Since my husband is a fire fighter / paramedic, the early baby gifts included a lot of things with fire trucks and the like embroidered on them. Once we determined that it was going to be a girl, that influx slowed, but we still get a good number of fire themed books (Even Firefighters hug their mother, Curious George and the Fireman, Fireman Bear’s story book) and an array of the limited number of pink fire fighter themed clothes (the little pink onesie that says “Future Firefighter”).
When our little baby to be was still an unknown, my husband loved the fire fighter themed apparel, but soon after he learned she was a girl, he got less excited. He didn’t mind the toys – sure she can play with fire trucks! (Let’s be honest, he was perfectly happy to increase the number of toy fire trucks in the house) – he just didn’t like the “future firefighter” clothes. Maybe he’d be OK with it for a boy, though even then I think he’d push back some, but for his daughter, he really would have preferred a pink onesie that said “Future Neurosurgeon.” Before you assume too much sexism (oh there’s certainly some there when it comes to the job! I’m generally one to say, girls can do anything that they want! But I have to agree that I want the fire fighter next to my husband to be someone who can pull all 250 lbs of him out of the fire if need be. Now there are certainly women who can do that – and more! But I want those women (and only those women) to be the ones running in with him.), the sexism isn’t so much the issue. The real issue is – the more paramedic classes my husband has taken, the more he realizes that he wishes he’d been a doctor.
I guess he hadn’t really thought about science / medicine when he was in college. I’m not sure if he so much had a path in mind or if that one just didn’t occur to him. Instead he took finance and IT classes, got 2 degrees (one in each) and went off to consult. It took about 4 years to realize that he hated it – that it was godless, soulless work (you know the axiom, if there’s not a solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem? As an aside, before you get offended, I'm not saying that ALL consulting is godless/soulless. What I'm saying is he felt that what he was doing / where he was working fell into that category.) and he just didn’t want to do it anymore. He liked the mental challenge and was good at that and the sales end, but just couldn’t continue to do it. So he quit and became a firefighter. The early training certainly had its challenges, but the real push came during paramedic training. It was during this time that the mantra started – I should have gone to med school.
So now in the spirit of parenting, he’s decided that since he didn’t go, our daughter absolutely should! (He’s also suggested that maybe he’ll go with her.)
I’m not sure how she feels about this (as she’s not yet a year!), but given her tendency toward head butting recently (she really nailed me in the side of the neck this weekend – you’d be surprised how much that hurts…), I think she may be thinking of a less cerebral occupation. Like maybe pro-wrestling.
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Monday, November 2, 2009
Everybody cut Footloose!
The other day was a kind of long day where the hubby and I looked at each other and said – let’s try to get the baby to bed early so we can go to bed immediately after! But she was having none of it. I went upstairs with her around 7:30, but her schedule was a bit off (she’d been up too late the night before and napped too late that afternoon) so she was vehemently opposed to sleep. Or maybe it was all the commotion…
Being upstairs with her, I missed most of the commotion (because I am that attentive), but was sort of aware of some yelling. Here’s what seems to have happened…
The dog started getting sick, so my husband got into gear to take him outside / take care of him. He eventually decided to take him to the basement – as there’s no carpeting there and easy access to an exit, if needed. His Mom thought he was outside and sometime after that heard loud banging / cracks. She thought they were gunshots (I heard them, but just don’t generally assume gunshots. Where I’m from, that’s almost always a car backfiring or kids playing with fire crackers. But I guess the deer are a real problem near them and she thought someone was shooting at them.). She got very nervous that her son and the dog were outside, so she called her husband to go find them. Apparently he went out after them, but she didn’t realize that. So when she found her son and the dog in the basement and then noticed the front door was unlocked, she locked it (as one would with people shooting outside!). Her husband came back a few minutes later to find himself locked out (so now he’s the one locked out at the O-kay coral!).
I came back down (with the very awake baby) a little bit later to hear this story. My husband was nowhere to be seen. About half an hour later, I convinced the baby that she WAS, in fact, tired and wanted to go to bed. So I decided to go look for my husband.
