MyThreeDaughters

July 4 was my Grandad’s birthday. He raised 12 children, was once one of the first on the Eastern Shore to own a car, ran a farm, a store, a truck farming business, built a church.
I always felt a closeness to him, even though he was very old even when I was a kid, because he was the only other guy around with blond hair and blue eyes. And he said he was skinny when he was a kid, a pole with shoes like me.
So in honor of his birthday, I tell a story that’s been told to me.
Forty three years ago, when I was two, he and I went to get the mail. His farm lane was a mile long, at the end of which was the mailbox, so you drove to check the mail. There was a gate at the end of the first part of the lane, to keep the sheep in the pasture. If you were alone and had to open the gate, you had to put the car in park, open the gate, drive through, put the car back in park, get out and close the gate.
If you were with someone, the person riding shotgun had gate duty.
So we got to the gate that day, and Granddad got out to open the gate. It being 1966, I was standing on the front seat.
I somehow nudged the car into drive, and the car and I cruised past my grandad. I don’t know at what point it dawned on him that there was not an adult in the car pulling the car through for him. Probably right away.
Had this been in the city, and I’ve read stories like this in the paper, I would have crashed into a pole, a parked car, someone’s house, or mowed down a gaggle of pedestrians.
Instead, I gushed to a stop in a muddy field.
The men folk got the car out of the field.
Despite the lack of a five-point harness, a Britax seat, and despite the metal steering wheel and granite dashboard,
I was unscathed.
Being a parent now, I know I never heard the end of the story. I have no idea if my mom, or her sisters, ever let Granddad hear the end of it.
But like I said, I don’t remember it happening, and I know the story pretty well.

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There’s a web site called Wordle in which you can paste a bunch of words and hit a button, and it makes a collage of the words that looks surprisingly cool.
And there’s a two-year-old we call “Rosebud.” She does the same thing as Wordle, in human linguistic form.
We talk. She hears. She gives it a try.
She can literally go on for many minutes without seeming to breathe.
Here’s probably 45 seconds that I wrote down one night:
It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a pizza place. It’s a writing book, but it’s a writing book, it’s a writing book, but a writing book has crayons.
But it don’t have crayons in it, but it’s, it’s, it’s a pizza, it’s, it’s, it’s a quesadilla. I don’t have, it’s, it’s, it’s Carmen played the piano. It’s a piano, but it’s a pizza place. It’s a pizza place, but far from here.
Guys…it’s, it’s, it’s so crazy. The pizza place is so crazy!
Oh, it’s so crazy alright.
After that, I stopped jotting. But after that, she kept talking.

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Last Halloween, we were at the pumpkin patch at a church nearby that sells them for a fundraiser every year. We call it The Pumpkin Church.
The guy selling the pumpkins said, “Three girls, huh?”
Yeah.
“I had three girls. Two things you’ll always be out of: Hot water and toilet paper.”
Yeah, hahaha, that’s funny. How much are the pumpkins?
But as life goes on…
Those gray rolls that come inside toilet paper? We could save them and build a gray tunnel to the moon. Elizabeth spins it off the roll and crumples it into a baseball-sized ball to use it. She could soak up a sizeable tributary of the Chesapeake Bay with one handful.
So the other day, the wife fought back. Bought a skid of Scott’s Super Rolls. Seven hundred and twenty sheets per roll.
The rolls are so big that they won’t fit into a standard old-house molded tile TP holder, so Scott’s includes a plastic extender that helps it fit by jutting out.
Super Rolls have now been installed in every bathroom.
The grand experiment has begun.
Actual roll shown above, but the photo doesn’t really do it justice.

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My Three Daughters has just celebrated “our” (and as you know “we” here at MTD.com like to refer to ourselves in the plural…makes us sound like a whole tsunami of bloggers) 100th comment.
Wow, only took a year. Huffington Post, we’re coming for you.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who reads and takes the time to post comments. I love comments; makes me feel like I have readers. I find it funny that my “Daddy blog” has almost entirely Mom readers.
And the winner is, the person who posted the 100th comment: “Just Mary.”
“Just Mary,” you can collect your prize: a no-expenses paid evening with the three charmers. You get to re-live your previous motherhood experiences of screaming, finger-pointing, tattle-tailing and diaper changing, while Wife and I head out for an evening at a local restaurant.

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My Three Daughters has just celebrated “our” (and as you know “we” here at MTD.com like to refer to ourselves in the plural…makes us sound like a whole tsunami of bloggers) 100th comment.
Wow, only took a year. Huffington Post, we’re coming for you.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who reads and takes the time to post comments. I love comments; makes me feel like I have readers. I find it funny that my “Daddy blog” has almost entirely Mom readers.
And the winner is, the person who posted the 100th comment: “Just Mary.”
“Just Mary,” you can collect your prize: a no-expenses paid evening with the three charmers. You get to re-live your previous motherhood experiences of screaming, finger-pointing, tattle-tailing and diaper changing, while Wife and I head out for an evening at a local restaurant.

