When I was your age...

As kids we all heard our parents use the phrase, "When I was your age..."

Sometimes the phrase was used to tell a story of how much the times have changed.  Other times it was used to make use appreciate something we had that our parents didn't when they were kids.  Most often (at least in the house I grew up in) it was used to add humor to a childhood story. 

The most humorous of the "When I was your age" stories had to do with my dad's walk to school.  I am confident that many other children have heard the tale of their parents' 15 mile uphill  both ways stroll to school.  When I saw the below picture on-line I laughed out loud and immediately thought of my dad.  He is an above average story teller, and his version often included fighting off wolves (not pictured), which meant him and his brother had to walk back to back for safety.

In addition to wanting to post this funny picture of my dad's walk to school, I wanted to discuss that I am now experiencing "When I was your age" moments with Lucy and Paige.  The first and most common is when Lucy or Paige touch the screen on our home computer and can't figure out why the cursor (that is what we called the "mouse" thing we used in my day) doesn't respond.  They are both accustom to tablets or smart phones that have touch screens that they don't realize devices haven't always been that way.

A second example of this occurred when Lucy and I did a father daughter date to The Lorax.  The movie was in 3D.  I told Lucy that it was the first time I has watched a 3D movie.  She just gave me a strange look.  Her look said that she is only four and I am old so how could I have not watched a 3D movie yet with all those extra days I have lived.

I didn't even get into the fact that we were taking pictures of each other with our 3D glasses on with a portable phone!?!? 

"When I was growing up phones were connected to the wall at home and they all had curly cords attached."

The third example of "When I was your age" that took place over the last couple weeks was when we went to Menard's to get some sand for the sandbox.  Menard's now offers pink, blue, purple, and white sand.

On the drive home from Menard's I said, "Lucy and Paige, when I was your age we didn't have different colors of sand to choose from.  We just had sand."

As you can see from the picture below they were unimpressed with my sand history lesson and happily went with pink.

I also remember that many of the stories about "When I was your age" drew upon memories of a simpler time.  As I am now the person using this quote, I have two thoughts about growing up in a different generation.  First, this generation like many before it will find a way to navigate all the new and different products and ideas.  Secondly, the girls will have many more complex situations in their future that will leave me yearning for what I remember as a simpler time.  Until those days roll around I am going to enjoy the 3D movie dates and the pink sand!

Stay-at-home dad article

I came across this article today and I thought it captured my feelings about being a stay-at-home dad well.  My favorite quote of the article is, "The hours are the pits and the pay stinks, but it's hard to complain about getting to spend time with your kids every day."

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/05/14/stay-home-dad-cory-byrom?hpt=hp_t2

The title of the article"Don't Call me Mr. Mom" isn't really discussed in the article.  From my own experience, there are plenty of people that call me Mr. Mom after I tell them I am a stay-at-home dad.  While I understand what they are saying and understand how the author of this article may take offense to being called that, it doesn't bother me much. 

If anything it just strikes me as inaccurate versus insulting.  People rarely mean harm with the comment (at least from my dense perspective).  It is inaccurate because they have a mom, a great mom.  Just because she has a full time job it doesn't mean that she is any less of a mom or needs to have some "Mr" do the "mom" work in the house. 

As for me, the job title of simply Dad is more than enough.

If you give them an inch

Everyone has heard the expression, "If you give them an inch, they will take a mile."  All parents have experienced this with their children.  You decide that they can have a cookie and they immediately ask for a second or third treat.  The examples of this are endless.

Recently at a park Paige became very interested in the drinking fountain.  For those of you reading this from Wisconsin, a drinking fountain is what we know as a bubbler!?!?  Paige took multiple drinks and enjoyed turning the handle to watch the water go on and off.

At first I didn't understand what she was doing, but since that day at the park Paige has been trying to climb up onto the bathroom counter for a drink.  After she brushes her teeth she turns the water on, climbs up, and sticks her head under the faucet.  Eventually the light bulb went on and I realized she was trying to make the sink her drinking fountain. 

If you give them an inch (in this example let them take a drink from a water fountain at the park),they will take a mile (assume all the sinks in the house are now their personal water fountains)!?!?!?!

Do Your Best

With the warmer weather of spring we have been spending more time outside. I love the fresh air and the healthy activity level that outside play provides. All at a great price too...free!

