The Ugliest Person In My Family

So you know those sitcoms where the dad is fat and funny and is inexplicably married to a super hot wife? No? Well here's a list:

The Honeymooners – Ralph and Alice Kramden

The Simpsons – Homer and Marge Simpson

Family Guy – Peter and Lois Griffin

King of Queens – Doug and Carrie Heffernan

According to Jim – Jim and Cheryl

The Sopranos – Tony and Carmela Soprano

Still Standing – Bill and Judy Miller

Modern Family – Jay and Gloria Pritchett, Cameron Tucker and Mitchell Pritchett

Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – Philip and Vivian Banks

Grounded for Life – Sean and Claudia Finnerty

Just the Ten of Us -  Graham and Elizabeth Lubbock

Lucky Louie – Louie and Kim

Married with Children- Al and Peg Bundy

The Flintstones – Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble

Entourage – Turtle and all of his girlfriends

Family Matters – Carl and Harriette Winslow

The Big C – Paul and Cathy Jamison

Game of Thrones – Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister

Parks and Recreation – Jerry and Gayle Gergich

Roc – Roc and Eleanor Emerson

The Drew Carey Show – Drew Carey and...all of his wives

That ’70s Show – Bob and Midge Pinciotti

 You get the point.

So I know that I am not Doug Herrernan fat but I definitely married outside of my league, after all she was dating this when I met her:

But I had come to terms with being the lesser beauty in my family...come to terms? What I mean is I nailed it and I was living the high life...though my wife has been asked more than once if I was super rich or something, but that was her problem and not mine.

Then came Daisy.  She is, like, incredibly beautiful...shockingly beautiful. We are stopped daily where someone tells us how beautiful my daughter is...multiple times a day.  And it's true, and while I always wanted to raise a super ugly girl who wears a back brace that connects to her head gear and then at 30 sheds her metallic exoskeleton and blossoms into a reasonably handsome woman with a PhD and a Nobel Prize in Chemical Engineering for discovering the most lucrative way to Chemical Engineer who marries a Priest who converted to Mormonism a week before he met my daughter.  But instead, all I can do is hope her supermodel height will keep those adolescent boys at bay long enough for her to graduate high school. We all have battles.

So then came Milo.  At first we were told we were having a girl, and while that seemed exciting, I was nervous that another girl may not be as physically gifted as her sister and would grow up wishing she looked different...which, I suppose, all girls do, but it was something I worried about.  Then, she wasn't going to be a she but a he and he would never have to live up to his sisters beauty, much like I don't have to live up to my wife's.

When he was born he looked like this:

Your average puckered faced prune that parents love and everyone else sees for what it is, a human pickle whose jar had just been opened.  And I loved him.  He would be my buddy.  The two boys who, though they could dress themselves like upper class British professors or elegant shipwreckees, didn't have to worry about social physical demands and neither one of us would be Abercrombie or Fitch.

It's been 17 months, and now he looks like this:

Yup.

So, I guess today I'm announcing my Kickstarter to have my face, well, not my nose, but much of my original face placed on the next olympian who meets an untimely end.  I mean, I wanted to be the ugliest guy at my dinner table...every dad does, but, come on, this is embarrassing.                

My Own Private Legacy

When we speak of the Mormon Pioneers, we can’t help but speak reverently of their legacy of sacrifice and devotion. I, myself, am I descendant of John Tanner. John was an entrepreneurial kind of a guy. He owned several farms and orchards, as well as a hotel in upstate New York. He received an impression that he was needed in Kirtland, Ohio - so he sold those farms and orchards and that hotel, and packed up his family Christmas morning to head 500 miles east to Kirtland. When he got there he found the mortgage on the temple site was due. He loaned money to the temple committee and to the Prophet Joseph Smith, personally. He then donated liberally to the cause. When he left Kirtland he had $7.50 to his name. Years later, in Nauvoo, he was called at the age of 66 to serve a mission. Leaving his wife and 14 children he was on his way out of town when he passed the prophet. Joseph said, "John, what of the $2,000 I owe you." John responded, "It's yours. You owe me nothing." The prophet put his hand on John's shoulder and said, "Bless you, Brother Tanner. Your posterity will never beg for bread."  

Many times in my life I have been the recipient of that promised blessing. As a child, as a husband, and as a father. And inevitably, I reflectively ask myself what I will be known for by my posterity. 

