Fatherhood

Pictures of Christmas Past

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Today, I decided to take a look back at Christmas photos since Kate and I were married in 2007, and after looking through them all I had to pick out a few to share on the blog. It’s amazing what can happen over the span of just nine Christmas holidays together as a married couple. I’m feeling very grateful for all the great people we have been able to celebrate Christmas with over the years and in all the beautiful places those celebrations have happened in.

2007

Just a couple of spring chickens here. 24-years-old. In Milwaukee for our first Christmas. Kate’s family drove out from Wyoming to join us. Very memorable. It was MKE’s snowiest winter ever recorded. Thanks for that welcome, Wisconsin.

2008

At the end of 2008, a very tumultuous year politically-speaking, I laid out a year of Newsweeks on the floor of our apartment and stood on top of our coffee table and took several pictures of them. My camera was actually on the fritz this year, so I don’t have that many in focus pictures, this one among them, but I still enjoy these photos, even though Palin can be seen off to the right.

Again in 2008, the Bradleys drove all the way from Wyoming (with the dogs) to have Christmas in Wisconsin. Here, Kate cuddles up with Molly and Max.

2009

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Christmas in Farmington, NM. However, this picture was taken in Durango the day we flew back to Milwaukee. This was my parents’ first Christmas in New Mexico. It was very special to be with them for that, as it had been an especially hard couple of years for them with unforeseeable and massive changes in their lives. Missionaries.

2010

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The first Colorado Christmas as a married couple. Here, we have some of Kate’s family celebrating the New Year at our high-rise apartment in Denver. Kate and I were actually alone on Christmas Day this year. We went for a walk at Wash Park because it was 60 degrees out. The day before we drove up to RMNP because we could.

2011

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All I can say is, it must have been a very good year because we ordered 25 lbs of Wisconsin cheese to be shipped to our Colorado address. ‘Twas a bit excessive, but we loved every bite and we gave away at least 10 lbs of it.

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I am incredibly blessed to have spent many Christmases with my grandparents as well. This Christmas dinner I was in charge of cooking the prime rib. I followed my mother-in-law’s standby recipe and things went perfectly. But then I goofed up and made a rum cake with Bacardi 151. It came out a little stronger than normal. Instead of a nice hint of rum taste with your cake, rum taste was all you got.

2012

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Kate’s family in town for this Christmas. This was also the only time I’ll sit in Row 1 for a Denver Broncos game. ‘Twas sweet.

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Per the usual, at a Bradley Christmas there were so many appetizers that I was left asking myself and others, “Why are we cooking dinner?”

2013

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Back in Farmington, NM we were for Christmas 2013. It had been a very long time since my dad and I had been photographed right after a Christmas Eve service so we took care of that and what a sweet picture it is.

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This is such a unique Christmas in my mind. We had just bought our first house. I had still somewhat recently graduated from DU and was looking for work in Denver. And we thought our first baby was five months away. London arrived just one month after this photo was taken.

2014

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For 2014, Kate’s family was in Denver again. We exchanged gifts. I got some great stuff, but the only thing I needed was London by our side, healthy, and off oxygen. That is exactly what we got and it was the best gift I have ever received.

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My beauties on Christmas morning.

What Lies Beneath

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London had just peed out her diaper. I thought it was odd since London had not peed out of her diaper in months. It could have just been that whoever changed her diaper last did not get a good seal.

I couldn’t quite believe it so I dabbed my hand on the big wet spot on London’s right pant leg. This was not some ordinary pee. This was some extremely sour-smelling stuff. As I brought my hand to my nose I finally realized it wasn’t pee.

Let me back up thirty minutes. We were all finishing dinner when London tooted. And by tooted, I mean it lasted five whole seconds. Then a few seconds later, another long toot. A few seconds after that, one more small blast. Kate and I looked at each other and sort of laughed, but London’s toot was not too extraordinary. She had done this before, but it had been a very long time.

We moved into the kitchen. Tonight, we kept London in the high chair as we cleaned the dishes. She kept snacking some, but seemed particularly moody so we decided to get her out of her high chair. And now, we are all caught up to the moment when it dawned on us that London, for only the second time since we brought her home from the NICU, had a poop blowout.

Luckily, we could tag team this. Kate grabbed some plastic bags. I carried London a good two feet out in front of me as we went upstairs to the bathroom. Once there we did a cursory examination of what was in front of us, deciding on how we were going to approach this horribly smelly and pasty mess.

To our benefit, London was wearing a onesie, which she just barely fit in, one that we weren’t particularly attached to. Scissors it is, but first we had to peel her pants off. As we did so little pieces of poo fell to the tiled floor. I could feel the extra weight of the pants as I moved them aside.