I knew he was very overtired and a sick dog was the last thing he wanted to be dealing with, so I wasn’t sure what mood I’d find him in. In the past when I’ve tried to help when the dog is busy throwing up at 3 am (and he’s got to get up in 2 hours), he’s been known to be… somewhat testy. So I was a little apprehensive about what I’d find. What I did find was that he’d found a working tv in the basement and he and the, now fairly healthy, dog were watching Footloose! It was just coming up to that scene were Kevin Bacon has just had it with the small town and therefore works out all his frustration and energy the way any normal young teenager would – by dancing around an old empty warehouse. I’ll have to remind my husband of that solution next time he gets frustrated with work. (Clearly watching it was enough to help all that night! The dog was perfectly healthy after that!)
Being upstairs with her, I missed most of the commotion (because I am that attentive), but was sort of aware of some yelling. Here’s what seems to have happened…
The dog started getting sick, so my husband got into gear to take him outside / take care of him. He eventually decided to take him to the basement – as there’s no carpeting there and easy access to an exit, if needed. His Mom thought he was outside and sometime after that heard loud banging / cracks. She thought they were gunshots (I heard them, but just don’t generally assume gunshots. Where I’m from, that’s almost always a car backfiring or kids playing with fire crackers. But I guess the deer are a real problem near them and she thought someone was shooting at them.). She got very nervous that her son and the dog were outside, so she called her husband to go find them. Apparently he went out after them, but she didn’t realize that. So when she found her son and the dog in the basement and then noticed the front door was unlocked, she locked it (as one would with people shooting outside!). Her husband came back a few minutes later to find himself locked out (so now he’s the one locked out at the O-kay coral!).
I came back down (with the very awake baby) a little bit later to hear this story. My husband was nowhere to be seen. About half an hour later, I convinced the baby that she WAS, in fact, tired and wanted to go to bed. So I decided to go look for my husband.
I knew he was very overtired and a sick dog was the last thing he wanted to be dealing with, so I wasn’t sure what mood I’d find him in. In the past when I’ve tried to help when the dog is busy throwing up at 3 am (and he’s got to get up in 2 hours), he’s been known to be… somewhat testy. So I was a little apprehensive about what I’d find. What I did find was that he’d found a working tv in the basement and he and the, now fairly healthy, dog were watching Footloose! It was just coming up to that scene were Kevin Bacon has just had it with the small town and therefore works out all his frustration and energy the way any normal young teenager would – by dancing around an old empty warehouse. I’ll have to remind my husband of that solution next time he gets frustrated with work. (Clearly watching it was enough to help all that night! The dog was perfectly healthy after that!)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Of Bees and Bee Gees
My husband worked on Sunday and got no sleep and then was on daddy daycare duty all day Monday. She let him nap in the morning (she went down for a nap, the dog woke her up by shaking his collar, my husband threatened to have the dog fixed (again) and removed his collar and then he got her back to sleep) – he slept in what he described as a nest on the floor next to her crib while she slept. From his description, he’s not really sure how long she slept, but she stayed relatively quiet and happy for close to two hours till he woke up to her kicking her feet against the slats of the crib. But two hours was it – then they were going for the day! He did pretty admirably well – he took her out to the museum, went to the grocery store for dinner and even had her fed and bathed with dinner underway by the time I got home.
But then he was DONE! Two hours of sleep hit him like a ton of bricks post dinner. We were sitting on the couch when he said – I’m just going to rest my eyes for a couple of minutes – and was OUT! Under some circumstances, this works out OK for me – it means I get control of the remote! But there was nothing on anyway and I was sort of tired, so I decided to take a page from his book of the morning and lay with her on the floor of her room (I was pretty sure I’d stay awake, so we were both on the floor). We played for an hour or so and then I thought it was a good time for an early attempt at bedtime. She disagreed, but I finally got her to sleep and decided to read my book in the dining room for a little bit with some tea (my husband was still sprawled asleep in the family room).
