What A Weekend

It was a busy weekend for the Papa Bear clan as we attended my brother’s engagement party on Saturday night at Gamma and Pop Church’s house in north Jersey and then had to travel back to suburban Philadelphia Sunday to get ready for the week.

Saturday night went really well with the kids. I was talking to Mama Bear on the drive home Sunday about how proud I was of them. See, in the past gatherings like this were very difficult for us. Junior Bear and Peanut Bear, who are twins, would usually be acting up and Cookie Bear would be very clingy.

However, on Saturday night the twins were very well behaved and Cookie Bear was excellent. As many of you parents may know, it can be extremely difficult to enjoy yourself and a gathering like this, because you are constantly chasing the kids around or they are literally hanging on you (I mean pulling on both my arms at the same time) the entire time.

But on this night there was a complete transformation by the kids. They were social with the other side of the family, they were able to entertain themselves and they were very well behaved. It's amazing to see when kids hit certain maturity levels. Obvioiusly, I know their not adults yet, but this was a breath of fresh air.

There was a brief moment when Junior Bear decided to become the focus of the party, as he started to tell his dirty diaper jokes and was forcing himself to burp, but it was short lived and honestly (for me) very entertaining.

Now let me explain to you that Junior Bear is in kindergarten and currently, for whatever reason, dirty diapers are very funny to him. In case you are wondering what his dirty diaper jokes are like, here’s an example:

Junior Bear: Knock-knock

Papa Bear: Who’s there?

Junior Bear: Diaper

Papa Bear: Diaper who?

Junior Bear: Diaper dirty diaper (followed by hysterical laughter)

Of course there was the moment Saturday night when gifts were being opened and for whatever reason there was a collective silence and he rips off the loudest burp he has ever released. I was actually surprised that his dinner didn’t follow it up.

Right now he is also his biggest fan. Every time he says something he thinks is funny, he follows it up with hysterical laughter. Honestly, though, I think he gets that from me.

Oh yeah, one other thing. Junior Bear cleaned up at Wii tennis Saturday night as well. He put the smack down on Mama Bear a number of times (Mama Bear is really bad) and also beat his cousin, uncle and Peanut Bear.

It really was Junior Bear’s weekend.

Papa Bear’s Tourney Pool…
As you know, I am addicted to everything sports, so it’s no surprise I’m in a few college basketball pools. I got off to a great start on Thursday, the first day of the tournament, going 15-of-16, but everything fell apart after that. I lost an Elite Eight team on Friday in West Virginia and once you lose an Elite Eight team in the first round you can basically mail it in.

The weekend didn’t get any better for me and I am now looking forward to my first fantasy baseball draft, which will be on Wednesday night.

A Cut Below

It can be very tiring with newborns. I don’t think I’m breaking any news when I tell you that. But imagine being in my shoes when Mama Bear pushes out a set of twins for our first children. Double freakin’ exhausting is putting it kindly.

It was shortly after my wife went back to work following her maternity leave. Junior Bear and Peanut Bear were probably only a few months old. I was playing stay-at-home Dad at that point (remember I was laid off just a few weeks after Mama Bear gave birth) and would also get up in the middle of the night for one of their two feedings (I usually took the 3 or 4 am feeding since Mama Bear was going to get up in a few hours to start her day).

This lack of sleep can really wreak havoc on a person, and I was no exception. We were feeding every three hours, the kids weren’t really sleeping through the night and there didn’t seem to be an end in sight. I barely got out of the house and when I did I was hauling two baby carriers with me all over the place. It was really a trying time.

One day I was able to shake the kids and I went to the Hair Cuttery for a trim. If memory serves me right, it was a Saturday and Mama Bear stayed back with the kids.

I’m not going to lie when I say it’s nice to get out of the house by yourself every once in a while when you’re the primary daytime caregiver. It kind of gives you a chance to catch your breath.