Once I returned to the bathroom with scissors, I held London and Kate cut down the back of the onesie and it fell to the ground inside the plastic bag London was standing on. Next, the diaper. A new bag for London to stand on. We just loosened the velcro-like straps of the diaper and let it fall off London. Pushing that mess aside, I grabbed the bathmat for London to lay on while Kate cleaned London up a little bit. She was not nearly clean enough to sit in a tub.

Kate asked, “What about the pants?”

“Oh, I’ll clean out what’s in there and I think they’ll be fine.” I picked them up, started to turn the oozy side inside out and immediately gave up. “They’re done for,” I said, as I plopped them into the plastic bag with London’s onesie.

Kate got to giving London a bath. I thought I’d check out the high chair because I knew it was going to be messy. I had seen some remnants in the seat before we went upstairs, but I didn’t really know how bad it was. First, I attacked it with bleach wipes, a lot of them. It looked good to me after that. Hold on, what’s beneath on the reverse side of the high chair cushion? Well, it was a brown stain bleeding out from the hole in the cushion, which part of the buckle slips through.

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Breakfast cereal, quesadilla, and a little bit of everything else.

I took the cushion off, flipped it over, and hit it with some more bleach wipes. The tag of the cushion read, “Do Not Wash. Hand Clean Only.” Throwing it in the washer seemed necessary at this point. Costco bleach wipes can only do so much. I scrubbed and scrubbed, but that sour smell was still there.

London was out of the tub by now and getting dressed, so I took the cushion upstairs, filled the tub with scalding water, and put in enough laundry detergent for several loads. I threw the cushion in the tub and made sure it was waterlogged before I left it there.

Back downstairs there was one last mess to clean up. I hadn’t fully cleaned London’s high chair in months so when I took the cushion off I discovered a pretty thick strip of food. I saw fossilized quesadilla, Crispix, Cheerios, and other food ground down to unrecognizable particles. I was going to vacuum it, but Kate told me to just dump it in the backyard. I lifted the chair up and out the backdoor and flipped it upside down once I was over the grass. Success. No vacuuming necessary and the lawn got fertilized with breakfast cereal.

The high chair cushion took two days to dry out in the backyard, but now London’s high chair is as clean as it was when we first got it. And, we only lost a onesie and some pants.

The Derailing of a New Year’s Resolution

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Things were going well. I was on track to read 12 classics in 2015, but then I set my IMG_6671eyes on The Executioner’s Song. Heck, Dave Eggers said it would be the fastest 1000 pages I would ever read. He wrote it on the back of this book. He was wrong, but that does not mean the book isn’t any good. It’s excellent. Every time I pick it up I am instantly drawn into Gary Gilmore’s story.

But the book is still 1000+ pages. No matter how excellent it is, I still have a baby at home who is sleeping less during the day than she used to and it’s the holidays so, naturally, there are more domestic duties to undertake in the short breaks I get while London is sleeping. There’s Christmas shopping (online), Christmas card and calendar building, and I’ve also spent the last few days frantically clearing the basement so our remodel can start this week.

I think I realized about two months ago that 12 classics in 2015 was not going to happen. I am pretty sure I won’t finish The Executioner’s Song in 2015, but I will finish it. I am enjoying it and it’s the first work by Norman Mailer that I have read. I just wanted to publicly confess to not achieving one goal for 2015. I am already thinking about a 2016 reading goal: No New Books. I have to finish all the books I have started, set down, and never gone back to. And when I’m done with those, I can start on books I already own, but have never read, which are quite a few.

Cleared to Run

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For years I had been ignoring a substantial pain in my right knee, thinking it was something that required surgery. Finally, in September, I stopped procrastinating and made a doctor’s appointment. The doctor was quite confident I was dealing with patellar tendonitis. He signed me up for physical therapy, prescribed nitroglycerin patches, and sent me on my way.

Six PT sessions, including two dry needling appointments later, I am pretty confident that the doctor was right. I have a slew of exercises and stretches which have kept the pain to a minimum. Ideally, when you really want to heal the patellar tendon, you eliminate running or jumping exercises first and then do the physical therapy exercises. I have opted for a different route, simultaneously doing the PT and beginning to train for my first 10k on Thanksgiving day. So far, so good. My knee hurts almost every time I start a run, but a mile or two in it does not bother me at all. Couple the exercises with the knee strap I wear, and my right knee feels excellent the whole latter half of the run.

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Swimming days at UW. 2005.

My interest in running first grew when I was swimming for Wyoming. In the fall and spring, the team would often run a 5k before getting into the pool and swimming one, as in another 5k, not a 1k. I wasn’t the fastest runner at practices. There would always be a couple guys ahead of me who were just built for longer distances, but I always enjoyed those runs, even though they were at 7200 ft in elevation. In the years since, I have loved running for exercise, but I haven’t ventured into competition that much. I ran in one 5k in Milwaukee a few years ago and that is it.

