ILX Parenting 6: "Put Some Goddamn Pants On Before You Go Outside!" is a thing I say now

in my experience there's a bit of a curve - at first they'll eat almost anything, then around 3 or so they start to narrow their tastes down.

yeah it may just be that. Still, I already see some positives from the removal of the junk snack foods. K is eating more at meals.

I got a sales robocall on my cell phone last night. It was a woman's voice informing me that my student loan (which I have never had) had been flagged for consolidation at an approved interest rate, or some such nonsense. An obvious scam, I cussed out the recording as I hung up: "You stupid piece of shit."

I returned to my daughter, who I'd been playing with when the call interrupted us. She looked astonished and asked "Who was she?" I immediately felt horrible for behaving that way in front of her. She thought I had been speaking that way to an actual person. "Oh that wasn't a person, it was just a robot," I tried to explain. "A robot?" Her bewilderment grew here. Her eyes were wide. She must have thought I had Bender on the other end of the phone or something.

At this point, my wife stepped in and rightfully called me out: "...but we shouldn't talk that way about anybody, right?"

Not much of a point to this story, but don't cuss out robocalls in front of your kids.

lol

your daughter is more forward thinking than you. She may well go to school with robots one day.

so we just moved to a new place, renting one half of a side-by-side 1907 duplex, and have realized there is a ton of peeling lead paint in the window sills (when you open the windows - the window stools and frames in the interior of the house have fresh paint), several window jambs, and the interior window frames of the kitchen windows. parts of the front porch have it too, especially the main walkway to the front door bc of the foot traffic. we confirmed all this by using lead testing kits from home depot. we are freaking the fuck out right now since we have a 16-month-old and a 4-year-old. the kitchen windows especially scare the shit out of me bc we are preparing our food there.

we told our landlord about it in writing yesterday, also told the next-door neighbors in the other half of the house and they had also noticed it. most of the house is okay - all the walls most windows have fresh paint. but all the windows are ver old and we're concerned about what kind of repairs the landlord will do - whether they will be sufficient, whether they will kick up even more lead dust, what should we do with our stuff while repairs are being made, etc. the landlord said he will come by this weekend to look at the areas I mention but I really want a certified lead inspector to do a risk assessment so this can be handled in the right way. the landlord is a DIY dude and if he hasn't done anything about the lead paint in the 16 years he's owned the place i'm doubtful that he knows the right way to handle this

we're hoping to be in the place only temporarily anyways since we are looking to buy a house, but that could be a while. i'm tempted to just get the fuck out of there, bring our little boys to my parents' house or something.

also i'm super pissed at myself for not doing a better inspection before signing the lease. the lead issue just wasn't on my radar - we've almost always lived in very old homes but most of them had replacement windows and were in good shape so it's never been a concern

You might want to talk to an expert or do some research. I think a badly done "remediation" can actually be worse than doing nothing because it can stir up a lot of lead dust into the air and spread it around the place.

yea, i think my landlord's first inclination will be to just do it himself and i'm worried that would make things worse. i've been doing a little research and it is universally recommended to have a certified lead inspector take a look and assess things. with one exception when i lived in a shitty deteriorating old house in college, i've always had good landlords so i've never really had to advocate or push for things, but i really want to push to have this done the right way. it's a lot easier to do that when my kids' health & safety is at stake.

but jeez this is majorly stressing me out, i've been reading about lead poisoning nonstop the past week and have been waking up at night worrying about it.

oof my sympathies. on the plus side "won't somebody think of the children" tactic liable to get some traction from your landlord, unless he's an inhuman monster

yea he does have kids too so i'm just going to push it from that angle. neighbors in the other unit have three little kids too. i'm just pissed, at myself for not being smarter and more aware and at him for not making updates for a decade and a half.

by law he was required to give us a lead disclosure form but in ohio a landlord can easily get around that by just stating "i have no knowledge of lead paint in the home", and that's what he did

"Won't someone think of the children" is also a good way to imply without implying massive future liability if anything actually happened, if he's smart at all.

yea i'm very curious to see how he responds to this. he owns multiple properties in the city we live in, one next door that has a lot of peeling exterior paint (which is being repaired now), all of them are very old homes and his claim that he "has no knowledge of lead-based paint" strikes me as complete bullshit for someone buying and renting multiple multi-unit early 20th century homes

I feel like if there's clearly visible peeling paint it's kind of transparently bullshit. You're taking pics right?

definitely

In NYC I feel like I'd just be calling 311, but IDK how it works there, how responsive local agencies are etc.

When we bought our first place I seem to recall a disclosure form about it possible existing (house was built in 1940, so obviously) but that it it had been sufficiently encapsulated due to having been painted over a bunch of times and wasn't chipping. Maybe this was in the inspection, I don't remember.