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The mother of today has come a long way, baby, to the point where she can bring home the organic humanely raised bacon that hasn’t been fed antibiotics, and fry it up in the pan.
But the basic elements of being a mother have not, and probably will never, change.
No doubt when I was growing up, I had no appreciation for what my parents pulled off. But now that I see it up close with my own wife, I have no idea how any mother pulls this off.
As a mother’s day tribute, I’ll list a few of the things my kids’ mom did this week:
Made sure homework got done, Monday through Friday (because in this day, kids have homework in first grade, but that’s another blog post rant).
Packed an insanely healthy lunch every day.
Monday: Made sure Fontaine took a flower out of the garden for “Teacher Appreciation Week.” (Teachers get a whole week, for some reason; Moms get a day, and in truth they get a couple of hours, maybe).
Tuesday: Cleaned up spills, wiped fannies, changed diapers, made lunches, picked up Fontaine from school, planned dinner, did laundry, then went to work and got home at 11 p.m.
Wednesday: All of the above, gave $10 of her hard-earned money for the teacher’s gift, wiped more fannies (I’m talking about our kids here), went to work for training, got home shortly after 10 p.m., then baked three or four dozen cookies until well past 11, for a fund-raiser for hungry people.
Thursday: Went to Fontaine’s school, with two-year-old Rosebud, made copies for teacher (which she’s done every Thursday morning all year) for an hour, went to the store, dragged kids around, bought snacks for T-ball, bought lunch for teacher for appreciation week, delivered it to school, got Rosebud down for a nap, went back to school to pick up Fontaine, let kids play in mud puddles, brought them home and gave them baths, had a clue about what we could fix for dinner.
Friday: Went running (why she came back, I have no idea), returned, made homemade macaroni and cheese for teacher appreciation lunch, delivered it, picked up Fontaine, went to work.
Friday night: Went to work for five and a half hours and served the demanding public.
Reward: A 30-minute Mother’s Day tea at pre-school and probably some hand-made “cards.”
I could do this, maybe, for one week, but only if I really had to, sure as heck not all day every week for years, and I’d be walking around cursing under my breath at least 50 percent of the time.
She never complained.
And a guy who hits a jump shot at the end of the game is a “hero.”

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Fontaine’s been busted a few times of late, steering her statements toward the outskirts of the truth. Just little things, like whether she had anything to do with the disappearance of some apparently delicious cherry-flavored Rolaids.
Just little things that, if they continue, that will lead to her being not trusted and kept on lockdown in her room until she is 21.
I know a lot of kids go through this phase. Usually, I just say, “Hey, I think somebody’s pants are on fire.”
But tonight, I was listening to a Grateful Dead song, “Althea,” when I heard a line I thought was appropriate. So I called it out:
Hey that’s a good line for someone: “Loose with the truth, baby, it’s your fire. I hope you don’t get burned,” get it?
Without flinching, she looked back at me: “You’re trying to be mean to me, that’s the only thing I get.”
Wow, girlfriend’s quick.
But she did get it.
O.K., so no more Jerry Garcia as Dr. Spock. I guess that’s why one was a rock star and the other a parenting expert, and why I am neither.

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I’m a very small person. Tiny. So let’s say on the rare occasion I am right, I don’t mind calling attention to it.
Last year, I wrote a piece making fun of the “micro-blogging” site Twitter.
I had read that Twitter was a service for people “who don’t have time for e-mail.”
People post things on Twitter like, “Went to grocery store, bought food.”
“Ten minutes later: Got home, put food in pantry.”
I strongly implied (O.K., I said it outright) that anybody who had time for Twitter must not have much of a life or anything going on worth Twittering about.
Sure, Ashton Kutcher and Oprah raced to see who could tally one million Twitter followers/stalkers first, but just a wild guess that they do have better things to do and have their people Twitter for them.
Anyway, come to find out, the country isn’t as completely messed up as I thought. The good folks at Nielson have reported that six out of 10 people who sign up for Twitter quit after a month.
What’s the matter, Twits? Figured out that reading and writing the most mundane and tedious of life’s tasks turns out to be…mundane and tedious?
I would say, “I don’t want to say I told you so,” but I think I just did.

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After a little more than a year, My Three Daughters is about to celebrate. Someone, who knows, it could be you, will write the 100th comment.
Remember that Nissan commercial: “Dogs Love Trucks”? Well, bloggers love comments.
We’re going to block the streets of downtown, have a parade, hire skydivers, shoot off fireworks, and cash in a 2-for-1 coupon at Moe’s Southwestern Grill, even though Moe’s is among the long list of places we patronize that has not yet stepped forward with advertising support.
Probably, right now, four, five, six people are simultanously posting comments and it could be any one of you.
Ready, set…

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I yanked an ad out of the Sunday paper (again folks, that’s a thing with news in it that they throw on your porch every morning…for now).
I saved it so I could make fun of it. The Living Baby Doll: She sucks on a pacifier! She gently falls asleep! She turns her head!”
And the kicker: “She responds to you like a real baby.”
You mean, she wakes up every 90 minutes, she spits up on your couch every time she eats, she screams and writhes and kicks her legs and tries to smear poop everywhere when you try to change her diaper?
(That’s right, I like ’em better once they start walking.)
And the best part, the real-fake baby costs only $149.
It was as if they put this ad in the paper just so I could lampoon it, but the plan backfired.
I left it sitting out, Fontaine saw it, and now she wants one.
But Fontaine is, at times, WBHY, Wise Beyond Her Years. Here’s what she got from the ad:
“It’s a real baby, only it doesn’t cry. But I read it, and it said it’s only for adults to collect, which is silly. Really silly.”
That’s my girl. I am so proud.
Now, I’m going to take this ad, crumple it up and bury it in the trash can under some coffee grounds.

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