Storytelling

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Fun Summer Activity: Playing With Wet Toilet Paper

July 11, 2013 at 9:55 pm , by 

2 years, 7 months.

Dear Jack,

Our family believes in being classy. Therefore, toilet paper is a toy.

Hey, it was your idea, not mine.

Last Sunday, the weather was a bit overcast and you wanted to play outside in the water, but didn’t really want to get wet.

So I just let you figure out for yourself what that even meant once you got outside.

It so happened that your nose started running once you got out there so I grabbed you some toilet paper real quick, leaving the extra sheets in my pocket.

As you dunked your plastic tiger souvenir from the Louisville Zoo into your Little Tikes water table, you saw the extra toilet paper hanging out of my front pocket:

“Daddy, I have that? Toilet paper… please?”

With me being in “whatever works” mode having survived the road trip from [Louisville] the day before, I didn’t hesitate to grant your wish.

I stepped away for a minute to pour a glass of water and returned to your explaining to me what was going on in your world:

“Look Daddy, the tiger has a mane!”

That confirmed that our Louisville Zoo trip was actually educational… sort of.

You then proceeded to use one of Mommy’s measuring cups to wash the tiger’s mane off.

I also learned from you that wet toilet paper serves as great “cement” for your toy trucks.

Admittedly, I was hoping yesterday’s thunderstorm would magically wash away the debris.

Turns out, wet toilet paper that has been dried by the sun does not necessarily turn mushy again by heavy rain… and then just “disappear” after that.

I guess I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

 

Love,

Daddy

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All Kids Go Through An “I’m A Lizard” Phase, Right?

July 9, 2013 at 10:58 pm , by 

2 years, 7 months.

Dear Jack,

I imagine that throughout your childhood, you will encounter various phases, which I look forward to the privilege of witnessing.

This one you’re in now, though… well, it’s pretty weird. In fact, I figure I might as well document it now before it’s gone.

You love pretending to be a lizard; especially when you see people you know.

My friend Jason was flying in from Houston and we were texting about seeing each other over the weekend.

I texted him: “Jack will like it if you make a lizard face when you see him- that’s his new thing these days.”

He replied: “I’m going to need a sample pic so I know what to do.”

I answered him: “Basically just pretend you’re slowly licking peanut butter off your upper lip.”

You were impressed.

The thing is, I’m not sure where this lizard phase of yours is coming from.

I wanted to tag it on your best friend Sophie, but I could just as easily see you being the one to introduce “lizardry” to her.

Here’s a clip of you two pretending to be lizards in the wagon:

What’s really interesting is, for a few months now, you’ve owned a headless dragon t-shirt that you’ve never worn until this week. Once I saw you in it for the first time, it was almost prophetic.

After all, a little boy who is now greeting people with his lizard impression should definitely be wearing a t-shirt that makes it look like his head belongs to the body of a dragon… which is sort of like a lizard.

In fact, you like this shirt so much now, that after you wore it to school on Monday, then slept in it that night, you asked to wear it again both Tuesday and Wednesday.

So, yeah.

I’m assuming all kids go through an “I’m a lizard” phrase, right?

Probably not.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

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The Need For Discipline… Or Just Sleep?

July 9, 2013 at 9:14 pm , by 

2 years, 7 months.

Dear Jack,

It’s done. I just uploaded the pictures from our weekend Louisville trip onto my Facebook page.

(See the album “Louisville Zoo Road Trip Summer 2013.”)

I love looking through those pictures, seeing how happy our family was.

And the way you smiled in most of them, it’s as if to say, “Yeah, I know I’m a sneaky rascal!”

The thing is, the happiness captured in those pictures came with a steep price- the total of 6 hours drive time to make those good memories possible.

It was rough…

We chose to drive there after work Friday night, hoping you’d sleep in the car.

You didn’t.

Not to mention, we were in the middle of heavy rain the whole time.

I did laugh, however, when you woke up in confusion as we were carrying you upstairs to our hotel room at midnight,  and you simply reacted by asking, “Wwwwwwhhhhhhyyyyyyyyy?…”.

By that point, I was so ready for rest, I didn’t mind taking the fold-out couch and letting you sleep in the real bed with Mommy.

But whereas I was actually asleep when I hit the “couch,” you stayed up until 2 AM with fidgety legs keeping both yourself and Mommy awake in the next room.

Fortunately, the splendor of the Louisville Zoo kept you entertained and in good spirits the entire 6 hours we were there.

That changed the moment we got back in the car for the 3 hour ride home.

You were extremely needy, you kicked the backs of our seats, you kept dropping your toys then screaming for them, you whined, you cried… and no seating arrangements between the three of us seemed to help.

Nothing we did or said would break your will.

(I’ve noticed that when people talk about their own temper, they attribute it to whatever ethnicity they are most aware of… I feel like it often tends to be an Irish reference. I’m not Irish, so I guess this is where I’m supposed to blame it on my Italian or Mexican heritage…)

I couldn’t take it anymore, I remember reaching behind my seat and grabbing the pink elephant squirt toy that the hotel gave you and throwing it in the floor, shouting something to the effect of “I told you to be quiet! I’m tired of you not listening to me! And I’m tired of you telling me ‘no’ when I’m talking to you!”

Mommy immediately advised to me to take the next exit so she could switch to the driver’s seat.

For the rest of the trip back to Nashville, Mommy and I tried something new:

We stopped answering you, looking at you, or responding to you in any way. Plus, we rolled down the windows to help drown out your screaming.