In the winter typically it takes 30 plus minutes to get snow pants, boots, hats, gloves, etc on and if it is a cold enough day we are ready to come back inside after about 10-20 minutes of fresh air. In the spring and summer, the neighborhood is filled with kids running around and the hours of play seems to fly by.

This spring the girls received softball helmets and a set of bases from the Easter Bunny. "The bunny" got the wrong size helmets, so the helmets haven't made their debut yet. There are two challenges here. First, finding a place that had a good selection of sizes of pink helmets. Second, how to explain to an inquisitive 4 year old how you set up an exchange with the Easter Bunny!?!?!

This new equipment has led to frequent tee ball games in the back yard. They both love to hit the ball and run the bases. I love to pitch to Lucy, set the tee up for Paige, and chase them around the bases.

Growing up sports was a big part of my life. A lot of great childhood memories were created playing football at recess, shooting hoops with my brother, or playing baseball with extended family on vacations. I am excited to see the girls smiling and laughing while enjoying sports.

As I grew older and played high school sports I developed a real passion and intensity for the sports I played. I wanted to be the best player I could and when competing I wanted to win. I learned many life lessons from the hard work and ups and downs that come with sports.

Knowing that passion and intensity for sports exists in me I have often thought about how that may affect how I coach the girls. It is very important to me that we focus on the fun and doing your best with sports versus the win at all cost mentality that is often seen on TV. Frankly, if you watch enough ESPN the "refuse to lose" attitude is often praised in our sports heroes.

To step back for a moment, the girls are two and four so we aren't at a major crossroads regarding playing for fun or playing to win. It should be 100% focused on fun at their age. At any age it should be fun and even when in competitive situations the focus should be on doing your best versus winning. This concept was confirmed for me when I stumbled across a speech by John Wooden.

When the Internet dries up of interesting things to do I often jump out to www.ted.com. Ted (Tech, Entertainment, and Design) is a series of global conferences where, simply put, people present ideas. On this site their are lots of videos of smart people talking about a wide variety of unique topics. This is where I found a speech given by John Wooden on true success. It is a great speech that contains a lot of information regarding life and sports.

John Wooden was a legendary college basketball coach from UCLA. He won multiple national championships and coached the best of the best in college basketball, including Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton. In the speech he says, "Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best that you are capable of becoming."

When you translate that to a four year old (or a high school kid probably) what it means is do your best! If that is a good enough measure of success for John Wooden, it certainly will be for me as the girls grow and pursue various things.

While we are currently at this stage of sports (Paige hitting video), doing your best will be our top sports motto regardless of what society says about winning and regardless of how well your helmet fits!?!?!?!

Post Script: Another great quote from Wooden in the video, “You can lose when you outscore somebody in a game. And you can win when you’re outscored.”

Halloween Preperation

Lucy is very excited about Halloween this year. This Tuesday she asked how many days until trick-or-treating. She has asked again every day since.

Lucy is old enough now that she remembers trick-or-treating last year and is very excited to do it again. She also remembers the compliments she received on her costume last year (Candy Corn Princess) and how fun it was to see other people dressed up.

Of course before any trick-or-treating happens a costume needs to be decided on. As you all know this is a decision that many youth do not take lightly.

Figuring out a costume for Paige is easy. She was a pumpkin last year because that is what we dressed her in. She will be a cupcake this year for the same reason. Although she is too young to care about what she wears she is old enough to get excited about dressing up. It will be fun to watch her giggle and get excited about candy this year.

Lucy's excitement has her pouring over all of the Halloween catalogs we have received in the mail. She loves looking at all the options and often can be heard laughing out loud about some of the costumes. So far we haven't had the heart to tell her that there is a zero percent chance we are ordering the $78 magical mermaid costume that comes with a tiara for $14, a wand for $8 (almost like they are giving it away!?!?!), and sparkly cape for $48. Even if we won the lottery I don't know I could see myself dropping $150 on a outfit for one day.

Lucy was pretty settled on being a cupcake with her sister and having her dad dress up at a baker for the trick-or-treating walk around the neighborhood. Our neighborhood has a traditional of all the kids gathering for a group picture and then the dads taking the kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood while having a couple beers. The cool dads even dress up!

This week Lucy received a Little Red Riding Hood dress for a belated birthday present from her special great Aunt Suzie. Lucy is now undecided about what to be for Haloween. We will certainly keep you posted on what she decides.

