Dad Is Fat (20 page)

The song goes, “Morning has broken,” and I’m pretty sure my children broke it. Like everything else they break, if they did break it, they’ll never admit it. I can just hear my kid’s explanation.

I don’t know what’s more exhausting about parenting: the getting up early or the acting like you know what you are doing. Sure, when I was single, I had to occasionally get up early for work, and it was a crisis!

“Jim, you have to get up next Tuesday at 7 a.m.”

“Oh no! I should go to bed now!”

When you have kids, there is a whole different element of crisis. You are not only waking up sleep deprived, but now you are also sleep deprived and in charge of another human being. Not only are they absurdly loud in the morning, they are also ravenously hungry.

“Dad, I’m
starving
!”

“Go back to bed, it’s too early.”

“But I need to eat or I will die!”

Suddenly they turn into Oliver at the orphanage. Great, now if I don’t get up, I am neglecting the basic needs of my child. Since Jeannie was against my brilliant idea of pouring cereal into dog bowls the night before, I have to get up and feed my kids.

Great, he wants pancakes, and I feel like a pancake. It seems to me that if you are not old enough to make breakfast, you really should not be allowed to get up before 7 a.m. Of course, it doesn’t feel like just getting up. It feels like punishment for
every time in your life you complained about being bored. Now you are faced with the challenge of finding something in the house that they
want
to eat. They may be starving when they wake you up, but then they will complain about everything you try to give them.

Sometimes I’ll make scrambled eggs for my kids, which usually barely get eaten. “They’re too runny.” “What is that, cheese? Ew.” “Is there egg in this?” “I thought you were starving!” “I am, but not for that!” Unless it’s an Easter basket or at IHOP, your little beggars become very choosy. Left to their own devices, they would probably just grab a bag of sugar and a spoon.

Once Marre, six at the time, made breakfast for herself and her brother and little sister. She woke us up and proudly announced, “You don’t have to get up. I made breakfast for me, Jack, and Katie.” When I asked why she had chocolate on her face, she explained they had breakfast dessert.

When I went out in the kitchen, it looked like a tornado had hit a frosting factory. Since Jeannie is usually breastfeeding a baby at this time of the morning, I normally get blamed for these natural disasters.

Most mornings it feels like it takes more than a village.

Given my passion for sleep, it is no surprise how I feel about naps. I believe in naps. I like to think of naps as a nonverbal way of saying to life, “I quit. I’m sitting this part of the day out.” I understand that naps are usually reserved for babies and old people, but I don’t discriminate. Naps used to be an integral part of my everyday life. Prior to children, a catastrophe for me was when I would sleep so late in the morning that I would miss my nap.

As a new parent, I was pleased to discover that newborns take a lot of naps. It seems like they nap more than they are awake. Newborns nap so much, you’d think they were on drugs or depressed. Always looking to contribute, I’ll often selflessly offer to help get one of our babies to sleep. Sometimes I’ll nap with our fifteen-month-old son to be supportive. Sometimes I’ll nap with our newborn to be supportive. Sometimes I’ll nap alone in homage to our newborn and fifteen-month-old. It’s all about putting kids first, really.

Any parent can tell you how important it is for children up to age two to take a nap. With babies, you always want to avoid the dreaded “over tired” state, and nobody wants to be around a two-year-old who didn’t nap. You’ll never hear a parent say, “He didn’t nap today” about a two-year-old boy that is behaving well. Naps are a necessity.

Unfortunately, around the age of three, there comes a time when napping your child becomes counterproductive. It’s not worth it. The nap during the day for a three-year-old becomes a payday loan. For those of you who don’t understand the connection, a payday loan is for people who can’t seem to make ends meet until their next paycheck, so they go to a loan company (aka thieves) that will give them their paycheck amount early for a huge fee. This is of course unwise, and Suze Orman would be angry with you.

It is equally unwise when applied to napping. If you take the payday loan of some free time by letting your cranky, drowsy three-year-old succumb to the relinquished nap habit, be prepared that your child will be awake very late. When I say awake, I really mean a nuisance to your life and sanity. This is the aforementioned huge fee that you now must pay.

When I say late, I mean late. A three-year-old with insomnia is very similar to a heroin addict going through withdrawal. There is nothing that calms them. They can’t focus. You can’t tell them enough stories. They don’t understand why they are still awake four hours past their bedtime. This is commonly understood by all parents of three-year-olds and has inspired great works of literature, such as
Go the F-ck to Sleep
.

Sure, while your three-year-old naps during the day, you
can get some work done, nap yourself, or waste time on the Internet, but at what cost? Now it’s payday, and you squandered your loan on what? Checking Twitter? Somebody call Suze, because you need advice.

Once you have figured out the horrible consequences of the payday loan, you become obsessed with preventing the nap-weaned three-year-old from napping in the middle of the day at all costs. This is not easy. They have napped all their life. They want to nap. They need to nap. You would like them a lot better if they napped. You feel that by keeping them awake, you are putting them through some CIA sleep-deprivation experiment. It seems cruel, yet you find yourself dreaming up ways to keep them awake: “You’re nodding off at four p.m? Time for a cold bath and a hot cup of coffee!”

Then comes the impossible task of enforcing nap prevention when your child is in the care of others. It’s understandable that babysitters love napping children. “She was a delight!” is always code for “She slept for four hours!” Jeannie and I have strict orders to not let Katie fall asleep, but why should the babysitters comply? They will never encounter the consequences of napping a three-year-old. Now we are the naive cosigners that wind up footing the bill when the sitter defaults. The housing crisis could have easily been prevented if someone had simply explained the economics of napping a three-year-old. Prepare for foreclosure on your evening because there’s no bailout in sight.

