Parenting

Do It Afraid

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“Sometimes fear does not subside and one must choose to do it afraid.” – Elisabeth Elliot, poet.

That is how I feel about writing these days, months, and years since I have not put pen to paper and fingers to keys. I have waited for the fear to subside. As you can tell, it has been a long wait and it would have been longer. But for what? I do not know.

Even stupider, I have waited for ideas to come to me without first sitting down at the desk.

And worst of all, I thought I would eventually convince myself, by taking a long break from writing, that I am indeed not bad at it. That most definitely did not happen. I think I have tired of the waiting. Tired of telling myself, writing, well, that is something I will do when life calms down. I think I have known for a while now that it will not.

Furthermore, my voice will not come to me if I do not share it. So, I will share it, but as Elliot reminds me, I must choose to share it afraid. For now, I have to lie to myself to get my butt in chair. (Thank you, Anne Lamott). You have something worth sharing. People will connect to the story of you and your family. I can build a following if I do this. I do not suck at writing. I will get better, even become good at this. Doing this will improve other areas of your life. These are some of the lies I tell myself. And to some degree, I recognize that some of them are not lies at this point. I guess the evolution that has taken place in my head is that it is better to convince myself of these lies than to go on believing much worse ones that I have spent a decade or longer believing, such as:

  • You are not unique.
  • You are alone.
  • This experience of being a stay at home dad, raising an autistic daughter and a neurotypical son is not unique enough to share.
  • I am not good at writing.
  • This will never make me a dime.
  • After spending 12 years as a dad and caregiver, no one will ever hire me again.
  • I am old and washed up.
  • If my own sister once told me this blog is ridiculous, then I should not try anymore.
  • I should not share because that one cousin called into question my whole education (a BA in English and an MA in International Studies) and approach to life all because I dared to support the COVID-19 vaccines. I should be fearful of pissing off people like him.

Yes, these are all things I have convinced myself of over the years as my writing became rarer, as blank journals stacked up, as keys stopped clacking. But no more. I will believe the first set of lies that, even if they do not come true, at least I will be a better person for having lived like they are truths.

The fear bit, well, I do believe the more I do this the more it will dissolve away. But I must be prepared for it to always be there and to always put pen to paper alongside a well of dread.

A Little More About 2025

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Here is a shorter summary of just some of what this family did in 2025!

January – Love a good run on the first day of the year. A clean slate. Everything back to zero. All things feel new, even though a lot of them aren’t. London turned 11 and made her own Barbie cake! I did not do dry January!

February – I turned 42. We entered the air fryer game. Should have done that sooner. I rented a storage unit for decluttering our house and prepping it for going on the market. My mom and I get drinks at Traveling Mercies, an excellent bar at Stanley Marketplace. Girls trip to Omaha. Guys trip to Steamboat. Guys win.

March – March 6th, the house is listed. The sight of the sign puts a pit in my stomach. London completes her last ABA session. It’s the right time, I think. But at the same time, I feel scared of what life will look like without any of those sessions. The obligatory Great Wolf Lodge trip is scratched off the list. Camden had never been. We did it once for him and won’t go back. 

April – The house goes under contract. Meanwhile, we look all over SE Aurora and Centennial, even Parker, for homes, but go under contract only once, breaking contract the next day. We offer $5k over asking on one house and lose to an offer $50k over asking. I take pictures of our pristine house before serious packing up begins. I get tremendously sad about that. 

May – I wrote about that yesterday. Read it here.

June – London finished elementary school. We moved from one rental in Denver to my parents’ house in Fort Collins, where, surprise, we started looking at homes, hoping to find and close on one by the end of summer. The day before we leave for a California road trip our parked cars are slammed into by a 16-yr-old driver out at 12:30am for “snacks.” My car is later totaled. The minivan is good and we drove it the next day. It was 107 degrees in Las Vegas when we arrived and I valeted the minivan next to Lambos and Ferraris at Mandalay Bay, not joking. There were lots of pools at the hotel, but with people packed into them like sardines. The night walk along the strip was memorable and worth doing one time, but we passed on the $16 coffee in our hotel room, the minimum $150 spend per diner at the steakhouse, and Camden laughed at the thong-clad dancers strolling the street who asked him if he wanted a photo with them.

July – On to LA, which was much cooler and enjoyable. Stayed with good friends. Swam in their pool, not packed with people. Went on to Oceanside and met Kate’s family there. We did it, we went to Disneyland for the day. A team of cast members had to stuff me into Space Mountain so I could join the rest of the family on the rollercoaster. I was taller than the Chewbacca in the Star Wars area and London got to meet Rapunzel. London was overjoyed. We grilled Cardiff Crack, the best. Back in Fort Collins, we took possession of our new home on Kate’s birthday, but didn’t spend the night for a few more nights. We attended the wedding of good friends in Monument. 