With a Thanksgiving 10k on the horizon, I really wanted to do some formal training. Not knowing where to start, I did some googling, naturally, and I found this (the intermediate 10k training program from Hal Higdon). Feeling like that was as good a place to start as anything else, I enlisted myself in a solo training program. Of course, it’s not entirely solo. On many of my runs I have had to push London in the Mountain Buggy. She enjoys it tremendously. I, on the other hand, sort of prefer the days I can run by myself. Although it rests on three wheels, the Mountain Buggy with London in it is no light load. The max distance I have pushed London is six miles. In the beginning, pushing London for 3 or 4 miles was very hard, but now, six weeks in, I can push her for a four mile run and quite easily run under eight minute miles. Progress.

Come race day, I’ll have two big breaks. One, I won’t have to push London around the course. And two, perhaps even more of a boost, the race takes place at about 1000 ft in elevation. There is some bad news though. There is a decent chance it will be cold enough to watch your spit freeze right after it hits the ground. At the start of last year’s race it was 12 degrees.

Pictures of Preemies

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London. 8 Hours Old.

A Canadian photographer and father to two preemies, Red Méthot, has a popular project in which he photographs preemies holding their own baby pictures. I first saw this on Facebook and thought I should share it here. Follow this link to the Unworthy post.

This link leads to Red’s Facebook page, where you can view all of his photos in this project.

Particularly of note for me, were the two preemies photographed who are still on oxygen as toddlers. One of them was born at 23 weeks and the other at 26 weeks. Both boys. Kate and I are tremendously blessed that London, born at 26 weeks, is now 21 months old and approaching her one year anniversary of being free of oxygen support. Here’s hoping the two boys pictured with oxygen can lose that cannula for good sometime soon!

Millennial Parenting

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Yesterday, I sat down to read Time‘s cover story about millennial parents. Before starting out I made a few predictions. One, I would bring my palm to my face on more than one occasion. Two, I would read about a kid with a ridiculous name. And three, I would hear the same old stuff about one generation thinking the way they parented was the best and younger people parenting differently are just wrong.

Well, prediction one and two came true in the first paragraph. First facepalm, when I saw the vegan dad who is raising his kids vegan wearing a t-shirt, which simply said, “VEGAN.” This reminded me of the best joke I have ever heard about vegans. File this one away: How do you know someone is vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.

As for prediction number two, let’s just say that right away there was a name that, in my opinion, seems like a classic case of millennial desperation to make everything about their kid unique starting right away with the name.

Prediction number three was also accurate, although there was not as much worrying about millennial parents as I expected there to be. The article mostly detailed the differences among parents from three generations: millennial,  gen x, and baby boomers.

The author made a few lazy assumptions about millennials. One was right there on the first page, “And they continue to build vast archives of selfies.” Not true in my case. Maybe that is because I am just barely a millennial parent, but it is mostly true because I strongly dislike selfies. I take them, when no one else is around to take a picture of London and I, but that is out of necessity, not because I need to Instagram a selfie right now. Another prediction: if your Instagram profile is chock full of selfies we probably won’t be good friends.

One of the best points in this article was that, due to nearly universal use of social media among millennial parents, it is far easier for us to compare our parenting or family to some other family. The Facebook and Instagram posts often present “impossibly pristine, accomplished version[s] of their family lives on the web.” That is one of the more accurate statements about parents all across social media. We are highly selective about what we share. I am guilty of this so in the margins of the article I wrote, “write about the dirty, time-consuming tasks…Instagram them too.” A couple of nights ago I had the best opportunity to do this. London had vomited all over the couch, Kate, and the floor. Next time, that is going on Instagram.

The author later writes that “millennials say infighting over topics like breast-feeding and vaccines has driven them from online groups.” I haven’t experienced too much of this, but in some cases I have encountered parents of preemies who almost advertise the complications of their kid’s prematurity in their IG profile, Facebook page, or Twitter account. I have certainly shied away from groups or users like that, much in the same way I unfollow people on Facebook whose posts are always political.

A teacher interviewed in the articles makes the point that social media “is leading the children of millennials to form stronger social bonds than previous generations, because they’re in contact with one another more outside of school.” Is this a good thing though? Doesn’t it breed traits into our children such as the need to always be connected to the internet or to always have a smartphone nearby? Are these kids able to be alone? Will they be able to enjoy silence?

The last scrawl in the margins of this article I made was about kids being unique. A mom is quoted as saying, “I just want them to be unique.” Aren’t they unique in your own eyes? That should be enough. My kid or kids will always be unique to me and that is all that matters. Most importantly, I want them to be happy. I know that if they are happy, they will encounter people in their lives who consider them unique. These people will become their friends.

