The hard things about fatherhood are the same as the hard things about everything else in life. The high points and the low points may define it in retrospect, but the day-to-day, on-going difficulties are what you have to live with now. The whining, the tantrums, the late-night and early-morning wake-ups, the unending petty annoyances, the insolence…that’s what wears you down. In retrospect, the screaming-on-the-floor-in-the-middle-of-Target incidences may not mean much, but it dominates my here-and-now.

The new year apparently has brought a new aggressiveness in CJ, with more frequent, more intense, and more unpredictable tantrums. I’ve heard that age three can actually be a more difficult period than the “terrible twos”, so I guess I can look forward to that.

Some say that the high moments of parenting, those gosh-awful cute moments, make up for the numbing pain, and maybe that’s true. When I got home from a 12-day trip, CJ welcomed me with a heart-melting, high-pitched squeal, “Daddy! Daddy!”

Of course, when our dog, Heidi, got back from an 11-day stay at dog camp, where she stayed while we were down in Louisiana over the holidays, CJ emitted the same high-pitched squeal, “Heidi! Heidi!”

Ah, well.

I’m not sure when humor is supposed to kick in for children, but for CJ, it happened a few months ago. And, of course, I only am just now getting around to blogging about it.

In her first two years, laughter was not the predominant sound that came out of her mouth. Come to think of it, it still isn’t. Rather, it’s predominantly whining and crying. If I drew a pie chart of the types of sounds that come out of her mouth, it wouldn’t be pretty. But I must admit, the progress is good. When I made a recording of her crying the ringtone on my cell phone, Becky objected because she felt it gave an unfair representation of our child. She may have a stronger case now than before, but it still doesn’t quite hold up.

The question is, does the hours of crying and whining that a parent has to endure get outweighed by the brief moments of joyous laughter that punctuate the day. It’s like enduring an hours-long surgery without anesthesia, and then being given a shot of morphine.

Anyway, this is one of her first jokes, and while I’m no Richard Pryor, I thought it wasn’t bad for a 2 1/2-year old.

The set-up:

There’s a children’s song called “I Had a Little Turtle” (see another child here singing it) that CJ likes to sing. And then she wants me to sing it.

Over and over and over again.

So, one day, I decide to change the lyrics a bit:

I have a little Tabeedee,

Her name is Clara Jade.

I turned her upside down

To see where she was made.

She has a blue barrette,

She has dark brown eyes, too.

And when she sits on the potty

Sometimes she likes to poo.

After singing it a couple of times, she liked the new song, and she would always chime in on the last line, when I would sing “Sometimes she likes to…” and pause to wait for her to shout “Poooooo!”

Then, one day, instead of saying “Poooo!” she shrieked:

“Peeee!”

And laughed herself silly.

She hasn’t learned, yet, that comedians don’t laugh at their own jokes.

Ah, well. There’s time.

p.s. Also, if you haven’t done so yet, please vote.

Like a lot of children, CJ goes by a lot of names. Folks who keep up with her through this blog tend to call her CJ. At daycare, they call her Clara Jade, in large part because the class has another Clara in it.

Me? I call her Tabeedee. Or, as she says, “Daddy calls me Tabeedee, and mommy calls me Sweetie.”

I’ve been meaning to get down in bits the story of Tabeedee, just so it doesn’t get lost. So here it is.

When Clara was born, Becky and I were prepared with a boy’s name. Martin Solomon. We had been on vacation in Georgia and while visiting the King Center, I thought, “Hmm. ‘Martin.’ That works.” Not quite sure where Solomon came from, though. Probably for the best that we didn’t go that route. Martin Solomon seems like an awful heavy burden.

Anyway, while we had a boy’s name, we did not have a girl’s name. So when I sent out the e-mail to folks announcing our bundle of joy, the subject line ended with “Name TBD.”

Thus, Tabeedee was born. I wanted to have it as a middle name. But somebody objected.

Of course, I also like the ulterior definition. When you’re a child, so much of life is TBD.

Come to think of it, so much of life is TBD, even when you’re an adult.

p.s. Also, if you haven’t done so yet, please vote.

So, a couple of people have mentioned to me that they think this blog is book material. I dunno. So, I’m asking you. The blog looks at fatherhood from my perspective, one of ambivalence. I don’t offer wisdom, encouragement or promises, and I don’t think my view is either dominant or rare. But I do think it is less acknowledged.

This is totally anonymous, feel free to be as open as you’d like, but please take the poll.

Thanks.

Today, I discovered that, given enough cranberry sauce, CJ will eat just about anything.

In this case, liver. Liver from a bison raised by a small local farmer, mind you, but liver nonetheless.

Fortunately, neighboring Wisconsin is the largest producer of cranberries, and cranberries can freeze for up to a year.

Unfortunately, Becky can’t stand liver.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. When she was four months old, she gobbled up a plate of pate and foie gras at Spoonriver.

