yellow cabs & hopscotch

honest notes to a son and daughter about a dad's journey in parenting. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-21935255-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[yellowcabhopscotch]

i love my kids in the morning.

That might sound like a bold statement as if I don’t love my kids the rest of the day. I love both of them every minute of every day. But the morning is my favorite time, when my love and often-unstable emotions overflow into overwhelming joy. Enough explaining.  

I love my kids in the morning. Before they are corrupted by sugary sweets. Before they think the other kids at school are funny and they really aren’t. Before they are forced to put on matching clothes. Before they start substituting “poop” for lyrics in a song. Have you ever heard the other version of All About That Bass called All About That Poop? Before the very-real four year old struggle rears its tantrum-y self. Before she realizes she hasn’t eaten in a half a day and needs to keep her figure. Before he thinks he’s too good for Paw Patrol or The Backyardigans. Before she realizes she can crawl and tries to walk.

They need us in the morning. They need us to help them out of bed, help them change clothes, help them make breakfast. They need us to turn on the television and build a Lego castle. They need a shoulder to rest their head on for just-a-few-more-minutes-daddy.

There’s a single moment in the morning when Harper and Kaeden, separated for eight hours by a single wall, see each other. And it’s as if they see each other for the first time. He calls her “Harpy Garpy” and she presses her lips against his forehead. She’ll stay close to him and he to her.

He’ll run by and she’ll crawl by in equally cute pajamas headed anywhere. Anywhere together. Sometimes they’ll sit and watch a cartoon. And other times, he’ll build something and she’ll tear it back down. And if I’m lucky, they’ll want me to play along.

In the mornings, for a brief moment before the sun fully comes through front windows, I lose any sense of my surroundings. I forget how little sleep I got the night before or what things I’ll be asked to do that day. I feel as if I’m seeing them play for the first time, seeing them giggle for the first time and seeing that sentimental childhood I’ve only watched on television.

The dreaded mornings are coming. The snooze buttons, the you-are-going-to-be-late screams, the early mornings after a late night out. Those are all the just-wait-until responses I’ll hear from people who’ll read this. I really don’t care. I know they are coming. The wheels will soon come off.

But for now, our mornings together, however beautiful and cluttered, are enough.

[yellowcabhopscotch]

stages, confidence and perspective.

NOTE: I haven’t blogged much in a while. I have been too caught up in trying to "live in the moment." But often living in the moment gets confused with simply being in the moment. And sometimes living really means seeing how far you’ve come and being okay with it. I'm doing better. I'll write more. We all get Instagram envy. Friends of friends post pictures of their kids, always the same age as our own, doing things we wish our kids would do. They eat broccoli and carrots, sleep through the night and spell their own name. Their parents are cooking edamame and elk chili, going on seemingly-tearless vacations and watching real, grown-up movies every night.

I don’t get jealous. Well, not exactly. I get confused. Where did we go wrong as parents? Why not us? Why not our kids?

A few weeks ago, we registered Kaeden for two-week swim lessons. We hyped it up for a few days hoping he would, apparently overnight, lose his fear of being in the water without holding onto someone. On the first night of swim lessons, he was excited, maybe even escatic. We pulled in and he said “Mommy, Daddy, I’m gonna swim.” A few minutes pass, the class starts and he’s sitting squarely on our laps. Watching the other kids swim. Holding his floaties.

Nothing. Not a toe in the water. Twenty-six minutes later, we are on our way home. Tan and dry. We leave and he tells us that he’s "super duper" sorry and that tomorrow he’ll get in the water. We talk about consequences and candy, treats and incentives. He says the other kids are just bigger than him and that he won’t be bad again.

For the next two weeks, he eases into the water. He learns the doggie paddle and the elementary backstroke. He wears his floaties. He goes down the slide. Again. And again.

Weeks later, he rides his first kiddie roller coaster. He starts to eat better. He goes to sleep without one of us being there and he plays by himself quietly.  

I don’t know exactly why it happened but something clicked. Our son, the same child who played an entire season of YMCA soccer holding my hand, found a piece of something he needed. Confidence. The confidence to realize he could do it. The confidence to lessen his fears, ease our burdens and well, it did something else. Something else entirely that I didn’t even think about. He moved on to a new stage of life. And as he continues to grow up, his sister is doing the same thing.   She has crossed the line from being a baby to being a child. She finds that crawling seems more fun than sitting. Table food trumps jarred baby food and the days of formula and constant bottle washing are numbered.

Parenting is, among many things, about stages. Getting from one stage to another without too many bruises, tears or shots of whiskey.

I used to be just a guy.

Then a husband.

Then a dad.

Then a dad of two.

Those are all stages no one prepares you for. Then those two little ones start to grow up. And they eat broccoli and learn to crawl. They realize they have a pee-pee and that their sister doesn’t. This just happened. I never prepared for this. We never talked about what this might look like. I read everything I could about kale and potty training, thrush and vaccinations. But not how to manage our own feelings, our own emotions, how to cope when our kids start to grow up and find their intoxicating independence. All while we still reminisce at night over grainy iPhone videos of their first breath.

I am still figuring out how to be a father, one day at a time, one mistake at a time. Sometimes I feel like if I start crying I won’t ever stop. Sometimes I’m just so grateful we get to do this thing called family together. Sometimes I want so badly to protect them from stages that I know can cause heartache and emotions.

And as our kids grow up and find out they are the main character in their own story, I think I’m starting to find something that I need. Something that tells me I’m okay to be the parent of a four-year-old preschooler and nine-month toddler. Confidence. I don’t stay awake paralyzed by the fear of schedules, the what-ifs and the hope of “maybe one day.” Instead I am excited by the next stages, whatever that might look like and the equal parts joy and trouble it can bring.

