Our Own Little Friar Tucks

My wife and I have a couple of small boys and I have a daughter from a previous relationship.  I love my kids.  I love my wife.  I love my family.  Our youngest is almost two now and he still looks kinda like a baby boy compared to our other boy.  I don't like the thought of him having too short a haircut because it makes him look quite a bit older than he actually is.

Recently, both of my boys needed a haircut, especially my youngest.  Now, when I say recently, I really mean a couple of days ago.  The older guy's wasn't bad just looking a little shaggy, but the little guy's was long.  Really long.  Think of the early Beatles, only longer.  Way longer.  So we decided (together) that we would get them each haircuts this weekend.  No problem.  End of story, right?  Wrong.

A little history of how my wife makes a decision about the boys' having their hair cut.  We (again, together) make a plan to get them trimmed up at a certain place and date and time.  Then, usually a few days or so before our scheduled outing, she will take it upon herself to do her own little cutting job.  She's never had any kind of training in the hair styling field.  Well, she did watch a youtube video once, but I don't really think that qualifies.  As a result, the hairdo's that the boys end up with are usually less than appealing.

Imagine the worst, monk style, bowl cut you can think of.  That was the latest result of my wife's ambition to get the hair out of his eyes.  Personally, I'd rather have the hair in his eyes than make him look the way he did.  And, like every other time she took matters into her own hands, we had to make an emergency run to the barber's.

I don't really get it.  It's like that AA saying about the definition of insanity.  You know the one, right?  The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again expecting a different result.  She always, always tries her own hand at the stylist thing, and every time we have to rescue the poor kids.  I love my wife, but there's no telling her.  I mean, I have told her that she shouldn't be cutting their hair (or her own for that matter, but that's another story), but she doesn't listen.  It's the classic "I'll just trim a little off the bangs.  Oops!  They're uneven.  Okay.  Just trim a little more...oops!  Now they're uneven the other way."  And so on, and so on.  It keeps going this way until I step in, but by that time, the kids don't really have that much hair left.  One time she told me flat out to give my oldest boy a buzz cut (I did my own too so that he didn't feel weird).

This time, we had to ask my wife's mother (who babysits the kids during the week while we're at work) to take them to the barber's today.  I gotta say, they look very stylin' now.  Because my wife had cut my youngest's hair so short, they had to go even shorter to make it look good, but I actually like it.  He looks like the kid from Jerry Maguire who knows the weight of the human head, and something about bees and fear or something (haven't seen that one in quite a few years), but it's cool 'cause it kinda suits him.  They both look really cool.

However, soon, when their hair is longish again...I know she's gonna try again.  God, it looks like I gotta get rid of all the scissors in my house.  We'll see in a few weeks...

Everyone remember's their first time

Well this is the first blog (and we've yet to see if there will be more).  I've never really been into journals (even though I tried), blogs or diaries.  My wife say's I should try it.  So here I go trying it.  And here's my first (of hopefully more than one) random thought.

I've been against joining this program for a little while now and I finally yielded to my wife's plea to join so as to help her with her own struggles.  Before I became a member, I was not the most supportive (not on purpose mind you, I always tried to be good, but I was weak).  Now that we're both members (and now paying twice as much a month) there is an accountability that was lacking.

I always saw it as more of a woman's thing (and if you've ever read any of the literature, you'd see a good 95% of the pictures are of women, so I can't totally be blamed for being unsophisticated, but I'll get into that more later) but I have to say that I've decided to bite the bullet and I'm gonna give it the ol' college try.  I have tried to do the program before, but not officially.  My wife has been an on-and-off-er for a little while now, so I'd just read her material, count my points, watched what I was eating (both content and portion-wise), and record my exercise and activities.

Unfortunately, that was a point in my life when I had the time and inclination to do so.  Then, it seemed like an effort to get my butt off the couch when I wasn't working, 'cause work would kick my rear-end and portion control has NEVER been a priority.  I've always had eyes bigger than my stomach and bitten off more than I could chew (pun intended).  That and I'm (a little) cheap and find it very hard to waste any food.  You add all that stuff up (the laziness, and the greediness) and it's not a good sum.

However, I'm now the heaviest I've ever been and I'm embarrassed to wear anything that is not loose and baggy, lest my true body shape show through.  We've got children and I want to be able to run and play with them.  I don't want them to be embarrassed of their father.  I want them to be able to look at their dad and say "That, there is MY dad, and he's awesome!"  I want to live a long and happy life.  I don't want any complications of health due to my own stupidness and laze.

Anyway, enough of the heavy stuff (pun intended), this doesn't have to be a (totally) miserable experience.  Let's have some fun with this and see if it really is gonna be new day.