I mean, you have to wonder what kind of legacy you are leaving for your children when they make astute observations like, “I can’t wait to be a dad – you get to stay up every night eating ice cream and watching TV!” Apparently I have painted quite a picture of fatherhood for my three sons. “Yep, that’s all there is to it, my boys! You put in your time as a youth spending grueling hours making forts out of the couch and playing Wipeout on the Wii; and then in a few short years, you’ll be living the high life with Haagen-Dazs and Seinfeld reruns. Life just gets simpler and simpler, I tell you.”

What kind of legacy would I like to leave my children? Oh, I suppose I’d like them to say …

My dad was the wisest person I ever knew.
My dad could solve any problem.

He never said a bad word about anyone.

He was the most patient man in the entire world.

I remember when he made his first $1M at age 43. (Next year!)

My mom always commented on how great he looked in a medium t-shirt.

However, my flaws and selfish indulgences are incessantly on parade at my house. It’s difficult to hide them when there are seven pairs of eyes watching. Somebody is always seeing something. So if you were to ask my children this afternoon how they would remember him…for better or for worse, it might realistically sound more like this:

My dad was do-it-yourself-home-repair-challenged and he hyphenated words far too often.

He knew a little too much about a lot of 80s and 90s pop-culture.

He couldn’t tell you the name of a single player of any professional sport.

He was his most impatient when we were whiny, which he always said was an expression of ingratitude.

My dad valued friendship. Especially mine.

He loved telling stories.

He could not dance or sing, but he loved dancing and singing with me.

I knew how to make more meals than my dad.

My dad was honest.

I felt emotionally and physically safe with him.

Though imperfectly, he tried all his life to be a better follower of the Savior. 

More than anything else, my dad loved my mom.

The Undying Love of a Daughter for her Father.

So my daughter is now three.  She can talk and she can put her own pants on, she knows how to use the toilet and she chooses not to.  It's a fantastic stage of life. Of all the skills she is mastering right now, the one she really enjoys most, the one she practices most and with the most revelry is, the eye roll.  I mean she's three.  Honestly, where does she get off.  She needs me to wipe her bum after she goes to the bathroom and she's rolling her eyes at me?!  And the thing is she really practices it. At least once a day I'll get and eye roll that didn't quite take the way she wanted so she'll stop, reset her eyes, and then with all the same over the top distain she'll start again.  I've began to tell her that when you roll your eyes at someone it means you love them more than any other thing on the earth.  Unfortunately, that only solicited yet another eye roll...which was deserved, granted.  I will give her credit for her timing, I mean she's three and yet she knows that an eye roll goes after Dad has said something super duper hilarious and she really wants to laugh but knows an eye roll will illicit a better reaction.  And she's right, I'm blogging about it right this second.

Please don't tell me that I can look forward to many more in the years to come, okay. I got it.  Girls roll their eyes at their dads.  It's clear. Listen, it's not the fact that her eyes spiral to the back of her head when I jump out screaming from behind the shower curtain. It's the fact that she is THREE. One. Two. Three. Where did she learn it?! It's certainly not my go to response when I deem something is beneath me. Quite the opposite, I like to look a thing right in the eye and tell them they are beneath me.  So it's clear. An eye roll is not clear.  It's muddy.  Maybe a fly flew by.  Maybe you are only having a stroke.  There are lots a reasons her face would do that after a well timed, in front of her friends, fart joke. I should have her checked for stokes.

All in all, she still hugs me more than she rolls her eyes at me.  She still laughs hard when she swings in her swing right into the back of my head.  This is really such a fun age.  She is able to tell you what she wants and she can explain to you why she's not going to do what you want.  And she's old enough to be told that if she doesn't listen to me and do every single thing that I ever say, then tusks will grow out of her nose and her feet will turn into hands and we will have to go to the glove store to get her a nice set of black gloves to walk to church in.

Which, I suppose, only gives her one appropriate response...but she's three.

Being Dad.

So there are moments, every day or rather, they can come on any day, where your mind snaps a picture and you remember that moment and it shapes you.

Our best friends lived right across the street from us in Jersey City, New Jersey.  They had a daughter and we did not have any kids.  We had always thought we would have kids, but we knew we needed to adopt and we really didn't know all that meant so we just kept on not having kids.

One night, I was sitting in our bedroom that looked out onto the street which our friends lived on and I noticed them parking their car.  It was summer but it was late and getting dark and I have this clear picture of my friend, a dad, climbing out of the driver's side and opening the back door and unhooking his sleeping daughter from her car seat, her flopping into his arms and then tucking in.  He wrapped her blanket around her and my mind took a picture.  That was what I wanted.  All of it.  This quite moment where no other labels stick to you, only 'Dad'.

