Friday, September 07, 2007

Can I Be Super Dad On Four Hours Of Sleep?

I'm off Friday. If the kids stay home with me, we save money on daycare. Thus, the kids will stay home with me.

I work nights and have habits that keep me up well into the wee hours of the A.M. (reading blogs, perusing Flickr, watching Hotel Babylon) and so I usually get up with my wife to help she and the kids get off to school and then it's back to bed for me until close to noon. It's never eight hours uninterrupted, but it's close enough for a working man with a family.

Today, I'll be up early as usual to drive Paige to school with the kids in tow. Then I'll go about the day trying to be an entertaining and fun dad while keeping my children so busy playing that they won't have time to annoy one another. If I just take the lazy way out and stay home with them, taking pseudo-naps on the couch while the Noggin channel does the entertaining on the television, I will spend most of my day breaking up small, but disruptive altercations between the two bored little siblings; I will be a lazy and an irritated dad. And there's no sense in that.

So on four hours of sleep, starting near the crack of dawn, I plan to stay busy out and about in my fair city with two kids and an empty wallet. I ask you stay-at-homers and weird work schedule moms and pops: What to do with kids on an average Friday in Nashville? We've got plenty of parks for playing, malls for walking, and...what else exactly? Let's not let the couch win. I want to be Super Dad.

At least for the day.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like the hours I kept when I started at the Opryland Hotel. Ugh.

I think the downtown library is still doing 'A Mid-Summer Night's Dream' puppet show. It may be a little too much for the kids. But then again the puppets and the set might just be cool enough that they would enjoy it. YEO loved it and I was worried she'd be bored and disruptive.

That's all I got. We, too, use Noggin way too much. So it goes . . .

Cup said...

Maybe you can snag a mini-nap during the puppet show.

Anonymous said...

So.... how'd it go? What did y'all do? I'm betting that Super Dad made it just fine!

Anonymous said...

Your desire to be Super Dad already makes you one! You care, and that's the most important thing.

OK, OK, but you want some tangible "to-do" things to cement your status as superpop. And free would be ideal ...

1. Do you have a zoo pass? It's not free, but once you buy one, it's worth it's weight in gold. We go all the time.

2. Farmers market. Just wander around. Totally free.

3. Are you a member of the Frist? Again, not free, but worth it's weight in gold--your kids can do art projects and such.

4. Radnor Lake. Again, not free, but if you buy their seasonal parking pass (I think $30), it's worth it's weight in gold. I gotta get a new catchphrase here.

5. Bake something together. Not free, but low cost.

6. Co-write the next big country single. Make it as silly as possible.

That's about all I can think of ... I always watch Ms. Cheap's announcements for free stuff.