First things first: Baby is doing well.
Baby's daddy, not so well. I mean, in the grand scheme of things I'm doing fine. But this blog isn't about the grand scheme of things. This blog is about whatever I want it to be about, which often means it is about me griping about relatively small things -- like, for instance, the fact that my older son (whom I am now calling Lil' S1 on this blog) is completely wearing me out. He's just SO hyperactive, and he doesn't really understand basic concepts like "stop" and "no" yet. Oh, and also he isn't potty-trained; in fact, he seems to be getting worse. He's gone from telling us when he has to go poo from roughly half the time to about ten percent of the time. He basically has an "accident" every night now. (I'm using quotes because if it happens every night, you can't really call it an accident -- can you?) So taking care of him -- which is what I do in the evenings now, since S and her mom have their hands full with the newborn -- is exhausting, frustrating, and messy.
Now, I already know your response: "uh ... yeah, he's a three-year-old." But that's not it, or that's not just it. I've been around many three-year-olds, and they aren't all the same. Yes, pretty much every little kid can be difficult, but it's a spectrum -- or maybe more like a normal curve. There is a mean "difficulty" measure, and most three-year-olds are concentrated around this mean. But then there are outliers on either side. S and I happened to get a kid who's an outlier on the difficult side. (Or maybe we've inadvertently shaped him to be this way -- who knows? I've found "Nature or nurture?" to be an impossible question to answer.) There are boys in his class, the same age or younger, who have been more or less potty-trained for months.
But the worst thing about caring for Lil' S1 right now -- even worse than the "accidents" -- is that he absolutely refuses to go to bed under any circumstances. It used to be that he refused to sleep in his bed (he preferred the guest room bed, or our bed if we were too tired to argue). Now he refuses to go to sleep in any bed. We actually want him to sleep in our bed with me, because then S and her mom can each have their own rooms, and then they can actually sleep in peace while the other one is up with the baby. (Although I get out of middle-of-the-night baby duty, I have to sleep with a toddler's knees in my back, so it's no treat.) But it's like an hour-and-a-half long process. I put him bed; he requests milk; he requests a story; he gets out of bed to play ("just three minutes," he assures me); I put him back into bed; he gets out again; I stand by the door so he can't leave the room; he collapses on the floor and screams and cries and bangs on the door; I wait and wait; he cries and cries; I calm him down and put him back into bed; he gets out again; lather, rise, repeat. Eventually he does go to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but, damn, there has got to be a better way to do this.
S and I don't really know what to do at this point. We are going with "cry it out," by default. We just don't have any other ideas. We've tried being stern; we've tried be nice; we've tried being regimented; we've tried being lax; we've tried talking to him about it; we've tried ignoring him; we've tried giving him food and milk right before bed; we've tried not; we've tried stories, videos, playtime, tuck-ins, stuffed animals... What else is there? I guess, you just tell yourself it's a phase, and tough it out.
But I was so jealous this weekend. I took Lil' S to a classmate's birthday party, and I was chatting with another dad, and I asked him if his son had problems sleeping, and we had the following conversation:
Him: No, not really. He's pretty good. But we are going to take the crib part off his bed next week, so we will see how he does in an open bed.
Me: What? He still sleeps in his crib?!
Him: Yeah, we're taking it off soon, though.
Me: Doesn't he climb out of it?
Him: Nah ... He can, but he doesn't really want to. He climbed out of it once a few months ago, but he hasn't done it since. We put him in there, and he pretty much just goes to sleep until we take him out in the morning.
Me: ... [Staring at him as if he just told me his kid had mastered integral calculus.]
To makes things worse, S and I have been getting into a little bit, over stupid things. Well, they aren't stupid to us, but they probably sound stupid to the outsider. But I probably shouldn't get into any of this in too much detail. Every now and then she actually reads this thing.