Later, we got our daughter, and she was perfect (is), and here's the thing, people who wonder if you can really love a child who came from somewhere else, or rather someone else, as much as biological child, well, they forget the father. You see, no father has ever carried a baby inside his belly. In fact, when he contributed to that baby, his mind was most likely elsewhere. His bonding begins when they meet face to face.  No child, who was raised by two parents thought, 'You know, my mom just sorta loves me more...I guess it was those nine pre-birth months that really tipped the scale.'  No one questions the fathers ability to bond and love and protect a baby he didn't carry. And so it was with my daughter.  But another secret they don't tell you, is that it doesn't happen that first second. You think maybe it should but in that moment you are still meeting a stranger and nothing is stranger than a new born. This is also complicated when adopting as there is one string in the back of your heart that you hold back, you have to. You protect it because the truth is it could all fall apart at any moment.  And if you gave yourself  over, completely and totally gave over every string, you would never recover.

The first time I saw her she was in an incubator getting warmed up.  The delivery had happend very fast and we had just missed it. So we pressed our faces to the nursery glass looking for our baby. While we thought she would be easy to spot, she was not.  We came looking for our black daughter but there were only white ones.  So she came out pink, we didn't know?! But we saw her name and she turned her head and we, all three of us, felt it. (okay, I'm projecting what the 15 min old baby felt, but it's our story and I'm telling it, so you get what you get.) ...she turned her head and we, all three of us, felt it.  But the 'IT' was the surprise, I did not feel that she was my daughter, what a felt was a deep longing, 'Oh...I hope that is her.  I want it to be her. Please, please, let her be mine.'  She was (is).

Raising a new born is like someone giving you a hot water bottle that cries and poops. You don't sleep a lot but you also get to snuggle a lot and rock it a lot and she never wipes off your kisses (three year olds do). And while I felt like a dad at the time, I must not have been.

Once, when she was older, we were driving across the country moving from New Jersey to Utah.  We picked the scenic route as we would never do this drive again, and meandered down the east coast through the Great Smokey Mountains, then through Atlanta on our way to Savannah and through Jacksonville. Drove for days through Texas, where the sky touches the distant ground on every side of you then whipped up to the foothills of Colorado before coming to our new home.  And every night, and my wife would let me cause she knew the story, we would pull into a new hotel, turn off the headlights and I would get out of the drivers side and open the back door and there she slept. Only when I unsnapped her buckle and she tucked her nose into my neck and breathed out into a deeper sleep did every label drip off me, and I was only 'Dad'
.

I'm Teaching My Son How to Lie

This photo has nothing to do with this post. It just makes me laugh. 

My son, let's call him Hortensio, is a great kid. He's wicked smart, funny, outgoing and creative. He has boundless energy, which is amazing to watch and can, or course, be exhausting. But there is one element of his personality (that ahem he might have got from me) that I am not so crazy about. He never, ever, ever, ever wants to be wrong. (Or lose at anything - but that is a whole other blog post.)

If my wife or I ever disagree with Hortensio, or try and tell him he isn't right about something, he will argue with us until the cows come home, throw a house party, burn the house down, go to jail, get reformed and then start a non-profit to help build homes for other cows to come home to.

This really manifests itself when Hortensio occasionally (more than occasionally) finds himself in trouble. Let's say he is running around the yard like a crazy person and accidentally crashes into his sister. He will immediately insist that he didn't actually crash into her.  And that it was her fault. And that she made him push her, or that he was just swinging his arms and she ran into him. It's really hard for him to own up and say "You're right. I messed up. I'm sorry."

The other day Hortensio was trying to explain something to his brother and got really frustrated when he didn't get it. Hortensio started yelling at him and when I said "Hey, if you are trying to teach your brother something and he doesn't get it, yelling at him doesn't help. Do I yell at you if you are trying to learn something and you don't get it right away?" his response was "Well, I don't know because you never take the time to teach me anything new." Cat's in the cradle, bud. Cat's in the cradle.

The problem with this is that when he argues back and insists that he is in the right, he just gets in more trouble. All we want is for him to say he is wrong or say he is sorry. But often a small incident will turn into a big punishment because I get so frustrated with his talking back and arguing and insisting that he is right and I send him to his room. (This post is really making me look like a hack, right?)

The other night we had a big blow out fight, about something that I don't recall and he got sent to his room. I went down and was talking to him and said, "Sometimes, Mom and I just want you to say your sorry and feel bad about what you did. When you argue that it was someone else'
s fault, it just makes us more frustrated. If you say you are sorry, even if you don't totally feel sorry, things will go better for you."

