Sep 26th, 2005
Dad returns
I work in e-commerce, deal with technology and blogs all the time, and I’ve hadalmost no postings here since Colin was born - what kind of horrible father am I?
Horrible as I may be, I had a bit of an epiphany last night, as I watched Colin yet again turn on the cold water in the bathtub. As a bit of background, we have an old cast iron tub made new again - it’s a great tub - and the hot and cold water handles are more fascinating to Colin than any toy we try to use to distract him. Further proof that the seemingly mundane is always more interesting to kids that the bells and whistles we try to throw at them.
He’s gotten better about the handles, for some time I spent the whole of the bath trying to distract him from constantly turning the handles and sending a jet of water in his face. Now what we have is this overwhelming desire to make sure that the cold is turned on just a bit. He has apparently figured out exactly where the handle needs to go to get just a trickle going - once that’s done he turns to the foam letters, cups and assorted other bath distractions; but the second you turn it off he hones in on the faucet and goes right back to turn it on.
So getting back to that epiphany, it was simply that a) there are a million little things like that which make parenting fun, b) I’d like to remember those and c) I know my memory sucks, so why not record it! And it only took me a year to figure it out.