I’m getting fat … as I planned. Luckily, my gut is intentional. I’m actually preparing for a big role. Sure, it’s a cinnamon roll, but I want there to be room for it. Okay, fine, I could lose some weight, but I’m not going to hide behind some lame excuse. My paunch is no one’s fault but my kids’.

I’m gaining weight, and I do blame my kids. I suppose that’s the cliché, right? You get married, you have kids, and you get fat. It’s not like being around young children suddenly makes you hungry. It’s just being around what children
eat
. Have you seen what a six-year-old wants to eat? “I’ll have a slice of pizza, a chocolate milk, and a lollipop.” Like they are on some drug-induced munchie binge. “For dinner, get me mac and cheese, a handful of pretzels, and half of a cupcake.”

They don’t actually ask for half of a cupcake, but half a cupcake is all they’ll actually eat. Once my daughter Katie ate the icing off a cupcake and then asked for more cake on her bread.
Half-eaten is an important detail. What are you supposed to do with the other half of that cupcake? A three-year-old will never finish their food. I’ll take my kids out to dinner, and they’ll leave half a plate of french fries. What? Who would actually
leave
french fries? It’s not some self-control thing. They aren’t thinking, “Moment on the lips, forever on the hips.” They just get distracted. “What’s that shiny thing over there?” Now I’m supposed to eat a boring-ass healthy salad when there’s a half a plate of fries twelve inches from me just going to waste? This is why being a parent is like the opposite of the Jenny Craig diet. I can just see the pitch: “I gained twenty pounds just eating small portions of my children’s leftovers. And it works!”

Now some of you might be thinking, why don’t I just order something healthy for my kids? Well, that’s not possible in a restaurant. Have you ever noticed that the children’s menu is exactly the same as the bar menu? Burger, hot dog, pizza. If you put the children’s menu at the bar, people wouldn’t even notice. “Oh, cool. I can color in an airplane while I drink this beer and wait for my chicken strips.”

Of course, there is a reason why there is no outrage that the children’s menu is the same as the bar menu. At a restaurant, the “I want my kids to eat healthy” rules are literally off the table. As a society, we are all concerned about childhood obesity until we bring a kid into a restaurant and want that kid to be quiet. Then even the most health-conscious mom changes her tune. “Yes, you can have cake and ice cream. Now what do you want for dessert?” Being at a restaurant with small children is not the time or place to enforce the “eat all your broccoli first” rule unless you want everyone in the restaurant
to hate you. “Your children are so well behaved!” No they’re not—they’re sedated with deep-fried chicken strips.

Obviously, what a child eats at home is entirely the parent’s responsibility. Kids will eat other things besides fries and hot dogs. I should be clear that Jeannie only buys “organic” food, which I believe is a grocery term for “twice as expensive.” I’ve almost gotten used to eating a type of “sprouted” bread that I believe is made from tree bark. Thanks to Jeannie’s leadership, instead of eating junk food, our kids eat organic junk food. You make as many smart choices as you can, but the war of attrition eventually involves you relenting to the whining. “Fine, here’s an organic pizza roll.”

It’s always been hard for me to eat healthy, but with kids, it’s virtually impossible. To people without young kids, allow me to explain. A kid doesn’t have to be spoiled or exposed to bad habits; it can happen in an instant. You would never buy desserts to have around the house if you want your kids to eat healthy, but you might innocently have cake after dinner one night. A special treat, right? What you don’t realize is that to a five-year-old, you have now established a precedent. One piece of cake on one night has ushered in six weeks of “What’s for dessert?” You might say, “It’s Tuesday. There is no dessert.” Now, to a five-year-old, that only means
try harder for dessert
. “But a month and a half ago, we had cake after dinner. That’s how we do it now.” It doesn’t matter that it was their birthday. Now they expect it, and if they don’t get it, they give you this look like they are being deprived. So then you have the brilliant idea to start using it as a punishment: If you don’t do this, then no dessert! Which means now you have put yourself
in a position where you are forced to actually have some dessert around in the event of the slim chance they actually do behave. So you must forsake your convictions and start buying desserts. This predicament is called “being stranded on a dessert island.”

Overall, kids are horrible at eating. We all know a baby’s first food experience is always a disaster. Anyone who has ever fed a baby his first cereal or strained carrots knows that calling this experience “eating” is generous. It is really a ritual that simply entails smearing a baby with food. The chance that some may actually end up in his mouth is purely incidental.

The next step in the evolution of eating is when a baby is learning to pick up food and “feed” himself. Watching a nine-month-old try to find his mouth is a game of pin the tail on the donkey. The food ends up in his ears, eyes, nose, and hair, but, again, rarely the mouth.

You would think a couple of years of practice would be enough for these babies to figure how to eat. After all, you can get an MBA degree in the same amount of time. Unfortunately, eating with children aged two to six years old is not that much of an improvement. First off, getting them to sit in a chair at the table is an accomplishment. Once they are there, getting them to properly use utensils is a feat. I don’t have to explain how fast kids can turn a simple butter knife into a shiv. A full spoon will be empty by the time it reaches the mouth. Little kids may start off with a fork, but eventually they’ll return to their trusty hands, because inevitably that fork is on the floor within five seconds of the kid picking it up. Eating with their hands seems to be the preferred method by a long shot.