Big Daddy Paul

He even knows how to go four-wheeling with his mommy!

Like all four-year-olds, Malcolm is as sharp as a tack. If it is 3:00 and you tell him that you’ll play a game with him in five minutes, you can bet your sweet bippy that he will come trotting up at 3:05 to remind you of your obligations. He can tell you which game of a three game series against the Cardinals last month the Giants lost 5-1. He remembers whether you told him earlier that he didn’t need to take a bath that day and can tell if you are in the kitchen eating chips (even if you try to eat them really, really quietly.) The kid knows a lot.

I am just glad that there is a lot of stuff he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know that the Wheat Chex he loves so dearly have no chocolate in them, despite their dark brown appearance.

He doesn’t know that I sometimes let him tag me out when we play baseball. Also, I can throw my fastball much faster than I’ll let on.

I am pretty sure that he doesn’t know that most of the time when I lock the door in the bathroom, I am just hiding from him.

He doesn’t know that after he goes to bed, we have popcorn, and sometimes ice cream!

He doesn’t know that play dates are often more for the parent’s sake than they are for the kids.

He doesn’t know that there are video games out there where you can be a ninja, a sharpshooter, or even Pablo Sandoballs. (As far as he knows, the entire video game universe consists of boggle, scrabble and game called “The Kindergarten Game.” I’m going to keep it that way as long as I can!)

He doesn’t understand how easy it would be for him to reach his goodie bag (filled with candy, chocolates etc. and reserved for semi-special occasions) while I have myself locked up in the bathroom.

He doesn’t yet know how bad my taste in music is. For now, he assumes everyone listens to Weird Al.

Lastly, he is beginning to learn how to read, but I am super-stoked that he doesn’t know how to get to this blog. I think he might get upset at some of the content around here.

We had a three-family play date on Friday. I thought things went pretty well, with the kids getting along well and nobody needing medical attention. Well, at least nobody needed medical attention on Friday.

On Saturday, we took Malcolm out to go golfing. On the practice green, he started looking, well, a little green. After mumbling something unintelligible, he proceeded to projectile vomit all over that finely mowed grass.

It was like this, except with more chunder!

Not wanting the 50 or so kids lined up for a youth golfing event to have to putt through any more puke, I picked him up and placed him in the rough next to the green. He continued to toss his cookies for another minute or so, while I rubbed his back and tried my best not to stare at the large chunks of fruit that were spewing forth from his mouth. Seeing all those kids with a hopeful and energetic look in their eyes was inspiring, at least until they saw what Malcolm was doing and started dry heaving themselves. After the episode finally came and went, I got some paper towels to clean up the mess. Let me tell you, cleaning sticky, chunky, gelatinous barf off of a tightly mowed green is a bit of a surreal experience. You should try it some time!!!

We got home and Malcolm threw up some more. Sadly, most of it went on our couch, which we had professionally cleaned last week. Timing is everything in life, isn’t it. I found out that two of the other kids at the play date were training to be supermodels on Friday as well. I think it may have been some bad cheese that we ate.

Ah, to heck with it. I don’t care. You know what time it is? It’s fantasy football time! I love fantasy football. If fantasy football were a gay man, I would marry it, even in a red state. If fantasy football wore Betty White’s dress to the Emmy’s, I would tell it it looked amazing. (And then take it home for some sweet lovin’!) Fantasy football could call me a racist, say that FEMA is building concentration camps, and compare me to Hitler, and I would still give it a big juicy hug at the end of each day. In order of awesomeness, my priorities are breathing, drinking, eating, Amy, fantasy football, money, a good toilet, Friday Night Lights, and then Malcolm. The hold that fantasy football has over me is stronger than Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Situation, put together!

Amy joined the party again this year by drafting her own team. She and her college pals started a league, and I helped Amy prepare for her draft. (That’s why she shows up so high on the priority list!) My draft is next monday. I will be feverishly preparing for the draft, so my posts my be a bit sparse this week. Wish me luck, and stay away from mozzarella cheese at my house, for the time being!

I hate doing stuff around the house. Perhaps this is the reason that our house looks like a clutter bomb just went off and has more spiders in it than humans. Alas, I knew that my housework hiatus was finished when I found a mushroom growing in our bathroom. I’ve had mushrooms in pizza and mushrooms in soup, and I even had mushrooms on prom night, but mushrooms in the bathtub? Yikes!!! Somewhere, deep down inside me, the beer drinking slacker died, replaced by a mighty Bob Villa-inspired phoenix springing forth out of the ashes.

Daddy, that thing I just ate made me feel a little ... fuzzy.

I hadn’t really figured out how I was going to go about getting Malcolm to agree to go to Home Depot with me to begin the process of unfungaling and re-grouting our shower. Luckily, fate was on my side this day, as Malcolm threw a ball into his ceiling fan, causing the light  to shatter and sending shards of glass cascading everywhere in his room. I saw the opening and I drove straight through it: “Malcolm, now we are going to have to go to the hardware store and figure out how to fix the light. This is really bad thing that you have done.” Inside, I was beaming! Score one for the home team! Sure, this meant that I was going to either have to replace the light fixture on Malcolm’s fan (or worse, replace the whole thing!) but this paled in comparison to having a whining brat running all around the store, throwing merchandise everywhere and proudly informing anyone who would listen how much he hates my guts.

Malcolm was more than a bit puzzled as to why we spent most of the time at the store in the cleaning solution and caulking aisles. “Daddy, I thought we needed a new ceiling fan?” he asked, at one point. I assured him that we were almost ready to head over to the ceiling fans and constantly chastised him for why we were there, “Remember, you did a really bad thing.” Much to my amazement, this actually worked, and he was pretty well behaved while I read instructions on the back of anti-fungal cleaners. Sadly, Home Depot does not appear to sell replacement globes to the ceiling fans they sell, so I ended up having to buy a whole new fan. Even worse, the replacement ceiling fan we bought is awesome: the light is a mini-earth, and there are stars and moons all over the blades. I am sure Malcolm has taken away this from the experience: destroy something large in the house and it will be replaced by something way better. I’m pissed.

We got home and Malcolm got to watch me scrape all the infected grout out the cracks in the shower. To his credit, he did not ever say, “You missed a spot!” I offered him the chance to help, but he graciously declined, muttering something under his breath about not wanting to inhale potentially poisonous spores. Soon, I had the caulk gun out and was spreading sealer around like it was icing on a cake. Both of us were extremely happy as nothing makes boys giggle with glee as much as the words “caulk” and “gun.” Having assured myself that I had rid our bathroom of any further pizza ingredients, we piled back downstairs, started up a game of Life, and picked a date next year when we planned on replacing his ceiling fan. Remember that beer guy? He’s back!