I guess I should begin this post by explaining the lack of any new posts over the last several months to my vast and impressive audience. Honestly, my life just accelerated to the point that keeping up with my blog became impossible. The school year got into full swing, I was coaching junior high baseball, my wife was working full time an hour from our house (my job is about an hour from home, too), our youngest son was past the "easy" phase where you can just feed them and put them back to sleep, and I was spending most evenings and weekends as a single parent.
My days had become endless blurs of attending to the needs of others. As soon as I woke up (sometimes sooner), I would have three children relying on me to get them ready for the day. There were breakfasts and lunches to be made, kids to get dressed, bottles to make, diaper bags to pack, diapers to change, and that is on top of getting myself ready to go. During the commute, I usually tried to wake myself up while answering an endless barrage of questions from the backseat assuming I wasn't mediating fights over the color of the sky or which town we were in. Once I got to work, my day as a teacher consists of dealing with the attitudes, insecurities, questions, and needs of around 130 teenagers. One thing I think a lot of people don't realize about teaching is that there is no fifteen minute break as a teacher. Every forty-three minutes, there is a four minute passing period and a fresh set of eager minds walks through the door in various combinations of eager curiosity and righteous indignation. Immediately after work, I would drive back across town to pick my daughter up from school, listen to her talk about her day all the way to daycare to pick up the boys, and then the questions and arguments of the morning commute were resumed. Once we got back home, I immediately made my way to the kitchen to throw together something that vaguely resembled an adequate dinner (mostly) and then begin the battle of "But, Daddy, I don't even like this stuff!" The complaints I got at home were very similar to the ones I got at work now that I think about it: "But, Mr. Ogle, I don't even need this stuff!"
After dinner, it was time to get everyone bathed (assuming it was bath night), into pajamas, my daughter's homework done, break up fights over toys not being shared or air being recklessly breathed, and finally to bed. By the time all three kids were in bed, I was so exhausted, both physically and mentally, that the idea of reading a book or writing a blog or anything other than staring mindlessly at the television for a couple of hours until I collapsed was ridiculous.
Each day, I could feel my patience for my children and my students wearing thinner. With every passing week, my enjoyment in life diminished. I tried not to complain or think about it too much, because there really didn't seem to be much point; there was nothing anyone could do for me anyway. It all finally came to head on Christmas Eve at my parents' house. As is the case with most family gatherings, there were a lot of people having a lot of different conversations all over the place. There were kids running around all over the place. The noise and chaos level in the house was at a ridiculous level, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I went back to the guest room and closed the door just to keep my head from exploding. My wife came looking for me. We talked and decided that something needed to change. I felt selfish for wanting to have some time to myself to do what I want to do. She made me realize that in order for me to be a good father, husband, teacher, I have to make time for myself. I have to allow my own battery to recharge and my own needs to be addressed.
Luckily, this meltdown also coincided with my wife making a career move to begin working as the school nurse at my high school. This would mean that we would be able to work together to take care of the kids before and after work, which would be a huge load off of my shoulders. My wife also agreed that it would be a good idea for me to take one night a week to leave her at home with the kids and go spend a little time taking care of myself. I am happy to report that this is one of those outings. So far, I have gone to a movie by myself, taken my wife on a date, and today I am sitting in a peaceful coffee shop writing this blog. With any luck, I will be using my "free time" to come up here once a week to write. This blog has become the most enjoyable hobby I've ever had, and I look forward to getting back to it. So, in spite of getting a Wii, and my wife claiming my sweet Droid X as a Christmas gift, the best thing I got for Christmas was given to me on Christmas Eve and wasn't even wrapped. My wife gave me the gift of my sanity. Thanks, Lady.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Siblings
I've been thinking a lot about siblings lately. I don't really know why, but it seems like I'm constantly having these moments of reflection about what it is to have a brother or sister and how those relationships change over time.
I'll start with my own kids. It started when my wife was pregnant with our middle child. Our daughter had been the only child in our family and the only grandchild on either side of our families for a couple of years. Like most only children, she was enjoying a life of indulgence. She was never without stimulation from adults; no matter where she went, she was the center of attention. Every holiday was an extravaganza of gifts that she didn't have to share with anyone. In fact, for her first two years, she didn't have to share anything. I have to admit, I was nervous about how she would react to having not only a new little brother in the house, but on my side of the family, she was getting a cousin at about the same time. I had heard stories about children in that situation acting out when the new baby came or refusing to accept that the new baby was even part of the family: "Can we take it back?"
When my son was born, everyone made sure that my daughter knew this didn't make her less special or that we would love her any less now that she wasn't the only little kiddo in our lives. My wife and I got her a baby doll as a present for her to open at the hospital when she came out to meet her little brother, and my parents got her a gift as well. We told her that the doll was for her to practice on so she could be a big helper with her little brother. She was beaming. I love to look at the pictures we have of her holding him at the hospital. You can't imagine a happier little girl, but I wasn't ready to let my guard down. I knew that this could just be a "honeymoon" phase and that things could change very quickly after a few days. This never happened. It was quite the opposite as a matter of fact. The days passed by, and instead of distancing herself from her little brother, she became more and more infatuated with him. They were together every minute of every day for a few months. This hadn't occurred to me until one Friday night when I decided to take her to a high school football game.