August – Unpacking really got under way. The kids started school August 13th and 14th, insanely early. Their first 7 days of school were half days because it was so hot and not every school here has AC. They are attending schools I went to while I lived in Fort Collins from 1991-1999. Casa Bonita and Water World trip with the best people. The Casa really is a fun place! London starts cross country. So proud of her!

September – After I rent a U-Haul in Denver and load up all our things from the storage unit and unload all the things at the house, all of our belongings are under one roof for the first time since February. Both cars in the garage on September 25th. A big day. We meet more neighbors here in less than two months than we did in over ten years at our last house. People in FoCo are more open to talking. They’re friendlier than your average Denverite. The USAF Thunderbirds put on a show here and practice right over the house a couple times. 

October – We took a much-needed mountain weekend trip with my parents at the YMCA of the Rockies. The weather and views were perfect. My kids love the outdoors and the mountains. My parents played a role in that and I am forever thankful for it. Camden turned 8! We threw one of those big birthday parties with pizza, cake, snacks, and games. That’s not much fun at all, but Camden loved it!

November – A late fall trip to Steamboat, where it is in the 50s. I swim outdoors. I dig out our Christmas decorations from a crawlspace, which is primarily filled with Christmas decorations. I run my first Turkey Trot in Fort Collins. It’s a big race and I am happy with my time. We see the northern lights for the first time in all of our lives. 

December – I always love this month. Christmas decorations and lights are up before the month starts. London and Camden both have Christmas concerts. London still wants to visit with Santa at the Gardens on Spring Creek. We attend several excellent Christmas parties and get some time in Denver on a 60 degree day. There’s an early Christmas celebration with my parents before we travel to Omaha for a week. Omaha is mild. I manage to get in 22 miles of running while we are there. We go to Top Golf, the only place I enjoy golf. My father-in-law turns 70. We party like he’s 30. We tell the kids we are going to London this summer. They freak. We come back to Fort Collins and ring in 2026 with dear friends, good drinks, homemade pizzas (one of which I dropped on the kitchen floor), and the kids stay up until midnight for the first time. We all sleep in, sort of, like just to 7:30. That’s late for us. 

Happy New Year!

Closing Day

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How do you sum up a year? I have in the past, written blog posts under the title “The Year in Review,” or something along those lines. I started writing such a thing a couple days ago and I finished today, but it’s too long. I post the whole review and not many people are going to make it to the end. I’ll boil that down to the bones and post that later. But for now, I’ll leave you with my thoughts on May 2025. It was a big year for my family and May was the hardest, busiest, and most emotional month in a year of busy and emotional months.

May 2025 In Review

We sold our house on 5th Avenue this month. The buyers, inexplicably, wanted us to take apart a floating deck we built in between our house and our neighbor’s house to the west. My parents and Kate’s dad were there to help dismantle the deck. We enjoyed our small, but perfect backyard on that wonderful spring evening. We found a home to live in for a few weeks until the kids finish school. It’s in the same neighborhood, within walking distance of our beloved 5th Ave house.

The PODS arrived May 13th, 3 of them. They’re filled on the 14th, to the ceiling. The next day they are taken away and the house is cleaned for eleven hours, luckily, not by me. I take videos of the empty house and record voice memos of what I remember from every room, hallway, closet, and door, crying or fighting back tears in each one.

My last moment in the house is the morning we close. The kids are at school. Kate is at work. I touch the walls in the living room. I pat them. I run my hands across their textured surface. I hug them. I say goodbye to the house like an old friend, a friend of eleven years, eleven of the toughest, eleven of the best. I laugh at myself as I speak to the house and whisper into its walls, telling it to be as nice to the next family as it was to ours, telling it to be a good friend to them.

From the front door, I take one last look about ten times. The house is open concept and has a relatively small first floor so with a glance I see the dining room, kitchen, and living room. I could have stood there for the rest of the day cycling through memories from every corner of those rooms, but it was time to close that door one last time.

At the bottom of the stairs, standing on the sidewalk, I felt so lonely, like I had truly lost a friend. I called Kate and let all the emotions out. I had a mix of feelings: gratitude for this structure I just stepped out of for the last time, a sense of mourning our Denver lives, and a greater sense of fear, not knowing where we would live next, and second-guessing our decision to move at all.

But the day did not allow for much contemplation. I had to unpack and continue our sort of move-in at the temporary house. I had elementary field days to attend. I had a half marathon to run in Steamboat Springs. (Note to self: never train for a race and move at the same time ever again.)

I am grateful for the busyness of the days following our 5th Ave close. They did not allow for me to further mourn or worry about what was next. We just had to continue life as usual in Denver, just with a different place to come back to at the end of those hectic days.

