The Cool Parent

I am not the cool parent in our house. I thought I was a pretty cool parent, but I came to my grim realization on the last day of  Kindergarten when Nathan brought home his journal.

I open it to the first page:

"I was at the ocean and I saw a fish in the water. Daddy saw an owl"

Awe, that’s so cute!

And the next:

"This is my dad's pumpkin so big"

I start tearing up because he loves his Daddy so much.

And the third:

"I went fishing with my daddy. I caught a ten pound fish"

It starts to hit me. He hasn’t yet mentioned ME.

As I flip through the book faster and faster, I get increasingly mad at Colin for being the cool parent.

I have no idea what this says but it includes the word "DAD"

Of COURSE Nathan journals about Daddy. They do so many adventurous things together. If he mentioned me in the journal, he would conveniently forget the time I took him rock climbing and would likely draw something like this:

Or this:

Or maybe even this:

Last night, I took Nathan to get some immunizations. I am the one sacrificing him to a stranger for a voluntary multiple stabbing, so yet again… NOT THE COOL PARENT.

He didn’t take it well at all. I guess it was his first set of shots that he really knows what’s going on, so he was quite traumatized by the experience. He didn’t even laugh when the nurse said, “Put your nose in Mommy’s armpit and tell me what it smells like” (???) as she came at him with the needle.

[Just to clarify, he did NOT say I had stinky armpits, however he did tell his Daddy at bedtime that he saw Mommy’s armpit whiskers. Nice.]

To cheer him up, I took him to a new pet store to look at the animals.  We stroked the chinchillas: the softest animal ever created. We saw bearded dragons, Peruvian ground squirrels (aka: rats) and parrots. When at a pet store, we always spend the most time at the fish section. “Fish” was Nate (and Evan’s) first word. It’s as if they were programmed to like fishing right from the beginning.

I saw something in a tank that I’ve never seen before. A freshwater crab! Nathan LOVES crabs. When we go to the beach, he literally spends ALL his time finding crabs, as I still do used to when I was his age.

I bought it for him. Before you call me a pushover, please note that I was going to spend this money on a yummy treat for us. At least the crab will last longer. Hopefully. 

He named it “Feisty Savary” (It’s a feisty crab that reminds him of his vacation on Savary Island). As we were all watching it explore his new home last night, Nathan says, “I’m going to start a journal so I can write about what the crab does”.

He gets that from my genes. I also used to document my observations of living creatures when I was a kid. It was called “spying”. Only I hid up a tree to do it.

So this is his first journal entry:

"I was [looking] at the fish [tank]. Dad was [sleeping] and I was [looking] at the crab"

???WHAT???

That's it.

I give up. Colin, you win. Even when you're sleeping you're cooler than me.