I was student teaching at the time, and I really thought it would be a good experience to go to a game and see my students outside of the classroom, a teacher's right of passage. My wife and I also decided it would be fun if my daughter went with me. My wife was working, so I dropped my son off with some friends of ours who had agreed to watch him for the evening, and my daughter and I headed to the game. Within a block of dropping my son off, my daughter became completely inconsolable at the thought of being away from her precious little brother. She cried the entire twenty-minute drive to the game. Once we were there and she was able to watch the band play and cheerleaders cheer, everything was okay, but as soon as we got back into the car, she immediately became worried about her brother. I thought she was happy the day he was born, but that was nothing compared to her reaction when we walked into our friends' house and she saw him again.
That was three years ago. I am happy to report that they are still as close as they were that night. It probably helps that they share a bedroom, so they continue to spend an incredible amount of time together. Sure, they have their moments when they don't want to take turns or they can't agree on what movie to watch, but at the end of the day, I don't know that either of them has a better friend in the world than each other. Over the past couple of weeks, they have developed the need to sleep in the same bed. I wasn't sure about this at first, but when my son waited until we left the room and snuck up into the top bunk with his sister, and my wife and I found them snuggled up together sleeping peacefully, I decided I should just cherish these moments while we have them. In the words of Darius Rucker, "It won't be like this for long."
A few months ago, my wife and I welcomed our third child to the world. Again, I was worried about the reaction of our other two children. For my daughter, I was worried about the disappointment of having another little brother instead of the little sister she had ordered. We had kept the sex of this baby a secret from everyone, including our two children, so we decided that a good way to avoid any issues with our daughter would be to let her in the secret the day before my wife was scheduled to be induced. This worked like a charm. She was disappointed, but it was offset by the excitement of being trusted with such an important secret. I was less worried about my older son than I was about my daughter when he was born because he wasn't used to being the only kid in the house, but I also figured he might have a problem with not being Daddy's only little buddy anymore. Again, my children amazed me.
When our older two met the new guy for the first time, they naturally wanted to hold him and love on him, but I really thought it would be something where they would hold him for a minute or two and lose interest. This couldn't have been farther from the truth. Both of my kids held their little brother on numerous occasions for upward of thirty minutes. They would just sit there and hold him in their lap like he was the greatest treasure on Earth, hugging him and kissing him and talking to him. It hasn't stopped. They still faun all over their little brother every chance they get, and they are enormously protective of the little guy. They are quick to let us know that we have let too much time lapse since he started crying and that we need to take care of him. Often, they will even let us know what it is he is crying about and what we ought to do to alleviate the situation.
I guess the sibling relationship I see in my own kids, and how incredible it all seems to me, is probably the reason I have become so attuned to the sibling dynamics around me. I remember growing up as the oldest of three boys. We were all close in age (four years between me and my youngest brother), so we grew up playing on a lot of the same teams and having many of the same friends. This led to some pretty contentious sibling rivalry from time to time. Sure, I have a ton of great memories of all of us playing together and getting along great, but there were also times when we wanted to tear each other apart. This got a lot worse when we were all teenagers. We were all struggling to find our own identities and develop relationships outside of the family, but we were all at different stages, all having different needs from each other at the same time. As the oldest, I desperately wanted to develop a social life separate from my brothers. For them, I can only guess that they weren't quite ready to lose the leader of our little wolf pack. We fought and bickered for much of our teen years, but now that we are adults, I can honestly say that I count my brothers as two of my best friends.
My wife is the youngest of a mixed bag: two girls and a boy. From what I have heard, they were not a very close bunch. Unlike my brothers and I who all had the same interests, my wife and her siblings are all completely different. Each of them had their own interests and hobbies, so they didn't share a lot of the same things that I shared with my brothers. For this reason, that little bit of separation I had with my brothers was far greater for them. However, this past weekend, we were over at the home of my in-laws. My wife's sister was there with her fiance, and her brother was in and out as he worked to get crops out of the fields. We had a great day of four-wheeler riding, combining (for my son with his uncle), and visiting with the family, but everyone agrees that the highlight was the hour or so that the three kids spent (plus my sister-in-law's fiance and me) sitting around the kitchen table chatting about anything and everything that came to our minds. My wife was beaming. She said she can't remember a time when she had just sat with her brother and sister and just talked without any real purpose. Around that table were people who were enjoying each other's company simply because they enjoyed each other's company. They didn't have to sit and talk like that just because they are related. They did it because they genuinely like each other.
As I sit and write this all down, I wonder what I can take away from it all. What message can I express about siblings? There is a saying about being able to pick your friends but not your family. The idea is that we are better off with our friends because we get to pick them but that our families are something we are saddled with. Certainly, there are times in our lives that it feels that way, but I also feel blessed that I was given the family I have. They're not perfect. Nobody is, but they are a group of people that know who I am in a way that even my friends probably don't. Our siblings are people with whom we have a shared heritage. Even if we experienced it in different ways, we have the same basic history. We share traditions, memories, and at the expense of sounding a little cheesy, love. I know that as my children grow, there will be times they don't like each other, but I also know that they love I see between them now will always be in there somewhere, just waiting for an afternoon around the kitchen table to show itself again.
