Suddenly, things make sense...

Story via The Onion.

Sidekick training

Postings here have been pretty sparse, I know. What can I say? Sidekick training takes a lot of time, and often a lot of computing power.

BTW, you truly need to witness the true Wisdom of Batman.

Not dead yet...

Now that the sidekicks are in school, I have my computer back!

Only one more year and one more sidekick left before I'm left alone at home during the day. Then... surely, there will come a cleaning!!

...because this last little sidekick tries to help with the care and cleaning of the secret lair. It's tough cleaning the giant robot dinosaur if she keeps activating its controls. Sheesh!! Do you know how hard it's going to be to get those burn marks out of the floor?

Happy Mother's Day!!

...but is there such a thing as a "Mr. Mom's Day"?

As a Mr. Mom, articles like this one are always funny. Well, funny, in that kinda "Wait, does that apply to me too 'cause I'm a Stay @ Home Dad?" It's one of the reasons why I don't read magazines like "Parenting" 'cause there's a subtle gender bias towards women; not that it's a bad thing or a negative, I just spend longer reading the article than I normally would because I'm always changing the nouns and pronouns relating to parents to something that would include me as a male parent.

Which Champion am I?

You walk a mystical path, and are a creature of the spiritual and the supernatural. You are introspective and self-reliant, but nobody will ever question your bravery or commitment to justice.

Take the quiz!

Wait! I'm like a girl? As a SAHD, I have enough gender-identity issues. Now this...

Why toddlers don't do what they're told

According to an article on Yahoo. And here I thought I was being tested for something I'd done in a previous life.

"Thar's GOLD in them thar hills!"

From Yahoo.

I've got a couple of mini-ideas for games (some of them from my time in the video game industry), but my brain is so rusty from being SAHD that I don't think I could code myself out of a cardboard box. I could do the graphics tho...

Daddy's Little Helper

My youngest daughter insists on helping me with the housework. Which means I have to do twice the amount of clean-up than I would've if she'd just kept watching "The Wonder Pets".

How does she help? Let me count the ways...
1) She uses the toilet brush to clean the bathroom floor.
2) She fills her emptied Mr. Potato Head bucket with water and a bunch of SoftSoap from the dispenser to use with the toilet brush to clean the bathroom floor, the toilet seat, and the sink.
3) She rips the sheets off of her bed and hides them.
4) She tosses all of the just-matched socks from the laundry basket to the four corners of the bedroom.
5) She draws on the walls so I have something to use my Magic Erasers on.
6) She feeds the cats with handfulls of dry food wherever they might be sleeping. On top of the armchair. Underneath the kitchen table. On the bed.

That's just a start. And yet I don't yell and I don't scream at her, even though she often leaves things worse than they were before. Why? Because when my oldest daughter was her age, I caught her using the toddler wipes to clean the bathroom and toilet seat; as she finished with each wipe, she'd drop it in the toilet. When I found her, she'd completely clogged the toilet. I yelled and screamed and chased her out of the bathroom. We had to call the plumber to unclog the toilet; he ended up having to completely remove the toilet from the floor to get to all the wipes that were still in our pipes. And my oldest daughter never offered to help clean ever again. I think it's because she's afraid of doing something wrong and I'll yell and scream at her again.

So this time I'm grateful for daddy's little helper. I teach her little by little what to do and sometimes she listens and most of the time she doesn't. It's easier to repair damage you can see than the damage you can't.

Being a Stay-at-Home Dad...

... is kind of like that role-reversal episode of "The Flintstones". Do you remember that one? It's the one where Wilma goes in to work for Mr. Slate and Fred stays home to cook and clean. Only, it's 6 years on now and my skills at cooking and cleaning have deteriorated and my wife doesn't come home demanding her brontosaurus burger as soon as she gets through the door.

Well, not as often as she used to, anyway...

There are others like me out there

A site that might understand: Rebel Dad.

Unlike this one, which is trying to sell me on something.

I didn't stay home to be an entrepreneur. I started staying home six years ago because the daycare we had set up for our son would've matched us up with a teenaged girl who just didn't seem to have much enthusiasm for taking care of babies. We certainly didn't want to pay more than $1000US a month for that kind of care. So my wife tearfully asked if I might take some paternity leave and stay home for as long as I could. I think it ended up being about 3 or 4 months, and it worked out so well that I've been doing it ever since.

I like being home for my 3 kids. I may not be the best housekeeper in the world, but I'm there for my kids everyday. Now if only I could get paid for it somehow...

In the meantime, a video.

Out of the Closet

It's time I 'fessed up. I've been living a lifestyle that lots of people, particularly men, find quite offensive. I can feel their stares at the mall as I walk by. I can tell that they know there's something different about me. Something... unmanly.

Well, it's time to come clean. Time to declare to the world who and what I am. Time to stand on my own two feet and own up to what I really am.

I AM A STAY AT HOME DAD.

No longer will I hide behind the veneer of just being a nerd and using this as a platform to express my nerdiness. I've got things to say, anecdotes to relate, recipes to share.

...

Seriously, the posts will get better.