Recommended

Regular visitors will notice that I have recently added a recommended list with links to five blogs over on the right. In the absence of any other inspiration in a busy, work-oriented and not particularly interesting week, I thought I would take this opportunity to say why I believe you should take a moment and check out the five sites.

The first is the blog "How Did I Get Here" by our friend "Stinkerbellmama." Not just a friend, she also appears to be, at the moment, our future family member as Owen has been best friends with her daughter since before they could walk and said daughter and Owen have talked frequently over the years of their desire to get married to each other some day. Things even got to the point where Owen had names picked out for the two sets of twins he was planning for them to have. The first set is going to be named Alice and Cooper (no he does not know who Alice Cooper is - just an amusing coincidence). The second set is slated to have the more unfortunate names of Coasterball and Googly-Goo. I will admit that now that these names have had a chance to roll around in my head for several months, I am starting to find them sort of cool in a quirky, futuristic way - kind of like Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa. Doubtful anyone stuck permanently with the name Googly-Goo would feel the same. Anyway, Stinkerbellmama, although she posts even less frequently than myself, cranks out some entertaining and thoughtful rants when the mood strikes that are definitely worth a read.

The second link is to Laid Off Dad. Although I have had trouble finding other daddy-blogs that I much enjoy, LOD is an exception. Funny, well-written and all around good reading.

Nothing But Bonfires I read simply to revel in Holly Burn's outstanding writing. I don't know what it is about her writing style that resonates with me but I just love it. It is just so lyrical and good that even when she is on about shoes or hairstyles or, even worse, the Bachelor, things I could not care less about, I read every word just for the sheer joy of it.

Next is Post Secret. Not a blog, per se, this site bills itself as a "an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard." A different group of postcards with secrets is posted once a week - every Sunday. It is sometimes funny, often heartbreaking, and always thought-provoking (and addictive!).

Lastly is Sweet Juniper. With the (sort of) demise of Neal Pollack's Alternadad blog as he focuses his writing talents on higher paying regular writing gigs at high-profile parenting sites, Sweet Juniper has to be considered the premier parenting blog out there. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find another parenting blog that does not link to it. And why shouldn't they, I say, as the Sweet Junipers' are consistently brilliant (and prolific!

Summer Part III

"I can't wait for Winter, Daddy!" Owen announced cheerily at breakfast the other day. Now I can't say, living here in Chicago, that that is a statement you hear very often, if ever. I was especially surprised considering it was another beautiful 80 degree day and he had nothing but playing and fun on his agenda for the day. Curious, I asked him what exactly he couldn't wait for about Winter. He then starting waxing poetic about all the fun we were going to have. When pressed for specifics, he came up with sledding, and eventually, Christmas.

Now I view one of my many jobs as a parent as helping prepare my kids for the less pleasant aspects of life, since who wants to encounter the inevitable setbacks and adversity and unpleasant surprises life has in store without the appropriate tools to process the event and move on. With my worrying ways, and my wife's unrelenting and sometimes alarming lack of worrying, I am uniquely suited within the family to take on this task. That is why, in the face of Owen's enthusiasm, I found myself concerned about the letdown to come, as summer eased into the chill of fall, followed by the frenzy and (intermittent) joy of Christmas, and finally, weeks of hard, unrelenting, bitter cold before Spring once again comes around. I briefly found myself telling him how much more fun summer, with its whirlwind of swimming, vacations, fun and freedom was than winter. To his credit, he seemed completely unswayed, and continued to talk about winter with unabated enthusiasm.

And so it goes. Summer with its many pleasures is quickly giving way to fall. Owen is now back at his second year of pre-school without a peep of protest (those looking for the requisite touching and bittersweet parental blog entry about letting go as a child heads off to school will have to look elsewhere, at least this year). The only concrete indication of sadness at summer's passing so far has been Cooper's shrill, tortured shrieks and uncontrollable sobbing every time his feet are imprisoned in socks or, God forbid, shoes. If nobody else seems fazed, I am certainly not going to dwell on summer's passing. This point was reinforced this past weekend when I attended not just one, but two gatherings where late night conversations around fire pits with friends and neighbors reminded me that every season has its joys, and that the best way to ward off the cold is to arm ourselves with Owen's cheery enthusiasm for life and to bask in the warm glow of our relationships with friends and family. So, having learned something about life from my four year old once again, I am ready to bid farewell to summer with nothing more than a "thanks for a great time" and "see you again next year" as I head off with Owen and the rest of the crew to pursue fun and adventure in the seasons ahead.

