Tag: #stepdadlife

I spent $200 on video games and my girls won a tootsie roll

My heart sank – a not unfamiliar feeling for a step-dad – as I watched my girls running off, excited that I had just put $20 each on their cards which should, in theory, provide an hour of fun playing video games. Myah, of course, didn’t care about playing the games as much as she was obsessed with winning as many tickets as possible. This led her to a game where you swipe your card (spending $1 in the process), pull a lever and win some ridiculously low number of tickets. The entire game takes about 12 seconds which, if my math is correct, averages out to about $914 per hour.

Sonya, on the other hand, seemed enthralled with the simple process of swiping her card. She would run up to one machine, swipe her card and jump up and down in excitement as the lights would begin to flash and fun noises began to emanate from the machine. Instead of actually playing the game she would rush to the next machine and swipe again. And again. And again. As impossible as it seemed, Sonya was managing to spend money at a faster clip than her older sister.

Being a generous spirit, I had included my niece, Izzy, in video game fun-day and she was also blowing through money at a pace that would embarrass a drunken sailor. With three wild children running amok in different directions, I had no idea how to contain the situation. Feeling like Sonya was the most out of control, I ran after her in hopes of slowing down the drain on my bank account.

I encouraged my little one to get on a bouncy train ride which looked like it should eat up 5 minutes or so and quickly discovered the first thing I hate about modern day arcades. After putting Sonya up on the train, I swiped the card – saying goodbye to another dollar – and watched as a few lights blinked on the train, it bobbed back and forth six times and then stopped. The ride wasn’t even 60 seconds long and Sonya earned exactly ZERO bad word tickets for her efforts.

One of the many lessons learned that day was that the little “rides” don’t award any tickets. They last for a few seconds, aren’t any fun at all, give you no tickets and charge you a fortune. What kind of bad word scam on hard working American middle-class families is that? Can somebody please tell me why there is no congressional sub-committee investigating this buffoonery? It’s easily more dishonest than the worst pyramid scheme to come out of Wall Street.

But it gets worse. Myah and Izzy were hooked on a game where you scan your card – adios to another bad word dollar – press a button and win some random number of tickets. While the game promises the possibility of winning thousands of tickets, the usual prize was five or ten. I did my best to urge them to play an actual game, one that would take at least a minute, but all they cared about was the lure of massive amounts of tickets.

I hate bad word tickets.

Left to her own devices, Sonya had blown $2 shooting up a bunch of zombies with a crossbow. This seemed inappropriate for a little girl so I scooped her out of the machine. Not before, however, I discovered you get exactly ZERO bad word tickets for shooting Zombies, something my sweet little princess performed with an alarming aptitude. As a matter of fact, actual “video games” don’t give tickets. There are games that are designed to give tickets and then there are actual video games, something you can play for a while if you are any good, but they don’t give you tickets.

The scam just gets bigger.

Eight and a half minutes after first handing the cards to the three hooligans they were yanking on my shorts, pulling on my arms and demanding more games. Less than 10 minutes and they had collectively blown SIXTY DOLLARS! How does that even happen? How did a fun trip to the arcade turn out to be more expensive than a cocaine habit? Were the drug cartels now in the video game business?

It sure felt like it.

I was already over my entertainment budget for the week and was loath to spend one more dollar on these idiotic rip-off machines. Still, I didn’t have a clue what else to do with the girls as I thought we would be here for at least an hour. I hated to give in to their tears but, what the bad word, it’s only money and surely I could teach them to make the second $20 last a little longer.

I did.

Sixteen minutes. That’s how long it took them to spend the next $60. I wanted to throw up.

Little did I know that the worst was yet to come.

I resisted the next set of tears and insisted we move on to spending our tickets – a level of hell more horrible than anything even Dante could have dreamed up. Myah led the way with 512 tickets which could have purchased her a plastic ball with a smiley face on it, allowing me to move on to the next child.

But Myah had other ideas.

She started with one tootsie roll, a bargain at 5 tickets. Myah was stumped over her next purchase, unsure if she wanted to spend another 5 tickets on a tootsie pop or move on from the tootsie family and get a piece of bubble gum for 5 tickets. I don’t know why I was worried about what I would do with the girls for the rest of the day because it was apparent that Myah would be here till closing time trying to maximize her ticket purchasing power.