But some friends just passed on buying an otherwise perfect house because of chipping lead paint everywhere and the massive cost to deal with it properly.

We had a little bit of what looked like it might have been lead paint on our radiator covers. Our understanding was that having the painters paint over it was a good middleground solution. Had we had it on more surfaces it might have been a bigger issue.

Eventually just want to replace the covers, but new ones are shockingly expensive.

yea I definitely have the number on hand for the county health department, Ohio laws though are more landlord-friendly than other places I've lived and everything I've read says to notify the landlord first. I do have the right though to pursue my own inspection with a professional though

Here's an ILP meets TMI update:

I've probably taken more hits to the crotch in the last 4.5 years than the rest of my life combined, but as of this week I finally know what it feels like to have my dick stepped on.

toddlers generally at prime dickpunching level

and like not even on purpose that's just the natural target for their reach

it's probably in retaliation for their eyes being at prime level to get poked by errant fingers

Sure I've taken punches, kicks, headbutts, flying elbows etc. but never had the main event itself pinned between a foot and a bed. I woke up to it, and briefly in my painful stupor imagined it might have to be partially reattached.

The worst I've gotten was a knock to the temple with a maraca. That shit hurt for over a week.

worst child-related injury for me involved a toy similar to this
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31R-EaiXNAL._SX300_.jpg
it was on my daughter's bed and i plopped down on the bed and managed to hit the bee just right so that the stick part flew up and the handle at the end hit me right in the bridge of my nose. just like sideshow bob and the rakes. no lasting damage but it hurt so bad.

I've never experienced such extended comedy of errors cascades than I have since I've been a parent.

Like of course your kid takes off his diaper as soon as he wakes up and of course he's pooed in it and yes after you've wrangled him onto the change table and banged your funny bone against it while putting a new diaper on will he wriggle away and, as you're washing your hands, somehow get the laundry detergent off a high shelf and start pouring it on the floor and then cry when he slips in it and you're frantically try to sop it up. Repeat series of similar events weekly.

And so many minor injuries!

Only multiplies with two of them. Especially when one of them screaming sets off the other screaming and vice versa.

So much head bonking! Children of earth - be mindful of where you are wildly flailing your head in joy and abandon! You may crash it into a bedpost or dad and then sadness will ensue!

I feel like half my childhood memories involve headbonking! (I have two brothers)

This morning while trying to help my toddler not take the lid off his milk cup, I managed to knock a pot off a shelf and onto my baby toe, which was already black and blue from some child-related injury last week! Then my kid barfed in his stroller in the way home. That also involved milk.

D:

Toddler dropped iPad onto the top of my bare foot the other day. Ouch. Also, when she's in the carrier these days she swings her feet, which are not at crotch-level.

I finally know what it feels like to have my dick stepped on.

for real, my daughter seems to think I'm some kind of benevolent climbable giant, and quite all of a sudden, all day everyday I'm looking out for number 1. so weird to just be resting with my palm on my crotch because my 3 yr old daughter is on the same couch that I'm on and who knows where she's headed

comedy of errors is exactly it. have never in my life participated in such a wild, ridiculous day-to-day as I have raising a child. completely unbelievable.

and yet...there is just nothing so fascinating as a front row seat for the creation of a New Person™

have we done a Parenting: C/D yet

Yeah, palm-over-crotch is totally a commmon posture for me now too.

i very, very nearly posted that exact moment exchange here but actually it works better neanderthal's way around. valiant effort I tho on wins' part

i'm really starting to feel like Beaten Down Dad

ok, have eight peaches before dinner

sure, don't do your homework, wtf do i care it's your life

lol

that's the spirit

"Ok one more octonauts episode" is the one I'm really bad about, bc deep down I know it means another 22 minutes of peacefully looking at my iPhone.

3yo son: "I'm gonna eat your penis!"
Me: "That is a thing that is not going to happen."
3yo son: "Us gonna eat all the penises!"
Me: ...

talking with my son now is basically like one long Butthole Surfers song

Trying to use proper words during diaper changes now has my kid talking about his "peesin" and "test takers".

Also he pissed while standing in the bathtub last night and was like HOLY SHIT HOW DID I DO THAT and spent the next couple of minutes thrusting his crotch out hoping that it would happen again.

"Ok one more octonauts episode" is the one I'm really bad about, bc deep down I know it means another 22 minutes of peacefully looking at my iPhone.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, September 6, 2016 1:35 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

We've been on a HUGE Octonauts kick lately. I like it a little less than Wild Kratts, but between the two my kid knows more about animal behavior than I have ever learned.

octonauts is the greatest tho

do they have american accents in america???

no