Extended Break.

Time has not been gentle with me these last few weeks. While I anticipated to be "done with" a variety of projects– Christmas and otherwise–, the reality is that I'm not even close. I'm giving myself an additional four weeks to get up-to-date, close out, or finish three or four outstanding projects which never received their due attention in 2009.

Expect the next posting during the first week of February 2010.

Take care,
Eric

Break?

Somehow the month of October passed me by without even nudging me from my befuddlement. I wasn’t asleep, my aching body can attest to that, but I also feel like I’ve just awoken from a daze and, in some scary way, been violated by the ravishings of time. I haven’t felt this worn down and morose in quite a while. Those childhood viruses certainly do more than just make the kids sick: they make Adrianne and I work that much harder to make sure the kids’ needs are taken care of. To make matters worse, Adrianne’s been working outrageous amounts of overtime, it’s the holiday season, and I’ve agreed to research and write a Patent Application for an invention Adrianne came up with two years ago. We’ve already been invited to three parties, and my parents are toying with the idea of visiting twice before the New Year– the first visit’s scheduled within two weeks. We are looking forward to the gatherings and visits, but the work that goes into them doesn’t end when the party is over or the guests have taken their leave. Many times– every time– the work continues on for us well into the night and the following morning. I’ve said this before: people don’t remember what it’s like to have young children. If they did, parties would be held at 10 or 11 a.m. instead of starting at 1 p.m. with dinner being served at 4:30 p.m.; or starting at 4 p.m. and eating dinner at 7:30 p.m.

I’ve been toying with the idea of pausing my blog for a few weeks. Not stopping it, but taking a break … a hiatus, of sorts, from writing. I love writing. Heck, I even think I’m pretty good at it. But the kids just haven’t returned to their normal routines: Taylor’s forgoing naps; Simon is trying to throw his off, too. We are knee deep in Christmas gift making– something we started four or five years ago to ease the expense of the holidays on our wallets, and I haven’t had the time to work on my lathe, write, or even read all that much. Our house is literally littered with incomplete projects from the front door, throughout the kitchen, living room, office, and … the downstairs is a disaster with half turned bowls, mismatched pen kits, and scrap wood covered in shavings; and now this patent…. Quite frankly, I’m sick of the mess and want nothing more to just finish everything in one fell swoop, or throw it all away.

It’s not that I haven’t had much to write about. I do. Yesterday Taylor named one of her stuffed animals. She walks around with her brown, stuffed puppy Casey like it’s a member of the family. “Come on, Casey. Good boy. No, no, no. Don’t touch that. Good boy!” Simon, he’s now at the stage where he is starting to be able to tell us what he needs. There is still a great deal of guessing on our part, but he is starting to string words together to make coherent sentences: “Open window, please.” Believe me, it’s a real exciting time in our house, despite the melancholy tone of this posting.

What is making this decision so much more difficult– or easier– is that a friend of mine just stopped writing his blog. He did it … so can I?

I think what I’ll do is take a week or two off from writing. (I’m going to cheat a little and count this rambling as a legitimate post). If I can find sometime between this morning and the next two weeks maybe I’ll have another post ready to go. Otherwise, I’m afraid, I’ll have to put the blog to bed until after the holidays or I’m finished working on all the extraneous projects cluttering up the house.

See you … then?

Worries. Part II.

It’s been two days since Simon was diagnosed with Croup, and he is worse for the wear. Yesterday we spent the day at the State Park down the road, walking through the woods, riding in the stroller, and playing on the waterfront. We frequent the park quite often– it’s a nice park. The kids had a great time: they walked, they ran, they played in the woods, tirelessly. We thought Simon was better. His face still looked pallid, intermixed with blotches of red. He still had a runny nose and a slight cough, but he seemed to feel better. At the very least he acted normal, but he wasn’t.

Last night he slept for two hours. I didn’t sleep at all. Adrianne? She slept … maybe … three hours. The problem is that he cannot stomach his prescribed steroids. (We’ve nixed the liquid albuterol– on the pediatrician’s advice– and substituted it with walks in the cool night air or breathing in hot steam from a warm bath. The steroids reduce the inflammation in his lungs, the albuterol, a quick fix, opens his airways– much like an asthma inhaler does for one with allergies.) Oh, we can get the medicine down his throat. That’s no problem. He may be 29 lbs. of solid, determined mass, who hates taking anything by mouth except food and can alligator roll with the best of them, but he’s only 29 lbs. The difficulty does not lay in the swallowing but keeping the medicine down. He vomits. I would too. The medication tastes horrible, vile. I don’t blame him one bit. Actually, I tasted his medicine to see what I could mix it in to mask the taste. One touch on the tongue took two swigs of black coffee to wipe clear the nauseating liquid’s taste out of my mouth. Adrianne, on the other hand, swallowed about 1/16 of a teaspoon. It took her nearly half the morning to rid her belly of the unsavory red liquid.

We’ve tried everything to help him keep it down, to no avail.

A third call to the pediatrician’s office in two days has given us a glimmer of hope. The office still will not give the steroid shot, they do not carry them in stock– the doctor said there was little need and the medication would “rot” on her shelf– but they recommended a medicine-compounding store not too far away. I called the store. The pharmacist, a wonderfully nice woman, explained that she could mix the steroid into a tolerable concoction, but a steroid is a steroid and it will have a bitter aftertaste, no matter what. We figured it’s worth the try.

Long story short, the pediatrician’s office never called the pharmacy, the emergency answering service refused to page the doctor until 6 pm (the pharmacy closes at 5:30 pm), and our insurance did not cover the cost of the compounding because the list of ingredients is not on their “acceptable” list of medicines. We, however, got what we needed before leaving the store. Thank God for compassionate people. Sometimes laws need to be broken for a higher good.

After all this we still decided to withhold Simon’s medications. It was a deliberate, thought-out and researched decision. We believe in modern medicine; we are not holistic people eating dried black berries and tree bark instead of taking Tylenol to relieve cold symptoms, but we still would rather not give our children medications if they do not need them. They have a long life ahead of them. I know when I was younger I received antibiotics for just about every cold. Now, thirty years later, when I was in the hospital for my emergency open appendectomy operation earlier this year, I had to be given two additional take-home doses for an extended time because my body was accustomed to the antibiotics. This, in turn, lengthened my recovery time by almost four weeks. I would rather not have my children experience the same difficulty with some medications as I do later in their lives.

The bad news is that Simon woke up at 1:30 am gasping for breath. The good news is that after 15 minutes in the cool night air he fell back asleep for the remainder of the night. We’re not out of the woods yet, but things are looking better for him.

Now if only his incisors would hurry up and come in … and if only Taylor’s body would rid itself of her cold….

Worries. Part I.

One would think that having a second child would gradually ease one’s worrying about colds, flues, viruses, and injuries. It doesn’t.

Last night Simon put the scare into us, once again. Not long after he was put down for bed he awoke with a terrible bark and labored breathing. I knew something was wrong with him– his whole body rattled like a cheap maraca; I could feel his sniffling and coughing vibrate through the palm of my two hands and up my arm as he struggled to breath. But he was tired, very tired, and quickly fell back to sleep without fuss or shedding the smallest tear. Strange.

I stayed by his side for awhile, sitting on the light brown wooden toy chest Grandpa made for his room nearly two years ago, watching him, quietly, concerned, unsure what to do. My wife and I checked on him two or three times before retiring for the night, just to make sure he was all right. He looked fine. He slept, undisturbed– at least for a little while.

About an hour later everything changed. Suddenly, without the slightest whimpering, warning, cry or stir, he woke gasping for breath. I thought he was choking. I really did. To make matters worse, as I hastily made my way down the unlit hallway, pulling my heavy-weight tarry cloth bathroom over my shoulders as I speed-walked into his room, I remembered Taylor dropping a small object into his crib yesterday afternoon … or was it two days ago … or was it last week? My mind swelled with an anxiety, a chemical concoction of overly scientific terms, created especially for parents of small children, flooded my head with an overpowering emotion: dread. Did I forget to scoop the object out of his crib? What did she drop in? What’s the quickest route to the hospital?

Something was wrong with him. There was no second-guessing this time. Adrianne ruled out an obstruction rather quickly– she’s knows her medical stuff quite well. Mucus, however, was everywhere– coming out of his nose, his mouth: long, stringy, and spider-like– plastered across his face, hands, and puppy dog night outfit as he cried into the night. Burp after burp after burp, gagging from the effects of the drool down his throat, my son was suffering; and there was nothing I could do about it.

Gag. Burp. Vomit. Nothing seemed to ease his labored breathing.

Adrianne called our pediatrician’s emergency number.

The diagnoses? Croup– a childhood virus, which is characterized by “Sudden onset in the middle of the night, of gasping for breath, hoarseness, bark-like cough” (What to Expect: Toddler Years). The pediatrician recommended we wrap Simon up in some warm clothing, open the car window just a crack and hastily drive to the ER. “The ER?,” I thought. “No, that’s the last place I want to take my child.” Germs. Diseases. The wait … the misdiagnoses I received just a couple of months ago. Maybe I asked, maybe she just said it, ‘Do you have a nebulizer?’ Time, as it always seems to do, has allowed me the distance to think about this question a little more deeply than I did when she first asked. What an odd question: ‘Do I own a nebulizer?’ How many people, or parents for that matter, even know what a nebulizer is– let alone have one at home? Not many, I imagine.

Luckily, we do own one. Simon was given an adult sized dose of Albuterol to open his tightening airways. I also took him out for a walk in the cool night air by the stream in the backyard. The cold air, like an icepack on a bruise, reduced the swelling and, in about ten minutes, Simon was breathing normally again. What a scare! My son couldn’t breath. And I felt just plain helpless.

The following morning both Simon and Taylor were diagnosed with viral infections and prescribed the appropriate doses of medication, which promptly caused Simon to vomit, twice, all over himself, me, and the living room carpet. Oh! Did I forget to mention that Simon is teething and Taylor has a case of poison ivy, too? Or that Simon nearly electrocuted himself by sucking on a “hot” wire plugged into a 120V outlet before going to bed that very night? Aaaarrrgggghhhh! It never stops.

