Author: Chris Souther

Chris joined the Air Force out of high school. After four years of supporting communications for the Department of Defense, the White House, and stations around the world, he left the military and moved to Atlanta. For the next six years, Chris continued working in the telecom field, eventually traveling around the country teaching companies like MCI, Nortel Networks, and Cabletron, how to do what he did.

When the dot.com crash happened, upon recommendation from his wife, Chris re-enrolled in school and earned his B.S. in Communications (PR & Marketing).

Since then, he was worked in network security, healthcare, banking and finance (and FinTech), general high tech (AI/ML, Cloud, IoT), and most recently, application development fields. Now, with more than 15 years of both Marketing and Communications under his belt, he helps organizations grow their business through the proper application of marketing, communications, and content.

And he blogs on the side. It keeps him sane.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Some Good Time Away with Just the Adults

CareerMom and I recently celebrated our 8th anniversary. No big milestone, but these days…8 years…kinda deserves something right? So, I booked us a night away from the house and the kids. We went to nearby Stone Mountain. They have a pretty nice Marriott and I got us a nice room for an evening and a massage treatment the next morning.

Since CareerMom is always fearful of asking her parents to watch the boys for us, I did it instead and it worked out beautifully. They came over and we gave them all the instructions for feeding and putting the boys to sleep and what to do when our youngest wakes up his usual two times. There were no tears (from either us or the boys), there was no sniffling…we just left.

One of the first things you notice about not having kids with you in the car is that both adults get to ride in the front of the car rather than the way it is usually; me driving and her sitting in the back keeping the baby from screaming. And we actually got to have adult-like conversation. It was really nice.

I won’t bore you with a play-by-play of the entire weekend, but I will tell you that it was nice to re-discover my wife. As parents, we get into this “parent mode” mentality that, while fun for the kids, is very much geared for the kids. And even once the kids have gone to bed, that mentality sticks because being a parent is a 24×7 job and you can’t just turn it on and off. I suspect this is why many marriages struggle once children are in the mix. There’s just nothing sexy about bathing children or changing poopy diapers and you’re usually just so “done” by the time they’re in bed, that you’re lucky if you have time for a shower before you feel like crawling under the covers and calling it quits for the day. So, forget relationship building on most days.

But when you’re away, I mean really away and not just “at the grocery store” away, you find that you can actually let it all go and be yourself again. On more than one occasion, I found myself looking at my wife while she was talking and thinking, “Ah, there you are. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed that playful side of you that I was attracted to in the beginning.”

I don’t know that I’ve changed like that, but I suppose I have too. Certainly, I’m much more stressed now that we have kids and I’m equally sure that it’s reflected in my behavior. And while I mentally made a note to be more mindful of my behavior at home when the kids aren’t around, I know that within a couple of weeks, after getting up multiple times in the middle of the night (and eventually staying up after the 4:30 feeding as I did this morning) and after the constant entertainment that is required to keep everyone from crying, I’ll fall back into my old habits. I’ll try not to, but I know I will. It’s just too hard not too.

It’s a shame though that one has to spend $400 on a night away just to remember who he is.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Through the eyes of a child

Rose Colored Glasses

In addition to all the physical changes that happen to us as we get older, our outlook about things changes too. We hear about older people who claim that the secret to longevity is keeping that childlike innocence, that joy of life. We’ve all heard that and I’m sure that like myself, most people nod along with it and make a promise to themselves that they’ll try a little harder next time.

But I wonder how many of us ever really reach that innocence. How many, I wonder, stop in the middle of doing something during the day and remember how doing that same thing as a child felt.

Though I give them kudos, I’ve never understood how people can take jobs working with children. The crying and the whining just seems too much for me. And while my outlook, now that I have children, hasn’t really changed (I STILL don’t see how people can work with children all day), I have gotten a glimpse or two into the thinking behind the idea that surrounding yourself with children can help keep one young.

Halloween was one such event. As my oldest son came home from Trick-or-Treating; his face shining with excitement over the candy he had. As an adult, who can go out and buy as much candy as I want at any time, it’s easy for me to gloss over his excitement. But instead, what I did was sit down with him and tried to put myself in his place. And the funny thing is that for just a moment, I felt what my son felt. I remembered how exciting it was to come home with a pumpkin full of candy and spread it out on the floor and figure out what I wanted to eat first. For just a moment there, I was a child again with eyes full of shiny wrappers and the taste of sugary goodness in my mouth. Wonderful!

The second time this happened was one morning recently. My oldest (again) wakes up at about 5:45 every morning. By the time I get up and get a cup of coffee, he’s standing in our room holding his blanket asking to watch cartoons. As someone who’s traditionally been a morning guy, albeit one that likes to get up, drink coffee and watch the morning news, I’ve tried not to get annoyed at having a 5 a.m. shadow. But the other morning as he was standing there looking at me with those big hazel eyes, I remembered what it was like to be standing there. I remembered getting up early before anyone else in the house was awake, and getting my blanket and pillow and plopping down in front of the TV and watching early morning cartoons. Being up alone watching TV, doing whatever I wanted while the rest of the house was asleep was liberating, and enjoyable. As my childhood memories inevitably fade, memories of this time in my childhood remain crystallized.