1000 Pushups in a Week

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Advice, strategies, and thoughts on 1000 pushups in a week:

Anytime you think of them, drop and do 10. Do you know that 1000 pushups a week is only 142.86 pushups a day? Most of us are up for well over 12 hours a day. That’s only 11.9 pushups per hour! Totally possible!

My pushup numbers were recently questioned when competing in a pushup challenge. All contestants were supposed to complete 400 pushups a week. My lowest number of pushups in a week for the last five weeks was 700.

In the last five weeks, I have completed 4,036 pushups. An average of 807.2, although that’s a little bloated by this last week of 1000.

Moving back to strategies, anywhere is a good place for a pushup, even in the shower if it is big enough. I am 6’9″, a shower big enough for me to do pushups in is not in my house, nor have I seen one, but I have seen plenty of showers in which an average height male could drop and get 20 ups in.

Keep a note in your phone titled Pushups Completed Today. Every time you knock out a set, no matter how large or small, instantly record those numbers in that note. It’s great to look back through the day and see that number grow and grow, bringing a great sense of accomplishment to the day. Also, at the end of the day, when it’s time to enter your numbers you have a handy note on your phone to tell you exactly how much ups you pushed.

There aren’t many rules to a pushup challenge, other than you have to do a proper pushup. No wide placement of the hands, but your elbows don’t have to stay in contact with your side through the movement. No incline pushups either. Those are too easy. But yes, decline pushups would count. Decline meaning with your feet on a chair or up a couple steps while your hands are on the ground.

Pushups don’t require special athletic clothing. They can be done in a suit. They can be done in your birthday suit, although that does mean some parts of your anatomy may be touching the floor during every rep. This can be uncomfortable and certainly a bit awkward if someone else is in the room.

This last week I did 150 pushups a day for the first five days. I did 170 on day 6 and only 80 today (that felt nice). The upper body definitely needs some rest now, but I never did more than 40 pushups straight. I often did sets of 25, but more common were sets of 20, 15, and 10, making that 1000 in a week completely manageable.

And if thinking about doing 1000 in a week is too overwhelming, set a timer to go off every 30 minutes or 1 hour for a reminder to do 10 or 15 pushups.

After building up to 1000 pushups in a week you will definitely be able to do things with your pecs that you have never been able to do, or haven’t been able to do in a long time. If you squeeze your pecs together and flex, BOOM, pencil holding cleavage. Make your kids aware that you can “dance your pecs.” They will delight in that oddity and it’s even something that you can keep your shirt on for.

Get your kids involved. On my last set of 20 today, my son was motivated to do pushups with me so he dropped to the ground and did sit-ups, telling me he can only do ten at a time. That’s okay. If you are walking around the house and randomly doing sets of 20 pushups your kids are going to get the message, pushups are important, fun, a great workout, and you can do them anywhere! Okay, maybe not in the shower.

Keep pushing up!

Welcome to the Pump House: Adventures in Fatherhood and Breast Milk Management

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A version of this post appeared on my blog years ago when London wasn’t even a year old. But I just tweaked it a bit, slimmed it down , and added here and there. I think it’s better now. Here it is…

Never in my wildest dreams, as I prepared for fatherhood, did I think I was going to spend so much time with lactation nurses, reviewing the intricacies of hand expressing (including motions), analyzing breast milk volumes, discussing engorgement, and just how much breast milk one could fit in a chest freezer.

A few hours prior to my meeting with lactation consultants, thinking there were three more months to learn these things, I didn’t even know lactation nurses existed. I knew that some babies were born prematurely, but I didn’t know my wife’s breast milk would still come in just as early as our daughter wanted out at 26 weeks gestation.

So it was that our 109-day stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) started with a crash course in breast milk. Within those first days of life for my daughter (London), my wife (Kate) and I spoke at great length with not just one lactation nurse, but several of them about breast milk and breasts, starting with a nurse asking my wife if she was going to pump breastmilk. Partly due to the trauma of the last 24 hours, and partly due to my complete lack of knowledge about breastfeeding, I had not thought a bit about breast milk or pumping. Kate was of a similar mindset at that particular moment, but we were both satisfied to know that there was a good chance Kate’s milk would come in. The early drops of colostrum, the nutrient-dense milk first released by the mammary glands, often come in shortly after the placenta detaches from the uterine wall, no matter the gestational age.

A couple of hours later a lactation nurse wheeled into our room something that looked like a medieval torture device. They were calling it the Symphony. They hooked Kate up to it and it hummed and sucked for 18 minutes. At the end of that first session, we could just barely make out two milliliters of colostrum. A few hours later Kate produced 2.6ml and then later that night 3.8ml. The next day, January 31, marked Kate’s first 24 hours of pumping. She produced 32.6ml that day, or 1.1 ounce. The lactation team handed us a log with the direction that we were to write down when Kate pumped, for how long, and the total volume.