I pushed and prodded, begged and pleaded and finally lost my temper. It worked, though, because only 36 minutes later Myah spent her last 25 tickets on a small plastic alien with a parachute on its back. That little piece of Chinese made crap was the most expensive thing she had purchased. Why she wanted 100 crappy pieces of crappy crap rather than one semi-crappy item she might actually play with was beyond me and unfortunately, she proved to be the trendsetter because the other two girls nickel and dimed their way through their tickets as well.

I have become intimately familiar with all of the various video game establishments in my time as a step-dad and each one has their pluses and minuses. Chuck-E-Cheese has it right in that they allow you to purchase and unlimited card when you have a birthday party there. I like that. Charge me whatever, I don’t care, but give me two hours without a kid coming up to me crying because they ran out of money. In spite of the unlimited card, Chuck-E-Cheese comes in at the bottom of my list because of the dreaded ticket muncher. Have you ever encountered this insanity? They don’t put the tickets electronically on your card like other places. You still get actual tickets. To cash them in you are forced to feed your tickets into the ticket muncher which counts your tickets and gives you a receipt.

I’m not sure I have the vocabulary or adequate writing skills to express how absolutely terrifyingly horrible this process is. Kids can win a lot of tickets in two hours of unlimited playing. I challenge you to munch 2,000 tickets while the machine keeps jamming, kids are running around like wild animals and other stressed parents are waiting for the machine. If you leave without having a nervous breakdown, developing an alcohol addiction or needing to seek professional therapy then you are a better parent than am I.

We now give our video game money to Game Time where, for FIFTY DOLLARS!!!, our children can have about 30 – 40 minutes of fun. I don’t even let them spend the tickets anymore which Game Time, thank God, loads electronically onto the cards. We bought lanyards for the swipe cards and make them save their tickets so that one day, after we have spent about $6,000, they will be able to win a stuffed animal.

When I was a kid my momma would give me $5 and I would ride my bike to the mall and play video games ALL BAD WORD DAY. It is absolutely insane how much these games cost and how awful the prizes are.

So why do we spend what amounts to the cost of tuition at a quality four-year university on video games? I really don’t know, to be honest. I guess we just want our kids to be happy. We like to spoil them but are displeased when they act spoiled. We enjoy being Americans with discretionary income and want our kids to have it better than we did, even though we had it pretty good.

My advice to you? Buy your kids a Frisbee and send them outside. Don’t worry about the arcades. They’ll be fine. I’m spending enough for both of us.

I broke the baby on our first date! And Kaley didn’t even care…

Admittedly, my courtship of Kaley moved at a rapid pace, certainly faster than any of the relationship books would say is prudent. Consequently, a quick three weeks after we met found us spending our first family weekend at the beach. No matter how fast one falls in love, however, it still takes time to truly learn about another person. Quite sure that forced to choose, Kaley would pick the girls over me, I was anxious to use the weekend as an opportunity to show what a great father figure I could be in the girl’s lives.

The Shores Resort and Spa in Daytona Beach Shores has become our home away from home and preferred destination for a quick staycation in no small part because of the great memories from that first get away with my soon-to-be step-daughters. We had a fantastic room with an extra-large terrace used for dance parties, the kids enjoyed room service, the pool and beach provided non-stop fun and roasting smores over the fire pits put the cherry on the top of a successful family trip.

One area in which my beautiful bride and I have proved to be woefully inadequate is making it home after having a fun time. It once took us 19 hours and 7 tiki bar stops to make it home from Key West. We simply don’t want the good times to end and it all started that first vacation. As we packed the Jeep to go home Kaley mentioned that a friend was a guest at a beach house just down the road and we were invited to go hang out at the pool for a bit. Already missing the pool at The Shores, I quickly agreed to another day of beachside pool lounging.

The house was only 5 minutes away from the hotel so in no time at all I was back in the water, pretending to be a shark and chasing Myah and Sonya all over the pool. Sonya had already mastered bossing me around and ordered the “shark” to swim to one side of the pool or the other, to swim to the bottom and hold his breath (much harder for a Russy shark than for a real shark ) or sometimes to get out of the water and run around the pool. I didn’t much understand the last part and it was quite tiring but I was sure to earn mad points with Kaley by being such an entertaining pool buddy for the girls.