To be continued….

Simon’s Words.

August 24, 2009.

It’s been several weeks since I first wrote this list down and tacked it up over my work desk. To say we’ve been busy is an understatement. It seems like whenever there is a break in the daily grind my wife and I find someway of filling the void. Whether we are taking the kids somewhere, visiting family, or starting or finishing a new project for others, or ourselves we are always busy, it seems. Regardless, as of August 24, 2009, the day I stopped tracking Simon’s word usage, he speaks (spoke) 50 words. Just for comparison purposes, according to the What to Expect book, Simon should be able to use one to three words and may be able to use up to six words. Doing the math, Simon’s vocabulary usage is 8.3 times that of the average 17 month-old.

His Words:

Mom, Dad, flower, fish, book, geese, bird, cat, dog, pig, horse, elephant, duck, seeds, bug, bottle, cup, baby, bear, water, beach, no, up, boo boo, bubble, bumble bee, wave, boat, chip, yes, done, bye-bye, hi, shoes, ball, balloon, truck, car, Stitchy (our cat), pee pee, moon, rock, tractor, cow, bunny, belly, powder, rain, Mary, park, Simon, Taylor, hot, swing, and slide.

What is interesting to me is not the number of words he knows, but how he is learning new words every week. Unlike Taylor, Simon’s working vocabulary at 12 months old was almost non-existent. If I remember correctly, he could speak … maybe … four to six words: mom, dad, Stitchy (our cat), and puppy. Taylor, on the other hand, had an impressive vocabulary– one I was certainly proud of and told everyone I knew. Memory fails me with how many words she could use, but I do remember how her vocabulary usage steadily decreased from when she was 12 months to 18 months old. The number of words she could use dwindled so much and so fast that I worried about it and researched why this was happening. The answer was quite simple: During this time period, as toddlers explore the world around them their word usage may subside and even ease until their gross and fine motor skills catch up to their cognitive skills. Looking back, that’s exactly what happened with Taylor. She never crawled; she could walk by her ninth month and run with ease by her first birthday. And for the six months after her first birthday she was engrossed by anything and everything that forced her to figure out and manipulate items with her hands. She loved puzzles, building blocks, and other creative type toys.

Simon, on the other hand, was a crawling champ. That boy could creep around the apartment like a mouse hiding from a hungry cat one second and then take off like his pants were on fire the next. He spent more time trying to bawl-over his sister’s building blocks, to her frustrations and dismay, than attempt to put the pieces together. The boy was a brick. Everything, and I mean everything– the cat, Taylor, Mom or Dad– was pushed or bullied out of his way. He was a tank, unstoppable.

It wasn’t until after his first birthday that he started, I mean really started, using his words. And during the same time period that Taylor was losing words Simon is gaining words. I can’t wait to see what happens when he turns 18 months old– the same age Taylor was when her word usage flourished. Will his word usage bloom like Taylor’s or will it diminish? I just don’t know. Like everything else, we’ll see what happens in a couple of months.

Materials. Part II.

Last week I wrote that Adrianne and I recently purchased a pre-K and a Kindergarten workbook. I mentioned the pre-K book was designed for children ages 3-5, while the Kindergarten book was for children between the ages of 5-6. I also mentioned that for those who do not have kids or are not around little kids enough to see a glaring problem staring them right in the face– there is one heck of a lot of difference between a three-year-old and a five-year-old!– that the book’s recommending starting age differed significantly. What I would like to add is that there is little difference between the pre-K book and the Kindergarten book. According to Scholastic, some three-year-olds are just as academically prepared to start Kindergarten as some five-year-olds. In addition, by age four, Scholastic believes, an able child could be prepared to complete the same instructional material as a first grader. This is mind-blowing to me!

According to iVillage, a web site that posts developmental stages of infants, toddlers, and youths, by four-years-old a child should be able to run, jump, walk and climb like the skills are second nature to them. Yet, standing on tiptoes or balancing on one foot probably still requires a child's full concentration. In contrast, by 5 ½ years old a child should be able to have the coordination and balance similar to that of an adult's. The child should be able to stand on his or her tiptoes, hop on one foot, do somersaults and maybe even skip. Tasks such as brushing his or her teeth and tying his or her shoe should be accomplished with little or no help from Mom or Dad. Do you see the problem? If not, let me spell it out for you. Scholastic, and every other homeschooling publication, secular and religious, believes the same toddler who has a difficult time standing on his or her tiptoes without fully concentrating on the task can still have the same cognitive ability as the youngster who can do somersaults! What am I missing? How can this disparity in abilities, physical verses cognitive, exist when what is being asked of our Kindergartener’s is so little?

I’ve been involved in education long enough to know that some 8th graders read at the 3rd grade reading level; and some high school students may never be able to read the simplest 8th grade books. What never occurred to me is how and when this ability gap first reared its ugly head. Sure, like everyone else I blamed “the earlier grades” and, especially, “parenting” as the primary causes of a schoolchild’s shortcoming, but … my God! How can parents allow their child to start pre-K or Kindergarten two or more years behind a fellow classmate? Aren’t colors, colors; shapes, shapes; numbers, numbers; and straight lines the same for everyone, everywhere? One does not need to have a degree to count aloud when walking down stairs with their child or ask what color the cat is, do they?

***

So what do I write now? Do I brag that Taylor knows her colors, can count to ten, and is working on her ABC’s? Do I boast that Simon has the vocabulary of some five-year-olds we’ve met at the park? Do I put other parents down for wasting so much time on themselves while ignoring their greatest responsibility– being a parent to their child? Do I blame the economy or our government for forcing would-be stay-at-home moms and dads into work instead of allowing them the gift of raising their own children, teaching them the skills every parent can impart onto their kids with a little concentration and time? God knows … I’m not perfect. But I guess that’s where this blog is going, or went. We know where our kids should be– physically and cognitively– or where we think they should be, and we are working on getting them to that quintessential point where they can start making decisions for themselves. We’ve chosen, although struggling severely for it now and probably for the rest of our lives, not to leave the responsibility for teaching our children basic educational skills to someone else or society at large. That’s what parenting is all about, right? Raising one’s children to the best of his or her abilities and utilizing all of one’s skills, knowledge, and resources to do the best job they can.

No one has ever said parenting is easy. There’s a reason for that– it isn’t!

Materials. Part I.

On rainy days I like taking the kids store browsing. We’ll spend hours walking around PetSmart, Wal*Mart, Target, and Borders book store simply roaming the aisles, looking at items we’ll never buy, or amusing ourselves with animal and people watching. The other morning, however, I spent a solid portion of our trip time scanning an enormous selection of homeschool, afterschool, and remedial workbooks for students in pre-K through 12th grade at a local bookstore. I was surprised to see such an abundant selection of materials in such a relatively small store.

This got me thinking. Is the local academic rigor in this area so weak that parents feel compelled to purchase additional schooling workbooks for their kids– like my sister-in-law, an astute parent who recognizes what her children are and are not learning in school and is willing to put in the time to correct academic deficiencies in her children? Or, are teachers purchasing these workbooks to ensure they are covering testable grade-appropriate skills required by No Child Left Behind? (I have a strange feeling this could be the case, since parents I speak to often refer to how well their child did on the state testing). Or, is there a demand for these materials because there is a good deal of homeschooled kids in Eastern PA? According to the staff worker I spoke to all three questions sum up why Borders’ homeschooling section is about the same size as their magazine section: the schools in this area have a poor reputation, homeschooling is a popular alternative for the county– the highest in the state; and many teachers do purchase the workbooks to help them prepare for standardized tests.

It doesn’t surprise me that many of the parents in this area homeschool. The county we live in is littered with 4000 sq. foot family McMansions throughout the older and newer neighborhoods surrounded by a sea of worn houses and trailers in serious need of TLC; all of the social services for this county are located in the same area as the major school districts; and the average commute time is over an hour for 27% of the working population– over 60% of the population drives at least 40 minutes to work every day! All of this can mean several things: There are droves of upper middle and upper class families in the area, and, by the same token, a lot of people are barely making end’s meet; higher paying jobs do not exist close by, and just as many are commuting into NYC and the surrounding metropolitan area to find those better paying jobs. How do these statistics and general observations add up to homeschooling? Easy. First, homeschooling not only takes courage and demands parents to be willing to take risks, but it also takes a rudimentary understanding of how to educate one’s child. In other words, one needs to be just as smart as our local elementary teacher. I think it is safe to equate higher learning with a higher social status. (This by no means implies the rich are smart or those in poverty are dumb. Please do not jump to unsupported conclusions). Second, generally speaking, the more money one has the less likely they are to tolerate the social ills that plague the economically poor– that’s one reason why this area has so many gated communities. Wasn’t it Hesiod whom said, “A bad neighbor is a misfortune, as much as a good one is a great blessing”?

I had an interesting conversation with a grandfather the other day in the park about the local school system. His story is a sad story. His youngest son, a recent high school graduate and special needs child, had a child with his girlfriend six years ago. After nearly five years, the grandfather and his wife, grandma, took custody of the six-year-old from his own son. It was an agreed upon move, for the betterment of the child, but still a heart-wrenching tragedy laced with the seeds of future frustrations and sorrows. His experiences with the school systems in the area were less than praiseworthy. Having both Honors and special needs children attend the local high school, his experiences with the local school system could not have received more attention for me. By the end of our conversation, I could not help returning to the idea of homeschooling our children.

More out of curiosity than investigation we recently purchased a pre-K and a Kindergarten workbook. The pre-K book is designed for children ages 3-5. For those who do not have kids or are not around little kids enough to see the glaring problem staring one right in the face, let me just say there is one heck of a lot of difference– emotionally, socially, developmentally– between a three-year-old and a five-year-old! The skills taught in the pre-K and Kindergarten books will be set aside for another blog, but lets just say there is not much difference between the two.