Sure enough a few days later there was another incident where he lost his temper. And immediately became argumentative. And shortly thereafter got sent to his room. But surprisingly after a few minutes, he sheepishly came out and came up to me and said "Dad, I'm really sorry. I lost my temper and I was wrong. Is it OK if I come out of my room now?" And you know what? I let him out. Do I think he really was 100% sorry. Hmmm..probably not. Do I care? Not really. Does that make me a terrible parent? Absolutely. I felt like we won a small victory. Here he was taking responsibility and apologizing instead of going to his grave insisting that he was right. And maybe he was lying. And maybe I don't care.

So, help me out. Have I failed utterly as a parent because I let my son manipulate me and get out of a punishment? Or did I teach him a valuable life lesson because sometimes part of being a grown up is saying you are sorry for things that you might not really feel all that sorry about because it's the right thing to do? Do you need a .pdf version of this post to attach to my parent of the year application?  And please don't try and tell me that I am wrong. Because I am not. I'm just flailing my arms around and you ran into me.

The Dad of a Son

So next week I am going to have been a Dad of a son for a year.  It's been pretty good, nothing real crazy, he walked faster then my daughter, though I think second children do; they need to keep up.  He is a much better eater, he's more aggressive in his dancing then she was, but all in all, they haven't been much different.

When I was younger...a little more then one year younger, I was petrified to have a son. I don't play sports, I am not tall, I've only been in one fight in my life and I was more feral raccoon then mighty lion. Also, I use metaphors of animals to explain fierceness in fighting. You know, that kind of guy.  And it's not that I think boys should play sports or fight to prove they are boys, but the truth is, some of them do.  Some boys just come out liking throwing balls and tackling strangers and kicking teeth, just like some boys come out liking to dance or sing or twirl...as it is with all kids, you just never know what you are going to get.

The guy I used to work with (yes, THE, as in the only guy) was getting a baby the same time I was getting a baby and we talked often about the terror of raising wrestlers or, what, kick boxers?!.  I mean, we work in women's clothing...wait, strike that...we sell women's clothing, but do not work in it. Anyway, we are guys that have the ability to explain what a cloche is and how to wear it.  We, neither of us, could tell you who played in the Super Bowl in 1969...or 2012 for that matter or for THAT matter, which sport the Super Bowl is the championship of. Some guys just like different stuff, and that's great!  That's amazing, as long as my son doesn't like different stuff then me.

I take comfort in the fact that there really are men out there whose biggest fear is that their son won't like guns, or sports, or spitting, or that they will like fashion or opera or cloches.  While I am the exact opposite, I am, however, no less terrified. "Please, don't let my son want to put on a helmet and smash in to other kids with helmets!", "Please don't let him think it's funny to pick on kids different then him!" "Please let him find value in kindness and inclusion!".

The worst part is, when you grow up and you are not exactly like the other boys, and you sit and seethe on the bench durring dodgeball, and you look at all the other boys who somehow make you feel less than--you make a vow: I will let my son be who ever he wants to be, I will celebrate his choices and empower his decisions! I will love him for exactly who he is and who he wants to be!

It just never occurred to me, he might like football.


"Really?!"


I'm sorry, I'll trying to keep an open mind.

A Thought of a Dream

Just a quick thought.  I don't want to take up too much of your time, but is there anything better than a good dreaming?  I don't mean the Ms Pac Man needs your help kind of dreaming, but the kind where you and your spouse get to come together and plan and scheme and change minds and improve older dreams and really get to settle in deep to a good wondering.  A good think.

A have a great wife for dreaming.  She gives and takes and her ideas aren't stupid.  It was one of my greatest fears to marry a woman with stupid ideas.  Her's are good, even though they are different then mine?! But also she gets me, and she understands what I mean when I say, 'Those big ol' pink bushes all over Capri' or 'Yeah, I just don't want the whole thing to start looking all 'Cafeteria Chic''. She's good like that.

I have always been a dreamer, both a night one and a day one.  School was just a place where I could go and relax and really let my mind wander.  I have better memories of thoughts I thought in high school then lessons prepared and refined and taught to me.  My Antonia...

Work is sometimes that way, though it's harder with customers constantly interrupting me with their own thoughts and dreams. But I make due. Today I repainted all the old wood furniture left in the back yard of some house I don't even own yet. But I dreamt I did. I went with robbins egg blue, to make the birds feel more comfortable.

