Minor Kid Learnings

2026-04-20

Last night I was very tired from hanging out with kids all weekend, definitely the weekends are more involved and tiring because during the weekdays the kids go to preschool and it is lower energy working than taking care of two kids. That being said it was a lot of fun and very fulfilling, I couldn’t really describe the fulfilling part to someone who is inquiring but I feel it in my brain. That also being said being a stay at home dad is not my first choice.

On to the learning, the first one I thought I had learned but apparently it hadn’t sunk in enough, and it is: my youngest son wakes up hungry (or hangry if you prefer). When he awakes from a full sleep or from a nap he is sometimes in a good mood and sometimes in a terrible mood. This weekend he mostly awoke in terrible moods, one afternoon he was crying, kicking me (lightly) and was mostly inconsolable. And since I had thought I learned this lesson previously I had food prepared, my first action while my youngest (or even my oldest) is asleep is to figure out what to feed them. I think Sneha sometimes get annoyed at this because I prefer to give them hot food for breakfast while she would default to cold cereal but that is another digression for another time.

So I had food ready and change his diaper, try to soothe him, and bring him downstairs. I strap him into his high chair and try to feed him but he continues to cry. He doesn’t seem to want any food. What is going on? I take him out, hold him, bounce him lightly. He cries so hard in my face. I think eventually he points at his high chair and I put him back in. I try to feed him but he pushes my arm away. And so as he is crying and refusing food I just pop little bits of food into his mouth. It is almost like I am force feeding him, but he eats, and as I continue to do this in a few minutes he stops crying. And he goes back to being pretty happy, he is usually a happy baby, and that crisis is over.

And it feels like a weird position, I kind of have to force feed my youngest when he wakes because he is too angry to accept food, and this doesn’t happen all of the time but it is frequent enough for me to learn a lesson from it.

Secondly, this is less of a lesson and more of a realization, and that is our youngest is older enough to hang out in the front yard. He loves the back yard and being there, I think he likes being outside, and the back yard is great, it is free from cars, well fenced in, etc. But there are sometimes when I need to do some work in the garage or on a car, and just now I think he has unlocked the ability to not automatically run into the street. This weekend I put a plastic gate out in the front so there was another obstacle between him and the street, and he did really good. He ran around the yard and I always kept an eye on him. Maybe we can even wash the cars together one day. I also might turn into one of those obnoxious people who gets one of those ‘slow, kids playing’ sign with a yellow color. Sometimes people drive fast on our street and with two kids playing in the front yard I would rather they drive a little slower.

-Gary