We then received a DVD to watch, which would apparently help Kate get more milk by hand expressing and provide tips to alleviate the pain of engorgement. We were to watch it and return it to the NICU team afterwards. That same day, we popped the DVD into my laptop to watch some before going to bed. One minute into this educational video, the biggest breast and nipple either of us had seen appeared on screen. Kate laughed so hard she began to worry she might injure herself being only two days clear of a C-section. Everything hurt. If we continued watching, we put Kate’s health at risk. I slammed the laptop shut. Tears ran down our cheeks from laughing so hard.

Who knows who is responsible for making this particular lactation video, but may I make one small suggestion on behalf of my wife and all women who have recently had C-sections? Great. Do not make the first breasts on the video also be the largest breasts known to mankind. They should not be comically large, needing 3-4 hands to get them under control. In fact, this video is a danger to new mothers everywhere, they might literally bust open their gut laughing from it, like we almost did.

Thus, it fell on me to watch the lactation video alone, gleaning from it any helpful tips and then sharing them with Kate. She was impressed. It wasn’t like Kate’s breast milk volumes needed any help. Not long after London was born, I was spending part of everyday rearranging containers of breast milk in the chest freezer in the basement—the chest freezer we needed to buy solely to store breast milk. Kate and I would joke that I knew more about hand expressing breast milk than she did so I should print up some business cards and walk around the NICU offering my services to anyone who needed them. Hand Expressions by Bryce. Simple and to the point.

By day of life 57 for our little girl, Kate was producing 1,863ml a day, or 63oz of breast milk. To put that in perspective, London was fed a total of 800ml on day 57, the most she had ever consumed in one day. In fact, it took London a long time to drink as much milk in one day as Kate got from one 20-minute pump. A point was reached where no amount of rearranging the breast milk in the freezer would make room for more. I picked up a second chest freezer at Costco and Kate started to fill that, too.

For the months London was in the NICU we rented a Symphony pump, which at the time retailed for $1500-2500, and kept it in our bedroom. We started to call it the pump house. When at home, Kate disappeared every three to four hours to spend some quality time with the Symphony. As all moms know that schedule wreaks havoc on sleep and work responsibilities, but Kate did an excellent job. I did what I could by waking with her every time throughout the night, assisting in bottling of the milk, labeling and recording volumes, washing pump parts, and then delivering milk to the freezers in the basement. So, at our house, at least two times a night, Netflix and chill was swapped out for Netflix and pump.

As Kate tapered off the pump, we were just filling up the second chest freezer and the lactation nurses understood why Kate was putting an end to pumping. She had developed a reputation in the NICU as a super producer. At London’s discharge, on May 19th, 109 days after she was born, the NICU staff wrote messages to us. One of our favorites from the lactation team wrote, “Your mom was a rock star with pumping. She could have fed three babies in the NICU!”

Next week, London will be six-months-old and I can thaw breast milk from three months back. And right now it’s lunch time for the little girl, to the chest freezer I go.

On My 10th Father’s Day

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This could be my last summer as a full-time stay-at-home dad. As much as I need and crave time away from my kids, after less than 96 hours without them, I miss them dearly. Their squeals, laughs, pitter patter of small feet, noises from the kitchen as I wonder what they’re helping themselves too. Even sometimes their cries, when the silence without them feels like a suffocating blanket of absence.

Being alone is very nice. More time to catch up on the projects you’ve been meaning to do. A lot more time to read that book catching dust wherever you last set it. And an abundance of time to binge the newest buzzy show. There is just a lot more time to busy yourself with work, entertainment, things. And you can do all of it with minimal interruptions or, if you prefer, in absolute silence.

But after a little bit, after you get a taste of all those things that you were missing and that you have now done, there’s something else. There are questions in the quiet. Is this all there is? If this was life all the time would I get sick of it? Would solitary pursuits give way to success, self-absorption, or both? Would I feel like I am missing out on something? Would I get lonely or would my spouse be enough? Would she get lonely? Even questions about my far flung end arise. Will we arrive graying and wrinkled at the end of our lives wondering what could have been? Who are we missing? Who could be by our side now as we live our last days? What being/s will we never know because we do not have a child? I feel like the what-ifs would continue stacking up and then it would be too late.

