Author: suburbanfatherhood

Kids, Thoughts

11 Things That Make Kids Awesome!

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

Over the past five years, here are some things I have discovered are AWESOME about having kids!

  1. The sense of wonder with which they experience the world.
  2. The look of surprise when you get an Amazon box in the mail.
  3. How they turn the empty Amazon box (that only had household goods in it) into a boat, then a car, then an artist’s studio.
  4. How everything for my son becomes a weapon so he can fight off the bad guys.
  5. How everything for my daughter becomes sweet and gentle.
  6. Rocking while reading books as they fall asleep.
  7. When they try to be helpful (and actually are!).
  8. How they can go from fighting to friends so quickly.
  9. The things they learn and figure out on a daily basis.
  10. Their capacity for forgiveness.
  11. And finally, the way they yell for joy when you get home, like a pair of hyper active puppies.
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Kids, memories, Thoughts

10 Things I No Longer Think are Cool

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

Growing up was a lot of fun. When you are younger you could do so many cool things, run across the water (it seemed like I could at least), and you always swore you would never turn into your parents. Well, I’m here today to chronicle 10 things that I no longer think are “cool”. And now I get to explain to a child why the same things I used to think are cool are in fact, decidedly uncool.

  1. Waking up Dad with a wet washcloth.
  2. Jumping on Dad while he is lying down.
  3. Yelling loudly in the back of the car for no reason.
  4. Hitting myself in the face.
  5. Lying really still and pretending not to hear people talking to me.
  6. Throwing things near expensive electronics.
  7. Asking to read the same book over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.
  8. Grandparents who load up their grand kids on sugar before sending them home.
  9. Singing the same song over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and OVER again.
  10. Asking to tell someone a secret… then yelling in their ear.

To my parents -> I’m sorry! (Although part of me suspects they are putting the kids up to this.)

Cheers,

-SF

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memories, Thoughts

Goodbyes

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

Goodbyes are hard. We all deal with them differently. Some of us like to down play them, some like to ignore them, some like to lament them long before they ever happen. Over the next 5 months I’ve got two big good byes coming up. I’m not sure if knowing they are coming makes them easier or harder. Combined they represent 36 years of relationships spanning both my personal life and my professional life.

The milestone coming up in September will undoubtedly be the easier goodbye. It’s only a 4 year relationship ending. I’m not sure when I’ll get to say goodbye face to face, hopefully this summer, but we both know the end is coming. Thankfully there’s little chance of running into each other after it’s over. But that doesn’t remove the fact that since inception I have been involved nurturing, growing, leading, and sustaining over the past 4 years. Saying good bye now is turning over control to someone else to make the decisions they see fit and to admit I’m no longer in a driver’s seat. I’ve been visiting less and less over the past year, but it still feels raw. Hopefully I’ll get to say goodbye face to face over this summer.

The harder goodbye still has an unknown timeline but is expected in the next 2 to 5 months. How do you say good bye to memories that span as long as you can remember, all the major milestones of your life and your kids’ lives,? How can that be easy? Where do you start? It will be all the harder given the fact that this is just minutes away from where I live, not in a different state. Reminders are everywhere.

Now before someone cries foul, let me explain a little bit more about each of these good byes. The first is a computer system (large Windows domain with associated components and peripherals) I designed, procured, built, and configured. It was many long hours getting it ready to be deployed, while working in varying environments to get it done. The system was shipped out in a blizzard. There are many unique aspects to the whole thing that make the good bye harder. The support is transitioning over to the system owner, a required next step. Yet that doesn’t make it feel easier. I’m trying to arrange an onsite visit/inspection to be with it one more time.

(Anyone currently judging me for a personal attachment to electronics a) don’t know me very well; and b) don’t pour their heart and soul into the projects they work on).

The second good bye is to my childhood home. My parents are moving out into a retirement community and will need to sell it. It’s been great to live near where both myself and my wife grew up. My kids have climbed the same trees I climbed as a child. We have celebrated Christmas in the same place I used to. The memories have been passed on. And yet it’s not easy to say good bye to a place with that many memories.

How will I handle these good byes? I can’t say for certain until the time comes. I try not to get caught up on the future. The work one will likely come and go, ultimately lost in the shuffle of continuing projects. It is inevitable for someone with a career as varied as mine to have to leave behind a project in order to tackle the next one. I’ll try to organize a celebration to recognize the past 4 years of hard work, and then turn around and do something new.