So what does all this mean? It means that after 866 words I’ve got some more thinking to do and a heck of a lot more to write about.

To be continued….

Taylor’s Quotes.

For the last few days, Taylor has come up with some clever comments. While I was only able to write down a few at the house– some were said in the park, at the store, or enroute somewhere– her command of the English language is improving, daily. For me, the most impressive remarks are the abstract ones that take a little imagination on her part. For example, her first comment about putting the top on the wagon to shed the rain is not only funny but it shows the maturation of her reasoning skills. Taylor is quite the character!

September 27, 2009

T: Go outside?
Dad: It’s raining out.
T: Put top on wagon. It works.
(Our Radio Flyer wagon comes with a detachable sunshade).


Taylor to the Cat: No go outside Stitchy. Raining out.
T: Okay. Go hunt mice and birds.


T: Taylor has mouse in mouth. Can’t get out. Aaaarrggghhhh!
(Taylor playing with the cat’s toy mouse).


T: T tired of picking up toys.


T: Mouse (toy) drink all water. You freakin’ mouse!
T: Mouse all drink water, again. You freakin’ mouse!
(Ouch! I own this language problem).


T: Almost there, Simon. Reach.
(Simon was reaching for a toy under the kitchen table).


T: Excuse me, Dadda.


T: Taylor want water.
Dad: Please?
T: Taylor want water, please.


T: Simon standing on chair– eating green crayon in mouth.
(Always ready to let Dad know what her brother is doing wrong).


T: T wearing Mommies running shoes.
T: Watch out Simon. Taylor coming soon.


T: T walk Simon? Simon wear monkey backpack?
(We own a backpack, shaped like a monkey that has a leash-like tail. It’s a great tool for keeping track of Simon).


T: You have some gum? Make some bubbles.
Dad: Please?
T: Make bubbles, pleeeeeaaasssee!


T: Dadda cut self with knife?
Dad: Yes, Taylor. Dadda cut himself with a knife.
T: Hurt?
Dad: Yes it hurt, Taylor.
T: Why do that?


T: T in there!
Dad: What are you doing in there?
T: Playing Mom’s bra.
(Taylor playing in the laundry basket).


Taylor to Simon: Simon no touch that. They Taylor’s friends.
(Simon going after four of Taylor’s stuffed animals).


T: Taylor make mess under table.
Dad: Are you going to clean it up?
T: Simon clean up.
Dad: Is Simon cleaning or eating the food you dropped?
T: Cleaning. Eating.
T: Simon no eat!


T: Hold tight puppies. We’re (at the) park! Go on big swings; ride.
(Taylor talking to her “big puppy” and her “walking puppy” as we park the van).

Mom: Goodnight, Taylor. I love you.
T: Goodnight, Mommy. I love you, too.
Mom: Sweet dreams.
T: Swinging trees.

Far From an Exhaustive List…

24 Simple Truths.

1. Fifteen minutes of reading on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday is better than one hour’s worth on Friday.

2. Positive discipline is a learning opportunity; punishment, on the other hand, is merely retribution.

3. Words can and do hurt more than bump and bruises.

4. Spanking is never an option.

5. The worrying never stops.

6. Learning takes time, patience.

7. Laughter heals all.

8. Everyone forgets what it is like to have small children.

9. Those without children have no idea what it means to have children.

10. It, and everything that “it” pertains to, seemingly never stops.

11. We love our kids. And we’ll do anything to help them become the adults they deserve to be.

12. There’s no turning back the clock; you will reap what you sow.

13. Before you know it, they’re already doing that!

14. Consistency is more important than exuberance; routines make the world work.

15. Learned behavior is not innate.

16. Not all boo boo’s can be avoided, but many avoidable accidents can.

17. If parenting were easy, the world would be a much different place.

18. If you don’t show them and then ask them to do it, they won’t– and that’s your fault.

19. Yelling accomplishes nothing– even if makes you feel better in the short run.

20. Potty training sucks!

21. If you’re downstairs changing the laundry from the washer into the dryer and you hear a loud bump, followed by silence and crying, that’s never a good sign that things are well upstairs.

22. When you ask your eldest, “What did you do?” don’t forget to praise her for her honesty somewhere in-between reminding her “I don’t want you to hit your brother, again” and “time out is over. You can play now.”

23. Time is our family’s most valuable commodity.

24. Creativity is messy; the more creative one is the more of a mess they make.

Socializing and Censorship at an Early Age.

There is a difference between socializing and socialization. Socializing (verb) means “to mix socially with others.” While the noun socialization means “to make someone behave in a way that is acceptable to their society.” In other words, besides being mistakenly and incorrectly transposed by many to conveniently refer to the later of the two definitions, the one has little to do with the other.

I’ve been socializing the kids more and more often these last few months: going to the park later in the morning when organized playgroups and daycare center providers bring their kids to run, roam, and beat each other up; going to the beach later in the day and on the weekends, and making frequent visits to the “fish store,” a.k.a. PetSmart, after 3 pm or on the weekends to expose the kids to youths, usually a couple of years older, to help them become more comfortable around large and noisy groups of people. I would rather not do this. By preference, I would rather get my kids to the park early in the morning, between 8:30 and 9 a.m., before the droves of brats push and pull their way onto the same ride my kids had been riding before hell’s doors opened to horde of size 3s so that we can do other things together throughout the remainder of our mornings; and, I would rather not be sandwiched between four fourteen-member families speaking Spanish and chain-smoking Parliament’s at the beach, but we do it. It’s important to us that our children are at ease in a number of environments and conditions– even at the greatest inconveniences to us.

What we do NOT do is pretend our kids are being socialized or obtaining some sort of socialization among the throngs of human bodies on a crowded playground, in store aisles, or packed in like sardines along the waterfront. No. Providing my children with the skills and habits necessary for acting and participating within our diverse society is my job. It takes work. It takes time. It takes patience. And if left for society to handle, like so many of the other children we run into, daily, I’m afraid our beautiful children would slowly turn into the incorrigible imps we vainly try to avoid every other day at those same “exposure” spots.

What amazes me, and upsets me to the highest degree, are the number of parents whom allow their latchkey kids to ramble throughout the playground and beach we frequently visit without a care or concern for their child’s welfare or the safety of other children around their kids. Today, for example, Taylor and Simon were playing on one end of a long wooden park Jungle Jim type construction. On the other end were several older children, all around six years old, playing, climbing, and jumping rather roughly on and around each other. Sooner or later the gaggle inched their way closer to where my kids were playing. Now, Taylor and Simon are finally at the point where they are interested in playing near, side-by-side, and even interacting a little bit with other children. For their ages, this is normal behavior. I’ve encouraged this. It’s good for them. For the most part, I kept quiet and allowed the kids to intermingle as I stood off on the sidelines and finished my third cup of coffee. However, far more than a dozen times, I had to gently speak to these kids and remind them to be careful around the younger children and to even leave our toys and food– packed off to the side of the playground and away from the rides– alone. Sadly, the mothers to these little fairies were less than 25 feet away, about the same distance I was, and they said nothing. Nothing! Not one cautionary word, direction, or interaction. Talk about teachable moments slipping through one’s fingers. Since when was it okay to eat someone else’s food without asking? Ironically, more than once was I on the receiving end of a perturbed look of indignation by one of the two women– the one, of course, paying more attention to her incoming text messages than her three darling delinquent’s behaviors. The second woman, while at least playing with her youngest, an infant, had no control over her elder three and five-year-old as they commingled with the roughest of boys. Silence is condoning.

I’m begrudgingly at the point of joining a playgroup so that fewer of these days occur. It gets real tiring being the playground “police officer” and surrogate father figure to the worst of someone else’s neglected offspring. My reluctance is weakened knowing the primary reasons for not wanting to join or start a playgroup is because I do not want to give up my freedom to choose when or if we go to the park or some other outing event. Once I commit to something, I commit. But hey, when was the last time I did something purely for myself, anyways?

The Big Question, Which is Not Going to be Answered Today.

I am a stay-at-home father of two toddlers. I chose to walk away from public school teaching for, at the time, our first child’s welfare; daycare just didn’t work out! I do plan to return to teaching, however, I cannot help but question the unfairness and inconsistencies of public education, all of the problems associated with public schools, and how those problems will eventually affect my children’s education. I’ve seen too many beautiful children from good homes ruined by the beatings of the school drum as every child, ready or not, is shuffled from one lesson to another, one subject to another, and one grade to another. And down the road, little attention, it seems, is paid to making sure skills are taught or learned. The focus is on getting the kids through school rather than on ensuring they’ve actually learned something and can prove they’ve learned it. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen or heard stories of kids being pushed, willingly or not, through the backdoor of a high school with a cheap paper diploma and a handful of prayers from his or her teachers and administrators who know those students are gigantic milestones behind their peers. Or, more importantly, I’ve seen too many smart, articulate, and naturally curious kids placed alongside lower-performing students and suffer interminably for it. Kids are brutal to one another. There, it seems, is nothing worse than for an impressionable child to be placed in a classroom littered with behavioral problems. Learning cannot happen when the teacher, expert in his or her subject area or not, is too busy making sure Johnny isn’t inappropriately touching Jill, beating the snot out of Billy, or starting fires under his desk with your child’s homework with Daddy’s Budweiser lighter. Why should the good kids suffer from the antics of feral children?

I, maybe arrogantly so, believe that I could teach just as well or better than an elementary or middle school teacher could with a classroom of unruly children. That’s not to say that there are not excellent school systems out there, there are. I worked in one. I doubt, however, that we’ll be able to afford to live in one of those communities where the housing market is 140% higher than in the surrounding communities. Education does have a price; and the better the education offered the higher the price. Having worked in two lower-income level, rural school districts, I’ve seen what kind of kids they produce. It’s not pretty. When tenth graders have never heard of the Holocaust and upper-level eleventh graders would rather sit through summer school than turn in their homework, that’s not good for anyone.

I do believe in public education. I also know that my wife and I will give our kids the tools they need to weather the storms of an undisciplined in class, or years of undisciplined classes. I wonder, though, if, knowing what I know about public education, if choosing not to homeschool our kids will be a decision we would live to regret?