What I don’t spend time doing is wondering what I could give to the world or to society if I did not have kids. Sure, it could be something great, but would it be as awe-inspiring, humbling, and as terrifying as having created a life? No. As holding the smallest hand in the pad of your index finger? No. As head-spinning as bearing witness to how fast the early years of life fly by? No. As proud a moment when you see your child shed a bit of your imprint on them to become someone wholly new, someone independent from you, but still your heart? No. As terrifying as the moment you realize they will spend many, many years on this Earth without you and you won’t be able to rush to their side anymore at the first sound of trouble, pain, or loneliness? I mean, the sadness of that thought could be enough to drive you to never have a kid, but it’s only a thought that parents can truly understand. And, by then, it’s too late. That is the risk we take. And there are big risks, but I know the answers to the questions above. Sometimes they get a little hazy and I feel the what-ifs rush in, but then I get a few days away from all their smiles, noises, questions, innocence, and imaginative everythings and the answers crystallize again into a sharp relief against a life without them.

I know I could give nothing to the world more precious and more important than them. I know the questions in the quiet would eat me up, but I know the answers to them and, for that, I am grateful.

Happy Father’s Day.

Camden’s Birth

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Yesterday @ANNELAMOTT tweeted:

Okay everybody, it’s almost time to start writing. Main thing: put on some pants. Finish up your cup of coffee–no one here thinks you need more. You’re good. Now: butt in chair; deep breath; write something, badly.

Write something, badly. Too often I think I can’t write until I can sit down and write something, goodly. I have about four days a year, maybe, when I think that is a possibility. Thus, I don’t write that often. So, thank you, Anne, for tweeting this out like a punch to my gut. Here is something I will finish writing, badly. But I will not abandon the coffee. Not yet.

After a couple minutes of vigorous massage, Camden’s first cry pierced the atmosphere of the operating room. Life, new and loud, dirty and fragile, and a sweet, sweet noise, but what tugged at my heart was another noise I heard from elsewhere in the OR.

At 7am, that Saturday morning, we arrived at the hospital. Kate had gone into labor a couple of days before her scheduled C-section. Camden was breach, so as they would have done two days later, the doctors moved ahead with the operation, prepping Kate and handing me the biggest set of scrubs in the hospital.

Within an hour I was sitting outside the OR by myself as the anesthesiologist gave Kate a spinal block. The last time I was in this chair outside the OR, Kate was 26 weeks pregnant and we were having an emergency C-section. That time around I sat for two minutes as Kate’s spinal tap was administered, as doctors frantically scrubbed in, and as person after person filed past me through the double doors and into the OR. But this time I sat for 20 minutes as people casually prepared for another C-section, as I heard small talk and even laughter on the other side of those doors. The laid back, quiet atmosphere was surreal. The only thing familiar to me that Saturday morning was the chair, the door, and the closet-like feel to the space where spouses are made to wait until they are cleared to enter the OR. The expediency, the mood, the number of people in the OR, and the conversation were all different. All normal, I suppose. This is how C-sections at full-term proceed, we learned.

As I was allowed in, I started to take pictures. First of Kate on the operating table with a curtain rising up from her chest to shield our view and maintain a sterile environment. Then, a selfie of the two of us, five minutes before Camden arrived. From there, things moved quickly. The anesthesiologist and nurse anesthetist stood by Kate, telling her when she might feel tugging or pressure. I readied myself to stand up and look over the curtains to glimpse my son for the first time.

By the time I was told to stand, Camden had already been placed on a warming bed, out of Kate’s sight. I leaned over and kissed Kate and then walked over to meet my son.

As I stood and watched a small team handle Camden during his first minutes of life, I knew something was not entirely okay. He was not making noise. His color was a little off, not pink yet. There were six hands on him, firmly massaging his whole body. One doctor was sucking a tremendous amount of fluid out of his mouth and nose.

I tried to keep things in perspective while I stood there. I had seen much worse. I had seen these docs with a much different demeanor. They were not there yet. They kept busily working on Camden, but did not appear worried. I kept reminding myself that this is a full-term baby. He will come around. He will come around.

First picture of Camden. 7 minutes old. 8:55am. 10/14/2017.

And then, he took a deep breath, and let out his long, first cry, which was answered by the sweet sound of Kate’s cry, the sweetest sound I heard that morning. For Kate, Camden had been out of sight since the doctors pulled him from her womb. She knew nothing of what was happening for that minute or two. The noise that came from her is truly a noise replicated at no other time than when a mother hears her baby for the first time. I could hear in it the anxiety washed away, the instantaneous connection of mother to son. Hearing it, I knew she loved him so much already, in a way only mothers can. To bear witness to that love is one of the single greatest blessings of fatherhood.

Write Every Day

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Do I have a piece of advice for new parents? Heck no! I am flying by the seat of my pants, making things up as I go along, convincing myself I am doing it the right way until I find out I am doing things completely wrong. I haven’t subscribed to a parenting magazine and I don’t listen to parenting podcasts. Maybe I should do one of those things. I know I would learn something, but then there is always the time.