I think there is some urge in millennial parents for their kid to be unique in the eyes of the world, not just their eyes, like we are all trying to raise the next prodigy, celebrity, or savant. If there is a concerning theme in this article, that would be it for me.

A discovery about millennial parents that is particularly promising and hopeful to me is that parents in this generation favor more unstructured playtime and are more encouraging of kids to explore on their own, to be on their own. This, according to the article, is a move away from the helicopter parenting of Gen X. In my experience, this is pretty accurate.

If you are interested at all about Time’s take on millennial parents, then I encourage you to check this article out. I just tried to link to it, but was told that the page is only available to subscribers of the magazine. So it might necessitate a trip to the library or a little more sleuth work on the internet. The title of the article: Help! My Parents Are Millennials.

Those First 20 Months

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Don’t run. Don’t run from this. I know, you had these grand plans. Fatherhood doesn’t mean those plans have to be scrapped. Modified, perhaps. Delayed, most likely. But scrapped? No.

Impending fatherhood can do some crazy things to you. A part of you might want to tuck tail and run. We are selfish beings after all. In the moment, it is all too easy to see the coming changes as the way you are going to lose your freedoms.

I won’t lie. Some freedoms disappear. Some just temporarily. Some other freedoms for a little while longer. But as you wade deeper and deeper into fatherhood, those freedoms will come back. Normal will be erased, redefined, and can slowly return to something resembling a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

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You won’t get to help complete her first puzzle.

But first there will be dirty diapers, lots of them. Also, there won’t be sleep, at least not restful sleep. Your life will be interrupted by a baby and within that interruption, there are hundreds more interruptions, coming at the worst moments after just two hours of sleep, or at 4 am, or in the middle of a book, or in the middle of a job when you are facing a deadline. And your checking account will take a hit. Even if you get a ton of gifts at multiple baby showers, you will think there is a leak in your bank. And in the toughest moments, you might mourn the old you. Where did that carefree you go? You thought you had to be responsible before? Huh, you will say out loud, I wish I could talk to that old me and let him know how easy he has got it.

You could just remain that person. After all, many people shirk the mantle of fatherhood. I don’t recommend it though. I have only been a father for 20 months, but just in case you decide to take even just the first 20 months off, here is some of what you will miss.

Your daughter’s first smile. Her very first laugh. Her. First. Laugh. Isn’t that amazing?

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You won’t get pictures like this.

You won’t get to teach her one of her first words. You won’t get to cheer her on as she makes her very first army crawl across the living room.

You won’t get to pick clothes out for her. You won’t get to dress her in a new outfit for the very first time.

You won’t get to look at her in awe and start to see her become something that resembles a little of you and a little of the woman you loved long before your daughter was even in your imagination.

You won’t get to hear her say dada for the first time. You won’t get to hear her say your actual name for the first time, like I did today.

You won’t be able to scoop her off the ground after her first fall. You won’t get to have a hug from her. Those hugs, well, there is nothing like them.

The firsts don’t end at 20 months. They keep on going and going and going. Never in my life have I heard someone speak highly of a father who skipped out on those firsts. Can you even be a father if you skip this? Maybe. Eventually. But that road back is going to be a lot more challenging than just sticking this out.

If you could talk to your future self, say twenty years down the road, regardless of that person’s decision, I am confident he would say the same thing. You should be a father and a husband first. You will find out that all the other titles, adventures, and stories out there, although great they can be, will fade away once you embrace the most important role you will ever have. Father.

Dads Saving the Day

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I saw these videos of dads who have saved the day and had to share them on here. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but number 5 is a very solid effort. The first time I watched it I thought the dad was sprinting after the girls on the Little Tikes car, because putting two girls on a car like that and pushing it down a hill just seems like a bad idea. But the dad is actually saving another kid from being run over by those girls. Another great video, number 2, which is the most casual, but still quite impressive, save on the list.

Watch the videos from Buzzfeed here.

I saw these videos a while back, but I thought of them again on Saturday. We had just arrived for brunch at a restaurant. I was standing and holding London on my left arm/hip waiting for the high chair to arrive at our table. I was looking to my right, when I felt London’s weight shift in my arms. She had started to lunge out of my hold, head first. My right arm swooped around and saved her from sailor-diving into our brunch table. There is no video of it, but there was definitely some daddy-pride in the aftermath of that moment.

Dear Milwaukee

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I know it had been a while, but I loved our very brief reunion. You reminded me that it is very easy to gain weight living in Wisconsin. With all the cheese curds, beef sticks, delicious beer, and six-year aged cheddar to eat, when would I ever find the time to work it off? It’s hard keeping up with your diet. By the looks of it, quite a few of your residents agree.

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Thanks, Wikipedia.

