The Good Life – January-February 2019

FATHERS | MR. FULL-TIME DAD
WRITTEN BY: BEN HANSON
PHOTOS BY: URBAN TOAD MEDIA
Ahh, New Year’s. What a wonderfully two-faced time of year. Sure, we
get one more chance to party (if you can find a sitter) with friends and
family, but it’s also the end. Literally. Not just the end of the year, but the
end of the most joyous, merry-filled time of the year. And to celebrate, we
embark on a ruthless examination of our personal failings and character
flaws. Cheers!
I’m of course talking about the yearly self-hazing ritual known as the
New Year’s resolution. Lose weight, stop smoking, eat a little healthier,
transcend time and space, finally write that children’s book you’ve been
talking about for the past two years… we all know the obvious ones.
This year, I’m giving up before I start, not even bothering to pick up the
towel before throwing it in. But I’m a sucker for tradition and couldn’t
stop myself from still making a list. Not for me, however, but for Macklin,
my above average three-year-old son. I put together a pretty universal
toddler resolutions list I’d like to believe he might choose to tackle in
2019.
I won’t lose my mind every morning when the
cartoons get turned off.
Routines are routines because they’re routine, right? My morning routine
goes off with atomic clock precision. Mack crawls into “the big bed,” we
watch cartoons, I destroy his life by turning the TV off in order to get him
dressed for school. I’d like to think he learns to anticipate the inevitable
and at some point in 2019 we make it to school without a fight.
2 / THE GOOD LIFE / urbantoadmedia.com
I’ll stop referring to the people I love as “poopy.”
My wife, Emily, is a therapist. A damn good one, too. But it took a
psychiatrist coworker of hers to help us put this one into perspective.