Dude Day :Vol 2

2/26/17

I knew this day would happen, but I was not expecting to happen one week after I started documenting these dude days with my son. I woke up this morning and did not feel like doing anything let alone having some kind of crazy adventurous day with a four year old. I thought to myself let’s not worry about it, we will just eat breakfast and see where the day takes us. I decided to take my own advice and just roll with it.  I had no expectations.

Waking up

I woke up at my normal time this morning about 6:30 took a shower and got dressed. My son slept in, we had his fourth birthday party yesterday and he was wiped out. I was finally able to get him up and moving about 9. He did not want to leave the house today. In fairness neither did I. I thought it might be fun to try somewhere new for breakfast today. I was wrong.

IHOP 

My son and I agreed to try the pancake house today instead of the Wafflehouse that we go to every week. If I could sum it up into one word it would be HORRIBLE. There was a 15 minute wait to get a table, a 20 minute wait to place our order and when we finally got our food my sons strawberry pancakes had spread through the whole plate. He now had a plate of strawberry eggs, strawberry bacon and strawberry hash browns anyone that has a little one can attest to the fact that just will not fly. There was no way I was waiting for another meal to be brought out. IHOP was a lot cheaper than wafflehouse, but was definitely lesser quality all the way around. Oh and I spilt my blueberry pancakes all done the front of me during an episode of silverware acrobatics. (Trying to keep Wills fork from hitting the floor) First World problems for sure.

Uncle Scotty

I had planned on meeting an uncle of mine for lunch, but because we slept in and IHOP had taken forever we decided to just hangout with him instead. He lives about an hour away so my son took a quick nap on the way, which was nice for me because I got a couple of minutes to regroup after the breakfast fiasco. When we got to my uncles house he was excited to see us but a little upset that we weren’t ready for lunch yet. At this point I am completely exhausted and honestly feeling a little defeated. It’s not like a lot of crazy stuff had happened it was just that I really was not feeling like a dad today. I felt like I needed a day off. Anyway we sat around Uncs house for a little bit ,my son had scored a popsicle so he was pretty content. My uncle has a little duck park right up the street from him and he thought Will might like to go up there and feed the ducks and geese. He was right Will loved it. As a father when I do things that are away from the norm I tend to be a little bit more attentive to my surroundings and because of that I noticed right a way that there were a pair of ducks that were way bigger than the others and very domineering. They kept dropping there heads and approaching us differently then the others. That’s when it happened they charged full steam I pulled Will behind me and used my foot as a sort of shield. I tried everything they just kept coming biting my foot and shoe hard.  I actually said out loud. “I’m gonna have to kick the shit out of these things” about that time Will decides he’s gonna flee he turns and books it. The birds turn towards him but bump into each other then they begin to fight each other and the whole incident was over. Will could not stop laughing it’s like he was fully aware of all of the consequences had anything else gone differently and was entertained by it all. I look up to see what my uncle was doing while all of this was going on and he’s got his damn cellphone in his hand trying to record it. He didn’t get it. We finished feeding the nice ducks the rest of the bread and dropped my uncle off at the house cause we had one more stop before I could put this day behind me.

Elephant and Piggie

Yea that’s what I thought. My wife works at COCA which is a creative arts studio here in the city. They had a performance named Elephant and Piggie which meant nothing to me but was evidently a pretty big deal. She got us tickets.  So we went. My son was pretty excited, I was not. It wasn’t that I dislike musicals or plays it’s just that I was exhausted and feeling pretty down because of my own attitude today. The show was amazing my son laughed through the whole thing, he sang along, he danced. Then as the show ended he looked at me and smiled and said “I Love You and thank you for taking me to dudes day” My heart melted and all the exhaustion I was feeling immediately went away. I realized we had a pretty good day in his eyes. I know that I don’t get days off from being his father and I’m super glad he doesn’t get any days off from being my son.

So remember dads our kids just need us to be present and that’s free.