My kids are where I dream the greatest. My three year old lives in a whole world all her own. Some times I join her there but I like to bring a small brown suitcase and pull dreams out that I have brought from my world and shake them out and see how they fit in hers.  She loves them. Tonight we had to decide what each of the three fairies that live in our back yard did for a living and what color they were:

Twinkle: Blue. She's really responsible for the watering of the plants.

Dinkle: Orange.  She brings sunlight to each flower in her bucket and spreds it like butter over their faces.  Also, she has a tooth business on the side.

Dot: Pink. It's her job to wake up each flower in morning with a kiss and put each one to bed with a song. And there is a song.

My parents planted my dreaming seed.  Well, if not, then they grew it. My parents were not professional artists or actors or comedians or writers but I thought they were...and so I wanted to be.  They valued the parts of me that were different from my brothers and never put my dreams in drawers or jars.  That way they stayed fresh. I suppose I owe my dreams to them, some of which have gotten bigger, some smaller, so small they might be mistaken for a wish, but they hold fast and are not fleeting.  And sometimes, I dream for them. For those I reach deep into the back of my suitcase for my most precious spheres, dancing with my finest dreams.  And float them their direction.    

Disneyland makes me cry

If you are my friend on facebook or follow me on Instagram you probably already know I am at Disneyland this week. Today's our last day and, as all vacations with kids are, it has been the best of times and the worst of times.

I have a long history with the Land. When I was younger, my family would make an annual trip to Oceanside, California and stay in a beach house. One day of that vacation would be spent in Disneyland and I loved it. As a parent now, I don't know how my parents managed to drive 8 kids 800 miles and pay for a beach house and a day at Disneyland. But we loved it.

As a teenager, I fell in with a crowd of Disney fanatics. My friend Charlotte's family were Disney Obsessees. Her dad would work on a telethon that was filmed at Disneyland and they graciously invited me to to with them each year. We would go for a week at a time, or longer, and these were the days before California Adventure so we would spend 7 full days in the one park. We rode every ride, ate at every restaurant and cart and explored every shop, side street and back alley and soaked in all the great and amazing details. The details is what Disney does best.

I know some people (my Dad) don't really love the Land. The lines are too long. The prices are too high. The rides aren't thrilling enough. But for me, it's like a giant work of art. Every moment and detail there is choreographed to elicit the most joy and fun. The music matches the area you are in. The paint colors on the walls and the colors that would have been used when they area of America was built. Even the ground and plants are different throughout the park to enhance the theme. I love it all and my oldest is starting to point things out to me. "Look Dad! Those benches look like they are made of Popsicle sticks! Dad, it smells like cookies on main street!" A future Disney nerd is born.

So whenever I am here with my kids, I get emotional. A lot. I'm that Dad. It makes me so happy to see a things that brought me so much joy and happiness as a kid do the same thing for my kids. I cried three times the first day. (Once on Star Tours, because my boys were JUST SO HAPPY.) All week long I have seen my daughter wave to and say hello to every character we pass like they are her best friends. And yesterday I watched my middle son, who has Asperger's and anxiety issues, wave his hands to be chosen to do Jedi training. He stood patiently to get his light saber and listened to his Jedi master and followed the instructions, neither of which comes easily to him. I got to see him fight Darth Maul while his little sister (who thinks most rides are "too scawy.") dueled Darth Vader. And they both won.

Charlotte's mom, Adrienne, who was the mother of all our Disney trips as teenagers told me a story once. We were off being awesome teenagers and riding rides and she was by herself and was sitting at the Plaza Inn watching the parade. That year, it was a Lion King parade and there was a segment where the performers would hand out drums and rattles to the kids in the crowd to help them make the music. Adrienne told us how touched she was as she watched all these young moms and dads reach down and help their little ones play the drums. And in the background the characters were singing "The Circle of Life." Because of course they were (it's all in the details!!)

I think of that story a lot now that I am the dad, trying to help my kids have fun and discover all the things I loved about this place when I was their age. And yes, I balk a little bit when I have to pay $7 for a corn dog (I've got a little bit of my dad in me too.) But its worth it when I hear my boys laughing at the end of Space Mountain, or see my daughter hugging Snow White, who's always been her favorite. Or see my sons holding hands as they walk down the street. And yes, all of those things have made me tear up this week. It's just what Disney does to me.

I blogged about my favorite things to eat at Disneyland last year. Check it out!

The Problem with New Years Resolutions: A Parents Manifesto

Are these slurpee drinking hoodlums killing creativity?