Kaley had been a gone for a bit making lunch in the house, leaving the girls and I alone to play shark in the pool. I was gasping for breath while chasing the girls who had discovered it was much more fun to split up and force me to swim back and forth to go after one at a time. The pool was long and rectangular with the side nearest the ocean being a tile wall. The lot was sloped as the house was up against sand dunes so there was quite a good drop from the tile wall down to the dunes which were covered with brambles and other sorts of thorny plants.

I was swimming to one end of the pool to get Myah and glanced over my shoulder to check on Sonya only to see that she had climbed up on the tile wall and was walking it like a balance beam, her floaty covered arms stuck out to her sides for balance. “You shouldn’t walk up there,” I told Sonya, turning back to Myah. I thought I would jump out of the pool and walk around to grab Sonya as she finished walking across the wall. After tossing her back in the pool I would explain that walking along the top of the wall was a no-no. She would listen to my sage advice and that would be that.

I swear, I looked at Sonya, swam the last 5 feet to Myah, turned back to Sonya less than 5 seconds later and…..

SHE WAS GONE!!!

I mean, gone. What the bad word???

Frantically, I began to swim to that side of the pool, checking to make sure she hadn’t fallen in and sank to the bottom but she was nowhere in sight. I had just made it to the tile wall when I heard a faint, “mommy….”

Holy mother bad word bad word! She fell over the side!

The second cry of “help…….” was so soft and pitiful it filled me dread. Shouldn’t she be screaming? Is it worse when they don’t scream? Was it so horrible she could hardly talk? I didn’t know! I simply had no idea what a pitiful whimper signified.

I pushed myself up on the wall and looked over the side. There she was, a good 6 feet below me, on her knees in the sand right between two really prickly bushes, looking lost and pitiful. I can’t believe I broke the baby, I thought. Not even 3 years old and permanently traumatized. Probably never get in a pool or go to the beach again and it’s all my fault.

I hopped all the way out of the pool, glad that Kaley wasn’t there to see her new love interest allow her baby to be catapulted into a forest of sea cactuses when I heard, “What happened?!?!”

Of course, my brand-new girlfriend had walked out on the balcony overlooking the pool at the exact moment I let her youngest daughter jump off the bad word sea wall. My mind raced trying to come up with a reasonable sounding explanation. Coming up with nothing and not trusting myself to speak, I ignored Kaley and jumped off the wall, almost crushing Sonya when I landed.

I snatched her up, checking everywhere for puncture wounds, broken bones or lacerations requiring stitches. I was only mildly relieved when I realized we wouldn’t have to call 911 as I was sure there was emotional damage that wouldn’t be discovered for years to come. Oh well, I wouldn’t be around to see it because in about 2 minutes the love of my life was going to show me the door. No way would she let a man with such poor parenting skills into her life.

I lifted Sonya up on the sea wall, climbing up after her and sat on the edge with my feet in the pool, head hung low, waiting for the justified chastisement that was soon to come my way. I wouldn’t even put up a fight, I decided. I would take responsibility like a man and go home, back to my lonely existence.

Sonya was already back in the pool swimming around by the time Kaley made it over to me. “What happened?” she asked.

I looked up with tears in my eyes. “She was walking on the sea wall, I looked away for 2 seconds and she was gone! I let her fall! I’m sorry. I’m a horrible failure of a man.”

Kaley looked over the side and said, “I’m glad she didn’t land in one of those bushes,” and then went off to tell her friend the story. In a few minutes they were laughing about it like it was the funniest thing that ever happened. Her baby girl had plummeted to her near-death and my love and her sick friend were laughing their butts off! What kind of monster had I fallen for?

Two weeks later, after watching Sonya catch her hair on fire when blowing out a candle, taking a head dive off a stool while I was serving her dinner, somehow toppling an elliptical machine over on top of herself and most alarmingly grabbing a full beer out of a cooler and shotgunning the frosty beverage before anybody could get it out of her hands, I realized that base jumping without a parachute off the sea wall wasn’t even in the top 10 of insane things this crazy little girl got herself into. Kaley wasn’t a monster – she was just numb to it all.