Alright, that's enough complaining... Wait, one more thing: Windows 10 sucks. I upgraded the other day hoping it would solve the problems I've been having with Windows 8 -- namely, slow internet browsing and a confusing interface, but it only made things worse. Now, I can't stream videos at all using the Windows default browser, and I can't shut-down my computer or put it into sleep mode. If I'm away from my computer for too long, the screen goes black, and the only way I can get it to work is to power off and power back on. So I basically have to restart my computer every time I need to close it for a few minutes.
What makes this most annoying is that I have a seven-year old work laptop that runs XP, and it works great. Why is the old, outdated technology far superior to the hot, new technology? This is the problem I have with Microsoft products. Their new stuff, instead of making things easier for the user, always makes things more difficult.
Microsoft must think people are moving away from laptops and into tablets, because Windows 10 (and Windows 8) is all app-based. In fact, the keyboard can detach from my computer, and it can become a touch-screen tablet. This sounds better in theory than it is practice. I, literally, have never once used it as a tablet. Because the thing is, the annoyance of having to keep track of two things (keyboard and screen) outweighs the benefit of its dual-function versatility.
In general, I think Microsoft is making a miscalculation with their new Windows products. I want a tablet to be a tablet and a laptop to be a laptop. What I would greatly prefer to an app-based OS is one that is just a little better than the old one. Why not keep the XP framework in place and just make it a bit better, a bit faster. That's what I want. But, maybe I'm just fast on my way to becoming an out-of-touch codger -- maybe Microsoft is right to try to court the new market with all this app-based garbage. I don't know. But I do know that people of any age prefer a computer that works properly to one that doesn't. Is it time for me to make the switch to a Mac? Perhaps.
Until next time ...
Baby's daddy, not so well. I mean, in the grand scheme of things I'm doing fine. But this blog isn't about the grand scheme of things. This blog is about whatever I want it to be about, which often means it is about me griping about relatively small things -- like, for instance, the fact that my older son (whom I am now calling Lil' S1 on this blog) is completely wearing me out. He's just SO hyperactive, and he doesn't really understand basic concepts like "stop" and "no" yet. Oh, and also he isn't potty-trained; in fact, he seems to be getting worse. He's gone from telling us when he has to go poo from roughly half the time to about ten percent of the time. He basically has an "accident" every night now. (I'm using quotes because if it happens every night, you can't really call it an accident -- can you?) So taking care of him -- which is what I do in the evenings now, since S and her mom have their hands full with the newborn -- is exhausting, frustrating, and messy.
Now, I already know your response: "uh ... yeah, he's a three-year-old." But that's not it, or that's not just it. I've been around many three-year-olds, and they aren't all the same. Yes, pretty much every little kid can be difficult, but it's a spectrum -- or maybe more like a normal curve. There is a mean "difficulty" measure, and most three-year-olds are concentrated around this mean. But then there are outliers on either side. S and I happened to get a kid who's an outlier on the difficult side. (Or maybe we've inadvertently shaped him to be this way -- who knows? I've found "Nature or nurture?" to be an impossible question to answer.) There are boys in his class, the same age or younger, who have been more or less potty-trained for months.
But the worst thing about caring for Lil' S1 right now -- even worse than the "accidents" -- is that he absolutely refuses to go to bed under any circumstances. It used to be that he refused to sleep in his bed (he preferred the guest room bed, or our bed if we were too tired to argue). Now he refuses to go to sleep in any bed. We actually want him to sleep in our bed with me, because then S and her mom can each have their own rooms, and then they can actually sleep in peace while the other one is up with the baby. (Although I get out of middle-of-the-night baby duty, I have to sleep with a toddler's knees in my back, so it's no treat.) But it's like an hour-and-a-half long process. I put him bed; he requests milk; he requests a story; he gets out of bed to play ("just three minutes," he assures me); I put him back into bed; he gets out again; I stand by the door so he can't leave the room; he collapses on the floor and screams and cries and bangs on the door; I wait and wait; he cries and cries; I calm him down and put him back into bed; he gets out again; lather, rise, repeat. Eventually he does go to sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but, damn, there has got to be a better way to do this.
