Among the things that drive my wife to madness, here is the latest: people who refer to our son as "buddy."

"Hey, buddy!" "How ya doin', buddy?" "Whatcha up to, buddy?"

He is 20 months old and so consumed with the curiosities and crankiness of toddlerhood that he seems like no one's buddy but his own. I know. It's just a word. A term of endearment. But "buddy" has come to bug me, too.

Applied to adults, "buddy" is filler, a throwaway in casual conversation, a moniker that hints at a kind of faux friendship, fake intimacy. When someone calls me their "buddy," I know I'm not. Applied to small children, well, I'm not sure what. It irritates my wife because she believes it presages a kind of ultra-dudeness---the language of a fratboy life to come. "Hey, buddy. Check out those ta-tas." "Hey, buddy. Chug this beer while I piss out the window on a hedge." By calling our son buddy, she's afraid that you'll make him someone's buddy some day.

My brother refers to his own son as "buddy," and the word miffs our father to no end.

"Your son is not your buddy," my father whispered to me when he first heard my brother throw around the term. "He's your son. And if you're very lucky, the best thing you can hope for is that he'll grow up to be your friend."

I like that phrasing. And I think about it whenever I'm tempted to call a young boy "buddy." Almost everybody does it, and it's close to reflexive. But I'm never tempted to use it on my own son. I call him Leo. Some day, I hope he'll be my chum.

When you aren't what they call the "primary care-giver," you're frequently reminded of your secondary status. Often the reminder comes from your kids.

Me: Scarlett, would you like to ride your bike around the block one more time?
Scarlett: Yes. But I have to ask my mommy if it's okay.
Me: It's okay. You have my permission.
Scarlett: Okay. Thanks. I'll just go ask my mommy.

In this small exchange, there was a pang of heartache. But I'll try not to read into it too much. She's 3 years old. What should I expect? She spends her days at preschool and then with her mom. I see her more than most dads see their kids throughout the day, but the encounters are fleeting. Besides, when it comes to parenting, it's a good thing that I don't play the primary role. It's my wife who possesses the sharper instincts, who imparts lessons and imposes order. And when what the gurus call a "teachable moment" comes along, she exploits it when I, on the other hand, never fail to fail. "Scarlett, don't do that," I say when she hurls a pebble at another toddler. My wife, by contrast, might administer a time out, replete with explanations and ripe with revelations. "Don't do that" is pretty much all that I can muster.

Raised by me alone, my children would transform into tiny wildlings. I forget to wash behind their ears. I can't braid hair. I nod off trying to read them books.

In life, fantasies are made for dashing. Or so, it seems, they are in mine. Maybe I've watched too many movies, or skimmed the pages of too many cheesy magazines, but I always imagined that when, as a father, I showed up at a scene overrun with mothers, my appearance would spark at least a whiff of intrigue.
"Who is that mystery father?" "Look, he's using cloth diapers. He's not just dark and handsome, he's conscientious and green."

So it was with disappointment that I gauged the reaction of a group of moms when I picked up my daughter from her first day of preschool. I was the only father on the scene, and, as such, I'd been hoping for something from the movie Little Children, where a father's appearance at a playground sets off a round of giggling and gossip worthy of a nude George Clooney sighting. Not to be.

The utter apathy my arrival triggered was enough to shake another middle-aged man's self-image. It's probably a good sign that men playing the role of, well, father no longer raises eyebrows or special interest (either that or it's a bad sign that I've got a gross beer belly and sun-wrecked skin). And it's not like I was looking for a torrid affair, like the kind the movie characters fall into.
Still, a guy can dream. As we lose our shape and hair, the fantasy of youthful vigor staggers on. A little harmless flirtation. The sense, however deluded, that one's appearance may stir even fleeting interest sometimes is enough to carry a guy through yet another sleepless night of diaper changing. At least that's what they tell me in those magazines.

Jerry Seinfield once joked that your first birthday party is a lot like your last: you don't recognize anyone; a family member handles all the invitations; and someone else blows out the candles for you.