Do I have the time? No. Sometimes. I don’t know. I probably do have the time, but remembering every little thing I am supposed to do during that time–when she is sleeping or at preschool–is very, very difficult. Many of the tasks seem overwhelming or too time-consuming, like if I take time to peruse through a parenting magazine for an hour and London simultaneously takes a short nap, all I can say about my day is that I read a parenting magazine. Forgive me, but I want more out of my precious free time. By now I have probably given you the impression that I have no interest in learning about parenting or becoming a better parent. That is just not the case.

What got me on this topic of advice was a question a friend asked me months ago. It was not a blanket appeal for advice for new parents. The question was broader than that. What have I found to be helpful? What was a waste? What would I do differently? It was a multi-parter, but without the requirement of answering each part. I have got a simple answer for one part.

Screen Shot 2017-09-29 at 1.36.30 PMWhat have I found to be helpful?

Write a few words about every day you have with your child. When you are in the thick of it, you can think to yourself, I have no time or energy for this. This is often true. It’s okay if you get a few days behind and have to write an entry for a few days back. But there is another excuse, I’ll never forget this. Oh, how wrong you are. There is so much happening each and every day that there is no way to remember each and every day. Your kid can say something hilarious one moment and then the next you are rushing to get out the door and by the time you get back home you know that something great happened that morning but you can’t recall what it was that happened.

So, my advice, if you want to call it that, is to buy a one line a day journal that covers five years. I have written about these journals before. I just bought this one for my baby boy…arriving any day now. Name suggestions anyone?

For the days of firsts, you will likely have photos and videos of crawling, walking, talking,  and maybe even sitting on the pot. But if you don’t write it down, you will forget your kid’s reaction to his first popsicle, the name of a friend made at music class, or that day your kid takes a glorious three-hour nap (September 10, 2016).

Do not fret if you don’t write something every day. I do write something every day, but it took me a while to get into that habit. There are too many blank days in London’s first year and a half of this journal, but better to get into this habit later than never. Now, I am on a streak of 2+ years and her journal has become one of the most-prized possessions in my entire house.

If the house goes down in flames, I am getting my family out and then going back for this journal and, if I have the time, a backup of the hard drive on this computer (photos!). Everything else can be replaced.

But do not forget the journal. Even the sharpest of minds cannot bottle up all the precious days of infancy and toddlerhood.

Going Wireless

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Nowadays, everything is going wireless. We have wireless video game controllers (which I still am not used to), wireless watches that answer phone calls (not perfected yet), wireless headphones, hands-free calling, and voice-activated phones. I remember being really impressed with wireless phones in the home.

Here at the Perica household we are going to keep the trend alive.

IMG_2972_91029

We are going to have a wireless baby. It’s true. I hear it is all the rage. We are late to the trend, but we were afraid to be early adopters of this newfangled technology.

Though going wireless will give us a freedom we have never had with a newborn, it will not be without sacrifice. For example, the option of being able to pump a meal into your newborn at just the right time regardless of whether they are awake to eat is truly handy. The food just pumps right out of an IV bag on a hospital rod in your living room and it goes right into your baby’s stomach via a tube that you get to insert yourself and feed down to the stomach.

Also nice, was knowing my baby’s heart rate and oxygen saturation every second of the night by connecting more wires to the baby. If ever there was a slight hiccup, we would be notified in the middle of our sleep by a fire alarm basically.

Lastly, there was the convenience of forcing oxygen into my baby. With oxygen tanks on every floor of my house an_BKP2796d oxygen tanks in the car, in the stroller, in my backpack, I always knew the baby was getting oxygen. In the rare case my baby looked a little winded or was turning blue, all I had to do was walk over to the giant oxygen tank in my living room and let her loose up to 1/4 flow. Baby turns the right color, but falls asleep right before it is dinner time. Not to worry. This is why there is a nasogastric tube, feeding at the right time is always an option.

Now that people have been having wireless babies for many years, we feel comfortable moving onto this post-modern way of having a newborn. We are happy, blessed, and excited to welcome a wireless baby into our family in the very near future.

I Needed A Subject

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As a creative, there is nothing quite as painful as being told what you’re putting out there is not very unique. When I was told this, it basically boiled down to, and I’m paraphrasing here, “People have gone through much worse…There are lots of stay-at-home parents…What you are doing isn’t special.”

These words struck me in a part of my heart that the world had not calloused over, a part that my own cynicism had not hardened. Their aim was true, but the words were not. Nevertheless, they hurt at the moment and they still hurt. They made me second guess. But they’re not going to stop me. I hope other creatives don’t let the people who don’t understand their art destroy their drive to make it.