Anyway, you know how this type of hair cut place works; you give your name and then wait for a stylist to come call your name. It’s kind of like the lottery in that you know who gives the good hair cuts at the place and who doesn’t just by looking at them and you are hoping and praying you don’t get called by someone who is going to butcher you.

So, I give my name and wait, hoping I don’t get the person who is going to screw up my hair. As I am sitting there, I am starting to fall asleep as I was exhausted. I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. I was trying everything I could to stay awake, going as far as looking through the only magazine left, Oprah (or some magazine that is not supposed to be read by any self-respecting male).

Anyway, I finally get called up and the woman who was cutting my hair was someone I had gotten before. She did a good job the prior times, so I was glad to get her.

I slowly get up from my seat in the waiting area and work my way back to the chair. I plop down and she asks me if I would you like a wash first. I say sure and she takes me back to wash my hair.

Now, as you know this can be completely relaxing. I think at one point my leg jerked as I began to fall asleep. I quickly woke up and pretended like it never happened.

After she was finished I went back to the chair and immediately fell into a trance. See, I’m not -- let me repeat NOT -- the kind of guy who likes to chit-chat when getting my hair cut. I want the person who is cutting my hair to concentrate on the task at hand. There is no need to distract him or her. One slip up and all of a sudden I’m looking like Telly Savalas. So, once I sat down I almost immediately shut myself off.

As I’m sitting there I hear her say to me, “You remind me of Gary.”

So thinking I missed part of the conversation, I give a little giggle to play it off like I knew what she was talking about I reply, “Okay.”

She gives me somewhat of a dirty look, but I’m too tired to even care what she’s thinking.

Fast forward a few minutes and I’m at the register paying. She hands me the receipt and at the bottom it reads her name and it’s at this point I realized what she said to me earlier. She didn’t say, “You remind me of Gary.” She said, “My name is Mary.”

I was so tired I responded to someone introducing themselves to me with “Okay.”

I said Okay! I might as well have said to her, I don’t care who you are.

I couldn’t believe it. I was too embarrassed to say anything to her at this point. So I just paid, left her a tip, bolted out of there and never went back.

I began going to a different Hair Cuttery after that, but I do remember seeing her at the super market a week or so later and I again got a dirty look.

PBM on Twitter

Papa Bear has joined Twitter, another social networking platform. The PBM Experience is spreading like wild fire -- or as a buddy said, "spreading like a virus." I'll take that as a compliment. Anyway, the Twitter name is http://twitter.com/PapaBearMemoirs. I think I made more friends in one hour on Twitter than I have made in my previous 30-plus years (not sure if that's good or bad, I'll let you know later).

Remember you can still friend me on Facebook at PapaBear Memoirs or if you're still stuck in the stone ages you can email me at papabearmemoirs@aol.com.

More Spider-man

We stumbled across this Weird Al Spider-man/Piano Man song. The kids won't stop singing it. So I figured if it's stuck in my head, it might as well be stuck in yours.

Actually I've found that YouTube comes in handy when you need to keep the kids occupied for just a few minutes while you unload the diswasher or make a bed.

Listen up…

I don’t want to share every moment of our lives, and I'll usually stick to the stories I’m directly associated with, but this story might give you a better idea of my situation.

I was talking to Mama Bear on Friday and she was relaying a funny conversation she had with a few colleagues at work earlier that day.

One of Mama Bear’s friends at work was saying that her younger child is pushing the limits. He or she (I don’t remember what sex the kid is) won’t listen the first few times she says something. Another one of her friends, someone who often comes over to our house and is a good friend of our family, says she has the same problems.

Mama Bear’s one friend then asked her if she had the same problems. Mama Bear said, “No. Our kids are really good. They listen to me every time I ask them something.”

Mama Bear’s close friend agreed, remembering a story of when she was over the last time. “They do listen to you,” she said. “Last time I was over, you only had to ask them once to put the coloring books away. But (Papa Bear) had asked them 10 times before that and they kept telling him to hold on.”

