For Dads Only

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #8 (PPPQ8)

2010-02-16T19:36:00.004-07:00

Last night you were working in the basement when you heard Avery getting loud with your wife, Laura. You knew Avery was a bit tired and cranky and wanted a treat or whatever....the details weren't clear. What was clear was that she was speaking to Laura in a way that wasn't acceptable. You were boiling. So you sat for a minute and weighed the pros and cons of getting in Avery's face and making sure she understood good and proper that she was not to speak to her mother like that again...ever.

Pros...she needed to know in no uncertain terms that raising her voice in defiance was NOT going to happen regularly...at least not that loud.

Cons...interject and you risk coming across like the "heavy" and usurping Laura's authority and ability to deal with situations like that as she sees fit.

An interesting dilemma. It took about 40 seconds to come up with the action plan....did you...

A) Let Laura handle the situation...to rush upstairs would be to give Avery the impression her mother couldn't be strong and that was the overriding consideration...

B) Stay in the basement and have a talk with Laura later about how you thought she should have been a little tougher on Avery...

C) Get your ass upstairs and get in your daughter's grill. "Usurping authority" or no, Avery will not address her mother in that tone and that's really all that matters. Time for you to take control...

D) Run upstairs screaming at the top of your lungs and frothing at the mouth -- something akin to a rabid rhino on speed. Get in your daughter's face. Make her cry. Terrorize her. This way you'll ensure she'll never raise her voice to her mother again. Hell if you play it right she may never again address her mother above a whisper for the rest of her years...

And the answer is? Boy D was tempting but I went with C on this. It was an easy decision actually...yes Laura can handle herself. But when you heard Avery upstairs your mind immediately flashed back to one day in Lake Placid five years ago. To one of the hundred stores that cater to tourists on Main Street. A four or five year old kid was being the biggest brat and addressing his mother in a way that should never be. And she just let it happen. Of course Avery wasn't at that age or stage but it's up to you as a parent to make sure she will NEVER get there.

So you went upstairs and got in her grill. Told her she will NEVER talk to her mom like that again.

You knew she'd cry. She did.

You knew she would run to her mom for a hug. She did.

She'll also know better next time and hopefully in the deep recesses of her mind there will be a voice telling her how far she can and cannot go. This is is essence of parenting...and it is why the decisions you make in these situations lays the foundation for tomorrow and the rest of their lives. And that is why the easy thing with your children is often the wrong thing...at least in this parent's mind...

Not to mention you know that Avery is strong. She may have been in tears for five minutes but you knew ten minutes after that the two of you would be playing ball again. And you were. The house didn't collapse. She didn't curl up into fetal position. She simply got a lesson at high volume for about a minute...and I believe the effects will last a lot longer...

Mirror Mirror

2010-02-13T09:22:00.004-07:00

Today you rocked Logan to sleep and watched yourself do it in the standing mirror you have in your bedroom. Just you and your tired little 6 1/2 month old infant in afternoon's fading light. You thought a lot in those five minutes about how you were a better father to Avery than you have been to Logan. How you've seen a lot worse dads but then you've seen better and so that wasn't a lot of comfort...

You wanted to make a New Year's Resolution (in February) to be better but those are always gone within a week so instead you just rocked her back and forth and looked at her eyes fading and you caught sight of yourself a lot, thinking you could be the greatest father or the worst and the world could care less. But this is your testimony. Every day. And you could maybe be doing better. And even without a "resolution" you quietly felt resolved...

The Chef

2010-02-09T17:27:00.002-07:00

Some photos don't need a big story. This is one of them. Taken by Laura on her IPhone during dinner prep. I believe that's a strainer in Avery's hand. I'm not sure she's actually going to use it and I'm not sure she'd actually be straining anything coming out of an oven set to 450. But that's besides the point. I've looked at this photo 50 times and it makes me smile every single time...enjoy...

Dr. Happy Hands and 8 Hours with Buddha and Damien...

2010-02-06T21:28:00.004-07:00

I equate 8 hours solo parenting two very young girls as sort of like going to the proctologist. First there's that awful sense of dread days before the event. The absolute, abject fear that permeates your existence for days. Then you finally get down to it and the whole damn experience flies by. Hell you even find that if you relax enough, you enjoy it in the end...

That's what today was like. Day one of Laura studying to become a pilates instructor, and the first time I'd spend 8 straight hours with Logan (Buddha) and Avery (Damien). I mean, don't get my wrong. I LOVE my time with my girls and I get plenty of it. But usually it's two hours here with Logan, then two hours with Avery, and so on. Never anything like today. And I was slightly fearful, to be honest. But Laura wants to learn how to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan and so I became Mr. Mom for the first of many days.

I'll spare you all the gory details of who pee'd when and what diapers were changed where. It was a GREAT day. Aided somewhat by a 90 minute workout at the gym where childcare was provided. Home, gym, bank, lunch, bookstore...I felt like we lived the whirlwind and daddy kept it all together. And that might have been the greatest lesson for today -- keeping it together. When you're on the move with a six-month old and a three year old, having the details straight is imperative #1. And not that I needed it, but boy did it deepen (yet again) my sense of marvel at how mom keeps everything in order.

Every time I moved a limb I had a mental checklist of at least a hundred things; where is the next diaper? what time is the next feeding? where are the snacks? their bags...hats...jackets...all the things that a mom thinks of routinely I had to concentrate on, hard, if the ship was to keep running smoothly...

By the time mom walked in I was exhausted. Not because the day was difficult. Like I said earlier it was GREAT, pretty low stress compared to what my mind imagined. I was tired because following two small kids around is simply exhausting even on the best of days!

...At the risk of telling any moms out there what they already know....

"That's Just the Way it is...."

2010-02-05T09:47:00.004-07:00

As much as you would like it to be different you pretty much realize when you’re a parent that the sun rises and sets with how your children are doing. For roughly the past month Avery has had huge separation issues when we drop her off at school in the morning. It’s bad with me, worse with Laura because the mother/daughter bond is different. So I end up dropping Avery off at school most days.

Two days ago she had to be ripped from me by her teacher. She was stuck to me like a barnacle. She had my shoulder in a death grip and clung to me as if she was being consigned to spend the rest of her childhood in a Thai sweatshop. No matter how you tell yourself it’s normal, that this is a phase, that she’ll grow out of it in a month, the pain you feel in your stomach is visceral, real. She was pulled from me and I wanted to go into the nearest closet and cry. I talked to her teacher for 20 minutes and that helped but when you see your child suffer that way...the creases of their face...the wrenched look of pain and abandonment....that stays with you for hours if not days.

Today she was a little better. I found myself tap dancing in the car; singing, joking, anything to keep her in a good mood so she wouldn’t be petrified when I left. She bounced on the trampoline for a few minutes and seemed so happy. Then I moved to leave quickly and she bolted off the tramp and ran after me. I had to leave. If I stayed it would have only made things worse. As I type this all I can really see is her face as she chased after me. That look that said "why are you leaving me when I need you to hold me, daddy?"

Laura will pick her up. She will have had a great day, bouncing on the trampoline, playing on the swing, eating four bowls of sweet rice…but right now all I can see is her face, chasing after me like she’ll never see it again…

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #7 (PPPQ7)

2010-02-01T21:16:00.001-07:00

Here's the scenario. The family is at a birthday party for a local boy. He's turning four and the party is at a kids' gym with tons of activities. Lots of kids around and parents and the usual.

God damn Avery reminds me of myself. Perfectly. She acts exactly as I would. Running around and engaging when there's an activity she likes. Being timid and shy the next minute. So shy sometimes that she doesn't want to join in to some of the activities. She's always been a cautious child but I'm dying for her to break out of that a bit. The kids are all playing in the middle of the room and I'm trying to having her join in but all she says is, "I don't want to..."

I'm in a quandary. I want her to join the other kids but I don't want to force her. I'm sitting right on the fence on this one. Push her a bit past her boundaries to show her she can or let her develop on her own when she's ready...so what do I do?

A) Don't push at all. If she wants to join in she will. If not, she'll develop at her own pace and hopefully time will make her a little more daring...

B) Suggest a number of times that it would be fun. Push a little bit but let her make the call in the end according to her comfort level...

C) Make her join in to some of the events even if she doesn't want to. Odds are she'll really enjoy it if she just breaks through the initial resistance barrier. Hold her hand, hold BOTH hands if need be but push her to join in a bit and in the process expand those boundaries...

D) Pull her aside. Call her a "sissy," and insist that she either joins in with the other kids or none of them will ever come to any of her parties. Make sure she knows she'll be celebrating her "Sweet-16" at a table for one in the local diner. Then make her join in anyway and ask her in a loud voice "why aren't you more like other kids here???" Embarrass her a bit. That's what dads are for...

And the answer is?

B

But wouldn't D be fun? No, B was the call....I asked a few times, let her know that I'd be there with her. I pushed a little bit but in the end she wasn't comfortable and at 3 years old she gets to make that call. I figure let her get to 4 and then it's time to drop "D" on her ass....

(Bagged) Grapes of Wrath...

2010-01-29T11:06:00.001-07:00

Children. They do this to you. Pictured left is my wife, Laura. Or rather my wife's hands. She wasn't quite feeling a perfect "10" at this point so she wouldn't let me include her face.

But I digress.

This is a beautiful picture of her hands. What is she doing? Yes that's right. She's squeezing a "bag" of wine. Yes that's correct I said a bag of wine. With the grip of an Olympic wrestler. She's trying to squeeze every drop of happy juice out of the bag. Why? Because the time is 6:04pm and both kids are still up. There's no end in sight...and there's wine to be consumed. And god damn it when will those kids go to bed so we can get properly tanked?

"Let There Be Yellow....!"

2010-01-27T21:53:00.005-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Let me be the first to announce that our first child, Avery Anderson is finally, at long last.....on her way to being potty trained.

God both Laura and I thought she might make it into grade school wearing size 12 diapers. We tried subtle direction, cajoling, small amounts of bribery followed by obscene bribery...all to no effect. Avery Anderson is her dad as a female three year old; cautious and stubborn beyond all reason. But today I am here to announce that era is officially OVER. Today Laura sweetened the pot (pun intended), offering Avery toys, candy and vast, untold riches if she sat her fanny on the potty and lo and behold at around 3:46pm Avery Anderson requested her tush be placed on that most wonderful piece of royal blue plastic where she would be free to "stream at will" and no I'm not talking about the Internet.

By the time I arrived home at about 5:15pm she had already sat her keyster on the can AGAIN...and wonder of wonders, lightning struck for a third time at around 5:28 and 32 seconds I believe, though somehow I wasn't asked to participate in the live "streaming" session. After she dropped some liquid refreshment into her little potty she and mom poured said pee into the real potty and joyously flushed it all away...

