Bozo before he got punched
If you had to ask my wife what’s the one genre of movies I will not watch, she will undoubtedly reply quickly with “scary movies.” I would rather sit down and watch 100 romantic comedies, terrible chick flicks and documentaries on foreign conflict than sit through one scary movie. Let’s be honest, I probably couldn’t sit through one.
Yeah, I’m not in trouble at all.
Last night, my wife brought up the idea of taking our oldest daughter shopping. At first, this didn’t seem out of the ordinary, as she goes shopping with her quite often. However, she quietly slipped in the last part of the sentence after a brief pause, “Because I want her to pick out some clothes.” WHAT?! She couldn’t be serious…oh but she was. She said, “I want her to walk around the store and pick out things that SHE wants to wear.” She’s three! This sort of stuff isn’t supposed to happen for like another decade, right?
First and foremost, some back story. In the last six months, Camryn has become obsessed with dressing herself. It’s usually pretty harmless and she’s actually pretty good at matching things up. She’s taken mental notes on all the things her mom and I have dressed her in and done a pretty good job of coordinating outfits on her own. The issue comes in with the frequency — like we’re talking two or three outfit changes a day. When she’s playing Barbies it’s one outfit, and when Barbie and Bitty Baby want to go to the imaginary park, well, that calls for an outfit change. Heck, today we woke up and she had herself completely dressed head to toe. We don’t need to focus on the fact is was sparkly leggings, flowing top and flip flops.
In her mind, certain shoes go with certain pants/shorts and a tutu skirt go with EVERYTHING. She calls them her “Princess Skirts” and while I know they’re cute and the fact that she feels pretty in them is heart-warming, but every time she puts one on all I want to do is call her Ace Ventura. Not only is it one of my favorite movies, but the fact she puts tutu skirts over an outfit that doesn’t match at all makes it a dead ringer for Jim Carrey.
How Cam looks 60% of the time.
So my wife called today and said, “Pray for me. We are headed to Carter’s.” She’s a brave soul, but I think the she’s letting the illusion of shopping with her daughters, something she always wanted, cloud up her vision. Realistically, she’s heading into a retail store with a 10-month old who grabs everything and threenager. I’m not much of a betting man, but this could turn into a scene straight out of the Ace Ventura play book. God speed, Samantha.
The other night, I came home and was greeted to a visibly frustrated wife who looked like she just had “one of those days.” She works part time as a registered nurse which has allowed her to stay home three days a week to spend more time with the girls. Awesome, right? For the most part, yes. The only downfall is that on her days off, sometimes she’s more run down than after a full 10-hour shift. And on this particular Monday, I knew it was better to wait and ask what happened.
Then I found the source of frustration at the end of hall. As I closed the distance to my oldest daughter’s room and intense wave of destruction began to show itself. I peeked into the room and honestly thought it was a deleted scene from the 1996 film “Twister.” I sat back to asses the damage and tried to come up with the appropriate Fujita scale rating — this was a solid F4. She’s normally pretty good at creating messes and they’re manageable to clean up, but this one took the cake. This one was going to require special attention and some reinforcements like myself or my wife. I decided the best course of action was to let things calm down, go make supper, and we’d come back to this natural disaster later.
The time was now. Supper was done, girls were bathed and it was time to conquer the Mt. Everest of messes in our home. Since this was a teachable moment for our daughter, I asked her to go clean up the mess she made in her room. With a blank stare she looked up at me and gave me, “But daddy, my legs are broken!” I didn’t know whether to be frustrated or laugh at her ingenuity. I decided on reasoning with her and asked, “How are you still standing if your legs are broken?” Quick thinking set in, and she fell to the ground, taking all her weight off the badly injured lower extremities — she always has been a little dramatic. “See,” she said. Well that escalated quickly. This wasn’t a war I was going to win easily. Time to pull our the big guns. “How are you going to go swimming at the pool or go down the slides at the park?” Dazed and confused at my seemingly impossible question, she did all she could to muster up a response. But her little three-year-old brain couldn’t turn fast enough. She caved and came back at me with a counter offer, “Okay, but you have to help, okay?” How could I say no to that?
The room was eventually cleaned and I think she spent more time correcting me on where she wanted things than she did actually cleaning. On the plus side, we only had to stop three times for Baby Alive outfit changes.
-Adam
Coming from someone who thought their house would be full of train sets, army guys and fake power tools with a work bench by the time he was 30, having a house full of Barbies has been hard to accept. My oldest daughter absolutely loves them, and can usually be found bellied up to her doll house where she lets her imagination run wild. When I say run wild, I mean WILD. I’ve often caught myself just sitting there in amazement while listening to the stuff she comes up with. Like the other night when she scolded Chelsea for not going to bed right away and said she couldn’t have a snack. Or the time that Ken wouldn’t take a bath and he had to sit in time out all day. Or when Barbie spilled her milk all over the table and ruined supper. She really gets into play time and while we try to not laugh and keep our snickers to ourselves, it’s hilarious to watch a three year old attempt to parent some plastic figurines.
The other thing that really baffles me is why do these things always have to be naked? I think it’s virtually impossible for my daughter to keep a set of clothes on her dolls for longer than 10 minutes? It’s like a big game to her. Sweetly coerce dad into helping put on a new outfit (the fourth one in 30 minutes), then yell that he did it wrong, just so she can rip it off (even though it was on perfect). Okay, that’s not always true, as my wife has caught me putting on dresses backwards — both on Barbies and our girls. In my defense, some of those dresses are really confusing. Bottom line, I have naked Barbies strewn about my house and no matter how hard I try to ignore it or convince her to get clothes on them, I’ve just come to accept that until she outgrows them, it’s just going to look like we have a toy nudist colony living with us.
-Adam
dads with daughters 