Like all of you, I started this new year off with a list of resolutions. I don't know what it is about this time of year that makes us, collectively as humanity, want to reboot our lives and start over. But we do it, even though we know by about January 10th, half of those resolutions will have fallen by the wayside.

I won't bore you with my resolutions - they were probably the same as yours. And they have gone OK. Some better than others. I think the real problem is that as a parent it feels impossible to make any positive changes in your life because all of your positivity and power for change gets funneled into helping your kids. And then when they are in bed all your change energy has been used up and you just want to sit on the couch and eat pretzel sticks dipped into cookie butter and watch Nashville. Amirite?

I read an awesome book this year called The Family Fang (and is currently available for Kindle for $2.99 - so why don't you just go buy it already?) Its basically the story of a family of performance artists. The parents, Caleb and Camille, use their children in their elaborate performance art pieces. But now the kids are grown up and are dealing with what growing up as a public spectacle meant. One of the themes that runs through the book is something that a friend of Caleb and Camille tells them when they have kids -- "Kids kill art." He thinks that once they have children, their art will suffer.

So, is that true? True life example: One of my resolutions is about writing more. And every day I say to myself, "Today is the day! When my wife goes to the gym and the kids are in bed I am going to sit down and bang out 1000 words in my novel!" And then my wife heads the the gym, and I (finally) get the kids to bed and either I had to scream and yell to get anyone to brush their teeth and I am too grumpy to write or I am just tired and there is a new episode of the Biggest Loser on and so I just watch that instead.

When I was in college and taking creative writing classes, I did a lot of writing. I wrote short stories and poetry like it was going out of style (my poetry probably was.) And it was great. And despite all of my best efforts to write more (I'm pretty sure it was my 2012 resolution too.) my production has slowed to a trickle.

So, whats a creative parent to do? I know there are people who read this blog who are painters or writers or videographers or photographers or print makers or whatever. So how do you find the time and the energy to stay creative when your children take everything you've got.  Parents of older kids: does it get better? Or do I just need to power through and find ways to be creative now?

Even this blog post (which is hardly high art) has taken me an hour to write because I am dealing with a toddler with the flu who just called me down to the bedroom screaming like she was dying because Mikey Mouse's blanket fell off. Now where did I put that cookie butter?

Halloween; Then and Now

My wife and I sit around all year and wait for October.  We used to over decorate the whole house and make delicious autumnal treats and throw a huge Halloween party every year, but now we have kids and don't have time for such things.  We literally, right this second, have a "Ghost Garland" from target that was purchased over a week ago that is only hanging by one side, the other cascading to the dinner table...not because it's fallen, but because we only ever hung one side and then lost interest.

We used to begin watching season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (no one watches season one) mid September and would wrap up season seven just before Halloween.  It was nice to come home and have your night all planned out for you; make dinner, watch Buffy; fold laundry, watch Buffy; hook up with spouse, pause Buffy. Easy.  (Sorry, but is that how you use semi colons?) But now we have kids and we no longer do ANY of the a fore mentioned activities. (again, sorry, is that how you use 'a fore'?)


We used to go to graveyards and take pictures of Crypts and Head Stones to print out and distress and hang as part of our October Decor.  (see below) 

 This last one is Washington Irving's Grave

One year, while living in New York City we found ourselves without a costume and had to whip something up because we wanted to go to the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village.  This is what we came up with:

 Dr. Dark and Madame Lumiere 

(we didn't have to name them, but we did...and we used French) 

That's right, take a closer look.

That's all Lindsay's hair.

 This was the last time we have dressed up for Halloween...because then...we got kids.

We no longer watch scary movies because the kids now creep into our room and it scares us.
We stopped buying holiday candy because we have kids and they would not eat anything else if they knew we had any.
We never say up past 10:30 (late, pref 9:45) because we have kids and no matter what time we go to bed they are coming for you at 6:45 am...with two nighttime wake ups...each.

It turns out that all the things you can't wait to do as a kid, you really do get to do...until you have kids! 
 

There is something to be said for getting to watch my kids have halloween, but they do it so poorly that it's hardly worth mentioning.  Milo is 4 months and rarely has much to contribute...except Exorcist style vomit which he offers up frequently.  And Daisy is two and a half and thinks the cheesiest things are scary (ie ghost garland from target). Lindsay and I have perfected our singular mix of Victorian Gothic blended with Savannah Grave Yard with a dash of 1692 Salem Courthouse for our Halloween aesthetic and the kids just don't get it. Which is fine by me, it's a lot of effort to set it all up just to then have some two-and-a-half-year-old wrap the ends of our grey muslin tablecloth around her neck like a cape and tear off tipping the lit candelabra into the piles of Spanish Moss and antique Law Books deliberately scattered on both the table and floor igniting my effortless balance between dilapidated library and spell casters squat.   

