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BigDHornfan

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Congrats - I remember those days well.  And that's even the same footprint blanket our hospital had for all the newborns.
And hold onto your butt - your life will never be the same.  But do cherish these days as much as you can.  "They grow up fast" is absolutely spot on.
 

Pretty sure we had the same blanket on at least one of ours too. It’s amazing how fast time goes by once you have a kid.

Congrats
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On the age gap, ours are almost exactly 3 years apart...it was a function of age and timing.  My wife was 34 when our first was born and 37 for the second, clock was ticking (though didn’t seem like it, both were conceived after like a month of ‘trying’ despite my hope it’d take a little longer lol).  
 

Im not sure it was the best, if we’d been a little younger I’d have preferred at least 4.  Our first turned 3 just as his sister was born, and it was like a light switch from sweet toddler to terrible threes...we thought he was sick as one day he just turned asshole.  It didn’t help that our newborn daughter was having massive digestive issues and was in pain / not sleeping well / crying all the time until she was six months and we finally got the right mix of formula + medicine to keep her more comfortable.  
 

Shortly after he turned 4 our first calmed down and things got quite a bit easier.  However my daughter just turned 4 and she still wakes up at 6 regardless of bed time, is a wild animal and exhibits plenty of terrible threes still.  I’m simultaneously trying to enjoy the last of her toddler cuteness and looking forward to her being older / calmer.  
 

That time period dealing with a 3yo and high maintenance infant put a real stress on our marriage wherein I didn’t react well (was also in grad school at the time), my wife was usually in a foul mood, and I self medicated with alcohol spinning the whole thing into a Charlie Strong level of apathy that we just recently recovered from.   In hindsight it’d have been easier if we had a newborn daughter while our son had been a little older.  
 

Then again everyone and every baby is different, so just sharing my thoughts on age gap.  

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Our boys are 5 years apart.  Oldest one loved being a big brother.  Youngest one loved being the little comic relief guy, which still persists to this day.  Through school, the biggest challenge was getting teachers/ coaches who had taught the older one that the younger brother wasn't the same kid.  He had the personality to overcome it, but it was an awfully big shadow to overcome academically, with regard to the teachers' expectations.  

They are both in their 20's now, and are very close.  It's very, very rewarding to watch as a dad.

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On the age gap, ours are almost exactly 3 years apart...it was a function of age and timing.  My wife was 34 when our first was born and 37 for the second, clock was ticking (though didn’t seem like it, both were conceived after like a month of ‘trying’ despite my hope it’d take a little longer lol).  
 
Im not sure it was the best, if we’d been a little younger I’d have preferred at least 4.  Our first turned 3 just as his sister was born, and it was like a light switch from sweet toddler to terrible threes...we thought he was sick as one day he just turned asshole.  It didn’t help that our newborn daughter was having massive digestive issues and was in pain / not sleeping well / crying all the time until she was six months and we finally got the right mix of formula + medicine to keep her more comfortable.  
 
Shortly after he turned 4 our first calmed down and things got quite a bit easier.  However my daughter just turned 4 and she still wakes up at 6 regardless of bed time, is a wild animal and exhibits plenty of terrible threes still.  I’m simultaneously trying to enjoy the last of her toddler cuteness and looking forward to her being older / calmer.  
 
That time period dealing with a 3yo and high maintenance infant put a real stress on our marriage wherein I didn’t react well (was also in grad school at the time), my wife was usually in a foul mood, and I self medicated with alcohol spinning the whole thing into a Charlie Strong level of apathy that we just recently recovered from.   In hindsight it’d have been easier if we had a newborn daughter while our son had been a little older.  
 
Then again everyone and every baby is different, so just sharing my thoughts on age gap.  

Haha wow.. same time line for us. When our oldest hit about 4.5 and she’s now past 5 she’s calmed down and been a good big sister. Rough houses with little brother every once in a while but he’s 90%in everything so in early 2022 he’ll be picking on her.