I learned a few things from my experience. First and foremost, women clearly handle these situations better than men. I attribute that to the fact that they aren’t as emotional and nurturing as is the male half of the population. Second, you have to keep all these accidents in perspective. If the police aren’t called, you don’t have to go to the hospital or the Department of Children and Family Services doesn’t get involved, it’s probably going to be ok. Third, you can’t take your eyes of your children for more than 2 seconds unless you are prepared to deal with catastrophic consequences.

I still don’t know what’s worse, screaming or whimpering, but I do know that either one probably means I’ve failed as a step-dad and broken my child. Again.

The girls first 5k (mine too)

I’m more of a spectator than participant when it comes to any sport so being asked to walk/run in a 5k on a Saturday morning would normally be met with a less than enthusiastic response. Add to that the fact that my wife wanted our two little girls to participate and well, it seemed like 2 hours of shear misery, to be honest.

My youngest step-daughter – now 5 years old – still prefers to be carried whenever she is with me. Carrying her out to the truck is one thing and I actually enjoy being able to pick her up and snuggle her close. At the rate she is growing I won’t have too much longer to scoop her up sneak some kissies on her cheek. Still, a 5k is like 3 miles and I am not sure I could carry myself that far without medical assistance.

My oldest step-daughter – now 8 years of age – is somewhat prone to laziness. While she is quite athletic, she is apt to show quick but short bursts of energy before growing bored and tired. I couldn’t imagine that she would stay entertained for however long it took to complete the race.

My thought was that maybe it would be best for my wife to participate in the event while I stayed home, made French toast and watched Sponge Bob with the girls. I obviously had Kaley’s best interest at heart as I wanted her to enjoy the race stress-free. However, she was determined that the entire family would complete the arduous 3 mile-trek. When Kaley is determined, Russell has no choice but to give in.

Literally – no choice.

I picked up our registration kits on Friday and when my 3 ladies woke up Saturday morning, I had our t-shirts all laid out with our competition numbers attached. It seemed silly to be wearing a number which would track our time as we would clearly come in last place, but I suppose we should at least give the appearance of serious athletes.

My spirits lifted somewhat when my little girls got dressed in their tennis shoes, tights and junior-size Me Strong t-shirts. Between my super-model wife and my two adorable step-daughters, I would surely have the best-looking entourage at the race. I doubted they gave an award for that but having these three beautiful gals in my life was a reward in itself.

Something I would have to keep reminding myself of over the next 2 hours.

The annual Me Strong 5k has become a pretty big event in our small town of Deland, FL. We live downtown which put the starting line an easy 10-minute walk from our front door. I was amazed at the crowds of people already on the street and you could hardly squeeze through the crowd packed around the start line. The energy from the crowd was contagious and my little girls began to get excited. Everybody in the crowd was smiling, pumped up to get a little exercise while running through a picturesque town for a good cause. In spite of myself, I began to feel optimistic about the upcoming trek.

After a well performed National Anthem the race was underway!! We waited on the sidelines as the serious runners passed by and then filtered into the crown about two-thirds back in the pack. I had already decided that the family would stay together with a steady but brisk walk. There were plenty of people walking so there was no need to pretend we were a family of track stars rather than, well, a family of people not prone to run in non-emergency situations.

Unfortunately, nobody had filled the children in on my plans.

The girls were off! Myah, ever the competitive spirit, had clearly made up her mind to log the fastest time of the day. Her little sister, however, proved to be more the athlete and quickly took the lead. It felt like poor parenting to let my children go off alone in a crowd of thousands of strangers so I dug deep and somehow found the energy to run….errr…..trot after my girls.

My wife and sister-in-law, obviously not sharing my views on sound parenting, seemed content to lag behind, walking with my niece. Ummmm…… step-niece? Niece once removed?

One of the hardest things about being a step-dad is understanding the proper labels for all your new relatives.

Google says she is simply my niece.

Huh.

Anywho, I was running about as fast as I could, trying to keep up with my two step-daughters who possessed a fleetness of foot of which I was previously unaware. They had obviously been involved in some athletic training in preparation for the 5k and I was wondering how long I could keep up. The fact that we had traveled a mere 200 yards and I was already considering ducking into one of the neighborhood restaurants to fuel my body did not fill me with confidence that I could keep up for 3 miles. Luckily, just when I thought all was lost, they stopped to catch their breath.