Congrads little Avery. This is one small whiz for a little girl. One giant leap for this family. Oh I know there may be setbacks along the way. The road to porcelain is paved with mishaps...but this is a time for celebration, not contemplation. So the above picture is dedicated to you. With your rump making three visits to the plastic goddess in less than two hours you are well on your way to imitating that annoying, incontinent 90 year old uncle that everyone has. You know, the one who stretches minutes into hours, reading the paper cover to cover while sitting on the john till his legs have lost circulation...? That could be you....

You go, girl...

"It's Just That It's Delicate..."

2010-01-26T23:13:00.001-07:00

Sometimes a song matches the mood you are in perfectly. Logan taking a one hour nap in her crib. Waking up as a fusspot. You walking her around and feeling her start to make a delicate nest of your shoulder. Damien Rice's brilliant "Delicate" playing in the living room. Filling every crack and every inch of space around you. No one else is home as Logan snuggles up and settles in. The light just starting to fade on the day. You listening to the wide open spaces in the song and swaying back and forth, imitating the quiet flow of a rocking chair. Kissing the back of her head and whispering in her ear. Knowing that she needs more sleep. Beaming inside that you might be the one to give it to her...

You moving to the sound of that sweet violin mixing in with the not so delicate sound of a six-month old snoring. That beautiful sound rising and falling like waves on the ocean and your shoulder is the beach. Feeling damp as a pool of saliva slowly spreads on your shirt. Thinking that you are happy no one else is around to disturb this...your back will soon ache and your arm will lose its strength but you're still happy no one else is around...you walk by the mirror roughly 56 times in the next 15 minutes and snap this picture...

As You Are So Shall You Parent...

2010-01-24T15:58:00.004-07:00

So last night Avery woke up at 11:30pm earlier than usual and you tried to get her back down but it was no dice..so you slept in her big-girl bed five feet away but it didn't help and she woke up again and again and again crying and sobbing and nearly hysterical.

So then by 12:30am you brought her into bed with you and hugged her as tight as any lover but she wouldn't stop shaking and you hugged her and then let her go and then hugged her harder but she kept waking up and you didn't know what the hell was wrong and a few times you were pissed cause you thought she was just afraid of the dark or something but she kept waking up and sobbing and she couldn't tell you why.

You even enlisted mom to come in and help at 1:30am but by 1:45 mom was gone and your little girl was waking up every 20 minutes and nearly hyperventilating. So by 4:30am you weren't peeved anymore you were just dead tired and she was spitting and dripping saliva she was crying so hard and you still had no idea what the hell was going on.

So by 7:15am mom walked down with Logan and couldn't believe the battle you had gone through and she said to you "maybe she's sick" and the thought had never really occurred to you but she's NEVER like this and the fact is you never get very sick. You haven't taken a sick day in like 12 years and you'd NEVER let anything less then a full blown fever or flu keep you down and the fact is you never even considered that for your little girl. And then Laura takes out the thermometer and sticks it in Avery's ear and then announces that she has a fever of 101. And in a way you felt like a great dad for bearing the last 8 hours and boy did that feeling go right out the window in three seconds when you realized you never considered the most obvious thing...

And later that morning you confessed your idiocy to Laura but it didn't help much. You still felt like a giant tool anyway and sort of felt like you should apologize to your daughter and Laura took this picture of Avery napping and you wondered if she was dreaming of better parental care the night before...

"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star..."

2010-01-21T22:06:00.003-07:00

Tonight contained one of those unexpected bits of sweetness that life as a parent sometimes brings. You were reading to Avery before she went to bed. It's your night time ritual. Upstairs. Into her pajamas. Reading "Thomas" the train engine book. EVERY night. Till your hoping that somehow on the next page Thomas has a nasty derailment that leads to a long career on the scrap heap...but you digress...

The book comes with a button that when pressed, plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star..." Avery wants you to sing it EVERY night. Tonight you did but you asked her to join in. Somehow she knew the words. Not just the "Twinkle Twinkle" part but the rest of the verse as well. There you were singing completely off key and holding your little girl while she mis-timed every word and it was glorious...and you both laughed and laughed and laughed for the longest time in her bed until your cheeks hurt and you wanted to cry...

You were amazed she knew the words and you're still not sure how or when she memorized them but as you ushered her into the bathroom to brush her teeth you picked her up from behind and gave her the biggest, most spontaneous hug you can ever remember for just making your day.

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #6 (PPPQ6)

2010-01-19T19:05:00.005-07:00

The time is 3:45pm. You're alone with Avery and you're starting to watch her progressively melt down before your eyes. She has had a crazy active day and the chance that she'll make it to 7pm without emotionally disassembling is between slim and none and slim is leaving the townhouse.

You've got all the warning signs. Rubbing her eyes. Starting to overreact to little things. Usually the cut off for nap time is 2:15pm. You're way past that but you'll be staring in a remake of "Misery," if she doesn't sleep and you'll play James Caan's character. The down side is that by napping her and keeping it to 30 - 45 minutes you'll be waking her out of a deep sleep and be inviting Armageddon. Guaranteed she's a bear for an hour after that. Lock it in. But from 5:30pm on she'll be the better for it. A quandary to be sure...stick it out or put her down for a short nap....what do you do? And by the way the wife is out running errands so as much as you'd like to pass the buck and go cycling that's not on the table...

A) Against your better judgment you put her down for the nap. The FULL nap. Let her sleep till about 5:30pm and hope somehow she isn't thrown completely off her sleep schedule. Fat chance she'll go down before 9pm...

B) You put her down for the nap. BUT you wake her up around 4:30pm. She'll hate your guts for awhile and life will suck but she'll be ready to go down by 8pm...

C) Stick it out. Life is for the bold and you'll boldly hope she'll hang on till 7pm without an emotional apocalypse hitting North Boulder.

D) Start randomly calling sex hot lines and don't worry about it for a second. You're busy, so she'll figure it out on her own. If you see her slumped over on the couch with drool dripping from her mouth you'll guess she fell asleep. If not, who cares anyway, mom will be home to deal with the aftermath in 20...

And the answer is...?

B Holy crap she was a bear. She was snoring loud enough to shake the bed when you started waking her at 4:30pm. 10 minutes to get her out of bed. 10 to get her downstairs. Another 10 to get her to stop crying. You played your favorite new sing-along, John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" and that finally seemed to snap her out of it...you sang "Rocky Mountain Hiiiiiiiiigh" and she responded with "Colorado!" at the top of her lungs. It was actually a pretty sweet moment. And by 5:15pm she was back on her "A" game. Today you made the right choice...

Tonight's Thought

2010-01-18T21:40:00.005-07:00

It always makes me chuckle that a number of people clearly look up to us as parents. I mean, if all of them knew the times I wanted to drop Logan in her crib and slam the door behind me...how many times I feel like we had zero clue what we were doing; letting Avery sleep in our bed one week, then making her cry the next and then choosing some entirely different path the week after that...

Parenting is taking the gobs of advice you get, filtering it into something workable that you and your wife/husband are comfortable with and then hoping for the best. Then it's about not getting discouraged and trying something else when Plan "A" fails miserably...

It's nice to be put on a pedestal once in awhile. Good for the ego I guess...but pedestals always lead to nasty falls and I can't tell you with certainty that our children won't grow up to be crack-whores at 15. No one plans for failure as a parent...sometimes it just happens that way...

Wait till they're off to college, then judge us on the job we did...

Maximum Living and the Urge to Fly...

2010-01-16T16:48:00.005-07:00

I love my children and I adore my wife. Let's start with that understood. I spent 20 years in sports television and made enough money to enjoy the insane things in life that only a small percentage of people would find remotely enjoyable; Ironmans, world travel, destination marathons, all that good stuff. If I saw a listing for a race and my eyes popped out of my head then that race became a mission.

That's how I ended up in New Zealand at the dawn of the new millennium, Iceland in the summer of 2001, Australia, Budapest, Austria, Penticton and a dozen other exotic locales too numerous to mention. Most of the time by myself. It was a tremendous life. I wasn't a pro. I wasn't great at racing, but after struggling for 30 years to find myself, I made damn sure to leave it all at every finish line and have the time of my life afterwards.

It was an existence that bears little resemblance to the life I have now as a husband and a parent.

With a wife, you can still live that existence. With two very small children? It becomes exponentially harder; life becomes a series of decisions and diapers and I don't mind making that trade-off. Being a husband and father is better than any race I will ever run. But at the same time, you need to focus on your children -- hard, if you expect to be a good parent. And with so much time and effort dedicated to them, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that something was missing. A friend of mine once said to me, "You don't do ordinary life well, do you?" and he was right. Too much "ordinary" living and I get antsy...edgy. I get the urge to plot races, to travel again to exotic locales. To find my next hunt and embark on another search and destroy mission...

There is a part of me that feels like a sharp instrument that's been blunted by domestication. Soft when I used to feel hard. I'm used to setting a goal and mowing it down. Now my only goal is to get my three-year old daughter to sleep through the night and be happy the next day. I am the knife that's gone dull through lack of use. And I feel the tug of the "extraordinary life" I used to live more and more with each diaper I change.

My fear is the ordinary; at work, at home, in life. One of my biggest fears is to be lying on my death bed at 90 with regrets, thinking..."I should have climbed that mountain or done the Great Wall of China Marathon or seen the Galapagos...but I didn't." This thought is present every day and it is beyond sad. With that in mind there are two missions that are kicking around my brain. And like in the days of old, my palms get a tad sweaty and my mind races when I start to ponder the details...

First, I have an urge to cycle all the way across our country. Coast to coast. I have a romantic desire to ride 100 miles, getting rained on and honked at during the day, then camping out under the stars in Utah, visiting a country bar in Texas and drinking homemade Kentucky moonshine at night. 30 or 40 days of exploration and pushing myself to the brink of sanity. Damn that sounds like an amazing way to spend a month, doesn't it? Now in reality, romance may give way to saddle sores and sunburn, but my heart pounds every time I really start to think about the feasibility of this mission...and that is my ultimate litmus test.

Second, I'm trying to convince the wife to take our two children (who'll be 5 and 2) and travel the world for a year. Thailand, Costa Rica, Brazil, France, Hackensack...the place or places are irrelevant. It's the experience that matters. Pushing the boundaries of the every day. My wife has been a bit resistant -- for good reason. Travelling with two small children isn't always fun, let alone setting up shop somewhere halfway around the world for six months. But I'm working on her. Every few days we talk about it and I throw some combat zen her way; "life is for the bold, hon," "think about looking back on this when we're 70, babe.." those are two of my favorites...and I think I'm getting to her...

