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I'm Totally Faking It

~ Pretending to be a functioning wife, mother, friend and adult.

I'm Totally Faking It

Tag Archives: tv

I Let My Two Year Old Use My iPad and I’m Not Sorry

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by ericakatherine in Parenting

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Tags

Cars, child care, compromise, Curious George, ipad parenting, screen time, technology, tv

It’s been a hot topic for years, since the invention of the tv; how much time is too much time in front of a screen? The topic has been amplified now that we have our i-everythings and screen time is available more than from our living rooms.

I totally agree that kids should be spending more time playing and using their imaginations than they do occupied by a device. However, I’m a parent that uses those devices to get through my day.  On an ideal day, the toddler never spends any time in front of the tv or in the iPad and sometimes those days happen.

On most days the hubby and I balance our full time jobs and part time child care. The toddler goes to school a few days a week, but days that he’s home or weeks with no school, like Spring Break this week, we have to do double duty. We usually split the days so we each get at least 8 hours of work time (poor hubby gets the short stick on this as his day usually starts at 4am).

Some days our schedules can demand we work even while we’re on toddler duty. Today, thanks to a last minute appointment hubby needed to attend, my afternoon involved working from home. This means I have to make sure he’s occupied so that I can still get work done. Enter the iPad. ipad-parentingThanks to my lovely device I can stream episode after episode of Curious George. This allows me to make calls and write emails while also making sure the toddler isn’t breaking something, eating something or tormenting the dog. No, it’s not ideal. I would love if we were out at the playground instead, but that’s not conducive to keeping myself employed.

The hubby faces the same issues. There are days that I have a client meeting during “my toddler time” and he has a deadline for his clients. Again, out comes Curious George (or lately, Cars has been a big demand).  This is the compromise we make in order to have the money to pay the bills, and to have a family.

Why am I defending my iPad parenting? Well, I do feel guilty… or maybe just judged. I have friends that don’t use devices to keep their kids occupied. I read the articles that talk about the “damage” done to children that are exposed to too much screen time at too young an age. Like I said above, this isn’t the ideal scenario, but it is our reality.

The hubby and I are actually extremely lucky to have the flexibility to cover each other with the kiddo when work duties call. We are both grateful to see our son more than a couple of hours a day, as we also know parents that can’t say the same. Every parent makes compromises to make life work for their family. This is one of ours, and I’m not sorry.

Dumb Things Men Take Pride In

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

Posted by ericakatherine in Men, Nothing, Pee

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bladder, Buffalo, drive times, horrible husband, peeing, poop, road trips, Silver Spring, sports, stats, Tim Hortons, tools, tv

If you are friends with me on Facebook and you happened to go on this past Sunday, you would have read about my hostage situation with my husband. He was determined to drive from Buffalo to Silver Spring, MD in 6 hours; starting at 9am, he stopped for 1 bathroom break at 11am. I had consumed a large Tim Horton’s coffee along with plenty of water… but Erica, why would you drink so much when your husband was on a mission? WELL, he only tells me this at 1pm when I finally decide to say I needed a bathroom break in the near future, AND.HE.SAID.NO.

I sat in the passenger seat for 2 hours needing to pee. BAD. While I told him what a horrible person he was, I also came up with the idea for this post! Here it is, my list of dumb things men take pride in:

Driving Times/Routes: This is of course first on the list because I just permanently damaged my bladder for my husbands driving bragging rights.  Which route to take also makes the list; how many times have you had to listen to “no, no, no, that way will take you forever. You have to take the blah, blah, blah, blah”?

The Number and Type of Tools Owned: Own the basic hammer, drill, screwdriver and saw? Yeah, so does my toddler (in corduroy). If you want to look like a real man in front of your friends and neighbors, you need to be able to offer them that random thing they would normally go rent from Home Depot. It’s all about the drill press, mitre saw and belt sander.

Size of Their TV: It’s like the only respectable way they can say “mine is ____ inches” to each other without compromising their perceived sexuality.

Knowing Sports Stats: They can’t remember to switch the laundry, but they can remember how many wins their football team has in the month of December, on the road, in temperatures less than 30, where the opposing team had a blue jersey.

Poop: Length, diameter, how many times it looped without breaking. Please tell me I am not the only one that’s been subject to this shit (see what I did there? hehe).

While I am still emotionally scarred by the pee holding experience with my husband (and may never take a road trip with him again), I did get some inspiration…and I got to mention poop for the first time on my blog (yes, first time. I have a toddler, there are more poop stories to be told).

 

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