Driving over your Hoan Bridge still scares me a little bit. I think of the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis every time I drive your span and then I think about what I would do or think during the long, long drop to the frigid waters of Lake Michigan. My face would probably freeze in a really stupid look and it would remain that way until I hit the water. Thanks for not collapsing.

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One view from the old commute.

I was reminded of the commute I had to an old job, specifically, just how damn beautiful it was. And yes, I took the Hoan Bridge because the view is worth it even though the bridge itself looks brittle. No, it wasn’t like driving up the coast of an ocean, but it was damn near it as long as you didn’t pay attention to the weather and focused on that strip of water that looks like it was pulled from the Caribbean and placed right there off the shore just for you.

This leads me to the weather. I had not forgotten that your weather can suck, but maybe it wasn’t the freshest memory in my head. After last weekend, you’ve remedied that. It was cloudy all weekend, windy, highs in the mid 50s. Honestly, I’ve seen that weather from you during nearly every month in the calendar. I remember a July 20th that felt like the middle of March.

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The beginning of a dynasty. Horizon League Champs 2010. I am in the upper right, arms outstretched.

Oh, and back to that commute. It took me to UW-Milwaukee, where I helped coach swimming for two years. I returned there to see some of the swimmers who were swimming at the time I was coaching and it was just perfect. These swimmers are now professionals (accountant, real estate agent, attorney, doctor), husbands, wives, and even some parents. I got to stand around and drink crappy beer with them (thanks for that awful taste in my mouth, Miller Lite) and share stories with one another about adulthood, but also about our brief, but fantastic stints as UWM swimmer and UWM coach, respectively. Sometimes those two years feel like peak career for me. That is ridiculous, I know. But still, do you know how many coaches coach for decades and never win a championship, never see their swimmers annihilate whole championship heats at conference? I saw both at UWM.

Milwaukee, I want to thank you for inexplicably plucking me from Colorado and setting me down on the shores of Lake Michigan. What a different land you are…from your cuisine, to your crap roads, to the stunning blues of the lake. It all combines to make you one sweet, little, big city.

SAHD Convention

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I found this good recap of the Annual At-Home Dads Convention, recently held in Raleigh (last year it was in Denver). I agree with nearly everything in the article except for this:

“Minivans are cool now. They’re all tricked out.”

Read the whole article here. 

Music Class in my Active Wear

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After music class this morning, this video is absolutely spot-on.

SAHD Guidelines for Music Class

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Yesterday was my first music class with London. I need to write some things down so I remember them for the next nine classes to come…

Try as hard as you can to act like there is another dad in the room. You are the only one, but be as comfortable as if there were three other SAHDs present.

Try not to sweat when you’re feeling like all eyes are on you because all eyes aren’t on you. It just feels that way because you’re the only SAHD there. IMG_7217

Just in case you do sweat a lot like yesterday, wear a darker shirt. Yesterday you wore a light blue shirt and within ten minutes you had a band of belly sweat visible on your shirt and by the end of the class it was impossible to hide the fact that you were pitting out.

Don’t drink a venti iced coffee from Starbucks right before music class. Trying to pee while holding London is not as easy as it once was. And yesterday you had to do it twice, right before class and immediately afterward.

Take pride in the fact that the first toddler on toddler assault yesterday was not London’s doing, but don’t forget to corral her if she starts winding up for a nice slap across the face, her customary greeting for babies.

If the opportunity arises, share London’s age. From past experience, I know there has to be someone there wondering why there is a three-year-old acting like a sixteen-month-old. Well, let them down gently, it’s because she is sixteen months old.

Also, be kind to anyone if they assume I am babysitting. Just because I am a dad and I am here with my daughter does not mean I am babysitting. I am parenting. No parent should feel like they are babysitting their own kid.

Do not assume a child’s age. Yes, he or she might be significantly smaller than London, but they might be six months to a a year older.

Just try to fit in. Try not to think of yourself as the pariah. You won’t be if you remember these things you’ve written down here. Oh yeah, and don’t sweat as much.

Shots From the Nashville Weekend

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We were in Nashville for a wedding last weekend. None of us had been there so it was fun being introduced to a new city and its offerings. One of the first things we tried, that I particularly enjoyed, was Barista Parlor. It came recommended to me from a friend who had gone to it before and it just so happened to be a five minute walk from our Airbnb house. Their cold brew coffee is delightfully smooth. I had several of them over the weekend.

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On the way up to the Fontanel Mansion. London rides in the bus like a big girl. This is so much better than holding her! That sounds bad, but she’s getting heavy and she’s already strong.

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The great room at the mansion. We were the youngest people on the tour of the mansion by 20+ years and the only ones along who didn’t know one damn thing about country music or popular, television variety shows of the early 1980s. Factoid about the vertical log in the exact middle of this photo: Chuck Norris signed it. Strongest log in the house, the tour guide told us.

