Tag: Family

Posts that discuss family life in America.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

I wanna make, a memory…

Every now and then, you do something that’s not only good for familial relationships, but which is also cathartic. It’s cathartic like the way watching Augustus Gloop glutton his way up the chocolate tube makes you feel better about the time you spend in the gym. It’s cathartic in how watching a nose picker in the car beside you come up with a nugget only to find that he/she is out of hankies, makes you feel better about yourself.

That’s what the yearly familial trek to the punkin patch is for me.

We didn’t really have family traditions around the holidays growing up. Oh we had a “fairly close to Christmas eve” family get-together, but to my knowledge, we didn’t go get pumpkins; we didn’t go cut a Christmas tree; and we certainly didn’t decorate for Halloween.

I like traditions. To me, they are the best kinds of memories (not that I really have much of a basis for this belief). So, I try to decorate a bit for the holidays, and I take the family out to a local tree farm and I hack down a tree with an old fashioned handsaw, and each year we go to “Berry Patch Farms” here in the burbs and we pick out pumpkins–overpriced pumpkins to be exact.

Sunday morning (yes, we skipped church…get over it!) MLE woke up at 6 a.m. I heard him because I was sleeping on the couch after having woken up at 1 a.m. with back and leg spasms and having gone downstairs so as to not wake up CareerMom. After the usual Saturday morning routine, we all piled into the car and arrived onsite at the punkin patch when it opened at 10 a.m.

They have a nice setup there. There are a few choice farm animals for the kids to fawn over. They have face painting and a little swing play area. Then, you take a hayride over to the punkin patch where you trek across 50 yards of leftover punkins–still on the vine in many cases– to a main area where the majority of the big ones are gathered.

And then, the pictures commence!

Pumpkin patch 4 pumpkins patch 1 Pumpkin patch 3 Pumpkin patch 2

Along with a dozen or so other parents, for nigh on 30 minutes we cajoled, we bribed, we even occasionally threatened our children to do something cute (or else!) just so we could get that one picture…that one memory to stick away in a book somewhere, or maybe to e-mail to all our friends.

But we got a few and then we let the boys pick out a couple of pumpkins to take home. We all loaded back onto the hayride and it was then that I noticed we were the only ones actually buying pumpkins. It seems everyone else just came for the pics, and that made me kinda sad.

Isn’t part of the fun, taking a pumpkin home with you? Does the kid care that you brought them to the punkin patch and just took pictures of them and let them feed the goat some leaves you stripped from a nearby tree? Is that a good memory? I dunno.

The carthartic part, for me, was watching all of the other parents with their kids. And so many of them seem to be going through the same things we are with ours–the defiance, the pulling away when you want them to do something, the annoying whines–it was all there on display. It made me realize that we’re not the only ones sighing on a regular basis, or praying for just one quiet meal at the dinner table. It was a good moment. Kind of like when you blog about something and a bunch of other people respond in kind.

So we did it and I have the pictures to prove it, good or otherwise. Now, if the weather would just cooperate and drop about 15 degrees, it’d be pretty darn perfect!

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Dad Blogs Family Marriage

Crap…it’s almost the weekend

payday Start rationing bread! Wait, only one glass of milk! Save money…CONSERVE, CONSERVE, CONSERVE!

What? No, I don’t live in Texas and I’m not hoarding supplies for the pending hurricane! Nope, I’m conserving because we have THREE WEEKENDS IN THIS PAYDAY!

(insert Sam Kennison-like scream here!)

If you’re like me, you’ve already spent the bulk of your paycheck by 8 p.m. of the day you get it and each weekend, when you have kids, is like opening the drain in the bathtub and waving your money goodbye as it leaks away, mostly by dragging the kids around trying to keep them happy.

So when there are three weekends in a pay period, I start getting worried. Worried because, as the temperatures continue to soar, along with the humidity, there’s only so much sitting in the house, or walking around the mall (without actually buying anything) that I can take.

There should be a law against three-weekend pay periods, or at least a moratorium on gas prices on the weekend so that those with kids can drive outside their usual sphere of influence in search of activity diversity.

Oh, but there IS college football and that should be good a few hours at least!

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

I’m beginning to suspect a pattern

patterns Remember back a couple of Friday’s ago…I was looking forward to a nice work from home day and then MLE puked on the way to daycare, only to come home and seem to feel fine the rest of the day.

Well, we made it to 10 a.m. today. I got a call from daycare, “Oh hi. I just wanted to let you know that MLE doesn’t seem to feel well. He’s been…well…just not himself and he keeps pulling on his right ear.”

I know this teacher and she’s not one to overreact, and I know that MLI and I have both been fighting a cold, so I told her I’d come pick him up.

When I arrived, he was standing on top of a bin of toys cackling. On the way home from daycare, he nursed a bottle and made faces at me as I drove.

Since we’ve been home, he’s destroyed the pantry; pulling down everything he could get his hands on. He’s eaten half my lunch Cheeto’s and now he’s playing with his brother’s light saber and making realistic “whonk whonk” noises as he stabs imaginary Sith Lords.

