Our nights of wrestling became more aggressive as she got older, too. Even today, at age eight, we still play the game where Natalia runs off the bed and I catch her. But now, a lot of times, she’s pulling some WWE moves on me. As I’m catching her, I’m also catching some elbows to the noggin. One time, I caught her and she just slapped me in the face for no reason. That was when Daddy said, “No mas,” and called it a night.

And Natalia tricked me into the abuse. There was a period when, every time I would come home, she’d say, “Daddy, I want a huggy.” And of course I’d fall for it. At which point, she’d grab the hat off my head, run squealing into the kitchen, and throw it on top of the upper cabinets. Our kitchen has nine-foot ceilings, but the top of the cabinets are at the eight-foot mark and then there’s two inches of crown molding, so once it was up there, it was nearly impossible to retrieve.

This happened multiple times before I laid down the law and said, “You’re getting my hat.” She stood on top of the counter but couldn’t reach, so I put her butt on my shoulder, and she was able to reach back and grab it. She fished it out, showed it to me, giving me just enough time to say thank you, and then tossed it on top of the fridge, which is deeper, so it was even harder to retrieve.

Luckily, this whole thing backfired on her one day. We went through the usual dance of the fake-out hug, her grabbing my Rams beanie and running away. To his credit, Sonny would usually try to stop her, but she’d throw him down and break away like Jim Brown running over a white defensive back. Then I’d try to dive and stop her, but she typically had too much of a head start. On this particular night, she slid on her socks on the wooden kitchen floor, and bonked her head. Then she had that moment all kids have when they fall, that few seconds that feel like forever, when they decide whether they’re hurt. So I jumped in and said, “You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine. It just made a loud noise.”

Then I saw Lynette at the kitchen entrance, making what I call the “Triple Mommy Face.” The super-concerned, “Are you okay, sweetie?” look. I was in the middle of my eighty-fifth “You’re okay,” when Natalia just collapsed in a heap of tears. I swear Lynette and I could have pulled it off if we were on the same page.

Natalia figured out early that it was funny to fuck with me. When she was about fourteen months old she learned to say no. And she would shake her head so vigorously when saying no to any request I made that she would fall over. She would hold a ball and when I’d reach for it, she’d pull it back and say “no” so hard she’d literally fall out of her chair. Who taught her this? That’s what I want to know. That terrible twos period when kids love to say no is a real burner. It’ll take the life out of you. I think all parents should get on the same page and agree not to say “no” in front of their kids until their eleventh birthday. It’s part of my campaign: “Just Don’t Say No.”

Most days, I’m still asleep when the kids go to school. And on those days Sonny would come in and give me a nice kiss on the lips and say, “Goodbye, Father,” and head off. (And, for the record, Sonny decided to call me “Father” instead of “Dad” without any prompting or coaching. I have no idea where he got it, but I’ve gotta admit I love the old-school flair.) Then, moments after Sonny’s sweet goodbye, I’d feel a cold flat-palm slap on my forehead from Natalia. She’d seriously just come in and smack me in the head, like I was in a commercial in which I forgot to have a V-8. That’s where she was at. Slapping the old man in his sleep.

We actually instituted a points system in the house for doing chores and being good. Five points equals a dollar. So the first time I experienced Natalia giving me an actual kiss goodbye, it was immediately followed by her shouting down the hallway, “That’s two points, Mommy. Where’s my dollar?”

That one didn’t stick. I guess she figured out that it was worth more than a buck to fuck with me. Now when I leave, Sonny gives me the big sloppy kiss on the lips and Natalia leans in, but then slides up to my forehead and laughs.

She’s quite the actress. On one of our wrestling nights, she broke down in tears. I thought I had been too rough. But when I went close to check out if she was okay, she punched me in the stomach.

The truth is, she’s just not that into me. One night, Lynette popped out to pick up some food. Meanwhile, I was upstairs skipping rope. The kids were downstairs in the kitchen watching television. I wrapped up my rope and walked downstairs into the kitchen. As I turned the corner the floor creaked. Natalia hopped up from her chair, elated, and shouted, “Mommee… ughh.” A moment of pure, uncut joy followed by a crash of disappointment. Lynette wasn’t out of town, she was just out running errands. And in this case Natalia wasn’t fucking with me. She was deflated. She was genuinely crushed to see me, instead of Lynette. She wordlessly sat down, turned around and got back to WaWa Wubzy.

With Natalia you have to earn her affection. The most she’s ever interested in me is when I’m temporarily off the C-list and inching towards the B-list or hanging out with the A-list. She was really into Daddy when he took her to the premiere of Wreck-It Ralph, or when she found out that I was doing the Tonight Show on the same night as Simon Cowell because she’s into One Direction. I’m not fucking around. My relationship with Natalia significantly improved when Catch a Contractor started airing. It went from flying beanies and knees in the groin to snuggle time on the couch to watch Daddy on television.

If it seems like I’m beating up on Natalia here, it’s because chicks hold grudges and I need to set the record straight. My sister couldn’t tell you what century the Civil War took place in or who the first president was, but when it comes to the times my dad ignored her or disapproved of a boyfriend, she’s Ken fucking Burns. Girl brains are like computer hard drives that are so full of bad memories and resentment that they can’t actually compute. If chicks applied their elephant memory to actual history, rather than the history of the times Dad disappointed them, they’d all have masters’ degrees.

I can just imagine the stuff a twenty-eight-year-old Natalia is telling you in therapy. I’m sure I know one of them. My favorite time of the year isn’t Christmas; it’s the Coronado Speed Festival. That trek 125 miles south of Los Angeles, near San Diego, is my pilgrimage to Mecca. The past two years I took Sonny with me. I made him my pit crew, working on the car together beforehand, letting him do unimportant stuff like hand me tools and spraying down and wiping the fenders with a rag. We drove down together, stayed in the hotel together and even slept in the same bed. It was a real father-son bonding trip. He cherished it and was counting the days to the next one.

For the record, I tried to take Natalia in 2014. I wanted her to have as much fun as Sonny had. She didn’t want to go. I’m pretty sure she said no just to fuck with me. Anyway, Sonny will be telling his therapist, “Father worked very hard and would always try to make time for me.” Meanwhile, Natalia will be saying, “That asshole was never home, he was always working and when he did have time he would spend it with Sonny.”

I know it probably feels like I’m doing an unfair amount of complaining about Natalia, but the reality is that Sonny was just easier to deal with as a kid. I’ve always said Natalia was like raising three kids, while Sonny was like raising one old cat. She was just more energetic and she drove Sonny nuts, too. He was like a Labrador trying to take a nap and she was a caffeinated Chihuahua bouncing around nipping on his ears.

In fact, for this book, I did a little memory refreshing and listened to the radio show from the couple days around their birth. Two days after they were born I said, “The boy is a little quieter than the girl… it could all change… but at this point the boy is a little quieter.” It never changed.