Team foot blanket too back in 2015 lol
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I had a short time (few days) were I was getting irritated my son was coming back downstairs after we put him to bed. He’s 9 and should not be back out of his room. However, he would come down with a different excuse and ask me to take him back up.

 

I realized he wanted me to tuck him in again, after his mom already did. One day, it will stop. Till then, I’ll get up and go back up with him for that extra hug.

 

And for those that know how many issues we have had with public education, he’s killing it in Virtual General Ed. He talks to his teacher. He sends her emails for clarification. He waits till he’s the last kid on to ask her for help. We may be one of the only families that are thriving in virtual school.

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Our boys are 2 years and 10 days apart. It seems  like a good gap but I don’t have anything to compare it to. Our oldest was sleeping all night in his room just before the youngest was born. The oldest potty trained pretty quick when we spent a weekend on it when he was almost 2.5, so we didn’t have two kids in diapers for very long. Now they are nearly 3.5 and 1.5 and the little one is transitioning into toddler and starting to play with big brother on the reg. I think they will be very close, and the narrow age gap should help. There’s 4.5 years between me and my brother, and I always felt like he was significantly younger even 35 years later. 

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In the course of my job I often have occasion to work with many teenagers, about all of whom are from challenging backgrounds.  Not that they're writing any of this down or even listening to me, but I tell them to remember the numbers: 26, 30, 2, and 4.

Don't get married until you're at least 26.

Don't have kids until you're at least 30.

And when you do have kids, have 2 kids 4 years apart.

My own gruesome twosome are just 2 years apart and often I feel that's not enough separation.

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In the course of my job I often have occasion to work with many teenagers, about all of whom are from challenging backgrounds.  Not that they're writing any of this down or even listening to me, but I tell them to remember the numbers: 26, 30, 2, and 4.
Don't get married until you're at least 26.
Don't have kids until you're at least 30.
And when you do have kids, have 2 kids 4 years apart.
My own gruesome twosome are just 2 years apart and often I feel that's not enough separation.

Let’s see..28, 29, 2 and 3. Crap
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24 minutes ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:


Let’s see..28, 29, 2 and 3. Crap

Laughing rep was not enough.

All i know is we fucked up and had our kids too early and it was hard as fuck.  It sure is nice now though. I turn 50 this year and we've been empty nesters for 3 years.  It is beyond awesome.

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In the course of my job I often have occasion to work with many teenagers, about all of whom are from challenging backgrounds.  Not that they're writing any of this down or even listening to me, but I tell them to remember the numbers: 26, 30, 2, and 4.

Don't get married until you're at least 26.

Don't have kids until you're at least 30.

And when you do have kids, have 2 kids 4 years apart.

My own gruesome twosome are just 2 years apart and often I feel that's not enough separation.

Lol holy hell. I’ve never heard that, but it’s exactly what I did. I won’t lie though. They go through periods where they absolutely try my patience.

 

My wife used to get so aggravated when my daughter would come get in bed with us. I always told to leave her alone, it wouldn’t always happen. Same with my son. He can’t hardly sleep if I’m not in bed with him. I’m a grown ass man, going to bed at 8:45. Lol

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Doing this with the almost three year old right now over the long weekend. So far it's been successful, minus the one time he stood up on the couch and let his river flow... It's a damn good thing I love him.

We tried with my son a few months ago (he was 2 years three months) and it was a fail. We decided to give it another 3-4 months before trying again. Figure we will have to get really serious as he approaches 3
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On 9/12/2020 at 11:20 AM, Jkwellborn said:

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I’m certainly guilty of this, it sucks you can’t DVR your life easily...there are so many moments where I refused to pull out my phone because I wanted to really soak it in and not through the lens of a camera.  I wish I could do both.  
 