A lot of things are different between then and now, but I suspect that children haven’t changed all that much. Watching cartoons is ten times more complicated now than it used to be thanks to a number of in-line electronic devices, but despite this, my son appears to enjoy his morning ritual every bit as much as I used to enjoy mine.

But the interesting thing is that for two brief moments in the last month, I’ve felt what it’s like to be a kid again. And you know what? It’s nice. It’s nice to shed the day to day craziness and cynicism and see the world through the eyes of someone who’s never been dumped, never lost a job, never bounced a check, or any of the other dozen things that make us adults.

Being an adult has its perks, but every now and then, it’s nice to be a kid again.

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Dad Blogs Family Marriage

A momentary, “Oh Crap!”

 Which day is my anniversary on?

This morning as I sat at my desk, I momentarily panicked because I couldn’t remember today’s date and I knew that my anniversary was either today or tomorrow. I quickly double-clicked on my desktop’s calendar icon and thankfully, it’s tomorrow and luckily I still have time to get a card this afternoon and perhaps a bottle of bubbly and still look like a hero tomorrow. Before you ladies crucify me though, I had already booked a night away next weekend, which includes in-room champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, breakfast and a 50-minute massage. So, it’s not like I totally forgot about our anniversary. I guess in my mind I’d already “taken care of it” so I had just let it fall to the back on my “most important things to focus on this week” list.

But then my mind played a trick on me and I wondered if my anniversary was really tomorrow (the 6th) or today (the 5th) and perhaps I was remembering the date wrong. And what if  CareerMom, rather than telling me “Happy Anniversary” this morning, was waiting it out to see how long I’d go before remembering it. Kinda like giving me enough rope to hang myself with. Even as I type this, I’m 99% sure we got married on the 6th, but I’m still in 1% panic mode that maybe I’m wrong! This is why men should always get their wedding date engraved on the inside of their wedding band. I didn’t.

But man, I never thought I’d be “that guy.” I remember being single and thinking, “Wow! How could a guy ever forget his anniversary? What a stooge!” And now here I am, airing out my armpits after a ten second, sweaty panic attack over having done just that.

At least I did plan something though, so I’m not coming down too hard on myself. But even still, with all the planning and reminder tools I have at my disposal, why haven’t I set myself a reminder? Before my wife’s birthday I should have a reminder pop up a week prior that says, “Yo dawg! Don’t forget that CareerMom’s birthday is three days before yours.” That works—cuz, you know I’m not going to forget my birthday. Same thing for our anniversary.

But I’ll tell you, before I go judging other men on their forgetfulness, I’ll first stop and remind myself that life is stressful and demanding. Sometimes it’s easy to forget things, but even if/when you do, it doesn’t mean you don’t care.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

100 bottles of beer on the, er…street

Beer PumpkinIt’s over, done, fini, complete…and any other foreign-sounding words that are meant to provide a sense of accomplishment regarding Halloween and trick or treat. Not that the whole event was bad, but it’s just such a build-up to something—like Christmas—that afterward leaves you feeling a bit like, “Was that it?”  And I think it’s doubly bad when said build-up happens in the middle of the week and you have to turn around go back to work the next day. Blah!

But in any event, last night was fun. We went to my oldest son’s best friend’s house for a party and then they TorTed for a while before making it over to the grandparent’s house who were overly and unusually chatty until finally my son gave us an “out” by exclaiming, “I want to go to my home.” Good boy!

And once again, we had absolutely zero Trick-or-Treators at our house last night. An examination as to why this is yields a couple of possibilities:

  1. Parents are too scared to let their little ones wander down our hilly driveway for fear of them getting tangled up in their sheet-costumes and tumbling down the pavement and crashing into my garage door.
  2. We are near the end of the neighborhood in a side-street where the housing density is not terribly great. From a parental standpoint, I can understand the desire to maximize one’s TorTing time by hitting the thoroughfare and avoiding the mildly populated side streets.

However, one thing struck me last night that I have been noticing with greater frequency of late, and that is that the life I lead is vastly different from the lives other families (and men in particular) lead. Here are a couple of “for instances.”

At this week’s golf tournament, several men were discussing the “over and under” and “the spread” regarding this weekend’s upcoming NFL games. It occurred to me that I had absolutely NO idea what they were talking about (well, I vaguely know) and that I was in the distinct minority here.

Secondly, last night as we TorTed around my son’s friend’s neighborhood, I noticed that every dad on the street, and some mothers, were carrying around a beer in their hand. And in one case of “oh man, where’s my camera?” we spotted a mother pushing a stroller with one hand and dragging a cooler full of beer behind her with the other. And these aren’t “white trash” people either. These are white-bread, successful white-collar professionals. Even the father of the boy my son was visiting put his son and my son in a wagon to pull them around the neighborhood, and then all around them in the empty wagon space he placed approximately 8 or 9 beers. WTH? I mean, we only planned on being out for 45 minutes. How many beers does a guy need?

And like I said, these activities aren’t limited to the men…nossir, the women were doing it too and both my wife and I realized how far from our peers our lives deviate. When things like this happen it always makes one wonder who is exhibiting the strange behavior? Them, or us?

Sometimes wish I could be “that guy.” I wish I could give up this zeal for fitness and this responsibility I feel to always be clean and sober around my kids and just live life for me as if having children didn’t change anything. But I don’t think I can, and truthfully, I don’t think I could live with myself very long if I did. But they’re still my friends…especially when they have free beer!