Category: Family

Posts that discuss family life in America.

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Dad Blogs DIY Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

Procrastination personified!

(feed readers may miss the super-cool pictures)

The baby is due in one month. (sssssh! don’t say it too loud or she might hear and come early!)

I am Waaaay under-prepared! As of this morning, here is what the baby’s room looks like:

IMG_3158As you can see, it’s pretty much…not done. CareerMom painted it a couple of weeks ago, but other than that, it still has all the trappings of a guest room.

Oh, I did move MLE’s crib out of his room into this room, but that was basically to make room for his big boy bed (which, unsurprisingly, isn’t helping him sleep any later!).

Those of you who have been following my blog for a while know that it took me a bit of time to get on board with this baby coming (it being such a shock and all), but I assure you, I’m not putting this off for some emotional reason or because mentally I think, “If you don’t build it, it won’t come.”

I’ve actually been very busy elsewhere in the house and THAT project is the lynchpin upon which the baby room’s completion will fall.

IMG_3157

My basement. (cue: “Ode to Joy”)

Our house is one of the only ones on our street w/out a finished basement and while I’m not one to “keep up with the Jones’,” (wow, what a weird series of punctuation. I’m not even sure that’s grammatically correct…) I am cognizant of the fact that as my chirrun get older, they will drive me crazy—that is unless I have a place to send them where they can venture forth and destroy.

Also, on a more practical note, since the baby room is taking up what used to be the guest room, AND since I’m trying to encourage MY family to come visit (and thereby babysit), I wanted to give them a place to go—a sanctuary if you will—when they do come. So, the basement consists of a bathroom, a bedroom, a GREAT room, and some other room-area that as of yet, has no known purpose (but it’s wired up for cable and Internet).

As you can see, it has no carpet; no doorknobs, no mirrors in the bathrooms and no ceiling fans (or um…light fixtures in the bathroom), but as soon as the carpet comes in, I’ll at least be able to move the furniture currently in the baby’s room, down to the basement and then baby room decorating can properly begin.

Wouldn’t you know it…my contractor went on vacation this week.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States

Stopped in my tracks

image I was writing a blog post about my kids and how much they wore me out over this past three-day weekend—you know, generally complaining—and then I received an e-mail from CareerMom.

A friend of hers from work has a five-year old son who was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of brain tumor last October. Despite treatment, they gave him less than a year to live. His parents asked him what he wanted to do before he left his family and he said, “Christmas in July.” So, CareerMom and others contributed to helping him fulfill his final desires.

According to his parent’s blog, he passed away on July 4th. His last few days were not easy. He was in noticeable pain.

Even writing this, I can’t imagine the strength it takes to confront this kind of finality on a daily basis—to know that each time you hug your child could be your last, or that each harsh word you spoke to them could be the last one they hear from you. It really brings things into perspective.

My boys drive me crazy, but it only takes something like this to make you realize what a gift they are. Sometimes we have to stop and really look at them as children, rather than just as something that—at that moment—is an annoyance, to really appreciate what we have.

Ethan, Aiden, if ever you read these posts, know that beneath it all, is a profound love for the both of you.

Give your kids an extra big hug today.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

My happy place doesn’t involve little people, grammas or blondes in lingerie

image I envy people with good children like I envy the obscenely rich and their crack-addict washboard abs. That is to say that, I would probably smoke crack (do you smoke it?) if it meant I could have abs like the stars. Which means, there’s little I probably wouldn’t do to have kids that minded me, that didn’t throw fits if they couldn’t watch Scooby Doo at 6 a.m.; that didn’t scream and wail in the car seat after an hour, and who didn’t sulk like I just tanned their hides with daddy’s narrow leather belt each time we tried to get them to go to church where we hope to both introduce them to other “Godlike” children and perhaps get a little Jesus in the process. I dunno, lofty goals perhaps.

It’s no secret that I feel that raising children is something best left for the likes of Mother Teresa, or perhaps even Gandhi (that is, if Gandhi hadn’t lived in abject poverty), who seem capable of meeting even the most vile of situations with an outward calm that–I personally believe–likely hid an inner desire to pick up a stick and beat the crap out of the other person. But they LOOKED calm and that’s what matters.

Anyway, CareerMom and I, until this past year, have been the only ones of her six other brothers and sisters who have reared boys. Everyone else–girls. And while yes, there was drama, there was never any of the problems we’ve lived through. For instance, remember the Infamous beach vacation of ’07 (Part 1 and Part 2), well, while everyone else was upstairs with their darling little girls having a grand old time, we were downstairs with two exhausted boys, including one baby who wouldn’t stay asleep for more than 15 minutes at a time–each time waking up and screaming at the top of his lungs.