S and I don't really know what to do at this point. We are going with "cry it out," by default. We just don't have any other ideas. We've tried being stern; we've tried be nice; we've tried being regimented; we've tried being lax; we've tried talking to him about it; we've tried ignoring him; we've tried giving him food and milk right before bed; we've tried not; we've tried stories, videos, playtime, tuck-ins, stuffed animals... What else is there? I guess, you just tell yourself it's a phase, and tough it out.
But I was so jealous this weekend. I took Lil' S to a classmate's birthday party, and I was chatting with another dad, and I asked him if his son had problems sleeping, and we had the following conversation:
Him: No, not really. He's pretty good. But we are going to take the crib part off his bed next week, so we will see how he does in an open bed.
Me: What? He still sleeps in his crib?!
Him: Yeah, we're taking it off soon, though.
Me: Doesn't he climb out of it?
Him: Nah ... He can, but he doesn't really want to. He climbed out of it once a few months ago, but he hasn't done it since. We put him in there, and he pretty much just goes to sleep until we take him out in the morning.
Me: ... [Staring at him as if he just told me his kid had mastered integral calculus.]
To makes things worse, S and I have been getting into a little bit, over stupid things. Well, they aren't stupid to us, but they probably sound stupid to the outsider. But I probably shouldn't get into any of this in too much detail. Every now and then she actually reads this thing.
Alright, that's enough complaining... Wait, one more thing: Windows 10 sucks. I upgraded the other day hoping it would solve the problems I've been having with Windows 8 -- namely, slow internet browsing and a confusing interface, but it only made things worse. Now, I can't stream videos at all using the Windows default browser, and I can't shut-down my computer or put it into sleep mode. If I'm away from my computer for too long, the screen goes black, and the only way I can get it to work is to power off and power back on. So I basically have to restart my computer every time I need to close it for a few minutes.
What makes this most annoying is that I have a seven-year old work laptop that runs XP, and it works great. Why is the old, outdated technology far superior to the hot, new technology? This is the problem I have with Microsoft products. Their new stuff, instead of making things easier for the user, always makes things more difficult.
Microsoft must think people are moving away from laptops and into tablets, because Windows 10 (and Windows 8) is all app-based. In fact, the keyboard can detach from my computer, and it can become a touch-screen tablet. This sounds better in theory than it is practice. I, literally, have never once used it as a tablet. Because the thing is, the annoyance of having to keep track of two things (keyboard and screen) outweighs the benefit of its dual-function versatility.
In general, I think Microsoft is making a miscalculation with their new Windows products. I want a tablet to be a tablet and a laptop to be a laptop. What I would greatly prefer to an app-based OS is one that is just a little better than the old one. Why not keep the XP framework in place and just make it a bit better, a bit faster. That's what I want. But, maybe I'm just fast on my way to becoming an out-of-touch codger -- maybe Microsoft is right to try to court the new market with all this app-based garbage. I don't know. But I do know that people of any age prefer a computer that works properly to one that doesn't. Is it time for me to make the switch to a Mac? Perhaps.
Until next time ...
I'm shackled to Windows for the same reason you are: I have to program on the Microsoft stack, which up until now has meant using Visual Studio on Windows.
ReplyDeleteBUT, I've been able to have my cake and eat it too by being on a MacBook Pro and using Windows through VMWare Fusion (you can also use Bootcamp, which is free). The funny thing is that Windows runs significantly better on a Mac, I assume because the hardware is better (although you do pay for it).
Plus, starting this Fall, Microsoft is making it so that you'll be able to program for their full .NET stack on a Mac. I have yet to see how well it works, though.
Yeah, I'm tempted to go full-on Mac for my personal computer and just use PC for work, but that would be annoying, and I also just bought my computer like a year ago and don't want to buy a new one any time soon. I've went online and found some fixes/workarounds for the most annoying things -- like I can stream using Chrome and *most* the time my computer will go into sleep mode properly, but it still doesn't shut down. And web browsing still gets really bogged down sometimes. It's just buggy all-around.
ReplyDelete