My drive was fully realized the moment London arrived in my life, as I expressed to a dear friend in an email on March 24, 2014, nearly two months after London was born:

For a long time I’ve questioned whether I will ever write for a career, as I’ve dreamed of most of my life. Besides getting rejected from MFA programs four years ago, I’ve also had my doubts that I had anything worth writing about. Clearer than ever, I have an answer to that now. I’m not sure what form that might take, but I have a story to tell from this whole experience. This also dawned on me within the first day or two after London’s birth. And in a way, it felt like God was saying, “This is it. This is what you’ll write about.” That has rattled me, probably because it is the truth. Pure, distilled truth.

Years later, I don’t know exactly what form that might take and I recognize the story is just starting. But I hear the still, small voice…This is it. This is what you’ll write about.

Just the Two of Us

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London and I sat in the sun on a warm February day. We took chalk and colored our_BKP8247 respective patches of concrete and bricks. There was no breeze, a few clouds, and a welcoming burst of warm Colorado air in the waning winter.

I colored stripes. London seemed more interested in collecting all the chalk and moving it from one location to another and then she would peel off to grab another rock to drop down the drain cover.

There wasn’t anything particularly extraordinary about our activity that morning, at least, that is what I thought at the time. But later that day I found out Kate was pregnant. A blessing, indeed, but I almost immediately recalled the simple morning I had with London, the hundreds of simple mornings. The two of us drawing with chalk, taking a break with her, and sitting on the brick wall at the end of the alley. Just the two of us. The  two of us.

I at once felt overjoyed at the thought of my family growing and mourned the days of London and I coming to an end. She is my life’s greatest work. My family is my greatest joy. If I don’t write about them, then why write about anything else? More to come…

Mr. Rodgers Testifies

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Watch it and weep. What our current President does not understand is perfectly distilled into the song Mr. Rogers sings at the end of this video.

And, of course, part of the reason Trump wants to cut funding for the NEA and the NEH is because, as Stephen Colbert recently said, Trump hates anything that’s well-endowed.

At 3

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I look at London and whisper, “You weren’t supposed to be three yet.” It is just like last year when I whispered to her, “You weren’t supposed to be two yet.” And the year before that when at 1 she was 9 months old to me.

We were robbed. At least that’s how it felt for a long time after London arrived. Robbed of that anticipation. Robbed of what this pregnancy thing was supposed to be like, especially for Kate. I have written about it before.

But as time has passed, healing has come. More and more I think of London’s premature birth at 26 weeks not as robbery, but as getting to receive the greatest gift I will ever receive three months early.

Though her birth and the following three and a half months in the hospital have left Kate and I with scars and, at times, profound distress, the experience is slowly shaping into a larger blessing as we watch London meet and exceed our expectations and the expectations of every healthcare professional she has seen over these three years.

London is less and less defined by the story of her birth, but for her mom and I, as we move further and further from that night, we are made more aware of how that night has shaped us into the parents, friends, and professionals we are today. We are aware that the passage of time will not completely fade that night in the minds of others, but throws it into sharp relief for us.

Emboldened by a Trump Victory, No, Not That Kind of Emboldened

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Like many of you, I was late to bed on Election Day. The morning after, I was early to rise, unfortunately remembering right away that Donald Trump just became the next President-elect. I hadn’t slept well. I had a headache. And I had six miles to tick off the training calendar. Hoping that the run would distance me from America’s new reality, I welcomed the strides ahead more than I typically do before the sun rises.

The one thing that struck me as I ran my usual route was how quiet this morning was. There was little traffic in the usually congested roundabouts. Even less traffic on the sidewalks. I had a sense there weren’t as many people joyfully embracing the morning in the aftermath of this election. Of course, I live in Denver County, where Trump earned less than 19% support; I wasn’t expecting to run into a lot of cheery people. But the atmosphere was something different than disappointment. It was somber. I had a sense people were mourning in those dawn hours.

After my run, it was back to reality, which this morning included getting through breakfast with my two-year-old daughter without my coffee supplement. As soon as possible, we were out the door to replenish the coffee bean container in the kitchen. I drove to the nearest coffee shop, which for me, happens to be a Starbucks. In I walked with London and I had this peculiar feeling. I looked around at the clientele, not surprised to see the shop was already full of immigrants, as this particular Starbucks always has a very diverse customer base.

I was sad. I could feel it on my face. But the peculiar feeling was shame. For the first time in my life, I had a sense of shame from being white. I wanted to announce to the whole café, “It wasn’t my fault. I voted for Clinton.”

And I wanted to say that I was sorry. To the Muslim barista, I am sorry. To the nice Ethiopian men sharing the Starbucks patio with London and I, I am sorry. To the immigrants sipping their morning espresso, I am sorry.

We have heard a lot about those people who have been emboldened by a Trump victory. The KKK, the racists, the xenophobes, and all the bigots out there think it’s their time.

Well, show them that it isn’t. Be emboldened to greet with open arms, a smile, or a handshake, those who Trump and his deep base have disparaged. Women, immigrants, non-whites, Muslims, Jews, or Mitt Romney. You shouldn’t have to look far. Go out there and be better.