Maybe neither of these fantasies will become a reality. Maybe both will. At this point I don't know. I do know that most people would be content with having an amazing wife and children. I am too...but then again I'm not. I hunger for more. To be challenged, physically, mentally, emotionally. The reality is that without a mission, without a hunt, a little piece of me is dead. Here's hoping that some day I can have both...

Our Daily Visit to the Town of Dumpos Muchos...

2010-01-15T21:24:00.006-07:00

Here's one of the things they REALLY don't tell you about being a parent. The pooh clean-up. Witness this collection of soul-stirring photography above and see our sweet little Logan visiting Dumpos Muchos on a dialy basis and in the process separating myth from reality for prespective parents...

Myth: before you're a parent, dumps are probably the last thing you think about when painting a portrait of life with a child in your mind. If you do, there's usually a little fantasy you have that goes something like this...

Magically you somehow sense that your child has had a "movement." She coos as you undress her. You peel off her diaper and the smell of a dozen roses fills the air as you easily slip off the soiled diaper and slip a fresh, clean one on under her tender bottom. She continues to giggle. Then you button up her onesy, both laughing and fully embracing the father/daughter moment, wishing you could savor this and every other second for all time...

Reality: shit happens. All over the place. Usually down her leg in the form of a mustard colored semi-solid with the consistency of a thin stew. No diaper could contain this. So BOOM, your're cradling your little girl in your arms and your hand finds something really wet on her leg. You really hope it's a drool-stain but who are you kidding...drool stains rarely make their way to your daughter's hamstring. So you look down and inevitably you catch sight of a rapidly spreading yellow stain on her leg that your hand is caught smack-dab in the middle of...

The diaper changing is the easy part; peeling it off and all her clothes and trying hard to keep her toes from kicking turd all over the living room. Next step is the oxy-clean. Full disclosure, the wife always handles that. I would be tempted to look at the onesy and mutter "Stay safe" before tossing it in the garbage. But since we don't have unlimited funds Laura has scrubbed with oxy-clean so often and bought so much of the stuff that she should own shares in the company. EVERY DAY. Scrubbing rancid turds out of clothes...usually right before we have to leave for an appointment. So enjoy the pictures. Give me another month and I'll give you 30 more...

The....Horror (Volume 2)

2010-01-12T21:28:00.003-07:00

You don't write about the wife a whole lot. Maybe you take her for granted a bit. But she's the foreman at the plant...the backbone of the operation here in Boulder. Last night you were sleeping in the guest bedroom again because Logan had a cold and you all knew it was going to be a long night.

At 11:45pm you heard Logan crying and you came down to see if you could help the wife at all. She was cradling your little daughter. Rocking her back and forth gently, the way only a mother could. You felt like the spare tire on your car. Useless except in case of emergency. Logan still had her cold. Still congested and waking up every hour. You looked at your wife as she held Logan in her arms and prepared to sleep sitting up for most of the night. Your wife's eyes said everything through the silence. They told you "the next seven hours are going to be brutal but I'm her mother and I'll find a way......"

You wanted to help but you knew that if anything was going to give Logan sleep it was going to be the nipple -- Laura's, not yours. You felt useless. All you could do was prop a pillow under Laura's arm and wish her good luck. You left the room at 11:50pm. Feeling a little shorter than when you came down. Wondering if your will would have been as strong...thinking you knew the answer....

"So tell me again why you're tired?"

2010-01-10T19:34:00.003-07:00

This is what non-parents tend to ask me a lot so I thought I'd detail a normal weekend day such as today...

6:45am...Laura wakes up with Logan who definitely has a cold. A 5-month old with a cold is not a good thing. They can't eat or sleep for long because they can't breath. And unlike you or me they can't pick or blow their nose. So they're screwed, and so are you by the way...

7:30am...I get up. I slept longer because I was up till 1:30am on the computer. And I got up twice during the night when Avery had nightmares...

8am...Breakfast is a 90-minute process of cooking and handing Logan off like a football while Laura preps...I have the first of many memories of when Laura and I were childless and we vacationed in New Orleans. Stumbling around Bourbon Street at 1am is the memory I'm rehashing right now....might as well have been 20 years ago...

9:30am...House clean-up. We're breaking in a new babysitter and the place is a disaster. "Clean-up" is actually inaccurate. Think of it more as placing crap in semi-neat piles all around the house. With two kids tugging at you...

10am...Taylor arrives and Laura immediately preps to go to the gym. I'm heading out to get some more java at the local coffee shop. Logan is already down and Laura is leaving in 10 minutes. I'm absolutely sure that Logan will wake up as soon as Laura's car has left the garage, and she'll scream so loud and long that our new babysitter will be turned into a suicidal wreck within 15 minutes. So I need to get back by 10:25am to talk her off the ledge...

10:30am...I get back home. No ledge. Logan is still down, thank the lord...

11am...I actually get some work done on the computer while Taylor entertains Avery and Logan still sleeps.

12:30am...Laura gets home and I immediately prep for the gym. By 1pm I am out the door. Body is tired from lack of sleep but that's life and I'm a bear when I'm not active...

3:45pm...I have a two hour workout and get back home before 4pm, ready for the dinner time "grind." Dinner is usually a beast because we have to trade Logan off twice as often as we did at breakfast. She's sick and the closer she is to 7pm bedtime the rougher it usually gets even when she's well...

5:30pm...Avery has had a great day but she didn't nap and now she's falling apart. I raised my voice on two separate occasions and she burst into tears. I was right to raise my voice but seeing your three-year old turned into a sobbing mound of jelly is not fun. I'm too tired to really feel bad. She'll get over it...

6pm...She falls apart again and all I can do is laugh...she's transitioning out of taking naps and once in awhile she goes haywire around 5pm because she's exhausted. Lucky us. Today is one of those days.

6:05pm...I ask Laura if she wants me to go out and get wine. We have none. Since we've been back from Florida we've been on this "sobriety kick." It feels moronic and ridiculous right now but we heard somewhere that not every set of parents blows through a bottle of wine every night. I haven't met them....

6:15pm...Hand off time. Laura is cooking and I'm walking around a dead tired infant who wants nothing more than to fall asleep on my shoulder. But 6:15pm is too early so I do a half hour dance with Logan; she cries, nearly falls asleep, then cries again. Rinse and repeat. Meanwhile I'm also trying to keep Avery entertained while Laura cooks...easy, right?

6:30pm...I ask Laura again if she wants wine. My shoulder has a grapefruit sized drool stain on it courtesy of Logan. I've been carrying around an 18 pound sack for 20 minutes and my back aches. I'm dead tired and I want alcohol. Even if I have to consume it under a park bench out of a paper bag...

7pm...Dinner. Thank the lord. No wine....

7:08pm It's great to be able to take 8 minutes to sit down, relax and connect with your family after a long day but the table has to be cleared, dishes have to be done and two kids have to be put to bed...

7:15pm...Laura puts Logan down. An extended affair because Logan still can't breath so she has a hard time falling asleep. I read to Avery and I can tell Logan has given her the cold.

7;45pm...Laura looks like a truck ran her over and dragged her three city streets for good measure. I probably look the same...we pay bills while collapsing on the couch and staring at the floor...

8:15pm...This is where the two of us should be working on our five small businesses. Planning the future. Getting creative. Sure. I can barely type. Laura heads upstairs. Logan will be up ten times tonight guaranteed because she can't breath. At some point Laura will sleep sitting up with Logan attached to her boob, snorting...

8:45pm...I was trying to rally and get some computer work done, ahhh but there's Avery crying now because she woke up since she can't breath....she's exhausted and congested and I rub her back for 5 minutes. I contemplate sucking the snot out of her nose with my mouth. I don't but I think if I had the wine I might have....the Eagles lyric from "Lyin" Eyes" plays in my head...."Another night....it's gonna be a long one...."

So go ahead, ask me again why I'm so tired??? Answer: cause I'm a parent, that's why...

Big Love

2010-01-10T11:26:00.005-07:00

It's a show on HBO. It could just as easily be a documentary on Logan's thighs. Holy Mackerel. We call her "Buddha" because she has this round head that sits on top of a circular body with zero tone. But we're always drawn to her legs.

Changing her diaper is near impossible until you peel back the fat layers. Here are two pictures at the start of the process. Where do I start? Picture one illustrates the point. By picture two she was feeling shy and tried covering up the leg-lard.

Nutri-System anyone?

Satisfaction...

2010-01-07T23:58:00.002-07:00

The satisfaction of being a parent can sometimes be felt in silence. In a glance between you and your wife on a flight. Both of you wishing you were home and your children are snoring and you catch sight of Laura's weary eyes. For all of two seconds. And you break out in smiles as wide as canyons while you both cradle your little girls. Like look at the two of us and who would have ever imagined and being in the back row holding these two is better than first class could ever be...

You could spend the rest of the flight giving words to that moment, but sometimes silence is better...

Travel Snippets...

2010-01-07T19:27:00.005-07:00

Snapshots from a loooong day of travel...

1). A crappy nights' rest because Avery kept kicking me in her sleep. Laura having even less success with Logan and waking up grumpy. I walked Logan around the lobby for 45 minutes just to give the wife 20 minutes of pure sleep....

2). Wondering if we really woke up in Miami. It was 35 degrees at 8am....

3) Wearing the same undergarment for two days straight is Rough. Note the capital "R." It's there on purpose.

4). Deciding NOT to spend $70/$75 to drag 4 tired humans around the Miami Zoo for an hour. So the kids are bored but surviving at the hotel with lots of TV. Yuck...

5). Waiting at the gate at the airport for two hours. Avery exhausted from inactivity, curling up and falling asleep in my arms. You can't beat boredom, can you? It might have been the first time she fell asleep on me since she was 1 1/2...it was uncomfortable but nice at the same time...

6). Already feeling like a zombie as they close the forward door to the plane. It's supposed to be snowing in Denver and 13 degrees without the wind chill. I'm wearing sandals, shorts and a very light fleece, and it's a 10 minute walk to our car....s'all good.

7) A four hour flight home at flight level 320. An 18-pound butterball in a onesy being passed back and forth between the wife and I....ahhhh who am I kidding, the wife did most of the heavy lifting...

8) Doing a 5 minute dash to the car. 10 degrees. Snow. Frozen toes. Me slip-sliding the wrong way down an airport on-ramp.

9) Feeling happy to be home but happier if I could actually see it. Windshield wipers are crap and I can barely see a thing in front of me with lots of precious cargo in the passenger seats.

10) Collapsing into a freezing cold bed.

The girls were warriors. They put me to shame and handled a brutal travel day with grace. Thank the lord for small favors...