I'll start with my own kids. It started when my wife was pregnant with our middle child. Our daughter had been the only child in our family and the only grandchild on either side of our families for a couple of years. Like most only children, she was enjoying a life of indulgence. She was never without stimulation from adults; no matter where she went, she was the center of attention. Every holiday was an extravaganza of gifts that she didn't have to share with anyone. In fact, for her first two years, she didn't have to share anything. I have to admit, I was nervous about how she would react to having not only a new little brother in the house, but on my side of the family, she was getting a cousin at about the same time. I had heard stories about children in that situation acting out when the new baby came or refusing to accept that the new baby was even part of the family: "Can we take it back?"
When my son was born, everyone made sure that my daughter knew this didn't make her less special or that we would love her any less now that she wasn't the only little kiddo in our lives. My wife and I got her a baby doll as a present for her to open at the hospital when she came out to meet her little brother, and my parents got her a gift as well. We told her that the doll was for her to practice on so she could be a big helper with her little brother. She was beaming. I love to look at the pictures we have of her holding him at the hospital. You can't imagine a happier little girl, but I wasn't ready to let my guard down. I knew that this could just be a "honeymoon" phase and that things could change very quickly after a few days. This never happened. It was quite the opposite as a matter of fact. The days passed by, and instead of distancing herself from her little brother, she became more and more infatuated with him. They were together every minute of every day for a few months. This hadn't occurred to me until one Friday night when I decided to take her to a high school football game.
I was student teaching at the time, and I really thought it would be a good experience to go to a game and see my students outside of the classroom, a teacher's right of passage. My wife and I also decided it would be fun if my daughter went with me. My wife was working, so I dropped my son off with some friends of ours who had agreed to watch him for the evening, and my daughter and I headed to the game. Within a block of dropping my son off, my daughter became completely inconsolable at the thought of being away from her precious little brother. She cried the entire twenty-minute drive to the game. Once we were there and she was able to watch the band play and cheerleaders cheer, everything was okay, but as soon as we got back into the car, she immediately became worried about her brother. I thought she was happy the day he was born, but that was nothing compared to her reaction when we walked into our friends' house and she saw him again.
That was three years ago. I am happy to report that they are still as close as they were that night. It probably helps that they share a bedroom, so they continue to spend an incredible amount of time together. Sure, they have their moments when they don't want to take turns or they can't agree on what movie to watch, but at the end of the day, I don't know that either of them has a better friend in the world than each other. Over the past couple of weeks, they have developed the need to sleep in the same bed. I wasn't sure about this at first, but when my son waited until we left the room and snuck up into the top bunk with his sister, and my wife and I found them snuggled up together sleeping peacefully, I decided I should just cherish these moments while we have them. In the words of Darius Rucker, "It won't be like this for long."
A few months ago, my wife and I welcomed our third child to the world. Again, I was worried about the reaction of our other two children. For my daughter, I was worried about the disappointment of having another little brother instead of the little sister she had ordered. We had kept the sex of this baby a secret from everyone, including our two children, so we decided that a good way to avoid any issues with our daughter would be to let her in the secret the day before my wife was scheduled to be induced. This worked like a charm. She was disappointed, but it was offset by the excitement of being trusted with such an important secret. I was less worried about my older son than I was about my daughter when he was born because he wasn't used to being the only kid in the house, but I also figured he might have a problem with not being Daddy's only little buddy anymore. Again, my children amazed me.
When our older two met the new guy for the first time, they naturally wanted to hold him and love on him, but I really thought it would be something where they would hold him for a minute or two and lose interest. This couldn't have been farther from the truth. Both of my kids held their little brother on numerous occasions for upward of thirty minutes. They would just sit there and hold him in their lap like he was the greatest treasure on Earth, hugging him and kissing him and talking to him. It hasn't stopped. They still faun all over their little brother every chance they get, and they are enormously protective of the little guy. They are quick to let us know that we have let too much time lapse since he started crying and that we need to take care of him. Often, they will even let us know what it is he is crying about and what we ought to do to alleviate the situation.
I guess the sibling relationship I see in my own kids, and how incredible it all seems to me, is probably the reason I have become so attuned to the sibling dynamics around me. I remember growing up as the oldest of three boys. We were all close in age (four years between me and my youngest brother), so we grew up playing on a lot of the same teams and having many of the same friends. This led to some pretty contentious sibling rivalry from time to time. Sure, I have a ton of great memories of all of us playing together and getting along great, but there were also times when we wanted to tear each other apart. This got a lot worse when we were all teenagers. We were all struggling to find our own identities and develop relationships outside of the family, but we were all at different stages, all having different needs from each other at the same time. As the oldest, I desperately wanted to develop a social life separate from my brothers. For them, I can only guess that they weren't quite ready to lose the leader of our little wolf pack. We fought and bickered for much of our teen years, but now that we are adults, I can honestly say that I count my brothers as two of my best friends.
