The gorrr

Wife and I both overcame he**in addiction (8+ years clean) only for her to be ravaged by neurological disease.

Apparently submitting assignments before the due date is considered “Late”.

I'd rather have a scratched up table than a table I have to worry about getting scratched.
Discussion
Having nice stuff = keeping stuff nice which is a fool's errand. You're serving the stuff instead of it serving you. What pieces of Dad Wisdom have you picked up over the years?

The whole “boys are wild animals” trope gets so old sometimes.
Humor
But tonight my 8yo son just peed in the middle of the driveway. So it’s hard to argue there isn’t some kernel of truth to it.

Even our dog knows to go in the grass.

I admit it guys. I've been taking PEDs.
I'm honestly not sure if I could parent without them at this point.

Milestone Achieved!
18 years and I can still pick her to give her a kiss.

All Clear Post vasectomy
Super happy with how my Vasectomy went, cleared results at 3 month test, glad to have 3 daughters but also happy to be done.

The original plan was to landscape that area. I like the dirt pile better
Bought a house that had what seemed to be a large fountain/small pond, not something we’d use, so I cleaned it out and started filling it with dirt. Got 2 yard in it and was waiting for a chance to get more, but the kids had other plans. Now we will happily host a dirt pit for the next several years and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Wasn’t sure how to handle this one…
Story
My youngest daughter turned 5 a couple of months ago and has been coming home from school, playing significantly more role play games, which has been a lot of fun.

Though recently, her favourite game to play is “abandoned child”

She tells us her parents abandoned her and we are supposed to come up and ask if she’s okay and she decides she wants to come and live with us. Bit of a weird one, but whatever, she seems to enjoy it an we play along.

Except last night on our walk home this game took a dark twist.

She hung back randomly while we were on our walk, put this look on her face that says “I’m now a kid and I am lost and alone”. Okay all good, we’ve done this plenty

I walk up to her

“Oh hello, are you okay? What’s your name? Where are your parents?”

“I DONT KNOW YOU, YOU ARE A STRANGER, GET AWAY FROM ME!”

I’m shook, I look around awkwardly at the other people walking past, I try again.

“Are you lost? Do you need some help?”

Then she runs down the path screaming “GET AWAY FROM ME”

I look at my wife who is pi***ng herself laughing as I struggle with the next best steps trying to work out how not to have the cops called on me.

“Let me give this a go” my wife says., and picks up the game like normal.

Ffs kid, you’re gonna get me in trouble. And I think she’s getting a kick out of knowing this.

Son thought he could outsmart me
Story
My son is 11 and we got him a cell phone for his birthday (divorced and it makes communication much easier). I have parental controls on it and noticed he has been spending more time on it than I like (up to 11 hours a day at his mom's). I put restrictions on it including a max 1 hour of YouTube per day. Tonight I looked and noticed he had spent over an hour on Chrome. Asked him about it and he tried to play it off as just searching some stuff. I told him I'm not stupid and asked if he was using Chrome to watch YouTube and get past my restrictions. He admitted he was. Phone is now taken away for a day.

I'm not sure what I'm more upset about. That he used Chrome to get around the restrictions or that he thought his dad, who literally writes code for a living, would not realize what he was doing. Did he really think I am so technologically inept that I would not realize what he is doing? YouTube is now blocked in Chrome. I'm sure this won't be the only way he tries to sneak around the rules.