While no one is watching

Happy Birthday, Miles. Keep on playing and singing as if no one is watching you. You're doing great! ~Dad

December

The month has nearly disappeared leaving only memories of many events and just three full days of 2011. My sprained wrist turned out to be a broken hand. I played and sang for a candlelight memorial service. I played and sang for a wedding. I helped photograph that same wedding. I played for another candlelight service. We ordered 8 pizzas and had many guests over to celebrate Margo's 2nd Birthday. We traveled to my parents house for Christmas Eve. Back home for Christmas Day. We are now hosting Emily's sister and family to celebrate Miles' Birthday as well as a belated Christmas for her side of the family.

My stay-at-home-dad days are over, at least for the foreseeable future, as I return to the grind of human resources on January 3. We shall see what the year 2012 brings...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Busy week

This photograph breaks a number of rules of "good" photography (exposing for the main subject, shooting faces instead of backs-of-heads, leaving room for your subject to go), but it gives a pretty accurate representation of our typical morning walk. We walk together on the neighborhood streets where cars and school buses and garbage trucks rumble by, and when we arrive at the trail head all is fair game. It's time to run ahead, free from the bonds of hand-holding and strollers.

It has been another busy week. We visited a new library on Monday. Papa Harry rode his bike to our house Tuesday and stayed the night. Nannie Lynn came Wednesday to play and help. Wednesday night we brought our car to Uncle Scot's shop for repair. We brought Emily to the bus station this morning to catch a ride to downtown Minneapolis for some work training. Miles has preschool tonight. Papa Mike will join us Friday for some adventure. Saturday on the calendar is an empty square. Thank goodness.

Minority

I brought Miles and Margo to our second ECFE event at the library and once again found myself in the minority. Although the three of us (one other dad and a grandpa) likely cramped the style of the "mob of moms" style, I'd like to think our masculine minds helped balance the energy of the room! Good stories and good projects..and good price: free.

Day thirty-eight

I'm well into my second month away from work and just starting week 5 with the kids. I can hardly tell you where October went, but I can tell you that it was wonderful.

The kids made a candy-killing at Halloween, zig-zagging the streets of our neighborhood, running door to door to Trick-or-Treat their way to sugared chocolate bliss. Miles and Margo proudly donned their costumes several times before October 31, showing them off to visitors and grandparents whenever they could. On the evening of Halloween, Miles knew the drill well, having rehearsed his lines many times. Margo trailed along slowly and prospered just fine on cuteness, without having to say a word. I'm curious to know how many seasons our home-made candy bags will last. I'm sure they'll hold up just fine to time, but will be forgotten and passed over once the allure of fake plastic pumpkin buckets draws them in. And should plastic pumpkins fail to attract them, surely adolescence will render grocery bag trick-or-treat containers grossly out of style.

Autumn in Minnesota has been very kind to us this year, and I am thankful to have gotten to enjoy much of it. The wind blew hard and cool yesterday, reminding us that Old Man Winter is packing his bags for his five month visit to our part of the world. Em and I will be outside in the yard again soon, cutting down and trimming back much of what flourished over the spring and summer months. Most of them will lie dormant over the winter months, frozen to the earth, hidden beneath a sheets of ice and blankets of snow...but very much alive and ready to thrive again next year. We will be together inside, ever thankful for a warm home, loving family and faithful friends.

Talking

One of the unexpected side-effects of watching the kids all day, every day is the strain on my voice. I talk far more than I ever did while I was working full-time. Miles is a constant question machine and, not wanting to ignore him, I spend a lot of time explaining why something is. It's a good refresher of mathematics when he asks me what "half of something" is...and of chemistry when he asks why steam comes from ice (can YOU explain that?). Margo is more of a noise machine than a question machine, and while her utterences don't require as many responses, I include her in our conversations. Add to those conversations many storybooks, commands and my own questions of them and I feel like I am talking non-stop.

Library day

Monday is library day. Today we returned books and read for a while in the children's area. Miles chose several books about trains, and Margo, a colorful book about a runaway wok. Seems like a good read. I hope it's a better choice than our previous choice by Aldous Huxley, The Crows of Pear Blossom. It may have been in the children's section, but we had to rephrase some of the storytelling, particularly the suggested killing of the main character's neighbor who was acting rather devious.

Day eighteen

This parenting thing is feeling more natural with each day I spend with the kids. I am more easily able to predict what will happen next and use that knowledge to know when to change tasks or change the subject to avert conflict. The improved rhythm tells me they, too, are settling into a comfortable routine with me.

Today was fun. We brought three letters to the post office to stamp and mail. We were then lucky to see a train chug through town, which thrilled Miles. Our car was no more than 20 feet from it, so we felt the earth vibrate and we heard the whistle sound. On our way home we stopped by a corn maze to burn some energy. We took some wrong turns and hit some dead ends, but eventually made it through. A fitting analogy to our time together.

I've learned to enjoy a slower pace at times. In times where we interacted with our kids only before and after work, agendas pretty much drove everything and for me it always seemed to be a system of rushing to get to the next thing. With wide-open days, we can take time finding our shoes, zipping our zippers, meandering down the sidewalk at a snail's pace without worrying when we'll return home or what we'll do next. So while I do have regular activities I plan to do, I'm learning to do them when it makes sense, not when the schedule dictates.

Day thirteen

It's only my fourth day at home with the kids full-time, but I've been away from work since the end of September. We're slowly starting to get into a routine. I pull them in a Burley on a six or seven-mile bike ride in the morning. We stop at the baseball diamond to stretch and run the bases and stretch some more. Then we make our way to a playground for a while and come back home around ten o'clock.

Then I think, Now what do I have them do?

Crayons and coloring books usually do the trick for a while and bring us to lunch time and [usually] naptime. In the great October weather we had up until yesterday, we were back outside for a walk or bike ride. With colder weather approaching, I'll need to get a bit more clever with my list of activities. We're sure to visit the library for storytime and the indoor trails at the zoo to explore the animals.

I'm surprisingly disconnected from any thoughts of work. I thought I might be tempted to check in by email to make sure things were running smoothly, but I can't tell you how nice it has been to remove myself from the constant back-and-forth of often-ambiguous electronic communication. My days are now very raw and transparent. No hidden emotion or motives...my kids give it to me straight up. We are learning.