Manual Labor.

Hesiod, the other famous eighth century Greek orating philosopher most students rarely read about because of all the fuss with Odysseus, Achilles, and that other guy who liked to fight, Hector, the author of Works and Days and Theogony, suggested that idleness, not work or manual labor is shameful; and, more definitively, he believed that the idler is a parasite. Four hundred years later, Plato, that wide-shouldered wrestler and ancient Greek contemporary of Hesiod, in The Republic, compared an idle person to a honeybee drone: “And God has made the flying drones … all without stings, whereas of the walking drones he has made some without stings but others have dreadful stings; of the stingless class are those who in their old age end as paupers; of the stingers come all the criminal class, as they are termed.” Contrary to earlier beliefs about the Greeks, they did, generally speaking, respected certain members of society whom practiced “mean employment and manual arts” when, and only when, those professions were willfully chosen and not thrust upon them (i.e. slaves, paupers, or criminals). Over the last couple of days I’ve had some interesting conversations with two manual laborers whom were hired to complete work around the property we live on. One of the workers I’ve come to ideologically admire. The other became the impetus for this blog entry.

The first gentleman is the elder of two loggers hired to cut down a one hundred plus year-old Maple tree, rotting and partially leaning over our home. In his late fifties, he’s been a logger off and on for the last 40 years. He has tried his hand at other employments over the years, but those jobs rarely satiated his tastes for the hands-on, rugged, and intensely gratifying manual craft needed to successfully cut down trees of all sizes, shapes, and leaning in precarious positions. Basically, he loves doing what others fear to do. About five years ago he learned how to “boon” cut treetops dangling near or over 50,000 volts power lines. Standing in a boon, a cherry-picker type of device, like the ones phone companies use to hoist workers up to fix phone lines, he learned how to trim trees utilizing a long pole with a string and a hook in one hand and a light, extremely powerful chainsaw in his other hand. After the first few days on his new post, he told his boss that the work was taking too long and costing his boss’s company too much money and, if the boss wanted him to, he would return to his old job of cutting trees down at ground level. The boss thanked him for his honesty and told him that it’ll take at least 1,000 trees of practice before the elder was going to feel comfortable cutting in a boon. Thousands of trees later, the elder mastered the job. He is now learning how to be a tree-climbing cutter– the act of climbing up a tree and cutting it from the top down. He expects it will take him 10,000 trees to master this new skill and he cannot wait to begin training from guys even older than he is.

His partner, on the other hand, also a nice person and pleasant to speak with, does not have the elder’s enthusiasm for logging. He, through a short lifetime of choices and circumstances, much of which I admit I am not privy to, works as a manual laborer in the tree cutting business because he does not possess other marketable skills or intelligences in other fields of expertise. He is not allowed to cut trees from boons nor is he allowed to work alone or even choose which trees to cut. In other words, he does a lot of hauling, lifting, and dragging. He has not tried his hands in other businesses or professions, like his partner, nor does he intend to– accumulated debt and a nasty divorce has put him so far in the financial hole that he is trapped working in one of the few jobs in the area that still pays well and does not require a liberal education and specialized training to obtain. The primary difference between the two men, though, is that the elder wants to be a logger. He wants to improve himself, not for more money, but because he has pride in his craft. The younger logger, however, logs because he has to. He’s trapped.

So where am I going with this? My kids, of course.

I, like most parents, want the best for my children. I love performing manual labor about as much as the next guy: cutting the grass, stacking wood or changing the oil in my car, but I wouldn’t want to do it to pay the bills; or find myself in a position where I was repetitively lifting heavy loads with a bad back or fused spine in order to put dinner on the table. I have options. I can choose to dig ditches or choose to teach in a classroom. I can choose to drive truck or I can choose to drive a patrol car. I want my kids to have the same option, the same power to choose how they make their livelihoods. I want them to be happy in their work, sure; and take pride in physical labor, not becoming stingless drones through lack of want, dire, or pride, but also to have the option to choose to whittle their bodies to the bone lifting heavy loads or choose to sit behind a desk, stand in front of a classroom, or work in an office building.

Choices.

Today's Goal.

Some days, the goal, the only goal I have, is to make it through the morning hours until Simon’s naptime. I really don’t care how I make it to 1 p.m., what the kids and I do to get there, or how much effort, wear and tear, or scraping by it takes. Some days, like today, we all just need to calm down and get some more sleep before emotions flare and grumpiness takes hold and ruins a perfectly good day together.

Today started out as innocuous as any other day: Simon woke up, Taylor woke up, and we all sat and played splendidly on the living room floor. An hour later, after reading Dr. Seuss’s Go, Dog. Go! for the fifth time, shuffling through countless flashcards, and building numerous “puppy houses” out of large building blocks, the kids’ mood changed. They wanted out, “run and play,” as Taylor would say; and they wanted it in a bad way. It’s not that I was keeping them inside or forcing them to listen to me read book after book after book, it just happened that way, but the invisible switch had been turned and the combined weight of two 30 lbs. toddlers raged for green grass, hills, and sunshine.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Really! My darling children, so peacefully and adorably sitting by my side for over an hour, laughing, playing, and behaving like all children should transformed, within microseconds, into little monsters: pushing, pulling, taking each others toys, and, to my dismay and utter disgust, biting each others fingers and toes. What the hell happened!

I decided we’d better go to the park, fast. At least there they can run and play, swing, jump around, and dig in the sandbox with plenty of open space around and between themselves. What I forget, willfully or otherwise, was that it rained, torrentially, the night before. The park was a swamp. A buggy, stinky swamp.

I spent the first fifteen minutes at the park chasing them out and away from mush and mud, to no avail. Finally, more tired and frustrated than enlightened, I gave in and let them play. And play they did! They loved it! Within the shortest time imaginable they were covered from head to toe with the stickiest mulch muck mud one has ever smelt or tried to wipe off. Bad. Real bad. Just nasty.

To make matters worse, rather than the expected opposite, both kids fell asleep on the ride home from the park. Before putting them down for a nap I first had to carry them in from the car, wake them up, give them a bath, while they were, of course, screaming to be fed lunch, before laying them down for their afternoon nap.

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!

Thankfully they slept. There really isn’t anything more comforting and soothing to an at-home parent than a quiet house. Thank God for little engines running out of steam!

Chinese Bamboo Tree.

We could all learn a little from the story of the Chinese bamboo tree. After being planted, the tree seemingly does little growing for almost a full five years. For four years, if one were to scan the ground where the tree’s seed was planted, he or she would see nothing out of the ordinary. It would appear as if the seed had died and rotted in the very ground it was supposed to be growing in! But what one does not see, unless he or she was to dig and investigate, is that the seed, when it is well watered and fertilized, is silently growing. It’s growing down and out, establishing a strong and extensive root system in preparation for the fifth year. Sometime during the fifth year, the Chinese bamboo tree sprouts and grows nearly ninety feet in six weeks. Six weeks!

My kids are my bamboo trees. There are days that I reach and exceed my maximum patience levels, can barely foster the strength to take them outside one more time before bed, or explain, once again, for the twentieth time that morning, why one needs to share with his or her sibling and that grabbing a toy from another’s hand is not okay. These days, these times, I know, are the most important times of my children’s lives and, usually a few hours after my stress level drops back to normal, I thank God for graciously allowing me, not some stranger down the street with a childcare business, the benefit of being there for my kids; and granting me the good sense to recognize teachable moments instead of what they appear to be, disrespectful and selfish misbehavior. The daily toils– and believe me, sometimes they are slogging labors of love– do pay off in the long run. Simon, for instance, has had the most difficult time these last few weeks keeping his sticky fingers out and off everything in sight. For the life of me, I can’t seem to stop him from pushing every button he comes across or searches for– even after moving, covering, and baby-proofing all I can. Everyday I am resetting the air conditioner, turning the coffee machine back on, or waiting for the television cable box to restart because they have been shut off and need a few seconds or a minute to reset. Yet, when removed from these distractions and given blocks to build, rings to stack, Play Doh to push and squeeze and shape, or Busy Popin’ Pals to twist and turn, he goes bananas! He wants to learn. He wants to play. He wants to be big and have more control over his fine motor skills like his sister does. He is not misbehaving; he’s bored and he wants to play.

The day will come, soon enough, that my little bamboo trees will sprout. We’ll see then, first hand, not a glimpse, not a sneak peak, but a full panoramic view of the fruits of our labors. And what a proud day that will be for Adrianne and me.

Not Yet. Part II.

Last week I wrote that I would rather spend my time reading to my children than showing and praising them for pushing the correct buttons on my laptop as they play games, even word, color or counting games from reputable websites such as Sesame Street and BigFishGames. What I failed to mention is that the optimal time for very young children to sit and play video games is the same “best” time for them to be read to. It is the time they are most affectionate, willing to be held, and ready to learn. Why squander it?

Too often I have heard that online games help develop one’s social skills by allowing him or her to “communicate” with others because they can “chat” with several players at once. Those players, whom may be sitting next-door or halfway around the world, can, if they want to, “chat” back, too. It’s communication, right? I doubt it. That’s synonymous to saying it’s better for people to twitter than talk! The only real way to learn to have meaningful conversations is to converse, frequently, within a diverse community of garrulous souls. Talking. It’s a basic skill; and once learned, kids will have it forever.

Now I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself. A paragraph ago I was talking about very young children, my eldest age, that is. And in the space of one short paragraph, this one, once it’s finished, I’ll interchange my ideas about very young children with pre-teens and then with young adults. I am aware of this and have done so deliberately. See, the longer I am at-home the clearer it is to me that what I do right now, regularly, deliberately or not will have an everlasting effect on my children. I’m not alone on this thinking. Plenty of research has shown that kids are like sponges: they take in their environments, for better or worse, and memorize, mimic and continually learn new things everyday. It’s no wonder that most toddlers learn to operate the television and DVD remotes, telephone, and other sophisticated devices around the house before their third birthday. And I’ve said this before: parents have children; it’s not the other way around. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can by them and recognize that what we expose or allow our children to be exposed to will help shape their personalities.

