Going back home

America has been great, but its time.

Father daughter bonding

On the way back from Philly where we saw the Phillies get crushed.

My strange and twisted brain was only about 75 percent invested in the game. The other quarter was busy observing my surroundings-- mostly to poke fun.

The topic for today is fathers taking their daughters to games.

Generally these dads fall into three categories.

1. Dads with daughters who are knowledgeable or at least interested in baseball. Lucky for my dad his two daughters fall into this category. Still, let's be honest guys. Even if a girl knows that there are three outs in an inning or even that A- Rod is having a fantastic year you can't argue the merits of the double switch or whether the pitcher should bunt with one out and a runner on first with a chick. There are very few women who won't spend a good amount of a baseball game thinking about whether David Wright would look better with his socks pulled up. Consider yourself lucky if you are a dad who falls into this category.

2. Over intense good dad with disinterested daughters. The first two innings are spent trying to explain the difference between a fastball and change up until he realizes that Sally and Jill are more interested in why the players slap each others butts. He then gives up and just buys them lots of cotton candy. Despite the sweets he is forced to leave his seat and go exploring for half the game, and, being a good dad, he is generally able to keep his emotions in check.

3. Over intense bad dad. See 2 except he sends his daughters exploring on their own, and, being a bad dad, is mostly unable to keep his emotions in check.

Today's random wikipedia search

Yes, the fact that I perform random wikipedia searches makes me only slightly less nerdy than the guy who wrote this article.

10 points for anyone who can get through it.

I CANT DO THIS ANYMORE!!!!

Research tells us that among fathers who are highly involved parents there exists infinitesimal difference between them and their wives in terms of parenting capacities (Ninio & Rinott, 1988).

The research failed to take me into account.

It has been less than a week since I finished school, and it is clear that I can't even come close to my eishes chayil.

Don't get me wrong. I love my kids more than anything in the world, and I know that I am a good dad. But the whole stay at home abba thing is not for me.

I think my problem is that, being a disciplined person, I can't deal with the times that my two and a half and one year olds act like two and a half and one year olds. My brother- in- law once actually said to his son who was two at the time and throwing a nasty tantrum, "stop acting like a two year old!!!"

Oh... the other problem is that I am a moron, and any decisiveness or common sense that I might display outside the house is lost once I step through the door.

A typical scene IH encounters when she returns from an errand that took 20 minutes:

Two and a half year old is gouging out his one year old sister's eyes while she desperately clings onto a block he is trying to wrestle from her. I sit on the couch reading.

IH: What's going on?
Me: They're playing.
IH: They're not playing, they're killing each other.

I'm fairly certain that had Ninio and Rinott observed me they would have quickly revised their work.

Ninio, A., Rinott, N. (1988). Fathers’ involvement in the care of their infants and their attributions of cognitive competence to infants. Child Development, 59, 652- 663
(if anyone is interested)