Then again I counted the number of times I heard ‘daddy’ from 615am wake up to 715am when I dropped them off at school...38 times between the two of them.  My 4yo cried twice.  It can be really hard to enjoy those fleeting moments when you’re needed over twice every minute, and your daughter is bawling in the car because you wouldn’t let her open her window when it’s raining.  
 

Then again there will be a time when they only say daddy when they want something and eventually it’ll just be ‘dad’.  

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Haha. My 6 year old son is really big into transformers right now. But it’s G1 or go home. Y’all help a brother out and keep an eye pealed for a G1 Optimus Prime with a trailer since that’s what Santa’s supposed to be bringing.

 

Homercles, I’ve taken so many pictures and videos that are a little off since I wanna actually see it it’s not funny. I love watching and listening to them as the kids grow older and letting them see that. I’ve got a ps3 fat boy that’s full of pictures of my daughter that I need to either fix or get the pics off the HD.

 

My daughter doesn’t call me daddy nearly as much as she used to. It kinda makes me sad thinking about it.

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Just now, Jkwellborn said:

Haha. My 6 year old son is really big into transformers right now. But it’s G1 or go home. Y’all help a brother out and keep an eye pealed for a G1 Optimus Prime with a trailer since that’s what Santa’s supposed to be bringing.

I know Hasbro has been (or will be) pumping out a ton of retro stuff - G I Joe, more old-school Transformers, M.A.S.K., Micronauts, Pound Puppies, R.O.M., and a few others.  They are going all in on the nostalgia front for Christmas.

And Micro Machines are out and in the wild, as somebody mentioned.  I love those, because they are small, and my kid has enough big stuff to last for a few years.

Walmart is launching the retro G I Joe 3.75" line in a few weeks.  Which is good, because too many of my old Joes have been broken by my son (not his fault, they were not made well in some cases).

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All you gents with your young kids, enjoy them while they're young. It goes really fast and before you know it they are 12 going on 13 and saying how much they hate you because you won't let them stay on devices all night to chat with their moronic friends on the internet or watch TikTok videos or stream Netflix all night because you want to impose reasonable limits and ensure they get a decent night's sleep or not turn into a braindead zombie. 

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3 hours ago, mdmost said:

All you gents with your young kids, enjoy them while they're young. It goes really fast and before you know it they are 12 going on 13 and saying how much they hate you because you won't let them stay on devices all night to chat with their moronic friends on the internet or watch TikTok videos or stream Netflix all night because you want to impose reasonable limits and ensure they get a decent night's sleep or not turn into a braindead zombie. 

Here, let me fix that:

It goes really fast and before you know it they are 12 going on 13 and saying how much they hate you because you won't let them stay on devices all night to chat

or

It goes really fast and before you know it they are 4 going on 5 and saying how much they hate you because you won't let them stay on devices for more than 10-15 minutes at a time to play Toca World, and because you think Ryan is the work of the Devil!

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Did your 4 going on 5 sneak into your room while you and the wife were watching a TV show to grab your laptop so he/she could get online and then hide the laptop when questioned? Now I'm playing whack-a-mole trying to disable wifi after a certain time with different devices on my router. 

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Surly dads, speaking of devices...we're at a point that I probably need to start thinking about parental controls on device content delivery.  I have a netgear router and apparently they have some sort of down load solution, but I haven't look taht far into it.  What if anything are you guys doing to control content to devices?

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Thanks for bringing that up.   Wife asked me to look into it for five year old I don’t even know where to start.  Need it for at home tablet device and also what can we doing to ensure school issued tablet is also a secure as it can be?

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How old? I've read good things about Disney Circle. 

For us, our issue is more about screen time than what they're looking at with some exceptions. I've limited the screen time for the devices directly through my Mac router. So it's set for a period of time each day which I can adjust. As far as websites, I've read a little about OpenDNS but haven't used it yet. I'm thinking of blocking Discord for my 12 year old as that's the thing that tends to distract her during virtual learning time. An issue with that is it can affect other sites you may need, for instance Discord being blocked can possibly block Slack as they use a similar structure through their gateway. 

