First Blog Entry

I felt I needed a creative outlet to opine on the on-goings/foibles of my family (especially my two wonderful boys Antonio 4 and Angelo 2) so I created this blog. Here is a quick family introduction:

• Antonio: The Chameleon. This kid changes clothes faster than Imelda Marcos changed shoes. He actually acts out things he sees on TV by portraying them in real life.  If Cowboys - black Stetson, jeans, belt with buckle, boots and a red bandanna, often accompanied by a denim jacket...even in the summer. If Musketeer D'artagnan - trade Stetson for white floppy hat and a stuffed horse he swears is real. If a movie about knights - trade white floppy hat for silver knight's helmet. You get the picture.

• Angelo: The Dr. of Destruction. This kid is like a bowling ball with legs.  He never met anything that didn't look better in pieces on the floor.  I actually had to rebuild part of my backyard fence because he was ripping wooden slats off the fence. Bottomless pit of a stomach (unless meat is involved...FYI hot dogs are excluded from the meat category)

• Misty: The Saint. Im not sure how she stays sane. Honestly if I had to sit with these kids all day I would go nuts. If not for her I would not have my wonderful children and this blog would not exist.

• Tony: Super Dad. Married to a saint and sire to chameleon and a wrecking ball.

For those of you who don't know, I work from home in a dedicated office (which helps) but is not sound proof and therefore renders any conference call potentially humiliating with what would seem to the untrained ear to be a stable full of barnyard animals or a Greco-Roman wrestling match (it varies by time of day).  I actually have to schedule important conference calls with my wife to ensure that the children will not be in the house.  Normally all it costs me is the market price of a Happy Meal (it makes more than just the kids happy I assure you) at McDonalds which I am more than willing to pony up for the peace and quiet.

I love my boys very much and I find it hard sometimes to separate work from home.  I do love the flexibility of being able to have breakfast with them in the morning, and having a family dinner in the early evening but it often a struggle. Let me walk you through a typical day in my life:

Wake-up around 6:30 go to the gym. Yes. Peace and quiet. Begin the day on a good note.

Return home and have breakfast around 8.  This isn't like breakfast at my parent's house. Breakfast in my house growing up was all or nothing. There were no a la carte menu items. Everyone ate the same thing. Breakfast with my children is an event. Take this morning for example. I ate cereal, Angelo wanted a different cereal, Raisin Bran, which he proceeded to pick the raisins out of and leave the cereal flakes. Antonio had toast with jelly and an egg over easy: which is better than the usual peanut butter & jelly sandwich. It could be worse I suppose: at least he didn't ask for 30 packets of ketchup.

Between 8-5: Go upstairs and check email. Attend conference calls. Solve problems. The usual. As long as the kids aren't strangling each other outside my office door (a favorite hangout of theirs) we can call it a good day.

There is not a lot of excitement when I step out of my office at the end of the day since the kids have the opportunity to be around daddy most of the day. Daddy also has no time to decompress from his workday. This is when the wheels usually start to fall off.

• Antonio can't seem to sit through a meal without excusing himself to go to the bathroom. But it isn't like he just gets up and goes. He normally has to put his cowboy hat back on and mosey over to the outhouse cowboy style.
• Meanwhile Angelo picks through his food and eliminates most products containing meat. The kid even picks toppings off of pizza if it looks like meat.  It is also understandable that being younger that he spills a little as he eats...but this kid spills a lot.  His plate, face, clothes and section of the table normally look like a bad day at an Impressionistic workshop. If I could only get him to put that on canvas I might be able to pawn it off on eBay...
• My wife and I feel like dinner is basically a tag team WWF wrestling match except we don't get to use the folding chairs as weapons. The kids do get to jump off the turnbuckle and drop flying elbows at will (which in my opinion isn't fair).

From 6PM to 8PM it is a struggle. Dinner is over. There is still daylight. What to do? With the fairly recent invention of the DVR and its proxies the DVD/VHS players (a.k.a. baby sitters) we have managed to scrape by. Although if I hear the Dora the Explorer theme one more time I might snap...and don't get me started on the Wiggles.

With any luck the kids are in bed by 8 and mommy and I crash on the couch and enjoy the silence.