I came across an interesting website the other afternoon: www.mediafamily.org. In a nutshell, the creator of the site, Dr. David Walsh, goes into detail about how 60-90 percent of the most popular video games are violent; how television and gaming violence has a stronger effect on young children than previously thought; and how any and all screen time, from the largest wide-screen television to the smallest hand-held video game, for young children will manipulate the wiring in his or her brain. It’s scary stuff.

We live in an information age. Technology is an integral part of life and every professional job, well … just about every profession job. That doesn’t mean, however, that just because one is able to comfortably sit in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day playing video games that he or she have a distinct advantage over non-game players. Simply sitting on one’s haunches is not a highly regarded skill in the workplace.

Kids really don’t know much about computers, anyways. Sure, they do know how to “do” certain things: find free music, download video to You Tube, and sign on and play games, but do they really know how to utilize that powerful CPU hidden under the up / down / spacebar keys used to move his or her character into or out of trouble? It’s like walking along the beach. One is close to the water, one can smell the water, and one may even touch the water from time to time, but besides helping one work on his or her tan, none of it will help him or her learn how to swim any better. Unless a child plans to become a professional video game tester or “fly” drone airplanes for the US Navy over some Middle East country in the near future, adroitly jockeying a joystick and pushing a series of button, no matter how far apart they are located on the keyboard, is not a very marketable skill.

I’m not sure when I am going to introduce my kids to our computer or computer games. I imagine they’ll get accustomed to using the computer by making digital photo albums or holiday cards at some point in time. And, they’ll probably start becoming hooked to video games around the same time they attend public school, but not today. For now, I’m going to shelter them from the evils of gaming and random online google searches until I’ve been able to put a little more thought into the subject.

From my lofty tower in the sky, six years from reality, where I do not have to make these contentious decisions right now and I can spew out my opinions without debate from either child, I say, “No. Not yet! Thank you very much.”

Not Yet. Part I

I had two interesting conversations with family members over the last few days. I’ll call the conversations interesting and politely refrain from calling them disturbing because I, like many new parents, have yet to struggle with how much and how often my kids are exposed to video games. I fear these days are coming sooner than I want them to and abhor the thought that I’ll probably give in to my son or daughter’s wishes to own and master the same shoot ‘em up / stab ‘em in the back type of video games I detest once they are mainstreamed into the local school system. But for now, I’m thankful that I can take the less trodden high road and in a loud whisper strike out against all forms of interactive video learning and games designed with luring children and young adults into the world of video gaming.

The first conversation I had centered on introducing my daughter to video learning games from websites like Sesame Street and BigFishGames. The second conversation also had to do with computers, but the emphasis of our talk focused on how proud the family member was at how long his / her child could sit and stare at a computer screen for hours upon hours playing a variety of games; and how he / she could “look up” all kinds of information on the Internet.

I’ve been fortunate to have my first child, a girl, take to being read to. Taylor loves books. One of her first words was “book.” From books, I feel, her vocabulary, among other things, has continually flourished from an early age. Simon, on the other hand, much to my distress at the time, would not sit still and be read to until he was about thirteen months old. Ironically, his useful vocabulary, when compared to his sister’s, lagged far behind hers at the same age. It was not until he accepted being read to that he started to speak; and now it seems like he is picking up a new word everyday. I would gander to say that he has learned more new words in the last two weeks than he’s know in the last fourteen months. It’s an amazing phenomenon to watch unfold!

With this first-hand, early and later book-loving empirical research staring me in the face I do not think it’s outlandish for me to deduce that the more that kids are exposed to reading the better their vocabulary will be. The better one’s vocabulary, as we all know, the easier it is for him or her to communicate. The easier it is for one to communicate the better one’s social skills will probably be. The better one’s social skills are the more desirable other people will find them, and on and on and on. Bottom line, I think it’s better that I spend my time reading to my children rather than showing them how to push buttons on my laptop and then praising them when they push those buttons, so that a computerized voice can tell them they, in fact, did push the correct button.

To be continued….

Stumbling.

I’ve been struggling to remind myself that just because one child has done something for the first time that it still is a big deal when the second child reaches the same milestone fifteen months later. I can distinctly remember taking thousands of digital pictures, from every possible angle, of Taylor walking, running, stacking blocks, and even looking at towering cumulous clouds in our backyard. We have digital video of her doing, or attempting to do just about everything one can imagine¬¬¬– from her first squeaky coo to her furrowed reactions of meeting her brother for the first time– we’ve got it all stored on our .mac’s hard drive. With Simon, however, too often I take his physical and cognitive achievements for granted. I have to constantly remind myself that, if I am doing my job correctly, he is learning or being exposed to something new all the time. For example, just the other day I was putting him to bed when he began alligator rolling out of my arms. Instinctively I plopped him in his crib to keep him from being flung to the ground. This infuriated him! He leapt at the sides of the crib like a little madman, screaming like a tyrant. I had no idea what he wanted or what he was doing. The following afternoon, when I brought him to bed for his nap, he did the same thing. This time, however, he wriggled so much I was forced to lay him down to the floor. As he was rolling and sliding down my leg, a split second before I was about to drop him, he scrambled on all fours to his sound machine, deftly turned on the volume, and sat back on his hunches, and, with a sense of pride gleaming in his eyes, his face lit was a smile. I can’t tell you the number of times I almost dropped Simon because of all his squirming before being put to bed. I can’t tell you the number of times he must have tried to show me his new self-taught skill of turning on his noise maker. And I can’t tell you how many other things he can do or wants to do that I’ve missed because I’ve already seen his sister do it before and have not taken the time to watch him show me what he intends to do.

This must stop.

It’s not that I willfully ignore my son. No one can. He’s beautiful. Perfect. He’s a gift from God. But I know, I just know, I’ve disappointed and frustrated him more than once because I’ve failed to heed the tell-tail signs that he wants to show me something he has learned to do.

In an attempt to right my missteps, I’ve decided to cease watching television after Adrianne takes Taylor to bed. Simon’s bedtime is about an hour later than Taylor’s and has been, traditionally, the only time I am able to sneak in my TV fix and find out what’s going on in the world outside of the walls of our home. Now, instead, I devote the hour singularly to Simon. We read, we play; we do anything and everything he wants to do. The bonding has been priceless. Like being a stay-at-home father, I will never regret the little I miss doing what is right for our children. The hell with the world!– for right now. I have my little slice of heaven right here in my own house that needs a little bit more attention.

A Disconcerting Afternoon.

As far back as I can remember, Taylor has always been a little autonomous: choosing her own toys, choosing her own day and nightwear, putting on her own shoes, brushing her teeth, and regulating her sleep schedule to match Adrianne’s work schedule, but recently she has been acting a lot more independently. I’ve enjoyed watching her slowly take control of herself and her environment, little by little, milestone by milestone, word for word. There is an indescribable pride, like catching a pass and running 50 yards to score six points at one’s homecoming football game or creating a work of art with one’s own hands and having it recognized by fellow artisans, watching your children grow and steadily develop their unique personalities through both trial and error and those experiences which you’ve help create, like trips to the beach. Today, however, of all those days and of all those minor acts of independence and all those positive and negative experiences she has had in the last twenty-eight months, Taylor’s extreme self-reliance has confounded, bewildered, and even scared me.

Looking back, her daylong pedantic independence began last night. During her bath time she refused to let me wash her. She wanted to pour the bathwater over her own arms using the “green cup;” she wanted to put her own soap on “ba, ba, pants” (her name for sponges); and she wanted to wash the soap off all by herself. So this morning, at 6 a.m. to be exact, much too early to “go downstairs” as she requested, it didn’t surprise me when she refused my hand and climb into bed to catch a few more z’s before Simon awoke. What did surprise me is waking up 45 minutes later to finding her sleeping on the floor with one leg draped over the top of the clothes basket at the foot of our bed while dozing full-length on one of Adrianne’s pillows she had pulled to the floor. Little did I know that this behavior, the distancing and utterly complete independence from Dad, was only the beginning … the proverbial tip of the iceberg for the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon.

On an average day one kid wakes about 30 to 60 minutes before the other. Lately, Taylor wakes before Simon. Our routine together, before heading downstairs, has been to pick out her day clothes, go downstairs, get changed, eat, and read together until Simon wakes. We then both go upstairs and get Simon changed and dressed for the day. I carry Simon down the stairs and I usually help Taylor walk down the stairs by holding onto her hand. Today, however, Taylor emphatically told me, “T no hold Dadda hand.” Strange, I thought, coupled with this morning’s nap on the bedroom floor, but it was nothing too crazy or too out of the ordinary, yet.

I was a little perplexed and concerned, although, when, two hours later, she didn’t tell me she had pooped. Adrianne and I have been working towards potty training her for some time now. We know Taylor is getting close to starting potty training because she usually tells us right after she makes a mess in her diaper. So I was dumbfounded to find poop smeared all over her bottom, meaning she had walked around and sat in feces for a while without whispering a word to me. I was even more troubled when she began screaming that her legs hurt when I was changing her, “Dadda hands hurt T legs.” I know that she has been going through a growth spurt these last two weeks, she’s eating everything in sight, she’s grown out of her 2T and 3T clothing, and her legs, my God!, have gotten so long. But I cannot remember the last time she felt pain anywhere on her body to the touch.

At the playground down the street she continued to voice her self-reliance and new-found confidence in herself: “T no hold Dadda hand,” over the rough terrain separating the sandbox from the swing set; “T no hold Dadda hand [down the] slide;” and “T no hold Dadda hand [on the] doggy [ride].” Monotonous? Yes. Fascinating? Yes. A cause for concern? No. But the pattern of shunning Dad’s help before it was even offered did start to get a little annoying.

As one may guess, Taylor’s independence lasted the remainder of the morning. She wanted to take out and use the bubble machine, alone, hold the soap bubble bottle by herself, and walk around the yard instead of riding in her push car. No problem, I thought. She’s just expressing herself.