It wasn't my birthday, but I still barely knew a soul at a bash in the park this past weekend. The honoree had just turned two, which in today's culture means she received a celebration worthy of a Victorian queen.

Throngs of well-wishers descended on a playground high up in the hills, with sweeping views of the San Francisco Bay. The birthday girl responded to their shouts of "happy birthday" by jumping into a sandbox and cramming a lump of dirt into her mouth. Clearly, she was deeply moved.

My personal rule, which I've never had success enforcing in our house, is that the number of invitees to a child's birthday party should exceed by only one the child's age. You're turning three, sweetheart? Great. Congratulations. You get to have four friends at your party.

This, of course, is hardly realistic in the world of American child-rearing. Birthday parties, like everything else surrounding children, are such an industry and an embedded element of parenting culture that no one gets away with a modest bash.

When my own son turned one, I managed to veto plans for a birthday party but only after throwing a tantrum worthy of the birthday boy himself. "I won't be part of this!" I wailed, as my wife fixed me with a baffled stare. She logged on to evite and diligently cancelled the 12-course French dinner she'd planned.

Gift-giving at kids' birthdays is another matter, one we tried to avoid at our daughter's third birthday by requesting that attendees forgo buying presents. No one listened, and the art center we'd rented (yes, an art center) quickly filled up with pretty pink boxes and happy birthday cards.

"You can request it," my wife informed me. "But no one takes you seriously."

What people do take seriously is this whole party thing, and the way I understand it is that, like so much else in parenting, it's more for the parents than it is for the kids. I tell my one-year-old to share when we're in public not because he'll listen but so that other adults don't think of me as a barbarian. I throw a big bash for a child who recognizes no one and needs help with the candles because, well, I'm not exactly sure.

Broken parental vow number 7,643: I will never take my children to Disneyland.

It happened late last month. In a moment of weakness, I brought my eager brood to the Crap ... er, Happiest Place on Earth.

Disney-philes had insisted, throughout my years of Mickey-bashing, that all would be well once we walked through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, that my crusty cynicism would melt beneath the warmth of my children's smiles and laughter. That their joy in the experience would soften me like Scrooge on Christmas morn.

You know what? I must confess.

They were wrong.

What worse way to shake off one's own cynicism than to visit the world's most cynical place? Where crass marketing permeates every microfiber, where insidious branding comes disguised in a cutesy chipmunk suit. That all of this is done by preying on the wide-eyed innocence of children (the way to a man's heart may be through his stomach, but the way to his wallet is through his kids) makes it all the more unappetizing. As with Michael Jackson's Never, Never Land, concerned adults should put a stop to this.

It didn't help, of course, that the mercury was hovering in the triple digits, that bottled water went for the price of crude oil, and that the only shade we found was in the tunnels of the dark rides, where kaleidoscopic stage sets and creepy-perky music, played in ceaseless loops, drove me to near madness.

But, wait, you say, Disney isn't for me. It's for my kids.

Oh, right. My kids. They spent two days at Disney alternating between spasms of wild craving (they needed this doll, they had to have that ice cream) and Chernobyl-esque meltdowns that not even Minnie could put stop to (in fact, she bolted on the autograph session before my kids got her to sign).

So we staggered through the park, wailing children in our arms, scorched by the sun and solicited silently by fake-quaint storefronts expertly styled to ratchet up our offspring's sense of unmet want. The kids screamed and moaned. We sweated, swore and found so-called "sustenance" at expensive themed cafes with flavorless cooking and a maitre d' in a Captain Hook suit who scared our daughter almost as much as the food scared me.

There we were, willing victims of grotesque commercialism, a family portrait of obscene Americana, wondering when it would all end.

And then, it happened. Somewhere between Toon Town and It's a Small World, an actual squirrel scooted past our children, hauling an acorn toward a sapling. Thing Number One and Two watched him with delight.

For that brief moment, all the other madness masquerading as "magic" drifted toward the background and our kids took fleeting pleasure in something real.