Leaving On a Jet Plane....

2010-01-05T20:44:00.003-07:00

Today was supposed to be our big day or travel back from family vacation in Florida. We made it through a 90 minute drive, clueless Marge at the ticket counter and then battled through security. We were set to fly from Miami to Charlotte and then connect on through Denver. A brutal day of travel to be sure...then they make an announcement that the flight to Charlotte was over sold. Way over sold. 12 passengers over sold somehow as the ticket agent told me.

Next thing I know he's offering me 600 per person(!)to bump us to a flight tomorrow that will get us DIRECT to Denver. I nearly lept over the counter to accept the offer. Somehow staying here one night in a pretty nice Doubletree will pay for the flights on our next two family vacations. The rest of the night was not so amazing to be sure. Logan was fussy and Avery was bored. We've got to think up something fun to do with the kids until our 6:15pm flight tomorrow night.

By the way whenever we have a long family travel day in front of us it always helps me to mentally prepare for the absolute worst; Logan screaming from the second we plop her in the car seat to the second we take her off the plane. Avery fussy as hell. A brutal, bumpy plane flight and me in a middle seat with heartburn and foot fungus. Somehow that puts me in a better frame of mind for the trip. I expect brutality. I usually get something better so it helps put a smile on my face.

Tomorrow we're going "home" to Boulder for our first time as a family. Here's hoping it won't be nearly as nasty a trip as it is in my mind. And if it is, it's ok too because I've got $1,800 good reasons to tolerate it....

Sleep....

2010-01-03T11:38:00.002-07:00

One of the hardest things to communicate to prospective parents is just how tired you are every night at 9pm....wait, make that 8:30. And how most of the time you don't even care.

A good friend of mine asked what we did for New Year's Eve and for a split second I was slightly embarrassed. The wife was snoring by 9:45pm. I made it on the computer till 12:02am. I would have knocked off at about 11pm but it was New Year's Eve after all and if there was a night to bang on the keyboard an extra hour this was it. No "Midnight Run" in Central Park in NYC. No projectile vomiting in an alley at 4am like I did after a night of severe alcohol intake about 15 years ago. Hell we didn't even bang pots or anything. For a second I thought, "Is this what our formerly exciting life has come to???"

I entered parenthood thinking that things would be different for us. Actually I remember telling my wife often that if we couldn't keep a good chunk of the life we had built for ourselves intact than I might not want to be a parent. We had such an exciting, fun time as a couple that I imagined resenting an infant or two robbing us of the ability to stay up late night doing whatever we darn well pleased...

In the end I think the transition to 8:30pm exhaustion is like a receding hairline. It happens gradually. You aren't always happy about it but it sort of feels natural. Every once in a while you resent it but then you look back and remember all the energy you devoted to your children in the last 12-14 hours and you don't wonder much further about why you're a mental zombie when the sun goes down. And if you do it doesn't matter much because you'll probably be asleep in ten minutes anyway....

More Potty...

2010-01-03T08:20:00.005-07:00

As gloriously detailed in Paper Parents Pop Quiz #4 (PPPQ4), our first daughter is slow on the draw with regards to sitting her fannie on the potty. She talks a good game but when it's time to deliver she looks at me with those innocent eyes and says she wants to pooh in her diaper as opposed to sitting on the dumper.

My patience is starting to wear a bit thin. Maybe being around other potty trained kids in school will fix things over time...maybe not. She's been in school for three months and it hasn't so I'm feeling the itch. We've tried bribery, and if promising her a full day's worth of ice cream doesn't work, nothing will...I'm running low on options, but one of them is still to let "nature" take its course. This is becoming a bit more difficult as time goes by because I don't clearly envision something coming along to change the situation.

I am open to suggestions for sure. Right now we're a bit stuck on what to do if anything at all! But I can tell you I'm wanting to feed her a gallon of laxative and tie her to the can until she craps her brains out! Probably not advisable though....

The Steering Wheel as Metaphor...

2009-12-31T09:15:00.010-07:00

Damn I'm afraid my dad will read this but here goes.....he was right about the steering wheel....actually let me amend that. He was right without knowing he was right.

Back when he taught me how to drive 25 years ago he used to talk about steering. "A good driver will never jerk the wheel back and forth. You make minute adjustments...subtle with the steering wheel...so you don't have to make major adjustments when your car is going off the road."

Obviously he was talking automobiles but instinctively I took that as a metaphor for life....and that has become especially true as a parent. Let your kids go too far; with junk food or TV or any other bad habit, and you'll be yanking the steering wheel back towards center in a month's time. Or worse, you'll be sitting there a year later with their bad habits so ingrained that you've got little shot to alter them anymore. Then you're really stuck.

Stay on top of your kids every day -- and I don't mean be an overbearing nutjob 24/7, and their "car" will likely stay close to the middle of the road where you want it....so far this metaphor has paid dividends with our two children, so I guess a quick "Thanks dad" is in order....damn that's not easy to admit....

"The....Horror" Volume 1

2009-12-28T21:07:00.007-07:00

Your wife wakes you out of a deep, deep sleep at 5:15am. You've been sleeping next to your three year old daughter in the spare bedroom because she's been sick and waking up often. You got to bed around 1am and you're pretty sure when the wife walks in and tugs on your arm, this isn't gonna be good. She tells you she's been up since 2:30am with an infant that has a stuffed nose and can't put herself to sleep for any length of time.

Your wife looks the way you feel...like crap. But the little infant in her arms looks wide awake. You're screwed. These are the moments they didn't tell you about -- or if they did maybe I wasn't paying attention...

Choices? Tell your wife to suck it up and keep dealing or drag your ass out of bed and deal with it yourself. The latter idea seems like time spent in purgatory. You're sleeping off a big meal and three glasses of wine and the house is pitch black. But are you really going to ask the wife to tack another three hours onto the three that she's already spent taking care of your sick little girl? No.

So you walk your infant around for 45 minutes in the black downstairs and you feel the discs compressing in your back as the clock on the VCR moves a minute for every hundred steps taken. All you hear is your own voice gently saying, "Shhhhhhhh..." and the shuffle of your feet over the cold tiles. Finally you get her to sleep on your chest and you sit ever-so-gently in your recliner because you're terrified she'll be jostled awake. You lay back afraid to move, exhausted from trying to relax every muscle. She starts snoring and you lay there for exactly 46 minutes.

It's 7:01am, the light is creeping in from under the window treatments, and you feel like you're coming off a three-day bender as she stirs awake. The only thing you feel halfway decent about is that you were able to give your wife 90 minutes of good sleep.

You're shot...already. Physically and mentally.

The day is just about to start.

"T.A.R.Y." #1

2009-12-27T19:58:00.001-07:00

They aren't robots. I have to remind myself of that frequently. Daughter #1 is just a little thing that still sucks on a pacifier and pees and poops into a diaper. She isn't an adult and won't be for years and years and years.

If I had to point to my biggest failing as a dad the first time around it would have to be the expectations I viewed my first daughter with -- and perhaps I shouldn't put that in past tense. I still do make that mistake sometimes. A large part of me has always felt that if she reaches for candy and I say "No," that she will understand and act accordingly. When she doesn't I've always had a hard time computing...I mean I did tell her "No," so she should understand and not reach for the candy again, right?

Ahhh, if only parenting were so simple. Unfortunately she's not 13, she's 3. Actually I'll be lucky if she listens any better when she's 13...

Today my wife left for the gym and my little girl stood saying goodbye 54 times like her mom was headed off to dismantle road mines in Iraq. As the garage closed she had a pitiful little whimper that lasted 5 minutes. Tomorrow my wife will go to the gym and my daughter will run around the house, bouncing off furniture like bumper cars, barely noticing. What's the difference in 24 hours? Beats me, I'm just the dad.

I do know that I dropped my daughter off at school a few weeks ago and the same thing occurred. Monday she could barely wait to say goodbye. She was off to play and daddy didn't matter for a second. Wednesday she was stuck to me like a barnacle. I said to her teacher, "I don't get it..." She looked at me and said, "Hey she's barely even three years old, she's just starting to figure things out..."

Ditto...

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #5 (PPPQ5)

2009-12-26T12:36:00.000-07:00

This one happened yesterday. Not pleasant.

Daughter #1 is a great girl but when she's off....? Be someplace else. She gets moody and the next thing you know she's impossible to please. Like a hormonal woman of 33, only she's 3. It's actually a great test of your parenting ability in a way. If you aren't strong you'll spend four hours being driven from pillar to post by a miserable child.

Today you were all at the mall and you could see her slip into one of those moods. The first "tell" was how quiet she got and how often she wanted to be picked up. Next she clutches you in a death-grip when you try to leave her with your dad and use the bathroom at the mall...

Then at the playground she starts off happy for five minutes but things go downhill. Fast. Slide, see-saw, monkey-bars....Nothing makes her happy and you quiz and probe for five minutes but if she knows what's wrong she sure isn't telling. There are some tears but mostly just sad melancholy. The kind where you want to smack her on the ass (if not the mouth) and tell her to snap out of it. Nothing stems the tide. Back in the car she melts down again and when you try to help fasten her seat belt she starts balling. What do you do? Keep in mind she's had a cold for the last three days so there are extenuating circumstances...

A) Bite your tongue and keep an even keel. You really want to tell her to "Shut the F*** up!" but she's still under the weather and you'll stay calm and give her a very, very big benefit of the doubt...

B) Let her have it. It's all well and good to be supportive and not jump off the deep end but that has its limits and she just passed them. At this point she's going to get a finger in the face and you'll get right in her grill. Hopefully this will help her -- you know it'll help you.

C) Take her out of the car, give her a timeout in the park. Basically an extension of B taken to the next level. Unbuckle the seat belt, finger in her face, get in her grill and give her some verbiage at high volume.

D) Ignore it. Tell grandpa to drive on, knowing that at some point the meltdown will end. You really don't know why she's melting but you've tried your level-headed best to stop it with no result. At this point let it play out on its own...

And the answer is...?

A

B and C were the heavy favorites but I successfully managed to stay silent when I had the urge to tell her to "Shut the F*** up!" As usual it was a gut call and there was no right or wrong. Tomorrow if the same thing happened I might have gone with B because she was really acting foul and I thought there was no excuse for it -- well almost no excuse. She was still a bit sick and that might have helped me hang on and answer A...

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #4 -- (PPPQ4)

2009-12-23T17:47:00.001-07:00

So here's one...daughter #1 is what we call, "slow on the draw" as a life habit. She was slow to crawl, slow to walk, slow to speak and right now she's slow to use the potty. She just turned three so no cause for big concern but most kids around her age are peeing and dumping on the toilet and she isn't.