I had just walked up beside them and said, “Let’s wait for mommy….” and they were off again, faster than before! I glanced over my shoulder, sure my wife was there ready to take her turn, but help was nowhere in sight. With a sigh and a quick check of my pulse I began to once again chase my laughing little girls.

I discovered they were sprinters and not really long-distance runners. They were content to sprint for about 200 yards and then take a few breaths and then sprint again. I wished they would take a little longer break between flights but at least we covering a lot of ground in a hurry. At this pace, I felt sure we would come in well under the 45 minutes Google claimed was the average time for a 5k.

We left downtown and entered scenic Stetson University. A quick trip around the Campus and we would be done. This wasn’t near as bad as I had feared. I was breathing hard and I could tell my girls were slowing down. It seemed like a good time for a quick break and then a burst to the finish line.

Myah and Sonya had other ideas as they dug deep for one more sprint. Somehow, I found the strength to follow. As we rounded a corner there was a digital clock displaying the elapsed time. 16 minutes! Not bad, I told myself.

“Look girls! We’re halfway!” I shouted at them.

About 200 people turned to me at once and said in unision, “That’s the 1 mile mark.”

Most of the 200 people were laughing at me.

Sonya asked, “What does 1 mile mean?”

“Well, honey,” I explained. “Basically, it means that we have to do what we just did two more times.”

“What?!?!” Myah screeched.

“I want to go home,” demanded Sonya.

“I’m tiiiiiiiired,” whined Myah.

“I wish we had never come,” Sonya informed me.

“My legs hurt,” cried Myah, the tears forming in her eyes.

Then came the inevitable, “Pick me up!” from Sonya.

I shouldn’t have been shocked, but I was. How could things have gone from “time of our lives” to “I wish I had never been born” in the blink of an eye? My little wilted flowers were starting to hold up the runners so I scooted them out of the road and took a second to regroup.

What to do? The easiest choice was to scoop up Sonya and just walk her and Myah back to my house. I had already donated money to the fine organization sponsoring the race and that was the important part. I could plop my two whiners down in front of the TV and have all my Saturday morning chores done before my wife got home. Sounded like a good plan to me.

Still, looking at the two pouting children in front of me, it seemed that teaching them it was ok to quit less than 1/3 of the way through what should be a pretty easy walk was not the right life lesson for the day. Especially when we were walking in support of those who battle cancer, something infinitely harder and more courageous than walking a few miles.

Well, sometimes parenting isn’t about being the nice guy.

“Let’s go, girls! Two miles to go!” I said in my peppiest voice.

“Pick me up,” Sonya pleaded in her saddest little girl voice.

I steeled myself against her powers and told her, “No. We came to walk this entire race and that’s what we’re gonna do. Let’s go!” and I started walking away at a rapid pace.

They didn’t fall in a ditch and die. They started walking after me. They whined. They cried. They complained. It was the worst day of their entire lives and somehow, I was totally to blame for it.

During the second mile Kaley caught up with us and thankfully the girls directed their complaints at her for a while. By the beginning of the third mile they actually started having fun again thanks to all the people lining the streets cheering us on. Their enthusiasm made it impossible to be in a bad mood.

And a big shout-out to Chick-fil-A who sent their cow to give out free prizes. Kids love them some chicken nuggets and taking a 5 minute break to play with the cow totally re-energized the girls for the home stretch.

We finished in just over an hour a long way from first place, but we weren’t last either. We gave a little money to a great cause and got a smidgeon of exercise in the process. Most importantly, the girls had a great time. We overcame their whining and desire to quit by pushing through and finishing, actually having fun in the process.

I would like to say it was a major breakthrough in their lives. It wasn’t. They still get bored easily. They still whine when something doesn’t go their way or isn’t the most fun thing ever in the history of the world. However, I suppose that is what they are supposed to do at 5 and 8 years old. What I am supposed to do as a step-dad is teach them to push through, to always finish and to try their very best.

Except I really want to whine, throw in the towel and veg out on the couch, too.

Nobody said it was easy.