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I know a guy at work who is 62 years old. Latin, ladies man (so he thinks), lives in Miami who drives a fancy car, half buttoned shirt, you know the type.

Anyways, he set his trap with outward appearances and money and landed a young lady and, boom! 62 years old he's going to be a father again (his kids are like mid-30's from his past life).

I can't even imagine. reminds me of the Theo Von skit, "my dad was 78, so that was cool. he had a stroke when i was a baby. So we both learned to walk at the same time".

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How old? I've read good things about Disney Circle. 
For us, our issue is more about screen time than what they're looking at with some exceptions. I've limited the screen time for the devices directly through my Mac router. So it's set for a period of time each day which I can adjust. As far as websites, I've read a little about OpenDNS but haven't used it yet. I'm thinking of blocking Discord for my 12 year old as that's the thing that tends to distract her during virtual learning time. An issue with that is it can affect other sites you may need, for instance Discord being blocked can possibly block Slack as they use a similar structure through their gateway. 

Y’all are much nicer than me. They get zero screen time during the week. We make them go outside.
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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/14/2020 at 5:03 PM, Anastasis said:

Surly dads, speaking of devices...we're at a point that I probably need to start thinking about parental controls on device content delivery.  I have a netgear router and apparently they have some sort of down load solution, but I haven't look taht far into it.  What if anything are you guys doing to control content to devices?

iPads you can lock them into apps with timers.  We use it for out-of-school times, like if she wants to play her Peppa Pig or PBS games, or he wants to play Minecraft.  I had to get strict, because he was watching these fucking "Preston Plays" YouTube videos to learn stuff in Minecraft, and she would watch fucking Ryan videos if we let them run wild with the iPad.

Speaking of Peppa Pig, was looking up stuff for an upcoming birthday party, and came across a shitload of Peppa Pig face masks.

Fucking 2020.

Edit: Might as well have the yearbooks feature a picture of them with and without masks.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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On 9/14/2020 at 4:00 PM, mdmost said:

Did your 4 going on 5 sneak into your room while you and the wife were watching a TV show to grab your laptop so he/she could get online and then hide the laptop when questioned? Now I'm playing whack-a-mole trying to disable wifi after a certain time with different devices on my router. 

The ex got the 9 year old an iPhone for Christmas against my wishes.  The 9 year old has a total meltdown whenever we take it away.  I’ve gotten close to tossing the fucking thing in the pool a few times.  

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41 minutes ago, GlenFromTheMailRoom said:

The ex got the 9 year old an iPhone for Christmas against my wishes.  The 9 year old has a total meltdown whenever we take it away.  I’ve gotten close to tossing the fucking thing in the pool a few times.  

In our neighborhood, there's a family we vaguely know (their oldest son was in our Cub Scout pack), and their daughter is probably 5th or 6th grade (I'm not a good judge of age in kids older than my kids, but she's fairly tall, and I know that her brother is in middle school while she is not, as I know when he aged out of our pack).  

Was out with my kids at the park, and saw her and some of her friends (who also looked probably 5th grade) and she had an iPhone 11 Pro.

Who the fuck gives a kid a thousand-dollar phone?  Let alone a kid still in elementary school? I mean, I know kids have them then, my wife taught elementary for many years, but it boggles my mind.  Putting aside the fact that it's obvious what it is and seems like it'd make easy target for theft or being dropped and broken, there's no way in hell the parents are able to monitor what those kids are doing.

Based on how I would have acted if I had a smartphone in middle school or high school (we didn't even have cell phones), there's no way in hell my kids will have fancy phones.

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1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

In our neighborhood, there's a family we vaguely know (their oldest son was in our Cub Scout pack), and their daughter is probably 5th or 6th grade (I'm not a good judge of age in kids older than my kids, but she's fairly tall, and I know that her brother is in middle school while she is not, as I know when he aged out of our pack).  