My wife is the youngest of a mixed bag: two girls and a boy. From what I have heard, they were not a very close bunch. Unlike my brothers and I who all had the same interests, my wife and her siblings are all completely different. Each of them had their own interests and hobbies, so they didn't share a lot of the same things that I shared with my brothers. For this reason, that little bit of separation I had with my brothers was far greater for them. However, this past weekend, we were over at the home of my in-laws. My wife's sister was there with her fiance, and her brother was in and out as he worked to get crops out of the fields. We had a great day of four-wheeler riding, combining (for my son with his uncle), and visiting with the family, but everyone agrees that the highlight was the hour or so that the three kids spent (plus my sister-in-law's fiance and me) sitting around the kitchen table chatting about anything and everything that came to our minds. My wife was beaming. She said she can't remember a time when she had just sat with her brother and sister and just talked without any real purpose. Around that table were people who were enjoying each other's company simply because they enjoyed each other's company. They didn't have to sit and talk like that just because they are related. They did it because they genuinely like each other.
As I sit and write this all down, I wonder what I can take away from it all. What message can I express about siblings? There is a saying about being able to pick your friends but not your family. The idea is that we are better off with our friends because we get to pick them but that our families are something we are saddled with. Certainly, there are times in our lives that it feels that way, but I also feel blessed that I was given the family I have. They're not perfect. Nobody is, but they are a group of people that know who I am in a way that even my friends probably don't. Our siblings are people with whom we have a shared heritage. Even if we experienced it in different ways, we have the same basic history. We share traditions, memories, and at the expense of sounding a little cheesy, love. I know that as my children grow, there will be times they don't like each other, but I also know that they love I see between them now will always be in there somewhere, just waiting for an afternoon around the kitchen table to show itself again.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Warp Speed
There are times as a parent that a milestone arrives and there is an overwhelming sense that somebody must have flipped the switch to "Warp Speed". I don't remember giving the order to speed recklessly through my children's lives, yet I found myself crashing into a kindergarten room with my oldest a few weeks ago. How can this be? I can still close my eyes and feel like I'm getting off the plane from Iraq to see her birth.
I wrote about it a post awhile back, so I hate to keep bringing it up, but having kids makes you more aware than you've ever been of the passage of time. Without kids, I wouldn't give a second thought to how quickly the last five years have passed, but now that I have kids, I can see it passing before my eyes. I look at pictures from a year ago, and while I still look just as stunning as I did 365 days ago, my kids look like they've aged ten years (in a good way). As I type this post, I'm looking at a family picture taken last fall. The two kids I had at the time seem so young compared to the two I dropped off this morning before coming to work.
At this time last year, my wife and I were hoping to get pregnant again, but now we have a two-month old that smiles and coos. In the picture on my desk, one can barely tell that my sister-in-law is pregnant, but my niece was crawling around like a pro when I dropped my boys off for daycare this morning.
I'm loving every second of this adventure, but I at the same time, I'm bracing myself for the morning that I wake up to the sound of my daughter getting ready for her wedding day or my sons packing up to head to college. I think of the movie Click starring Adam Sandler, and realize that while his remote started auto-fast-forwarding because he was using it so much, mine would probably get stuck in pause mode. I would want to pause on every smile, hug, and "I love you, Daddy," but life doesn't work that way, so I'll just have to do my best to live in the moment every moment I get.
I wrote about it a post awhile back, so I hate to keep bringing it up, but having kids makes you more aware than you've ever been of the passage of time. Without kids, I wouldn't give a second thought to how quickly the last five years have passed, but now that I have kids, I can see it passing before my eyes. I look at pictures from a year ago, and while I still look just as stunning as I did 365 days ago, my kids look like they've aged ten years (in a good way). As I type this post, I'm looking at a family picture taken last fall. The two kids I had at the time seem so young compared to the two I dropped off this morning before coming to work.
At this time last year, my wife and I were hoping to get pregnant again, but now we have a two-month old that smiles and coos. In the picture on my desk, one can barely tell that my sister-in-law is pregnant, but my niece was crawling around like a pro when I dropped my boys off for daycare this morning.
I'm loving every second of this adventure, but I at the same time, I'm bracing myself for the morning that I wake up to the sound of my daughter getting ready for her wedding day or my sons packing up to head to college. I think of the movie Click starring Adam Sandler, and realize that while his remote started auto-fast-forwarding because he was using it so much, mine would probably get stuck in pause mode. I would want to pause on every smile, hug, and "I love you, Daddy," but life doesn't work that way, so I'll just have to do my best to live in the moment every moment I get.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Why?
My three-year-old son is going through his "Why?" phase right now. Actually, he's been going through it for awhile now, and when it first hit, my natural inclination was to try to end his questioning as quickly as possible with short answers and a stern warning to knock it off. However, I was struck with the realization that my high school students had lost this sense of curiosity somewhere along the line and no longer seem interested in exploring much of anything beyond the surface.
I wrote about this on my teacher blog (www.mrogle.blogspot.com) and opined about it on Twitter. My principal (www.phsprincipal.blogspot.com) sent me a link to this video, and it really struck a chord a with me. I decided right then that I would answer my son's questions to the best of my ability until his curiosity was satisfied.
