Category: Parenting

  • Covid Blues, But My Wife Rocks

    Just going to brag about my wife for a second…

    She was hired today, for a fulltime job with benefits. She busted her ass and found a job in the middle of a pandemic. It has made life easier for all of us, and we can take a little breath of relief. Maybe only for a second, but it feels like the first breath we have been able to take in five months. I’m very proud of of this amazing woman.

    It has been such a insane and unpredictable nine months for us. From leaving California, and reestablishing ourselves back in New York, only to have Covid pull the rug from out from everyone. There was no way to predict any of this.

    To be honest, I never thought there really would be a pandemic. From the way the world treated SARs and Ebola, even N1H1, it just seemed to me that the we knew how to work together and fight a contagious disease. I really felt like science and logic were winning over ignorance. Little did I know that stupid is stronger than I thought.

    And with all of this, how will we tell this story of disease? That is the question I keep hearing from my artist friends… if we survive. How will this affect the way we tell stories, and how we share this common experience? Only time will tell.

  • Coronavirus Downer of a Day

    We are all having a down in the dumps coronavirus day in our home. My wife’s job hasn’t been the most fun of late, and to be honest, remoting into work every day does take a toll on you after a while. The kid had a tummy ache most of the morning, so we passed on going to the park, which, now that her tummy ache is gone, she’s become a rubber ball, bouncing off the walls. I, for my part, got my big chore done today (laundry) but pretty much have farted out on everything else; I have to finish school shopping, and creating a “school area” for the kid as the start of school is closing in.

    I had been hoping that school was going to start in September, and we were going to be able to drop into a normal routine for our family. I have to admit now that it isn’t going to happen. We have to choose, very soon, if the kid will attend classes in the school, or if she is going to continue with remote learning. We have to deal with the very harsh reality that as we don’t have health insurance (the kid is covered, thank God) that sending her to school does create a risk for us to get infected. I am aware that NYC has the lowest level of infection in the USA, but I am still nervous about getting so sick that I or the wife have to go to the hospital. That thought is never out of our minds.

    On a day when things aren’t working out the way we want, it’s easy to start down the path of all the awful things that could happen to us, and then everything becomes unbearably depressing, and the world is coming to an end.

    That’s why I suggest you check out my friend John’s free trivia night, called “Mind If I Ask You Something?” It’s virtual, on Wednesday night, and anyone can play. You can find him on Instagram or on Twitch.

  • Day Trip Out of New York

    I decided that I was going to take the weekend off from writing anything, with the exception of journaling. That lead to an exceptionally lazy Saturday, where none of us did anything. As for Sunday, we planned a hike outside of New York City, at the Great Hollow Nature Preserve in Connecticut. We went looking for a place that had an “easy skill level” that was kid friendly, but still had enough of a hike to make us feel like we had accomplished something. Great Hollow checked all the boxes, and we had a wonderful afternoon of hiking, which ended with a picnic on the lawn.

    As we are now in the middle of August, the last month of Summer before school starts, the idea that we will be able to get away for a vacation is no longer even remotely a possibility. To make the best out of this situation, we are planning more day trips upstate, and seeing if we can find a few more easy trails to tackle. This has been the third time this Summer that we took a short excursion to get out to a park or preserve to do some very easy hiking, and it has been a welcome relaxation for us. 2020 has thrown us so many curveballs, car trips to break up to monotony of being stuck at home have helped.

  • Parenting: Going to the Doctor

    As we are trying to get ready for the school year, whatever it might be, we are attempting to behave as normal as possible, and that would be the annual pediatrician checkup before the Fall. Normally, this has never been an issue for the kid. To a degree, she sort of liked going to see the doctor. Both of the kid’s grandmas were nurses, and on my wife’s side of the family, there is a long history of working in the medical field. For that reason, the kid has grown up around lots of nurses and doctors.

    I made the appointment to the pediatrician, and let the kid know that it was something we would be doing, but she got very concerned.

    “Will I get a shot?” she asked me.

    I told her it was possible, and did the routine of “It will only hurt of a second,” and “I’ll be with you the whole time.”

    That didn’t work.

    For over a week I fielded questions about shots, medicine, and sharpe instruments that the doctor might use.

    I could feel the kid’s anxiety growing, and no matter how hard I tried, there didn’t seem to be anything I could say or do to make her feel better. It made me feel powerless, and insufficient as her father.

    All I can do is be with her, and encourage her to be strong.

  • Playgrounds and The Kid’s Mental Health

    Playgrounds and The Kid’s Mental Health

    Yesterday, I talked about how the virus may affect us and our kids in the future. I think about this often, especially when me and the kid head to the playground.

    When the playgrounds were closed in the City, it was awful for all of us. We tried to stay active by going for walks twice a day. The one nice benefit of this was that we got to explore all the streets in our neighborhood, but nonetheless it was not a substitute for a playground. Every time we walked through a park, and the kid laid eyes on the playground, I would get the question of, “When can we go back in there?” There was never an acceptable answer.

    With the lack of physically activity, and having no social contact with other kids, my daughter was starting to act out, and undertake behaviors she had never demonstrated before. She was more prone to scream, argue, throw things, and have temper tantrums, the likes she hadn’t done at least since she was three. We had been lucky in having a child that loved to sleep, and went to bed with no issues, but since April, she has been fighting going to bed, and getting up several times a night.

    Now that playgrounds have been open for almost a month now, it has made this situation more tolerable for the kid. Her behavior has gotten better, and she is generally sleeping solidly again. There are still flair ups, from time to time. I am sure that with the kid having a chance to be around other kids, and act out her frustrations and fears, that she is finding ways to cope with all of this stuff. It has been our one glimmer of hope in this season of unpredictability.