Sick? I don’t think so.

A big fat faker? I’m leaning in that general direction.

Oh, and three days and counting till CareerMom heads out to Colorado for a week. She says she’s not looking forward to it, but lemme see…while in Colorado, you get to stay in a nice hotel and sleep later than you do at home. But, you work during the day, except for the last day when they get free time. There are usually coordinated dinners at night at really nice restaurants (and unlimited good wine) that if you really really wanted to, you could find an excuse to get out of.

vs.

The usual rat race here at home, complete with leftovers from this week that I’ve managed to put away to make life easier for myself next week.

I know what I’d vote for.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood Marriage

Behind every memory…is a Coffee Mug?

If there’s an adult male in your house over the age of 30, it’s a pretty good bet that if Gordon Elliott and the cast of “Doorknock Dinners” were to suddenly show up at your house and go scrounging through your pantry, they’d find a number of unmatched coffee mugs, complete with various pictures, logos, and catch-phrases.

I thought about this as I was emptying the dishwasher and trying to find a place for some of our mugs the other day. Now, CareerMom is an avowed packrat and I’m generally a “tosser” (and not in a British kinda way). I don’t normally get sentimental over knick-knacks so its easy for me to just throw things out.

Knowing this, I was taken aback to discover that, as I was moving the mugs around and trying to decide which ones to keep and which ones to toss out, that more than a few held very strong sentimental value. Like markers in my life, each of them pointed at some very good, or notsogood, time in my life and I was hesitant to get rid of them.

If you’re interested:

IMG_2320I got this mug at the Georgia Renaissance Festival back in 2000. CareerMom and I had just gotten married the fall prior and I had quit a very lucrative contract job (making the same money 9 years ago that I’m making now) so I could move back to Atlanta and get married. I remember that we really didn’t have much spending cash, but I really wanted one of these cool mugs (filled at the time of purchase, with beer) because it was a typically steamy June day and because I really liked the mug. So, CareerMom bought it for me and I’ve treasured it ever since.

IMG_2321I grew up in Alabama, and though I wasn’t lucky enough to go to the U. of Alabama, I will forever be a fan! CareerMom got her B.A. at U. of Texas and did her graduate studies at Georgia Tech. And though we don’t actually use these cups much, they are as much a part of our lives as anything else. I just can’t seem to part with them.

ROLL TIDE!

IMG_2322Much like my career, this mug symbolizes the hayday of my single life. I was young, I took contract jobs where I often got to do very fun and different things. One time, I worked for a railroad company planning a large telecommunications rollout. Part of my job was to help complete some maps. This was in the day before everything was on the Internet, so I was poring over what few maps were available via Mapquest, plus some maps we had on a program on disk, trying to figure out where the railroad tracks went across the U.S. The logo on this mug has long since worn off, but the underlying color is still there, shiny and bright. I don’t even remember specifically where I got it; only that it meant something special at the time. Still does really…

IMG_2325…the hell did this come from? It looks like something CareerMom got in a crappy “Thank You” basket at at a baby shower.
It’s outta here!

IMG_2324CareerMom brought this mug, along with a set of platters and such when we got married. I think I’ve seen a similar set at Target on and off over the years. But we pull these mugs out around the Christmas holidays. They are a beautiful green with a snowy scene on them that reminds me of the “Christmas that could be.” We will probably never have a white Christmas here in Atlanta, but like seeing the first leaves drop and feeling that first bite of cool Canadian air in October, these mugs always lift my spirits a bit.

IMG_2323When MLE was born, I wanted to make something people could keep. So, I took this picture of him, one of the very first,  and had a mug made up and sent it to all of our family members. For very obvious reasons, I can never throw this one out. I thought about this cup this morning as I was eating breakfast and MLE came down and asked to sit in my lap. I really love that little guy!

IMG_2327CareerMom brought this and another mug like it back from San Francisco recently. Not that I’m a fan of San Fran mind you, but the mugs are very interesting. The  scenery is raised on the mug making it a very tactile drinking experience. They also hold a LOT of coffee, which is a boon in the mornings when you’re already making umpteen trips up and down the stairs retrieving various things for the kids while trying to get ready. They seem kind of fragile though, so I suspect I’ll break them before I actually tire of them. Since these are relatively new, I’m not sure yet what the memory of these will be in 5 years. Perhaps thinking back of all the time I was able to spend with my boys by myself as she traveled for work. (*whisper* It’s kinda really fun when she’s gone!)

IMG_2326Ah, our old standby coffee mugs. These are our everyday, eat and drink whatever you want outta them, cups. Fruit, teas, coffee…they take them all. They aren’t flashy, but there’s lots of them and they do the job.

It’s kinda like our marriage really. Maybe they’re not the most exciting all the time, but they’re strong, and there whenever you need ’em.

People collect things specifically for the memories they make, but coffee cups are one of those things that you just sort of pick up along the way, no special reason. But, that’s what makes them special. Like the picture on the wall that, in time, you tend to ignore, pulling one of these gems out of the back of the cabinet and reliving the sentiment behind it is special.