Don't get me wrong, his repetitive questioning can be very annoying and at times exhausting, but I really do my best to give him real answers to his questions whenever I can. Unfortunately, I'm not the most knowledgeable guy on some subjects and some of his questions simply don't have real answers. This has lead to some interesting conversations.
We were driving down the road one day when it began to rain. He asked why it was raining. I proceeded to tell him about the water cycle and about how moisture builds in the air to the point that it can't hold anymore and that the temperature also plays a role in producing clouds capable of causing precipitation. I was pretty proud of my knowledge of this (a big thank you to Eastern Illinois University for making me take a class on weather and climate), but he wasn't satisfied. He wanted to know why all of this happens. I explained that it was simply the laws of nature at work. He wasn't satisfied with this either. I was left with no other option than to tell him that is just how God wants it. He asked why God wants it that way. I said it is because God wants to water the plants on Earth. He asked why. I said it was because he wanted them to grow and be pretty. He asked why again. This went on for a good five minutes before I could only tell him that he needed to take this line of questioning up with God. It was at this point that my little boy looked up from his booster seat and said in the most innocent voice imaginable, "God, why do you make it rain?" There was silence in the car for a few moments. Then he looked back at me and said, "Daddy, he's not answering." I caught myself just in time to keep from saying, "Sometimes God doesn't answer us right away," but I knew that would only start the cycle again. I'm a man, not a saint.
Other times, his questions just don't have an answer that I can give. We were driving through town (most of these happen when he is bored in the car) and passed some cheerleaders from the local university holding signs advertising their car wash. If I'd had cash, I would have stopped. I mean, my car was dirty and it seemed like a good cause. Anyway, my son asked what they were doing. I explained the idea of a fundraising car wash. He asked why they needed money. I explained it was to pay for their expenses since cheerleading is an often overlooked program when it comes to funding. He asked why, so I explained about revenue from ticket sales and pressure from booster clubs. He was okay with that, but then asked why they were allowed to stand out near the road and wash cars. I said I didn't know. He persisted down this path, and I honestly ran out of ideas to keep his little mind going. Again, there was silence in the car. Finally, after much thought, my son asked, "Did their mommy say they could?" Hallelujah! "Yes, son. Their mommy said they could." Silence. "Why?"
I don't know if all of this will lead to my son being an engaged and intellectually curious teenager, but I can only hope it helps because I am certain it will be a contributing factor to my future grey hair.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Summer Reflections
I got an email today inviting me to the faculty kick-off party for the new school year. I knew the end of my summer break was fast approaching, but this makes it official. It is a strange thing when I reflect on this past summer. Somehow, it seems like the summer flew by but also lasted forever. It seems like only yesterday my daughter and I were eating donuts in my classroom getting ready to go handout final report cards, and yet I feel like it has been the most amazing and everlasting summer I can remember.
I suppose this has a lot to do with all of the excitement we managed to pack into this short two-and-a-half months. The summer started with t-ball. It seems like such a long time ago that I took my little girl to her first practice. In reality, it was only about ten weeks ago. T-ball season concluded on the same day our son was born: another huge occasion. I feel bad that my wife and I missed my daughter's last game and her getting her trophy, but something tells me that she will forgive us. She loves her baby brother and dotes on him constantly.
After the birth of my youngest son, it was only a few short weeks before I got to take my older son to his first major league baseball game. I wrote about it in my last blog in more detail, but let me just say here that I still can't wipe the smile off of my face when I think about it. All along the way, we enjoyed trips to the park and afternoons in my parents' pool watching my son demonstrate how fearless he is by doing back flips into the pool off of my shoulders while my daughter practiced all she was learning in swimming lessons. Oh, and I got the joy of watching my son find an outlet for his athleticism in tumbling class.
I spend a lot of time thinking about why time seems to fly and stand still at the same time as I get older. I think it is because as I grow and my family grows, I have more and more to look forward to, and one thing I know from childhood is that looking forward to something makes time do funny things. I remember looking forward to Christmas or birthdays and feeling on a day-to-day basis that they would never come but then waking up one morning and realizing it had arrived.
Having kids is kind of like that. I look forward to so many things with them, and it feels like these milestones and events will never come, but they do. I registered my oldest for kindergarten today. I remember when my middle child was born and wondering what his voice would sound like when he was finally able to call me daddy, and now he tells the most amazing stories and is able to tell me I'm the best daddy in the whole world in complete sentences. Now I find myself daydreaming about what it will be like when our youngest is old enough to run around and play with his big brother and sister, but I know that I will wake up one day and find that time has come. Some people might get a little sad to think about how fast their children grow up, and I suppose that someday I will look back and wish they were still my little kiddos, but for now, I am loving every minute of watching them grow and absolutely can't wait until I get to see them do the next thing for the very first time.
I suppose this has a lot to do with all of the excitement we managed to pack into this short two-and-a-half months. The summer started with t-ball. It seems like such a long time ago that I took my little girl to her first practice. In reality, it was only about ten weeks ago. T-ball season concluded on the same day our son was born: another huge occasion. I feel bad that my wife and I missed my daughter's last game and her getting her trophy, but something tells me that she will forgive us. She loves her baby brother and dotes on him constantly.