By noon both kids were exhausted. Spending over an hour at the park and another hour outside in the yard had tuckered them out to the point of shear burnout. Simon could barely walk without tripping; his face was placid; and his eyes had “a deer in the headlights look” to them. It was, unquestionably, naptime for Simon. Our normal routine (Taylor’s and mine) for putting him to bed is for Taylor to come upstairs with us, turn on his wave sound machines, turn on his Fisher Price monitor, and gather two pillows of her choice from Mom and Dad’s bed to bring downstairs while I feed Simon. I’ve given up trying to put her to bed upstairs. Sadly, I’ve succumbed to allowing her to sleep downstairs on the living room floor. I know that someday I will pay for this allowance, but for now the concession works, Taylor naps. This afternoon, however, she barely had the energy to drag the pillows down the hallway from Mom and Dad’s room into Simon’s. And instead of throwing them down the stairs like she normally does, she passed out two steps into Simon’s room.

Simon, as anticipated, fell asleep. That’s when it happened.

While leaning over to pick Taylor up and carry her downstairs, I must have scared her from her slumber. Like a fullback barreling through the offensive line’s three hole, she sprang to her feet, forced herself between Simon’s crib and his ash dresser, and crashed her right arm and shoulder into a wrought iron dresser handle. The pain was immediate and intense. Simon’s reactions to Taylor’s screams were just as alarming, he wailed louder than any child should– frightened, shocked, and bewildered as to why his big sister was bawling beside his bedside.

I made a split second decision to take Taylor downstairs, calm her down as quickly as I could, and return to Simon’s room to comfort him before laying him back down for his overdue afternoon nap. Looking back, I truly was in a pickle. No matter which course I took– calming Taylor first or attempting to calm Simon first¬ or trying to calm Taylor in Simon’s room or attempt to calm Simon with Taylor screaming next to her– nothing would have worked better than what I did, I’m sure of it, I think. The unexpected consequences of bringing Taylor downstairs and leaving her there to tend to Simon, however, stabbed me through the heart.

I think Taylor felt abandoned. All day long she wanted her independence from me, but I was always by her side when she demanded it from me. This time, however, I think that in her time of need, justly or not, she still wanted her independence from me, so long as I held her in my arms while she cried her fears away. She just could not recognize that she was physically all right and Simon, because of being woken up so abruptly, wasn’t. He needed immediate comforting.

Thankfully, Simon calmed down after I picked him up and held him for a couple of minutes. Taylor, despite my hastily return downstairs, vigorously evaded me with fervor. At every advance Taylor repeated, “Dadda no touch T.” I was crushed.

For the next two hours Taylor shunned my very presence. If I walked into the room, she walked out. If I walked near her, she hid in a corner. My baby wanted nothing to do with me. In her eyes, compounded by exhaustion, muscle fatigue, and a sore shoulder, I had failed to be there when she needed me most. I felt sick to my soul.

Talking to her was useless. Comforting her was impossible. I gave her space, lots of it.

I worked in the office; I worked in the kitchen; I even re-did the dishes. In time, I caught a couple of glimpses of Taylor looking around the corner for me. Eventually, she asked to go outside and allowed me to push her around the yard in her Step 2 car and hand her a couple of freshly bloomed flowers by the stream. We didn’t say a word to one another, but I felt the tension was slowly breaking down, to my relief.

An hour later Adrianne returned from work. It was like a magical button had been pushed: all the animosity and all the avoiding disappeared– everything was back to normal. Taylor was laughing, playing, and she even jumped on Daddy’s lap as she played with her mother and me. By bedtime, Taylor was sitting on my left thigh and Simon sat on my right as we read book after book after book together. I guess Mommies do make everything better.

It has been several days since this incident happened and my stomach still turns in knots over it. I thought I did everything right. I thought I made the best decision. I thought … I thought … I thought. Sometimes there is no right decision. Sometimes no matter which decision one makes he or she will be wrong. I think in this case, however, my strong relationship with Taylor will smooth over this little bump in the road of our lives and all will soon be forgotten, except by me.

We'll Never Know.

Taylor’s vocabulary has expanded; she is speaking in complete sentences. Her average sentence length is roughly four to six words, and every once in a while seven words. According to the What to Expect: The Toddler Years, she is well ahead of the cognitive development curve. As a matter of fact, the book states that by three years old she should have a vocabulary of 31 words and speak in two to three word sentences, utilizing between one to three adjectives out of her language toolbox to describe people, places, things or ideas, and using prepositions and prepositional phrases such as “on the boat” and “in the air” and “out the door,” frequently. Proudly, I must announce to family and friends that she reached and surpassed those benchmarks months ago. We are finally at the point where we can ask Taylor what is wrong and she’ll answer us. If she needs something, anything, she can articulate it to us. And she is able to respond to simple questions such as, “What is Simon doing?” or “What would you like to wear this morning?” Simon, on the other hand, is still only fifteen months old. His needs and desires are heard by us, generally speaking, not spoken to us, in the form of a cry, grunt, or with clenched fists shortly followed by a groan, but he’s working on it.

This lack of dialogue, even in its simplest form, can be frustrating at times. For example, yesterday morning Simon woke up at 5 a.m. crying at the top of his lungs. My initial guess for his abrupt stir was hunger pains, followed by possible gas pains and / or teething pains. When fed, he ate little, stamping out the hunger guess. He hadn’t pooped during the night nor was he uncomfortable in a seated position– so it wasn’t gas pains. And, he wasn’t grabbing at his teeth nor did he mind when I palpitated the top and bottom of his mouth searching for a new fang or swollen gums. He did, however, have a slightly stuffy nose, but not enough to slow or impede his consumption of milk. I had, and I still have, no idea what was wrong with him. We’ll never know why he woke up early or why it took him another hour to fall back asleep.

The nice thing, even though it does little good at three o’clock in the morning, is that Taylor does understand Simon’s needs and his limited vocabulary. She is the first to let us know “Simon pooped” or “Si Pa hungry” or “Sipe’s want[s] [to] walk” or “Si Pa want gold fish [snacks].” I have, halfheartedly, thought about waking Taylor up during those nights that I can’t get Simon down for bed or when he wakes in the middle of the night and refuses to lay back down and asking her, “What’s wrong with him, Taylor?” I have to admit, as foolish and off the wall as this idea may sound, after an hour of crying, alligator rolling, and personal anguish, I’m ready to try just about anything. Thankfully though, Simon’s nighttime rousing doesn’t happen much anymore. And, if he is having a hard time falling asleep at night then it’s probably because he still has energy to burn before turning in or he is in some type of internal, gastric or muscular pain.

A friend of mine recently joked that I should be writing a child development book, comparing the developmental stages of girls and boys, utilizing my prior blogs as primary documentation and as a case study. I laughed then as I laugh now at the idea of making my kid’s lives more public, but that doesn’t mean I’m not considering it. I guess time will tell what I’ll end up doing with these 600 words every week. Until then, I’ll just keep typing away, reflecting on what I think I know, and making adjustments along the way. Someday, maybe, everything I see my kids do will make sense. Until then ….

Division of Play.

Having more than one toddler playing in a small area takes a little planning, a little creativity, and sometimes a lot of hands-on refereeing. Ideally, kids should be able to play by themselves with minimal support from an adult. Ideally. Toddlers, however, still requires one to give a bit more guidance and have a bit more patience and flexibility before letting them off on their own.

Over the last two years I’ve watched Taylor progress from complete dependence during her playtimes to a much celebrated virtual independence from me. There are times, although still too often to take for granted, that she’ll play by herself for such a long period of time that I feel obligated to stop what I’m doing and silently peek around the corner to check on her. Simon, on the other hand, is still very much dependent on direct adult interaction, regardless of how much his sister strives to have a twenty-five pound playmate; he needs to be watched. Too many times have I caught him standing on one of his play chairs, gnawing on a choking hazard, or poking around and into things where his chub fingers don’t belong. Simon is, however, more independent, if memory serves me correctly, at thirteen months than Taylor ever was at his age. I guess that is the difference between a girl and a boy and the difference between one’s first and one’s second child. Simon, by default, has learned to wait for attention while Mom or Dad takes care of his sister’s needs, complete house chores, cook, etc., whereas Taylor rarely encountered such delays at an early age and has only recently, with the birth of her brother, had to master the art of self-restraint. Thank God!

Through trial and error I’ve learned that if the kids are safe and are playing without assistance, guidance, or direct supervision that one should leave them alone. Little distracts the creativity of a toddler more than some big person sticking their nose or “helping” where it doesn’t belong or is not needed. At the same token, absolute freedom can quickly morph into absolute disaster if one is not careful. For example, the other night, about an hour before bedtime, the kids were running from room to room squealing with joy as one played the mouse and the other the cat. It’s a new game they have begun playing, fraught with anxiety¬– on my part– as they dash and stumble under and around toys, furniture, daddy and the cat, alike. On this particular night the chasing game last nearly as long as Jeopardy!– the only TV show I force the kids to tolerate Dad’s partial attention whether they want to or not. Moments before Final Jeopardy! the pitter-patter of Simon’s size 5s and Taylor’s size 6s abruptly halted in the far corner of the office, about the furthest away from my chair as they could get, and I heard Taylor’s emphatic three word command, “Simon no bite!,” followed by a piercing scream and the ear-piecing bawl of two crying tykes. Payback is a you-no-what!

Over the winter and spring, I’ve come up with a quick list of “must do’s” to keep my kids for bludgeoning one another with naked baby dolls and Lego’s during those long rainy days when we are stuck inside. While this list is far from extensive, thus far, it has worked for me.