Of course, this leads to the question: What are the limits of cranberry sauce? CJ already likes broccoli and Brussel sprouts. Does cranberry sauce go well with durian?

I can’t say when it started, but she’s begun to lie. I’m neither disappointed nor upset. Actually, I’m a little happy that it’s come so soon, still three months shy of her third birthday.

A few days ago, shortly before dinner, she asks me if she can play with her fingerpaints. I was in the kitchen making dinner, so I punted and asked her to ask her mom. A few minutes later, she comes back, holding back tears and sniffling, asking if she can play fingerpaints. Although I knew the answer, I asked her what her mom said. Without hesitation, “She said, ‘Yes,’” she said.

I’ve been bracing myself for this, and the day has come. A little early, but it’s come. An article from New York magazine has been my guide, a layperson’s compilation of the research on children and lying.

It starts very young. Indeed, bright kids—those who do better on other academic indicators—are able to start lying at 2 or 3.

“Lying is related to intelligence,” explains Dr. Victoria Talwar, an assistant professor at Montreal’s McGill University and a leading expert on children’s lying behavior.

Although we think of truthfulness as a young child’s paramount virtue, it turns out that lying is the more advanced skill. A child who is going to lie must recognize the truth, intellectually conceive of an alternate reality, and be able to convincingly sell that new reality to someone else. Therefore, lying demands both advanced cognitive development and social skills that honesty simply doesn’t require. “It’s a developmental milestone,” Talwar has concluded.

Before you decide to click over to the full article, note that the above three paragraphs are the most sanguine ones. The rest of it is filled with summaries of studies that reinforce your worst fears about children and lying. It doesn’t matter if they know lying is bad, or how much they know lying is bad. It doesn’t matter if they’re well-adjusted or otherwise well-behaved, get good grades at school, or if you think they never lie.

They do. A lot. And if they don’t, the alternatives aren’t that attractive.

But that’s okay. Neither the steepest nor the most significant challenge ahead. Just add it to the pile.

I just came back from a 12-day trip with a buddy of mine, sans family, to Ho Chi Minh City and Phnom Penh. It’s a different trip when it’s just you and the guys. You don’t see the same things, you don’t go to the same places. You stay out a lot later. And in places like Vietnam and Cambodia, both stops on the current sex tourism circuit, you get approached by different people offering different, um, services.

I didn’t do anything that I couldn’t come home and tell Becky about, but I did do things that I wouldn’t do with her and CJ. And, of course, what would be the point of a guys’ trip if that weren’t the case?

The family was, however, always on my mind. What would Becky think of this? Would this be a place that we would want to revisit together? How would Becky and CJ handle the current of scooters that flows like a river through the streets of HCMC, oblivious to any laws of traffic or common sense?

I saved for them Hanoi and the beaches of central Vietnam, as well as Angkor Wat. I spared them harrowing rides on the backs of scooters that serve as cheap taxis, street food that could threaten their stomach linings, bus and boat rides that could threaten their safety, and dingy bars that some might say have “character” and others might say lack “cleanliness”.

And, in the end, I returned home, health intact, and only a little worse for the wear. Within four days, I had Becky saying, “Maybe you could go back to Vietnam?”

She’s been out with a fever and, we presume, a flu. Other than being forced to take time off from work to take care of her, it hasn’t been that bad. She’s been a pita, to be sure, but not nearly as bad as I would have imagined…and, frankly, it’s hard to tell the difference between her flu-induced bad temper and her normal bad temper. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Whatev.

Oddly, her fever began just after we returned from a late lunch at a local restaurant that, almost a year to the day, was also the site of her breaking her arm. Last year, shortly after CJ got treated for the broken arm, I received a letter from my health insurance provider asking for details of the incident…specifically, where did it occur and how. It was pretty clear that they were hoping to hit up the restaurant to pay the medical bill.

I somehow misplaced that letter. And the next one. And the next one. I really do need to clean up my desk some day. Or not.

A couple of weekends ago, Becky and I were flat on our backs sick. It hurt to roll over in bed. So, for the first time, we used the television as a baby sitter. Not the kind of use where you put the child down in front of the tube to salvage 10 minutes to make dinner. No, we’re talking about half an hour, an hour at a time, just to get some relief.

And CJ loved it. She sat slack-jawed in front of that box, basking in whatever idiotic images flowed from it. She quickly learned how to answer questions with a thoughtless “Yeah” while never tearing her eyes from the screen.

And, so, it begins.

Television is like a lot of things in life — a force so strong and unrelenting that, no matter how hard you fight, you eventually succumb. Public financing of sports stadiums comes to mind. It’s how parents end up taking their kids to Disneyland.

I’m doomed. Still.

“Daddy, GO AWAY!” she said.

“Honey, that’s  not very polite,” mom said.

“Daddy, PLEASE, GO AWAY!”