we have a future biter on our hands.

Try me, Old Man!

I shall soften this strange man who yells at sporting events on television, as though his cheers affect the outcome, by destroying his equilibrium with sustained inner ear damage and constant fatigue.  Then I feast!

This little narrative speaks to the sleep deprivation I am dealing with.  In my mind, Gabe is a cuter Stewie Griffin with a more animalistic approach to confrontation.  And in my mind, I respect him for it.

If it didn't piss me off to no end, I'd actually be extremely impressed by the way he is able to time these seemingly random outbursts.  I say 'seemingly' because it has become extremely difficult to believe it is a coincidence that he lets out his blood curdling screams exactly 22 minutes after I achieve REM sleep, regardless of what time I go to bed.

If I make it an early night and turn in at 10:00 p.m., Gabe is tuning up the band at 10:22 p.m.  If I stay up to finish work and go to bed at 1:30 a.m., he wakes up hungry at 1:52 a.m.  And after watching a Rocky marathon the assholes at Spike TV had the audacity to air on a week night, when I quietly crawl into bed at 4:25 a.m. in search of a couple hours before my alarm goes off, my human alarm and his poopy diaper sound at - you guessed it - 4:47 a.m.!

More remarkable than the soul-crushing time of his cries are the psychic abilities they have bestowed upon us.  Early on, when Gabe would throw a fit in the middle of the night, Summer and I learned to negotiate baby duties using as few words as possible.

"C'mon, Baby," she would say, meaning, "It's your turn."
"Rah-duh-wa-uh," I would reply, meaning, "No thank you."

These exchanges have gone to a whole new level in recent weeks.  We no longer give short coded responses.  We hash it out entirely through telepathy.

When I returned to bed after getting up to handle an exceptionally harsh fit the other night, Summer touched my arm and told me, without actually saying it, "Thanks, Baby."

I rolled over and pulled the covers to my face.  "Go to hell," my exhausted aura replied.

The exact same exchange was shared the next night, but the roles were reversed in the interest of fairness and sanity.

That's called a healthy marriage.  If you want to learn more, shoot me a telepathic message in 22 minutes.

Good night!

The Car Seat Follies

Parenthood and home ownership have one striking similarity; you are always one unanticipated cost away from walking outside to unleash a string of expletives under the sonic camouflage of the lawnmower motor - which sounds like it could use a little oil.  Goddammit.

Toilets break and kids grow faster than you expect.  When you're on a budget, you try to delay those unexpected costs as long as possible.  No big deal when it means not using the half-bath by the living room because you haven't gotten around to fixing a plumbing issue, but it's a little tougher to push back the purchase of a new car seat when you look over and see your freakishly tall five-month-old with his ass in the air and feet on the floor.

My son has learned to escape a level one car seat, but gives me a befuddled look whenever I try to get him to hold his own bottle so I can get things done while he feeds.  Bullshit, Houdini.

Normally it's cause for concern when my wife tells me to get in the car and drive to the house of a stranger she met on Craigslist, but these things seem reasonable when following the aforementioned budget, and said stranger claims to have a car seat for $30 under retail.

After a 30-minute drive to a suburb on the other side of Dallas, we pulled up the the house of the woman selling the car seat.  The house was in a nice semi-affluent neighborhood in the kind of suburb where everyone has the same shit and looks pretty happy about it.  This is also the type of neighborhood where the local news interviews people who can't believe their quiet, church-going optometrist neighbor had a rape room in his basement and tortured 26 women between 1996 and 2011.

The last bit didn't occur to me until I looked up and realized I had been checking Facebook on my phone for 25 minutes while my wife was inside the house, a curious amount of time since the woman had originally brought the box containing the car seat to the door with her.

At this point I confronted the reality that I may have to barge into what I had determined was a suburban torture chamber and save my wife from impending doom.  Of course that would have meant releasing my son's car seat from the base and carrying him into the firestorm with me, because in Yuppie Suburb America assault and murder can be swept under the rug, but leaving a child in a car unattended for 3 minutes - even with the air on - while you save your beloved from a Craigslist serial killer is the second most damning act you can commit. The first, obviously, being striking a dog for any reason whatsoever.

So I resorted to a very direct, yet understated method of rescue...

Text message: problem?

Shortly after, Summer emerged from the house without the car seat.  Son of a bitch, I was right, she's making a run for it!

Actually the woman had spent most of that time explaining to Summer that the car seat was probably not right for her, laying out an explanation that covered weight, rear-facing vs. front-facing, and neck muscle development of the typical five-month-old.

Knowing that one out of every two Craigslist postings is a front for sexual deviants, we decided not to go back to the well, instead shifting gears and going to Target to pay full price on a car seat like a couple of hip-hop moguls.

The car seat selection at Target is vast and overwhelming if you allow it to be.  Because I am above all that, I simply looked for the cheapest model containing the desired features we agreed upon.  Summer, predictably, took my liking of the economically sound, reliable-looking $100 car seat as an act of careless parenting.

I'm convinced the only reason the $100 car seat is on display is to make people feel better about getting the more expensive model, despite the fact there is little to no difference in quality.  It wouldn't shock me at all to learn that everyday they just switch the price tags around based on inventory.

But I'm not here to hate the hustle, and it worked like a charm, as my wife pointed out the $180 seat was on sale for $150 and there was only ONE LEFT!!!

"Baby, we lucked out!  Do you realize how lucky we got?!?"

So lucky.  In fact, at that very moment I felt the tingle in my loins usually encountered after surviving a near-death experience.  My wife experienced a similar rush of carnal desire ten minutes later when she stopped, weak-kneed in the coffee creamer section.

"Yes!!!  Holiday flavors already!"

We are very different creatures, men and women.