A Mom With Dude Parts

Stay-at-home Daddydom is perhaps the best trick in the book for self-esteem. Don't think you're very organized? Slap a day or sixty of 'em together with a two and half year old. You might surprise yourself. Not sure if you're capable of juggling thirteen things at once and getting them all done, better than half-arsed I might add? Wake up and drag your funster around with you all day and see how you manage. Again, you might be in for a pleasant surprise.

I know that I can juggle a lot. My work days remind me of that...and I'm aware that I have varying degrees of patience, a scale that's actually quite ridiculous...from profound to embarrassing, but I rarely give myself any credit for the good stuff. This Camp Zed deal...quite proud of the management of it all (save those dirty dishes, I still rarely touch the dirty dishes). We keep a pretty good schedule. We're terribly creative. We're on top of meals and snacks...on top of sunscreen and extra this and thats packed. We're stellar with naps. The house is clean when June gets home. I'm typically ailing in some way, shape or form while doing all of this...back out of whack...achilles heal buggered...etc...but we manage. It's not that we manage that surprises me though, it's just what we manage that has me beaming with pride.

Take today for example...

I woke when June was leaving for work...6:45am. Homework 'til 7:40am. Shower, shave, dress. Put breakfast together for easy access. Wake Zed at 8:00 or so (don't make any comments about the the time, that's all planned and a direct result of our choices, and situation. If your child is up at 5am it's very likely they have to be, or they are because they went to bed at 6pm, and/or you've conditioned them to be. Not my deal, it's yours. Zed will be up earlier when our situation demands it). Slather her with affection, clean her up, dress her up, head downstairs. Easy peasy breakfast already laid out. Daddy's Hair Salon in full effect (I'm wicked good BTW). Bags are already packed 'cause they always are. Go, go, go...Ridding the world of boredom by 8:30am most days, 9am at the latest. Park, bubbles, etc...whatever amounts to amazeballs fun. Home for lunch. Food, conversation, cleaning up as we go. Camp Zed Mondo rad crafty type enterprise fits here. Nap prep (important Daddy trick he is unwilling to share)...nap, and now here I am.

Applause here.

No TV. No cries for help...no crying period. No lost limbs or bloodied parts and pieces. We're good. In fact, we're more than good. After looking in Zed's closet this morning and feeling guilty at the embarrassing lack of Zopropriate summer clothing options, we got busy making this...



Yeah, that's a dress. It used to be my shirt. Now it's an acute pain between my shoulder blades (how do tailors and seamstresses do all that leaning over?), and has provided me with a keen awareness that June doesn't have a sewing needle anywhere to be found. There's lots of pins, but no needles. So we're in the business of making Zed some so-ridiculously-cute-I-could-puke summer clothes, while we manage the day to day curiosities of Camp Zed. No problem. Who's not organized?

Just for clarity, that is the beginnings of a dress. I did that...I did...me, and no I don't feel any less manly, in fact, I feel like one @#$% of a man having made the clothing on my own child's soon to be cute-as-hell back all by myself. Take that universe. Also, for the sake of full disclosure, I don't want to ever hear one of you whiny playground super-Moms complain ever again, and while we're at it, stop looking at me like I'm a sideshow. I'm not a single Dad, and I'm a better Mom than you might ever be, and I have dude parts. That's what fifteen years of camp will do for you. Not the dude parts thing, I came with those, but the better Mom than you part.

Stay tuned for tomorrow when we do more cool $#%t.