[yellowcabhopscotch]

two things that happened

It’s fair to say I’m overthinking this. But in my defense, I overthink everything. Last night, our two kids both did new things. Kaeden slept in his new “big boy” twin bed and Harper rolled over to her stomach. Both for the first time. It’s almost hard to believe that it took this long. They both seem like they should have done it a long time ago. But that’s not the point. They both did new things. On the same night. There must be a message in that, right? Often life feels like something spilled. And all we are doing is cleaning up the mess. We chafe at progress, we agonize about the now. I worry about the dishes, sleep patterns and antioxidants. We spend half our evenings teaching about consequences and responsibilities. We explain that golf isn’t hockey and that proper football tackling doesn’t end in an armbar. I wonder if Harper is going to like jeans or skirts. Or if she will be a sweatpants girl. Or if she will be content with living her in own skin.

But firsts like last night, those are parenting milestones. They are reasons to stop, acknowledge and cry. If you do that sort of thing. That’s my way to say I do that sort of thing. We squeeze the most out of them. We relish in them and we take pictures of them. But none of that helps.

These moments come and go. It’s just a new bed and it’s just rolling over. There will be more firsts. But more firsts mean growing up and these firsts will be farther away. And yet just when we think they are growing up too fast or we can’t relate, something happens that seems purposefully designed to set our hearts aflutter.

If I’ve learned anything in three and a half years of being called a dad, I’ve learned that parenting is based on one thing, joy. Not everything about parenting brings joy. But it’s the joy part that makes the rest of it palatable. And joy? That’s nothing more than a smile in the morning, the second helping of a vegetable, a new bed and a new move. Today, we are full of joy. That’s the message.

I love you both to the sun and the moon,

Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

on bill cosby, timeouts and imaginations.

I was somewhere between the milk crates and the lasagna hot tray when the impulsion took over. I swung the lunch tray and knocked a classmate to the ground. The following images, like a VHS tape skipping through the reel, are fleeting. The lunch aides launched over the metal milk carriers. The boy, probably six inches shorter than me, was on the ground. His glasses were broken and he wasn’t moving. As the cafeteria staff hauled me away, I could hear him crying. I smiled and wondered if I was still going to be able to eat. I’m not a sinister man. And I wasn’t into the typical thirteen-year-old boy into the machismo world of swirlys, lunch room hijinks and name calling. Quite the opposite. I was the one being bullied. Well, they didn’t call it bullying when I was in school. I was teased, ragged on, rode hard because of my speech impediment, long last name that is easily twisted into a variety of mean puns, and the general awkwardness that goes with both. I think about the fight every week. No kidding. I really do. I wonder where he is now and if he thinks about the fight like I do and if he has children and what his actual freaking name is. And I’ve thought about it much more this week. Our three year old has gotten in trouble five days in a row at school. He’s been in timeout every day for hitting, slapping, lack of listening and getting up from timeout. We had a note sent home from school this week that said “he seems to think it’s funny when he gets into trouble.” To be fair, she ended the note with a smiley face.

I know the interval between a three year old impulsively hitting another three-year old at daycare and a thirteen-year-old knocking a classmate unconscious is slow. But I was that thirteen year old and that fight still haunts me. I don't know if anybody else has ever felt this way. We spend the first 45 minutes after picking him up from school coaxing the truth from him and explaining why it was wrong and what a consequence is. We’ve taken away candy. We’ve taken away television. We’ve hid the YouTube app from our phones. We’ve enacted timeout rules. We work on discipline and I can see the confusion in his eyes. Rather his eyes are stuck somewhere between misery and confusion. When did this happen?

Let me be clear. He’s a great kid. He kisses his sister every time she whimpers. He cuddles in my lap to watch basketball. He sings along to every other song on the radio. And more often than not, he gets in trouble at school only because he’s the self-appointed policeman of the classroom. But hitting is hitting and a timeout is a timeout. I finished reading Bill Cosby's "Fatherhood" memoir this week. Cosby serendipitously wrote "Let me repeat: nothing is harder for a parent than getting your kids to do the right thing. There is such a rich variety of ways for you to fail: by using threats, by using bribery, by using reason, by using example, by using blackmail, or by pleading for mercy." I take comfort in the fact that whatever consequence we decree, we have a fifty percent chance of getting it right. We will keep trying and keep having patience. By three years of age, he has somehow convinced himself that being a bad guy means (fake) shooting web out of his knuckles like Spider-Man. So naturally, he told me this week in the car that he wanted to be a bad guy when he grew up. The next fifteen minutes challenged every parental bone in my body and imagination. These young adversaries won't beat us. That's parenthood, right? Survival.

Maybe these are the glory days of parenting, before the stakes are really raised, and I'm not even realizing it because I'm too worried. Maybe it’s supposed to be fun to compare bad guys to Yo Gabba Gabba and consequences to doughnuts. Maybe he’s just three years old and boys will be boys. Maybe this is the height of his mischievousness and we should be thankful.

And maybe this is all hard because he's growing up so fast. Because we are blessed to see him, a three-year with the sweetest smile ever who calls the chiropractor “a skeleton doctor,” and a two-month old who eats, sleeps and smiles at my every word. I can still remember holding him at her age. When did he get so big? His growth is bittersweet. Maybe I should stop projecting his future to mine in the lunchroom. He won’t turn out like that. But even if he does, we’ll still try to explain consequences. Slowly, without realizing it, I’ve growing to love having these talks with him. We talk about how Jesus loves him and Jesus doesn’t hit. He says that Santa Claus is watching us. And I say that we love him. He apologizes and says “I’ll not do it again.” As far as I'm concerned, a little confusion and punishment may not keep our evenings tear-free, but it also lets parents like us know that we are still needed and that dialogue with a three year old will always include lots of “I love yous.” Cosby also said "if you cannot function in a world where things like this happen, then you better forget about raising children and go for daffodils.” I've never liked daffodils. I'll stick with my kids.

[yellowcabhopscotch]

an obligatory christmas post: 19 thoughts on our eighth christmas season as a couple, sixth as a married couple, fourth as parents and first as parents of two.