Stay-at-Home Dads and Depression

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I shared this article on Facebook a couple of days ago and I must share it here as well. It really is one of the most honest articles I have ever read about the stay-at-home dad life.

The reality of being a stay-at-home dad is that strangers are suspicious, our friends are patronizing, and stay-at-home moms—the one group you might actually expect to have your back—often won’t let you into their club.

Bradley Egel, who has been a stay-at-home dad for the last decade, told me when he first started taking his son to the park, he felt ostracized by the other moms.

“There was this group of moms who were extraordinarily cold to me. Sometimes to the point where they would just leave [when I arrived],” he said. “Then, after a year, this one woman—I guess she was like queen bee—walks over and says, ‘We’ve been noticing that you come to the same park all the time. What’s your deal?’ I was like, ‘I’m here with my kid. The same as you.'”

Read the rest of the article, “Why So Many Stay-at-Home Dads Are Depressed.”

Play Dates & Guns

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My lovely sister-in-law sent me an article today. It’s not new, but becoming more relevant for this little family as London nears the age where somewhat unsupervised play dates will occur.

As soon as I saw part of the title: “The question I asked before any play date,” I knew it was going to be about guns. Sure enough, “Do you keep guns in the house?”

I am not going to pull quotes from the article, because you should read the whole thing. It’s short and sweet. 

My take: if you have guns, I want to see the safe they’re in before I’m hanging out in your house and especially before my daughter has a play date with your kid.

Hiding your gun isn’t enough. Okay, I’ll paraphrase one stat from the article, that 8 out of 10 first graders (first graders, people) know where their parents hide the guns.

Well done, America.

Emails and Poetry

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I rely on my parents to send me inspirational emails every so often. Yesterday, on my 33rd birthday, I received such an email. My mom encouraged me to go to a blog she regularly reads, to read a specific poem, and to listen to a hymn.

The blog is Barnstorming.

The poem found in this post is “Sure On This Shining Night” by James Agee

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground. 
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth. 
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
 ~James Agee
The hymn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wio1hcuAAAk
I found the poem and the hymn deeply moving. I wrote my mom back and thought I’d share that note on here:

 

Truly loved that poem, but especially the song. It reminds me of the Christmas Night: Carols of the Nativity album from the Cambridge Singers. I found the song on iTunes and bought it already.

It made me think of the the 29th of January two years ago. As Kate and I went to bed on the 29th just a few days ago we quietly talked to each other about how London’s birthday celebration will always start on the night of the 29th because that’s when our miracle started. That night is so fresh and raw. Anytime I dwell on it I immediately start weeping, for several reasons, but maybe most of all because of what we have now, a boundless, healthy 2-year-old, which seemed to be outside the realm of possibility on that night two years ago and for many months afterward.
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
Love you,
Bryce

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.

Becoming a Playground Aficionado

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London has discovered playgrounds. The closest one is just up the street. We went IMG_7500there months ago. I have the exact date written down somewhere, but since then, we have had to expand our known playground universe. Throughout the process, London has seemed to enjoy every playground we have been to, but I quickly developed preferences and discovered things about playgrounds that are quite different since I was last climbing around one.

And, of course, some things about playgrounds are still the same. For example, I am still too big for them just like I was too big for them when I was 12.

IMG_7504But the differences are many. Sand is often isolated to a small area of the playground or simply nonexistent. As a parent, I absolutely love this. London would probably prefer more sand, but she has tried to eat it and it has the potential to get places I’d rather not find sand in later in the day. Thus, I love it.

However, the common sand replacement is wood chips. In my opinion, better than sand, but not the best surface. There is a potential for slivers and, apparently, spiders. Spiders like wood chips. London likes the wood chips. Like sand, she has tasted them, but it is loads easier to get wood chips out of a baby’s mouth than sand.

So far, my preferred playground surface almost looks like concrete, but it’s soft and coated in rubber. It’s springy enough to ease a fall, but firm enough to support easy walking and running.

I think it is safe to say that London and I prefer Kompan playgrounds. They build some really sweet playgrounds. They aren’t the playgrounds of my late elementary years, which were starting to be too safe as our society became more litigious. Kompan playgrounds seem to have taken steps back from that fun-sapping trend. So far, our time on Kompan playgrounds has been plenty safe, but I love that they incorporate a lot of ropes and tall playground equipment. I love the potential for injury and risk, even if I still don’t fit well on most of their contraptions. That’s okay! London fits just fine and  every week we are trying out new playgrounds across Denver and finding out that our favorites consistently have Kompan printed all over the playground, a welcome site for this playground duo.

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.

IMG_3237_164854

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?

IMG_3226_164846

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.