It took a challenging 45 minutes, but you finally shut down and fell into the deep sleep you needed so badly.

You’re a good kid. Sure, you’re iron willed, but so am I.

I will always make sure you get the discipline you need, when you need it.

But as Mommy reminded me, in her subtle and gentle way, this wasn’t a case of you needing discipline as much as it was you needing sleep.

Once we got home, we were both cool again.

The next time you act like a maniac, the first thing I’m going to do is ask myself whether or not your nap time or bed time was compromised. That way I won’t turn into the Incredible Hulk, even if you do.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

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No More Monkeys Jumpin’ On The Bed!

July 7, 2013 at 9:56 pm , by 

2 years, 7 months.

Dear Jack,

You have now officially been to the Midwest!

While visiting the zoo in Louisville, Kentucky, our hotel was actually right across the Ohio River, in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Of course, technically, Louisville is, in my opinion, half Southern and half Midwestern, as the confusing pronunciation of its name exemplifies.

It’s either the most northern Southern city or the most southern Northern city of America… I don’t think anyone really knows for sure.

Either way, I love the whole Louisville area (including the Indiana side) because it all reminds me so much of Nashville.

So I had mentioned a few days ago how Mommy and I had been hyping you up for the exciting fold-out couch you would be sleeping on in the hotel.

Your “big boy bed,” as I kept referring to it.

Yeah, well, guess who ended up sleeping in your big boy bed…

That’s right; the biggest boy in our family of three… Daddy.

All I remember is you laying down with me on the fold-out couch watching a horse race on TV, then waking up 7 hours later to find out you and Mommy got to sleep in the real bed without me.

I didn’t mind…

Hey, I got 7 hours of sound sleep; that’s a pretty big deal for me, especially after driving 3 hours at night in the rain with you refusing to fall asleep in the car.

As you can see from these pictures, which sort of remind me of a 1990′s mosh pit at a grunge concert, you had a good time jumping on the bed, like those monkeys we sing about sometimes.

Fortunately, despite all your contorting, you never fell off and bumped your head or injured yourself in anyway.

This was not only your first Midwestern road trip, but it was also your first hotel experience.I had hoped you’d like the fun fold-out couch, but I’ll settle for getting a full night’s rest out of it myself, as well as getting to watch you the next morning go crazy jumping around on the bed that I was supposed to get to sleep on.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

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Our 5th Wedding Anniversary Gift Of Being Debt-Free!

July 5, 2013 at 12:16 am , by 

2 years, 7 months.

Dear Jack,

Today is a very special day… for more than one reason.

It was five years ago that Mommy and I got married!

We had talked a couple of weeks ago about what we would get each other as 5th year anniversary gifts. Well, we couldn’t have planned this, even if we tried, but…

As of today, our family is officially debt-free!

I can’t think of any greater gift Mommy and I could give each other on this special day.

Of course, we still have a mortgage. But as far as school loans, car payments, and our credit card, which mainly consisted of our wedding expenses and pre-existing debts from single life, those are all paid off now.

No other debts. Done.

Just to make sure this good news holds its worth weight, the amount of debt we paid off was a little over$58,000. And just to be clear, our household income level is completely average for Nashville.

No, Mommy and I didn’t win the lottery, gain a huge inheritance from a rich uncle, or suddenly get a multi-million dollar book deal.

We just took Dave Ramsey very seriously. Maybe a little too seriously.

I now equate credit cards with the devil, or at least Monsanto; but really, I think they’re all the same thing anyway.

Every penny we earn is accounted for. We tell our money where to go so that it doesn’t tell us where to go. We snowballed our way into debt and we snowballed our way out.

Another thing that financial guru Dave Ramsey taught us was that if we live like no one else now, we’ll live like no one else in the future.

He jokingly talks about living off beans and rice until you’re debt-free.

Considering that through this process, you and Mommy became vegetarians, and I became a vegan, you could say we took Dave Ramsey’s “beans and rice” advice pretty literally, even though our “plant-based, non-GMO” lifestyle change was motivated more by other reasons.

Either way, our family never, and I do mean never, eats food from a restaurant anymore. That saves us a lot of money every month.

Speaking of, on January 1st, I wrote “5 Impractical Ways To Save Your Family Money in 2013,” in which I proclaimed that this would be the year we would become debt-free.

Here are the 5 ways I mentioned:

1. We don’t pay for cable or satellite TV.

2. We don’t pay for Internet on our phones.

3. We hardly ever go out to eat. (That, of course, has since changed from “hardly ever” to “never.”)

4. We don’t update our electronics or possessions that cost over $100.

5. We live by a strict weekly budget, on an Excel spreadsheet.

Then, a week after I wrote that, I revealed that we also tithe 10% of our income. As Dave Ramsey puts it, “If you cannot live off 90% of your income, then you cannot live off 100%.”

Oh, and I cut your hair now. That saves us about 12 bucks a month.

I’ve never been so happy in my life to be at ground zero. Our family will continue the rest of our lives with our extremely frugal (!) lifestyle no matter what our income is.

Now that we’re out of debt, we will begin to snowball our savings and eventually our investments.

Granted, one of the greatest benefits of strategically working our way out of nearly $60,000 of debt is that Mommy and I will carefully teach you everything we’ve had to learn the hard way about money management.

Apparently, that knowledge alone is worth at least $60,000. It was for us, at least.

 

Love,

Daddy

 

Photos by Joe Hendricks Photography.