Now my biggest regret as a parent the first time around was how I wanted to treat her as a functioning adult. Meaning when she was slow to walk I forced her hand (or foot) a little bit. I basically MADE her take two steps towards me one day. It was a little traumatic but the upshot was that daughter #1 was walking a week later. Looking back I can't say the ends justified the means. Sure I wish she was walking earlier but there really wasn't a good reason to push her when I did.

So. Daughter #1 is now at the same point with her potty training. We're getting advice from friends, family and Mohammud the cab driver on how to get her out of diapers. I'm starting to get a tad impatient and beginning to feel the itch to push. Should I...

A) Let her go as long as it takes. Hopefully she won't be entering her high school years in pampers but it may take a while to get her on the potty. Whatever...it does no good to push her in areas like this, you'll only give her a complex.

B) Start applying growing pressure; verbal cues, reminders, non-verbal cues. Giving her juice in the morning and sitting her on the toilet 30 minutes later as one friend suggested...

C) Start getting a little aggro on her as another friend politely suggested. At three she's old enough to take some pushing as opposed to when you made her walk. By now she should be potty trained and it's about time to start getting her there...

D) Start subscribing to magazines on ranching and scan ads for cattle prods. This potty-training crap is for the birds and why let this drag on when getting her fannie on the can should be a simple matter of voltage?

And the answer is?

For right now a combo of A and B....in my eyes we're not at the point where big pressure needs to be applied. The wife and I would like to live in a world that's size-5 diaper free but we aren't there yet. We'll get there soon I think. And if not, then yeah it's time to renew that subscription to "Cattleman's Illustrated" and let the sparks fly...

Ahhhh...Florida

2009-12-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

As usual, travel wasn't nearly as bad as I dreaded it would be. Two flights meant neither was longer than 1:50 in length and that meant travel in digestible chunks. Get to the airport, get to the Presidents Club, get on flight one, get to the Presidents Club, get on flight two, get to the house. No meltdowns, both kids behaving very, very well. We got to sleep last night feeling less than exhausted, minimal drama during the day...could we ask for more?

I'm watching daughter #1 playing catch with her grandfather. The wife and I went for a run today, something we haven't done in months. Both of us were feeling the effects of a long travel day yesterday so it wasn't a world class run but damn, just being able go four miles, just the two of us, felt like a vacation. When you've got two young children you tunnel vision so much, your attention is so focused on them, that when you have 45 minutes to spend with the wife it feels like 4 hours. Damn right we'll be doing as much of that as possible in the next two weeks...

More dispatches from the family front to come...

Travel Time...

2009-12-21T20:53:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow we leave for Florida and a family vacation...since we're leaving both cars behind it means a visit to the airport and two plane rides to get there.

Parenting and planes have always been a tough mix for me. The first time we flew with daughter #1 was honestly the most stress I had felt in the first year of her life. I remembered how I was for decades as a passenger. Dreading the woman with the screaming infant plodding along, ready to occupy the seat next to me and make my life a living hell for the next two or three hours.

That's what I assumed everyone was thinking when the wife and I walked onto the plane with daughter #1 almost three years ago. And you know what? As soon as the plane took off she was down for the count. Two-and-a-half hours later when the wheels touched ground she woke up. Painless. Here's hoping tomorrow runs along the same lines...

Dancing in the Dark...

2009-12-19T23:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday you were with your infant daughter and you wanted to get her to sleep but you weren't sure she would.

So you walked her around as she cried a little and you felt her make a nest of your shoulder. She wanted to go down but she needed your help so you stood there walking and singing badly in low tones but you thought it would help. And you looked at the two of you a lot in the mirror in the bathroom. She was wearing white and you were wearing a black shirt. You looked at her in the darkness as the nightlight reflected off her eyes and you swayed back and forth rocking her slowly in the silence. Her hand around your arm, her head laying limp between your collarbone and your shoulder...

You danced with her in the dark...a slow dance just you and your little girl in the shadows. You rocked her back and forth until the nightlight caught no reflection at all and you heard the faintest sound of snoring...a sound softer than snow falling right there in your bathroom...

And then...

2009-12-19T22:16:00.001-07:00

And then there are moments like yesterday...

...When daughter #2 pooped a bucketful and I was in completely over my head trying to change her and my wife came to my rescue and I ran to the kitchen to get paper towels and we both burst into laughter over the craziness of it all....a silly little two minutes we shared that left me thinking I wouldn't trade this for anything and wondering how anybody could...

Dark Side of the Moon...

2009-12-17T20:44:00.001-07:00

There are days with your family that just flow on endlessly like a high you can't beat and a bar that is set so high you feel like you'll spend the rest of your life chasing it. There are days you are the greatest dad in the world and your wife is the best mom and there's nothing you can do to screw up the feeling. Minutes stretch to hours and the high just keeps getting higher until you finally have to let it end when you put them to bed.....you touch their fingers, kiss their cheek...you linger at their crib or bedside because you really don't want the day -- or that high -- to end...

And then there are days like today......today was the dark side of the moon.

Maybe you weren't feeling so great this morning because you were up late last night working and not sleeping because you were worrying about money. Maybe that didn't help but in the afternoon when the wife was out running errands, it all fell apart. Daughter #1 was needy all day. Stuck to the two of you like a barnacle...and whiny. God we hate whiny. Meanwhile daughter #2 woke up from her nap miserable. Crying -- no not crying, screaming. That wail that pierces your skull and tells you somethings wrong. But hell, you didn't know what it was and so you felt all the more helpless. Like a punching bag that was destined to take it for as long as daughter #2 dished it out...

Hunger? No, she spit out the bottle. And when you're a dad if it isn't hunger you're really just guessing. 40 minutes of waling and there was jack you could do about it. You picked her up, put her down, bounced her, kissed her...what you really wanted to do was throw her.

You thought to yourself thoughts you've had before. That you understood how someone could lose it and mash their child against the wall in a fit of rage. You really did. You worried for a second that might be you on this day...but just for a second. You always knew if you got to that point you would just put her in her crib and walk away. But god it was hard. You felt pissed and numb and sick of it all in different doses in different moments. And daughter #1 was calling out from her room because she needed attention and you wondered what the hell, was she listening to the same shrieking you were? I mean you were a little busy and screw her, now was not the time to be needy...

You called your wife and told her you'd like her to speed up her return if possible. This helped you feel like an idiot because you always wanted to be able to handle ANYthing and not need mom to play fixer...You found yourself pushing daughter #1 over your shoulder and craning your head to the back of her neck so when she screamed it wouldn't be directly in your ear and so it wouldn't be all that bad.

You felt like a crappy dad and a miserable human being because you were screwing up two kids and dying for the wife to relieve you and by the way 6pm couldn't come fast enough for that first glass of wine....you thought about being 14 years old and curling up in your bed watching "Odd Couple" reruns at night because you had nothing else to do and it made you very happy...and you knew that time in your life was long, long gone......

In the end it seemed she was hungry...the wife burst through the door, slammed the "tap" into the daughter's mouth and two minutes later she'd calmed down enough to eat. Why wouldn't she take the bottle from me? Who knows. Maybe she just got to a point where she was too pissed to eat if it wasn't mom's boob. What I do know is today was that place you never want to go as a dad. The intersection of reality and insanity. You're at the end of your rope and about to lose it on your two young kids. You feel no love, no happiness, nothing. Only anger and a desire to escape -- or go cry -- or go anywhere or to any situation but the one you're in.

So the wife fed your little girl and she was happy and she has your ears and she laughed and knew nothing about how you nearly broke down or broke HER into pieces only 30 minutes ago. But she bounced up and down on her mother's lap and beamed that radiant smile your way and in that instant you felt nothing but powerless and completely and utterly ashamed of yourself...

Ankles? What ankles?

2009-12-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

For all who have doubted how, shall we say, "stout" or "portly" daughter #2 is, check out the photo above. Look ma, no ankles...there's just a place where the legs ends and a place where the feet begins inside a mass of shapeless gelatin...

And guaranteed in 14 or 15 months all that fat will melt away like it was never there. Amazing what happens when you actually use the muscles in your body. For now it's a good talking point as in, "Crap she's a porker, hon" or "How is the michelin-girl doing today..." You can say these things when they're yours...

"Let Them Be Little"....Post Script

2009-12-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

It’s two days after posting that bit about “Let Them Be Little.” My wife’s Ipod is on shuffle. Daughter #1 is in my arms on the couch and we’re having fun on the computer when the shuffle plays “Just the Two of Us” by Will Smith. I feel that inexplicable surge of somethingorother behind my eyes. I feel in love and blessed and happy to have my arm around a beautiful, healthy little girl.

I’m also thinking if the wife had more songs on her Ipod, the shuffle probably wouldn’t have found that song and I wouldn’t be sitting here feeling like a hopeless choad, completely head over heels in love with his three year old daughter

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #3 (PPPQ#3)

2009-12-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

Daughter #1 is transitioning between her crib and a “big girl bed” that’s been set up for her. The transition has been a little rockier than I would like.

If she’s sleeping by 8:30pm, guaranteed she’s up and scared by 1am. Then usually again by 4am. Not always the wake-up where she mumbles in her sleep and she’s going right back down. The wake-up where I know she’ll be up for awhile and I need to put in extended time to get her back to sleep. Or I can bring her into our bed which is what my little girl really wants.

Now I'm not gorgeous to start with so I need all the beauty sleep I can get. And since mom is up three times a night with daughter #2, I know the decision with daughter #1 is all mine. So tonight at 1am she wakes up again in a fright….what do I do?

A) Crawl into her big girl bed with her and sleep for five minutes -- sometimes five hours -- depending on how hard I fall asleep. It’s better than going back to my bed and waking up two more times that night…

B) I take her into my own bed if I think she’s really going to be up for awhile. No sense fighting a one-hour battle and getting sleep deprived when bringing her into my bed will have her down in three minutes…

C) I turn on an extra light. I calm her down but make sure she understands I'm not staying for an extended visit.

D) I tell her she’s absolutely right. The world is a frightening place; monsters under the bed, Obama in the White House, Osama Bin Laden still at large. I further tell her that if the boogie-man is in the closet that she shouldn’t worry because after he “gets” her he’s going to get both her parents so none of us will see the sun rise in the morning…with that I tell her to have a good night and please stop whining. I shut out all the lights and go back to bed...

And the answer is????

I’ll let you know when I have this one figured out. Right now as tempting as D is, I’ve been working a combo of A, B and C….

A, a little more than I’d like, B, a little more than I should. C, as much as possible. It just hasn’t been all that possible yet. Crap this parenting thing isn't easy. And often times it doesn't stop when they go to bed -- or I go to bed, for that matter...

