boo the bad guys<\/a>.<\/p>\nTo get back to that competitve thing for a moment, my movie nights are significantly better than momma’s. Whether I’m there or not, she simply can’t resist the lure of the telephone, or getting caught up on chores, or even a good book. <\/p>\n
Yesterday evening, J decided she was going to take a walk with the dogs. I’ve been a bit under the weather (nasty headcold), so as soon as dinner was done, I rushed the kids into their pajamas. C figured it out right away. When I was changing N, however, I thought I’d make it clear. “Would you like to watch Mary Poppins or Chance and Sassy?” I asked.<\/p>\n
His eyes lit up. “Marry Poppins!”<\/p>\n
“Really?” I asked. I thought Homeward Bound was his favorite. He calls it ‘Chance and Sassy’, after two of the main characters.<\/p>\n
“No, Chance and Sassy!” <\/p>\n
That’s what I thought. “Okay, Chance and Sassy.”<\/p>\n
“No, Mary Poppins!”<\/p>\n
Hmm… “Okay, little man. Pick one.”<\/p>\n
“Mary Poppins. Yes, Mary Poppins.”<\/p>\n
By this point he was changed. I prepared to lift him down off the changing table. “Okay. Mary Poppins.”<\/p>\n
“And popcorn?” he asked.<\/p>\n
“Yep!”<\/p>\n
“And mommy’s going?”<\/p>\n
Umm…. “What?”<\/p>\n
Fortunately, he’s good about repeating his questions when I don’t understand: “Is mommy going?”<\/p>\n
“Yes. She’s taking a walk.”<\/p>\n
“Hooray! Movie Night!”<\/p>\n
See, now that’s a problem. It crosses over the line from trying to have a good time into “mommy vs daddy”. The point of DaddyTime is to have a good time, but not at momma’s expense.<\/p>\n
I considered cancelling movie night, but, well, the popcorn smelled really, really good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As parents, it’s a bad idea to compete for your kids’ attention. You really don’t want them to have a favorite parent. However, it’s practically impossible to stop yourself from trying to have a good time with your kids. I mean, they’re your kids. You’re supposed to have a good time with them. Sure, family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-3l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}