Ruminations of a middle-aged father

A long but good read...

Taken from here

You should walk in my shoes. Everybody in our house does, except Truman, my 4-month-old son.

Julian, 3, wears my roller blades and loafers. Luke, 2, walks around in my tennis shoes. My wife, age confidential, just plain owns the place and everything in it, including me.

I’m not complaining. A father is expected to give everything to his family – even his life. Most of us will be called home to the Lord long before our wives, killed by repeated, vain attempts to make everyone happy.

In a family, everybody is never happy at the same time and the secret to happiness is learning to enjoy life amidst tears, screeches and tantrums. For families with a lot of girls, there is an even harsher reality, which makes the art of living well even more difficult: someone is always in crisis. I have three sisters and three sons, so I’ve experienced both environments. I definitely praise God for giving me sons.

I feel like Fred MacMurray in the television show My Three Sons. Unfortunately, I don’t have Uncle Charlie to help out. My wife, of course, would sing the same sad song, if she could write a newspaper column. She works just as hard as I do (she says harder), just a different shift. She’s a full-time student, so when I’m home, she’s studying. When I’m at work, the kids are in daycare or she’s watching them. It’s gotten to the point that she accuses me of hiding at work.

I feel like a general commanding an army. I call mine, “The Weenie Brigade.” I’ve never seen such a bunch of whiners, criers and complainers. Luke has a terrible case of the terrible twos and will disintegrate emotionally over the slightest affront. Julian is just an emotional child – a quality he inherited from his mother. And Truman, of course, just has baby spats, although he sometimes turns red with anger and screeches out an ungodly sound.

I often have to admonish these emotional troops, “Suck it back, weenies. Daddy wants to command Marines.” They don’t listen. I wonder if my brigade will ever be tough enough to do battle in the real world.

I don’t think there is a five-minute interval of silence in our house. Someone is always crying or carrying on like a ninny. I know the tones of different tears and respond appropriately. There’s the dirty diaper cry, which requires quick action but no yelling. The he-took-my-toy cry requires some Daddy growls but no interruption of folding laundry or washing dishes.

“My toy” is a concept I’m trying to expunge from their minds. We’re too poor to buy “my toys,” I tell them. We just have “share toys.”

When they are not crying, they’re bounding around the house, laughing and giggling and shouting. Julian doesn’t walk anymore. He runs all the time, or jumps from high places onto Daddy’s stomach. His antics have tightened my abdominal muscles, for which I’m grateful, but we’ve had a few close calls of landings in more sensitive areas.

I no longer have personal space – no comfortable barrier zone between me and other human beings. When I walk in the door, two rug rats attach themselves to my legs, screaming, “Daddy, Daddy!” After hearing my voice, the littlest one starts crying in his crib, demanding to be picked up and carried around the house. It’s amazing how much can be accomplished while dragging around a mess of kids.

When I sit down to read or watch television, I am not alone. Rug rats One and Two are there, crawling on top of me as if I were a jungle gym, or pointing at pictures in the paper, “What’s that? What’s that, Daddy?” If lying on the floor, I become a human trampoline. They jump all over me, never thinking that Daddy might actually feel pain. And I never complain, of course, because there’s enough sniveling in the house – no need to encourage The Weenie Brigade.

When I cook dinner, little boys pull their little plastic chairs to the counter, little eyes watching and little fingers pointing, eager to help: “I want to try. I want to try, Daddy.” I encourage them to help, and there are little things they can do such as setting the table. I draw the line at cutting and anything involving hot pots.

I never stop working from the time I get home until they go to bed, or from first light until I leave for work. The washing machine never stops and the house is cluttered, no matter how hard I try to pick up. The more I clean, the more they destroy. Sometimes I just follow them around the house with a broom in one hand, a mop in the other and a dustpan between my legs. I remind my wife that some day they will stop destroying and start building. She’s skeptical.

I never eat a meal anymore. I’m the family scrap dog. I eat what is left on their plates or share what is on mine. They share my drink, my hamburger and my ice cream cone. I’m not concerned about germs or where their hands have been. They are my offspring, after all.

There are many time outs in our house and occasional spankings. I used to think I would never spank my children. Ha, ha. We were all young and idealistic once. The most effective means of control in our house is the child safety gate. Bless the person who invented it – a moveable barrier for containing the movement of your children. Quite often, we have to confine them to their bedroom for brief periods, just to accomplish trivial things.

I read once that the French writer Jean Jacques Rousseau built a cage in the backyard where he put his children when he needed time to write. I don’t agree with his means but I now understand his reasons.

I have an enormous reservoir of love and patience for my family. I find their antics hilarious and love “messing” with them. It’s usually very hard to play Daddy and mete out discipline.

I take as much time as I can to play with my children, especially outside on bicycles, skateboards and swings. Boys need to be run like dogs. If they don’t get exercise, they won’t sleep, and if they don’t sleep, Daddy doesn’t sleep.

My family is a constant joy, whether I’m dealing with a rowdy child or a cranky wife. I call the two rug rats monkeys, and their bedroom the monkey room. The monkeys and I have fun together but we sometimes disgust my wife. She has pledged that she won’t let me “ruin” our baby Truman as I have apparently ruined the monkeys. We’ll see about that. Everything that’s mine is theirs but they are all mine and we’re all boy.