When I woke up the day after Christmas, rather when I woke up to feed Harper at 3 in the morning, I started writing about the recently-passed holiday. I wrote in notes, rapid thoughts about how amazing it is to be alive and generally introspective material. Though all true, I deleted most of it because those words didn’t explain everything. And I wanted to remember it all. 19) We have had a somewhat estranged relationship with sleep lately. Life with two kids is different. Less sleep means more time to catch up on Hallmark Christmas movies. And White Christmas. Which I watched 17 times this month. 18) News organizations across the nation reported that Santa Claus was being escorted by multiple fighter jets. Spoiler alert. Thinking about that for five minutes revealed several continuity errors. Isn’t Santa supposed to be a symbol of peace? What country is willingly supplying their own fighter jets on Christmas Eve? Do their citizens know? What does Santa do in North Korea?  17) Excessive hours of watching Home and Home (what Kaeden calls Home Alone 2) reveals several major plot holes. But it’s Christmas and we forgive, right? 16) "Christmas is sights, especially the sights of Christmas reflected in the eyes of a child." — William Saroyan 15) I forgot having a baby at a large family gathering makes me hyperventilate. All those hands, all those people kissing my child on the face, all those people assuming they know her and how she is and who she looks like. That’s when I take the older child and let Mommy deal with those people. To be fair, I get that way at the mall and the grocery store too. 14) For a few hours, while opening presents, Kaeden forgot about iPhones, televisions, iPads. He didn’t ask to play a game or watch a YouTube video of Cars or listen to Katy Perry. I’m not that guy who thinks technology is ruining children. Really he can do almost anything at the swipe of his fingers. But it was nice and saved me from having to charge my phone. 13) I cried watching Kaeden watch the Disney (tape-delayed, they know we know, right?) Christmas Day Parade. He’s just so big and so smart. Like he knows Dark Wader (what he calls Darth Vader) and almost every word of Santa Claus is Coming to Town. 12) Harper’s first Christmas was uneventful. I, at one point, worried if she was having fun. Having a newborn at Christmas is telling your friends a joke about that one time in high school but they really don't understand, know the people or understand what was so funny. She looked so great in her Christmas pajamas though. 11) I used the term “stoked” to explain my excitement to a coworker for this year’s Christmas. This is a reminder to not use that again. 10) I cannot wait until the kiddos are old enough that Christmas dance parties are acceptable. 9) I suspect next year we’ll be leaving cookies for Santa and kale for the reindeers. And we’ll receive a pixelated PDF of Kaeden’s Christmas list. But this year, all he was concerned about was Santa bringing him a Thomas the Train set. He was so simple, yet so happy.  Maybe we need a few more days like that. 8) I’ve consumed the following calories in the last two weeks: ham, turkey, pork bbq, chocolate chip cookies, Wendy’s hamburgers, apple pie moonshine, French fries and hash brown casserole. All needed to get through the season. Unfortunately I eat the same way the rest of the year. 7) Good things don’t come running when you whistle. They happen in little instances. They crawl to you and if you don’t see it, sometimes you miss it. Good thing Christmas provides a lot of time to watch. 6) At one point this month, Kaeden said “I was good today. I didn’t say poopy butt.” That’s my Christmas present. 5) We celebrated Jesus’s birthday with a birthday cake, cupcakes and a song. But the best part, the time when you know we succeeded as parents, was when he asked if Jesus was going to be at church because he wanted “to give him a hug.”

4) We made a gingerbread train this year. Well, Mommy and Kaeden did. I took a lot of pictures and stole M&Ms out of the packaging. Twenty minutes later, K broke the train. He said, “I broke the train. Bwahaha. Let’s make another one.” 3) Jessica and I have exchanged gifts twice in our Christmases together. She is the best present I have ever received. Don’t tell her that it’s not a fair trade.

2) Men don’t get to have babies. We don’t get to watch our bodies change and cry uncontrollably when they enter the world. We don’t get to hold that over their heads every day for the rest of their lives. But one thing I can do, is make sure they enjoy Christmas and are loved. My present to them is that I do better every year.

1) And this is what I’ll think about when I remember Christmas 2013. Not the movies we’ve watched, or the decorations we’ve seen. That’s what writing it down is for. I’ll think of the traditions we’ve continued and the ones we’ve started. I’ll think about Harper sleeping and Kaeden waiting for whatever is inside the next box. I’ll think about trying to make the holiday season perfect and learning that maybe the Christmas season isn’t supposed to be the same experience for everybody. And maybe being a three-year old and a two-month old at Christmas is like being a three-year old and a two-month old every other time of year, only with more presents and opportunities to eat cookies.

[yellowcabhopscotch]

about last night at the john mayer concert.

Practically overnight, well, say three and a half years, date nights have become rare. Date nights in the middle of the week, phew, forgetaboutit. But John Mayer was in town and no Winter Weather Advisory was going to hold us back.

I’ve mentioned this over the years. We listen to John Mayer in our house. His songs were crib music for Kaeden. And his live performances helped kicked the crap out of his colic-y-ness. So it has sort of a special place in our family. Last night was very special. And I learned a few things. Life is about 13-minute guitar solos and long, extended outros. It’s a reminder to do something different. There were several times during his concert where a three-minute, twenty-second studio song turns into a fourteen-minute extension of soul. And the entire crowd goes through the thisisamazing-wowthisisgettingawkwardbecausehejustkeepsgoing-howarehisfingersnotbroken thought process. We think and we talk about being special, about being unique but we don’t want to push through and find that place. Getting a three-year old ready for school and coordinating a newborn’s lack of routine can be challenging. But it’s the unexpected sweet moments, the boxes of cereal in the car, the deviations from norm that make life, well, life. We aren’t even scratching the scratch of the scratch with most things in life. Be the couple that slow dances in the aisles and not even with rhythm. It might stir weird looks but do it anyway, the rest of us just wish we had the guts. Play the electric mandolin, play the guitar behind your back, play whatever song makes you happy for as long as you want because whotheheck cares. We paid for it anyway.

It’s the kids. It’s the kids. It was halfway through the concert. He was singing maybe the best song on the album and I opened my phone to take a picture. A photo of Harper from earlier in the day popped up. Then a video of Kaeden playing drums in front of a sleeping Harper. Then a photo of Kaeden. In the background, John sang “and I’m waiting on the day/when these words are in stone/when the kids are all grown/and we go dancing.”

