Are We Still Searching for a Better Father?

There's was an obvious level of terror when Melissa and I packed our entire lives into box to move to Idaho. I had been out for a short visit, and all she had to go on was a few pictures and my very detailed description of, "It's pretty!"

Recently I discovered that another gentleman (that seems way too pompous, but I'm gonna allow it), somewhere in Idaho, has been blogging about his experiences here in the "Gem State." While he doesn't seem to be a dad, he often talks about things that speak to me in different ways. Like me, he moved from a much larger city to the slow paced life somewhere in what I assume is the Boise area. Also like me, he seems to be struggling to adapt to certain aspects of being in an area that can feel out of touch with the rest of the world.

Truthfully, some of what he talks about on his website is just untrue. Sadly though, it's easy to convince people that life in Idaho is some form of black and white cartoon centered around a potato. People in Idaho know what the internet is, and I even saw our Governor take what I'm certain was an iPhone out of his straw hat, check the time, and put it in his overalls. Life here is not all that different from them big fancy cities.

One thing does tend to irritate me about many of the people here - sometimes I feel unwelcome. While I find the idea that Idaho needs to "catch up" with the rest of the world to be a little short-sighted, the very concept of a stay-at-home dad is still perplexing to some people in this state. I think much of it comes from religious points of view. The idea that the woman's role is in the household, but there has to be more to it than that.

It doesn't really bother me that people around here find it a little odd that I'm the one at home with the kids. What bothers me is their need to bring attention to it. As a man in an area that does not seem to understand that fathers are also parents, it's hard to find the balance between being offended by people who seem to look down on fatherhood, and not caring at all what they think. It's not okay that people ask Melissa why she is not the one at home. It's not okay that people ask me if I'm having a "day off with the kids" and then give me the most confused look when I explain that I'm a stay-at-home dad. I wish that confusion was limited to this state.

I don't feel a big connection to many of the dad bloggers I've come across, but that has a lot to do with me not trying that hard to make the connections. Still, I've come across some great sites and done a lot of reading and one thing I've seen discussed a lot is that  dads are too often forgotten in the parenting world. There are still people who want to perpetuate the idea that fathers can't be every bit as involved in the lives of their children as mothers. There are still people out there who feel like something must be wrong with Melissa and I because our "roles" are not reversed. There seems to be a nation-wide level of complacency to commercials, clothing, greeting cards, movies, TV shows, and more, all portraying dads as not only less important than mothers to kids, but fundamentally stupid when it comes to our children. We are supposed to be good with a hammer, not a hug. Good with a lawn mower, but not a frying pan. This has sadly become a common ideal in the minds of many people, and I really have to thank the amazing group of dad bloggers who have pushed issues of unbalanced views of fatherhood into the light. People are way too passive about underselling the role of a father.

See, there's not much poking fun at moms going around. That's a good thing, but I do think it's time for people to stop pretending that dads are some sort of mute sidekick when it comes to parenting. Great fathers are everywhere, and I think most people are aware of that. So I'm confused at the companies who make efforts to pretend otherwise. What more can fathers do to stop the negative image for the people come up with this crap? How is it that with many great figures of fatherhood around, people are still searching for a better father?

Fun little exercise, open up your eyes a little wider when shopping, watching TV, or even reading parenting materials. It becomes surprising how many commercials paint a picture of the lost dad who needs mom to save the day. You'll hear things like, "dad-proof" or "mother approved." You'll read that "even dad can get involved with this!" or "you'll be surprised to know that there are things we can learn from dad!" or "it's okay to let dad push the stroller even though he doesn't understand how to dress your child." Let's not forget the amazing "parenting" books that have a "special chapter just for dad." It's quite sad, as a father, to need to defend your commitment to your children to faceless corporations and strangers who have turned fatherhood into a joke. A big thank you to the dads and  parenting blogs out there, fighting for our real place in the lives of our children.

Not every dad is perfect, but that applies to moms as well. Sorry world, but there's a lot of great dads around. Our bad.

BATTLE OF THE SEXES!

You know you want my opinion on it. Who does the better job at home, the man or the woman? Well get ready for the wintery fresh scent of disappointment, because not only is that the most loaded question since, "Do you think O.J. did it?" but I happen to believe that it's a total crap question. So what then, could possibly have sparked me to talk about this at all?

