Good Advice
I know I said I'd talk about Charlie Brown, but that's no in the cards today. Next time.
Today started off bad. Brazen woke me up, howling at the top of the stairs. That's never great, but today it happened sixty-five minutes after my alarm went off. I say it went off without any evidence it actually went off, but it does not have a habit of failing (unless you count allowing me to turn it off too easily) so I'm going to assume it went off.
The rest of the day is irrelevant, it was just a series of minor, frustrating-but-not-serious failures. But now that I think about it, it was actually a good day. Today was the first day James gave me serious advice that I needed to hear and wasn't going to figure out on my own.
Starting the day more than an hour late does not do much for my mental state, but I do my best to try to keep things in perspective. I will not skip reading James a book in the morning as a way of waking him up gently. I will not skip taking him to the potty (we're in the middle of potty-training now). I will not skip the inevitable negotiation (often, but not always successful) around getting him to brush his teeth. I will not rush his breakfast.
Those things being immutable, lots of corners get cut on my side of things in order to still try to fit this stuff in with a vastly reduced window to get on the road and out of our suburb before the arteries get jammed and I effectively double my drive to work time. So this morning I got James set up with his breakfast (Pancakes, Daddy!) then did the hunt for his clothes, fed Brazen, cleaned the litter-box, prepped the dish-washer, gathered snacks -- didn't manage to make lunch today, but oh well -- and so on. By the time I'd finished that I just sat down at the table with James with my water bottle and tried to think if I'd forgotten anything. No breakfast for me today, either. I didn't feel like it and I didn't really think I had time since James was nearing the end of his stack of pancakes.
"Daddy?"
"Yes James?"
"Eat some oatmeal."
This caught me so completely off-guard that I had to parse it a couple of times before I nodded.
"Yeah, you're right, buddy, Daddy's got time for some oatmeal."
So I made oatmeal and ate some breakfast, like my son told me to.
Today started off bad. Brazen woke me up, howling at the top of the stairs. That's never great, but today it happened sixty-five minutes after my alarm went off. I say it went off without any evidence it actually went off, but it does not have a habit of failing (unless you count allowing me to turn it off too easily) so I'm going to assume it went off.
The rest of the day is irrelevant, it was just a series of minor, frustrating-but-not-serious failures. But now that I think about it, it was actually a good day. Today was the first day James gave me serious advice that I needed to hear and wasn't going to figure out on my own.
Starting the day more than an hour late does not do much for my mental state, but I do my best to try to keep things in perspective. I will not skip reading James a book in the morning as a way of waking him up gently. I will not skip taking him to the potty (we're in the middle of potty-training now). I will not skip the inevitable negotiation (often, but not always successful) around getting him to brush his teeth. I will not rush his breakfast.
Those things being immutable, lots of corners get cut on my side of things in order to still try to fit this stuff in with a vastly reduced window to get on the road and out of our suburb before the arteries get jammed and I effectively double my drive to work time. So this morning I got James set up with his breakfast (Pancakes, Daddy!) then did the hunt for his clothes, fed Brazen, cleaned the litter-box, prepped the dish-washer, gathered snacks -- didn't manage to make lunch today, but oh well -- and so on. By the time I'd finished that I just sat down at the table with James with my water bottle and tried to think if I'd forgotten anything. No breakfast for me today, either. I didn't feel like it and I didn't really think I had time since James was nearing the end of his stack of pancakes.
"Daddy?"
"Yes James?"
"Eat some oatmeal."
This caught me so completely off-guard that I had to parse it a couple of times before I nodded.
"Yeah, you're right, buddy, Daddy's got time for some oatmeal."
So I made oatmeal and ate some breakfast, like my son told me to.
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