I Can Remember When....

2009-12-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

All right this will probably rip away any vestiges of uber-masculinity people might have when thinking about me but here goes. This was on my mind for whatever reason yesterday...

If you want to see a new dad cry, play “Let Them Be Little” by Lonestar. Oh my god. Guaranteed water works.

Now, I’m a fanatical music fan. Punk was there for me as a rebellious teen and Bruce has been with me ever since. Not to mention a host of other musicians like Social Distortion, Nick Cave, the Misfits, Graham Parker, Superchunk, the Clash…Collectively they’ve played the soundtrack to my life. Special songs have made me want to have sex, to punch walls, to get through races, to scream at the top of my lungs and sometimes made me even relax. But never had a song made me cry until I held my infant daughter and listened to “Let Them Be Little.” Actually another song made me cry too, now that I think about it but I’ll get to that later.

There was a six or eight month stretch a few years back when we were new parents and I just felt floored by the sheer emotion of it all. I’d pop that song on and start to cry holding my little girl. Now tears shouldn’t be particularly fun, but I made my way back to that song time after time. There was a comfort in it, somehow. My wife would always look at me and say, “Not again….”

"I can remember when you fit in the palm of my hand
Felt so good in it, no bigger than a minute
How it amazes me, you're changing with every blink
Faster than a flower blooms they grow up all too soon

So let them be little 'cause they're only that way for a while
Give them hope, give them praise, give them love every day
Let them cry, let them giggle, let them sleep in the middle
Oh just let them be little..."

Boy, that got me every time. It was like going to a little cubbyhole all my own when that song played. My own to share with the little piece of perfection I clutched in my arms. Maybe, as a man who likes to control his life, his surroundings, and yes his emotions…maybe that was my way of embracing the tidal wave I felt. Maybe beneath all the bluster I always thought of myself as a loser. A loser that somehow had made good and lucked into everything he could have ever wanted in life. A wonderful wife. A healthy child. Who knows. I do know I came back to that song again and again and I gripped my little girl tight with both arms as tears zig-zaged all down my face.

Disconcerting – yet comforting. Every time.

Oh and the other song to make me cry? You’d never guess. Will Smith’s “Just the Two of Us.” I probably have nothing in common with a famous actor and rapper, yet I felt the power of that song every time. Emotion pouring over me like water. And it felt like the world was just the two of us when I held my sweet, precious daughter and listened to the words…even with my wife close by.

Life and Death

2009-12-10T16:55:00.001-07:00

A good friend today told you about a relative who was diagnosed with cancer and may not make it. You felt for her because she's never been through it with a close relative before but it sucks and the only solace is that if it didn't hurt so much that person wouldn't mean very much to you. So in a way it's good that it hurts but you've been through it before and that stuff is for a year down the road and it doesn't help much now.

You've lost relatives before. Some hurt like hell, some didn't mean a goddamn thing so you guess you knew how much those people meant to you in the end but how do you put that into words for someone. That kind of solace is for tomorrow not today.

You're thinking a lot about your daughters now. About the cycle of life and about how one day they're both going to wear black and stick you and your wife six feet underground and shovel dirt on your boxes. You sure hope they will cause the alternative is you burying your children and jesus is there anything worse than the thought of burying your child? You hope your kids will cash the life insurance checks after some tragic skydiving accident where the chutes didn't open for you and your wife. That sounds like a passionate way to go...not lying in a hospital bed surrounded by cards and flowers. God no.

You think a lot about sucking every second of honey out of your life with your family and why you don't always do that and why it takes death or illness to remind you of that. You remember writing a poem about burying your daughter right after she was born. You should find that somewhere and see if the writing was really as bad as you think it was...

But that doesn't help your friend right now and probably not much will other than a new diagnosis or some time...

Nightmares...

2009-12-09T13:31:00.000-07:00

There are certain things I think a dad should be able to do for his little girl. Like making her feel safe when there’s nothing but fear in her eyes.

Last night daughter #1 woke up crying at 11:15pm. I was downstairs working on my computer when I heard her. At three years old you can tell the different cries – which one will last a minute and which will keep her up. This was the kind that would last an hour and require parental attention. I bounded up the stairs to her door and saw her sitting up in bed. Sheets pulled down to her feet. Terror and tears in her young eyes.

“Did you have a bad dream sweetie?”
“Yeah….”

I could barely make out what she was saying through the sobs.

Without asking I knew she needed me to stay with her. To be her daddy. To pull the covers up around her neck and put my arm around her waist. So I did exactly that. And I watched her face and nothing else. Slowly, the sobs turned to sniffles and then to normal breathing. Then her eyes fluttered a few times and she was down again. It took all of five minutes. I probably could have left but I stayed with her the entire night. In a bed that was too small and not very supportive and more than a little uncomfortable.

I’m not sure why I did. Maybe I was afraid she’d wake up again. Maybe I just wanted to feel like a good dad last night.

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #2

2009-12-08T18:53:00.000-07:00

By the way these things aren’t being graded. These are real scenarios that might be poignant for the non-parent especially because if you plan on procreating you’ll be dealing with this stuff sooner or later and you might as well be thinking about it now.

OK, PPPQ #2. Daughter #1 has a great bond with both her parents, but mom will probably always be #1. So lately when she gets a full diaper or wants food she gives daddy the straight-arm (football term, see picture) and asks for mommy. Sometimes you think she demands mommy. You are a big believer in the 50/50 rule so you should be able to do all this stuff; change her diaper, prep some food, pour some juice, etc. But daughter #1 wants mommy. This is a trend you aren’t taking a liking to. You think about it for awhile and you…

A) Talk to your daughter nicely but in the end, you make the decision to change her diaper, prep her food/drink, etc. You’re the dad and she shouldn’t have the option to play favorites. Plus the wife has enough to worry about with a three month old lying around god knows where…

B) Shut your mouth most of the time and deal…telling yourself that she is a three year old so you pretty much grin and bear it.

C) Pick your battles. Sometimes A, sometimes B. Depending on your mood and how forceful your daughter is. The more forceful the less likely you are to bend....

D) Throw your own tantrum and demand that your daughter preps your food and drink from now on and insist that she changes your diaper just to see what it’s like…

And the Answer is….well for me it is really a combo of A and B so the answer is C with the winner being B more times than not…Parenting is often about making choices and picking your battles. This one I have often chosen not to fight -- sometimes against my better judgment. All things being equal I do not like when our daughter pulls that routine – BUT, she is just a three year old and she wants mommy more than me so I let it slide. It’s a real judgment call. It’s something I think she’ll grow out of so I make the decision not to force her to grow out of it before she’s ready.

Believe me if I’m still fixing her food and changing her diapers at 28 I’ll tackle this one head on…

Paper Parents Pop Quiz #1 (PPPQ #1)

2009-12-07T10:19:00.002-07:00

Let’s make our first quiz an easy one….well for me it was easy anyway.

Daughter #1 is a great little girl. She’s nearly three and she’s close to what we would have drawn up on the blackboard. Pretty happy, yet possessing a stubborn streak that we think will serve her well later in life if she keeps it. But in one month “stubborn” became “obstinate.” Often you find that you or your wife has to ask six or seven times before she’ll stop what she’s doing, leave the playground, etc...your wife doesn’t like it. You find it intolerable.

To you it’s a disturbing trend and one that needs to change. You believe that three times is probably as much as a parent should ask a child do to anything. That’s enough space so that they can express themselves but not so much that they’re allowed to be too defiant. Today you are on the beach and she WILL NOT LEAVE. You’ve already warned the wife that daughter #1 was getting close to getting a smackdown in the days leading up. Now your daughter is openly defying you…do you

A) Extend the limit to asking a dozen times and live with the fact that she’s not even three so you put up with this stuff…maybe if a dozen doesn’t work you’ll grab her by the arm and lead her to the car but that’s as tough as you’re willing to get…

B) Keep asking her, knowing that sooner or later she’ll move when she’s ready…again, she’s only three.

C) Lean her over right then and there and smack her ass a few times so she knows you mean business

D) Call NATO, NORAD or any other organization that begins with an “N” so they can NAPALM the entire beach. If you and your family are still on it, so be it. You’re royally pissed and this is going to end now.

And the answer is?????? C

I leaned her over right there and gave her three butt smacks for the first time. Hard. But she was wearing pants and a diaper so it really wasn’t that hard. This was the first time I ever hit her and I think she was more surprised than anything. By the way two minutes later she didn’t get the message so she got it again. Enough to get her attention. Enough to know that when daddy asks something a few times that her job was to listen. Not enough to cause permanent damage. Hell I think I barely affected her for more than an hour. A little while later she was laughing and smiling. The wife wasn’t so sure about my methods but this was one of those rare cases when I wasn’t asking. This was what needed to be done in my mind. No way 7 or 8 times asked was going to become 9 or 10. Children challenge. Parents respond....or they don't.

As a postscript. For the next month we had ZERO problems with our daughter. Six or seven weeks later her behavior started to creep back, but nothing like it was. Like I said she’s a child. One of her jobs is to push her boundaries to see what she can get away with. One of ours is to provide that guidance and show her what those boundaries are…

“For My Infant Daughter…”

2009-12-06T19:39:00.000-07:00

I was going through some old things I’d written back when daughter #1 was “fresh out the kitchen” as both R Kelly and I like to say. What an amazing time, too powerful to really put into words but that didn’t stop me from trying. I came across this old poem that I wince at a little bit but I don’t mind sharing…

Keep in mind I’m not a poet and never will be. Reading it now the “poem,” if you can call it that, was mediocre at best…an amateurish attempt to capture a feeling that was really beyond me. Clearly I was in over my head…looking back I’m more impressed that I even tried the medium…whatever…here it is

"For My Infant Daughter..."

While I'm still strong
and vital
will you know that
once
a long time ago
you listened to a song with your
daddy
and your daddy cried all over
the arm of your
pretty white dress

When I'm elderly
when I lay dying
will you comfort me
wipe my forehead
sing a song from your childhood
to make me smile
will you go so far as to
change me
as I changed you so many times?

When I'm gone
will you cry for me
miss me
hum a tune to yourself
will you wish you could hold me
hold me up
so we could dance together one more time?
the way I danced and whirled you in circles and cried all at
once?