Despite my efforts, our children will not stop growing. And by happenstance, we won’t stop getting older. Our kids sometimes can be a handful and I occasionally flash-forward to a time when it’s just us as husband and wife. We spend so much of our time trying to talk Kaeden out of drinking too much chocolate milk, coax him into and then out of the bathtub and trying to swoon Harper into sleeping so we can get some quiet Mommy and Daddy time.

A blogger I read once wrote, “It’s harder than hard to appreciate madness when it’s in front of you.” My favorite musician was singing one of my favorite songs directly in front of me and the only thing I could look at was a pixelated selfie of our little family of four. They will be grown soon enough. Probably sooner than I think. And Jess and I will go dancing. But this is such a happy time right now. And it took leaving them for a few hours and coming back to know. Point taken. Sometimes the reason why you go is not the reason why you go. I went for the music. I wasn’t even 21 yet, seven months from it actually. And it was my first John Mayer concert with my future wife. We sang along, I watched the other couples in the audience to see how it’s done and we held hands in that way only college kids with no jobs, no worries and mounds of student loans piling up can. That night for the first time, the music quieted around us and it became about something else. Three years later, we went again. This time as a married couple with a baby on the way. And last night, we went out again, a mom and dad one month removed from our second child being born and rocking our world again. Each concert something happens. Something suggests there’s more to it than music. It's the special moments. Somehow, by coexisting with another in the place with the same shared passion, you learn something about each other you never knew.

Last night I saw thousands of people sing along, make out and hold hands. I don’t know why each person was there, what their stories were or if they actually knew every single word to every song. I can only say that, for me, it’s not about the music. It’s about the girl. And if I had to do it over, the next time I would find her earlier so I could love her longer.

who are these people / 2007

about to be family of three / 2010

two kids and a weeknight concert / 2013

[yellowcabhopscotch]

ten things i learned this weekend.

10. We have two kids. Plural with an s. As in more than one, less than three. It hits me more and more every day. 9. Every time we think Kaeden is finished with temper tantrums, a new and more upsetting kind of fit arises. The most recent tantrums fueled by jealousy, confusion, terrible threes result in one or all three of us getting mad, timeout chairs that don’t work and a spank that ends with in him in tears and profusely apologetic. 8. The effort it takes to discipline and teach a three-year old is an absolute workout. I literally sweated all weekend.   7. Waiters and waitresses who devote extra effort to children deserve a round of praise. Thank you waiter at Chuys. 6. Attempts at getting back into reading, with a three-year old and a newborn in the house, are futile. Any extra time is being devoted to cleaning, sleeping or cleaning some more. With that being said, in a book I read this weekend, a writer described the Pequot War of the 1630s as “a destructive tantrum brought on by an accumulation of aggregation.” Sounds like a three-year old that I know. 5. I had forgotten about how intense and uncertain the first few months of a baby’s life are. I wholeheartedly believe that if we remember, we wouldn’t want to have more. We have our moments. I cried in the car the other day and I threw a cup once. One of those plastic cups you steal from a baseball game. And it was empty. And I threw it in the general direction of the sink. But still. 4. I adore how Kaeden adores his sister. Or as he calls her, “my baby.” All things considered, he kisses her when she’s upset, hugs her before bedtime and doesn’t let her being around bother him. 3. I’m scared that I don’t worry enough about Harper. At this stage with Kaeden, I was drowning in a sea of self-help parenting books, e-newsletters about children’s sleeping habits and post-partum tears. Can a dad have those? But we’ve been here before and there is light somewhere. That makes it so much easier. 2. Kaeden has an obsessive gene. He listened to his new favorite song “Roar” by Katy Perry for an entire day on repeat. But he’s just so stinking cute when he’s singing it. 1. The only thing more frustrating than one kid fighting sleep is two kids fighting sleep at the same time. Man-to-man defense is not enough.

[yellowcabhopscotch]

at the end of paternity leave

Dear Harper, I swear, the idea of an eight-pound human continues to amaze me. And how we, in such little time, can fall in love with such a little person. You’ve been alive for ten days and I promised myself every night that I would write to you. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. You see, there are things they never say about becoming a parent. Or maybe some things that God allows us to forget so that we can figure it out again.

One is that, from your first moment in this world, we cannot comprehend how we created you. We cannot understand what we did to be blessed this much. Two is that, we are not sure that we can do it. We don’t know if we are up for the challenge. Almost instantaneously, I saw you and thought that you deserved way more than me. I thought to myself, I’ll never be a good enough father for you. I’ll never be able to provide well enough. Maybe that’s the price parents pay to keep getting better, to never love enough, to never take the responsibility of another for granted. --- Often our lives change in unexpected ways and when we least expect it. When we drove to the hospital that day, we didn’t know what would happen. To be honest, your Mommy and I didn’t talk much. I probably made a joke and she probably half-smiled, both of us worried about the day’s events. We wondered if you would be healthy, if you would cry, if you would sleep, if we forgot to pack something important. In the same spot where I had been sitting with your Mommy in the hospital for almost 12 hours, you were born. There’s something so special about those moments in the hospital that no visitor, no outsider would ever know. They don’t know the special touches, the tears, the first moments.

I loved you from the first moment I saw you.

I loved you at 10:25 pm, when I first saw the top of your head. And at 10:32 pm, when we realized the umbilical cord was wrapped around your neck three times. And at 10:40 pm, when you became a part of our family. At 10:47, when your Mommy held you close to her chest. And at 12:45 am, when I first got to hold you. At 2:30 am, when I sang to you for the first time. And at 4:45 am, when I woke up to feed you. Nothing is ever as simple as we think it should be. There is, after all, a happiness in uncertainty. And there is definite uncertainty in parenthood. --- It took two hours. Two hours until the emotions hit. Two hours until the grandparents left, the visitors left and our house was ours alone for the first time, just for our new family of four.