Why is it that I have such a problem getting them to listen to me the first time? That’s rhetorical.

Now I am exaggerating a little bit. The kids do listen to me (sometimes) and they are really good kids. I love them to death. They all know how to have fun and I love that. If I didn’t love them so much and love being a dad as much as I do, I wouldn’t be sharing these stories with you.

Mama Bear has an amazing way to get the kids to listen. She focuses on the positives and the kids really respond to that. She’s smart, fun and witty. I am a better parent because of her.

She does go to bed too early, but if she didn’t I wouldn’t have time to write these (so let’s thank her for that).

Now you’re catching me at a serious moment (listen carefully because these moments don’t and won’t happen too often). These stories are often just meant to be entertaining for you, focusing on my faults and making fun of that.

I only think it’s fair that I seriously tell you that I wouldn’t be able to laugh at myself so much if it wasn’t for Mama Bear. She is the rock and keeps the order and that if it wasn’t for her, I’d probably be crying more than laughing.

THE WEEKEND THAT WAS…
My father-in-law and I worked on the bathroom again on Saturday. This time we were filling in the holes we made with dirt and cement. If you forgot the problems I had a few weekends with the kids, laugh about it again here: http://papabearmemoirs.blogspot.com/2009/02/world-needs-ditch-diggers-too.html

For a brief recap on this weeked, exchange “please get out of the hole,” with “please get out of the cement,” and you get the idea. Actually, the kids were out most of the time with mom and nana. They came back with a Wii.

We hooked up the Wii on Sunday. I was initially concerned that I was going to have to put a time limit on them, which I’ll have to do anyway, but I think Mama Bear is going to also have to put a time limit on me.

We played baseball, bowling, golf and tennis. In baseball, I took Junior Bear deep, twice. Peanut Bear was talking mad smack during bowling and golf. Junior Bear was beating the competitive Peanut Bear with regularity in tennis and she was getting so mad that he started to let her win and was being so encouraging to her. At one point he was telling her, “That was a really good shot.” That would’ve been true if the ball wasn’t going into the stands. Cookie Bear, well, she was busy with her blocks and babies and wasn’t too interested. Good for her.

Papa Bear is a Parenting.com Fave!

The PBM Experience is catching on! Parenting.com has caught the fever. Check it out here.

http://forums.parenting.com/blogs/daily-fave/posts/dear-dads-we-love-you-too

Hell Hath No Fury...

This is from the files of When a Good Dad Goes Bad.

It was November 2007 and I was still playing Daytime Daddy. I had just dropped Junior Bear and Peanut Bear off at preschool and came back to the house with Cookie Bear, who was 2-years-old at the time and too young for school, and was taking care of some personal financing.

Mama Bear and I own a pair of rental properties with her parents and I pretty much oversee the daily operations of the investments. It was towards the beginning of the month and I had just deposited the rent checks a few days earlier. So I got online to make sure the checks cleared in time for the automatic withdrawals when I noticed that a large amount of money was missing.

Yes, missing! I immediately went into a panic.

Knowing I am forgetful, I ripped apart the house looking for one of the rent checks. After I couldn’t find the check, I realized I forgot to check the account history when I was online to see if the checks were deposited. (It’s amazing I can make it through a day without any major injuries).

Anyway, both checks were deposited and the account history showed that a withdrawal was made on the same day I was in a wedding party for a good friend of mine.

So I called my bank’s 800 number to get them to look into it. The lady I spoke to on the phone said that the withdrawal was made from a South Jersey bank and was signed for by a guy with my same last name, just a different first name – making it a clerical error and not fraud (remember that fact). However, she told me I had to call that local branch for them to fix it.

I then called that branch and, at first, I was sane. I explained my situation to the assistant manager, who then transferred me to the branch manager. That is when the problems started.

This dude (I’ll call him Sunshine) kept insisting that this was fraud and not a clerical error. Sunshine refused to give in and told me I had to file a police report and go to my local branch to file another report.