After the birth of my youngest son, it was only a few short weeks before I got to take my older son to his first major league baseball game. I wrote about it in my last blog in more detail, but let me just say here that I still can't wipe the smile off of my face when I think about it. All along the way, we enjoyed trips to the park and afternoons in my parents' pool watching my son demonstrate how fearless he is by doing back flips into the pool off of my shoulders while my daughter practiced all she was learning in swimming lessons. Oh, and I got the joy of watching my son find an outlet for his athleticism in tumbling class.
I spend a lot of time thinking about why time seems to fly and stand still at the same time as I get older. I think it is because as I grow and my family grows, I have more and more to look forward to, and one thing I know from childhood is that looking forward to something makes time do funny things. I remember looking forward to Christmas or birthdays and feeling on a day-to-day basis that they would never come but then waking up one morning and realizing it had arrived.
Having kids is kind of like that. I look forward to so many things with them, and it feels like these milestones and events will never come, but they do. I registered my oldest for kindergarten today. I remember when my middle child was born and wondering what his voice would sound like when he was finally able to call me daddy, and now he tells the most amazing stories and is able to tell me I'm the best daddy in the whole world in complete sentences. Now I find myself daydreaming about what it will be like when our youngest is old enough to run around and play with his big brother and sister, but I know that I will wake up one day and find that time has come. Some people might get a little sad to think about how fast their children grow up, and I suppose that someday I will look back and wish they were still my little kiddos, but for now, I am loving every minute of watching them grow and absolutely can't wait until I get to see them do the next thing for the very first time.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
All-Time Highs and Lows
I'm always amazed when I watch television and someone being interviewed at some big, newsworthy event says, "This is the (greatest/happiest/best/saddest/etc.) day of my life." This just bothers me. I guess it is because I rarely see the event being covered as that big a deal. I remember hearing people say it when Barack Obama was elected and again when Michael Jackson died. While these would certainly be monumental occasions if you are very close to one of these people, these events just don't rank that high in importance for me on a personal level. That said, these extreme pronouncements due cause me to think about the happiest/saddest days in my life.
Fatherhood has provided me days that rank high on both the happy and sad days list. I'll start with the sad ones so that I can finish strong with the happy ones. Two of the most crushing days of my life took place within my first year of being a father. I was serving in Iraq when my daughter was born, and while I did get to come home for her birth (definitely one of the happiest days of my life), I also had to turn around and leave her when she was only two weeks old. I remember feeling like someone had ripped my heart out through my throat as I boarded the plane that day. I didn't know if I would ever see her again, and it killed me to think that she wouldn't remember me if I didn't come back. Ten months later, I was able to come home for two weeks of R&R, but I had to go through leaving my little girl a second time. Both times were made all the more difficult by the fact that I was traveling alone. Each time it took me about five days of traveling surrounded by strangers to get back to my friends in Iraq. Once I was back, everything was fine because I was able to be with other guys who were going through the same thing, and we helped each other get through it, but for those days when I was on my own on planes and sitting in airport terminals, the sadness was crushing. Luckily, that is the full list of my worst days.
The great thing about having kids is that they will give you more great days than you can count. Even simple days of grabbing a picnic lunch and going to the park rank higher than just about anything I experienced in life before kids. The day my wife said she would marry me and the day we got married are both in my top ten greatest days, but just about everything beyond that is time I've spent with my kids.
The days they were born are obvious ones, but I recently added another great day to my list. It is a tradition in our house that when one of our kids turns three, they get to go to a St. Louis Cardinals game with me. My daughter and I went to a game two years ago when she turned three. It was Father's Day, so it was a double-dip of awesomeness to get to share that with her. We had a fantastic time. She got a real major league baseball before the game started when a ball got away from the visiting Phillies and rolled to the wall in front of our seats. A member of the grounds crew drove up on a cart and tossed it to us. After the game, she got to run the bases.
This year it was my son's turn. I have to say that as excited as my daughter was for the game, my son was twice as thrilled. He is much more into sports, so he was more interested in watching the actual game, which was cool. Our seats were amazing. We were sitting in the front row of the bleachers above the Cardinals bullpen, so we got to see the pitchers warm-up, and my son managed to charm a baseball from the bullpen catcher. Like my daughter, my son got to run the bases after the game. The only difference is that my son is more timid than my daughter, so he wouldn't run them alone. That's right; I got to run the bases at Busch Stadium with my son.
I look at those two trips, both of which resulted in exciting one-run wins by our beloved Cardinals, official major-league baseballs for my kids, and a chance to touch 'em all on one of the most beautiful baseball fields in the world, and I can't imagine anything on a national or global scale, no matter how historic, meaning as much to me as that.