We sat together on Sunday afternoon, football as background noise. Your brother was trying to help you sleep. I was playing referee, helping him not suffocate you and Mommy was letting the latest round of Percocet take effect. All three of us lost it. And you. You sat there dumbfounded. Who are these people and why do they sound like that? Every time Kaeden would cry, Mommy would cry. And every time Mommy would cry, I would cry. A cycle of tears and happiness we haven’t yet broken. Every time your brother does something sweet for you, a tear wells up in both of our faces.

--- One day, maybe you’ll ask me, why it took ten days for me to write? Why it took so long to compile my feelings? The answer is maybe because I’ve been crying too much. And I have been too tired. And we’ve had visitors to entertain. But if I think about it enough, I haven’t written because you have taught me so much little girl. And I just don’t have the words to describe it. It’s a privilege to be your dad. Love always, Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

tale of two feelings.

Dear Harper, No one seems to know when you are coming into this world. Not the doctors, not your mom. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. Your room is ready, our bags have been packed for three weeks and your car seat has been checked and rechecked. I’ve had a lot of time to think about you. To think about what you will look like, how you will smile and if you stop crying when you see me. It's self-medication, a pseudo-therapy for the anxious.

But now we’re ready. I’m ready to take part in a drama, a love affair between daddies and little girls that has gone on for ages. Where the parent is both servant and king, a servant to providing for his little girl and the king of her world. I cannot wait to see you. I cannot wait to be transformed to that place. That place of fatherhood when I say, “I am a part of this. I am blessed to be your daddy.” The morning after you’re born, I’m going to feel it. I’m going to wonder why I rushed this whole process; why we wanted you to get here; why we were so eager to get very little sleep, be cranky and ache from hours in a rocking chair. But you’ll be worth it. You’re already worth it. Waiting, Daddy Dear Kaeden, There is a sentimental season, early on in the process of pregnancy, where you reflect on everything. For me, I reflected on the last three years with you, why the sky is blue, if Toy Story and Cars are the best Pixar movie and other existential questions that keep me awake at night. Pregnancies are nine months for a reason. For a man, it is not a quick process and get worse when the woman you love starts to ache and groan with every movement. For a father, especially with a son already feeling his way through toddler years, pregnancy compels us to decelerate. We miss something about the point of the nine months if we don’t take time to assess what has been and deal with our emotions.

I’ve said it before, we had no idea what we were doing when we had you. We were a couple with no money, who recently traded an apartment in a not-so-great, not-so-right part of town to a house in a town whom we had no connection and a whole lot of love to go around. There were many things that we hadn’t learned yet, but it was a comfort to see you, hold you and love you every night. Everything great that happened in the last three years was because of you. Every picture, every smile, every outing.

I’m not sure if you knew what this past weekend meant. It was the last weekend with you as an only child. We did all of your favorite things; went to the zoo, ate ice cream, drank a gallon of chocolate milk, ate tacos and played puzzles. We watched movies, jumped on the couch and played baseball.

I don’t really know how to handle this whole situation. Whether to be happy or sad or bittersweet. But I am one thing. I am blessed you are who you are. Always there for you, Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

on maverick and iceman.

Dispatch to Kaeden There’s a scene in a movie that I have watched between 65-70 times. The main characters, all Navy fighter pilots, are gathered in a room. They are the elite of what they do. And one of the guys, we’ll call him Maverick, asks maybe the most human of questions: who’s the best?

A few moments later, the instructor, we’ll call him Viper, asks him if he thinks it’s him. The obvious answer is yes.

That scene has stuck with me for years. Watch it here.

In my opinion, Top Gun is the greatest movie of all time. Here’s looking at you AFI and your Casablanca ranking. It was the basis for many of my childhood AOL Instant Messenger screen names and it’s the only movie I can quote from opening sequence to ending song. Besides the cinematography, iconic scenes, Kenny Loggins music and karaoke as a pickup line, no movie has shaped my life more. Maybe more than one blog can relay.

But what you don’t know, what you’re about to find out is that there’s a battle waging in me, like enemy jets at 16,000 feet, between the two iconic characters in that movie – Maverick and Iceman. I struggled as a kid trying to decide whether I wanted to be Iceman or Maverick. Did I want to be suave and cool under pressure like Iceman or tough and rebellious like Maverick. To my credit, Maverick did get the girls. But even worse, like the characters in that scene, I walked into any room and wondered who the best was and what I needed to do to beat him. I wanted my name on the plaque in the back of the room. I compared myself to everybody. I compared others to me. I compared others to each other. And here’s the confession part: sometimes I compare you to them. I compare you to other kids. Not in that I’m-a-one-upper-look-at-my-kid way. I compare you to how other kids your age do things. I was quietly broken-hearted because you weren’t potty trained first. I compared you to other kids on your three-year soccer team. I’m Viper comparing his pilots, trying to decide who number one is. When other babies walked and you were still crawling, I thought something may have been wrong. Before you were potty trained and stopped on the shoulder of the road to pee in between the doors, I wondered why you were the only boy not wearing big boy underwear in your class. Which really wasn’t true. And the past two weekends at soccer, I wondered why you were the only one who needed to hold his dad’s hand during the game. Keep reading, an apology is coming. Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they beat others. Cue the volleyball scene with Goose, Maverick, Iceman and Cougar. Or if they live with reckless abandon. Almost every single thing Maverick did. The truth is, I am a competitive person who doesn’t handle not winning well and comparisons don’t really matter. They aren’t really even fair. Of the many talents people are born with – like an instinctual sense of direction or a wicked curveball – I managed to live with always wanting to be the best. I’m not even sure that’s a talent but if it is, I win at that. There I go again with the being the best thing. There’s a nine-year-old boy inside of me who can’t decide if he wants to be Iceman or Maverick. There’s a 15-year-old teenager who is still wondering if it’s okay to not be number one. And there’s a 27-year-old husband and dad who is still learning that it doesn’t matter. I write letters to tell you what I feel at any given time in parenthood, however raw and unsavory it may make me look. So here’s what I feel now: I’m sorry that I ever tried to compare you. It’s okay if you want to be Maverick or Iceman. Or maybe you want to be Cougar or Hollywood or Goose. Comparisons can be a funny thing. It often doesn’t matter who comes out on top, who is the better soccer player, or who wins the Top Gun trophy. What I finally learned – or maybe still learning – is the person I want you to be is the main character in your own story, compared to no one, second to none. And if you let me, I’ll be your wingman. Holding your hand on the soccer field however long you want me to. Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

the one that ends at a rest stop.