Parent of the Year (POTY) Competition

Each year since Owen was born, we have bestowed upon a lucky parent in our house a Parent of the Year (POTY) award. Competition among the two fairly competitive nominees has always been fierce. Sadly, I have only been able to eke out a victory once, in 2004, largely on the strength of my willingness to continue to get up in the middle of the night for bottle feedings while Deanna, who needs more sleep than me, slumbered happily on. My narrow victory was of course helped along by my arsenal of other parenting skills (such as my unique ability to quickly dress a struggling baby/toddler) and innovations (such as the creation of "the knockout punch" - essentially getting then-baby Owen to regularly fall asleep with the aid of a final extra two ounces of formula after an earlier pre-bedtime bottle). Other years have not featured such close battles. Deanna has successfully (fine, deservedly) played the "pregnancy/giving birth" card to propel her to easy victories in 2003 and 2006. In the face of carrying around 13-odd pounds of babies while moving, setting up a new household, mothering then three-year old Owen, and holding down a demanding full-time job (including working late the night before giving birth to said 13 odd-pounds of twinage), my clear edge in lesser categories such as "skill at swaddling" and "most animated interpretations of children's books" just didn't seem to get me much traction with the voters. 2005 was a closer contest but, despite a year of solid parenting, I found myself once again giving my "happy just to have been nominated" speech to the largely uninterested crowd in the press room.

This year, however, readers o' mine, I have my eyes set firmly on the prize once again. Sure, Hayden's poop-eating incident and Christmas ornament glass eating incident have both been on my watch, but I am optimistic that those hiccups (non-poop scented, if you are lucky) in my record will be overlooked in favor of what has been a year of outstanding parenting. This is my time. Stay tuned for further developments.

They Grow Up So Fast

In recent weeks, 4 1/2 year old Owen has gotten his own place AND started a job, thereby going directly from little boy to adult and skipping those annoying teenage years. I was going to say he had moved out of the house, but the truth is he has merely "moved" into an apartment in the basement. When he is in his renter persona, he calls us by our first names ("Michael, when you get a chance, there is a lightbulb burned out in my apartment"), and acts like we are recent acquaintances - asking us to refresh his memory as to the babies names, complimenting us on our taste in furnishings, etc. We usually invite him to eat dinner with us, which he seems to appreciate. We also have been suggesting each night that instead of making the long trip back to his basement apartment, he sleep in our "guest room" (his actual bedroom) upstairs. To date, he has always taken us up on the offer, although he will sometimes head back to the basement to retrieve "his" toothbrush rather than borrow the one upstairs that belongs to "that four year old" who sometimes lives with us. He has furnished the basement with a table, some plastic food and dishes, and a chair and makeshift desk where he "can sit and relax." As of today, he appears to have constructed a fireplace down there out of cardboard bricks, complete with some hand drawn pictures on the mantle.

As of last week, he also started a new job as an auto-mechanic out on the driveway, where he spends part of each day tinkering with the three plastic foot-powered cars we recently acquired. At first we just had one, but the primeval grunting, pushing and anguished screaming matches between the non-talking twins over the use of it was such that we decided to acquire a second off of Craig's List (a stylish teal and yellow garage-kept model from a far-Western suburb). The third came when my in-laws dropped off a convertible that they acquired second-hand. Anyway, Owen announced one morning last week that he was starting a new job as a mechanic and did not have much time for breakfast as he did not want to be late for his first day. He has a plastic gas pump and various plastic tools which he uses on the job. His boss appears to be a little demanding, as Owen was slated to work yesterday on Labor Day. I offered to talk to his boss about how he should have Labor Day off so we could do things as a family; an offer he briefly considered before announcing that he had been mixed up and did not have to work after all. Now I just hope his boss is understanding of the fact that he is headed off to pre-school part-time tomorrow. Is it too much to hope that his employer offers some sort of tuition reimbursement program?