I was sitting for a little while when I heard a buzzing noise. I looked up to see a HUGE bee flying by the light. Now I admit that bees scare me a little (esp anywhere near my baby!) and this one looked big enough to fight back, so I thought it might really take two of us to take care of this one. So I called out to my husband that I needed his help. He actually woke up admirably fast though his eyes showed he wasn’t really QUITE awake yet. I pointed out the bee and told him I needed his assistance (all the while I was wondering, where on earth did this thing come from? No windows were opened and I hadn’t opened the door since I’d come home.). He looked at it perched on the edge of a frame and pointed out that the frame might die in the process too. I noted that the painting had actually been expensive to frame – but I also wanted that bee GONE! He moved over and swatted it – and then jumped back (he later even laughed about his run from the bee – but who can blame him? The thing was the size of a small plane and he’d probably just pissed it off!). Amazingly, he got it in one fell swoop (my hero!) and we disposed of it and cleaned up the remains (did you know that bees release a pheromone when they are killed or when the sting you that other bees can sense and will be attracted to?), again noting how big the darn thing was.
A few minutes later he called me over to the computer to show me pictures of bees to ask which I thought it looked like.
Did it look like this?
or this?
This made me a little nervous – was there a type of bee I should be worried about? Until I saw his third picture, did it look like this?!
Oh my God, I killed Andy Gibb. (Those are the bee gees in case you were wondering.)
The rest of the night, he’d ask – do you hear that – while pretending to be checking for more bees and then would start singing Staying Alive.
It later occurred to me to ask why he was looking up the pictures of bees in the first place (again worried about some strange strain of them). He said – oh, it was so I could make that joke.
Ugh.
But then he was DONE! Two hours of sleep hit him like a ton of bricks post dinner. We were sitting on the couch when he said – I’m just going to rest my eyes for a couple of minutes – and was OUT! Under some circumstances, this works out OK for me – it means I get control of the remote! But there was nothing on anyway and I was sort of tired, so I decided to take a page from his book of the morning and lay with her on the floor of her room (I was pretty sure I’d stay awake, so we were both on the floor). We played for an hour or so and then I thought it was a good time for an early attempt at bedtime. She disagreed, but I finally got her to sleep and decided to read my book in the dining room for a little bit with some tea (my husband was still sprawled asleep in the family room).
I was sitting for a little while when I heard a buzzing noise. I looked up to see a HUGE bee flying by the light. Now I admit that bees scare me a little (esp anywhere near my baby!) and this one looked big enough to fight back, so I thought it might really take two of us to take care of this one. So I called out to my husband that I needed his help. He actually woke up admirably fast though his eyes showed he wasn’t really QUITE awake yet. I pointed out the bee and told him I needed his assistance (all the while I was wondering, where on earth did this thing come from? No windows were opened and I hadn’t opened the door since I’d come home.). He looked at it perched on the edge of a frame and pointed out that the frame might die in the process too. I noted that the painting had actually been expensive to frame – but I also wanted that bee GONE! He moved over and swatted it – and then jumped back (he later even laughed about his run from the bee – but who can blame him? The thing was the size of a small plane and he’d probably just pissed it off!). Amazingly, he got it in one fell swoop (my hero!) and we disposed of it and cleaned up the remains (did you know that bees release a pheromone when they are killed or when the sting you that other bees can sense and will be attracted to?), again noting how big the darn thing was.
A few minutes later he called me over to the computer to show me pictures of bees to ask which I thought it looked like.
Did it look like this?
or this?
This made me a little nervous – was there a type of bee I should be worried about? Until I saw his third picture, did it look like this?!
Oh my God, I killed Andy Gibb. (Those are the bee gees in case you were wondering.)
The rest of the night, he’d ask – do you hear that – while pretending to be checking for more bees and then would start singing Staying Alive.
It later occurred to me to ask why he was looking up the pictures of bees in the first place (again worried about some strange strain of them). He said – oh, it was so I could make that joke.
Ugh.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)