There's a rest stop on the interstate that I’ve never stopped at. For four years driving back and forth to college, I drove by, making a mental note that I'm exactly halfway on the 115-mile drive. I’ve driven by it since college for family picnics, birthday parties, homecoming and literal trips down memory lane. Not once stopping.

I am from the school of "the fastest way to get from point a to point b is to drive fast, hope you don't get pulled over and never, ever stop." Rest stops were for old people, I thought. Old people, puppies and now, us.

Yesterday, we stopped. We became those people. At the rest stop for old people, puppies and people who wear compression socks.

We are in the midst of potty training. And yesterday was day three.

Day three of potty training is really the most important. Day one isn’t really day one until there's a day two. And day two only validates that day one wasn't a fluke. It's the third day of using the toilet that weeds out the fakers from the pee-ers. It was also the first day we tried potty training anywhere but home. Day three was go big or go home day.

To the untrained eye potty training seems pretty straightforward – they put underwear on, they feel the urge, they tell you when they have to go and they go potty – but it's more than that. It’s a mental Ping-Pong match that begins the moment they drink their morning milk. It’s a game of chicken between a child’s bladder, their self-control and the power of incentivized potty prizes.  

We started day three off with a plan. Drive thirty minutes, stop, find a bathroom, take his stool to the potty, pee, declare ourselves champion pee-ers, drive and then start the game of “do you have to go potty?”

Almost halfway through our trip, it had been too long and the exits with reliable gas stations/restaurants/Wal-Marts/tree-lined alleys were far between. It was now or never and I was never really good at playing chicken. From all of our trips down the same stretch of interstate, we knew there was a rest stop coming up. We stopped. Along with a high school cross country team, three dogs, a soldier, a sad woman carrying  box of tissues and a family making ham and turkey sandwiches out of their trunk. We went in, our potty stool in tow, and found a rather pristine restroom.

This rest stop was an undiscovered gem. Should we tell people about this?

He peed. He declared himself a champion. And we were on our way. Accident diverted, for now.

People say being a parent allows you to be a kid again. Maybe being a parent to a potty training kid allows you to think like a kid. Any place is a good place to pee. Even a rest stop.

Armed with a potty stool, Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

ever so patiently.

To Harper, I have rewritten this opening paragraph five times. But none of them conveyed the enormity and full extent of my feelings. Or maybe I don’t have enough patience to wait for the right thing to say.

So much of parenthood is patience.

We wait for first words. Wait for first steps and the first full night of sleep. We wait through temper tantrums and wait, often tirelessly, until the end of the workday to get to daycare. Yet often the most overlooked endurance sport is the nine months before.

We are waiting for you. Each day closer than the last, but too far to say it’s right around the corner.

I honestly cannot wait for you. If it’s possible to miss someone you have never met, I’d say that I miss you.

Last week, we went on our last vacation without you. We spent a week in the sun, listening to the waves and watching airplanes, eating shrimp bigger than our hands and watching tropical rains pour in.

One morning at the beach, I ran with your brother. But all we had was a double jogging stroller, serendipitously left over from the renters before us. So I strapped him into one half of the two-seater and we took a tour of the town. We smelled the salty air and he pointed out birds and told me to run faster when I slowed down. In that moment, I wanted to see you. I wanted the empty seat to be filled. During the rest of the trip, I became preoccupied, thinking about the first time you’d taste salt water, wondering if you’ll cry when your little toes touch the sand and if you’ll sleep through the night at a different house. I thought about all the work left to be done on your room and if your nose would crinkle when you smiled.

On the last night of vacation, I hugged Kaeden and kissed him good night. He was in a room with two beds. One for him. One empty. That was it. The last night of vacation I’ll ever tell only one kid good night.

In that moment, my patience was wearing.

By the time I thought that the latch on my patience was about to give and spill emotions, something happened.

We made the ten-hour drive home, through sun and storms, unpacked and rested. We turned a Mumford & Sons concert on television and watched Kaeden bounce between Legos, Hot Wheels and Cheez-Its. He sang one of many songs he knows the chorus to. He sang “I will wait, I will wait for you.” It was only as I watched your brother sing at the top of his lungs did I know. That I knew waiting for you is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

People have said for years that patience is a virtue. But I say patience is love. Because I’ve been in love and I have had patience and it feels a lot closer to love.

You’re worth the wait.

Waiting for you, Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

to my daughter.

Dear Sweetheart, There were magazines lined up by the counter. Each one with a headline about ten ways to be sexy or who has the best beach body or why breast cancer is preventable. I look at my pregnant wife, not yet showing, but full of baby nonetheless. And I thought how tough it is to be a woman in this generation. Like when you buy a new car and everybody else you see has the same exact car, or so it seems, I saw these magazines everywhere. At the grocery store. In the trash can. At work.  I was barraged with images in commercials, television shows and on the front of magazines all with this same modern, often-Photoshopped standard of beauty. And I started to get what God and apparently the editor of every glossy cover wanted me to know: get ready for a girl. I saw you this week. A black and white movie of you. It wasn’t much, just an ultrasound glimpse. But it was enough. You were everything I expected and secretly wanted. You are a girl. My beautiful daughter. You don’t know me yet. Not well at least. I’m the voice yelling at your brother to not jump from the top of the couch. I’m the guy who will put headphones on mommy’s belly. I’m the dad who will push you in a stroller and push you when your car stalls in the middle of the road because you thought quarter of a tank is enough to get you home. There’s a lot of things I can’t verbalize right now. I cannot tell you what it meant to see your mom see you for the first time on the screen. And I cannot tell you how long I’ve prayed for you. I cannot tell you that I’m going to like every decision you make and I cannot promise to love you perfectly. I am trying to come to grips with the fact that often the life of a little girl is reliant on a mixture of forces both seen and unseen. And I may not be at the center of all of them. But today, I am a dad who is blessed to be a part of your story. To have the privilege to share a life with so many people who have made you, your brother and your mom possible. It was nice to meet you this week, sweetheart. I’ve been told that little girls love their daddys. I hope so. Because I’ve loved you for so long already. Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

i write when i grieve. an open love letter to the office.