Was out with my kids at the park, and saw her and some of her friends (who also looked probably 5th grade) and she had an iPhone 11 Pro.

Who the fuck gives a kid a thousand-dollar phone?  Let alone a kid still in elementary school? I mean, I know kids have them then, my wife taught elementary for many years, but it boggles my mind.  Putting aside the fact that it's obvious what it is and seems like it'd make easy target for theft or being dropped and broken, there's no way in hell the parents are able to monitor what those kids are doing.

Based on how I would have acted if I had a smartphone in middle school or high school (we didn't even have cell phones), there's no way in hell my kids will have fancy phones.

My thing is, unless you go to extreme lengths to totally lock it down (I did), giving a 4th grader a medium like that isn’t necessary.  Where the fuck is she going to go that warrants her having a phone?  I’m not quite a helicopter dad, but she is generally always in line of sight when she’s at the MailRoom house.

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2 hours ago, GlenFromTheMailRoom said:

The ex got the 9 year old an iPhone for Christmas against my wishes.  The 9 year old has a total meltdown whenever we take it away.  I’ve gotten close to tossing the fucking thing in the pool a few times.  

That's tough.

If we allowed them, my kids (9 & 6) would be on their Ipad all day, so we put pretty strict limits on their screen time and only when they've done their chores and only when they've been outside playing getting actual exercise for at least 1 hour on school days. 

We were able to identify a pretty strong positive correlation early on between their screen time and level of whininess. 

I'm certainly not a perfect parent, but it astonishes me how much time that my kids' peers and other kids in general spend on screens.

I smh at pictures and scenes like these when we know how damaging screen time is to a child's development.

This Psychologist Says the iPad is One of the Biggest Threats to Our Kids |  Working Mother

10 iPad Apps for Teaching Kids to Read | HowStuffWorks

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Worst thing my ex did was get both kids iPads when they were in Middle School. She did it to show she was the cool mom but all I saw was a split in the family. I would shut off the Internet at 8PM every evening (worked remote site 2008) and this caused a lot of fights. Tech has its place, just not at the dining room table. 

And full disclosure. I am now dating a younger woman and the first thing she does in the morning is check her instagram. This shit becomes an addiction and that is never good. 

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2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Based on how I would have acted if I had a smartphone in middle school or high school (we didn't even have cell phones), there's no way in hell my kids will have fancy phones.


I would like my children to be employable one day. No way in hell I would be if I had a smart phone in my pocket during high school. 

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It's been a struggle with the 12 year old and we try not to be giant hardasses about it given she's expressed issues with depression and isolation during this shitfest. The wife took her to a park this weekend where she met one of her friends that she normally only converses with online. We joked that we were curious if they would be able to communicate in person and have anything to talk about. Devices weren't allowed. They hung out for a couple hours which was very good for their mental states.

We're trying to find a happy medium given they're pretty isolated from the people they would normally hang out with like my nephew and their school friends. We've reduced all screen time to 0 after 7pm, minus mutual TV shows or movies. We have dinner, we take the dog on a walk, the wife will watch a show with them, and then it's reading and bedtime. It's gotten better. It will improve once they go back to school in November, though currently DISD in person is basically going to school to be on your Chromebook all day. Yeah, they can do that at home just fine. My youngest actually prefers virtual schooling as it helps her be less distracted and she can get more one on one time with the teacher. 

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5 hours ago, Message Board User said:

I'm certainly not a perfect parent, but it astonishes me how much time that my kids' peers and other kids in general spend on screens.

Or seeing somebody that's been shopping at a grocery store or wherever, and it's obvious they've been there for a while, and the kid is glued to a screen.

 

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16 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Or seeing somebody that's been shopping at a grocery store or wherever, and it's obvious they've been there for a while, and the kid is glued to a screen.