When you have your own daughter
will you rush home to see her?
will your day change when she flashes that
amazing
amazing smile?
will you remember us driving
and laughing
me kissing your hair
how you fell asleep on my shoulder
how I put you to bed
how I closed your diaper (a little too tight)
played with your pacifier
and often counted the minutes till you woke up in the morning
so I could see you again....

will you have any idea how we danced and I whirled you in a circle and cried
and cried
and cried
and cried

Drugs and Honey

2009-12-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

Driving in my car with the radio on and daughter #1 in the back. Bad country music playing but both of us in sparkling moods. No one on earth could possibly derail this train. The sun is beaming and my little girl is speaking gibberish and acting silly as I spy on her in the rear-view mirror. Head flying side to side in her car seat. Blond hair bouncing. Eyes closed. Reminding me of a white Stevie Wonder with no glasses. A smile as wide as a cave showing off the gaps in her front teeth.

Me feeling radiant. Radioactive. Like a seated super-nova ready to blow through the roof. Like the greatest dad in the world and the center of the universe and that being absolutely good enough when most of what I accomplish isn’t good enough. Taking the 5 minute ride to her school and circling the block because I just don’t want to drop her off. Then circling around again because you’re both in the slipstream of the same mood and the ride is intoxicating and you really don’t care to break it or share it with a single soul. You have no idea how or why this moment came but you feel thankful and alive and what the hell….it feels like drugs or honey and how many moments in your life are really like drugs or honey and so what if she’s a few minutes late…

Paper Parents Pop Quiz

2009-12-05T20:43:00.001-07:00

If there’s one thing I remember about the days before I was a parent, it’s how sure I was of exactly how I wanted to raise my children. I was pretty sure I had every detail nailed down, from how much TV they wouldn’t watch to how I would discipline them to how they would treat their friends and family. A part of me knew that I might be jumping the gun since I didn’t actually have children but that didn’t stop me from feeling I pretty much could handle whatever and thinking I had most of the details nailed down before conception.

What an idiot. Reality is that it’s great to be confident about how you would handle different situations and what kind of parent you’ll want to be, but trust me….real parenting is often way different than “paper parenting” as I call it. Before we had our first little girl I remember feeling with absolute certainty that we’d train her as early as possible to sleep through the night in her own room. If she wailed she wailed, so what? This was what needed to be done and heck if I wasn’t going to stay strong. So at six months of age she was transferred to the crib and on the first night she screamed her brains out at 2am. And there it is. There’s your moment of truth. This isn’t a scenario. Nothing drawn up on a blackboard or discussed over cocktails at the bar. Your kid is peeling the paint off the walls and you’ve got a choice….Real parenting vs. paper parenting. What’s your decision going to be?

Paper parenting lasted three minutes that night. It never had a chance. Our daughter was clearly going to take extended parental duty to get her back down and daddy needed sleep. So in a flash I whisked her into our bed and we lived to fight another day.

This is a scenario you will face a hundred times on a thousand fronts as a first timer. How you think you should parent vs. the reality of making hard choices and sticking to them. Do you fight a battle with your daughter for two hours at 2am or do you bring her into your bed? Do you push for her to read a book when she’s crying because she wants to watch another episode of Dora the Explorer? And so on it goes, every single day. You can lose a battle or two, no problem. But if you lose too many, it may threaten the development of your child.

So look for some pop quizzes to come. I’ll throw out a scenario we faced as parents and then tell you how we handled it. It may be very different than the way you would want to handle the situation. BUT remember there are two parenting categories ….those people who are actually living it and those who are paper parenting and guessing. And guesses are often very, very different from reality…

Hell and Red Lights

2009-12-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

You want to know what hell is like? Hell is a fussy baby balling her eyes out while you navigate the streets of your town with a headache. Wife to your right. Daughter #1 behind her. Daughter #2 right behind you exercising the full extent of her lungs.

At this point a red light is your worst nightmare. Your daughter isn’t like most infants you know who fall asleep as soon as the engine turns over. Unless she’s dead tired the motion of a car seems only to piss her off. Then you find yourself stopped dead at a big intersection waiting for the crosstown traffic to have their five minute green while she just about screams the hair off your neck and you see red and do a slow burn behind the wheel.

You don’t remember it being so bad with daughter #1 but your wife reminds you that it sort of was and you’ve just erased it from your memory. Anyway the light seems to take an eternity and you’re pissed at everyone, even the homeless dude on the corner, not to mention yourself because she’s just an infant and infants cry and that’s life and you should know that by now only that doesn’t help.

The only thing that will soothe you is the sight of a green light and even that doesn’t fix it because you’re behind an octogenarian who seems to have forgotten that the gas pedal is on the right. So you’d really like to bumper-bash granny at warp speed but you just smack the steering wheel and in the end it doesn’t matter much cause now daughter #2 is wailing like a banshee and getting the car moving will only piss her off more.

Yep, this is hell.

School and the Supermarket

2009-12-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

All you really remember about your daughter’s first day at school is the supermarket. And a lot of tears. Yours.

You recall driving to school with your wife and your little girl. Your wife had spent weeks afraid your daughter would be stuck to the two of you like glue, petrified of her new world. Having to be peeled away from her parents and her safety. You spent so much time reassuring your wife everything would be fine that you didn’t realize how nervous you were about the day.

You were amazed that she took to her new surroundings without a single sob. You were so amazed, that when you said goodbye you weren’t sure your little girl understood that meant you and your wife weren’t going to be there for the next three hours. You tried to count the number of times she’d been away from both of you for that long and there weren’t very many. You drove away giggling with your wife about the ease of it all.

But you needed food and there was a supermarket to visit and a coffee shop to the left and in the parking lot you just sat there and burst into tears. You didn’t know why, really. You just did. Your wife was shocked and you were shocked and you just cried. Fat tears filling the valleys of an unshaven face while you buried your face in your palms...

Were you relieved at how quickly she adjusted?
Were you scared that she didn’t need you today like she needed you yesterday?
Were you feeling her grow up before your eyes?
Were you just being a goddamn woman?

You hadn’t figured it out. Moments like that, you rarely get a handle on until later. But your wife held you like a baby as people shopped for bananas and oatmeal in the supermarket and you....you just cried and cried in her arms in the parking lot.

It's Like a Game...

2009-11-30T21:41:00.001-07:00

A non-parent a while back asked me what being a dad was like, knowing I wasn't shy about elaborating on parenthood.

I told her what I've told 100 other people. There's being a parent and there's everything else in your life. Take everything else you've ever gone through; childhood, college, the day you got married, the day you got divorced...everything. Take the sum of what you've experienced, put it all together and it still doesn't match the day your child is born.

That's the only day of my life I felt different...changed as a human being. From that day on your kids have you playing chutes and ladders on the game-board of life...sucking on the sweetest highs for as long as you can and scraping subterranean floors enduring the most unforgiving lows...but your life will never be the same.

She said she understood but we both knew she really didn't. I told her not to worry. Some things in life are like that.

Dad Will Never Be Mom...

2009-11-29T17:02:00.000-07:00

I look at my wife and my two daughters and I know that no matter how good a dad I am, no matter how well I raise my children, I will never have the bond with them that my wife will.

For the first three or four months of a baby's life it's hard for most men I know. Me included. You do your best and you love them because they're yours but let's face it....at that age they're just a mass of protoplasm that craps and poops and eats. Then around four months they start smiling some and at least you get some feedback for your troubles. But you're a man and no matter how you slice it, it ain't the same. My wife carried them. She dealt with the nausea, the mood swings, the gut expansion, the weight gain, the euphoria, the pure and simple love of pregnancy. She's the one that saved every printout from every ultra-sound.

What did I do? I tried to be comforting. To give her space when necessary, support when needed and relief when she hurt. But when my children were born she was the one who got up every night with them. She did the breast feeding while I watched -- grateful she had something that soothed our crying child. In awe at the way they looked at each other. Listening intently at the sucking sound my daughter makes when feeding. Just that voracious "slurp" over pure silence. I watched knowing this was something I would never quite be a part of no matter how hard I tried or how good a parent I became. I would always be on the outside.

I hurt when my children hurt. I'm touched in ways I never thought possible. I hold them and play with them and devote chunks of my life to them. But I'm still just the dad. Second fiddle. I'm not the mom and I never will be. I find myself envious once in a while, but mostly I'm content....second fiddle is hard enough...

The Doctor

2009-11-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

Little things never mattered much to you until you had a daughter. Today you walked into the hospital a little frightened that your little girl would be petrified at the sight of a doctor and her white coat. You've seen her scared before at the sight of that coat and you never want to see that look again in her eyes...you never want her grab you again in terror and bury her head in your shoulder as if she was avoiding being witness to a murder

You had to smile when she weighed-in and hopped up and down on the scale even though she probably shouldn't have. It meant she was happy. And every happy minute for her felt like a win for you. You felt just the slightest push of moisture behind your eyes when she aced her hearing test and smiled, her blond hair bouncing up and down as she laughed. You thought you were halfway home -- halfway to leaving the doctor's office without a meltdown. You knew you were all the way when the doctor came in without a white coat and your little girl was still smiling. You wondered if she was growing up before your eyes or maybe she was just having a good day.

You wanted to hug the doctor when the exam was over and she offered your little girl a lollipop. You could have handled the meltdown but as you all walked out the door you were quietly thrilled you didn't have to...you thought this was a small victory...a two-hour win in the never ending war...

The Manual

2009-11-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

If I heard "there's no manual to being a parent" once I heard it 1,000 times.

Nonsense. The problem is there are too many manuals. Too many books. And too many people who think just because they raised a kid and managed to keep them away from drugs, alcohol and unwanted teen pregnancy, they're experts on child-rearing.

When your daughter is crying her ass off for 6 hours a day and you want to throw her through a wall the problem isn't getting advice. The problem is that everyone who has-a-third-cousin-who-had-a-friend-who-had-a-baby-that-cried-a-lot-too is giving you advice that you didn't really ask for. You'll hear it all.
Gas. Indigestion (isn't that the same thing?) Not sleeping enough. Sleeping too much. No schedule. And my all time favorite...

Colic

What is colic anyways besides a catch-all phrase that tells you your life has gone to hell and you might as well deal with it because your daughter is going to scream in your ear for an hour no matter what position you put her in? I've looked it up in books, on-line, talked to doctors and I can't get a straight answer on what colic really is... "Ahhh, she must be colicky." I've heard that plenty. "No, she's just a miserable infant right now."

So for all the grandmothers and grandfathers and Aunt Mabel's and Uncle Floyd's who can tell you just what you need to do to soothe your child I say relax...just because you had kids doesn't make you the expert. And GOD, it doesn't mean I have to listen to you blabber on about "I remember when Johnny was up every night for a month....." Great. You fought your war and survived. Sweet. Now let me fight mine in peace...

The Continental Divide...

2009-11-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

The continental divide in your marriage starts with a small fissure and grows from there. Here’s an example. You enter marriage and have children with the idea that everything is going to be roughly 50/50. Other than breastfeeding you didn’t want there to be anything that you couldn’t do with your children. Changing diapers, bathing them, cooking their food when they were older. Everything.