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Not the first time I’ve been in a shower like this, but the first time I’ve had my picture taken while I’ve been in a shower like this. It’s worth documenting once.

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When family selfies go well.

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When family selfies go horribly.

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Had to get some weenies at I Dream of Weenie, where they also sell Professional Weenie Handler pins.

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Nashville was showing off the morning after the wedding. We had a great time walking around downtown. Our biggest gripe about the entire downtown area and other parts of Nashville is parking. Whoever owns Premier Parking in Nashville is making a lot of money. $16 to park for two hours? C’mon, this isn’t San Francisco. On our way to the airport yesterday we stopped by Opryland to look at the botanic gardens. No way that was going to happen because once we arrived we saw that parking was $23. Nice try, Opryland.

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Panorama from the pedestrian bridge in downtown Nashville.

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Other than the cost of parking (and almost anything along Honky Tonk row) Nashville really impressed us. We would love to go back again. Friendly people. Great food and coffee. Of course, good bars too. And a river going right through the middle of a city can only make things better.

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We were all over with traveling by the end of yesterday, but especially this little gal. She did so well! Our next family trip is to Breckenridge for another wedding and then a week after that we are off to Milwaukee for a much-needed reunion with the Brew City and an opportunity to introduce London to family and friends!

Ten Insults SAHDs Hear

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I read this great article yesterday. A stay-at-home dad writes about the ten insults he hears as a SAHD.

All of them are so accurate and pretty universal. I think I have heard eight out of ten. I have yet to hear, “It must be nice not to work” and “Seriously, you change diapers?”

Great read. Here’s the link.

What Makes You Happy?

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With encouragement from my wife, I am very slowly reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I have enjoyed reading about Rubin’s year-long journey to a happier life.

The book includes a nice mix of practical and philosophical advice for a happier life. In Screen Shot 2015-09-06 at 11.59.48 AMthe last chapter I read, Rubin spent a fair amount of time writing about what makes her happy. She kept asking herself, am I happy doing this? She asked her readers, what makes you happy? In response, Rubin and her blog readers concluded that what truly makes them happy is not always what they wish made them happy. For example, Rubin might be happiest being at home reading a book without interruption, but in her mind she is tormented by the thought that she might be happier on a hike even though she knows perfectly well that is not going to make her as happy.

Since reading the chapter I have been thinking about what sort of activities make me happy. At this point in my life, being able to do something without interruption makes me happiest. It does not really matter what that something is. If I can sit down and watch a movie without interruption, I am thrilled. Read a chapter of a book without being interrupted? So refreshing and invigorating. Refinishing an end table for our living room without an interruption? This actually give me a strong sense of accomplishment, which combined with the effort it takes to refinish furniture, gives me a lasting happiness that helps me through the menial tasks of SAHD duty: diaper changes, bottle service, dishes, laundry, house-cleaning, etc.

So, today, I set out to do a few things without interruption. One, go to Novo Coffee and read a couple of articles in Vanity Fair without interruption (done). Two, write a blog without interruption (currently in progress). Three, go home and eat lunch while watching an hour of television without interruption (coming soon). Four, work on refinishing an end table without the worry of being interrupted (also, coming soon).

Time for number three.

2 Good Documentaries

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I regularly write movie reviews on a Facebook page I created a few years ago. When I feel like it, I’ll post them here as well. Both of the movies mentioned below are currently on Netflix.

Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist

The common cycling saga one hears about in the US is all about Lance Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 1.24.48 PMArmstrong’s rise and fall, but this doc focuses on a cyclist who I’m embarrassed to mention I did not even know. Pantani raced in an age where every single team in the Tour and the Giro doped.

Had he been able to continue cycling, there does not seem to be doubt in people’s minds that he would have far exceeded Armstrong as the most successful doping cyclist to ever live.

The guy was a machine, seemed like he was made to ride a bike in a way that Armstrong never was. As soon as he hopped on his mom’s bike for his first training ride it was clear to his parents and his first coach that he was a prodigy. They were correct. But going pro turned out far more challenging than Pantani expected. The length of the rides were not a problem. The climbs were not a problem. The major challenge came when Pantani was introduced to the seedy underbelly of the cycling world at that time. This documentary follows Pantani’s arc as a professional, from his meteoric rise to the sudden, sad denouement.

Point and Shoot

This is a zany documentary about a zany kid who got his MA in IR from Screen Shot 2015-09-04 at 1.25.19 PMGeorgetown and then decided he hadn’t done anything cool, wasn’t a man, didn’t know crap, so he rode his motorcycle across the Middle East, came home, and then went back to fight alongside friends he made in Libya against Gaddafi and his army. Oh, and he was also imprisoned for five months during Libya’s civil war.

The guy is unique and he knows it. His moderate to severe OCD also plays a prominent role in his journey as would be expected. It’s a fascinating tale and it makes for one wild ride.