Saying good bye to my childhood home is likely hard because it feels like saying good bye to my childhood, to the memories I harbor, to what it is that makes up who I am. What’s likely to happen is I take some time to walk around the place and remember. Then take those memories and treasure them up in my heart. I need to remind myself I’ve already said good bye to my childhood in one sense (I’m an adult with kids), but in another sense it will never leave me (it helped make me who I am today and my wife reminds me I’m a 12 year old who shaves many times.).

In both cases I’ll raise a glass to freedom, memories, successful projects, and continued life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Raise one with me.

Cheers,

-SF

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Domestic Tranquility, Kids

Childhood Imagination

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

It never ceases to amaze me what my kids pretend to be. Here are some of my recent favorites:

  • Dinosaur Hunter (using modern weaponry)
  • Explorer in a volcano (like the traditional “the floor is lava” game, but with a lava sucking laser to protect his feet)
  • Batman
  • Spiderman
  • Wolverine (“Dad, next time you guess, can you guess Wolverine since I have stripes on my jacket?”)
  • Wonder Woman
  • Elsa
  • “Bad Guys”
  • “Good Guys”
  • Artist
  • Mommy
  • Koala Bear (while giving hugs)
  • The Flash
  • “The strongest” (ignoring the fact that he is trying to push Daddy over and can’t do it)
  • “The fastest” (ignoring the fact that I beat him in the race)
  • Every Star Wars character
  • Cute and Innocent (as in, got caught red handed – “What are you doing?” “I don’t know Daddy, can I give you a hug?….”)
  • Anyone with a blaster.
  • Soldiers
  • Police officers

Oh to have the mind of a child again. The world is always filled with wonder.

-SF

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Constitution, Domestic Tranquility, Kids, Thoughts

Childhood Justice

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.     

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The childhood sense of fairness is unparalleled in its ability to create conflict and strife. The height of the Cold War pales in comparison to the scorn felt by a child who has perceived wrong. And the offense doesn’t need to be as trivial as a nuclear arms race. No, these wrongs are felt over real, true matters. Like the amount of goldfish in snack cup (“But he got MORE”), the book selection (“We ALWAYS read her book first”), or the dreaded “turn” (as in “I NEVER get a turn”). All of these are invariably followed up by “It’s not FAIR”. The kids are truly internalizing what Martin Luther King, Jr. said, but focusing it on themselves. Injustice to me is a threat to justice everywhere.

As they progress, the things that are unfair get bigger and bigger. What started as the snack cup selection (and I will promise you they have the exact same number of goldfish) quickly escalates to privileges such as driving, seeing PG-13 movies, dating, and other events in life. Whenever Dad makes an unpopular decision, as determined by a nation wide poll and loudly proclaimed by a teenage daughter at the top of her lungs, it’s NOT FAIR.

But what if fair is NOT in the eye of the beholder. We all perceive injustices against ourselves. But I think in the spirit of Dr. King, we should not focus on the injustice perpetrated against ourselves, but that which is wrought upon those who are less fortunate, those who truly are not getting a fair life. Why is it that some people are born to loving families and others are not? Why is it that some kids are blessed with siblings, while others aren’t? How can it be fair that atrocities such as the Holocaust happened. Is there an objective standard that can be used to measure fairness in this world?

I would argue yes, there is an objective standard. How is it that universally children are ready to go to war over the concept of fairness? How is it that a child fresh from the womb has a concept of wanting something they don’t have? How is it that every society throughout human history has come up with concepts such as justice and fairness? The only rational explanation is that this is grounded in objective truth, that there is a deeper meaning behind these feelings and that if we can focus outside ourselves long enough, we may be able to see the source of the justice or find that which is prompting us.

Whatever the case, as long as we focus on fairness for ourselves, we will be in constant battles with those around us. When we can take a step back and evaluate the situation calmly and rationally, it might just be possible for us to discover true fairness.

Cheers,

-SF

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Domestic Tranquility, Kids, Thoughts, Why

Why Do Spiders Need to Die?