Fatherhood has provided me days that rank high on both the happy and sad days list. I'll start with the sad ones so that I can finish strong with the happy ones. Two of the most crushing days of my life took place within my first year of being a father. I was serving in Iraq when my daughter was born, and while I did get to come home for her birth (definitely one of the happiest days of my life), I also had to turn around and leave her when she was only two weeks old. I remember feeling like someone had ripped my heart out through my throat as I boarded the plane that day. I didn't know if I would ever see her again, and it killed me to think that she wouldn't remember me if I didn't come back. Ten months later, I was able to come home for two weeks of R&R, but I had to go through leaving my little girl a second time. Both times were made all the more difficult by the fact that I was traveling alone. Each time it took me about five days of traveling surrounded by strangers to get back to my friends in Iraq. Once I was back, everything was fine because I was able to be with other guys who were going through the same thing, and we helped each other get through it, but for those days when I was on my own on planes and sitting in airport terminals, the sadness was crushing. Luckily, that is the full list of my worst days.
The great thing about having kids is that they will give you more great days than you can count. Even simple days of grabbing a picnic lunch and going to the park rank higher than just about anything I experienced in life before kids. The day my wife said she would marry me and the day we got married are both in my top ten greatest days, but just about everything beyond that is time I've spent with my kids.
The days they were born are obvious ones, but I recently added another great day to my list. It is a tradition in our house that when one of our kids turns three, they get to go to a St. Louis Cardinals game with me. My daughter and I went to a game two years ago when she turned three. It was Father's Day, so it was a double-dip of awesomeness to get to share that with her. We had a fantastic time. She got a real major league baseball before the game started when a ball got away from the visiting Phillies and rolled to the wall in front of our seats. A member of the grounds crew drove up on a cart and tossed it to us. After the game, she got to run the bases.
This year it was my son's turn. I have to say that as excited as my daughter was for the game, my son was twice as thrilled. He is much more into sports, so he was more interested in watching the actual game, which was cool. Our seats were amazing. We were sitting in the front row of the bleachers above the Cardinals bullpen, so we got to see the pitchers warm-up, and my son managed to charm a baseball from the bullpen catcher. Like my daughter, my son got to run the bases after the game. The only difference is that my son is more timid than my daughter, so he wouldn't run them alone. That's right; I got to run the bases at Busch Stadium with my son.
I look at those two trips, both of which resulted in exciting one-run wins by our beloved Cardinals, official major-league baseballs for my kids, and a chance to touch 'em all on one of the most beautiful baseball fields in the world, and I can't imagine anything on a national or global scale, no matter how historic, meaning as much to me as that.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Potty Training
***WARNING: This post is not for the squeamish.***
Sometimes I stop and think about what being a parent really means, and it is frightening. When your child is born, they literally don't know anything. They don't know how to talk. They don't know how to make themselves mobile. Heck, the little stinkers don't even know how to control their own limbs, and our jobs as parents is to teach them absolutely everything one must know in order to function as a human. I don't know about you, but that seems like a pretty daunting task when you think about.
I remember my cousin buying a Furby when we were in college. We would sit around while we were bored (yeah, bored, that's what we were) trying to teach it dirty words and phrases, but it didn't learn and we soon became irritated with it and gave up. I know now that at that point I was not ready for kids, because kids are infinitely harder to train than a Furby. For one thing, the Furby wouldn't learn the bad words we wanted it to, which caused no hardship for us at all, but kids will learn the bad words you don't want them to and recite them at the top of their lungs at the most inopportune times. Obviously, that is more irritating, but teaching kids to talk is far from the biggest challenge a parent faces on their way to training their very own human. No, the biggest challenge when training a human child is potty training. Some people may think teaching a teenager to drive is harder, but those people are idiots. Think about it: If your teenager wrecks the car, who has to clean up the mess? Somebody else, that's who. If your toddler craps their pants at the park on the hottest day of year, who has to sweat their butt off in a stinky park bathroom with flies buzzing around their head trying to clean the kids' rear-end while also trying to keep their curious hands from touching anything that will require hospital-strength sterilization? You do!
Now, some of you non-parent-types out there may be wondering why the kid wasn't wearing a diaper at the park if they aren't fully potty trained. Let me explain. You see, potty training a kid isn't like teaching your pet bird to say, "Your fly's undone," whenever a guest at your house walks out of the bathroom. You don't just work with them and then when they learn it the process is over. The hardest thing about potty training is that the real hassle doesn't start until they are out of diapers. Kids are more clever than we give them credit for. They will poop and pee (another side effects of potty training is that you talk about poop and pee like some people talk about the weather or sports scores) on the potty with 100% accuracy until they have you convinced they are ready for real underwear. That is when the fun starts.
My daughter was "potty trained" (totally fake title) when she was two. One day, after she was "potty trained", I discovered that she had pooped her pants (I know, doesn't sound potty trained at all, right?). When I was working on getting her pants and underwear off, she decided to help me out by kicking her underwear off, which basically turned her underwear into some kind of medieval poo launcher. She thought it was funny. It is only now, years later, that I am able to laugh about it.
My son has been "potty trained" (can we drop the myth already?) for a few months now, but we still go through about five pairs of big boy underwear a day, and it is not as if he just doesn't understand how to tell he needs to use the bathroom because he will leave the living room, walk past the bathroom, and hide in his closet to do it. You don't do all of that by accident!
