Breakfast, lunch and Dinner

What use to be my favorite times of the day have become my worst nightmare.  Its really easy to spoon feed a child when they are young, like 1.5 or younger.  In my experience they don't make that much of a mess, the bib catches most of it, they sit in one spot, they eat what you give em.  The minute they start talking is when it becomes more difficult to just sit down and have these 3 meals.  Everything is an argument!  In the morning is not so bad because they just woke up and  their hungry so they will just eat what I give them.  Usually cereal or pancakes, or waffles, or oatmeal.   But from then on my kids will just have constant energy throughout the day.  At lunch, my 4 year old will slowly eat one bit at a time while running around crazy.  And even though I try to set the tone by turning off all games and  start leading them into the kitchen they feed off of each others energy and keep constant commotion.  Oh, and even though I give them the same food to eat they both fight to eat off of one plate.  What the hell is that all about!  Is it a territorial thing, please someone explain!!!  So that brings us to dinner.  At this point in the day I am getting exhausted from whatever activities we did through the day but, I still make it a point to have a great meal ready or workin in the oven for my wife when she gets home.  I know she loves it when I cook but it becomes a living hell trying to get our kids to eat something new.  And the more we argue, the better my kids are getting at negotiating!  Its funny but stressful sometimes.  Now I can except it if my kids would eat one bite and say they don't like it.  Fine, i'll make you something else quick.  Like mac n cheese, grilled cheese, or fish stix or something.  But to justify doing this they got to at least try one bite!  Come on! Just one bite!  You can't just look at it and say eewww!  And then I end up quoting one of his bed time stories "how does a dinosaur eat his food".  "They try every new thing at least one small bite".  Sometimes it works and sometimes not.  And forget about eating out for dinner.  Thats even worse.  We just don't go out hardly anymore.  Unless it is just my wife and I.  My kids will destroy an establishment in no time and cause the biggest scene.  I love it but I hate it.

The power of Candy

Now when I was younger I remember going to the local candy shop with about .75 cents and coming out with a handful of bazooka joe, a bag of bravos, and a small drink of some color with no name on it, you know with the tin foil top.  No restrictions, and no one there the tell us what we can and can't have.  Oh, fundip was another one of my favorites.  Well, those days didn't last long because the owner of the shop was thrown in jail and shut down for having poker slots in the back next to my favorite arcade game double dragon.  But even with no real parental supervision, we were all very active kids so we burned off all those calories quickly.  Basketball, handball, and generally walking everywhere was part of our daily routine hangin out.  It was never a dull moment where we grew up.  Now having said all that I allow my kids to have candy when its available but,  I make damn sure they get off there asses and play outside or ride their bikes around the block, go to the park, go swimming, walk the dogs with me.  Just keep them active enough to not want to sit at home playing games.  If you read my previous blog about video games you already know what happened to my Wii.  I mean eating all their dinner and brushing teeth and listening are just basic instructions that I expect my kids to understand in order to have this privilege.  It also helps that I got them in a gymnastics class thats only once a week but they love it.  You know what bothers me too, they make it so easy for kids now to just sit at home.  But if you want to go play basketball or something you have to pay a membership fee for some half ass gym where nobody plays.  My favorite thing about growing up where I was, is that there was so many other people around and it was easy to get involved with activities being played.
Sorry I got side tracked.  I taught my oldest son how to make a tiramisu.  We also made birthday cakes and brownies and junk.  I'll post some pics so you can all see.  Halloween is awesome now with my kids being old enough to understand it.  Last year Carmine had so much fun and got so much candy!  My neighborhood is great with that.  Everyone gets involved.  Almost every house we knocked on, we got something.  I am pretty psycho about checking every piece of candy though before my kid eats it.  I have to make sure there are no holes in the wrappers and all the candy I allow them to take must have a proper label on it or I'll throw it out.  I'll take you back one more time here.  When I went trick or treating growing up, apparently there were reports of some unknown people poisoning candy and giving it out to people.  So my parents beat it into our heads not trust anyone and thoroughly examine every piece of candy we got.  Lindsey will laugh at me and comment on my psychotic behavior sometimes but, I can't help it.  After so many years it just becomes natural to think like this.
      

Video Games

My wife and I got a nintendo wii a few years ago.  The kids were still young and were not at all interested in it and we didn't even play it that much to be honest.  We downloaded some of the old school nintendo games to play, thats why we bought the damn thing.  Super mario bros., punch out and double dribble was our addiction.  Well Carmine starts getting a little older and is starting to show interest in the wii.  And to be honest, I really don't know how it happened but it was like one day he woke up and knew how it worked and played super mario bros. every day in the morning before school.  I shit you not, I would hear him get up in the middle of the night and turn everything on and play.  I woke up one night at 230am and all I hear is that super mario music, like what the hell!  Anyway, things went from bad to worse, real freakin quick.  It soon became an addiction for him and it was a fight every morning before and after school.  That's all he wanted to do.  The first thing out of his mouth when I got him at daycare was "I wanna play super mario bros.".  Well, one day I started slowly taking it away and cutting down his play time to 1 hour a day.  But the resistance was torturous.  My infamous low frustration tolerance kicked in one day when carmine was fighting with me to get the remote out of my hand as I was trying to take it away,  I yanked the damn wii right outta the tv stand and smashed it on the floor.  After I had done that I knew I was gonna hear it from Lindsey.  I told her "Rocco got a hold of it and dropped it and it stopped working".  I had a warranty on it so I sent it back to get fixed and now it works again.  But I left it boxed up for a while after that so Carmine would learn to live without it.
I'm sorry honey you had to find out like this.  But at least there are no holes in the wall this time.

