Day Eight - The Good Dad / Bad Dad Game

I don't suppose there is anything you can do about being the bad dad every once in a while. Here are the facts: It's Saturday. Mom and Dad are coming home in two days. The house has been hit by a tornado. The kids are daydreaming of playing the entire day.

Sorry boys, you'll be worked to the bone until I say so, capiche? Naturally, this is always accompanied with a fair amount of protest and whine, but it's refreshing to be on the side with the most bargaining chips for the first time in my life. :) So for the morning, I was Bad Dad.

Bad Dad: "Did you get all of the beanie babies off of the playroom floor?
Bad Kid: "Yes."
Bad Dad: "Great, let's go take a look together."
Bad Kid: "No, no, no, there's a couple of last-minute things I want to do first!"

Translation: "How do you expect me to lie to you if you're going to check on my work?"


Spic and span, baby! The house looked great around noon so I had the rest of the day to be Good Dad. First activity on the list - sledding in American Fork Canyon. Tyler elected to stay home to avoid the cold extremities factor, but Ryan, Adam, and Brianna all joined me for an afternoon of sledding fun. Bored with the lame tracks other people had created, Ryan and I spent quite a while developing the best track on the whole mountain side. It was a smooth, speedy chute that went twice as far as any others. It didn't take long before our track became the most popular track on the hill, but we'd satisfied our fill in the meantime.

I have a theory about winter sports and kids: The predicted time of (E)njoyment is a function of the (T)ime it takes for the first (C)hild to lose (F)eeling in their fingers and toes. E = T(C(1) - F(or(fingers,toes))) This time it was Brianna. She was crying because her hands were "burning." Poor little thing, I know exactly what that feels like. I tried to give her a quick lesson on friction and rubbing her hands together, but she was too delirious at that point to listen to my random scientific explanations, so it was indeed time to go.

Having been lectured all of my childhood and adolescent life, I jumped on the chance to give a mini-lecture to Ryan, Adam, and Brianna. Payback time, you know? Using Tyler as an example (sorry Tyler), I told them that no matter what they were afraid of or what unknown there might be, they should never ever exclude themselves from an opportunity for adventure. If my lecture was anywhere as successful as my dad's lectures were to me, the kids have probably forgotten our little chat altogether, but maybe, just maybe. . .

One last lesson learned for the day - kids always get back at you for being Bad Dad. I kid you not, by the end of the day, the house seemed just as messy as when we started that morning. The kids decided to build a fort and cave that spanned the stairwell and entire basement. Don't forget the snacks, backpacks, sleeping bags, and beanie babies strewn out everywhere for survival in the fiercest of conditions... Just don't touch my kitchen - that's all I ask. :)