Cookie being Cookie

It’s been awhile since Papa Bear has made an appearance, and for that I apologize. It seems every time I went to blog my home internet was down or I was just tired. Well, it was down again tonight, but I am making an effort to carve out some time to say hello and share a couple of recent stories even though I'm tired.

First story comes from the tales of Mama Bear, who is now home for the summer and is having a blast with the kids. As a matter a fact, she is having such a good time she told the kids the other day she would take them to nearby Valley Forge Park to show them “where the soldiers fought in the Revolutionary War.”

Peanut Bear, the 5-year-old, responded, “I’d like to see where they fighted.”

Mama Bear expalined, “It’s fought. Not fighted.”

Cookie Bear, the 3-year-old, not missing a beat gave an example to her older sister: “Yeah. Like last night I ‘foughted’ in your bed.” (Insert her sound effect here).

I know. It’s not a Papa Bear story, but I find it hard to believe that if it wasn’t because of me, Cookie Bear might’ve not known about “foughting.”

Also, since I last left you, t-ball has ended. It was a great time. The kids enjoyed it and I had a fun time coaching. I had my doubts at the start as I thought the full uniforms and trophy at the end was a little overkill, but as usual I was wrong. The kids loved the uniforms (I thought they wouldn’t really care) and they absolutely loved the trophies (I thought it wouldn’t matter to them). They loved the trophies so much they slept with them next to their beds for the first week or so.

Junior Bear enjoyed himself all season. He is really good, making great strides since the season began. He was excited about games, wanted to be where the action was and held his own at the plate.

Peanut Bear was also really good. She was actually named the Instructional T-Ball League Player of the Week for the final week of the season.

It was great that she was honored. I realize she is just 5, but she worked really hard, practicing at home and paying attention at games and team practice. She is very competitive, which is resulting in problems here and there with her twin brother Junior Bear, but that is who she is right now.

However, I do have to ask the question: Why does Instructional T-Ball for 5-year-olds have a Player of the Week? The point at this level is to let the kids enjoy the game and learn. Every kid hits, every kid scores, there are no outs; so why is one kid honored over the others? I don’t get it. Either every kid gets honored or no one does. I don’t think 5-year-olds are going to care about player of the week honors. Honestly, we (my kids and I) didn’t even know there was a player of the week award before Peanut Bear was named. And not knowing there was a player of the week award, didn’t take anything away from their experience.

PBM on Betty Confidential

Yet another Father's Day mention for the PBM. This time by ours friends at Betty Confidential, naming the PBM a Dad Blog worth reading! Enjoy!

http://www.bettyconfidential.com/ar/h/a/a06326.html

Papa Bear on ivillage.com

I've held off on mentioning this for a few weeks because I didn't know how it would pan out, but NBC Universal owned website ivillage.com asked me to write an article on things to do for your Stay-At-Home Dad this Father's Day.

As you all know, I was a stay-at-home dad for about a year and then a Daytime Daddy for another four. You'll notice they edited my words to make me a Stay-At-Home Dad for five years. I wrote them to let them know of the difference. But they left it the way it is.

Anyway, here is a link to the article. As of Thursday afternoon it was part of the homepage lead. Not sure how long that will last, so I am giving you the direct link.

http://parenting.ivillage.com/mom/structure/0,,fm8rhnb4-p,00.html

There it is on the left side... Papa Bear next to Brad Pitt (who would've thunk it??) Of course though, that's not a picture of Papa Bear. It just takes you to the article.

PBM Featured on Goodyblog

The Papa Bear Memoirs continues to make strides. Thanks to all who have been loyal readers and welcome to all you first-timers to the blog.

I'm proud to announce that Parents Magazine's Goodyblog, in honor of Father's Day, recently featured the blog, calling it a "great new dad blog."

I thank them for the kind words.

If you are a first-time visitor I encourage you to check out the archives along the right side to check out some of the older postings.

Here are some of my favorites (in no particular order):

http://papabearmemoirs.blogspot.com/2009/02/lets-get-him.html

http://papabearmemoirs.blogspot.com/2009/02/hairy-picture-day.html

http://papabearmemoirs.blogspot.com/2009/03/slight-misunderstanding.html

http://papabearmemoirs.blogspot.com/2009/03/hell-hath-no-fury.html

http://papabearmemoirs.blogspot.com/2009/03/dad-beware-of-children.html

http://papabearmemoirs.blogspot.com/2009/02/world-needs-ditch-diggers-too.html

Thanks again to everyone out there!

Well, You Asked...

So my sister emailed Mama Bear and I recently on behalf of one of her friends who is going to be having twins. Since we lived the chaos of twins, her friend wanted to pick our collective brains about what to expect, what was needed and all that fun stuff. So, here was my response (some names were changed to protect the innocent). Let me know if it was too much. My sister thinks it was over the top. But I can tell you it's all the truth.

Dear...

The first 2 -2 1/2 years are absolute hell. I'm not just saying that to scare you -- I mean it!!!

Think about what it's like to have have one baby and now times that by two. It starts with lack of sleep, piles and piles of dirty diapers, endless amounts of bottles, creative ways to feed two babies at once (utilize the boppy), and countless trips to the doctors office (who, by the way, if he was ever on time it would be a sign of the apocalypse).

And that's the easy part!

