Fatherhood Adventures – June 3, 2016

Fatherhood Adventures – June 3, 2016
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A mean stomach bug worked its way through our house last week and with it came some memorable moments.

As is usually the case, one of the kids was first to go down followed by both parents and then the lone remaining individual — the first born — got hit the hardest.

Over the course of a week, things were a bit messy around the house.

First up was Carson, who vomited in his bed one night last week. When I went into his room to check on him before we went to bed, like I do every night, he was nowhere to be found but his bed and floor were soiled. I’m guessing it had just happened because I found him behind a chair in his room awake. He would have come downstairs if not.

When I found him, besides wanting to play hide and seek, he was in need of a major wipe down and was in a strange state of awareness. His eyes were open so he was awake but he was all sorts of delusional. When he woke up the next morning, he was fine.

At that time, we just thought it was something he ate or a quick-moving bug.

Two days later, Pam was knocked off her feet with the same type of symptoms. Two days after, I was hit with it.

We should have known Beckett would not be able to escape unharmed. On Memorial Day, on the way back from a movie, he let us know he was feeling sick. Of course, we happened to be in my new truck that I desperately did not want to see vomited on. We gave him a bag to puke in if he did and moments later we were glad we did. Unfortunately, he missed the bag but was considerate about it and got most of it on himself. The good news is we were close to home.

Beckett actually missed a day of school, which is unacceptable to him. He was agitated and then argumentative when we told him he couldn’t go to school because he was too sick. I love that about him — the part about wanting to go to school, not so much the arguing side.

There was a time when I would never get sick, but since kids my immune system has been wrecked. Nowadays, it seems I’m sick at least twice a year and I like to remind my kids it’s because of them and has nothing to do with the whole aging thing.

Because of the illness sweeping through our house over the weekend, I was never able to catch up with a friend who was down for the weekend. As a result of my lameness, he came over to see us on Monday, despite being cautioned about our germ-filled house and Beckett’s most recent episode.

I think within a few minutes he regretted that decision. As we were talking, Beckett could be heard vomiting in the other room and the geriatric dog of the house promptly overwhelmed the room with further confirmation control over his bowels is gone.

When I came back into the room to clean up that mess while checking in on Pam and Beckett, my buddy was getting his coat on. He was polite about it, but I got it.

These are indeed the days.

Beckett seems to be entering the phase of always wanting to have a buddy around.

No matter the time of day, whenever we pull in our driveway, his head is on a swivel looking for neighborhood friends. It’s been fun to watch these friendships evolve.

What’s not a ton of fun for me I have to admit is being the lone adult responsible for Beckett, Carson and whatever friend or friends he has over when we are in the pool. That’s just stressful and I need to put a cap on the number of kids allowed in the pool if I’m the only adult around.

That sounds incredibly lame but get a handful of boys between the ages of 6 and 10 years old together around a pool and it’s not easy on the nerves.

Last week there were only three kids — Beckett and Carson and a 9-year-old neighbor — in the pool and I remember thinking this is manageable. Everything was going well until our hilarious game of basketball in the pool ended and Beckett discovered he hadn’t shown his buddy the slide.

That brought out the worst of the three boys, who clearly must have had water in their ears because they were incapable of listening. It seems pool and slide equal some sort of zombie state in kids.

I wasn’t really worried about the older kids’ safety because they both were good swimmers. The problem was letting Carson, who is not always the most reasoned in his approach to exciting things, get into the fun. It would be unfair — as he was not so nicely reminding me — to exclude him, so I let him go down the slide as well so long as he had on swimmies.

However, because I didn’t trust him climbing up the eight-foot slide by himself, I would jump out of the pool and stand behind him as he got up. He would then order me into the pool as a sense of assurance. Therefore, I spent a good amount of the afternoon dodging kids — not running, of course — and jumping in and out of the pool to track Carson.

Yes, indeed, these are the days.

About The Author: Steven Green

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The writer has been with The Dispatch in various capacities since 1995, including serving as editor and publisher since 2004. His previous titles were managing editor, staff writer, sports editor, sales account manager and copy editor. Growing up in Salisbury before moving to Berlin, Green graduated from Worcester Preparatory School in 1993 and graduated from Loyola University Baltimore in 1997 with degrees in Communications (journalism concentration) and Political Science.