 

But real talk...a lot of this is learned behavior.

We (as in society and adults in general) pearl-clutch about kids on screens...but I find adults are just as bad as kids.

Shit, on my drive home I would say at least a third to half the drivers on the road are on their phones.  So if these adults cannot untether themselves to their social media WHILE DRIVING, you know that at home, during regular down time, they're on their phone.  And I'm sure the kids see that.

In fact...

 

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My 9 year old came up to my office bawlling her eyes out. Apparently she saw one of those abused dog commercials where for pennies a day you can end animal cruelty.

"Why are people so mean?"

"Those dogs are so sad!!"

on and on.

 

Both of our dogs are sleeping in her room tonight, sleeping off a dog biscuit binge. Our dogs love those abused dog commercials.

 

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But real talk...a lot of this is learned behavior.
We (as in society and adults in general) pearl-clutch about kids on screens...but I find adults are just as bad as kids.
Shit, on my drive home I would say at least a third to half the drivers on the road are on their phones.  So if these adults cannot untether themselves to their social media WHILE DRIVING, you know that at home, during regular down time, they're on their phone.  And I'm sure the kids see that.
In fact...
 

Sounds like my oldest brother. I rode with him on a trip one weekend, fucker couldn’t get off of Snapchat or whatever it was. When he did, it was to take a phone call or because I was bitching about him nearly putting us in the ditch.
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A couple of weeks ago my daughter asked me to come up and hike up to the peak of Mt Nebo in Utah.  I jumped at the opportunity since she may never ask me again.  It was a really nice hike in the Wasatch mountain range.  The peak is not really high, a little less than 12K ft.  The last mile though is 20% grade and is an ass breaker.  We ended up turning around with 1/2 mile to go.  She started freaking out when a guy was coming back down blood from head to toes.  He said he stumbled about 40ft down the side.  I didn't want to push her so we turned around and hiked back to the car.  The scenery was amazing and the temps were incredible. 

After we got back to the car, we ate some lunch and drove to a different area and hiked to the top of Sunset Peak, around 10.6K ft.  Over 12 miles of hiking, it was great.  Unfortunately I had to fly home the next day.  I had a fantastic time, it had been a few years since we spent an entire day together.  

 

Untitled.png

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Fuck. I am exhausted. 44 with a 5 and 3 year old. I know in 10 years I will miss this time but fuck I am tired. Plus the stress of being unemployed (thanks covid and opec)...I just want to go live in a cave for 6 months.

I’m not old like you (35) but I’m 5 & 2... and I can’t wait until it’s safe to drop them off at grandparents for 2-3 days
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1 hour ago, Patricio Swayze said:

Fuck. I am exhausted. 44 with a 5 and 3 year old. I know in 10 years I will miss this time but fuck I am tired. Plus the stress of being unemployed (thanks covid and opec)...I just want to go live in a cave for 6 months.

What did you used to do in the music industry?  

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Fuck. I am exhausted. 44 with a 5 and 3 year old. I know in 10 years I will miss this time but fuck I am tired. Plus the stress of being unemployed (thanks covid and opec)...I just want to go live in a cave for 6 months.
I'm 51 with a 6 and 4 yr old. It can be a beating some times.
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that's tough bro. Worse thing is that being unemployed, you can't escape to the office to get some peace and quiet.
 
Seriously, hope it gets better for you.


Thanks. The first couple of months were a great break. Now I just want to find any fucking job.

I’m not old like you (35) but I’m 5 & 2... and I can’t wait until it’s safe to drop them off at grandparents for 2-3 days


Fuck you (not really, it’s just the stress talking).

What did you used to do in the music industry?  


I was a recording engineer and also co-owner of a recording studio. I gave that up in 2005 and have been in the oil and gas industry since 2007.

I'm 51 with a 6 and 4 yr old. It can be a beating some times.


Jesus.
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