Why I Hate the Winter Olympics

When the Seattle Seahawks annihilated the Denver Broncos earlier this month in the Super Bowl, among other things it meant that self-proclaimed “Football Widows” received their spouses back until training camps begin over the summer. What I personally didn’t anticipate was becoming a Sports Widower myself less than a week later.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I’m a big sports fan. I’m also a long-suffering one as I grew up a Cleveland sports fan. If you’re not a sports fan, I can best explain being a Cleveland sports fan like being the punchline in a nightmare. Anything that could go wrong inevitably does in the most publically embarrassing way. But I’ve grown to live with that. And now that I live on the West Coast with two young sons I seldom make time to sit through many games these days that aren’t Go Fish.  

So how did I come to find myself in the position of asking my non-sports fan wife approximately every 15 minutes every night for the last 2 weeks “is this almost over?” Two words: Winter Olympics.

Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be any more pro-American if I had a pet Bald Eagle named Uncle Sam. I just can’t get into the Winter Olympics, no matter how half-heartedly I try. As I mentioned, I grew up in the Midwest, about 20 minutes from a place where I could have gone skiing every winter for 20+ years and opted to never do so. Intentionally. Unlike Elsa from Frozen, the cold always bothered me anyway.

Over the decade-plus my wife and I have been together, I’ve tried watching some of the Winter Olympic Games with her. However, beyond that I have a hard time recognizing it as a sport, spending time watching sequined couples “Ice Dancing” just doesn’t do it for me.

From what I’ve seen the primary objective of at least half of the Winter Olympic events could be listed as “not dying”. Hell, there’s a sport where the “athlete” lies face down on a tiny metal sled going 80+mph down a curvy icy chute, which is actually called “Skeleton”. Foreshadowing much?

This Skeletoner is laying still like a corpse.
How is this a sport?

Then there’s the Biathlon which combines that natural duo of skiing and shooting a rifle which so many people seemingly do every day. I’d call that Polar Military Training before I’d call it a sport. What about Cross Country, which most people who live in cold weather places refer to as “walking on snow”.

And don’t even get me started on Curling, a “sport” which my housekeeper could likely medal in based on her expert-level proficiency at removing piles of Cheerios from the floor with a broom.

As if their "sport" didn't make them look silly enough...

I was sitting with my wife the other night while she watched the 1^st of something like 86 rounds of some skiing event and kept hearing the announcers mention Rosa Khoutour, which I assumed was some sort of Russian fashion brand. Turns out it’s a mountain. Who would have known?

The centerpiece of the Winter Olympics is always the Figure Skating events, and those have eaten up a big chunk of my TiVo for the last 10 nights. No interest. I didn’t even like Blades of Glory and that starred Ron Burgundy and Napoleon Dynamite, two of the funniest dudes from the last decade.

Part of my ancestry actually stems from Russia and I still couldn’t be less interested in a “Homeland vs. Birthland” story line if NBC created one specifically about me, like the packages they show about athletes suffering from hangnails, misplaced iPhones and other tragedies.

The truth is that the most interesting part of the Olympic coverage to me so far has been Bob Costas’ Pink Eye, which would be a great name for a punk-rock band. Bob’s Oozing Oculars (another good band name) has kept me wondering what kind of medical attention he’s getting that he couldn’t work at an event he’d probably be preparing 6 months to a year in advance for. Who is his MD, Dr. Frankenstein?

The good news is that the games will be over in a few more days and I’ll get 4 glorious sequin-less years until they resume. How long until baseball season begins?

Sleeping Ugly

The cliché of overly exhausted parents is as exhausted as much as it is true. But even though I’ve been a parent for over three years, I never really believed it until a few months ago.

When I started this blog 18 months ago I had a much simpler life with just one child. At that time, the Little Dude was a happy 20-month-old who napped regularly, ate fussily (though not fusilli) and gave me lots of entertainment to write about. For more than a year, that stayed constant. 

The Little Dude in his favorite nap location.

Since The Littler Dude’s arrival, however, Mrs. Dude and I have struggled to figure out a regular schedule for ourselves and our family.  I think part of that stems from my biggest gaffe (so far) as a parent of two kids: I expected #2 to be just like #1 was.  But that’s not how it usually works out, just ask Pippa Middleton's parents. 

Throughout Mrs. Dude’s second pregnancy, countless people told us “having two kids is easier than having one”.  That’s absolutely ridiculous, unless you have full-time help, in which case someone else is likely doing much of the heavy lifting for you. Four months later, I’d like to reconnect with those nosy strangers again and kick them in the shins. There’s absolutely no way what they said is true.

The Little Dude was an amazing sleeper who was sleeping soundly through the night after about a week. No joke. His brother, not so much. After 15 weeks he is finally getting into a routine consisting of waking up once during the night to feed in the midst of a 10-11 hour stretch, which most parents of newborns would consider spectacular.  To us, it’s created an unprecedented level of exhaustion that we are still figuring out how to caffeinate our way out of.  

One key difference between having one kid and two is that with the first one you have the freedom to allow him to get into a routine. Three years ago the Little Dude’s schedule was so locked in that you could set your TiVo by it:

Wake up in the morning > Eat > 3 hour nap > Wake up > Eat > 3 hour nap > Wake up > Eat > Bath >  Sleep for 12 hours, then rinse and repeat.

Now, with #2, we make sure he’s changed and fed, then throw him in the car to take his older brother where he needs to be. Naps are few and far between. The Littler Dude naps well in the car so he takes a lot of 20 minute snoozes throughout the day, which most adults would kill for, but are not nearly enough to quench a baby’s thirst for longer stretches in dreamland.  He doesn’t know any better or have higher expectations, so he has no clue about how his brother lived before him.  But as a parent it can be hard to watch an obviously tired infant who only wants to crash for an hour or two get schlepped through Target, to preschool pickup and then the bank while his eyelids quiver toward sleepyville.  

The Littler Dude in his frequent nap spot. 

For a variety of reasons, our living situation has changed since the boys were born. In our current circumstance, they will soon have to share a room. I never shared a room with anyone until college (and I hated that) so it’s a foreign concept to me. I’ve delayed moving him into his big brother’s room partially out of fear that they will cannibalize each other’s sleep by waking each other up during the night. If that happens, our entire infrastructure will collapse faster than a treehouse full of Biggest Loser contestants.  

So what can I do to rectify this whole situation? Though I don’t like it, I’ve gotten used to operating on about 5 hours of sleep per night over the last few months after averaging 8 during the previous 3 years.  I know this situation is only temporary, but until The Littler Dude starts making it through the night I think there may be really only one good solution. Earplugs.

How did you deal with kids' sleeping issues? Any tips?