Just when that ends, they turn into toddlers!!! Avoid this at all costs!!! Once they learn to walk, your days of leaving the house are over. Avoid teaching them to walk until they are at least 30.

One goes up the aisles, the other goes down the aisles. You now have to decide who you are going to grab first. Some argue this is life's first lesson in teaching them who you love more. Usually it's the one nearest to the sharper items (at least it was in my case). But once you get him, don't just put in him the stroller, DUCT TAPE HIM TO THE SEAT!!! Trust me when I say he will find a way out when you turn to get the other child.

Then, this one touches this, that one touches that. "No" become the word you say the most. There was one point when someone asked me if we were Japanese, because I was in the store saying "Junior No! Peanut No!" the person thought our last name was "No."

When you leave the store, you learn that your children just broke their first law and you became an accomplice to a crime, as they have that cute little toy you walked passed hidden in their stroller. You know, the toy you said he couldn't have, took from him and put back on the shelf. Well, somehow he got it back. How? I still don't know, but he did.

When you get home and want to relax, you plop in a movie. You shut your eyes for just a minute only to open them to the toy hammer being slammed on your head.

Before you know it, you're in your own house looking for your son. You go upstairs, downstairs, in the bathroom, in your room, check under beds, behind couches and then you happen to look out the window and notice he's half way up the block walking to the playground. You go to get him and when you get inside, the other one has the phone in her hand. You grab it from her and hang it up. As you are in the middle of screaming at them, the police show up at your front door. Apparently she called 911 by accident when you ran outside.

After you convince the nice officer you are a sane individual, the day is over and as you lay in bed you realize you have to do it all again tomorrow.

Only one thought got me through this. I knew one day they would have to change my diapers -- and that is going to be my ultimate revenge.

Seriously, though, congrats on having twins!!!

Papa Bear

First-time Dad Woes

Being home during the day with infant twins is a challenging task for anyone, but is was especially hard for me because, well, I’m a guy.

I’m not speaking for all dads who stay home with the kids, as I’m sure there are plenty who could handle the kids and house with ease. However, for me it was difficult.

On top of having to make sure two kids were fed, cleaned, dressed, rested and kept in good health (which was stressful enough), at the beginning of my tenure as a Daytime Daddy there was a certain expectation of me to keep the house in good shape.

Now, just because I was home during the day it didn’t mean I was domesticated. Sure I can do laundry, but I’m a little challenged at folding it. Sure I can run a vacuum, but I’m not good at cleaning. And of course I can use a bathroom, but not good at…I think you get my drift.

Needless to say, it was very difficult for me to keep up the home and watch the twins. Fortunately, my wife caught on to this early on and the household duties were quickly lifted from my to-do list. I still did the “guy” things, like mow the lawn and balance the checkbook (not sure if that’s a guy thing or not, but for the sake of this it is), but the cleaning chores were taken from me. Mama Bear felt it was better for her to clean, rather than clean-up my clean-up. Apparently that’s how bad I am at cleaning.

To give you an idea of how challenging it was for me to just watch over the kids, here are a few things I did as a first-time father:

I used to write down the time of day the kids had a feeding and how much they had. This helped me remember when I fed them and figure out how long it would take for them to get hungry again. At the time it made sense, in hindsight it was silly. Now, I would tell someone to just feed the kid when he gets hungry.

My diaper challenges also started at an early stage. I would try and be proactive and as soon as I heard a noise I was stripping them down. Well, this didn’t work out that well. See, as soon as I removed the diaper, more would come out, dirtying everything in sight. Of course there was the time I lifted Junior Bear’s legs to ease his “exit,” only to learn I assisted in his wetting his face!

When the kids were older, I once dressed the Peanut Bear in Cookie Bear’s outfit and Cookie Bear in Peanut Bear’s outfit and sent them to pre-school. When asked by Mama Bear later that night what I was thinking, I responded, “I thought it was odd you picked out clam diggers for Peanut and full-length pants for Cookie.”

Point is, I often screwed up the easiest of tasks and was clueless I did so until someone pointed it out.

ANOTHER THING...
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Note to self: Expect the Unexpected

I've been real busy this last week. Not that you want to hear about everything I'm doing, but I've been full-steam ahead on the basement bathroom (drywalling the walls and ceiling and spackling everything), work has been exceptionally busy trying to fit in a bunch of meetings before the holiday and t-ball seems to be every night of the week (although it's just twice). Then, just when I didn't expect it, the washing machine starts acting up (looks like the pump isn't working right). Ugh!!!


Anyway, speaking of the holiday and expecting the unexpected, we had a unique exchange with Peanut Bear and Junior Bear regarding Memorial Day this week when we were getting ready for our Wednesday night t-ball game.


Peanut Bear asked, "Why do we celebrate Memorial Day?"


Mama Bear: "So we can remember all the people who have died fighting for our country."


Peanut Bear: "Well, I don't know any dead people!" (Saying it like she wouldn't be able to celebrate the holiday like everyone else).

...But wait, it gets better...

Junior Bear (jumping right in and not allowing Peanut Bear's punchline to fully sink in): "You mean, like the African Americans?"

...catching me completely off guard...

Papa Bear: "What?!"

Mama Bear: "They've been learning about the Civil War in school."

Papa Bear: "Oh. In kindergarten!!!???"

So then we had to take the time to explain all of this to them (and when I say "we" I mean Mama Bear).


...Everyone enjoy the long weekend!