Dear “The Office”: This much is certain when you end your 206-episode run this week: we will go on. That seems like a weird way to start off a love letter, but you’ve never been one for convention.   Whatever happens on screen this Thursday, I know I will be annihilated by emotion. I’ll be very retrospective throughout the day, finding YouTube clips of the best Dwight moments or most awkward exchanges between Toby and Michael and then I’ll go home and tear up most of the evening. Screw it, you know me too well, I’ll weep for a solid ten minutes then pretend to need to use the bathroom to mask the pain.    Let me be clear and say I'm not a fan boy. I haven't made the exodus to Scranton for an office-con and I don't own any “Michael Scott's Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race for the Cure” t-shirts (for those so inclined, size large would work). I don’t even watch all the shows live. That’s what DVRs are for and I have a three-year old. And you aren’t even my first love. You aren’t the Jetsons, West Wing, Friends or Bewitched. Those shows transport me to another place, another island, another era. You don’t force me to escape my comfort zone, help me understand the eating habits of zombies or solve a crime. You are none of those. You were real life and current. You got me. I found you at a time when I could understand everything; the laughs, the awkwardness of growing up, the veiled sexual references, the confusion about “The Others” on Lost. I'm just a guy watching a television show and finding himself in every moment. Even in the awkward and innuendos, I find a parody on reality that is not really a parody at all. When I thought about you ending your show after nine seasons, I thought about all the things I could say. I could write about how we all think we are smarter than our boss. Or how we regularly get drinks after work to talk about “the oh-my-gosh-did-you-see-what-she-he-did.” Or that we’ve all been in a place where we think we could start our own company. Or how every office has a Vikram and a Meredith and a Hunter. Or how mad you’d be if you cooked chili all night only to spill it five steps into the door. Or that Threat Level Midnight wouldn’t be the worst thing that Hollywood has produced. Or that I think parkour every time I see a refrigerator box. But this isn’t what this love letter is about. You are about much more that. Much more than the quirky little show that made it. You struggled with relationships in the workplace and I worked thirty feet from my wife every day. I struggled with finding the balance of fun, future and friendship in my career and you gave us Michael, Andy, and well, Creed. You went through that awkward phase (i.e. DeAngelo Vickers, Charles Miner and Robert California) and I went through my month of belt buckles and cowboy hats. You were everything about life that was so funny it made me cry and so awkward my stomach hurt. Every time you’d end for the night, I’d slip into a post-episode depression and wish my job, my workplace, my co-workers were just like you. You didn’t exist within a utopia of virtue. You're too “that’s what she said” for that.  Nor do you exist in a myriad of lackadaisical effort, never getting to the work at hand. We see Jim, Angela, even Kelly actually in the business of selling paper. But there was this universal feeling that we were all in this together. The conversations you had are far more meta, less about the day-to-day, more about the stories and the relationships and the people. That's how life works and that's why you worked. You always left room for humanity. And this Friday, I’ll wake up with that “having cried myself to sleep” look which luckily for me doubles as my spring allergy season look and pick out a Casual Friday outfit (no sandals right, Toby?) and go on. Because that’s what you always did. We’re better having known you. Thank you for everything. Fan

[yellowcabhopscotch]

three. it seems so much bigger than two.

Dispatch to Kaeden We’re on our way home from daycare, or what we call school for purposes of simpler conversation, and you’re in the middle of a story. You’re talking about how you fell and got a boo-boo, but you “not have to go to doctor” and “it not broken” and that a girl in your class kissed it. The conversation continued. Something about coloring and dirty pants. But I stopped listening. One day I’m sure you will repay the favor by not listening to Mom and I. This was a real conversation. A two-minute discussion with a plot; a beginning, climax and end that didn’t involve Yo Gabba Gabba or Lightning McQueen. You were at that moment officially old, well, older than you were last year and older than you were when we went to the beach and older than you were when you first saw our faces at 11:15 p.m. on a Friday night in May. These conversations are no longer novelties we talk about to prove the genius of our children. This is now every day. And you’re no longer two.

Today you are three years old. --- When learning about numbers, it’s really quite simple. It’s one and two and three and four and five and so on. They roll right off the tongue, one after the other, subtle in differences. One doesn’t seem that much smaller than two and three is only one syllable away from four. But for you, when I think about turning three, it seems so much bigger than two. In the last 365 days, we’ve played in makeshift tents, threw rocks, been to the emergency room and made a mess. You’ve been sick, cried and cuddled. You’ve been the reason why we’ve woken up and the reason why we come home. We have dealt with things no one else knows and played when no one else was there. I don’t really know how to feel about you turning three. It’s not a milestone birthday, you’re not going to kindergarten and it’s not sixteen and a driver’s permit. But I do know you are getting older. You can take over a room with your precociousness and your giggle. And you know what you like and know how to get it. You’re predictable half the time, which makes you more like an adult than a baby. You throw temper tantrums about sports and food, not because you’re infantile but because you’re so passionate, which again unfortunately makes you more like one of us. On your third birthday, parenting still feels new, so new we still operate without a basic set of rules of action and response. We call it as we see it; one day, one hug, one sleepless hour at a time. You still need us to be loving and strict. You still need a bedtime and safety latches on the cabinets.

But in one moment, at least one time a day, you are older. Everything comes together and it feels like a moment, not an Instagram moment, not a Facebook post moment, not something we can put into words or a great achievement we can benchmark. You do something entirely different, something more subtle, something that a two-year old wouldn’t do. In these moments – a glance, a sentence, an act of independence – we know we aren’t changing the world that much, but we’re living out love in our little part of the world and that’s okay with me. Last night on the eve of your third birthday, you were everything you always are. You laid down, held my hand and prayed. You prayed for three things: mommy, daddy and baby. You had me wrapped around your finger, hanging on every word. Then you smiled and grinned. And you said “poopy booty. I pray for poopy booty.” Moment over. Here’s to 365 more days and nights of being three. I love you. Always have. Always will. Happy birthday and amen. Daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

brotherly love

Dispatch to Kaeden

My earliest memory is somewhere around four years old. It’s a medley of smells and colors and scenery. And for you, it’ll be about the same. You’ll have another year of firsts and lasts, tests and exhilarations that will be captured not by your brain, but by Instagram, Twitter, Shutterfly and my posts.