While it's true I love my children, more then anything, it will be nice when they grow up and we can get back to having fun on Halloween.    

Parenting and the Mountians, Part II

So you all remember last week when I took my wife and kids inside and mountain to die.  Well, I thought I had made it pretty clear that we were no longer going to parent outside but then, for some reason, America celebrates Labor. I don't know why and I asked my wife, who is the smartest person I know, and she told me that it was because "We now have weekends".  I smiled because I knew this response was one of two things: One, she was serious and I didn't want to look like a fool...(er) or Two, she was joking, however she would only be joking because she thought I was joking by asking such a stupid question in which case I had to play it off like I was joking.  So I still don't know why we have Labor Day, (cause if it's for the weekends why do we celebrate it on Monday?) I could google it, but so could you and that's not why we're here anyway.

We went to a cabin.  Yup.  One week after the Cave of Death we went to the Cabin of Death.  No, not really, it was more the cabin of leaf changing tranquility and a moose. I found myself with the weekend off and Lindsay found herself in the same predicament, which almost never happens, so we tried to whip up some fun plans but it turns out everyone made plans for Labor Day before Friday afternoon.  Literally, my brother, who was camping, told us there was no room for us cause his friends were coming up that night, he may have meant in his trailer but it sounded more like, in the whole Utah Wild.  Well, just about to give up we called Lindsay's cousin and our good friends, (they are the same people not two sets of people one being a cousin and one being a good friend...so I guess I should have wrote Lindsay's cousin who is our good friend but that would complicate things, not like this parenthesized paragraph which only simplifies.) and they were more then happy to go to their grandfathers cabin with us.  So we went...however, we did leave the backpack of death behind which is strange as it would have been perfect for such a trip.  So we cabined, and took naps (that's four adults and five kids under 5 all sleeping at the same time... karma for that hellish cave fiasco) and ate good trashy food and watched Brother Bear (really Phil Collins, that's the best you can do? Perhaps it was, in which case, get a job.) and read the book club book and took a drive over unpaved mountain roads with all the kids free of seat-belts.  I know, it could have been awful but it was wonderful. 

Then this morning, my little family, all on our own, drove up to Mirror Lake and went to the Provo River Upper Falls or somewhere and it was down right lovely.  The kids loved it, the dog loved it, we loved it, everyone happy and together.

As we drove away, my wife and I had a great young parenting talk and I thought I'd pass on our barely tested wisdom.  Several weeks ago we had a hard talk...not a fight, a hard talk, and it seemed that there was this score keeping going on between her and I. When one of us would come home we would relay all the horrible and hard things two kids and a dog had done, the point being to prove to the other one how hard my day home with the kids was.  It was strange but it was palpable.  So after a while we got in to a fight...not a hard talk, a fight and it was as if we had been storing bullets of hard work we had been doing while the other did nothing.  There was a big feeling of 'I have it the hardest and I can prove it!' Well, I don't know how it is in your house but in my house after every fight there is the fight summery where we pin point where we went wrong.  And it's good, cause we've made up and we can cop up to our blame. And at some point one of us figured out this Score Keeping and we both knew that was the center.  There is no equality in marriage.  You never come out fair and square so don't strive for it.  There is, however, the good stuff and the bad stuff. And for weeks we had been laying the bad stuff at the others feet, hoping they'd trip on it and get all covered in it and know how much Bad Stuff I had to deal with because it had just ruined her favorite sweater.  So we gave it up.  The new rule was just give me the good stuff.  When we tell each other about our days, we just pass off the good stuff.  Lindsay has done much better than I have, in my defense I have been at work picking up the clothes I thought I asked you to hang up yourselves and return to me with a smile, but she told me that this new point of view has changed the way she parents.  We have a two year old, so most days are pretty much 50/50, half good, half bad and so it's just as easy to focus on one as it is the other, and she found that her days were just better when she thought about the good stuff.

So I know it's not ground breaking, and I'm sure there is a Covey step that tells me all of that in a much better way, but for us, in our own little experiment, it's worked...or is working.  It turns out we really like taking care of our kids and we like having a partner who likes taking care of our kids, too.  I guess what I'm saying is, take the drive to the Upper Falls, it's worth the view.