Here's the thing, I like to believe myself creative enough to not need "ideas" from somewhere else. I don't want to do a search on the top 10 blog topics and just give my own input on it. There's probably gonna be a time when I'll need to go all Mythbusters with this and take suggestions or answer questions, and for the record, always feel free to ask questions. I'll do my best to answer them truthfully and as quick as I can. Till I can get an email link permanently here, my facebook page dedicated to this blog (http://www.facebook.com/TheDadLifeBlog) has a message option. If I have enough to say on the matter, I'm sure it'll wind up here. However, till my mind becomes as equally blank as those of the girls on Teen Mom, I'd like to come up with my own stuff. Sometimes though, I can't help but be directly...inspired?...by a topic I see somewhere else.

Which brings me to a time right before Mother's Day. I read this blog from a Dad. I really, really don't want to post it. I don't want to give him any more traffic to the page than he has already received. I'm happy to give you the idea though. The guy decided that Letterman wasn't giving the world enough Top 10 lists, so he took it upon himself to list 10 things "Mothers do better than Fathers." Ugh. Oddly enough, the large number of Dads who read this on a blog about being a Dad, were slightly to medium slightly upset, and the wildfires were set. I can see why, but it's all very stupid. First off, I'm a big user of blanket statements. I say things all the time like, "Fruit is delicious." or "I'm awesome." though I don't believe either of those statements to be 100% true. I don't like pineapple enough to call it delicious and I had kidney stones before and that wasn't awesome at all (and yet people always laugh when I tell the story, my friends might be a little mean). However, if you're going to use a blanket statement about "Group A" is better than "Group B" it really needs to be the absolute truth. That's why all those "#1 Dad" mugs and shirts are a sham. Did you know you can just get those at the store? There's not like some sort of validation process for them. You can even buy them if you don't have kids! You can even buy them if you're a woman! Second, there's just no way the guy who wrote it could possibly believe what he said applies to all fathers. I mean, people are smarter than that, right*?

I'm not interested in getting all up in arms over his general statements about my ability to do things like - hugging, cooking, and changing diapers. All things from the list. I have a hunch that says this guy probably started out with very specific intentions. Basically, I'm guessing that his list was originally called "10 Things I Can Say To Up My Chance of Having My Wife Touch My Bing-Bong Tonight." Hopefully it worked, cause I imagine the outcry of negative comments from those who read it, must have kept him busy for a while afterwards. Seriously, making that kind of list privately for your wife as a way to say how much you appreciate everything she does (I mean, it was right before Mother's Day) is nice, romantic even. Posting it for the world with that kind of title implies that he believes his specific shortcomings are a world wide pandemic. I doubt he honestly thinks that all Dads are simply too stupid to put on a diaper correctly.

So are there any major factors that differ for men and women who stay at home with the kids? Parents of any kind at all? I looked into it, and well, there's breastfeeding. I think most men could agree that women hold the skills in that department. Outside of that, the feedback will always depend on the individual person. Someone once told me that as a guy, I'll probably deal better with being by myself for long periods of time. Yeah, you're thinking, "He's never alone, those two super cute boys are always around!" It's true, but anyone who has ever been a stay at home parent for a decent length of time can understand the thought. Stay at home parents deal with an amazing amount of isolation. It's lonely when your main outlet of conversation doesn't really talk back much. So, any truth to that idea? Who knows! The lovely thing about statistics is that if you want something that fully supports your point of view, it's there, and so are all the points against you. The reason? Everyone handles things in their own way. That's why no survey asking these types of questions has ever produced a 100% unanimous return. Want a survey that will pull up the same answer for ever person? Ask if they believe they are exactly the same as every other person on the planet. It's because people let their own experiences shape the way they do everything in life that you simply can't argue that gender plays any role in a person's abilities as a parent. It will always come down to the individual.

SO WHO IS IT? Who's better? Men or Women? In a time when I see women posting stories about how men will never understand how much a stay at home Mom does during the day, shouldn't I, a walking example of understanding, be able to stand up and say how outdated that kind of talk is, and how much it really does bother me? Of course! But it takes away from the bigger picture. We are all parents. That's gonna be my new favorite thing to say. While it's obvious that some people struggle with parenting far more than others, it has absolutely nothing to do with having or not having a vagina.

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I like hockey. A sport that seems tremendously unpopular to TV audiences in the US, but in recent years one big change happened. A couple young superstar players started catching the eyes of the ladies. Yep, hockey (a sport filled with battered men wearing fake teeth) was sexy. In the middle of this new wave of popularity were two players, Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. People had a great deal of opinions on both players, and the teams they played for, but the real story was THE RIVALRY! Oh boy, the media loved how these two kids were so popular and so talented, which made the obvious story how much they hated each other. Which....and get ready to have your minds blown...was completely made up! "What Ev?! You mean the media lied to us? That's absurd!" If the idea that a bunch of people who absolutely need viewers, would lie in order to get said viewers, is just too much for you...go walk it off, it's gonna be okay. Come on back when you're ready.