Buy Me A Beer

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No one knows what it is like to be a stay-at-home parent unless they have
done it themselves.

Maybe you watched your kids for a long weekend so your spouse could get a break. Maybe you watched your kids for a week while your spouse was away. Maybe you actually used all your paternity or maternity leave after your child was born. These are all great things to do. Necessary, in my view.

IMG_1018_43927But doing all of those stints with your kid doesn’t give you enough experience to know what being a stay-at-home parent (SAHP) is like.

There is an end you can see in all three scenarios mentioned above. Of course,  for SAHDs or SAHMs, there is also an end, but well beyond the horizon and out of sight. As a SAHD, I’m not yearning for the end of this job, but until you grasp the permanence of staying at home, you haven’t gotten a taste for the real thing.

And then you must prepare yourself because that’s the tip of the iceberg. There are so many challenging aspects of stay-at-home parenting. I have mentioned some of them in previous posts: limited adult-to-adult communication, a decent dose of isolation, the fact that you’re not making money, and facing the stigma associated with being a SAHD, which is certainly one thing SAHDs have to deal with a little more than SAHMs.

So why am I writing about this? Well, it’s long overdue. I have talked to too many people since becoming a SAHD who have never been a SAHD or SAHM themselves who imply that they know what it is like. Yet, we don’t do this in conversations with other professionals (and yes, I’m implying that I’m a professional and, once again, if you don’t get that, you’ve never been a stay-at-home parent) like doctors, accountants, or teachers. We don’t assume to know what daily challenges they face because we once used an epipen, did our own taxes using TurboTax, or completed a math problem on a chalkboard for an audience, respectively. So why do so many people assume they know the day-to-day ups and downs of SAHDs and SAHMs because they spend the weekend around their kids?

Because they assume it is easy. They assume it just must be like the weekend over and over again. How hard can that be?

I think the real problem is that being a stay-at-home parent is not viewed and talked about as a real job by enough people. Too many people talk about it as a hobby. I cannot tell you how far from the truth calling this a hobby is. Hopefully, I’ve conveyed that from time to time on this blog.

Next time you find yourself talking to a SAHP, treat them like a professional, understand that they work 80 hours a week, and buy them a beer because they don’t have a paycheck.

I Shot A Wedding, Here Are Some Of My Favorites

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Last week I had the pleasure of shooting my sister-in-law’s wedding. The first time she told me I was going to shoot her wedding, she was not even engaged, so I knew whenever the big day arrived I would have some sort of responsibility. Of course I took the photos for free. In fact, this being the first wedding I shot, I think that helped. I felt like there was barely any pressure and maybe that actually helped with having confidence. Today I wanted to share a few of my favorites from the beautiful backyard wedding. The above photo is of a sign my wife painted for the entrance to my in-laws’ backyard.

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Before things got underway last Saturday I took pictures of the beautiful venue. My in-laws had a beer garden in their backyard. Can you believe it? And great beer on tap.

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Found this girl cruising through the yard. Cute as ever.

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Once it was time for the wedding to begin I took up a great position where I was able to see Kendra come out of the house. Only her parents and I could see her because she had not yet walked around the corner of the house. I took so many shots of this moment.

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It is a weird thing to be given permission to photograph a private conversation, to get as many great photos as you can from a deeply personal moment. This was the first time I have ever been tasked with shooting such a moment. From the look on Kendra’s face, I know Tim was saying something touching to his daughter, something for her ears only, yet I have twenty pictures of the moment. The words I will never know, but the pictures will be seen by many. I find the difference intriguing.

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Not quite confident enough on her feet to be a flower girl, London makes her grand entrance with assistance from Kate. My beauties.

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In this series of photos, Kendra’s parents walk her down the aisle. I probably took fifteen to twenty shots during this. Tim’s expression does not change one iota from shot to shot, it is frozen in this fatherly, stoic, and proud gaze.

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Of all the photos I took, this is my favorite. The groom, Jake, has an expression of joy on his face that I have never seen before so I was so happy to see that I had caught it.

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The newlyweds. The purple wedding. The perfect backyard for a wedding with a two-week notice.

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The happy couple with their Max, also sporting purple.

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The groom serenades his bride. Good sock game.

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By candlelight and the flashlights of four to five cellphones.

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Under the big top for a little more music and drink.

The Selma Snub

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Going into the awkwardly long, movie award season, I remember Birdman had most Screen Shot 2015-08-19 at 4.23.34 PMof the momentum. Having seen it, I was not that surprised. The movie is shot in such an innovative way. The story was interesting. The acting superb. But the ending, the ending left something to be desired. Most people I have spoken with about Birdman mention that they walked out of the theater angry, confused, and generally wondering, what the hell just happened there? It seemed like the three positives I mentioned already, the cinematography, story, and acting overshadowed the overall effect, which was meh.

