Baby Daddy 54: My Son Ate It

What man, what a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.....

Have you ever had it where you want to write, and you have all the material, and you never get the time to write it? Literally the past month. I have been traveling more than I ever wanted. I have been working more than I ever wanted. And for the first time in a decent while (two months) I am finally writing again. For the record, I have started getting to the office at 5AM, which affords me time to get shit done. And for the record, a 19-hour day is not sustainable. I know this. I respect this. And I recognize that it is necessary for short sprints.

But that does not delve into the world of fatherhood. What does? My son. My son learned an important lesson.

For those that have not been keeping up, such as myself, my son is two years old. Actually, he is two and half years. And as any good two-year-old, my son loves to run, play, learn, and test limits. Last week, my son was playing with the idea of chewing things. In particular, my son decided to put small toys in his mouth.

While we don't have many toys that would be a choking hazard, we do have some that fit in his mouth. And as any good parent would, my wife and I work hard to keep our son from putting those toys in his mouth.

Enter: The Two-Year-Old

As I said, my son is an active two-year-old and like to test limits. You can tell when he is testing limits because he gets this gleam in his eye. He gets a smirk on his face, you know that he is thinking, "how serious are you, Baba?"

Well one day, I kept telling my son not to put the toys in his mouth. Of course, he kept doing so until I took the toy away. My son then found the next closest thing: a brown rock. I immediately said, "NO!" and lunged for my boy. He put the rock in his mouth, got a look of confusion, and immediately spat it out.

Now, I should probably share the fact that we were pet-sitting the week before, during which time the dog and cat started a turf-war. Imagine the Bloods and the Crips, but with pee-pee and poopoo.

I'm going to let you think about the situation a little bit longer......

There it is!

Yes, my son put a small piece of poopoo in his mouth. As it turns out -- despite my best efforts -- I had not completely cleaned the mess. I thought I had, but it turns out there was one area that I was not aware of. It was kinda like walking down the street and discovering a body in the alleyway.

Like any good parent/cop, I set up caution tape, cleaned up the scene of the crime, and waterboarded my son into a confession.

That's a lie. I washed his hands and mouth before cleaning the rest of the area.

Moral of the Story: My son ate shit, and I now have additional ammunition to wield against him during those angsty teenage years. Oh, and I think he is technically a casualty of the gang war.

Baby Daddy 53: My Son Beat Me Up

Once upon a time, I trained in Krav Maga. As a Krav practicioner, I learned to fight against knives, guns, fists, feet, even long sticks. I would fight against the biggest fuckers in the room, and out work them. I would fight against the fastest fuckers in the room, and overpower them. I was everyone's favorite training partner because I brought a physicality and "realness" to the training.

So why do I say all of this? Because my son broke my nose.

Now for those uninitiated, my son is two and half years old. And for the record, I earned it.

About a month ago, I was trying to get my son to sleep. Anyone with a toddler knows that this is no easy task. Unfortunately, he will usually run around and play for 30-45 minutes before he sleeps. Even then, he struggles to fall asleep until something happens and he throws a mini-tantrum.

Knowing this, and being the horrible parents that we are, my wife and I will sometimes provoke our son. We aren't necessarily rude about it, but we will insist that he sleep. That is usually all it takes. There are other times that we will lay down in his room. Our son gets mad because he knows we are ready to sleep, and he does not want to. For the record: do not do this.

One night, I decided to lay down. Normally, this would not be a terrible ordeal. I lay down, my son gets upset, he realizes he needs to sleep, and he passes right the fuck out. Unfortunately, on this night, my son decided to climb into a chair in his room. As he starts climbing into the chair, I start to legitimately fall asleep in his room. As I am starting to dose off, I see my son open his arms wide. That's fine, he likely wants help into the chair. Right? Wrong!

My son decided to swan dive backwards, off the chair and into the bed. The bed that I was laying down in. He landed, I saw black, and I immediately yelled "fucker!" I wasn't yelling at him, mind you, but out of pain. My boy started crying, and I hugged him to make sure he was okay. My wife runs up, and I tell her to take care of the kiddo.

I immediately run to the bathroom, in case I have a concussion. As it turns out, I did not. I did, however, have a broken nose. While my pupils were not dilated, my nose was shifted a solid half centimeter to the right.

We managed to calm my son down and get him to sleep. I had surgery to fix my nose a few days later, and proceeded to spend a week in a nose splint. I'm healed up now, so that's cool.

Moral of the Story: I'm trained to fight grown-ass people with weapons, and my two-year-old son was able to break my nose. Also, never fall asleep before your toddler. Ever. Snort coffee or something, but never.

Whoop. There it is.

I'm about to lose my mind. I've been gone for so long, I'm running out of time. I need a doctor, send me a doctor, to bring me back to life.

It sounds SO MUCH BETTER when I do not sing. I know I have been gone for a while. What can I say? Between travel, and classes, and work, and jobs, and family, I lost track of time. Did you know it is almost SEPTEMBER???? What the hell!? I thought it was June. Fuck me, was I wrong.

Anyways, it has been a hell of a time. I went to Boston and that was fun. I met interesting people. One of my companies is taking off like gangbusters. If momentum keeps up, we could be in for a wicked fun ride.

My son is growing. I will have a follow-up post this week (I promise) for the Baby Daddy series.

I recently invested in a Whoop strap. It is basically like a Fitbit on steroids. The Fitbit has the functionality of a watch, where as the Whoop is just a tacky black band. With that said, the Whoop gives insights into sleep, strain, recovery, and shit like that. The important part is that the strap helps me gauge whether I am actually tired, and need to recover, or feel great and need to conquer. It turns out that I have legitimately needed the time to recover. Speaking of which.....

I GO TO GYM JONES IN TWO-ISH WEEKS!!! That's a lie. It's three weeks. I am woefully under-trained. At the same time, I finally have a lot of my shit put back together. It turns out that having a toddle, multiple jobs/companies, and taking classes are not in anyway conducive to completing a workout. They are, however, conducive in developing a chemical addiction or two.

On a related note, did you know that some people do not like jokes about addiction? I had a class project this summer that centered around pitching an idea for a platform business. I made a joke in the pitch about engineering giving me a caffeine addiction that rivaled a small coke addiction. Evidently, my group did not think that was "professional" and dinged me on it. I suspect I know who the person was. If it is who I think it was, they clearly do not realize the wide-spread chemical addiction that is rampant in "professional" society. Just because people don't talk about drugs, does NOT negate the white powder coating their noses.

In other news, I know a person with Vertigo. For those that don't know, vertigo is a condition that impacts a person's balance. It is also a fantastic movie by Alfred Hitchcock. And yes, I brought this up with the sole intent to reference the movie and post the clip, below.

Moral of the Story: Summer was busy, some people do NOT have a sense of humor about drugs, and my friend is perpetually on a boat. Oh, and a Baby Daddy story will be coming this week.