And another thing, whoever thought it was necessary to teach kids to use the toilet before they are ten forgot one little hiccup: diarrhea. I know fully grown adults who can barely make it to the bathroom when they have the flu. How in the world can we expect a three-year-old to understand the concept of "never trust a fart"? It's not going to happen. I've watched my kids get this look of fearful bewilderment as their pants inexplicably become heavier. One lovely evening, my daughter walked into the living room with her pants soaking wet. She told me she had peed her pants. As she got closer, I noticed the smell. She hadn't peed her pants at all. The poor girl spent about half an hour in the bathtub as I raced around trying to figure out what to do. We didn't have any pull-ups for her, and I certainly wasn't going to change her pants every five minutes, which happened to be the intervals at which she would announce from the bathroom, "It happened again!" I hosed her down in there at least five times before I was able to get hold of my wife at work. She came up with the idea of digging the little training potty out and having her sit in the living room on it so she could watch a movie until her tummy felt better. She ended up having to sit on the training potty for like three hours.
Why do we put this burden on small children? I say make potty training part of the fifth grade curriculum and leave it alone until then. I don't understand what the big rush is anyway. The way I see it, life is just a big race to get back into diapers. I can't wait until I don't have to be bothered with nuisances like trips to the restroom during my daily routine. Just leave me alone with my applesauce; I'll scream when I need someone to change me.
Sometimes I stop and think about what being a parent really means, and it is frightening. When your child is born, they literally don't know anything. They don't know how to talk. They don't know how to make themselves mobile. Heck, the little stinkers don't even know how to control their own limbs, and our jobs as parents is to teach them absolutely everything one must know in order to function as a human. I don't know about you, but that seems like a pretty daunting task when you think about.
I remember my cousin buying a Furby when we were in college. We would sit around while we were bored (yeah, bored, that's what we were) trying to teach it dirty words and phrases, but it didn't learn and we soon became irritated with it and gave up. I know now that at that point I was not ready for kids, because kids are infinitely harder to train than a Furby. For one thing, the Furby wouldn't learn the bad words we wanted it to, which caused no hardship for us at all, but kids will learn the bad words you don't want them to and recite them at the top of their lungs at the most inopportune times. Obviously, that is more irritating, but teaching kids to talk is far from the biggest challenge a parent faces on their way to training their very own human. No, the biggest challenge when training a human child is potty training. Some people may think teaching a teenager to drive is harder, but those people are idiots. Think about it: If your teenager wrecks the car, who has to clean up the mess? Somebody else, that's who. If your toddler craps their pants at the park on the hottest day of year, who has to sweat their butt off in a stinky park bathroom with flies buzzing around their head trying to clean the kids' rear-end while also trying to keep their curious hands from touching anything that will require hospital-strength sterilization? You do!
Now, some of you non-parent-types out there may be wondering why the kid wasn't wearing a diaper at the park if they aren't fully potty trained. Let me explain. You see, potty training a kid isn't like teaching your pet bird to say, "Your fly's undone," whenever a guest at your house walks out of the bathroom. You don't just work with them and then when they learn it the process is over. The hardest thing about potty training is that the real hassle doesn't start until they are out of diapers. Kids are more clever than we give them credit for. They will poop and pee (another side effects of potty training is that you talk about poop and pee like some people talk about the weather or sports scores) on the potty with 100% accuracy until they have you convinced they are ready for real underwear. That is when the fun starts.
My daughter was "potty trained" (totally fake title) when she was two. One day, after she was "potty trained", I discovered that she had pooped her pants (I know, doesn't sound potty trained at all, right?). When I was working on getting her pants and underwear off, she decided to help me out by kicking her underwear off, which basically turned her underwear into some kind of medieval poo launcher. She thought it was funny. It is only now, years later, that I am able to laugh about it.
My son has been "potty trained" (can we drop the myth already?) for a few months now, but we still go through about five pairs of big boy underwear a day, and it is not as if he just doesn't understand how to tell he needs to use the bathroom because he will leave the living room, walk past the bathroom, and hide in his closet to do it. You don't do all of that by accident!
And another thing, whoever thought it was necessary to teach kids to use the toilet before they are ten forgot one little hiccup: diarrhea. I know fully grown adults who can barely make it to the bathroom when they have the flu. How in the world can we expect a three-year-old to understand the concept of "never trust a fart"? It's not going to happen. I've watched my kids get this look of fearful bewilderment as their pants inexplicably become heavier. One lovely evening, my daughter walked into the living room with her pants soaking wet. She told me she had peed her pants. As she got closer, I noticed the smell. She hadn't peed her pants at all. The poor girl spent about half an hour in the bathtub as I raced around trying to figure out what to do. We didn't have any pull-ups for her, and I certainly wasn't going to change her pants every five minutes, which happened to be the intervals at which she would announce from the bathroom, "It happened again!" I hosed her down in there at least five times before I was able to get hold of my wife at work. She came up with the idea of digging the little training potty out and having her sit in the living room on it so she could watch a movie until her tummy felt better. She ended up having to sit on the training potty for like three hours.
Why do we put this burden on small children? I say make potty training part of the fifth grade curriculum and leave it alone until then. I don't understand what the big rush is anyway. The way I see it, life is just a big race to get back into diapers. I can't wait until I don't have to be bothered with nuisances like trips to the restroom during my daily routine. Just leave me alone with my applesauce; I'll scream when I need someone to change me.
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