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All posts for the month November, 2012

Nap Time…..is it for me or the kids….lol

Posted by hiphopdad on November 29, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. 2 comments

I swear that every day I look forward to nap time. In fact I plan my day around it. You might even catch me on the phone talking to one of my friends like, “Yo, from 8-12 I’m book from like 12-2, you can come over and get whooped in some Playstation 3.” For me that 2 hour space of time is filled with endless possibilities. Sometimes I do stuff like buy a book, and measure how long it’s going to take me to finish the book in nap times. I’m like, “Dang, this book is 200 pages, I could probably knock this out in like 3-4 nap times if I want.” However, here is the problem with nap time, sometimes my son doesn’t want to go to sleep. He’s figured it out. It’s like he’s at the playground trading nap time tips with the other toddlers. I can picture them all congregated around the slide like, “Yo, this is how I get out of nap time every day, try this,” and he takes mental notes and puts them to use at home.

Here’s how it goes. I put him in the crib, and turn the channel from Yo Gabba Gabba to ESPN. 10 minutes later, he pops his head out of the door and says, “Give me a kiss daddy.” You’ve got to be a cold dude to be able to turn that down, so I pick him up, kiss him and put him back in the crib, and close the door. I’m sure he pulls out a pen and pad, and scratches that one off of the list like, “Damn, that didn’t work.” 10 minutes pass, and pow, he yells out, “Daddy, I have to go pee pee.” This is a tricky one. He could be lying, but you never know, so you have to get up and take him to the toilet to scope out the authenticity of the situation. So here we are in the bathroom, he’s smiling, sitting on the toilet, trying to unroll the ENTIRE roll of toilet paper, reaching for toys, asking me questions (sometimes the same question 12 times in a row hoping I break), and when he is finished I put him back in the crib. 30 minutes pass, “Oh my gosh there is a bug.” This is another statement, that you have to check out. What if there is a bug? You have to go look, and when you do there is no bug in sight. I feel like Wylie Coyote falling for the same roadrunner tricks every day. Buy now 50 minutes have passed, and you have to figure out how to get him to sleep in order to get your 2 hour break. So what do I do, I go lay in the room with him. I’m on his sisters bed, and he’s in the crib. Here is where the plan falls apart.

I have usually been up since 5:30 am, the time that I go to the gym in the morning, and within about 15 minutes, I am sleep. When I wake up, the crib is empty (my 3 year old climbs out of the crib faster than Kim Kardashian gets out of a relationship), and I usually find him in the room playing with toys and watching TV. He then smiles at me, knowing he should have been sleep and says something like, “Did you have a good nap daddy?” Feeling duped, I have now vowed to never lay in the bed in his room at all costs. If he yells something to me, I yell back. I keep the door cracked, so that I can see if he is in fact asleep. I do this because I used to close the door, and when I opened it thinking that he was sleep, he would pop up and become re-energized, thinking that his nap was now over. So now, POW!!! I refuse to be fooled. Here is some off parent humor from one of my favorite comedians Kevin Hart and another video about Nap Time:


Let’s play the be quiet and don’t wake up your brother in the morning game…….please!!

Posted by hiphopdad on November 29, 2012
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In the world of parenting, sleep could definitely be sold on the black market for a premium price. If sleep, and “me time” were sold in the grocery store, that sh*t would sell out. I’d have cans of it in the pantry, and I’d whip it out like a super power. For instance, picture me chilling on the couch watching my favorite television show while my 3 year old son plays with his toys. He would eventually get tired of playing with his toys, as he often does, and throw on his Iron Man costume (yes the one from Halloween), and run over to me yelling, “I want to watch Sponge Bob,” and I would whip out my can of “Me Time” like POW!!!! It’s “Me Time” you have to leave me alone, and be good until my show is over. However in real life that doesn’t happen. What does happen however is that every so often my 3 year old sleeps in (sleeping in is sleeping until 9 or 10), and I try to prolong that experience however long I can. I tip toe around, put the television on a super low volume that only some dogs have been trained to hear, and try to be as quiet as possible. If it’s a weekend, my daughter may be sleep to, but if not (hold on my son is currently yelling at the toilet. This is hilarious, he just said, “Stop it toilet, I am trying to flush you.” I think he pushed the lever, and it didn’t work the first time)….back to my dilemma.

If my daughter is awake, she is usually prancing about, singing, asking me 95,000 questions back to back, like some sort of dad interrogation, and making as much noise as “accidentally” possible. The key here is trying to either compromise and put on a show that she wants to watch, create some sort of art project that she can in no way complete quickly, feed her (this is only a temporary fix), or find some sort of electronical device that she can play with until ESPN goes off. Its like some kind of military mission where you have an objective, and if you fail, you will have to relinquish control of the “big tv” and your little bit of quiet time until the 3 year old wakes up. This happens every morning, and sometimes I win, and sometimes I lose. Sometimes, I’m sitting there, and I’m flipping through the channels, and facebooking on my phone, and other times, the door cracks open, and my son pops his face out smiling at me like, “Yeah sucker it’s on.” Today I lost. Sponge Bob is on the tv, my son has me making him some oatmeal, while he pretends that he is in Iron Man, and throws punches at me some of which come extremely close to the proximity of my nuts. So while the oatmeal is in the microwave, and in between him telling me he’s hungry repeatedly, I decided to type this up, and let you know how my day is starting. Tomorrow, I vow that I will be successful in squeezing out an extra hour or so in the morning for me…….I will not lose….wait, microwave stopped, I have to go.

So you thought parenting was going to be a walk in the park? (Litterally)…….Hell No!!!

Posted by hiphopdad on November 28, 2012
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Maybe you are like me, and your first kid tricked you into thinking parenting was easy, or maybe this is your first child. Either way, no book, video, or short story could have prepared you for what was to come. I used to go to the park and see parents playing with their children, and think, “Wow, that’s easy.” I used to imagine myself dressing up my kid in miniature Air Jordan tennis shoes, and little denim jeans, and having these made for tv moments. Then reality hit. POW!!! One broken condom, one phone call, and 9 months later I was a father for the first time (I’m a father of two). I read a few books, I went to the parenting classes, I talked to my mom, and thought I was prepared…..oh boy was I wrong.

Right now, as I write this, my son is ripping up pieces of mail and shoving them in a cup which is an accessory for an Easy Bake Oven. In between doing that, he is sprinting from the front door to his bedroom, and sporadically hitting flips in the living room. My daughter is passed out in her bed, and I am watching Ink Masters, and blogging away. My living room is littered with ripped paper, an Iron Man mask, a tin lunch box, a fire truck, a dump truck, a die cast Lamborghini, and two Polly Pocket dolls which I am assuming have been beaten up by an Iron Man action figure. Oddly enough, I couldn’t imagine my life any other way.

As a stay at home dad, I live for nap time, and I am one of only a handful of stay at home dads that I know. While my daughter who is now 8, is reserved, courteous and polite, my son is the “Ying” to her “Yang.” The balance makes things interesting to say the least, and makes for some pretty odd encounters, conversation topics, and life experiences. One minute you’re taking your kids to meet Snoop Dogg, and he’s remarking on what a beautiful family you have (see picture below). The next  minute you are sitting

on the toilet with a three year old trying to climb on your lap, because he wants to hang with dad. Things are always interesting, and they definitely are not just a walk in the park. Hopefully as this blog progresses, you will be able to take part in this journey which I have embarked on, and will be apart of for a long time to come.