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

The Itsy Bitsy Spider climbed up the water spout;

Down came the rain and washed the spider out;

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain;

And the Itsy Bitsy Spider climbed up the spout again;

-The Itsy Bitsy Spider

A year ago, a spider would have sent my kids running, despite my professions that they are harmless and just eat the bad bugs. Today, a daddy long legs was spotted in the corner of the play room and all of a sudden it turned into DEFCON 3. Not from me. I was calmly sitting, but the kids were grabbing EVERYTHING. Suddenly the tranquil play time turned into shouts of:

  • “This is my blaster”
  • “This is my shooter”
  • [2 year old puts on Wonder Woman costume] “This will help me”
  • “I need this” [grabs random play kitchen pot]

In all the commotion, they don’t notice that the daddy long legs has calmly meandered behind the climbing wall and isn’t in view anymore. This led to an interesting discussion (emphasis added to give an idea on inflection of littler voices):

  • Suburban Father – “Guys, why does the spider need to die?”
  • Daughter – “Because he is EVIL!”
  • SF – “What does that mean?”
  • Son – “He’s here to GET us.”
  • D – “Yeah… he’s here to GET us.”
  • SF – “He’s only here to eat the bad bugs…”
  • S – “No… he’s here to GET us.”

This continued for a few minutes with little change to content. No longer are they afraid of a spider, they have been ingrained with the urge to kill (thankfully the urge and the capability are two different things). It doesn’t matter why, it’s the enemy, the other, the thing that is after us. It awakens their imaginations and they are not in the playroom, they are soldiers on the front lines of a Starship Troopers style invasion. They are breaching the Black Gate into Mordor. No matter what hideous thing comes at them, they are READY.

And aren’t we all this way? Sure, we laugh and watch as our kids get worked up over a spider and have their imaginations run wild. But we do this too. We let our imaginations run wild with our own importance, manufacturing a world around us that is different than reality. It manifests itself differently for different people, but it is all over the suburbs. There’s the guy down the street self-medicating his divorce with shiny toys that make it seem like his life isn’t falling apart. There’s the couple in the cul-de-sac up to their eyeballs in credit card debt trying to maintain a lifestyle they think they have. There’s the boss at work who fancies himself as upper management’s savior and always micro-managing people. There’s the person writing this blog that thinks he’s smarter than the other people in the room, so he started a blog.

What’s the answer? For starters, the spider doesn’t need to die. It eats bugs and helps control them, something we can all appreciate. Second, the answer is also not to lose the imagination. It’s a wonderful tool we were built with to create something out of nothing. With no imagination there would be no art, no new technology, and a lot of bland vanilla.

We need to maintain a healthy view of reality to make good decisions hand in hand with the ability to see the world as a child does: in wonder with excitement and potential around every corner. Be truthful in the things that matter, and fun-loving in the things that are trivial.

Cheers,

-SF

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Domestic Tranquility, Kids, Thoughts

The Smell of Grass

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. 

Walt Whitman

Nothing is more suburban than mowing the grass on a Saturday morning. The whir of other lawn mowers fills the air, water flows down the road from someone washing their car up the street, and the smell of freshly cut grass permeates the air. Since God rested in the Garden of Eden, this is the closest to heaven that we can get. It is a ritual not understood by those in the city, and undertaken alone by those in the country.

And then the tranquil bliss is interrupted by the most angelic of beings… your 4 year old walking up wanting to help. How do you explain why the grass needs to be cut, or even what the grass is? How do you explain that the blade on the bottom of the lawn mower can create a BIG problem really quickly without scarring him for life? Or that him “helping” will add 20 minutes to a task that was only going to take 15 minutes in the first place. You can’t. You can only breathe deep and stare in wonder at the world the way a child does, when the days seem to last forever, the sun is always warm, and nothing is better than playing outside with your friends and your imagination.

And then that breathe is interrupted by your 2 year old walking up wiping her mouth with dirt stained hands saying the dirt tastes “yucky” with a horrendous look on her face. As you laugh because you remember doing the same thing when you were a child, you help her wipe her mouth out and ask if she learned something from the experience. And then you take a deep breathe, enjoy the smell of the cut grass, and let time pass slowly for a few minutes, basking in the moment.

Does this sound familiar? Isn’t this all of our experience every weekend? No? Me neither. I wish I could say I took the time to embrace and experience the peace, the Jewish concept of shalom. That slice of perfection this side of heaven that is spending a perfect summer morning cutting the grass and enjoying the weather with your family. But I don’t. Why not? Why do I let the worries of Monday affect my Saturday. Why do I worry about the events planned for the weekend instead of being in the moment? Why do I feel envious because the Joneses seem to be able to relax by their pool while I’m out here?