Getting sent to the principals office

My oldest son is 4 now.  He has been in daycare pretty much since the day he was born.  He stayed at the same daycare center so there was no confusion in his mind about places and people.  It was a nice place the teachers were nice and taught him well.  Not just Carmine, the 4 year old, but Rocco too, both have my families low frustration tolerance.  Its unavoidable in my family, I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about it. Well one day I get this missed call from the daycare and its from the director herself.  Says CARMINE IS IN THE OFFICE when I come to pick him up.  I'm thinking, oh shit what happened, right.  So I'm driving up to the daycare and I'm having those old feelings of when I was younger getting sent to the principals office.  Butterflies in my stomach and my mind preparing itself for whatever is going to happen, right.  And I don't just walk in the office all concerned with my head up, but like a dog who just got caught shitting on the rug with my head down like I was going to get a beating.  And I mumbled, what happened?  She tells me about how Carmine was not listening to the teacher.  She had to put him in time out for hitting.  And when he was in time out he wouldn't stay there, he would get up and run around laughing.  When the teacher tried to put him in time out again he replied, go head I wanna sit in time out and continued to laugh at her.  At this point the teacher has to call in the director to take him to the office for the remainder of his day and call me to pick him up.  Well let me tell you when I heard that it took 3 teachers to get my 3 year old under control, I myself could not help but laugh.  Then of course when Carmine sees me laughing he wants to laugh too.  So now this director, who is trying to discipline my child for laughing at her and not listening is now getting laughed at by both of us, me and Carmine.  I totally respect her but to me that was just funny.  And in the most sincere voice I told her that I would work on that with him and try to teach him to listen.  I'm not kidding when I say this, he got sent to the office 3 more times that same week!  Though I did get him to stop hitting, he just won't listen and continues to laugh at the teacher.

Censoring

Ok.  Those of you who truly know me, censoring is something that was none existent in my house growing up.  The filthy obscenities that randomly came out of my parents mouths on a daily basis were ear piercing and even going in the next room to avoid hearing it didn't make a difference cause we lived in a 1000 square foot 3 bedroom apartment.  But don't miss understand what I'm saying here, there really wasn't any violence going on in the house.  That's just how well spoken my parents are and believe me if they heard me curse and swear in the house like they did I got a pop in the mouth and the classic line "who taught you to say that".  Well anyway, obviously now Im the adult and I can honestly say the only thing that changed is instead of my father popping me in the mouth,  I gotta get it dished out by my wife Lindsey.    Oh, and she say's "If I had a nickel for every time,  we would have paid off the house".  I have definatly showed 110% improvement in this area but its not just watching what you say.  It's the music in the car, and the movies on TV.  It took me a while to realize how much of my life I needed to censor for the sake of my kids.  And I still strive to make these improvements.  I went from listening to Eminem and 50 cent to "we sing children's songs and puff the magic dragon" in the car.  It's hilarious when I roll up to a stop light and I got jimmy crack corn jammin in the car.  If only Lindsey was thinking that we would end up watching spongebob and dora the explorer on the new 42in plasma she got me for xmas 3 years ago, she probably would have down sized to a 19in Zenith or some shit like that.  Road rage is another one of my "opportunities".  Of the 8 or 9 million people that live in NY, only about 15 or 20 people know how to drive.  Its funny, me and 19 other people are on that list.  Some of my favorite stories to tell are the one's were my father is cursing out a ups driver for double parking in the street and blocking the road, me and my brother sat in the back seat and laughed our asses off not realizing that one day we would be doing the same thing.  Well, time to grow up, now with kids in the car I can't do that shit anymore.  I just bit my lip and look for another way to go.  

My first few weeks as a stay at home dad

So here I am, day 1.  I'm use to waking up very early for work so being able to wake up with my kids at 7:30am was sleeping in for me.  It was very exciting for me to know that I can start making up all the time lost with my family.  When I say all time lost, I mean weekends, family vacations that I was never able to go on, holiday's like Christmas at my wife's families house that I was never able to attend, and special occations like birthdays for my kids, and my wife and my anniversary.  We acted like it was no big deal I had to work so we accepted it.  But thats bullshit,  it bothered me more then words can express.  There wasn't a day that went by I was wishing at work the building would burn down so I can go home and see my kids for 1 day.  My old job as a chef kept me very active so naturally being home with the kids I had to come up with a full days schedule to keep feeling like im busy.  What I had to realize now is that I'm on my child's time schedule.  I do what they want and I cant force them to stay as active as me.  Or expect them to do the things I want to do.  That was the hardest thing at first to get used to.  Changing diapers and doing laundry, and cooking lunch and dinner was easy for me.  I had a much harder time figuring out what will keep my kids entertained and happy other then throwing cookies and popsicles at them.  I'm a little crazy when it comes to the safety of my kids.  I'm one of those dad's who will run to my kid when he falls to the ground and cries for a second.  I'm getting better though at just letting them figure things out for themselves and not baby them too much.  Now, when either one of my kids bang there elbow or scrape their knee on the ground I tell them to shake it off, smile, and say "Everyone takes a beating sometime" Henry Hill, Goodfellas.