Adopting Fatherhood

Nick Jr. has really ticked me off lately. They started messing with their morning lineup, and now I can't watch Little Bill before work anymore. And I'd much rather have Ni Hao Ki-lan or The Fresh Beat Band on the television than Max and Ruby. Regardless of what's on, starting Friday mornings, they promote the daylights out of their NickMom project. I've tried watching a few of the programs to get what the deal is, and I don't understand how the vapid comedy displayed on Parental Discretion with Stefanie Wilder-Taylor stays on the air.  Sadly, the show is better than Take Me To Your Mother, which is borderline offensive because of her premise that she's an accidental mother who doesn't want to raise a jerk. First of all, how do you accidentally become a mother? Or do the show's producers think we're all rubes? On the subject of jerks, do boys automatically come out of the womb as a jerk? Also she's very clearly bothered that her son is a ...

Saturday, I was driving with The Kid to visit friends in Cincinnati. She took a long nap, lasting most of the way from Detroit to Wapakoneta, OH. When she woke up, she informed me that the doll she was playing with, appropriately named Baby, was 'uckie,' which means poo-poo in The Kid speak. We stopped at the Bob Evans in Wapakoneta so Baby could get cleaned up, The Kid could also get a clean Pull-Up and we could enjoy lunch. At least I assumed The Kid needed a clean up. Why else would she be telling me Baby was uckie, right? I was wrong. As I gave The Kid a baby wipe to clean Baby with, and Baby's bottom subsequently received a thorough scrubbing, I checked The Kid's diaper. It was clean. I didn't have to change her Pull-Up until we reached our destination. Tonight, her Hug Me Elmo doll needed to use the potty. Not the Big Potty that Mama and Papa use, but the training potty. The Kid opened the lid to the potty, sat Elmo down and instructed me to sit next t...

As the winter games in Sochi start heating up, and my interest in them is only held when I'm near a CBC broadcast of the games, my mind started racing. What's an average Joe like me, who has a toddler, thinks he could be athletic again someday, and has the remnants of a competitive streak, supposed to do when his dreams of competing in the winter games melts away? Create his own games, that's what! For example, in the travel category: Diaper bag packing dash. Dads get the opportunity to back a diaper bag suitable for a shopping trip to Costco. This competition would be timed, because everything is timed with a toddler in the house, and style points can be earned by going beyond just the basics of diapers and wipes. Your style points can be multiplied by the degree of difficulty, which is lowered by asking your wife for help. Road trip fight for the radio. Every father wants their kids to understand cool music, and the creepy nursery rhymes your little one lea...

Every kid says cute things when they are trying to learn English. One of my cousins used to have trouble annunciating the word frog. It sounded a lot like a versatile curse word that starts with 'F'. It certainly made his constant want of "Frog Juice" a lot more funny! The Kid is no exception. I don't want to forget her learning how to speak English. She gets a little Spanish language at home and at daycare, but not enough to be her primary choice. But it is cute that rojo sounds a lot more like hoho. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite English gems from The Kid. When a dust-jacket falls off a book, she brings it to me with me the book, yelling, "BROKEN PAPA! BROKEN!" until I put the dust-jacket back on.  A friend bought a clock that glows a different color when it's time to wake up and when it's time to go to bed. The Kid knows that blue is for bed, and she likes to point to it when I'm reading a bedtime story. She'll announce ...

I've indulged the introverted part of my personality a lot lately. And by lately, I mean since we brought The Kid home to live with us a year ago. There are a lot of reasons. It takes time to find your way as a family, so we spent a lot of time early on learning about each other and how the three of us  would react. Gladys and I have workaholic tendencies, so learning what work projects we have to say no to in order to have time as a family is a learning curve with an impossibly long horizon. I've also been learning to deal with the exhaustion that comes with being the parent of a toddler. Throw into that mix the normal pressures of colds, work travel, vacations, potty-training, dog walking, teaching The Kid not to jump on the dog and keeping our daughter on a regular sleep schedule. When you add in the passing of my mother in-law, the wind was really knocked out of my sail. As a result, I've missed a lot. I've kept up with many people on social networks, and I...

His parents were among the first wave of transracial adopters, and did their best to prepare him for the real world. Parents today can do even better, he says. "I don't have a checklist," he says, "but if I did, it would sound something like this: If you don't have any close friends or people who look like your kid before you adopt a kid, then why are you adopting that kid? Your child should not be your first black friend." I was reading a story on NPR the other day called "Growing Up 'White,' Transracial Adoptee Learned To Be Black," and was fascinated enough to share it on my personal Facebook feed. This is a bit unusual, because I've been on an anti-mayo kick on that page, much to the chagrin of many friends who love that bland bread-moistener. I broke format because Chad Goller-Sojourner's account of his childhood spoke to me personally, because we are a transracial family ourselves. And the quote above is from the end of ...

The Kid loves apples. She enjoys eating them, serving them as an entree when she's pretending to cook for her classmates, feeding pretend apples to her Papa whenever, and even trying to force-feed our dog Barney the occasional apple. So it really didn't surprise me when she started yelling, "apple Papa!" when we pulled up to the intersection of W. Grand Blvd. and The Lodge service drive a few weeks ago. The sign for the Detroit Federation of Teachers has an apple as a part of their logo, and she was feverishly trying to ensure I didn't miss it. The Kid didn't stop yelling, "apple Papa!" when I acknowledged she found the apple. She was so excited, she couldn't stop. But then, a rusty late 90's Ford Explorer pulled alongside our car to make a right turn, which blocked her view of the apple. Then the shouts became, "Me-me (excuse me). Me-me! Apple! Me-me! Apple!" And as the Explorer pulled away, "Cank you (thank you)! Ap...