1. If they are playing safely, leave them alone.
2. Don’t expect them to share. Have two toys ready before handing the first one out.
3. Play positioning is important. I’ve found that sitting them back-to-back instead of side-by-side or front-to-front helps limit toy jealousy, wandering hands, and flailing feet.
4. Offer limited choices. Filling a room full of toys causes more headaches than one can imagine. Besides tripping over them, having too many toys out confuses and frustrates the kids.
5. Along with number four, limit the number of parts of various toys helps to focus play. Does a toddler really need 235 Lego’s or 22 plastic animals out at one time?
6. Watch for signs of boredom or frustration and be prepared to step in and make the toy fun again or switch it out.
7. Along with number seven, before switching out a toy I find asking if they are done with the toy helps them transition to a new toy, especially if their sibling takes an interest in the old toy before it’s out of sight.
8. Switching or remove toys from the play area quickly. Do it fast and don’t hesitate! Renewed interest in an old toy rarely lasts but a few seconds before the being kicked to the side or hurled into the opposing corner of the room.
9. Sometimes putting toys away loudly or, say, driving the Tonka dump truck to its bin will illicit interest or curiosity. (I like to use this little trick just before taking down a new toy for the kids to play with. It allows me a few seconds to leave the room and introduce the new toy without a lull in the action.)
10. And finally, when the kids have had enough playing, stop. There does come a time when playtime is over. I suggest having a light snack or meal ready to cushion the space of time between toy playtime and another activity.

Good luck.

Rain Day.

I believe there are three levels of cleaning one’s house. These levels are familiar to all, although I’ve been in enough households to know that some people rarely make it passed beyond the first or second level. Just the same, a level one cleaning consists of moving items around and out of the way, picking up items off the floor– usually to place in larger piles to be dealt with at a later date, doing the dishes, and putting away whatever has been used throughout the day, somewhere. This is the type of cleaning one does immediately after receiving a phone call from family or friends telling them they’ll be over in 30 minutes for a visit; or late at night just after the kids have gone to bed so that one’s wife (mine in this case) will not pull her hair out in frustration over the mess one’s left for her to contend with before she takes off to work at 6 a.m. the following morning. In our house, a level one cleaning means putting the kid’s toys in the living room’s multicolored bins and baskets, wiping down the kitchen table and countertops, emptying and refilling the diaper supply basket, and stacking everything else in neat little piles on that same table and those same countertops to be taken care of later on. A level two cleaning involves a little more time, effort, and kid juggling. It includes moving furniture and large toys while vacuuming and dusting, washing and folding and putting away laundry, and a general sorting of toys, papers, projects, etc. into their proper places or at alternative sites. A level three cleaning, commonly known as spring-cleaning, takes the most time, most effort, and most patience. Over the last two days we’ve completed a selective spring-cleaning of the kid’s toys, and what an accomplishment it has been!

My wife and I are adventurous creatures, always have been and always will be. I fondly remember either being kicked out of the house by my mother for fighting with my older brother or taking off and trekking through the woods for long hours during the day. Later in life I continued my escapades by hiking through the woods or riding my motorcycle on the sharpest serpentine roads I could find. Adrianne also affectionately reminisces about taking her horse and galloping down old railroad tracks, up and over hills and pastures, and through countless open fields in her youth. So today, it’s not too hard to imagine why Mom and Dad like to go “bye-bye” quite often. In doing so, we often find ourselves at the doors of Wal-Mart, Target, Borders, and Barns and Noble picking up this and that for the kids. The kid’s also have generous family members and very generous grandparents. So today’s cleaning was more than a necessity.

I would like to say that this week’s cleaning was routine. It wasn’t. We have had so many rainy days these last two weeks that I’ve resorted to changing the kid’s clothing two or three times a day because of how soaked the backyard is. I’ve even had to resort to putting superglue on my toes because the skin has cracked from continual submersion in the muck and mud that separates our lawn from the creek behind the house. I’ve also used and the kids have played with just about every toy we own, causing pieces and parts of different toys to become intermingled beyond the expected accidental mixing.

Besides cleaning up a little clutter, we have been able to give away most of the out-grown toys to expecting mothers or to a local church. We’ve been able to reunite long-lost missing pieces, make once incomplete toys useful again, and organize the toys by ability level. In other words, I can now take an age appropriate toy off of one shelf and hand it to Taylor and take an ability appropriate toy off another shelf and hand it to Simon, without either one wanting the other’s toy. And since today’s forecasts, tomorrow’s forecast, and the next three days’ worth of forecasts all call for rain, the spring-cleaning could not have come at a better time.

Rough Day.

Every once in a while I’m reminded of how good our kids truly are; how blessed we are to have two happy, healthy, and naturally curious children. This revelation usually occurs the day following a rough day with the kids. Like getting over a long suffering, difficult cold, everything is made clear once the fog of frustration and neuralgia is lifted off of one’s head. Today is one of those days. Yesterday was a rough day.

The grueling day began several hours before the kids’ even woke up. Simon had been put to bed wearing his green dinosaur outfit: long pants with gripper sole booties and a long sleeve over his short sleeve cotton onesy. I should have known the outfit was too hot– it was still 70 degrees outside when I put him to bed, but I figured it would probably rain and the temperature would drop to the low 60s or even high 50s like it had the last several nights. It didn’t.

Two hours later, just as I was about to fall asleep after reading three-dozen pages of Virgil’s The Aeneid, Simon woke up on fire! His body temperature was easily up two degrees, and he felt like the clothes on his back were going to burst into flames at any moment. I thought he was only hot from being overdressed and, in response, doused him with copious amounts of baby powder to offset the thin layer of sweat separating his pale skin from his cotton clothing. While this fine blanket of sweat may have contributed to his discomfort, the real reason he was so hot was from a low-grade temperature; he was teething. Six teeth are coming in, four molars and two incisors, the poor boy. After an hour of cuddling, Simon finally fell back asleep, exhausted. I shortly followed suit, completely ignorant of the real reason he awoke in the first place.

Simon’s teething pains and how he reacts to them are much different than Taylor’s were. Taylor had suffered. Her discomfort lasted every minute of the day and night until her tooth or teeth came in. Crabbiness and irritability followed her everywhere she went until she was given temporary relief from products like Tylenol and Baby Orajel; or given cold teething toys, a wet washcloth, or frozen foods like Italian Ice and hard ice cream. We also knew the exact moment her teeth started coming in and, with much anticipation and relief, when they finally grew in. Simon’s teething pattern, however, has been a bewildering mystery to us. He behaves normally throughout the day: he runs, he laughs, and he plays without a care in the world. There is no indication of teething, whatsoever, unless one catches a glimpse of the red spot– the exposed nerve– in the middle of a new tooth breaking through his gums. But at night, for one to three hours, usually sometime between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., an entire day’s worth of aching, misery, and wretchedness descends on him like hell’s fury and relentlessly clobbers his mouth, his head, and our sanity.

In all honesty, it took nearly two full days before Adrianne figured out what was going wrong with Simon at night. I completely missed every sign and symptom of his teething while standing in the dark of the night in his bedroom holding him while he’s screaming and practically rolling out of my arms from all of his squiggling, pushing, and alligator rolls. The worst part is, neither Tylenol nor Orajel seem to mitigate his pain. It’s almost as if, overnight, his body has become immune to acetaminophen and benzocaine. On this particular night, either from sheer exhaustion or the absolute maximum dosing of medication I gave him, I was finally able to put him down to rest for another few hours before the start of another day together.

The remainder of the day was spent, I thought, since I incorrectly misdiagnosed the reasoning behind it, chasing Simon around the house and yard and keeping him from pushing, pulling, and biting Taylor. His behavior was definitively out-of-the-ordinary. He was in pain.

He also fell asleep two hours earlier than his normal naptime. This, in turn, threw off Taylor’s nap schedule because when she was heading off to bed Simon was wide-awake and letting the world know it!

Yesterday was a long day, a rough day. But as a friend of mine once said, “If everything was perfect there would be nothing to talk about.” Or in this case, write about.

The Beach.

In the not-to-distant past I used to giggle to myself, discreetly shake my head, and roll my eyes at those “Did you pack the kitchen sink, dear?” beachgoers. You know the ones: they are the ones dragging the industrial sized Igloo coolers– usually more than one, the four dented and scratched, antiquated aluminum folding chairs; a useless, brightly colored sunbrella; enough floatation devices to float a Buick, and every type of lead-based sand toy produced in China for the last decade. Oh, did I forget? They are also the ones toting 2.5 kids down to the waterfront with them.

I fondly remember going to the beach carrying very little: A small cooler containing a small assortment of snacks and drink (mostly drink), a beach towel, and some extra sunscreen. Nowadays, I’m the one dragging most of the items listed in the first paragraph, save the lawn chairs. What happened? We had two kids; that’s what happened!

Going to the beach has become as much an art as it is a science. I’ve learned that one must make sure the kids have been fed, changed, and, most importantly, have pooped, before even heading off down the road and onto the giant sandbox. There is nothing more frustrating than an uncomfortable toddler trying to wiggle out of their car seat or a cramping thirteen-month-old wailing in pain.

I try to be a minimalist when packing gear for the kids, but one can never have too much stuff. For example, while the kids will be wearing little swimmers (waterproof diapers) they still need an extra shirt and pair of shorts “just-in-case.” Food. Well, I don’t mind living on a liquid diet for an afternoon but the kids can’t. This means we need to pack a cooler for the cold food and a bag for the dry food. Oh, one mustn’t forget the utensils, wet wipes, and sippy cups filled with water and with iced tea to quench those finicky teeny taste buds, either.

Toys. Unless they’ve passed out from sheer exhaustion or sunstroke, kids don’t sit still very long. They are not going to enjoy the warmth on their faces, the sun on their backs, the sounds of crashing waves whooshing on the golden sands, or ensconce themselves watching the endless varieties of freaks and winsome people tramping along the shoreline and grass areas. No. Kids want to play. And play involves toys, lots of toys. So many toys that the kids won’t even use all of them, but will miss every single one you “forget” to bring. Trust me.