Oh yeah, and he said I was out of luck when I asked who was going to spot me the money for the two mortgage payments that were due in 48 hours. He told that when it has to do with identity fraud, which he was claiming, I would have to wait a few weeks, if not months, for my money.

BS, right? That’s what I told him in so many words.

By the time we stopped yelling at each other, I had about 15 minutes before I had to pick up the kids from preschool. On my way to pick them up, a very evil thought came to my mind – I was going to take all three kids to the bank right from school, meaning they were going to be hungry and tired.

So that’s what I did.

First, we stopped by the police station and filed the report. That took just a few minutes and the officer couldn’t believe that we had to go through these steps.

Then, we went to the bank. Of course, we had to wait for the assistant manager, as the branch manager was off that day. That was fine by me though, I was letting the kids have their way with that bank from the start, as they immediately began climbing all over the chairs.

Seeing the kids acting up, one of the tellers thought it would be a good idea to give the kids lollipops. I agreed -- the more sugar the better I thought.

About 20 minutes went by and we were finally called to the assistant manager’s desk. You could see this guy was having a bad day before I even got there. Sunshine had called him to warn him of my arrival and if memory serves me right, he was trying to fix another problem from another client just before we got there.

Anyway, the lollipops were almost finished when we got to the desk, meaning -- you guessed it – sticky fingers.

I explained my situation to him and he could barely keep his attention on me, as Junior Bear and Cookie Bear were playing musical chairs without the music and Peanut Bear began to creep behind him. The kids were behaving just perfect (insert sinister laugh here).

He then called the other branch and as he was doing that the lady who gave the kids the lollipops came over with some coloring books and crayons. Good idea by her, but what she failed to realize was there was plenty of other things on this guy’s desk for them to color.

As he was talking to the other branch manager, Cookie Bear went through about 50 percent of his business cards with the crayons. The rest were taken care of by Junior Bear’s sticky fingers from the sugar-filled lollipop he just devoured.

After the assistant manager hung up, he had a few more questions for me and you could tell he was stuck in the whirlwinds, not knowing what end was up.

He had me fill out some paper work and while I was doing this his phone rang. Now I couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation so this it was it sounded like to me.

“Hello.”

“Hi Ella.” (She’s the district manager I came to find out).

“I know. I know. I asked him to stay but he had to go. I am in the middle of dealing with a client.”

(Peanut Bear screams that she has to go potty, diverting the guy’s attention for a moment. I tell her to hold it.)

“What?”

“Oh, right. I know I can’t miss the pick-up, but what am I supposed to do? I asked if he could wait five more minutes and he didn’t.”

“Okay, it won’t happen again.”

(He then slams down the phone and violently throws his pad and paper across his desk into the window.)

By this point I was done filling out the paper work and I realized my plan had played out perfectly. The guy was frazzled. The kids tore apart his desk and took the attention from other bank personnel. He had missed the armored car pick-up and he got yelled at by his boss.

(In my mind, this was when I was saying, in my best Hannibal Smith impersonation, “I love it when a plan comes together.” And stick the cigar in my mouth smiling. Remember, he was the leader in the 80’s hit show the A-Team).

I wasn’t ready to leave yet as I didn’t have my money, but the guy told me that he believed this was a clerical error and he would take care of it and call me within the next few hours with an update.

So I took the kids out of the bank, with a quick pit stop at the potty for Peanut Bear, and treated them to Burger King to “reward” them for their behavior.

This is when Karma kicked in, as I quickly realized that two 4-year-olds and a 2-year-old can’t change their behavior so quickly. And I paid the price as the kids had me running around BK like crazy as they were jumping on the chairs, spilling drinks and throwing food.

I looked like the worst father and that day I probably was, but my point was made and the issue was taken care of, because when I got home there was a message on out machine saying, “I apologize for the error, your money has been refunded to your account.”