Also, we saw a moose.

The Deal.

So here's the deal: I've been a father for a bit over two years, and I will tell you I have never loved anything the way I love my daughter...


So here's another deal: my good old friend turned 40 last weekend and his wife sneaked behind his back and got his work covered for four days and, when he came home on Wednesday, she stole him off, dropped the kids at Grandma's and gave him a whole weekend without kids (they have two and are expecting their third) in sunny St. George. Also, Lindsay and I came along...

Once, I had a mildly sexy life. My wife is so much hotter than me it's hardly worth mentioning and I worked in New York City or LA in a overly decorated apartment while she pursued her PhD in some of the best theater programs in the country. We had great friends and wonderful food and hunted for adventure ever day.

Then Daisy.

And we gladly and simply scurried back to Utah so she could be close to Grandparents and cousins, and I literally rush home from work to be with her. And I love this life more then I ever have loved my life before...

But here's the real deal, when I found out that we would be spending a weekend with our super sexy friends but without my darling daughter, I was ecstatic! I COULD NOT WAIT!! And I felt bad. Not that I was farming my baby out to any family member that would have her, but that I was so SO SO SO excited about it! This little weekend to do what? To do nothing, go see a movie in a theater, go out to eat without a single other person on my lap! To meet my wife who, as it turns out, is still much better looking than I am. But what does this all say about me as a father? I love babies...I would never eat a baby, they are filthy, but I do love being a dad. And I miss Daisy Lu...oh, that's right, I am blogging from sunny St. George and I'm pretty sure Daisy is sleeping at my mother-in-law's--or at one of my Brothers, who can say for sure--but I'm here and she is somewhere else. On one hand, I miss her desperately (I will tell you that two couples who used to have mildly sexy lives but now have kids, even when the kids are somewhere else, spend most of their time talking about their kids and how awesome their kids are), but there is that other hand...

Maybe those of you who have been parents for more than two years can send over a little words of comfort or, I suppose, condemnation. But for now I have to go to the pool... and swim in the deep end... with my wife. Then later I will call one of my brothers and find my girl just so I can hear her voice before she goes to bed...and we go to the movie.

Get Out of the Pool!

image from disney.com

Amy and I have been on vacation this week (at Disneyland!) which is why this blog is posting a little late in the evening. The other night while I was at the pool with my kids, I witnessed a parenting moment I have lived through about 150 times.

A couple was ready to leave the pool and had already gathered up 2 of their 3 kids. The third was still in the pool and when they asked her to get out, she refused. Mom went to reach for her arm, but she swam just out of reach. When Dad walked around to the other side of the pool, she swam away from him, too. I can hear your gasps from here. Nothing is worse than chasing your kids and looking like a fool doing it. Following the unwritten code of parental conduct, all the other parents at the pool tried to look away to lessen the embarrassment of the couple who was now circling the pool and trying, in vain, to grab their wayward daughter.

Things then went from bad to worse. The girl started splashing water at her parents as they tried to grab her. "Oh no she didn't!" I wanted to yell, but didn't think my helpful comment would be appreciated. The parents started making threats, all of which the girls laughed off. "If you don't get out now you are going to time out!" Ha ha! *splash* "Get out or there will be no swimming tomorrow!" Ha *splash* ha!! "If you don't get out this minute we won't go to Disneyland tomorrow!" *SPLASH* Bwua-ha-HA-HA-HA!!!

We have all been there. The empty threat that we know holds no power. Unless those parents have a lot more discipline than me, there is no way that after paying all the money to get to Disneyland, get a hotel and buy the park tickets that they were going to hang out in a hotel room for 16 hours to make a point about the importance of listening. I know I frequently make threats that I know I don't have the energy or willpower to carry through on.

It is the great lie of parenting. Kids think the parents have all the power, but the real truth is that the kids are 100% in control. If my kids just say no, then I run out of options pretty quick. Sure I can send them to time out, and take away privileges and restrict their behavior. And I do all of those things and sometimes they get results. But sometimes, like that family at the pool, your kids decide to call your bluff and see how far you are willing to go. And pretty soon you get to the empty promises that are really just punishing you and the rest of the family.

Every day as parents we walk that line. Trying to maintain order in the household without showing too much of our hand and hoping the kids don't figure out that I won't really throw every toy in their bedroom in the garbage if they don't clean it up and that they won't really have to sit at the table until all of their dinner is gone. Those punishments would just really punish me. I just hope tonight they all get out of the pool, because I really want to go to Disneyland tomorrow.