As a metaphor, it was pretty heavy-handed, like a moral-to-the-story in a Disney movie. But it stuck with me.

Want to fill your kids with the flush of wonder? Take them to Yellowstone instead.

Just returned from a family trip to Disneyland, purgatory with guys in Pluto suits. But that's a subject for another day.
This morning, we're dealing with blackmail by barf.
It began three weeks ago, as we kicked off an extended family trip. Thing Number 2, a 20-month-old boy, seemed peppy enough as we prepared for bed. But when I laid him down in his portable crib, he began to cry. And snort. And gag. And before we knew it, a stream of curdled milk was arcing from his mouth, like a scene snatched from The Exorcist.
A surprising sight, and Thing Number 2 must have noticed the bug-eyed looks on his parents' faces because the next night . . . he projectile barfed again.
On and on it's gone ever since. Every night, come bedtime, when we set him down, the gagging starts. If we don't pick him up quickly, he covers the room in a milky spray.
Otherwise, all systems appear normal. He's eating well and filling his diaper in the usual way.
Which leads us to conclude that this near-ritualistic regurgitation has become part of a nighttime ploy. Not a sinister plot, but a power-play of sorts. An attention-grabbing method to get his way. And now that we're back home, he's kept it up.
The only way we can now get him to sleep is to lay with him in our bed and wait for him to drift into his deepest nighttime cycle. But that method takes an hour, sometimes more. And it's not a habit we want to encourage.
Which leads me to wonder: are we doing something wrong? Or are we being blackmailed by a little barfing boy?
Anyone dealt with this before?

A grab bag of thoughts after traveling for three weeks with the kids.

1. There is a special place in purgatory reserved for people who insist on giving young children noise-making toys. In 21 days of travel, we've acquired more than that number of beeping, whirring, whining, cheapo plastic things, all bestowed on us by "friends" whom we've obviously done something to offend. When these gifts come from child-less adults, I can almost understand it. When they come from fellow parents, who should know better . . . straight to hell for them.

2. There may also be a special place reserved for fathers who "lose" these toys along the way. That static-producing toy microphone with the shrieking voice-over? Whoops. Must have left it in that rest stop dumpster. Sorry, kids. I'm a bad, bad man.

3. If you can't stand the screaming, get out of the cabin. On a cross-country flight, cranky kids in tow, we sat behind an ornery 60-something woman who I recognized from motion pictures: she played Glen Close's stunt-double in "101 Dalmations." Throughout the six-hour flight, the glares she gave our kids were fierce enough to turn Medusa to stone. Listen, Cruella, you want quiet (and something to snack on besides pretzels), cough up for first class.

4. Watching my father try to tend to our children makes it clear that he raised me in a Stepford era: obviously, despite siring two kids of his own, the man has never changed a diaper in his life.

5. And god bless him: he makes me look like a hero for the little I do.

6. The true downside of travel isn't cost or jetlag. It's the risk you run of undoing healthy sleep habits. After three weeks on the road in hotels and motels, both kids are back to sleeping in our bed.

7. No matter how kid-friendly the waiters or affordable the meals, there is no restaurant worth attending when your children are 1 and 3 years old.

8. The world's greatest invention: the portable DVD player.

9. The world's second greatest invention: a grandparent who knows how to change diapers.

10. The world's third greatest invention: infant Tylenol.

P.S. To clarify a cloudy point from a previous post (I tried logging on to the forum discussion to clear this up but was stymied by a technical glitch), yes, we have two children but my wife Sara has given birth to three. Her first child, whom she put up for adoption but is now in our lives, is now 21, a built-in older sister to our two toddlers.

Early in our marriage, Sara and I endured three years of fertility problems, a stress-filled stretch that led me to conclude that there was no sex worse than sex for the sake of conception alone.

I came to almost dread those mechanical couplings, fueled by purpose but not passion, infused with a deadening pressure to perform.

But fraught sex is still better than no sex at all.

