Tuesday, October 25, 2005
How The Weekend With The Boy Ended: Not With A Bang, But A Dinner Of M&Ms
by Tom Bozzo
The program to displace the Thomas and Friends product catalog from John's reading repertoire was amazingly successful, to the extent that I arguably could have read all twenty-six volumes of the Rev. Awdry's Thomas stories straight through without complaint from John.
During naptime, I strove to be a Really Useful Husband by making sure that I hadn't made any glaring errors or omissions in my domestic efforts over the course of the weekend. One problem loomed: We were sitting on three-quarters of a day's supply of diapers for Julia, tops. We also got a call letting us know that some industrial-strength diaper rash ointment that Suzanne had special ordered had arrived. So we were going to head out for some errands in the brief window between the end of nap (~5 P.M.) and the expected return (~6:30 P.M.).
The place to get diapers in the largest quantities (short of the warehouse stores, the only one of which in Madison is co-located with the Wal-Mart, if you get my meaning) is Toys 'R' Us, which is obviously a dangerous place to take a 3-year-old. Fortunately, John was so fixated on a desire for a lollipop that we passed a display of Thomas and Friends Duplos ("Daddy, that's cool"), not to mention the rest of the retail Thomasverse, with scarcely a peep pip peep or poop poop poop of protest that we took the Express to the baby stuff. Unfortunately, there were no lollipops at the checkouts, though a brief negotiation led to the purchase of the titular M&Ms as a substitute.
Honest, the bag of M&Ms looked small, but the dent that John put in it between TRU and the Walgreen's where the diaper rash stuff was waiting, despite a constant feed of candies, made it clear that dinner was not going to proceed as usual. So we were downstairs playing with Legos when Suzanne and Julia returned home. Then we traded children.
There was some delayed hell to pay. John woke up this morning decidedly on the wrong side of the crib, and reportedly was whiny and demanding straight through my return from work, at which point I was treated to a not-enough-birthday-presents-to-open tantrum that led me to scoop up Julia and let it burn out without an audience. My reward was a much more compliant boy content to eat his dinner, brush his teeth, have three Thomas stories read to him, and fall asleep promptly at 7:30.
Glad to have you back, sweet pea!
Day 3 alone with John was quiet enough. We weren't hurrying each other in the morning, as we had nowhere in particular to go. Eventually, we strolled up to the playground in Wingra Park, did a couple of underdogs, ran around the merry-go-round until I got dizzy (John kept going), then headed back home via Pasqual's.
The program to displace the Thomas and Friends product catalog from John's reading repertoire was amazingly successful, to the extent that I arguably could have read all twenty-six volumes of the Rev. Awdry's Thomas stories straight through without complaint from John.
During naptime, I strove to be a Really Useful Husband by making sure that I hadn't made any glaring errors or omissions in my domestic efforts over the course of the weekend. One problem loomed: We were sitting on three-quarters of a day's supply of diapers for Julia, tops. We also got a call letting us know that some industrial-strength diaper rash ointment that Suzanne had special ordered had arrived. So we were going to head out for some errands in the brief window between the end of nap (~5 P.M.) and the expected return (~6:30 P.M.).
The place to get diapers in the largest quantities (short of the warehouse stores, the only one of which in Madison is co-located with the Wal-Mart, if you get my meaning) is Toys 'R' Us, which is obviously a dangerous place to take a 3-year-old. Fortunately, John was so fixated on a desire for a lollipop that we passed a display of Thomas and Friends Duplos ("Daddy, that's cool"), not to mention the rest of the retail Thomasverse, with scarcely a peep pip peep or poop poop poop of protest that we took the Express to the baby stuff. Unfortunately, there were no lollipops at the checkouts, though a brief negotiation led to the purchase of the titular M&Ms as a substitute.
Honest, the bag of M&Ms looked small, but the dent that John put in it between TRU and the Walgreen's where the diaper rash stuff was waiting, despite a constant feed of candies, made it clear that dinner was not going to proceed as usual. So we were downstairs playing with Legos when Suzanne and Julia returned home. Then we traded children.
There was some delayed hell to pay. John woke up this morning decidedly on the wrong side of the crib, and reportedly was whiny and demanding straight through my return from work, at which point I was treated to a not-enough-birthday-presents-to-open tantrum that led me to scoop up Julia and let it burn out without an audience. My reward was a much more compliant boy content to eat his dinner, brush his teeth, have three Thomas stories read to him, and fall asleep promptly at 7:30.
Glad to have you back, sweet pea!
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Was Suzanne's "single parent" trip equally smooth?
Seems that if the only bribe you needed for a good kid was a scoop of M&Ms you had yourself one successful week-end.
A very nice account of it, BTW. You should print out all the John/Julia posts in each month and present it to them when they're old enough to appreciate the humor.
Seems that if the only bribe you needed for a good kid was a scoop of M&Ms you had yourself one successful week-end.
A very nice account of it, BTW. You should print out all the John/Julia posts in each month and present it to them when they're old enough to appreciate the humor.
Oh, LG wants the storybook now, too. (Which he is far more likely to get than the other things he picked out, all of which cost more than $50!!)
Only one dinner of M&Ms? It sounds like you have this solo parenting business pretty much perfected!
The Thomas Duplos are pretty cool...
Only one dinner of M&Ms? It sounds like you have this solo parenting business pretty much perfected!
The Thomas Duplos are pretty cool...
Nina: Suzanne had a pretty good time; her main cost was that the travel messed up Julia's nap schedule a bit.
I've heard before that I should save all of this stuff to show the kids what happened the year(s) when Dad went nuts and started posting his ramblings on the Internet.
Phantom: The dinner would have been better for me had it been ice cream instead.
Agreed on the Thomas Duplos, though I actively discouraged my brother from getting John some of them for B'Day (pointing him to the regular Lego trains instead), on the grounds that three model railway gauges is enough for one household. No guarantee that my in-laws have gotten the message, though...
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I've heard before that I should save all of this stuff to show the kids what happened the year(s) when Dad went nuts and started posting his ramblings on the Internet.
Phantom: The dinner would have been better for me had it been ice cream instead.
Agreed on the Thomas Duplos, though I actively discouraged my brother from getting John some of them for B'Day (pointing him to the regular Lego trains instead), on the grounds that three model railway gauges is enough for one household. No guarantee that my in-laws have gotten the message, though...
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