And that, is exactly what seems to be running around the blogging universe like pot at a Dave Matthews Band concert. Moms against Moms, Dads against Dads, Moms against Dads, Moms and Dads against Hipsters. (Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria.) All of it driven by some "man behind the curtain" that wants so very much for the arguments to continue so the heavy traffic gets him that crazy internet money.

This idea that there needs to be tension or competition between men and women who are all just trying to raise their kids, is so dumb that I might cry myself to sleep on my tiny portion of the bed. A "war" between Mothers of any kind and Fathers of any kind makes about as much sense as a "war" between a one pound bag of sand and 10 sheets of paper (my money's on the sand). I really wish some people could get past all the made up crap and petty arguments. Stop buying into something that isn't there. If, as parents, you really need to go pick fights against someone, why not pick the government? We absolutely do less in this country for new/to-be Moms and Dads than any country who shares a similar economic status. Period. Why not pick those anonymous people behind these websites who thrive on and promote conflict?

So while we're all bickering behind our computer screens on places like facebook and parenting sites about why you simply must breastfeed your baby, why males just don't get how much work goes into maintaining a clean house, and the pros and cons of sleeping on the tummy/back/in bed with the parents/upright near a picture of Peter Frampton, let's try to remember: We are all parents. Every book I've ever read about parenting states that there is not one, singular, correct, way to do it. The fact that there's arguments at all should be enough to figure out that no one has it figured out.

Let's cut each other some slack here. Except for those self-righteous cloth diapering jerks**.



*So I went back because I found out he made a follow up, trying to address the overwhelming outcry of hate comments. I found that it did nothing to address the most basic problem which to me is, "Hey I really messed up the title of it."  He admits that he's quite new to blogging and didn't mean to offend anyone.

**Good lord! Joke! Love you Kimmie!

There's gonna be so much room!

When I was writing up my post about moving to Florida I spent a pretty decent amount of time talking to my Dad about the house we first moved into. I loved that house, and when we moved to Idaho I would compare every house we looked at to my childhood home.

There was something about the layout that I really liked, and it just seems hard to find in most modern homes. Separation. I have lots of memories of people coming over, and that house allowed the adults to be within ear shot of all the kids, and yet completely separate from them. I have to imagine that they enjoyed that aspect as much as we did. Everyone was "together" but without having your conversation constantly interrupted by the two ladies in the corner that no one really invited but are having the loudest conversation about soup ever imagined.

After my parents got divorced, the decision was made to sell the house. I get that, fresh start and such. It's certainly the "house where I grew up" but while that's nice and all, what I'm talking about here is the design of it all. It really made sense, and that seems hard to come by lately.

Turns out this is no mere coincidence. My Mom and Dad were able to actually give very specific input during the design of the house, another long lost idea. It got me thinking about the house we bought here in Idaho. We had decided to move out of our townhouse in Florida for the explicit reason of having kids. Changing states did not change the "why" at all, just the where. So when our realtor asked what kind of things we were looking for, we included everything on our list of wants for ourselves and what we thought we needed for our children. We knew that finding a place that had everything we wanted was probably not going to happen with our budget. Still, when we finally settled on this place, we really thought we had most of it covered. It had a decent sized back yard, for the future games of catch, soccer, backyard camping, and last man standing dance offs. It had my favorite concept of "separate" room areas. Not exactly to the extent that I was hoping, but close! It had an area that could be our office, since we knew that we'd always want our central geek area. Big must for me, it had a great sized kitchen, and that still holds true. When the person who does the majority of the cooking says it's a good size, go with it. To top it all off, we had increased the square footage from the townhouse by more than half. Certainly enough.

If you've ever wondered how much wrong you can fit into a house, it's actually quite a bit. It's amazing how quickly you realize that everything you asked for becomes an issue, and suddenly there's a hundred things you desperately need. Thank god the hospital bills from the birth are so cheap; you can use all the money you're saving to get into that bigger, better house.

So allow me to give a mental tour of my house! Welcome! Again, we knew we wanted kids soon and tried really hard to factor that into our purchase. Let's see where we went wrong.