We haven't reached the grim point of sexless matrimony. But with two toddlers in tow, nor are we busy tearing up the bedsheets. No one would mistake us for Henry and June.

Back when we were in the baby-making business, I was the problem. With so much at stake, I often had trouble (you'll forgive me) rising to the occasion. But now our roles have flip-flopped. To turn a "Seinfeld" excuse on its head, it's not me, it's her.

All the enticements and inducements, all the initiation has been left to me. Sara insists I shouldn't worry. She's tired (me too!). She's worn out (ditto). After bearing three children in the past 20 years, her body stretched and suckled by motherhood's demands, she says she doesn't feel sexy, though she looks great to me.

I've tried the remedies I know: the frilly lingerie and conforting assurances, the conversations that last as long as we both can keep ourselves awake.

They haven't worked yet. And so we beat on through the currents, verging on middle-age cliche.

There are flashes, now and then, of our vital former sex life. But far too few and too long in between.

Sara swears that it will change as the kids get older. Meantime, though, we're not getting any younger. Or slimmer. Or less sleepy.

We have a good marriage. I believe that. But there's nothing less sexy than a partner who never seems to be up for sex.

Two things I've concluded, now that I'm entering my ugly middle age: I don't want to see many of my friends naked, and I don't want to travel with them and their kids.
It's all too dangerous, hitching your vacation to the traveling and parenting habits of people whom you otherwise adore. But we opted for it anyway, and now find ourselves on a three-week East Coast swing, treading on fraught territory, hoping we'll escape with our sanity and longstanding relationships in tact.
We love Jennifer and Jim, but why, we wonder, do their kids display the dining etiquette of lower primates? Hopping on the table in the local IHOP. Spilling water on one another's heads. And why will their parents not reprimand them?
Why will they not nap when they are so clearly nackered? Why will they not stop throwing sand at our children? Why will they not simply go away?
You could drive yourself crazy, trying to understand someone else's parenting habits. And you could destroy a friendship bringing up these questions for discussion. Which is why, I now realize, that traveling is like shaving: something best done on your own.
I imagine others have these kind of nightmare stories. Friendships strained by traveling in close quarters. Choices you wish you could undo.
We've got two weeks left on our sweltering vacation. It's 100 degrees outside here on the beach in Delaware, with 5,000 percent humidity. Like Venus, with less attractive architecture. Our friends are outside, with their unruly children. And we're about to join them for an afternoon swim.
I just hope they don't decide to skinny dip.

Decades after it was launched, our War on Drugs is failing badly: stoners are still producing children's TV.
The problem was widespread in my own younger years, when my brother and I would sit on the couch in a television trance, soaking up the strange sights of the New Zoo Review, wherein a giant frog, an owl and a long-haired human couple cohabitated on a psychedelic set in a kind of intra-species hippy idyll. Or maybe I'm just having an acid flashback.
There was also Barbapapa: a family of brightly colored shape-shifting blobs whose mundane problem-solving always seemed to lead to a moral lesson. A peyote-trip for toddlers, sketched in pastel.
If you flipped the dials enough, you could come across some non-hallucinogenic morning happenings. The claymation proselytising of Davey and Goliath. The amusing meanderings of Mr. Magoo. Bugs Bunny was there in all his whackiness, but at least you could recognize him as a rabbit. Rascally, yes, but vaguely realistic.
Now, when I sit down with my own kids, it's like I'm back on electric Kool-Aid again.
Who are these newfound friends with the helium-voices? The underwater weirdness of SpongeBob Square Pants. The hair-tearing babble of the Teletubbies. Dora the Explorer seems grounded in the real world, but then a giant red chicken shows up on the scene.
Not that I'd want it any other way. Childhood, as relived through my own children's eyes, feels like something of a drug, an extended period of experimentation. And maybe our own dabbling in illicit substances, assuming there's been any, is simply an attempt to reclaim the magic, to return to a time when we could stare at a flower for half a day.
The people producing children's TV seem to think so. And I've got no real beef with them. I allow my kids to watch. They just can't inhale.