It’s way too easy for us to get sidetracked from the pictures of perfection, or heaven on Earth, that are put before us. I’m not saying the Suburbs are heaven (although I do enjoy living here). I’m saying the situations we are put in resemble Heaven in those ways. If we can find a way to be content, to live in those moments and cling to them, we’d find that the stress melts away, our families become stronger, and the worries of this world don’t have as much power over us.

Cheers,

-SF

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food, Kids, Thoughts

Food Choices

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

It’s amazing the things kids will and won’t eat. They start off with milk and then are transitioned to things pureed. It doesn’t matter what, they’ll eat it. Pureed spinach? Yep. Pureed meatball? Yep. Pureed Mac and Cheese? Yet. And then they hit 18 months and start getting picky. All of a sudden food they liked the day before is comida non grata. This post is dedicated to the weird food combinations and statements my kids have liked and made…

Likes…

  • Peanut butter and cheese
  • Butter and cheese
  • Peanut butter by itself
  • Banana and peanut butter (not a bad combination, but it makes the list because the child thinks banana by itself is disgusting)
  • Peanut butter and popcorn
  • Liking the table (“it tastes good”)
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Raw pizza dough (takes after me)
  • Licking the butter wrapper
  • Licking the Mac and Cheese cheese flavor wrapper

Doesn’t like…

  • Refuses to touch hamburger (“It’s too spicy”)
  • Refuses to touch blueberries (except to throw them away)
  • Starts to eat an orange slice and then spits it out… every time. And then asks for another one.
  • Ice cream is too cold and not good?
  • Bagel toasted with cream cheese… then tries it and loves it… then wants it “regular” again.
  • Candy with nuts in it.
  • Any form of green herb in the food (“it’s too spicy”)

Cheers,

-SF

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Thoughts

Boys and Girls

Posted on by suburbanfatherhood

A person’s a person, no matter how small.

Dr. Seuss

If you’re like me, you’re a fan of Dr. Seuss. From the start of One Fish, Two Fish he had me hooked. The rhyming nature of his work, the tongue twisters he puts together, and even his illustrating are a huge reason he still is a mainstay in children’s literature.

But the thing that enthralls me the most is the whimsical worlds he creates. The houses defies the laws of physics, animals can talk (of course), and a big-hearted moose gets away just in time. He had an uncanny nature to inject the world of a child’s mind onto each page, to display the same sense of wonder at what is going on in the world as the readers are experiencing.

Being in touch with a child’s mind like this is a gift. One that I don’t have. But having observed my own children growing, I’ve noticed a distinct difference between my son and my daughter. Yes, all children are different and unique and will have inherent differences. But there’s just something different about how they are wired as genders.

My son is awesome. His enthusiasm for life seems unparalleled. He is wild, crazy, and fierce, always wanting your attention and always full of energy. Some days he is Batman, other days he is the Flash. He always thinks he can win and always hates losing (which is bad because he is nowhere near as fast the adult he always challenges to race… me).

But regardless of how he is pretending to be that day, without fail, any toy you give him inevitably ends up being a weapon. It may be a sword, a knife, a gun, a “shooter”, a blaster, a light-saber, or another item from his imagination. There’s always a bad guy to catch, a person to fight, a pirate to find, or something else seemingly manly to do. He is currently walking around asking “where is my blaster?” It’s always destruction and fighting.

Alternatively, my daughter also loves being sweet and cuddly, pretending to be Wonder Woman, Batgirl, or other girl-based superhero. Where “Batman” likes fighting, “Batgirl” loves saving. She’s there to pull him out of trouble when he gets caught by Daddy. She’s there to save her stuffed animals. Instead of building weapons, she has accessories. She builds homes and beds, and wants to make sure things are tucked in tight.

I realize that gender is a touchy topic in our present society, and I am not intending to wade into that fight. However, I marvel at the diversity I see in my own kids, raised in the same house. No matter how much we encourage our son to build something “nice”, it always becomes a weapon or a base or similar. As soon as our daughter gets involved, she labels it something charming. From the womb, with the same environment and upbringing, they demonstrate very different inherent tendencies. What a wonderful world we live in.

Cheers,

SF

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