Come Oscar night, one could see the award for best picture coming a mile away, the meeting of it and Birdman was inevitable. At that point in time I had not seen all the Oscar favorites, Selma among them. I was extraordinarily late to Selma, having just watched it a few nights ago, but now I know just how badly that movie was robbed when it came to the award for best picture.

Selma is a movie that instantly grabs ahold of you and shakes you, it makes sure you are watching, it pleads with you to remember what you are seeing, and it begs you to not look away. It is powerful, important, and artistic. As a whole, it works in ways that Birdman and other movies from last year did not.

As I watched, I kept asking, how was this movie so drastically overlooked? Why is Oprah not in more movies? Because in this movie she instantly conveyed powerful emotion without even speaking in most scenes. What did Birdman have that this one did not besides Michael Keaton stomping through Times Square in his whitey tighties?

I can think of a number of things Selma has which Birdman did not. To borrow from MLK Jr., it has the “fierce urgency of now,” a story, unfortunately, quite relevant to today’s ongoing racial tensions and institutionalized racism. It evoked an important sense of disgust for a big slice of this country’s past. I think as Americans we occasionally have to be reminded of how blacks were treated then and how they are still victims today because of the color of their skin. To learn the latter, all that is required of us is to turn on the news or read a newspaper. For the former, sometimes it takes a talented director like Ava DuVernay to bring the events of Selma to the big screen in such a way that haunts us for hours and days to come. And, hopefully, longer.

Hollywood is selective about what trends it chooses to buck. The trend of the white, male director seems to be a lasting one. The trend of making the majority of movies for a male target audience ages 16-25 is here to stay. These trends should be bucked in favor of bringing back a more important trend, that of awarding the Oscar to the best picture of the year, not just the trendiest.

The House Is Not For Sale

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The last time I had a garage sale I priced every item, including the house. There were no takers that day. And on Saturday, when I finally had another garage sale this house was not for sale.

Instead, this garage sale was one in a series of steps we needed to take in order to finish the basement. There is a lot of stuff down there that we do not use and no longer have a need to hold onto, such as English class notes from UW, which I mentioned a couple posts ago.

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Ready for the deals!

Saturday was a huge success for us. At the end of the day we did not move that much stuff back into the basement. The majority of goods we sold and then we had one carload of them left for Goodwill.

Among the items, which did not sell, is a dining room table with two leaf inserts and six chairs. Interested? Leave a comment because this thing is going up on Craigslist for a sweet price. There were some leftover books, a few from my grad school days at DU. It wasn’t all that surprising to know the demand for The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security is not that high, but why not try? But my two copies of Goodfellas on DVD (one of them unopened!) didn’t sell either. Are people insane? Have they not seen this movie? One of the all-time best. Watch it. Tonight.

One of the puzzling things about garage sales is what sells and what does not sell. A sturdy, still-in-good-condition wingback chair from the American Revolution did not sell, but someone bought Gone In 60 Seconds (eww, 24% RottenTomatoes score) for a dollar? This does not make sense. And that chair, well, it’s not quite that old and it found its way back into the basement. I had a collection of Pepsi cans for the last 16 years. It was a set of 24 collector cans from the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. They sold for $3 after pricing them down from $10. Although when I was 16 and collecting these cans I had a fantasy of selling them for a couple hundred dollars sometime in the not-too-distant future, but by 10am on Saturday, selling them for three bucks was one of the best moments of the day.

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Tired now. Ready for a snack!

After the early rush of professional garage sale shoppers, who show up early or even before the sale starts, lump everything they want to buy in a pile, and then ask you what you will part with it for, there was quite the lull. I think we didn’t have any interest for an hour. This cute little lady came by with her push toy looking for some deals. She found some shade instead and a granola bar.

After the lull, the stragglers seriously impressed. One of them bought my Pepsi cans, size XXXL standard issue sweatpants from the University of Wyoming athletic department, a Starbucks shirt from my barista days, and Unbreakable on DVD. One big ticket item was left, my mountain bike. It was time to clear space in the garage for my next bike, which will not be a mountain bike. Plus, these are just some of the repairs the bike needed: new rear tire, new rear wheel, new disc brake pads, new bike seat, some spoke fixing on the front wheel, and a thorough tuneup. After a few hours, I did not think it was going to move. Right about the time we were thinking of packing everything up it sold. I was a little proud of the bike in this moment and of how I had kept it together for so long, even when it meant using gorilla glue to hold the spokes in place.

Now that the bike was gone and it was going on 12, we started packing up. A couple lucky shoppers got an old digital camera for free and a copy of Command and Conquer: Generals for nothing!

But still, the table and chairs remain untouched. Someone still has yet to get that lucky!