When you enter the front door you find yourself in a nice sized room with fake wood floors. As a sales point this is said to be the dining room. We, however, are not nearly fancy enough to pull off a formal dining room in addition to the kitchen table. So this is where we set up shop for geek central. Three computers and a laptop split over two gigante (What's up 10th grade Spanish?! BOOM!) corner desks. I sometimes wonder if it's a bit too awesome tacky to walk into this crazy mound of technology when you first walk in, but the truth is there's a futon set up which has actually made it a nice sitting area. Lots of post dinner conversations with friends have ended up around the computers instead of the comfy couch. I wonder if people just follow me in there. Maybe next time I'll go upstairs and get in bed to see if people are too polite to point out that there's probably a better location for idle chit chat. The real issue I have found in our office set up, is buttons. Kids really love the heck out of buttons, don't they? I've always been amazed at what keeps a child's attention. You fill your house with toys for them, and they gravitate toward a set of earphones you haven't used since Bobby Brown was popular. To each his own. So of course, the part of the office the kids like best is the computers. They always find some time throughout the day to come in and turn on/off the computers. Now as short as I can keep it, turning off your computer by holding the power button is a bad idea. I confirmed this with a text message to a very smart guy who works less than 100 feet from a toner vacuum. He responded almost instantly with "it can be" and it is, I even googlewebs it. Carter, who loves to watch Daddy type, is the major culprit here. He likes to use a different keyboard and imitate my typing technique (evidently I just hit my hand on the keyboard for extended periods of time...thank god for spell check). That's all well and good till he sees the power button. Like the lion stalks the zebra, he waits for me to let my guard down, and then he STRIKES! A furious display of claws and fury and goldfish crumb-coated fingers, and I walk in to my computer having been turned off (thank god for auto-save). As a man who has had horrible luck with computers all my life, you can see where this might concern me a bit. Next house? A space for geek central...that has a door. Oh! And like retinal/voice/fingerprint scans to get in! (and a mini fridge)

At the end of the office you have two options, go into the kitchen or head upstairs. Let's finish the downstairs part of the tour.

There's the kitchen, which is fantastic, and has just enough separation from the family room to be legally called two different rooms (I don't like the modern day set up of kitchen/eating area/great room in one long mega-hallway). The family room is where issue two pops up for me. It's actually a really great space, whenever the boys are asleep. The problem we neglected, callously, was how much space would really be there when all our couch cushions were on the floor and every toy the boys own had been placed where ever there might be open space like a really bad jigsaw puzzle. We also have what was at one point, a great 65 inch rear projection TV. Remember those from before flatscreens were affordable? I have plans when it finally dies to gut it, and make it my secret fort. It's gonna be amazing....no girls allowed. The problem with the TV? You guessed it! Buttons! All the power, picture, format, device selection buttons are right in arms reach for both of the boys. It's always nice to listen to William scream after Carter has turned off the TV right when we're about to find out what the mystery mouskatool is going to be. Seriously, what if Mickey and the gang can't use it to find the path with the stars?!!! Come on, Carter! Next house? A better "play space" or if money allows, an actual play room!

Then there's the laundry room/half bathroom/Dad Hallway(that is "my" room where I keep my music stuff and also my high school self portrait from art class)/Door to the garage/Dog room. I have neither anything serious or funny to say about these places. They all serve their purpose and the kids never go to any of them with the exception of just passing through to the garage. I understand that people often look for me to point out the funny in the unfunny...so again...if it helps...most of our guests poop in the half bathroom. There ya go. Once you get the giggles out, meet me upstairs. Next house? People will poop in one bathroom or another there too.

The upstairs has the last major indoor problem. At the top of the stairs you have four options: master bedroom, kid room 1, kid room 2, kid bathroom. If I were Michael Jordan, I would likely be able to stand in the middle and touch all 4 doors (also if I were Michael Jordan I would have bought a different house). That's the problem. The rooms are so close! This isn't about the chance at the end of the night to finally have some "alone time" *wink* (Hi Mom!). Nope, I think the idea of splitting up the bedroom areas goes much deeper than that.

When I was little, I had bad dreams pretty often. It seems like it was a lot anyway, and I know more than once my Dad was pretty upset about it. Here's the thing though. When you're a kid who wakes up from a bad dream, everything is terrifying. This means you have to weigh your options of staying in bed or traversing the house. See where I'm going here? When it takes all of two seconds to get to your parent's bedroom, that option becomes a lot more doable. So as much as it might have bothered my parents to have this frightened, albeit adorable, little boy show up in their room in the middle of the night, that means there were countless more times that getting across the nightmare maze to their room kept me in my room. This kind of sounds mean, but seriously, I want the boys to have to make that decision of "is it worth it to get over there" when they want to come wake us up. When they do come in late at night, I'm gonna try to remember that sometimes I need a little snuggle to get to sleep. Then, I'll man up, and tell Melissa to make sure she brings her phone with her so she's got an alarm clock in there. Next house? More than 4 steps from our door to theirs.


Now, please excuse me while I go practice my, "It was a joke baby, you know I'll go with them. I'll probably be up anyway." speech.