A couple of weeks ago we purchased two items that seem to catch everyone’s attention when we set up camp at the beach. For us, the purchases were well worth the few extra dollars and they have easily paid themselves off in fewer than two visits to the beach. The first item is a sun tent. The best way to describe it is to think of a dome shaped tent, cut it half, and add two zipper windows on the sides. Forget umbrellas. This shelter can withstand the brightest sun, coolest breeze, and, with the windows zipped, block out that cigarette smoke from people who still choose to poison themselves with nicotine. The second item is a beach cargo carrier. Made out of lightweight plastic with a nylon net basket, this contraption is worth its weight in gold. There will be no more slinging bags like Mexican bandoleers across my body as I trudge up and down the beach to find the perfect afternoon site to set up our beach camp!

Yesteryear has definitely come and gone at the Gross household; and the last two years have ushered in a new and dramatically disparate reality. Gone are the days of three-hour bicycle rides through the countryside of Vermont; gone are the days of running six to nine miles on the water causeway; gone are the days of endless motorcycling and camping; and gone are the days of being able to sleep soundly and recover from all of it.

I like the change. I’ve come to appreciate the sacrifices and the unimaginable new joys that only other parents have experienced and can relate to. But I must candidly admit I never expected these changes to be this encompassing, this engrossing, and come on this fast. And still, at times, I find myself taking a step back in reflection and shaking my head in disbelief with where I’m at, what I’m doing, and how lucky I am to have the family I do.

The Day.

“At least you’ll never have to go through it again,” the doctor smirks from the foot of my $1,300 dollar a night hospital bed. “One can only have their appendix out once in their lifetime.”

Comforting thought, was the first response without a swear word tagged on the end of a sentence that came to mind as I silently curse to myself in pain.

“Thanks doc. Thank you for saving my life.”

The discomforting gut pain, which morphed into a five-day stay at the hospital for an emergency open appendectomy surgery, began on Sunday morning around 3 a.m. The pain in my lower abdomen, like excruciating poop cramps rolling from one side of my midsection to the other, was relentless. For the next two-and-one-half hours I struggled between getting a below average night’s sleep and desperately trying to relieve myself in the bathroom, only to my growing frustrations and to no avail.

By 6:30 a.m. I forced myself to the bathroom three or four times, vomiting about the same number of times until absolutely nothing was left in my stomach or intestines except that yellow, stinky mucus we all have grown to love to hate. I was not having fun.

Since moving to Pennsylvania our family has been sick several times. The progression of illness usually begins with Adrianne, moves to Taylor and then Simon, and finally it makes its way to me. It doesn’t help that my wife works in the hospital or that she completed her orientation working on the floors with isolation units. Just the same, we’ve each experienced several days of unaccustomed infirmity over the last few weeks in the Gross’ house. Because of this, I thought very little of my pains beyond the normal frustrations of having a viral infection on a warm summer day as my wife and sister-in-law took our kids swimming in our new 4’ x 11’ green and white blowup pool in the backyard.

I spent a good portion of the morning and early afternoon laying flat on my back, wreathing in agony before trying to fall asleep upstairs. The pain was like nothing I had ever experienced before. I thought, and Adrianne mentioned this more than once, that the pain could be originating from my appendix. But since our insurance coverage did not kick in for another five days, I could not convince myself to go to the emergency room, spending hundreds or thousands of dollars of blood tests, CT scans and the like, and have the chance of being sent home with a handful of Tums or being told that I have a stomach virus. Life is hard enough. The last thing I wanted to do is add another bill on to the piles of unpaid bills we already have.

By 11:30 p.m. I knew I was in trouble. Simon woke up around 11 p.m. for a last minute snack before sleeping the remainder of the night in his cozy green pack and play. While holding him, I broke out into a terrible, cold sweat, pain radiated from below my belly button to the right quadrant of my abdomen. “This isn’t good,” I thought to myself as I was bent over on the bathroom floor attempting to find a position to relieve the pain before struggling back into bed. I did not know what I was going to do. I decided, haphazardly, to continue to ignore the pain, crawl back into bed, and reevaluate my options with Adrianne first thing in the morning. I never had the opportunity.

By 12:30 p.m. my moaning and bellyaching woke Adrianne from her restful slumber. Still stubborn and refusing to go to the ER, Adrianne had me bring my laptop upstairs and we surfed the Internet looking for an answer to the symptoms I was having. The answer was unquestionably appendicitis.

After several unsuccessful attempts to convince me to go to the ER, Adrianne asked one final question that, for me, put everything in perspective: “If we had insurance, would you have gone to the hospital hours ago?” The rhetorical question did not need an answer. I got dressed, grabbed the car keys, and left.

Suffice it to say, forty minutes after checking into the ER my appendix burst. And a five-day stay shortly followed the two-hour emergency surgery.

Looking back, the signs and symptoms of my appendicitis were not clear-cut. The pain in my abdomen did feel like an intestinal virus or, as Adrianne suggested, a swelling of the bladder or intestine. It was not until late Sunday night that I knew for certain that something was horribly wrong with my body. To make matters even more convoluted, the first doctor I saw in the ER– after receiving three doses of intravenous pain medications– planned to send me home with painkillers; he thought I had kidney stones. It was only by the grace of God that a surgeon, who, ironically, had already performed three appendix surgeries that night, stopped by my room to look in on me. He was the only one in the ER that night to correctly diagnose my condition. One can only wonder what would have happened to me if I had gone to the ER earlier in the day or had not been visited by the surgeon walking by my room and sent home loaded with pain medications.

What Happened To May?

I’ve been busy. I’ve been in a lot of pain, but I’ve been healing.

What happened? My appendix burst on Monday, April 25th at 2:40 am. Luckily, I was in the ER when it happened. Since then … well … life has been topsy-turvy for the last month with little more going on than mending and finding ways to make it through the day without having those excruciatingly agonizing pains shooting through my midsection as I try to carry on like nothing really happened, as if I’m as invincible as ever.

It hasn’t been easy. Adrianne has, by default, been asked to perform the duties of a single parent. Not only has she been working full-time but when she finally gets home after putting in a 14 hour day she is tasked with taking care of both kids and spelling me for a little R and R– not that she has the extra time, energy, or wherewith all, mind you!

The doctor said I should be back to normal in four to six weeks. Normal? Normal for whom? The days of waking to the sound of an alarm clock, putting in an eight-hour workday at the “office,” and going to bed early to catch up on some much needed rest ended a long time ago. (Actually, I haven’t worked an eight-hour workday in well over a decade.)

So how long do I have before I’m back to normal? Good question. I’ve hazard to guess I have another four weeks before I can return to my normal routines with the kids: taking them in the double stroller for walks, hiking in the woods with one in a backpack, etc.; and with Adrianne: going for runs, exercising, and clowning around with the kids at the park, in the water or on the sands at the beach.

I tried to perform one half-dozen alternative push-ups last night, with miserable success. While I completed the short set with relative ease, the knee buckling pain streaking from my right side oblique to my rib cage– damn those internal stitches!– reminded me that if I overdo it too soon I’ll find myself having a hernia operation before the end of summer. Frankly, I’ve had my fill of hospitals for life and do not plan on returning anytime soon.

Woe is me, right? Wrong. My operation and time away from family has, oddly enough, brought us closer together than we have been in a long time. We’ve been blessed with good fortune these last several weeks; and most importantly, we’ve recognized that we’ve been blessed. (I’ll write more about this in the next couple of weeks.)

As for now, I’m mending and anxious to get into the full swing of summer. We have had the fortune of most excellent weather these last five weeks and we’ve found a couple of new places to take the kids, including a beach about 20 minutes down the road! So overall, things are well and forever looking better.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a bored child.

William Congreve, the playwright of "The Mourning Bride" (1697), would probably consider my flippant alteration to his famous proverb a bastardization of his work, but he’s long been dead and I doubt his surviving relatives have logged-on recently to read my tiresome musings. Never the less, since my singing, guitar playing, and play acting skills are less than spectacular, and I would rather not drive too far or too often with the kids to visit various sites around the state– hey, we should all do our part to protect the environment, especially since the county we live in does not recycle and the idea that littering is okay seems to be bequeathed from one generation to the next– I am constantly looking for new and interesting adventures to take the kids on. So, it’s of little surprise that I was beside myself with glee the other day when my suspicions were confirmed and I learned that we have a private walking trail that goes right through our backyard and travels at least two miles south of us along the creek. (I have yet to explore the northern portion of the trail.)

Around 18 months ago, my parents bought us our first child carrier backpack, a Chicco: A seven-pound, 40 pound maximum weight, eighty-nine dollar pack. Overall, it has served us well. My one complaint with the unit is that after two hours of hiking the pack’s straps feel like they are tearing into my shoulders and the middle of my back feels like someone has stuck an assassin’s knife between the T8 and T9 vertebras. The pack, as I would find out after our first hike, was made for someone a little shorter. Luckily, my wife appears to be a perfect fit for it and it won’t have to be replaced.

A couple of days ago we picked up a new child carrier backpack at a local store. When I called them in the morning I spoke with a monotone sales person who told me they had “many different” packs we could look at. Two hours later, we found that the store carried one pack, a KeltyKids FC 3.0– so much for their selection. Yet, little did we know that this pack is one of the best-rated packs, and most expensive, on the market.

I tried the pack on. I love it. I mean, I really loved it! From the 5-point harness to the auto-deploy kickstand, the pack was a perfect fit for me and for either kid. The difference between the Chicco and the Kelty would take too long to describe– it would be like describing the differences between a BMW motorcycle and a scooter. Needless to say, before I even knew the cost I knew that pack would be coming home with us. Thank God it cost just a little over the maximum I was willing to spend.

Last night I took Taylor out for a stroll down the walking path by the house. She loved it. In Vermont we spent hours upon hours hiking in the heat of summer and in the dead of winter. One of our favorite pastimes was hiking. (Not to mention Grandma got the biggest thrill of walking through the woods with her granddaughter.) This morning I took Simon out for an hour. He loved it, too. I’m in heaven! On Adrianne’s next day off we plan to hike a good portion of the trail abutting our property.

We might be broke. We might not have a lot to show for the sacrifices we’ve made these last several years. But darn it, we are going to give our kids the best experiences and foundation we can. They deserve it.