But here’s how reality sometimes works. Since you’re the breadwinner and you’re gone 60 – 70 hours a week, the wife starts doing a lot of the heavy lifting. She has a particular way she makes the food, a certain way she changes the diapers, and so on. And since being a mother is everything to her she gets pretty militant for the first time in her life. When you’re off the road or back from the office you want to pitch in and do your share. You’re looking forward to it, even. I mean they are your kids too and you should be able to handle just about everything.

But when you defrost the breast-milk from the freezer you don’t quite do it the way she does. Meaning you heated it for 23 seconds instead of 25 and those two seconds make for the advent of the apocalypse. And by the way when you strap on your daughter’s diaper you sometimes make it a bit too tight since you’re out of practice and you don’t always pull the folds down on her leg to prevent leakage. So the wife is pissed because she’s been doing it forever and it isn’t too hard and here you are screwing things up and the poo and piss are going to leak all over her because the diaper wasn’t put on right. Now you’re pissed because you work your ass off to make a comfortable life for your wife and kids and by the way, most of the parents you know BOTH have to work and your wife doesn’t so she should be grateful she’s even around 24/7 to change diapers and make baby food to begin with.

So you start saying “screw it.” Since I’m so bad at this let her make the food and change the diapers all the time. It’ll make her happy because she’ll get to do it right every time and you’ll be happy because you won’t feel like an ass for being told how wrong you’re doing it. Only she isn’t happy because she thinks she shouldn’t have to change the diapers and make the food every single time. She’s peeved because you aren’t pitching in and you are the dad after all and she knows two dads down the street who change diapers without the apocalypse descending on mankind and why can’t you either? And she’s further pissed because she has no free time because she’s covering for your ass when you should be helping out.

Now you’re pissed because you’ve busted your ass at your job and when you get home your self-esteem takes a bath because now you’re convinced you can’t heat milk and strap a piece of cloth to your child. And you say "screw it mom, go do it yourself." So six months later you realize that mom does just about everything, she resents it and you resent it too but you don’t talk much about it cause that’s just how it is and there are other battles to fight and you have to pick them carefully because by 8pm at night you feel like a zombie and you’re ready for 38 hours of sleep.

Welcome to the fissure. Congratulations. You’re well on your way to the continental divide. Enjoy the view.

One Good Minute Can Last Me A Whole Year....

2009-11-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

I had three minutes of nirvana today. Daughter #1 and I laying on the couch. Me tickling her on the ribs. Horsing around. She was so happy. Laughing and giggling together it seemed like forever but it was probably only three minutes or so. The unintended taste of her hair in my mouth as I wrapped my arms around her waist and squeezed. The feel of her head banging against my chin in recoil.

Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey” was playing in the dining room. His voice swelling as the song hits nearly impossible heights of beauty…then softens…then crescendo’s again…mirroring the way the world felt for a second. Spitting out her hair I thought this moment is why I had kids. I made a little memory today – just me and my daughter.

The Diapers and the Damage Done...

2009-11-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

Changing an infant’s diaper is brutal. Couple it with changing the diaper of a three year old at the same time and you feel like you’re in the middle of an episode of keystone cops.

First you change the infant. She’s daughter #2 because she came second down the “turnpike.” You place both of them next to each other on the floor of their bedroom. Now it’s a race against the clock to keep both of them happy – or at least not crying and miserable.

So you operate at warp speed. You peel off the onesy with it’s complicated button pattern and then you peel off the diaper. You try your best to remember what button fits with what button hole but you’re sure you’ll forget because around the crotch area it gets a little complicated. Trust me, it does. Usually your infant’s dump has the consistency and color of rancid squash and today’s edition is no exception. So you lift her legs like a Thanksgiving turkey to scoop out the poo from her crack. It’s around this time you think to yourself, “Christ she’s fat.” Michelin-man legs. No tone. Rolls with no butter. You console yourself with the fact that your first daughter was pretty fat too, though not this bad, and that as soon as she started crawling, walking and actually using those leg muscles, that she dropped half a ton.

Daughter #2 has yet to reach that stage so she hasn’t been “chiseled out of her fat jacket” as you like to tell people daughter #1 was. Now you’re trying to keep #2 occupied and happy and you feel like you’re doing a song and dance just to keep her from crying. Smiling and mouthing unintelligible words because you want her to forget you’ve got your hand all up in her nether-regions. Then it’s back on with the diaper and as you try to put the onesy back on you see the big squash colored stain on the back and you realize she poo’d through her diaper. Now you’re on one knee, rummaging through her drawer because the wife puts all the kids clothes away and you’ve got no clue where her next onesy is. Finally you find one that could be onesy pajamas but you don’t really give a crap as long as they have buttons. You force her arms and legs into it and you button everything up. You’re sure half the buttons are in the wrong button holes but hell, you feel like a rock star anyway. You’re thrilled that daughter #1 is still happy and not a fusspot because trying to fit two arms and two legs into a onesy when she’s writhing around is the reason they invented straight-jackets for adults…

Then you’re off to your older daughter who has waited patiently while you’ve managed not to maul her baby sister. Daughter #1 has also made a #2 and 50% of the time hers look like rabbit turds. You’re in luck. Today’s movement is long and strong but daughter #1 wants to pause and admire her dump as if she gave birth to it. She'll freak if you wrap it and toss it out without gazing upon her creation. So you lovingly show it to her, meanwhile daughter #2 is two feet away and starting to squawk…squawking is a prelude to crying and this is a must to avoid. You know that once the avalanche starts rolling downhill it never stops. If she starts crying now she may cry for 30 minutes straight and mom’s boob isn’t here to make the world right. Hell if mom’s boob, not to mention the rest of her, was on premises she’d be doing the changing anyway and you could be watching football like a man was meant to on a Sunday…

So you all admire daughter #1’s dump…then it’s wipe up time and she’s complaining because she has a rash “down there.” When you piss and poop in a diaper this happens a lot, trust me. So you want to wipe hard and fast like a window washer before lunch break but instead you have to operate in slow-mo with surgical precision while both daughter’s grunt. You want to tell daughter #1 that if she was potty trained like a lot of other girls her age neither of you would be dealing with her painful butt-rash but that’s another story and besides, you’d only make her cry.

So on goes the diaper, back on go the pants. Up comes the infant in one arm, up goes two poo diapers in the other and you make a pilgrimage to the toilet where daughter #1 insists on it being flushed and she’s going to do the flushing. The room looks like a war zone; clothes, diapers and wipes. But at least no one is sobbing and no one has lost a limb and you feel like you’ll live tear-free for at least the next 20 minutes of your life….and where the hell is your wife anyways???

Dead Poets Society

2009-11-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

I firmly believe that most of the life lessons you need to learn are contained in "Dead Poets Society." Carpe Diem, Seize the Day, etc. It's all there. Great movie. Go watch it and tell me it doesn't speak to a part of your soul.

There's a section in the middle when Robin Williams huddles up his class and talks about the things we do to sustain our lives...becoming a doctor, a lawyer, a carpenter etc...noble professions all...but poetry, love, romance...this is what we sustain life FOR...

I often think of that with my wife and children. Even without a full time job right now I feel like we spend so much of our time on the things that sustain our lives; getting our daughter to school, making sure our kids eat right, keeping them from watching too much TV and making the house an utter disaster 24/7, blah blah blah...sometimes we forget what we had kids for...we rush around so much that we forget just how at any instant, one of them can give us three seconds of joy that can make us smile for months. How our three-year old can let out a loud fart and say "I beefed!" with the biggest grin you've even seen. And how our youngest is just now learning how to smile. It's tentative at first, like she doesn't quite know what she's doing, but then the corners of her mouth rise up towards her cheeks like curtains being drawn at the best Broadway play you've ever seen and she bursts into a full-on grin. So, so rewarding after months of fussiness. Sometimes we miss these silly little, wonderful nuggets because we're worried about whether one of them will get swine flu or whether the wash needs to be put in the dryer and another load started...

I'm afraid that I'll wake up tomorrow and be 80 years old and I'll realize I wasted too much time sustaining our lives and not enough time savoring every morsel of the sweetness we've worked so hard to create. I know this. I just haven't changed it yet.

Sleeping Angels

2009-11-16T19:48:00.001-07:00

I love watching my first daughter sleep in her crib. Sometimes I do it for five or ten minutes at a time. She reminds me of the way my brother used to look 25 years ago.

Pure

Uncorrupted

Blond hair falling almost over her eyes. Gently snoring and sucking on her pacifier. 3 years old. Long before boys and school and self-esteem problems and food issues. Way before peer pressure and decisions about drugs and birth control and drinking and driving. Years before she has to be a grown up. Looking like her only concern is her blanket, her pillow and the sweetness of her dreams. Blanket pulled up around the base of her neck. Nothing but sweetness and light.

Pure

The Truth About Parenting...

2009-11-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

People used to tell me for years that children take years off your life. And many of the people who've uttered those words are what I would describe as "good" and "happy" parents. It made me think a billion times before we took the plunge (pun intended) and became parents.

In the three years since our first child was born I've personally experienced the most incredible highs of my life...your heart swells with pride when your daughter aces a hearing test of all things! You find yourself crying at the sound of songs you would have laughed at for years -- their lyrics making sense to you on levels never before imaginable. Life takes on a completely different perspective than when it was all about you -- or maybe you and your wife...

It's also been in some ways, the most difficult three years of my life. And the reason is the same...because it isn't all about you and your wife. You have a 10 pound lump of flesh that's completely dependent upon you for EVERYthing. And for the first seven or eight months all they do is eat, sleep, poop, cry and poop some more. There is no feedback. They don't slap you on the back at night and say, "Hey dad I really like how you handled that rough stretch I had at 4am when I cried for an hour and spit up on your back..."

They can barely smile to let you know all of this is worth it. That in a few years they're going to be a living, breathing independent organism that can smile and laugh and worship you for all the suffering you went through...So this blog is dedicated to the daddy's who have taken on the relentless challenge of parenthood. I will try document the immeasurable highs and the lowest lows that being a father entails...oh and one note, I tend to write in third person sometimes. When things feel a little too raw, emotionally, I sometimes write "you," as in "you knew your daughter was tired but you didn't care because you thought she was acting like a brat." Don't be put off. It's just a mechanism to get the words out when part of me wants to choke them back...

And to get back to the sentiment expressed to me by the parents in my opening paragraph...yes, I do think my two children will probably take about 5 to 10 years off of my natural life...but my life will be a hundred times richer for having had them. That's a trade-off worth making, no?