None of this you will remember. You won’t remember the dancing, the loud music, the bananas you spit out, the baths you hated, the trips you took, the people we lost, the oceans we surfed, the diapers we changed and more than everything, the three minutes it took for you to enter this world to totally and utterly consume our lives and steal away everything we thought we knew.

The silver lining is that by the time you register memories, combine people with places and happiness with family, you’ll never know when you weren’t loved. But maybe more importantly, you’ll never have a memory that won’t include being a big brother.

I still cannot believe I wrote that sentence. A pregnancy test and an OB/GYN visit later, you are soon going to be a big brother.

And I write to you now because you don’t have a clue. When I asked you if you wanted a brother or a sister, you said you wanted a basketball. Ironically, with you, your mommy said she felt like she was carrying a basketball.  

There are so many and yet still not enough words to describe our feelings about your future sibling. They will mean the world to us, just as you did. They, whether boy or girl, will never know how much they don’t have, rather that what they have is more than enough.

But today, and every day from now on, we’ll have to learn how to manage your life and a new life. We are caught— in our desires, in our choices, in our weekends, in our plans, in our wants, in your needs, in their needs – in a net of questions. We’ll have to figure out room arrangements, travel plans, money issues not just with you in mind, but with a whole other person.

But because of you, we cannot wait to try. You gave us the courage to have another. You turned our sofa into a trampoline and life kept moving. You were the future we always wanted and now we get to live it every day. And more often than not, you waited for us as we were finding our way, each mystified and confused look after another. In truth, you are our greatest adventure.

I will promise to tell you I love you enough. And I will promise to make you feel like you are still the best thing to happen to us.

I don’t know exactly where we are going, what house we will live in, what paths our careers may go, or how you’ll react to another person sharing your space, but I feel it deep in my bones that we’re headed somewhere good.

love,

daddy

[yellowcabhopscotch]

freaking out.

My first memory of my anger is playing Monopoly with my mom during summer break. She beat me so badly that I threw the game board and her 17 hotels across the room. I stormed off and my recollections pretty much end there. I don’t remember if she got mad at me or figured it was her penance for putting a hotel on every other plot of land successfully scaring me away from a career in real estate. Suffice it to say, I don’t play Monopoly anymore. My parents occasionally remind me, though I don’t need the cues, that I used to explode and enigmatically break things. I would work myself up into a blind rage and only the shattering of tangible items would give the sweet release of endorphins and freedom. Freedom that was quickly followed by a consequence. I’ve been so angry that I knocked a kid out with a lunch room tray in middle school and punched a hole through double-paned glass. I was not a bad kid, at least in hindsight, but my trail of tantrums was far and wide. Many of which I keep secret until I can fully remember which ones I’ve told my parents about and which ones I haven’t. To my future children reading this, this is why you don’t tell lies because eventually they run together. --- I read about terrible twos and the often-described-as-worse terrible threes. But I assumed it was rebellion in the form of “no’s” and unwillingness to listen. I thought it was touching everything on the way out of the sporting goods store and not being able to leave the grocery until a “special snack” was purchased, opened and consumed. When Kaeden threw his first fit, his first real “run-out-of-breath-because-you-are-screaming-so loud, fists-against-any-object-within-five-feet, flying-cup-flying-food-flying-spit, snot-running-out-of-both-nostrils” fit, I knew exactly what was happening. They say an addict can spot other addicts, right?   The more he screamed and kicked, the more I got it. His tears of rage were me years ago. The inability to process frustration, no matter how normal, was something I wanted mightily for him to avoid. --- He throws fits when he wants to wear his socks on his hands, not on his feet. Or when he wants to wear the shirt he wore yesterday again today. When the radio is too quiet. Or too loud. When I tell him his shirt is red but he thinks it’s orange. Or if he wants to eat a pancake, not the one on his plate, but the one on mine. Because three minutes is too long to wait for macaroni and cheese to heat in the microwave. Or because there is no basketball on television at 5:45 in the morning. Because he doesn't want to roll his sleeves up when he washes his hands. And then when his sleeves are wet after washing his hands. And all too often because the morning is not an appropriate time for ice cream. Or a lollipop.

When I started writing this, I only wanted to record for our future selves the many things that make Kaeden go full-moon crazy. For the record, he only throws fits about once a week. The rest are solved with a kiss, a fist bump or a lollipop. But it turned into more than that; it reminded me why I care so much when he does. Everybody sees a two-year-old throwing typical tantrums. I see a vision of my younger self slamming a door so hard that frames shatter falling off the wall. For as long as this phase lasts, we’ve been forced to learn more about our son, his cues, his tipping points and to get creative in the resolutions. We’ve learned that there’s a science behind fits, toddler’s inability to self-regulate their emotions and how parents should lovingly guide them through. And unlike Monopoly or any other board game, we can’t compare stacks of love units and cash them in for a quick end to this unnecessary temper tantrum. --- Parenthood comes with a very special kind of guilt. The kind of guilt that makes us, as adults, feel responsible for every action and inaction by our children. As another blog so matter-of-factly put it, “a guilt that terrifies you into thinking you are not only making a mess of your life, but a brand-new person’s as well.” I’m sure like most things I do as a parent, I’m overanalyzing his temper tantrums. Most of the time, it’s simply an effect of subcortical brain activity, terrible twos and the impending terrible threes. Here’s to hoping the fours are fantastic and not like the movie series that starred Jessica Alba and still put me to sleep.   But on the slimmest chance that these outbursts are caused by a DNA mutation that I passed along, I refuse to attach a label to it and will say I know the feeling and love him all the more.