Big Daddy Paul

I have always enjoyed watching the superbowl. Check that, I have always enjoyed superbowl sunday. Despite the great games in the past few years, the games are mostly lame. I do, however, enjoy hanging out with my best friends, eating super awesome food and, while I hate to admit it, I like to watch the superbowl ads. Don’t tell anyone, because the stay at home parent just watching the Superbowl for the commercials is so cliche. This year was no exception, although the game has certainly changed.

This year, the kids were there. We had about ten adults and six kids over, meaning you couldn’t swing a dead chicken wing without knocking over a child (and then wiping off the wing sauce.) Instead of getting drunk, betting on every play, yelling at the screen and eating myself into a partial coma, this year I got drunk, broke up fights, stopped one-year-olds from eating chalk and falling off the couch, and ate myself into a partial coma. Having kids at any event changes the essential nature of the event, but it doesn’t mean that the event is no longer any fun.

Sure, the days of wet tee shirt contests and jello shots at our house are gone, but in its place something oddly alluring has sprouted: parenting. During the game I got to teach Malcolm. I taught him how to check raise before the flop during the annual pre-superbowl poker game. I taught him how to read the score off the TV screen. I told him sad the people of New Orleans have been and how happy this football game was going to make them. I taught him what “squares” were and how if the Colts didn’t throw that last interception he was going to win $40. Then, I had to tell him that when you gamble you lose money most of the time. I taught him that you get to eat whatever you want on Superbowl sunday, even if that means your dinner consists entirely of chocolate chip cookies. (Thanks for the awesome batch Diedre!)

If you offered me the chance to, for one day, be childless again, I am not sure what my answer would be. Of course, I like jello shots and wet tee shirt contests. I like to watch football games without any distractions and swearing loudly whenever anything truly exciting happens. I like talking to my friends about things other than new teeth, first steps and who’s kid hit who. Seeing Malcolm actually watching the game, though, was pretty cool. Answering his questions about what was going on made the game fun in a brand new way.  I guess I’m actually glad we had kids there and I was able to share some experiences with Malcolm.

Oh wait, I’m not that guy. Give me a shot, a chair at the judging table and some chicken wings. Let someone else have fun with the kids.

Most of the time, our mornings are OK. Malcolm wakes up just as groggily as Amy and I, and together we all slowly rise to the level of consciousness that the real world requires. Today, however, Malcolm brought the perfect storm of annoying behavior and I almost had to end his short little life prematurely.

It started somewhere around 5:45, when Malcolm came bounding into our room asking if we wanted to play. Amy muttered something about the earliness of the hour and implored him to crawl into bed to get some more sleep. I grunted and turned over, trying desperately to get back to my dream about my high school friends, a beachside pool party, and tennis babe Gabriela Sabatini.  After a short while (over an hour) of Amy pleading with Malcolm to lie still, I finally pulled myself from the bed and took Malcolm downstairs to play. While flitting around the house like a woman in a workout video, he went into the following diatribe:

“Daddy we can have some breakkie? I want cereal. And Eggs and bacon. Do we have any yoghurt? Can I have a mint? Harry Potter has special powers. Can we play monopoly? I love you daddy. Where’s my cereal? Where’s mommy? I’m thirsty. Let’s play tic tac toe. I drew a picture of a shark. He is the smallest dot. You take the chalk and boink him on the head like this. I’m bored. Where’s breakfast? Will you play with me? I want sumping to eat.”

All this before coffee. At first, I casually reminded him that he should only ask for one thing at a time, and that he shouldn’t wine. Minutes later, I regressed to, “STOP BEING ANNOYING! I CAN’T HANDLE YOU UNTIL I DRINK MY COFFEE. GO PLAY IN YOUR ROOM WITH THE DOOR CLOSED!!!”

After breakfast, I pushed him out the backdoor and promptly locked it. When he got bored of playing with the spiders, I threw a ball out to him. He threw it over the fence and had a tantrum. At this point, I reflected on just how long it takes to make coffee and wondered if there was some faster means of jump starting my day. I gave him another ball, but his lips were blue and I could tell he was cold. (He was in pajamas and crocks.)  So, I let him back in and told him to try and not irritate me until after I had my coffee. Now, I am drinking my coffee while he is playing with his legos.  Either I have weathered the storm or he is planning his assault. I don’t really care, because after finishing I am going to google the shit outta Gabriela Sabatini.