While her costume is still unknown, Lucy does have one halloween item fully prepared.

She learned this pumpkin poem from Nona, Lib's mom, when we went for visit a couple weeks ago. Nona did a great job teaching it to Lucy and Lucy is glad to say the poem whenever the topic of Halloween comes up.

As discussed in the previous post, Paige of course have to give the pumpkin poem a try too.

Good luck to you on your costume selection and Halloween preparation.

Anything you can do, I want to do too

Regardless of the angle of the sun or the time of day Lucy always has a shadow. The shadow is her younger sister Paige. Ocassionally Lucy gets frustrated by having a constant follower or observer, but she does very well with it the majority of the time.

The best way to get Paige to eat a banana is to give one to Lucy and have Paige see her eating it. The same is true with getting dressed. Paige is typically content running around the house in just her diaper, until she sees Lucy putting on her daytime clothes.

While eating healthy food and getting dressed are productive examples of this game, there are multiple funny example of this too. When we brush our teeth, Paige uses the toothpaste you can swallow because that is exactly what she does...chews on the brush until she has swallowed all the toothpaste. Lucy knows the traditional routine of brushing, spitting, rinsing, etc. When Paige is done "brushing" her teeth she always insist that we hold her up over the sink so she can "spit". Paige's spit consists of her leaning her head down into the sink and making spitting noises. She aways pops her head back up with a look of accomplishment.

I am optimistic this monkey see, monkey do routine will be beneficial for potty training. Already Paige is asking to sit on the potty after Lucy uses it. So far Paige hasn't gone potty, but she has the rest of the routine mastered. She will sit on the pot, smile, hold her arms up to get down, and then lean over to get wiped. We have been amazed at the detail of her observations and ability to remember routines.

This sword cuts both ways of course. When Lucy is jumping on the couch, running around the house, trying to hang upside down off the swingset, not wanting to share, or not wanting to sit at the table to eat you can bet Paige is trying her best to do the exact same thing.

As much as we appreciate and enjoy when Lucy sets a good example it is important for us to remember she is only four. While being responsible and setting a good example are skills we want Lucy to develop, we don't want her to feel pressure to be perfect all the time.

Observing what is sure to be a lifelong friendship is ultimately a lot of fun. We also know that there may be periods of time in the future that Paige and Lucy might not want to spend as much time together. Until those days come Paige will continue to shadow Lucy and learn life lessons including: how to stand when dad wants to put sunscreen on you, how to plug you nose when you are by the compost pile, and that there is never a bad day to rock a birthday party hat.

Getting back on pace...hopefully

Yesterday I ran my first marathon. I am proud of my accomplishment and plan to blog about it more in the near future. Today my legs are sore. My fingers are not sore, so I am turning my focus to another goal: 100 blog posts this year.

While I trained and ran the marathon I spent a lot of time looking at splits and calculated my pace. For example, if I ran a 8:30 mile I would often think about how long a marathon would take at that pace. Through the running and pace analysis I was able to put together a reasonable plan to complete the race. Regarding the goal of completing 100 blog posts this year I did not make a plan and it shows.

So far this year I have completed 16 posts. My last post was July 25th. I have completed 3 posts since June 1st. This is the equivalent of crawling the first 2 miles of a marathon and expecting to finish at a reasonable time. To complete the goal of 100 posts in a year I should have posted 8 or 9 times per month. I am way, way off pace.

I have 89 days to complete 84 posts. In an unrelated story, there are only 82 more shopping days until Christmas!?!?! After crawling the first two miles of th 100 blog posts marathon I now need to stand up and sprint the last 24.2 miles. This is basically impossible, but as a poster in most elementary and middle schools across the country reads, "If you shoot for the moon and miss, you can still land among the stars!"

Before I click "publish post" tonight and get the ball rolling on posting spree from here until 12/31/11 (My family won't mind if I am posting during Thanksgiving dinner will they?), I want to apologize for a couple things. First, sorry about my over two month blog break. Thanks for sticking with me.

Second, sorry for posting probably my 3rd or 4th post about apologizing for taking long blogging breaks. Who wants to read a blog about a guy apologizing for not blogging all the time?!?!?

Finally, sorry in advance if you get sick of hearing from me over the next three months. My advice if you get sick of me would be to go get some Christmas shopping done or go for a run!