The other siblings, and to a large part even both CareerMom and my parents, have never understood our reluctance to travel. They don’t live through the sleepless nights, the miserable car trips, etc., that we go through each time just to make someone else happy. (On a sidenote, I have since learned to not give a rat’s butt what anyone else wants. If I don’t want to go, I don’t go. CareerMom is optional. Life is too short to be miserable.)

This all changed with the birth of a boy to CareerMom’s  next oldest sister. She had a boy. And not just any boy..a HOSS of a boy. In the past year CareerMom and I have sat back and grinned as her sister has regaled the family with his latest exploits and most recently, when her family took a trip to South Carolina, I couldn’t wait to copy CareerMom on her sister’s FaceBook update that said,

“…just stopped at a random park in NC to give the kids a break from the car…we got to take a miniature train ride!”

This may seem minute to you, but I also happen to know that he’d been cranky in the car a good bit of the trip, so for them to stop…well, that’s just a little bit of Gold in my book!

Shall I apologize for finding solace in another’s misery? Should I feel bad that someone else is finally understanding–even if just a wee bit–what CareerMom and I have been trying to explain to others for five years? Maybe so, but I won’t!

And here in just two short months, we’ll have a little girl around the house and I PRAY, OH Dear Lord, I PRAY, that we get one of those darling little sleepers and not another personality like the last two. I’m not sure I can take another six months of colic!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Life in these United States Marriage

It’s feelin’ just a little bit like Office Space around here these days

When I was eight and playing pine-cone wars with my buds back in Lower Alabama (LA), I never would have dreamed that one day, I’d be doing what I do, or that I’d do some of the things that I’ve done in my life; like working in the DoD and…yeah, that’s pretty much it for the cool stuff.

But also, growing up, I never would have thought I’d end up married to a woman who works full time and we’d be putting our kids in a daycare to be raised by perfect strangers.

I’m not sure where I thought my life would take me, but I’m sure it wasn’t a house in the burbs of Atlanta and exotic family vacations to…the beach.

Looking back, it’s amazing how far off I’ve drifted from “The Plan.” Granted, I didn’t have much of a plan, but I had dreams man! I was gonna do things! I’m not sure what, but THINGS!

I had ambition too. Money…oh! I always wanted to make lots of money, but that was just Alex P. Keaton talking and truthfully, I never completely got that out of my system.

But it’s funny how time changes you isn’t it? The things that you thought were important to you then, are now just footnotes at the bottom of the page, “***Chris was going to do so and so, but then kids came along…”

For the most part, I don’t have regrets. I mean, I did things. Sure, maybe I didn’t travel the world, but knowing what I know now about hygiene and bathrooms in other countries, I’m not so sure it was a loss. But, there is one thing that has changed about me though and perhaps it’s the most surprising since it’s really the one thing that I could still have–the one thing that my life hasn’t thrown up a bar against–ambition!

Do you remember when you started your first REAL job? Do you remember being on the bottom of the totem pole and just grinding your teeth every day and thinking to yourself, “Just wait, one day I’ll be the boss, you just wait and see.” I had that once. I still do–sorta–but now it comes with conditions, such as:but it now comes with conditions. Such as:

  • I want to be the boss, AND still be able to walk away from work at the end of the day without having to spend hours upon hours checking e-mail in the wee hours of the night while my family sleeps
  • I want the money, but I don’t want to spend all my time in useless meetings talking about “high level overviews” and “program guidance.”
  • I want the vacation house and all the perks, but I don’t want to have to have an “office” at my vacation house so I can stay in touch with work

Basically, I want my cake, and of course I want to eat it. What else would you do with cake?

So I find myself at war with…myself…over work. As it is with most companies, at my job, I’m expected to constantly grow in my career. I’m supposed to WANT to get out and get involved in new things, which inevitably means adding more work onto my existing work load, which screws with my aforementioned “wants.” It’s expected that I want to climb the corporate ladder and I do; no really I do. I just don’t want all that other crap that comes with it.

To put it plainly, I’ve lost my ambition. Maybe that’s not quite right, I still have my ambition, but I don’t want all the strings that seem to come attached with it. Does that make sense?

Sometimes I look at my mom up in rural PA and think, “Dang, that’s the life. It’s simple and it’s beautiful up there, and she doesn’t have a care in the world (as she snorts loudly while reading this).”  But then, I realize that it too has its problems. Everyone’s life has its problems…we all just hide it behind happy faces and platitudes. Man, what a crappy way to go through life. I’m really working on this whole acceptance thing. Hey, don’t sugar coat it–I’m not getting any younger and the things that I dreamt of as a young man, are by and large never gonna happen if they haven’t happened yet, so I just need to suck it up and “accept” that things are the way they are and try to make the best of it.

(This sounds like a mid-life crisis I know.)

It can’t be just me right? Did you have a Plan? Have you accomplished it? If not, why? I’m curious how many people’s lives actually worked out the way they thought it would.